Despite Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous obituary notice, God did not die. Today, most of the world’s population continues to claim some form of faith. Politics and international relations cannot be understood without accounting for religion.

The essays in this book are based upon the Engelsberg conference of 2014, On Religion. They investigate the role religion has played in societies, from antiquity to the present. They also explore religion as a phenomenon of the human condition and how it manifests as individual experience; or, as William James put it, the “feelings, acts and experiences of individuals in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine”.

Contributors: Reza Aslan, Esther Benbassa, Benedetta Berti, Jessica Frazier, Armin W. Geertz, Ariel Glucklich, Martin Goodman, Janne Haaland Matlary, Wouter Hanegraaff, Hugh N. Kennedy, Gary Lachman, Julius J. Lipner, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Simon May, Richard Miles, Candida R. Moss, Robin Osborne, William O’ Reilly, Elaine Pagels, Wolfgang Palaver, Marco Pasi, Daniel T. Potts, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Göran Rosenberg, Malise Ruthven, John Schneid, Mona Siddiqui, Pär Stenbäck, Jayne Svenungsson, Harvey Whitehouse, A.N Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, Adrian Wooldridge.