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How, when, and why did ordinary people began to care for the fate of distant strangers? This book addresses these questions by reconstructing, for the first time, the historical origins of global humanitarianism. Peter Stamatov investigates these origins in the context of European overseas imperialism between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This book examines the political consequences of growing religiosity in countries where politics are repressive and religious freedoms are in flux. The study compares how two authoritarian regimes - Russia and China - manage religion and how religious communities navigate restrictive political environments to pursue their own spiritual and economic interests.

Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans? challenges a conventional wisdom in which recently mobilized religious and Secular extremists captured the parties and created a God gap. Using surveys (1960-2008), Claassen investigates the motivations of religious and non-religious activists and produces a new way of understanding the religious divide in American politics.

Through an analysis of Christian communities in the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica, this book analyzes how religious groups talk about the politics surrounding economic life.

Mormons have long had an outsized presence in American culture and politics, but they remain largely unknown to most Americans. Recent years have seen the political prominence of Mormons taken to a new level - including the presidential candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney, the prominent involvement of Mormons in the campaign for California's Proposition 8 (anti-gay marriage), and the ascendancy of Democrat Harry Reid to the position of Senate Majority Leader. This book provides the most thorough examination ever written of Mormons' place in the American political landscape - what Mormons are like politically and how non-Mormons respond to Mormon candidates. However, this is a book about more than Mormons. As a religious subculture in a pluralistic society, Mormons are a case study of how a religious group balances distinctiveness and assimilation - a question faced by all faiths.