Faithful Narratives

Historians of religion face complex interpretive issues when examining religious texts, practices, and experiences. Faithful Narratives presents the work of twelve eminent scholars whose research has exemplified compelling strategies for negotiating the difficulties inherent in this increasingly important area of historical inquiry. The chapters range chronologically from Late Antiquity to modern America and thematically from the spirituality of near eastern monks to women's agency in religion, considering familiar religious communities alongside those on the margins and bringing a range of spiritual and religious practices into historical focus.

Focusing on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the essays address matters central to the study of religion in history, in particular texts and traditions of authority, interreligious discourse, and religious practice and experience. Some examine mainstream communities and traditions, others explore individuals who crossed religious or confessional boundaries, and still others study the peripheries of what is considered orthodox religious tradition. Encompassing a wide geographical as well as chronological scope, Faithful Narratives illustrates the persistence of central themes and common analytical challenges for historians working in all periods.

Andrea Sterk is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. She is the author most recently of Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity. Nina Caputo is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. She is the author of Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia: Community, History, and Messianism.

Traversing the boundaries of the religious and the secular, the premodern and modern, and the disciplines of history and religious studies, this collection of illuminating and compelling essays offers new insights into the significance of religion in the study of history. It is an important and interdisciplinary intervention in modern historiography, for the contributors remind us that religion belongs alongside politics, economics, and culture as an integral dimension of individual and communal identity.

David Kling, University of Miami, author of The Bible in History:

Faithful Narratives features an all-star lineup of historians, the best of the best, and all deliver. They contend that religion cannot be explained away, ignored as a factor in human agency, reduced to a by-product of other factors, or treated as a category separate from society.