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Each volume in this series of companions to major topics and key figures in theology and religious studies contains specially commissioned essays by international scholars providing an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for new readers and non-specialists alike. Like the highly successful Cambridge Companions to Literature and Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, these volumes are ideal for use by students on relevant courses, and by general interested readers.

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93 results in Cambridge Companions to Religion

Page 1 of 5

The Cambridge Companion to Counter-Reformation Sanctity
  • Edited by Jan Machielsen, Emily Michelson, Katrina B. Olds
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    01 October 2026
  • This groundbreaking Companion explores how Counter-Reformation sanctity reshaped religious identities, sacred traditions, and devotional practices that transformed Catholicism into the first global religion. Offering a fresh perspective on early modern Catholicism, it moves beyond traditional debates about Reformation and Reform and presents sanctity as the defining lens through which to view the period's transformative changes. By examining the lives, representations, and global impact of saints, the Companion demonstrates how sanctity countered the Protestant challenge and also transformed the very fabric of Catholicism between 1500 and 1750. Organized into four thematic sections-models of sanctity, the creation and contestation of sanctity, the representation of saints, and everyday interactions with saints-the volume also provides insight into the role of holiness during this pivotal period in Church history. Connecting history, theology, art history, and material culture, this interdisciplinary Companion serves as an indispensable resource for scholars and students seeking a comprehensive understanding of early modern Catholicism's influence on European and global history.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Liturgy
  • Edited by Joris Geldhof
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • Throughout the long history of Christianity, Christians have celebrated their faith in a myriad of ways. This Companion offers new insights into the theological depths of the liturgical mysteries that are the essence of Christian worship services, rituals, and sacraments. It investigates how these mysteries order time and space, and how they permeate the life of the Churches. The volume explores how Christian liturgy, as a corporeal and communal set of activities, has had a profound impact on spiritualities, preaching, pastoral engagement, and ecumenical relations, as well as encounters with religious others. Written by an international team of scholars, it also explores the intrinsic connections between liturgy and the arts, and why liturgy matters theologically. Ultimately, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Liturgy demonstrates the inextricable link between theology and liturgy and provides incentives for critical and constructive reflections about the relevance of liturgy in today's world.

The Cambridge Companion to Christology
  • Edited by Timothy J. Pawl, Michael L. Peterson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • The idea that God became incarnate as a human is a doctrine at the core of historic Christianity. Defined by the Great Councils and Creeds of the Christian church, the study of this doctrine, Christology, has been a focus of inquiry for two millennia. This Companion reflects the most recent paths of inquiry for our understanding of Christology. Covering Biblical and other sources, it explores the reception of Christology over the course of Christianity's history, from the early Patristic Ages to post-modernity, as well Jewish and Islamic treatments of the Christological claims. The volume also considers the recent contributions of systematic theology, metaphysics, and political theology to the study of Christology. It demonstrates how the conceptual substance of Christological doctrine interacts with a range of areas on the intellectual landscape. Designed for use by students and experts, The Cambridge Companion to Christology also points to the new and dynamic directions in scholarship on this topic.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Heresy
  • Edited by Richard Flower
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • The concept of heresy has played a major role across Christian history. Traditionally, heretical sects have been regarded as distinct, real-life groups of people who had departed from the stable orthodox traditions of Christianity and who posed a threat that needed to be addressed, sometimes through violent repression. More recently, scholarship has focused on the notion of heresy as discourse, placing particular emphasis on its literary construction and the social and cultural contexts in which it was deployed. This literature has generated significant debates about the nature and historicity of many heresies. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Heresy provides a systematic and up-to-date guide to the study of this topic and its methodological challenges. The opening chapters explore different forms of written material that have played vital roles in historical disputes and in modern scholarly accounts. These are followed by case studies of thirteen notable heresies, ranging from the Gnostics through to the Hussites at the dawn of the Reformation.

The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons
  • Edited by Andrew Hofer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • Augustine of Hippo is known for some of the greatest theological masterpieces in Christian history, notably, his Confessions, The Trinity, and The City of God. Over 900 of his sermons, a treasure trove of his insights into God, Scripture, and humanity, have also survived. Given the wide dissemination of many of these texts over the past 1600 years, Augustine is arguably the most influential preacher since the time of the apostles. In recent decades, scholars have paid more attention to his sermons, including those newly discovered, with the result that Augustine's preaching has become increasingly accessible to a broad audience. The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons furthers this work by offering essays from an international team of experts. It provides a reliable guide for scholars and students of early Christian biblical exegesis, liturgy, doctrine, social practices, and homiletics, as well as for those dedicated to the retrieval of early preaching for the Church today.

