Religious Identities and the Global South

This book offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of religious identities in the Global South. Drawing on literature in various fields, Felix Wilfred analyzes how religious identities intersect with the processes of globalization, modernity, and postmodernity. He illustrates how the study of religion in the Global North often revolves around questions of secularism and fundamentalism, whereas a neo-Orientalist quality often attends study of religion in the Global South. These approaches and theorizing fail to incorporate the experiences of lived religion in the South, especially in Asia. Historically, the religions in the South have played a highly significant role in resistance to the domination by the colonial forces, an important reason for the continued attachment of the peoples of the South to their religious universe. This book puts the two regions and their scholarly norms in conversation with one another, exploring the social, political, cultural, and economic implications. 

“Wilfred’s new book is a comprehensive and stimulating analysis of religion in relation to both globalization and identity, which, as we put the notion of secularization behind us, have come again to the forefront of debate and concern. It is a work of immense scholarship and distilled experience that fluently addresses the place of religion in the contemporary world.” (John Clammer, Professor, O.P. Jindal Global University, India)

“This book is a wake-up call. Felix Wilfred shows us that today’s crisis is such that we cannot take the survival and the future of humankind for granted. At stake is not the future of religion but the development of a religion of the future that is concerned about the future of humanity and of creation.” (Georg Evers, author of The Churches in Asia)

"Religious Identities and the Global South is a masterwork in the study of human communities across the sweep of modern states and societies. Felix Wilfred’s magnum opus offers an erudite, insightful and incisive assessment of religious identity as one of the defining characteristics in the lives of humans beings everywhere today. Religion and religions lie at the heart of the learned volume, but only as woven in with every other aspect of our current situation. Though deeply informed in the sociological and political literature of the modern West, Wilfred firmly and forthrightly speaks from the global south, thus upending the too often taken for granted dominance of Western voices in conversations about the present and future of humanity in our increasing intertwined and imperiled world. Readers seeking a clear view of where we are heading in the 21^st century will surely put this book on their must-read list." (Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University, USA)

Felix Wilfred is Emeritus Professor and Chair, School of Philosophy and Religious Thought, State University of Madras, India.