At the dawn of the twentieth century many leading European intellectuals perceiving that
religion was in rapid decline in their secularizing societies thought that it was doomed to
soon become marginal and eventually to disappear throughout the world. A century later such
naïve beliefs have collapsed. We are struck by the complexity of religious transformations in
our globalized world. Today religion often appears to have been hijacked by murderous thugs
for God's sake who come in various shapes and colours but always with the same intentions
they are often also willing to act on. In the essays in this volume Guy G. Stroumsa reflects
on some leading intellectuals such as Sigmund Freud Martin Buber Emmanuel Levinas and Carlo
Ginzburg and how they approached an understanding of religious phenomena from their own
disciplinary viewpoints. The volume closes with comments on crucial problems and methods in the
contemporary study of religion.