The Cambridge Companion to Women and Islam
  • Edited by Masooda Bano
  • Published online:
    12 April 2025
    Print publication:
    17 April 2025
  • The Cambridge Companion to Women and Islam provides a comprehensive overview of a timely topic that encompasses the fields of Islamic feminist scholarship, anthropology, history, and sociology. Divided into three parts, it makes several key contributions. The volume offers a detailed analysis of textual debates on gender and Islam, highlighting the logic of classical reasoning and its enduring appeal, while emphasizing alternative readings proposed by Islamic feminists. It considers the agency that Muslim women exhibit in relation to their faith as reflected in women's piety movements. Moreover, the volume documents how Muslim women shape socio-political life, presenting real-world examples from across the Muslim world and diaspora communities.  Written by an international team of scholars, the Companion also explores theoretical and methodological advances in the field, providing guidance for future research. Surveying Muslim women's experiences across time and place, it also presents debates on gender norms across various genres of Islamic scholarship.

The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Narrative
  • Edited by Keith Bodner
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Narrative offers an overview and a concise introduction to an exciting field within literary interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. Analysis of biblical narrative has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades, and this volume features essays that explore many of the artistic techniques that readers encounter in an array of texts. Specially commissioned for this volume, the chapters analyze various scenes in Genesis, Exodus and the wilderness wanderings, Israel's experience in the land and royal experiment in Kings and Chronicles, along with short stories like Ruth, Jonah, Esther, and Daniel. New Testament essays examine each of the four gospels, the book of Acts, stories from the letters of Paul, and reading for the plot in the book of Revelation. Designed for use in undergraduate and graduate courses, this Companion will serve as an excellent resource for instructors and students interested in understanding and interpreting biblical narrative.

The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence
  • Edited by Beth Singler, Fraser Watts
  • Published online:
    20 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • Religion and artificial intelligence are now deeply enmeshed in humanity's collective imagination, narratives, institutions, and aspirations. Their growing entanglement also runs counter to several dominant narratives that engage with long-standing historical discussions regarding the relationship between the 'sacred” and the 'secular' - technology and science. This Cambridge Companion explores the fields of Religion and AI comprehensively and provides an authoritative guide to their symbiotic relationship. It examines established topics, such as transhumanism, together with new and emerging fields, notably, computer simulations of religion. Specific chapters are devoted to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while others demonstrate that entanglements between religion and AI are not always encapsulated through such a paradigm. Collectively, the volume addresses issues that AI raises for religions, and contributions that AI has made to religious studies, especially the conceptual and philosophical issues inherent in the concept of an intelligent machine, and social-cultural work on attitudes to AI and its impact on contemporary life. The diverse perspectives in this Companion demonstrate how all religions are now interacting with artificial intelligence.

The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus
  • Edited by Markus Bockmuehl
  • Published online:
    15 November 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024
  • The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus serves as the most up to date guide and resource for understanding Jesus' multifaceted legacy, enduring impact over time and space, and relevance in today's world. Integrating textual, historical, theological, and cultural perspectives, the essays, specially commissioned for this volume, also offer a fresh and diverse overview of Jesus' significance in contemporary global contexts. Key features include insights into Jesus' life and teachings, his role in different religious traditions, and his influence on art, music, and global cultures. The volume also addresses contemporary issues of poverty, race, and power dynamics, making it especially relevant for today's readers. The Companion offers a diversity of perspectives from which to approach the unique identity and importance of Jesus beyond the 2020s, whether in relation to Christianity's cultural and existential crises in the Americas, its precipitous decline in Western Europe, or its unprecedented growth and proliferation in Africa and Asia.

The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah
  • Edited by Christopher B. Hays
  • Published online:
    08 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • Few writings have shaped the world as much as the Book of Isaiah. Its lyricism, imagery, theology, and ethics are all deeply ingrained into us, and into Judeo-Christian culture more generally. It has been a cultural touchstone from the time when it was formed, and it influenced later Biblical authors as well. The Book of Isaiah is also a complex work of literature, dense with poetry, rhetoric, and theology, and richly intertwined with ancient history. For all these reasons, it is a challenge to read well. The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah serves as an up-to-date and reliable guide to this biblical book. Including diverse perspectives from leading scholars all over the world, it approaches Isaiah from a wide range of methodological approaches. It also introduces the worlds in which the book was produced, the way it was formed, and the impacts it has had on contemporary and later audiences in an accessible way.

