Religion, Language and Power

This edited volume examines the intricate relationships between religious discourse, linguistic practices, and structures of power across diverse historical and cultural contexts. Green brings together contributions that analyze how religious language functions as both an instrument of authority and a site of contestation, demonstrating that theological concepts and divine references operate within complex networks of social and political meaning.

The collection employs intellectual-historical methods to trace how religious vocabularies have been deployed, transformed, and contested across different periods and regions. Contributors examine cases ranging from medieval Islamic jurisprudence to colonial missionary linguistics, from Buddhist textual traditions to modern secular appropriations of religious rhetoric. This comparative approach reveals that discussions about divine authority and religious truth claims cannot be separated from questions of who controls linguistic resources and how sacred languages mediate social hierarchies.

Central to the volume is the argument that religious language never exists in a neutral space but always embodies particular configurations of power. Whether analyzing Sanskrit's role in legitimating Brahmanical authority, Latin's function in medieval Christian governance, or Arabic's status in Islamic legal discourse, the contributors demonstrate that languages deemed sacred or liturgical serve to include and exclude, to authorize and marginalize. The work engages with broader debates about theism not by defending or attacking religious belief directly, but by historicizing the linguistic conditions through which claims about divine reality have been articulated and contested.

The collection's significance lies in its refusal to treat religious language as merely expressive of pre-existing theological positions. Instead, it shows how linguistic practices actively constitute religious realities and shape possibilities for thinking about divine presence or absence. By examining translation controversies, scriptural interpretation debates, and conflicts over religious terminology, the volume reveals that what appear as purely theological disputes often encode struggles over social authority and cultural legitimacy.

Green's introduction frames these investigations within post-colonial and critical theory perspectives, arguing that understanding religion's truth claims requires attention to the material and institutional contexts of religious speech. The volume thus contributes to debates about theism by demonstrating that questions of God's existence or nature cannot be abstracted from the historical dynamics through which religious language acquires its power to convince, coerce, or console.