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Religion: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
by Martin ForwardThis innovative study proves to the heart of religion, examining issues from the origins of religious belief to life after death.
Religion: A Cross-Cultural Dictionary
by David LevinsonReligion is about the relationship between human beings and the supernatural world. Of the dozens of definitions of religion that have been suggested by theologians, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and others, this one cuts to what is common to all religious systems. The term religious system is used here to mean all of the shared religious beliefs and practices that comprise the human-supernatural relationship of a particular indigenous culture or a particular world religion. A world religion is a religious system whose adherents are spread widely around the world and/or a religious system that has significantly influenced other religious systems. The term indigenous religion is used here to mean the religious system of a non-industrialized, non-Western society. This volume focuses on both world religions and indigenous religions. Sixteen major world religions are described in separate entries, a chronology of world religions is provided, and topical entries cover various aspects of world religions such as missionary activity and monotheism. The purpose of these sixteen world religion articles is to provide a basic profile of each religion, with a focus on the official beliefs and practices of each religion.
Religion: Sound smarter without trying harder (The Very Lazy Intellectual)
by Adams MediaHave you pondered the existence of an afterlife? Are you curious in the beliefs of the world's religions? The Very Lazy Intellectual: Religion surveys the world's theological teachings, detailing the history and beliefs of all. With information on Catholicism, to Buddhism, to Taoism, and everything in between, you'll garner a richer understanding of the world's spirituality.
Religion: Philosophical Theology, Volume Three
by Robert Cummings NevilleReligion is the third and final volume in Robert Cummings Neville's systematic development of a new philosophical theology. Unfolding through his earlier volumes, Ultimates and Existence, and now in Religion, philosophical theology considers first-order questions generally treated by religious traditions through philosophical methods while reflecting Neville's long engagement with philosophy, theology, and Eastern and Western religious traditions. In this capstone to the trilogy, Neville provides a theory of religion and presents a sacred worldview to guide religious participation. His philosophical theory of value enlightens religions' approaches to ethics, spirituality, and religious institutional living and collaboration. With a detailed examination of plausibility conditions for sacred worldviews, the book concludes with an exploration of "religionless religion" for which institutions of religion are of penultimate value.Through the development of philosophical theology, Neville has built a unique, multidisciplinary, comparative, nonconfessional theological system, one that addresses concerns and provides tools for scientific and humanistic scholars of religion, postmodern thinkers, intellectuals from both secular and religious backgrounds, and those interested in the global state of religion today.
Religion: The Basics (The Basics)
by Malory NyeFrom the local to the global level, religion is – more than ever – an important and hotly debated part of modern life in the twenty-first century. From silver rings to ringtones and from clubs to headscarves, we often find the cultural role and discussion of religion in unexpected ways. Now in its second edition, Religion: The Basics remains the best introduction to religion and contemporary culture available. The new edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes new discussions of: the study of religion and culture in the twenty-first century texts, films and rituals cognitive approaches to religion globalization and multiculturalism spirituality in the West popular religion. With new case studies, linking cultural theory to real world religious experience and practice, and guides to further reading, Religion: The Basics is an essential buy for students wanting to get to grips with this hotly debated topic.
Religion: Rereading What Is Bound Together
by Michel SerresWith this profound final work, completed in the days leading up to his death, Michel Serres presents a vivid picture of his thinking about religion—a constant preoccupation since childhood—thereby completing Le Grand Récit, the comprehensive explanation of the world and of humanity to which he devoted the last twenty years of his life. Themes from Serres's earlier writings—energy and information, the role of the media in modern society, the anthropological function of sacrifice, the role of scientific knowledge, the problem of evil—are reinterpreted here in the light of the Old Testament accounts of Isaac and Jonah and a variety of Gospel episodes, including the Three Wise Men of the Epiphany, the Transfiguration, Peter's denying Christ, the Crucifixion, Emmaus, and the Pentecost. Monotheistic religion, Serres argues, resembles mathematical abstraction in its dazzling power to bring together the real and the virtual, the natural and the transcendent; but only in its Christian embodiment is it capable of binding together human beings in such a way that partisan attachments are dissolved and a new era of history, free for once of the lethal repetition of collective violence, can be entered into.
Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters
by Christian SmithA groundbreaking new theory of religionReligion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book builds on recent developments in science, theory, and philosophy to advance an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past.Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith answers key questions about the nature, powers, workings, appeal, and future of religion. He defines religion in a way that resolves myriad problems and ambiguities in past accounts, explains the kinds of causal influences religion exerts in the world, and examines the key cognitive process that makes religion possible. Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place—uniquely so as a species—and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which so many religion scholars have been stuck for so long.Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.