The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible
  • Edited by Bruce Wells
  • Published online:
    11 April 2024
    Print publication:
    18 April 2024
  • This Companion offers a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and legacy of biblical law.  Examining the debates that swirl around the nature of biblical law, it explores its historical context, the significance of its rules, and its influence on early Judaism and Christianity. The volume also interrogates key questions: Were the rules intended to function as ancient Israel's statutory law? Is there evidence to indicate that they served a different purpose? What is the relationship between this legal material and other parts of the Hebrew Bible? Most importantly, the book provides an in-depth look at the content of the Torah's laws, with individual essays on substantive, procedural, and ritual law. With contributions from an international team of experts, written specially for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible provides an up-to-date look at scholarship on biblical law and outlines themes and topics for future research.

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger
  • Edited by Daniel Cardó, Uwe Michael Lang
  • Published online:
    25 January 2024
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • Among the most important modern Catholic thinkers, Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, fundamentally shaped Christian theology in the 20th and early 21st centuries. His collaborations and debates with figures such as Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, Jean Daniélou, Hans Küng, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jürgen Habermas reflect the key role he has played in the development of Christian life and doctrine. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger conveys the depth and breadth of his significant legacy to contemporary Catholic theology and culture. With contributions from an international team of scholars, the volume assesses Ratzinger's theological synthesis in response to contemporary challenges that Christianity faces. It surveys the major themes and topics that Ratzinger explored, and highlights aspects of the ideas that he developed in his engagement with a wide variety of intellectual and religious currents. Collectively, the essays in this volume demonstrate how Ratzinger's epochal contributions to Christian thought will reverberate for generations to come.

The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Trent
  • Edited by Nelson H. Minnich
  • Published online:
    02 October 2023
    Print publication:
    16 March 2023
  • The Council of Trent was a major event in the history of Christianity. It shaped Roman Catholicism's doctrine and practice for the next four hundred years and continues to do so today. The literature on the Council is vast and in numerous languages. This Companion, written  by an international group of leading researchers, brings together the latest scholarship on the principal issues treated at the Council: the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, original sin, justification, the  sacraments (Baptism, Penance, Confirmation, Eucharist, Holy Orders, Marriage, and the Annointing of the Sick), sacred images, sacred music, and its reform of religious orders, the training of the  clergy, the provision of pastoral care in the parish setting, and the implementation of its decrees. The volume demonstrates that the Council unwittingly furthered the papal centralization of authority by allowing the interpretation of its decrees to be the exclusive prerogative of the Holy See, and entrusting it with their implementation.

The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War
  • Edited by Margo Kitts
  • Published online:
    04 May 2023
    Print publication:
    11 May 2023
  • This Companion offers a global, comparative history of the interplay between religion and war from ancient times to the present. Moving beyond sensationalist theories that seek to explain why 'religion causes war,' the volume takes a thoughtful look at the connection between religion and war through a variety of lenses - historical, literary, and sociological-as well as the particular features of religious war. The twenty-three carefully nuanced and historically grounded chapters comprehensively examine the religious foundations for war, classical just war doctrines, sociological accounts of religious nationalism, and featured conflicts that illustrate interdisciplinary expressions of the intertwining of religion and war. Written by a distinguished, international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the history and sociology of religion and war, as well as other disciplines.

The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine
  • Edited by Michael Allen
  • Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022
  • What is Christian Doctrine? This Companion guides students and scholars through the key issues in the contemporary practice of Christian theology. Including twenty-one essays, specially commissioned from an international team of leading theologians, the volume outlines the central features of Christian doctrinal claims and examines leading methods and theological movements. The first part of the book explores the ten most important topics in Christian doctrine, offering a nuanced historical analysis, as well as charting pathways for further development. In the second part, essays address the most significant movements that are reshaping approaches to multiple topics across disciplinary, as well as denominational and ecclesiastical, borders. Incorporating cutting-edge biblical and historical scholarship in theological argument, this Companion serves as an accessible and engaging introduction to the main themes of Christian doctrine. It will also guide theologians through a growing literature that is increasingly diverse and pluriform.

