- Table View
- List View
Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism)
by Jonathan Z. SmithWith this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of historically and geographically situated human ingenuity, cognition, and curiosity—simply put, as the result of human labor, one of the decisive but wholly ordinary ways human beings create the worlds in which they live and make sense of them. "These seven essays . . . display the critical intelligence, creativity, and sheer common sense that make Smith one of the most methodologically sophisticated and suggestive historians of religion writing today. . . . Smith scrutinizes the fundamental problems of taxonomy and comparison in religious studies, suggestively redescribes such basic categories as canon and ritual, and shows how frequently studied myths may more likely reflect situational incongruities than vaunted mimetic congruities. His final essay, on Jonestown, demonstrates the interpretive power of the historian of religion to render intelligible that in our own day which seems most bizarre."—Richard S. Sarason, Religious Studies Review
Imagining Religious Toleration: A Literary History of an Idea, 1600–1830
by Alison Conway David AlvarezFormerly a site of study reserved for intellectual historians and political philosophers, scholarship on religious toleration, from the perspective of literary scholars, is fairly limited. Largely ignored and understudied techniques employed by writers to influence cultural understandings of tolerance are rich for exploration. In investigating the eighteenth-century novel, Alison Conway, David Alvarez, and their contributors shed light on what literature can say about toleration, and how it can produce and manage feelings of tolerance and intolerance. Beginning with an overview of the historical debates surrounding the terms "toleration" and "tolerance," this book moves on to discuss the specific contributions that literature and literary modes have made to cultural history, studying the literary techniques that philosophers, theologians, and political theorists used to frame the questions central to the idea and practice of religious toleration. Tracing the rhetoric employed by a wide range of authors, the contributors delve into topics such as conversion as an instrument of power in Shakespeare; the relationship between religious toleration and the rise of Enlightenment satire; and the ways in which writing can act as a call for tolerance.
Imagining The Kingdom: How Worship Works (Cultural Liturgies, Vol. #2)
by James K. A. SmithHow does worship work? How exactly does liturgical formation shape us? What are the dynamics of such transformation? In the second of James K. A. Smith's three-volume theology of culture, the author expands and deepens the analysis of cultural liturgies and Christian worship he developed in his well-received Desiring the Kingdom. He helps us understand and appreciate the bodily basis of habit formation and how liturgical formation--both "secular" and Christian--affects our fundamental orientation to the world. Worship "works" by leveraging our bodies to transform our imagination, and it does this through stories we understand on a register that is closer to body than mind. This has critical implications for how we think about Christian formation. Professors and students will welcome this work as will pastors, worship leaders, and Christian educators. The book includes analyses of popular films, novels, and other cultural phenomena, such as The King's Speech, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Facebook.
Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement
by S. Ilan TroenThis timely book tells the fascinating story of how Zionists colonizers planned and established nearly 700 agricultural settlements, towns, and cities from the 1880s to the present. This extraordinary activity of planners, architects, social scientists, military personnel, politicians, and settlers is inextricably linked to multiple contexts: Jewish and Zionist history, the Arab/Jewish conflict, and the diffusion of European ideas to non-European worlds. S. Ilan Troen demonstrates how professionals and settlers continually innovated plans for both rural and urban frontiers in response to the competing demands of social and political ideologies and the need to achieve productivity, economic independence, and security in a hostile environment. In the 1930s, security became the primary challenge, shaping and even distorting patterns of growth. Not until the 1993 Oslo Accords, with prospects of compromise and accommodation, did planners again imagine Israel as a normal state, developing like other modern societies. Troen concludes that if Palestinian Arabs become reconciled to a Jewish state, Israel will reassign priority to the social and economic development of the country and region.
Imagining a Sermon
by Thomas H. TroegerTroeger shares the secrets of capturing the imaginative spirit through exploration of the creative use of sight, sound, touch, and taste that leads to new visions for truth-telling and revelation in the sermon. Here is the remedy for trite, boring sermons! Thomas H. Troeger shows how to breathe fresh life into your sermons by harnessing your imaginative powers in a new way. In scores of dynamic workshops, Troeger has shown preachers and seminarians how to create powerful sermons by seizing moments when the heart and mind catch fire. Now, in Imagining a Sermon, Troeger shares the secrets of capturing the imaginative spirit within you. You will discover how to observe daily events that can energize the preaching event. You will also discover how to fine-tune your visual and listening skills to fuse televised, scriptural, and remembered images into new truths for your congregation.
