Preface -- Introduction -- Historical models -- Gods' statues as a tool of Assyrian political policy: Esarhaddon's return of Marduk to Babylon -- Religious projection: A Hellenistic instance -- Mani versus Mazdak: The prophet and his king in pre-Islamic Iran -- Religious transformations and socio-political change: A western eurocentric paradigm? -- Eastern Europe -- The intelligentsia between secular and religious culture -- Personal spiritual orientations and religiousness in (former) Soviet society -- John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev: The process of globalization in multidimensional comparison -- The analogy of the proportionalitas: The coherence between sociopolitical development and the development of religion in the new socio-cultural reality of Czechoslovakia -- National history, culture and the process of religious change -- Religion and revolution: A Hungarian pilgrimage in Rumania -- Muslim fundamentalism in Soviet Central Asia: A social perspective -- The Muslims of Poland: A religious minority in transition -- Delusion and illusion, false hopes and failed dreams: Religion, the churches and East Germany's 1989 "November revolution" -- Theology of liberation and the Protestant monastery of Loccum in Germany -- Opposition within affinity between religion and politics with reference to Golden Age Denmark and Brazil -- Latin America -- Religious transformations and social change in Latin America -- In the beginning there were the Canaries ...: The forgotten purgatory en route to the new world -- Missionary activity in Latin America: Confession manuals and indigenous eroticism -- Iconography, inter subjectivity, and anthropological experience: A Toba shamanic tree -- Political culture, religious culture and sacrifice -- Theoretical and methodological implications.

Theories on tradition and change in sociology, anthropology, history, and the history of religions -- Method, theory, and the subject matter -- What sort of "reality" is religion? -- The symbolics of power discourse among contemporary religious groups in West Africa -- Religious studies as a saving grace? From Goodenough to South Africa -- Conclusion -- Methodological conceits and theoretical opportunities: Reflections on the level of analysis appropriate for explaining socio- cultural phenomena -- List of contributors -- Index.