Researching Religion through Exemplary Figures: Exemplarist Narrative Analysis for Theology and Religious Studies is my newly contracted book with Routledge, as part of their Routledge Focus on Religion series. I’m in the thick of researching for the text, and it’s due to be published in Q1 of 2028.
The book comes out of my recent work on exemplars, especially the methods used in Leadership by Example (Cambridge University Press 2025) and The Spiritual Narratives of Generation Z (Routledge 2026).
Here’s the working abstract:
Researching Religion through Exemplary Figures argues that religious and spiritual worlds are frequently encountered through admiration of exemplary figures before they are articulated as systems of doctrine, belief, or practice. While scholars of theology and religious studies have traditionally focused on beliefs, institutions, texts, rituals, and identities, this book begins with a different question: who do people admire, and what does that admiration reveal about the religious worlds they inhabit?
Building on Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, which grounds moral understanding in the emotion of admiration, the book develops Exemplarist Narrative Analysis (ENA) as a qualitative analytical framework for researching religion and spirituality. It argues that exemplary figures provide a distinctive window into religious meaning because they embody and communicate understandings of cosmos, self, and morality—three domains of life that religious traditions have historically sought to explain and order. By analysing narratives of admired figures, researchers can gain insight into the religious and spiritual visions that shape individuals, communities, and traditions.
The book’s primary aim is to introduce, defend, and develop ENA as a methodological framework for theology and religious studies. It explains the theoretical foundations of exemplarist analysis, provides guidance for designing research projects using ENA, and demonstrates its application across diverse forms of data, including sacred scriptures, hagiographies, autobiographical narratives, interviews, social media content, and AI-generated texts. It also develops several modes of exemplarist inquiry—including exploratory, comparative, historical, digital, and constructive ENA—and considers the framework’s strengths, limitations, and future development.
Written for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and academic staff, the book positions ENA as a novel and illuminating methodological approach. It offers a productive framework for investigating how exemplary figures and patterns of admiration shape religious and spiritual worlds.
Many thanks to the four anonymous peer reviewers, as well as Emilie Coin and her team at Routledge. God willing, this will be my third book with Routledge, who are always a pleasure to work with.
Edward A. David 
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