Imagining a Way: Exploring Reformed Practical Theology And Ethics
by Clive PearsonFrom the inception of the Reformed tradition, Reformed Christians have followed God's call to engage and change the world. Yet little work has been done to bring the tools of practical theology and ethics to bear on the task of understanding the Reformed tradition. This comprehensive volume addresses that problem. It gathers some of the most respected voices from within the study of Christian ethics and practical theology to ask how the Reformed tradition understands its calling into the world. What does being Reformed mean for how one engages the ills of racism, white supremacy, and homophobia? What does it mean for an environmental ethic? How does Reformed preaching and liturgy respond to sexual violence? These are among the many important issues this book seeks to address. Readers will come away with a firmer grasp of how the Reformed tradition informs and animates Christian engagement with the world. <P><P>Contributors include Denise Ackermann, Jana Childers, Susan Davies, Etienne de Villiers, Cynthia Jarvis, Jong Hyuk Kim, Ralph Kunz, Cam Murchison, Piet Naudé, Cornelius Plantinga, Nancy Ramsay, Kang Phee Ramsay, Dirk Seng, Max Smit Stackhouse, William Storrar, Geoff Thompson, and Hmar Vanlalauva.
Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution
by Saree Makdisi Michael MeranzeBetween 1750 and 1820, tides of revolution swept the Atlantic world. From the new industrial towns of Great Britain to the plantations of Haiti, they heralded both the rise of democratic nationalism and the subsequent surge of imperial reaction.In Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution, nine essays consider these revolutionary transformations from a variety of literary, visual, and historical perspectives. On topics ranging from painting and poetry to prison reform, the essays challenge and complicate our understandings of revolution and reaction within the transatlantic imagination. Drawing on examples from different local and regional contexts, they demonstrate the many remarkably local ways that revolution and empire were experienced in London, Pennsylvania, Pitcairn Island, and points in between.Published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture
by Samantha ZacherMost studies of Jews in medieval England begin with the year 1066, when Jews first arrived on English soil. Yet the absence of Jews in England before the conquest did not prevent early English authors from writing obsessively about them. Using material from the writings of the Church Fathers, contemporary continental sources, widespread cultural stereotypes, and their own imaginations, their depictions of Jews reflected their own politico-theological experiences.The thirteen essays in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture examine visual and textual representations of Jews, the translation and interpretation of Scripture, the use of Hebrew words and etymologies, and the treatment of Jewish spaces and landmarks. By studying the "imaginary Jews" of Anglo-Saxon England, they offer new perspectives on the treatment of race, religion, and ethnicity in pre- and post-conquest literature and culture.
Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (Dimyonot)
by Ranen Omer-ShermanIn Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.
Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination #2)
by Ranen Omer-ShermanIn Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.
Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile
by Cynthia RobinsonRecent research into the texts, practices, and visual culture of late medieval devotional life in western Europe has clearly demonstrated the centrality of devotions to Christ’s Passion. The situation in Castile, however, could not have been more different. Prior to the final decades of the fifteenth century, individual relationships to Christ established through the use of “personalized” Passion imagery simply do not appear to have been a component of Castilian devotional culture.
Imagining the Soul in Premodern Literature (Early Modern Literature in History)
by Abe DaviesThis book is a study of ghostly matters - of the soul - in literature spanning the tenth century and the age of Shakespeare. All people, according to John Donne, ‘constantly beleeve’ that they have an immortal soul. But he also reflects that in fact there is nothing ‘so well established as constrains us to beleeve, both that the soul is immortall, and that every particular man hath such a soul’. In understanding the question of man's disembodied part as at once fundamental and fundamentally uncertain he was entirely of his time, and Imagining the Soul in Premodern Literature considers this fraught, shifting, yet uniquely compelling entity in the context of the literary forms and effects involved in its representation. Gruesome medieval dialogues between damned souls and worm-eaten bodies; verse and prose works by Donne, René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish and Andrew Marvell; a profusion of sonnet sequences, sermons, manuals of instruction and travelogues; Hamlet and its natural philosophical thinking about the apparently disembodied soul haunting Elsinore: these chapters range across all this and more, offering a rigorous yet accessible account of an essential aspect of premodern literature that will be of interest to scholars, students and the general reader alike.
