From “Folk Religion” to What?: Re-evaluating Rejected Terms in the Study of Late Antique Religions Available to Purchase

The following papers seek to add something new to current debates and developments in the study of late antique religion by returning to models and approaches previously rejected yet capable of stimulating ways of rethinking our subjects. Scholars specializing in both Eastern and Western areas of the late antique world reconsider these models with reference to their own particular case-studies, historical periods, and styles of historiography. Georgia Frank takes on the “‘non’-category” of the laity with help from recent theoretical discussions of embodiment and agency. David Frankfurter makes the case for rehabilitating a concept of syncretism for understanding the dynamics of Christianization. Lucy Grig suggests that while a derogatory model of “popular religion” has rightly been long-neglected, the time is nonetheless ripe to reconsider the popular dimension, drawing on theories of popular culture as well as of “lived religion.” Nicola Denzey Lewis “outlines principles for a category ‘ordinary religion...