Explores the relationship between religion and politics through a number of key issues including marriage, law, conversion and veiling.

Introduction; Part I. The Religious and the Political: 1. Fear of diversity: the origin of politics; 2. Charisma and church-state relations; 3. City, nation and globe: the rise of the church and the citizen; Part II. State Management of Religion: 4. Religion and kingship: liturgies and royal rituals; 5. Religion and reproduction: marriage and family; 6. Conversion and the state; 7. Religion, state and legitimacy: three dimensions of authority; Part III. Comparative and Historical Studies: 8. Buddhism and the political: the sangha and the state; 9. Confucianism as state ideology: China; 10. Religion, state and Japanese exceptionalism: nihonjinron; 11. State and Turkish secularism: the case of Diyanet (with Berna Zengin Arslan); Part IV. Conclusion: 12. Popular religion and popular democracy; 13. The state and freedom of religion.

Bryan S. Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Committee on Religion at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, and the Director of the Center for Religion and Society at the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of Religion and Modern Society (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the editor of The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 2006).