World Religions

Self-declared Satanism is a controversial topic, which has largely been neglected by academia. This book fills that gap, with twelve scholars presenting cutting-edge research from the emerging field of Satanism studies. Topics covered range from early literary Satanists like Blake and Shelley over the Californian Church of Satan of the 1960s to the radical developments the Satanic milieu have undergone in recent decades. With a levelheaded and detached approach, the contributors analyze facets of the phenomenon such as conversion to Satanism, connections between Satanism and political violence, 19th century decadent Satanism, transgression, conspiracy theory, and the construction of Satanic scripture. A wide array of methods are employed to shed light on the Devil's disciples: statistical surveys, anthropological field studies, philological examination of The Satanic Bible, contextual analysis of literary texts, careful scrutiny of obscure historical records, and close readings of key Satanic writings. The book will be an invaluable resource for everyone interested in Satanism as a philosophical or religious position of alterity rather than an imagined other.

The anecdotal literature of late-medieval China is not unknown, but it is under-used. This study explores two collections of anecdotal memoirs to construct a portrait of the first half of the tenth century as seen by people who lived through it. The author Wang Renyu’s adult life coincided closely with that period, and his memoirs, though not directly transmitted, can be largely reconstructed from encyclopaedia quotations. His experience led from early life on the north-west border with Tibet, through service with the kingdom of Shu, to a mainstream career under four successive dynasties in northern China. He bore personal witness to some great events, but also travelled widely and transcribed material from a lifetime of conversations with colleagues in the Hanlin Academy. The study first sets Wang’s life in its historical context and discusses the nature and value of his memoirs. It then pursues a number of underlying themes that run through the collections, presenting nearly 80 distinct items in translation. What emerges is a characterization of an age of inter-regional warfare in which individual lives, not grand historical narrative, form the focus. A nuanced self-portrait of the author emerges too, combining features that seem alien to modern values with others that seem close to them. Four appendixes give the text of the author’s tombstone epitaph; a detailed list of his surviving memoir items; data from Song catalogues on the early transmission of his writings; and Wang Renyu’s own definition of the four musical modes inherited from the Tang dynasty.

The recently excavated Guodian manuscript “Xing zi mingchu” understands morality as something that is inherently expansive and not restrictive. Dating from China’s Warring States Period, this text has a hybrid of beliefs that later come to be called Confucianism and Daoism. One contribution of this book is its clarification of the role of the term “qing,” a concept that in some passages could be translated as “emotions” save for the fact that it is seen as having a surprising power to enable us to become more connected to our world. Becoming a moral person is seen as involving reaching the Dao by leveraging our qing and the teaching of the sages. These two levels, immanent and Dao, represent truths and higher truths. Both are crucial elements of our quest for morality, but the path we follow is not a linear progression since conflict on a lower level becomes irrelevant when we reach the Dao. The text does not seek to ameliorate the friction we commonly encounter from our mundane view of problems; rather the goal is to transcend it with the Dao.

Scholars have commented for years on the southward shift of Christianity during the twentieth century. The majority of Christians worldwide are now found in the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But the nature of that shift and the actors involved have not been fully explored. This book maintains that a transformation of Christianity has occurred that is far more than demographical or geographical — a profound reformation in the character of Christianity itself has taken place. The emergence, growth, and impact of Pentecostalism in the past hundred years played a major role in this transformation of a European and North American religion into a non-Western, charismatic, and predominantly female one. Key figures and movements, the many divisions and proliferations, and the resourcefulness and challenges of its leaders and members in the majority world are examined. The book discusses the historical origins, characteristics, ideologies, theologies, and emphases of Pentecostalism as it developed from a small number of obscure Christian revivalist sects at the beginning of the century, to representing, in many different forms today, possibly as much as a quarter of the world’s Christian population. How this has happened is what this book is all about.