Ashgate anthology

This anthology is the outcome of the Inform conference at the
London School of Economics (31 January - 2 February 2014)
with some additional contributions.

The collection spans a range of countries and minority religions - some new and some traditional - from an international range of scholars, some established and others early-career. Some of the featured religions are familiar to the public, while others are less known.

The anthology is part of the Routledge/Inform Series on Minority and Spiritual Movements,

For a full list of chapters and contributors, see below.

Please click here for publisher's details

List of chapters and contributors:

Summary Outline:
1. George D. Chryssides
(York St John University)
Introduction: Religious minorities in Europe and the Middle East

Part 1: Mapping the minority religions

2. Ringo Ringvee
(University of Tartu, Estonia)
What do the censuses tell about minority religions? Some reflections on Estonia

3. Brigitte Knobel and
Camille Gonzales (Centre intercantonal d’information sur les croyances, Geneva)
Mapping of religious minorities in Geneva

4. Holly Folk
(Western Washington University)
Scientology in Hungary

5. Milda Ališauskiene (Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania)
Religious minorities in Contemporary Lithuania

6. Paulina Niechcial
(Jagiellonian University, Krakow)
Sacred homeland, glorious ancestors and old-time language: Ethnic elements in the identity of the Zoroastrian religious minority in modern Tehran

7. George D. Chryssides
(York St John University)
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Middle East

Part 2: Belonging and monitoring

8. Alain Garay (Court of Appeal of Paris)
The legal situation of New Religious Movements in France

9. Claude Proeschel (Nancy University and the Institute for Political Studies, Paris)
Religious minorities in democratic Spain: Rekindling the past

10. Eugenia Roussou
(CRIA/FCSH, New University of Lisbon)
Spiritual movements in times of crisis: an anthropological account of alternative spirituality in Portugal and Greece

Religion in the 21st Century

Minority Religions
in Europe and the Middle East:
Mapping and Monitoring

11. Titus Hjelm (University College London), Essi Mäkelä (University of Helsinki),and Jussi Sohlberg (Research Institute of the Lutheran Church in Finland)
What do we talk about when we talk about legitimate religion? Failure and success in the registration of two Pagan communities in Finland

12. J. Eugene Clay (Arizona State University)
Religious liberty in Russia after 1997

13. Inez Schippers (Tilburg University, Netherlands)
Turkey’s Gülen Movement

14. Shai Feraro (Tel Aviv University)
Is there a future for Neo-Paganism in the Holy Land?

15. Kishan Manocha (British Chapter of the International Association for Religious Freedom and Inter Faith Network for the UK) and Saba Tahzib (International Association for Religious Freedom)
Religion, social change and responding to persecution - the case of the Baha’i community in Iran

16. Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
(Center for Islamic Pluralism, Washington DC)
The Bektashi-Alevi Continuum from the Balkans to Iran: Sufi Minorities and Politics

Religion in the 21st Century