Imagining the World into Existence: An Ancient Egyptian Manual of Consciousness
by Normandi EllisReveals the secret language and words of power that enabled the ancient Egyptians to imagine the world into existence • Reveals ancient Egyptian Mystery teachings on immaculate conception, transubstantiation, resurrection, and eternal life • Explores the shamanic journeys that ancient Egyptian priests used to view the unconscious and the afterlife • Provides the essential spiritual tools needed to return to Zep Tepi, the creative source Drawing from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Pyramid texts, the Book of Thoth, and other sacred hieroglyphic writings spanning the three millennia of the Egyptian Mystery Traditions, Normandi Ellis reveals the magical language of creation and words of power that enabled the ancient Egyptians to act as co-creators with the gods. Examining the power of hieroglyphic thinking--how thoughts create reality--and the multiple meanings behind every word of power, the author shows how, with the Neteru, we imagine the world into existence, casting a spell of consciousness over the material world. Uncovering the deep layers of meaning and symbol within the myths of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, Ellis investigates the shamanic journeys that ancient Egyptian priests used to view the unconscious and the afterlife and shares their initiations for immaculate conception, transubstantiation, resurrection, and eternal life—initiations that later became part of the Christian mystery school. Revealing the words of power used by these ancient priests/sorcerers, she explains how to search for the deeper, hidden truths beneath their spells and shows how ancient Egyptian consciousness holds the secret of life itself. Revealing the initiatory secrets of the Osirian Mystery school, Ellis provides the essential teachings and shamanic tools needed to return to Zep Tepi--the creative source--as we face the transitional time of radical change currently at hand.
Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts #36)
by Jaroslav PelikanA sweeping account of the controversies surrounding the worship of images in the early Byzantine churchIn 726, the Byzantine emperor, Leo III, issued an edict that all religious images in the empire were to be destroyed, a directive that was later endorsed by a synod of the church in 753 under his son, Constantine V. If the policy of Iconoclasm had succeeded, the entire history of Christian art—and of the Christian church, at least in the East—would have been altered.Iconoclasm was defeated by Byzantine politics, popular revolts, monastic piety, and, most fundamentally of all, by theology, just as it had been theology that the opponents of images had used to justify their actions. Analyzing an intriguing chapter in the history of ideas, the renowned scholar Jaroslav Pelikan shows how a faith that began by attacking the worship of images ended first in permitting and then in commanding it.Pelikan charts the theological defense of icons during the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries, whose high point came in 787, when the Second Council of Nicaea restored the cult of images in the church. He demonstrates how the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation eventually provided the basic rationale for images: because the invisible God had become human and therefore personally visible in Jesus Christ, it became permissible to make images of that Image. And because not only the human nature of Christ, but that of his Mother had been transformed by the Incarnation, she, too, could be “iconized,” together with all the other saints and angels.The iconographic “text” of the book is provided by one of the very few surviving icons from the period before Iconoclasm, the Egyptian tapestry Icon of the Virgin now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Other icons serve to illustrate the theological argument, just as the theological argument serves to explain the icons.In an incisive foreword, Judith Herrin explains the enduring importance of the book and discusses how later scholars have built on Pelikan’s work.Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.
Imam Shafi'i: Scholar and Saint (Makers of the Muslim World)
by Kecia AliIn this innovative study, Kecia Ali examines the forefather of the second largest of the four principal Sunni schools of jurisprudence, the Shafi'i. Gifted poet and outstanding Islamic Scholar, Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (767-820) firmly rejected the use of common sense in Islamic legal rulings, arguing that the only valid sunnah (or prophetic religious traditions) were directly handed down from Muhammad by Hadith. Kecia Ali is Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University. She is a world authority on Islamic jurisprudence, and author of Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith and Jurisprudence.
