Includes bibliographical references (p. [367]-392) and index.

Preliminary Material / E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg -- Introduction A Dialectic Relation / Eliezer Ben-Rafael -- Chapter One. The New Religious Constellations In The Frameworks Of Contemporary Globalization And Civilizational Transformation / Shmuel N. Eisenstadt -- Chapter Two. Religious America, Secular Europe: Framing The Debate / Grace Davie -- Chapter Three. Globalization, Nationalism And Religion: A Multiple Modernities Perspective On Imperial And Peripheral Nations In Post-Communist Europe / Willfried Spohn -- Chapter Four. Dynamics Of Ultramodern Religiosity And New Forms Of Religious Spatiality / Danièle Hervieu-Léger -- Chapter Five. Pentecostalism: A Christian Revival Sweeping The Developing World / David Martin -- Chapter Six. Trans-National Pentecostalism And Secular Modernity / Bernice Martin -- Chapter Seven. Transnational Islam In A Post-Westphalian World: Connectedness Vs. Sovereignty / Armando Salvatore -- Chapter Eight. Authoritarian Persistence And Barriers To Democracy In The Muslim Middle East: Beyond Cultural Essentialism / Mehdi P. Amineh -- Chapter Nine. From Medina To The Ummah: Muslim Globalization In Historical And Contemporary Perspective / Peter Mandaville -- Chapter Ten. Establishment Of Buddhist Sacred Space In Contemporary India: The Ambedkarite Buddhism, Dalit Civil Religion And The Struggle Against Social Exclusion / Knut A. Jacobsen -- Chapter Eleven. Hindu Traditions In Diaspora: Shifting Spaces And Places / Martin Baumann -- Chapter Twelve. Religions In India And China Today / Peter Van Der Veer -- Chapter Thirteen. One People? Contemporary Jewish Identities / Eliezer Ben-Rafael -- Chapter Fourteen. Judaism And Global Religious Trends: Some Contemporary Developments / Shlomo Fischer -- Chapter Fifteen. Religion, Territory And Multiculturalism / Yitzhak Sternberg -- Bibliography / E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg -- Index / E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg.

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This book is about new forms of religiosity and religious activity emerging in the context of their dialectic relations with contemporary multicultural realities. World religions are effectively a major agent of the multiculturalization of contemporary societies. However, multiculturalism pushes them not only toward change and reforms, but also toward new conflicts between and within them. This process should remind us of the Jewish legend of the Golem – an animated being created by man which finally challenges the latter’s control over it - a dialectic relation, indeed. World religions today greatly contribute to a world (dis)order that is multicultural both when viewed as a whole, and from within most societies that compose it. It is a development that contrasts both with the assumption that globalization implies one-way homogenization and convergence to Western modernity, and the expectation that globalization would be bound to polarize homogeneous civilizations.