A God of One's Own: Religion's Capacity for Peace and Potential for Violence

ISBN: 978-0-7456-4618-3

Hardcover

264 pages

September 2010, Polity

Other Available Formats: Paperback

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This is a major new book by one of the world’s leading sociologists. Here he draws on his theory of the second modernity to offer a highly original account of the role of religion and religious experience in contemporary societies.
In Western societies, where the autonomy of the individual has been internalized, religious belief has become detached from established churches and increasingly personalized, so that individuals feel increasingly at liberty to find their own forms of faith that fit their own lives Ð to appoint ‘Gods of their own’.
But this ‘God of one’s own’ is not the only God, and the central question we face today is: How can we conceive of a type of inter-religious tolerance in which loving one’s neighbor does not imply war to the death?
This will appeal to students and academics in sociology, social theory and religious studies, but its clarity and accessibility will also ensure that it appeals to a much broader readership interested in the nature and role of religion in the 21st century.