Imaminnen und Doing Gender: Kollektive Orientierungen im transnationalen Bildungsraum (Islam in der Gesellschaft)
by Betül KarakoçMoscheen als binär codierte Binnenräume spannen transnationale Bildungsräume auf und stoßen Erziehungs- und Bildungsprozesse an. Durch pädagogische und religiöse Handlungsfelder eröffnen sie Räume der religiösen Wissensvermittlung oder der politischen Bildung, aber auch Räume der Geschlechtererziehung, in denen die Teilhabenden Normen- und Wertevorstellungen verhandeln. Imaminnen in Moscheen lassen sich dabei als pädagogische Orientierungspersonen verstehen, die durch ihre Handlungsfelder Geschlechtervorstellungen verfestigen und an der Konstruktion und Konstitution von Geschlecht mitwirken. Vor diesem Hintergrund rückt die Studie türkische und deutsch-türkische Imaminnen in DITIB-Moscheen in den Vordergrund und rekonstruiert die kollektiven Orientierungen und Modi der Bearbeitung in den Geschlechterkonstruktionen – im Doing Gender – der Imaminnen, die an den theologischen Fakultäten in Ankara und Konya (Türkei) und in unterschiedlichen Moscheegemeinden in Hessen interviewt wurden. Die Studie gibt folglich Aufschlüsse, wie sich Doing Gender im transnationalen Bildungsraum gestaltet und Geschlechterkonstruktionen transnational wirkmächtig werden.
Imani Rituals: Nurturing African Spiritual Heritage
by Dr. Anthony Y. Stringer Ayanna Kafi Rev. Duncan E. TeagueA powerful and necessary collection of rituals centering the African American experience and the African Diaspora.As American society becomes increasingly diverse, people are seeking spiritual inspiration from an expanding array of sources. Unitarian Universalist congregations must be culturally pluralistic to become a religious home to all who cross their threshold. Imani (Swahili for faith) Rituals centers the African American experience and the African Diaspora as the inspiration for rituals to enrich religious and spiritual life for Unitarian Universalists and other liberal denominations.Intended for individual, family, congregational, and community use, the practices in this book offer a creative and contemporary approach to rituals that are grounded in heritage and tradition, creating connection with ancestors and ancient wisdom while responding to the present moment. The rituals include individual practices to promote transcendence, healing, and acceptance; family rituals that honor elders; and community rituals that honor holidays and promote action for social justice, among many others.
Imbolc: Rituals, Recipes & Lore for Brigid's Day (Llewellyn's Sabbat Essentials)
by Carl F. NealImbolc—also known as Brigid's Day—is a time to awaken from our months of introspection and start making plans for the future. This guide to the history and modern celebration of Imbolc shows you how to perform rituals and magic to celebrate and work with the energy of the re-awakening earth.RitualsRecipesLoreSpellsDivinationCraftsCorrespondencesInvocationsPrayersMeditationsLlewellyn's Sabbat Essentials explore the old and new ways of celebrating the seasonal rites that are the cornerstones of the witch's year.
Imbéciles Anónimos
by José Mariano LeyvaImagínate una casa en Cuernavaca, en medio de la nada, que pides prestada a un amigo para exorcizar tus demonios en soledad. Imagina que llegas y, como por arte de magia, va formándose un grupo de imbéciles a los que en tu vida has visto, que aparecen ahí con la misma intención que tú. Imagina entonces un crimen inesperado, del que te vuelves cómplice sin comprender cómo es que de ser un desgraciado te has convertido, de repente, en un asesino. A partir de ese momento, sobra decir que nada volverá a ser igual. "Imbéciles Anónimos es una novela de euforia prolongada por el beat de un DJ. Pero también es una explosión de rabia nihilista como distintivo generacional. En su primera novela, José Mariano Leyva se perfila como un exquisito narrador kamikaze que con la narcosis, el sexo sin profilaxis, la música electrónica y el gadget tecnológico como fuselaje, estalla contra el aquí y el ahora de una sociedad predecible y aburrida. El impulso vital de un grupo de amigos 'hermosos y malditos', (diría Scott Fitzgerald) es el combustible de esta historia."
