Throughout history, the world's great religions have been profoundly shaped by their encounters with successive empires. Secular empires have provided the means by which religions achieve their global scale, and any worthwhile historical account of those religions must reckon with that imperial dimension. In some cases, empires have favored and supported particular faiths, while in other instances they have suppressed traditions they feared or distrusted. Empires build cities and communication systems, they mix population groups from previously unconnected parts of the world, and crucially, they spread common languages. Taken together, such actions allow faiths to develop and spread, and eventually to achieve worldwide diffusion.
Kingdoms of This World is the first full-length study of the imperial contexts of the world's religions. Philip Jenkins offers extensive coverage of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and other faiths, and ranges widely in tracing the imperial histories of many different parts of the world. This study also considers the religious consequences of the dissolution of empires in modern times. Drawing on the very extensive contemporary scholarship about empires, the book is an innovative and thoroughly researched survey of a critical topic in the history of religion.
In the modern era, we see that the main centers of the different faiths closely imitate the imperial maps of centuries past. Moreover, those religions inherit much from older empires in terms of their institutions, their art, and even their theologies. At so many points, we can see the ghosts of bygone empires in our own religious context. Kingdoms of This World gives voice to the interaction between religion and empire, providing a nuanced understanding of the past as well as its continual influence upon the present.