Religion: A Critical Introduction (Controversial New Religions Ser.)
by Steven J. SutcliffeTreating 'religion' as a fully social, cultural, historical and material field of practice, this book presents a series of debates and positions on the nature and purpose of the 'Study of Religions', or 'Religious Studies'. Offering an introductory guide to this influential, and politically relevant, academic field, the contributors illustrate the diversity and theoretical viability of qualitative empirical methodologies in the study of religions. The historical and cultural circumstances attending the emergence, defence, and future prospects of Religious Studies are documented, drawing on theoretical material and case studies prepared within the context of the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR), and making frequent reference to wider European, North American, and other international debates and critiques.
Religion: An Anthropological View
by Anthony WallaceAn anthropological view of religion by Anthony F. C. Wallace, including sections on general theories on religion, religion as therapy, and religion as a form of expression.
Religion – Gewalt – Minderheiten: Studien zu religiöser Identität im Kontext der geopolitischen Herausforderungen der Moderne
by Hüseyin ÇiçekDer Band nimmt aus unterschiedlichen religionswissenschaftlichen und sozialwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven aktuelle Themen der Religionswissenschaft in den Blick. Sie gehen explizit oder implizit von der zentralen religionswissenschaftlichen sowie -politischen These aus, dass Solidarität im Inneren von Gemeinschaften durch Feindschaft nach Außen begünstigt wird. Diese simpel wirkende Formel hat viele Facetten und wird deshalb in den jeweiligen Artikeln mit dem spezifischen Fokus auf Religion, Gewalt/Terrorismus und Minderheiten aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven analysiert, um sie sowohl komparativ als auch konnektiv auf den Prüfstand zu stellen.
Religion 101: From Allah to Zen Buddhism, an Exploration of the Key People, Practices, and Beliefs that Have Shaped the Religions of the World (Adams 101)
by Peter ArcherDiscover the origins and traditions of world religions!With so many religions in the world, it isn't always easy to recall each faith's key influences, spiritual figures, and dogmas. Written in easy-to-understand language, Religion 101 offers a fascinating--and memorable--glimpse at the sacred stories, traditions, and doctrines that have influenced today's most popular religions.From Jesus and the Four Noble Truths to the Buddhist Wheel of Existence, this book provides you with thought-provoking insight into the customs and beliefs of common faiths like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. Inside, you will also discover hundreds of important religious facts, illustrations, and thought puzzles that you won't be able to find anywhere else.So whether you're looking to unravel the mysteries of existence and meaning, or just want to find out what Kabbalah is all about, Religion 101 has all the answers--even the ones you didn't know you were looking for.
Religion - 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know (50 Ideas You Really Need to Know series)
by Peter StanfordThe need to understand religion and the role it plays in our world has never been more pressing. The beliefs and actions of the planet's 2 billion Christians, 1.2 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus and 700 million followers of other religions has an impact on every aspect of war and peace, ethics, politics, reproduction, family and social structure across every civilization and continent. 50 Religion Ideas You Really Need to Know aims to lift the clouds of confusion surrounding religion and to address its key issues. What is the 'Golden Rule' and how does it unite religious people? How did the divisions arise between Catholics and Protestants and what do they mean for us today? What are the differences between Anglicanism, Methodism, Baptism and Presbyterianism? What separates Sunni Muslims from Shi'a Muslims? What does it mean to be Jewish? Award-winning writer Peter Stanford answers these and a myriad other questions in 50 Religion Ideas You Really Need to Know. Both readable and informative, it will appeal to anyone who wants to understand one of the most powerful and enduring forces shaping our world.
Religion - 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know
by Peter StanfordThe need to understand religion and the role it plays in our world has never been more pressing. The beliefs and actions of the planet's 2 billion Christians, 1.2 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus and 700 million followers of other religions has an impact on every aspect of war and peace, ethics, politics, reproduction, family and social structure across every civilization and continent. 50 Religion Ideas You Really Need to Know aims to lift the clouds of confusion surrounding religion and to address its key issues. What is the 'Golden Rule' and how does it unite religious people? How did the divisions arise between Catholics and Protestants and what do they mean for us today? What are the differences between Anglicanism, Methodism, Baptism and Presbyterianism? What separates Sunni Muslims from Shi'a Muslims? What does it mean to be Jewish? Award-winning writer Peter Stanford answers these and a myriad other questions in 50 Religion Ideas You Really Need to Know. Both readable and informative, it will appeal to anyone who wants to understand one of the most powerful and enduring forces shaping our world.
Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos
by Steven M. WasserstromBy the end of World War II, religion appeared to be on the decline throughout the United States and Europe. Recent world events had cast doubt on the relevance of religious belief, and modernizing trends made religious rituals look out of place. It was in this atmosphere that the careers of Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin--the twentieth century's legendary scholars in the respective fields of Judaism, History of Religions, and Islam--converged and ultimately revolutionized how people thought about religion. Between 1949 and 1978, all three lectured to Carl Jung's famous Eranos circle in Ascona, Switzerland, where each in his own way came to identify the symbolism of mystical experience as a central element of his monotheistic tradition. In this, the first book ever to compare the paths taken by these thinkers, Steven Wasserstrom explores how they overturned traditional approaches to studying religion by de-emphasizing law, ritual, and social history and by extolling the role of myth and mysticism. The most controversial aspect of their theory of religion, Wasserstrom argues, is that it minimized the binding character of moral law associated with monotheism. The author focuses on the lectures delivered by Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin to the Eranos participants, but also shows how these scholars generated broader interest in their ideas through radio talks, poetry, novels, short stories, autobiographies, and interviews. He analyzes their conception of religion from a broadly integrated, comparative perspective, sets their distinctive thinking into historical and intellectual context, and interprets the striking success of their approaches.
Religion after Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity (Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society)
by J. L. SchellenbergIn this provocative work, J. L. Schellenberg addresses those who, influenced by science, take a negative view of religion, thinking of it as outmoded if not decadent. He promotes the view that transcendently oriented religion is developmentally immature, showing the consilience of scientific thinking about deep time with his view. From this unique perspective, he responds to a number of influential cultural factors commonly thought to spell ill for religion, showing the changes - changes favorable to religion - that are now called for in how we understand them and their proper impact. Finally, he provides a defense for a new and attractive religious humanism that benefits from, rather than being hindered by, religious immaturity. In Schellenberg's view, religion can and should become a human project as monumental as science.
Religion among We the People: Conversations on Democracy and the Divine Good
by Franklin I. GamwellFranklin I. Gamwell holds that democracy with religious freedom is dependent on metaphysical theism. Democratic politics can be neutral to all religious convictions only if its constitution establishes a full and free discourse about the ultimate terms of justice and their application to decisions of the state, and the divine good is the true ground of justice. Notably, Gamwell's view challenges virtually all current accounts of democracy with religious freedom. This uncommon position emerges through a series of essays in which Gamwell engages a variety of conversation partners, including Thomas Jefferson, David Strauss, Abraham Lincoln, Jürgen Habermas, Alfred North Whitehead, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Iris Murdoch. Discussions of Jefferson, Lincoln, and the US Constitution illustrate the promise of neoclassical metaphysics as a context for interpreting US history. Gamwell then defends his metaphysics against both modern refusals of metaphysics and accounts of ultimate reality offered by Niebuhr and Murdoch.
Religion and Aesthetic Experience in Joyce and Yeats
by Tudor BalinisteanuThis monograph is based on archival research and close readings of James Joyce's and W. B. Yeats's poetics and political aesthetics. Georges Sorel's theory of social myth is used as a starting point for exploring the ways in which the experience of art, like that of social myth, can be seen as a form of religious experience. The theorisation of the experience of art as a form of religious experience illuminates the role of art in engendering social attitudes in opposition to economic materialism and capitalism. Based on these analyses, the arguments explore the ways in which a theory that defines the experience of art as a form of religious experience can help us to answer three questions of pressing interest for the contemporary moment: How can we read cultural texts to imagine forms of social belonging through which to challenge the isolation of economic materialism? How can we imagine cultural texts to create the collective relations necessary for social change in global capitalism? How can we define an ethics of satisfaction that does not relate to this capital modernity?
Religion and Aging: An Anthology of the Poppele Papers
by Derrell R. WatkinsFind solace and wise counsel in these classics of spiritual gerontology!In these days, when so many people live beyond the Biblical threescore and ten, the spiritual questing and questioning of the aged demands a meaningful response from clergy, family members, and nursing home staff. The essays and research studies reprinted in Religion and Aging: An Anthology of the Poppele Papers investigate the role of faith in older people's lives. Many of these classic studies have been updated with new information.These essays were originally published in the Quarterly Papers on Religion and Aging. This renowned journal was issued from 1984 to 1994 by the Poppele Center for Health and Welfare Studies at the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. The issues of spiritual gerontology discussed in that journal are still powerfully relevant today. Because back issues of the journal are not widely available, the cream of its ten-year history is being reissued in permanent form.Religion and Aging offers unfailing wisdom and insight in a broad range of issues, including: training clergy to be more responsive to the needs of older people a historical perspective on the meaning of ”honoring thy father and mother” in first-century Judaism and Christianity the Psalms as a way to help nursing home residents deal with pain, loneliness, anger, and other difficult emotions original research into belief patterns of older Americans ways to give meaning to suffering suggested by the lives and works of Viktor Frankl, Martin Gray, and Rabbi Harold Kushner techniques of communicating with older people Religion and Aging is an invaluable resource to anyone who works with old people, whether in adult day-care programs, nursing homes, hospitals, or other senior citizens’groups. It will help chaplains, pastors, rabbis, and other clergy minister more effectively to the older members of their flock.
