Path

Success

PathCreated with Sketch.

Warning

Path

Error

FREE SHIPPING Every Day With Purchases Of $60 Or More Of Eligible Items. Online Orders Only.
Cokesbury

Stealing My Religion

Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation
  • By Liz Bucar
$19.95
Product Description

"Bucar's sharp insights, shot through with humor and self-awareness, are exactly what we need the next time we reach over to borrow from someone else's religion for our own therapeutic, political, or educational needs."
--Gene Demby, cohost and correspondent for NPR's Code Switch

"So finely written, so intelligent and fair, and laced with such surprising discoveries that it deserves a reader's full attention...As the act of walking a religious pilgrimage does invite greater self-awareness...Stealing My Religion is now an essential part of that worthy endeavor." --Kurt Caswell, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Lively in style and backed by solid, unobtrusive scholarship." --Jonathan Benthall, Times Literary Supplement

"With interpretive subtlety and ethical vision, Liz Bucar explores the moral risk of intercultural theft. Stealing My Religion is a powerful intervention by a leading scholar of religion into the illiberal results of everyday religious exploitation. Highly recommended." --Kathryn Lofton, author of Consuming Religion

Liz Bucar unpacks the ethical dilemmas of a messy form of cultural appropriation: the borrowing of religious doctrines, rituals, and dress for political, economic, and therapeutic reasons. Does borrowing from another's religion harm believers? Who can consent to such borrowings? Bucar sees religion as an especially vexing arena for appropriation debates because faiths overlap and imitate each other and because diversity within religious groups scrambles our sense of who is an insider and who is not. Indeed, if we are to understand why some appropriations are insulting and others benign, we have to ask difficult philosophical questions about what religions really are.

Stealing My Religion guides us through three revealing case studies--the hijab as a feminist signal of Muslim allyship, a study abroad "pilgrimage" on the Camino de Santiago, and the commodification of yoga in the West. We see why the Vatican can't grant Rihanna permission to dress up as the pope, yet it's still okay to roll out our yoga mats. Reflecting on her own missteps, Bucar comes to a surprising conclusion: the way to avoid religious appropriation isn't to borrow less but to borrow more--to become deeply invested in learning the roots and diverse meanings of our enthusiasms.

free shipping iconEligible For Free Shipping
Usually ships in 4-5 business days. Ships from a Cokesbury Connect Partner.
  • Additional Details
  • Kit components
    The following items and their quantities are included in the kit product: Stealing My Religion

    Quantity Included ItemFormatSKUIndividual Price
  • Additional Details
    Product Specs
    • SKU: 9780674297210
    • Manufacturer: Harvard Univ Pr
    • ISBN 13: 9780674297210
    • Publication Date: 10/15/2024
    • Format: Paperback
    • Author: Liz Bucar

     
    Shipping & Returns
    This item is available for return. At Cokesbury, we offer various expedited shipping methods for an additional charge during checkout. However, products with long lead times and those shipped from a Cokesbury Connect Partner are not eligible for expedited shipping. If you select expedited shipping at checkout and your order includes items that cannot be expedited, you will receive a notice explaining that not all items are eligible.