OCHS Academic Director publishes on Importance of Religion

Professor Gavin Flood, OCHS Academic Director and author of The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion; The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition; Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion; and the widely prescribed Introduction to Hinduism has published  with Wiley-Blackwell.

The Importance of Religion argues for the central importance of religion in modern times and how it provides people with meaning to their lives and guides them in their everyday moral choices. Professor Flood argues that modern religions do not just represent passive notions about the nature of reality but are active and inspirational: they show us ways of living, dying, choosing a good life and inhabiting the world.

Professor Flood discusses the nature and meaning of religion and spirituality, and religion's relationship with politics, science, evolutionary biology, human rights, culture, humanism and more.

The title is an excellent addition to the body of publishing that has sprung from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. It has been well-received by scholars of religion including Gavin D’Costa of the University of Bristol: ‘Flood presents a thesis about “religion” that is provocative, irenic, learned and wide-ranging. His interdisciplinary intervention is an elegant challenge to those who think religion is dead or dying. It is a sensitive exploration of religion as the textual and ritual generator of meaning.’

Professor Flood has been the Academic Director of OCHS since October 2005. In 2008 he was granted the title of Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion from the University of Oxford.