ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores modern-day transformations in the amount and kinds of religious diversity increasingly underway in more and more parts of the contemporary world. It explores the politics and practice of religious diversity unleashed by or closely associated with the political-economic and socio-cultural transformations through which countries are passing as increasingly prominent players on the world scene. The book describes the treatment of specific nation-states and awareness that such focus involves understanding the local impact and domestic implications of transnational processes and border-transcending dynamics. It offers a determinative power of localized political structures and governance processes that shape the modern religious landscape. The book focuses on the United States, Mexico, and South Africa, each of which situates its treatment of the politics and practice of religious diversity against the backdrop of the typically modern forces of, respectively, globalization, insecuritization, and transformation.