Religion and AIDS Treatment in Africa: Saving Souls, Prolonging Lives
by Hansjörg Dilger Thera RasingThis book critically interrogates emerging interconnections between religion and biomedicine in Africa in the era of antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Highlighting the complex relationships between religious ideologies, practices and organizations on the one hand, and biomedical treatment programmes and the scientific languages and public health institutions that sustain them on the other, this anthology charts largely uncovered terrain in the social science study of the Aids epidemic. Spanning different regions of Africa, the authors offer unique access to issues at the interface of religion and medical humanitarianism and the manifold therapeutic traditions, religious practices and moralities as they co-evolve in situations of AIDS treatment. This book also sheds new light on how religious spaces are formed in response to the dilemmas people face with the introduction of life-prolonging treatment programmes.
Religion and American Culture: A Reader
by David G. HackettToday the study of American religion continues to move away from an older, European American, male, middle-class, northeastern, Protestant narrative concerned primarily with churches and theology and toward a multicultural tale of Native Americans, African Americans, Catholics, Jews and other groups. Many of these new studies cut across boundaries of gender, class, and region, and pay particular attention to popular religion. Most current textbooks remain wed to the older Protestant narrative. The purpose of this reader is to expose students to a broad overview of the work emerging from this rapidly changing field.
Religion and American Culture: A Brief History
by George MarsdenMarsden offers the kind of historically and religiously informed scholarship that has made him one of the nation’s most respected and decorated historians. Students in the classroom and history readers of all ages will benefit from engaging with the story Marsden tells.
Religion and American Culture: A Brief History
by George M. MarsdenWhile Americans still profess to be one of the most religious people in the industrialized world, many aspects of American culture have long been secular and materialistic. That is just one of the many paradoxes, contradictions, and surprises in the relationship between Christianity and American culture. In this book George Marsden, a leading historian of American Christianity and award-winning author, tells the story of that relationship in a concise and thought-provoking way.Surveying the history of religion and American culture from the days of the earliest European settlers right up through the elections of 2016, Marsden offers the kind of historically and religiously informed scholarship that has made him one of the nation&’s most respected and decorated historians. Students in the classroom and history readers of all ages will benefit from engaging with the story Marsden tells.
Religion and American Culture: A Brief History
by George M. MarsdenWhile Americans still profess to be one of the most religious people in the industrialized world, many aspects of American culture have long been secular and materialistic. That is just one of the many paradoxes, contradictions, and surprises in the relationship between Christianity and American culture. In this book George Marsden, a leading historian of American Christianity and award-winning author, tells the story of that relationship in a concise and thought-provoking way.Surveying the history of religion and American culture from the days of the earliest European settlers right up through the elections of 2016, Marsden offers the kind of historically and religiously informed scholarship that has made him one of the nation&’s most respected and decorated historians. Students in the classroom and history readers of all ages will benefit from engaging with the story Marsden tells.
Religion and American Education
by Warren A. NordWarren Nord's thoughtful book tackles an issue of great importance in contemporary America: the role of religion in our public schools and universities. According to Nord, public opinion has been excessively polarized by those religious conservatives who would restore religious purposes and practices to public education and by those secular liberals for whom religion is irrelevant to everything in the curriculum. While he maintains that public schools and universities must not promote religion, he also argues that there are powerful philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional reasons for requiring students to study religion. Indeed, only if religion is included in the curriculum will students receive a truly liberal education, one that takes seriously a variety of ways of understanding the human experience. Intended for a broad audience, Nord's comprehensive study encompasses American history, constitutional law, educational theory and practice, theology, philosophy, and ethics. It also discusses a number of current, controversial issues, including multiculturalism, moral education, creationism, academic freedom, and the voucher and school choice movements.
Religion and Authoritarianism
by Karrie J. KoeselThis book provides a rare window into the micropolitics of contemporary authoritarian rule through a comparison of religious-state relations in Russia and China - two countries with long histories of religious repression, and even longer experiences with authoritarian politics. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple sites in these countries, this book explores what religious and political authority want from one another, how they negotiate the terms of their relationship, and how cooperative or conflicting their interactions are. This comparison reveals that while tensions exist between the two sides, there is also ample room for mutually beneficial interaction. Religious communities and their authoritarian overseers are cooperating around the core issue of politics - namely, the struggle for money, power, and prestige - and becoming unexpected allies in the process.