The New Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation
  • Edited by Ian Boxall, Bradley C. Gregory
  • Published online:
    15 October 2022
    Print publication:
    22 December 2022
  • This Cambridge Companion offers an up-to-date and accessible guide to the fast-changing discipline of biblical studies. Written by scholars from diverse backgrounds and religious commitments – many of whom are pioneers in their respective fields – the volume covers a range of contemporary scholarly methods and interpretive frameworks. The volume reflects the diversity and globalized character of biblical interpretation in which neat boundaries between author-focused, text-focused, and reader-focused approaches are blurred. The significant space devoted to the reception of the Bible – in art, literature, liturgy, and religious practice – also blurs the distinction between professional and popular biblical interpretation. The volume provides an ideal introduction to the various ways that scholars are currently interpreting the Bible. It offers both beginning and advanced students an understanding of the state of biblical interpretation, and how to explore each topic in greater depth.

The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature
  • Edited by Katherine J. Dell
  • Edited in association with Suzanna R. Millar, Arthur Jan Keefer
  • Published online:
    28 July 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022
  • Study of the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible and the contemporary cultures in the ancient Near Eastern world is evolving rapidly as old definitions and assumptions are questioned. Scholars are now interrogating the role of oral culture, the rhetoric of teaching and didacticism, the understanding of genre, and the relationship of these factors to the corpus of writings. The scribal culture in which wisdom literature arose is also under investigation, alongside questions of social context and character formation. This Companion serves as an essential guide to wisdom texts, a body of biblical literature with ancient origins that continue to have universal and timeless appeal. Reflecting new interpretive approaches, including virtue ethics and intertextuality, the volume includes essays by an international team of leading scholars. They engage with the texts, provide authoritative summaries of the state of the field, and open up to readers the exciting world of biblical wisdom.

The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
  • Edited by Alexander J. B. Hampton, Douglas Hedley
  • Published online:
    21 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022
  • Christianity has understood the environment as a gift to nurture and steward, a book of divine revelation disclosing the divine mind, a wild garden in need of cultivation and betterment, and as a resource for the creation of a new Eden. This Cambridge Companion details how Christianity, one of the world's most important religions, has shaped one of the existential issues of our age, the environment. Engaging with contemporary issues, including gender, traditional knowledge, and enchantment, it brings together the work of international scholars on the subject of Christianity and the Environment from a diversity of fields. Together, their work offers a comprehensive guide to the complex relationship between Christianity and the environment that moves beyond disciplinary boundaries. To do this, the volume explains the key concepts concerning Christianity and the environment, outlines the historical development of this relationship from antiquity to the present, and explores important contemporary issues.

The Cambridge Companion to Genesis
  • Edited by Bill T. Arnold
  • Published online:
    02 June 2022
    Print publication:
    12 May 2022
  • The Cambridge Companion to Genesis explores the first book of the Bible, the book that serves as the foundation for the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. Recognizing its unique position in world history, the history of religions, as well as biblical and theological studies, the volume summarizes key developments in Biblical scholarship since the Enlightenment, while offering an overview of the diverse methods and reading strategies that are currently applied to the reading of Genesis. It also explores questions that, in some cases, have been explored for centuries. Written by an international team of scholars whose essays were specially commissioned, the Companion provides a multi-disciplinary update of all relevant issues related to the interpretation of Genesis. Whether the reader is taking the first step on the path or continuing a research journey, this volume will illuminate the role of Genesis in world religions, theology, philosophy, and critical biblical scholarship.

The Cambridge Companion to American Protestantism
  • Edited by Jason E. Vickers, Jennifer Woodruff Tait
  • Published online:
    11 May 2022
    Print publication:
    26 May 2022
  • American Protestantism has been the dominant form of Christianity in United States since the colonial era and has had a profound impact on American society. Understanding this religious tradition is, thus, crucial to understanding American culture. This Companion offers a comprehensive overview of  American Protestantism. It considers all its major streams—Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Baptist, Stone-Campbell, Methodist, Holiness, and Pentecostal. Written from various disciplinary perspectives, including history, theology, liturgics, and religious studies, it explores the beliefs and practices around which American Protestant life has revolved. The volume also provides a chronological overview of the tradition's entire history, addresses its prominent theological and sociological features, and explores its numerous intersections with American culture. Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, as well as an interested general audience, this Companion will be useful both for insiders and outsiders to the American Protestant tradition.

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