New book: Michael/Redden: Mediating Faiths

Cover of Mediating FaithsAshgate Publishing published a book in December titled Mediating Faiths: Religion and Socio-Cultural Change in the Twenty-First Century. It was edited by Michael Bailey, a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex and Guy Redden, who teaches cultural studies at the University of Sydney. If you are member of the The British Sociological Association (or on their email list) you can find the discount code that gives you 20% of the book till April 30, 2011.

The announcing email introduced the book with these words:

Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations.

Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the very latest social and cultural developments in the environments in which it exists. They raise fundamental questions concerning new media and religious expression, religious youth cultures, the links between spirituality, personal development and consumer culture, and contemporary intersections of religion, identity and politics. Together the chapters demonstrate how belief in the superempirical is negotiated relative to secular concerns in the twenty-first century.

The publisher's page includes the book's table of contents. I boldfaced those essays that are probably relevant to this site's topic (religion online)

Editors' Introduction: Religion as living culture, Michael Bailey and Guy Redden;
 
Part I New Media Religion:
Transformations in British religious broadcasting, Stephen Hunt;
Alternative Islamic voices on the internet, Aini Linjakumpu;
Mediatizing faith: digital storytelling on the unspoken, Knut Lundby;
Haredim and the internet: a hate-love affair, Yoel Cohen.
 
Part II Consumption and Lifestyle:
Fixing the self: alternative therapies and spiritual logics, Ruth Barcan and Jay Johnston;
Religious media events and branding religion, Veronika Krönert and Andreas Hepp;
The after-life of born-again beauty queens, Karen W. Tice;
How congregations are becoming customers, Rob Warner;
US evangelicals and the redefinition of worship music, Anna E. Nekola.
 
Part III Youth:
The making of Muslim youth cultures in Europe, Thijl Sunier;
Religious experience of a young megachurch congregation in Singapore, Joy Kooi-Chin Tong.
 
Part IV Politics and Community:
Recent literary representations of British Muslims, Claire Chambers;
Destiny, the Exclusive Bretheren and mediated politics in New Zealand, Ann Hardy;
Social security with a Christian twist in John Howard's Australia, Holly Randell-Moon;
Mediated spaces of religious community in Manila, Philippines, Katherine L. Wiegele;
 
Index.