Religion

This book draws upon 14 months of field research centered on devotional singing and Svetambar Jain laywomen's religiosity in Pune, Maharashtra. These women balance their lives between received ideals of womanhood (Jain, Gujarati, Indian, middle‐class) and their own personal understandings of what it means to be a good Jain. This book argues that the Jain laywomen's theologies are developed in the practice and performance of Jain hymn singing. The devotional songs articulate theology through their lyrics and through the contexts in which each is sung, which reflects the women's interpretations of these contexts and songs. The performance contexts were chosen according to theological and musicological appropriateness and prepared performance patterns were broken specifically to infer theological challenges. Finally, hymn singing and public worship contexts provide locations for negotiations over religious authority between the spheres of expertise and prestige. Jain laywomen negotiate between the competing spheres of expertise and prestige, to find a balance that privileges their praxis‐oriented approach to Jain religiosity and highlights the grace and compassion of the Jinas.

The variety and complexity of its traditions make African American religion one of the most difficult topics in religious studies to understand. The sheer scope of the subject is daunting to anyone wanting to learn about it, especially if they are not experts in African American religious traditions. Also, the unfamiliarity of the subject matter to the vast majority hoping to investigate the subject makes it difficult to achieve any depth of understanding. The chapters in this book will supply functional, innovative ways to teach African American religious traditions in a variety of settings.

Teaching Confucianism presents pedagogically oriented essays that are informed by the latest scholarship, as well as practical experience in the religious studies and theology classroom, attentive to various settings within which religious material is taught, and sensitive to both expert (e.g., those in Confucian studies) and lay (e.g., those with no background in Asian studies who nonetheless are charged with teaching Asian traditions) audiences. The volume includes reflections by scholars in all arenas of Confucian studies: specialists in early Chinese thought (dealing with the “historical Confucius” and early texts such as The Analects), historians of medieval and late imperial China (addressing the ways in which the Confucian tradition helped shape Chinese popular culture and social history), and scholars of contemporary Confucian thought and practice (discussing how Confucian orientations underlie and inform civic and familial traditions in East Asia and throughout the East Asian diaspora).

This book offers a thematic approach to looking at Native American religious traditions. Within the great multiplicity of Native American cultures, the book observes certain common themes that resonate within many Native traditions. It demonstrates how themes within native traditions connect with each other, at the same time upholding the integrity of individual traditions. The book illustrates each of these themes with explorations of specific native cultures including Lakota, Navajo, Apache, Koyukon, and Ojibwe. It demonstrates how Native American values provide an alternative metaphysics that stand opposed to modern materialism. It also shows how these spiritual values provide material for a serious rethinking of modern attitudes—especially toward the environment—as well as how they may help non-native peoples develop a more sensitive response to native concerns. Throughout, the book draws on the author's extensive personal experience with Black Elk, who came to symbolize for many the greatness of the imperiled native cultures.

Studies of African-derived religious traditions have generally focused on their retention of African elements. This emphasis slights the ways in which communities in the African diaspora have created and formed new religious meaning. In this fieldwork-based study, this book shows that African people have been agents of their own religious, ritual, and theological formation. The book examines the African-derived and African-centered traditions in historical and contemporary Jamaica: Myal, Obeah, Native Baptist, Revival/Zion, Kumina, and Rastafari, drawing on them to forge a new womanist liberation theology for the Caribbean.

While the significance of the Book of Mormon in American history and religion is universally acknowledged, its complicated narrative can be bewildering to outsiders. In addition, controversy over its historical claims tends to overshadow its contents. This book argues that whether the Book of Mormon is approached as history, fiction, or scripture, focusing on its narrative structure, and in particular on the contributions of the major narrators, allows for more comprehensive, detailed readings. The Book of Mormon is nearly unique among recent world scriptures in that it is presented as a lengthy, integrated narrative rather than a series of doctrinal expositions, moral exhortations, or devotional hymns. Joseph Smith, whether regarded as an author or translator, never speaks in his own voice in the text; nearly everything is mediated through the narrators Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. This study takes readers through the basic characters, events, and ideas in the Book of Mormon by focusing on each of the major narrators in turn and identifying their characteristic literary techniques. Critics and believers alike can agree that someone, sometime, decided how to tell the story—where to employ direct dialogue, embedded documents, parallel narratives, allusions, and so forth. This introduction sets aside questions of ultimate authorship in order to examine how the text operates, how it makes its points, and what its message is. Despite its sometimes awkward style, the Book of Mormon has more coherence and literary interest than is often assumed.

Western esotericism combines spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order. This introduction to the Western esoteric traditions offers a concise overview of their historical development. It explores these traditions, from their roots in Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up to their reverberations in today's scientific paradigms. While the study of Western esotericism is usually confined to the history of ideas, the book examines the phenomenon much more broadly. It demonstrates that, far from being a strictly intellectual movement, the spread of esotericism owes a great deal to geopolitics and globalization. In Hellenistic culture, for example, the empire of Alexander the Great, which stretched across Egypt and Western Asia to provinces in India, facilitated a mixing of Eastern and Western cultures. As the Greeks absorbed ideas from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, they gave rise to the first esoteric movements. From the late 16th to the 18th centuries, post-Reformation spirituality found expression in theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. Similarly, in the modern era, dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and a lack of faith in traditional Christianity led thinkers like Madame Blavatsky to look east for spiritual inspiration. The book further examines Modern esoteric thought in the light of new scientific and medical paradigms along with the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.

This book explores medieval scriptural interpretation. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often characterized as religio-cultural siblings, traditions whose origins can be traced to the same geographical region and whose systems of belief and institutional structures share much in common. A particularly important point of commonality is the emphasis that each of these traditions places upon the notion of divine revelation, especially as codified in the text. During the medieval period, the three exegetical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam produced a vast literature, one of great diversity but also one of numerous cross-cultural similarities. The three sections of this book, each of which begins with an introduction to one of these exegetical traditions, explore this rich heritage of biblical and Quarʼanic interpretation.

What is the distinctive Zoroastrian experience, and what is the common diasporic experience? This book is the outcome of twenty years of research and of archival and fieldwork in eleven countries. It has involved a survey questionnaire in eight countries, yielding over 1,840 responses. It attempts a global comparison of Diaspora groups in six continents. Little has been written about Zoroastrian communities as far apart as China, East Africa, Europe, America, and Australia or on Parsis in Mumbai post-Independence. Each chapter is based on unused original sources ranging from 19th century archives to contemporary newsletters. The book also includes studies of Zoroastrians on the Internet, audio-visual resources, and the modern development of Parsi novels in English. As well as studying the Zoroastrians for their own inherent importance, this book contextualizes the Zoroastrian migrations within contemporary debates on Diaspora studies. The book examines what it is like to be a religious Asian in Los Angeles or London, Sydney or Hong Kong. Moreover, he explores not only how experience differs from one country to another, but also the differences between cities in the same country, for example, Chicago and Houston. The survey data is used firstly to consider the distinguishing demographic features of the Zoroastrian communities in various countries; and secondly to analyse different patterns of assimilation between different groups: men and women and according to the level and type of education. Comparisons are also drawn between people from rural and urban backgrounds; and between generations in religious beliefs and practices.