Imitating Christ: Becoming More Like Jesus
by R.T. KendallBeing a humble Christian does not make you a wimp---it makes you powerful! It's tough to be humble today, whether at home or in your community of relationships. R. T. Kendall wants you to understand that out of that meekness comes majesty and success. In Imitating Christ he carefully explains answers to questions like: •What does it mean to have the mind of Christ? •What motivated Jesus? •How can you become a servant to others? •When was Jesus vindicated, and who vindicated Him?Outlining Christ's capabilities, conscience, and credibility, Kendall invites you to dig deeper in your relationship with the Father.
Imitating Christ: The Disputed Character of Christian Discipleship
by Luke Timothy JohnsonIs discipleship about personal sanctification or social reform? Believers are divided on a question central to Christian identity: what does it mean to follow Jesus? For centuries, imitating Christ meant the pursuit of holiness, conforming the self to Jesus through self-sacrifice in order to join him in eternal life. But some Christians today consider this model to be self-centered. Instead, they say, true disciples ought to imitate Jesus in confronting corrupt social systems on behalf of the oppressed. In Imitating Christ,esteemed New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson seeks the origin of this fissure. Surveying the New Testament, medieval mysticism, modern theology, and more, Johnson shows how twentieth-century social-gospel and liberation theologies created a new model of discipleship. He then evaluates the theological implications of the two models and asks what we can learn from each. Inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton, Johnson puts forward a vision of discipleship that can revitalize Christian witness in the world today. Replete with keen exegesis and spiritual insight, Imitating Christ reorients Christian living toward pursuing sainthood. Pastors and interested lay readers alike will rediscover a rich heritage in these pages.
Imitation in Early Christianity: Mimesis and Religious-Ethical Formation
by Cornelis BennemaWhat did exhortations to &“follow Jesus&” or &“imitate Christ&” mean to early Christians? Cornelis Bennema examines mimesis as a religious-ethical concept in early Christianity—the imitation of Jesus (and other exemplars) to become a better, more Christlike person. Situating appeals for imitation in the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers within the cultural and social context of the broader Greco-Roman world, Bennema shows how early Christian mimesis was not about literal replication, but instead was a creative, cognitive, and transformative means for shaping conduct and character. As part of this study, Bennema explores key questions about the historic origins of early Christian mimesis; the language that early Christian authors used to articulate the concept of mimesis; the scope, nature, and workings of mimesis in each major section of early Christian literature; and how early Christians navigated the challenges of imitating exemplars (such as Paul or Jesus) who were not physically present. Offering well-researched answers to these questions, Bennema provides readers with a nuanced and informative picture of exhortations to imitation in the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers.
Imitation of Christ: Classic Devotions in Today's Language
by James WatkinsThe timeless classic, The Imitation of Christ, is updated into modern English and arranged topically for daily devotions.
Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)
by Michael MotiaWe do not have many definitions of Christianity from late antiquity, but among the few extant is the brief statement of Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 CE) that it is "mimesis of the divine nature." The sentence is both a historical gem and theologically puzzling. Gregory was the first Christian to make the infinity of God central to his theological program, but how could he intend for humans to imitate the infinite? If the aim of the Christian life is "never to stop growing towards what is better and never to place any limit on perfection," how could mimesis function within this endless pursuit?In Imitations of Infinity, Michael Motia situates Gregory among Platonist philosophers, rhetorical teachers, and early Christian leaders to demonstrate how much of late ancient life was governed by notions of imitation. Questions both intimate and immense, of education, childcare, or cosmology, all found form in a relationship of archetype and image. It is no wonder that these debates demanded the attention of people at every level of the Roman Empire, including the Christians looking to form new social habits and norms. Whatever else the late ancient transformation of the empire affected, it changed the names, spaces, and characters that filled the imagination and common sense of its citizens, and it changed how they thought of their imitations.Like religion, imitation was a way to organize the world and a way to reach toward new possibilities, Motia argues, and two earlier conceptions of mimesis—one centering on ontological participation, the other on aesthetic representation—merged in late antiquity. As philosophers and religious leaders pondered how linking oneself to reality depended on practices of representation, their theoretical debates accompanied practical concerns about what kinds of objects would best guide practitioners toward the divine. Motia places Gregory within a broader landscape of figures who retheorized the role of mimesis in search of perfection. No longer was imitation a marker of inauthenticity or immaturity. Mimesis became a way of life.