Religion

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a virtual cottage industry in all things “Abrahamic.” Directly proportionate to the rise of religious exclusivism, perhaps best epitomized by the attacks of 9/11 and the current problems plaguing the Middle East and Afghanistan, there has been a real desire both to find and map a set of commonalities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is often done, however, not for the sake of scholarship, but interfaith dialogue. Recently, however, the term “Abrahamic religions” has been used with exceeding frequency in the academy. We now regularly encounter academic books, conferences, and even positions (including endowed chairs) devoted to the so-called “Abrahamic religions.” Often lost in contemporary discussions of “Abrahamic religions” is a set of crucial questions: whence does the term “Abrahamic religions” derive? Who created it and for what purposes? What sort of intellectual work is it perceived to perform? In order to answer these and related questions, the book examines the creation and dissemination of this category. Part genealogical and part analytical, this study seeks to raise and answer questions about the appropriateness and usefulness of employing “Abrahamic religions” as a vehicle for understanding and classifying data. In so doing, this book can be taken as a case study that examines the construction of categories within the academic study of religion, showing how the categories we employ can become more an impediment than an expedient to understanding.

Over the last two decades, scientific accounts of religion have received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention both because of their intrinsic interest and because they are widely viewed as constituting a threat to the religion they analyse. This book aims to describe and discuss these scientific accounts as well as to assess their implications. The volume begins with essays by leading scientists in the field, describing these accounts and discussing evidence in their favour. Philosophical and theological reflections on these accounts follow, offered by leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. This diverse group of scholars address some fascinating underlying questions: Do scientific accounts of religion undermine the justification of religious belief? Do such accounts show religion to be an accidental by-product of our evolutionary development? And, whilst we seem naturally disposed toward religion, would we fare better or worse without it? Bringing together dissenting perspectives, this provocative collection will serve to freshly illuminate on-going debate on these perennial questions.

The fourth-century writer Evagrius of Pontus likens the experience of contemplation to dwelling in a kind of place. “When the mind has put off the old self and shall put on the one born of grace,” says Evagrius, “then it will see its own state in the time of prayer resembling sapphire of the color of heaven. This state is called by scripture, the place of God.” This book believes that the ancient tradition of Christian contemplative thought and practice represented by Evagrius has a genuine contribution to make to the world of ecological thought and practice. At the same time, he says, the sense of “the whole” emerging from contemporary ecological discourse has the potential to deepen and expand the classic understanding of contemplative life and practice. One of the striking features of the present historical moment is a deep and pervasive hunger for a less fragmented way of apprehending the world. Attending to these two traditions of thought and practice together, this book argues, can help us recover such an integrated vision of the world. Additionally, there is a growing recognition in the culture at large, and in faith communities in particular, of the need for a response to the ecological crisis that expresses our deepest moral and spiritual values. Drawing on the insights of the early Christian monastics as well as the ecological writings of such figures as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, and many others, this book forges a distinctively contemplative vision of ecological spirituality that could, the book contends, serve to ground the work of ecological restoration.

What were the beliefs of the Branch Davidians? This book provides an account of their history. The book argues that, far from being an act of unfathomable religious insanity, the calamitous fire at Waco in 1993 was the culmination of a long theological and historical tradition that goes back many decades. The Branch Davidians under David Koresh were an eschatologically confident community that had long expected that the American government, whom they identified as the Lamb-like Beast of the Book of Revelation, would one day arrive to seek to destroy God's remnant people. The end result, the fire, must be seen in this context.

This book explores central aspects of Calvin’s influence across the centuries and around the world from his lifetime to the present day. The volume offers a perspective on the full scope of the reformer’s impact on the subsequent course of the Protestant tradition and on modern Western civilization more generally. It opens with an examination of Calvin’s theology as the distillation of the first five centuries of Christianity with all its possibilities and limitations. The next four studies focus on Calvin as man and thinker in his sixteenth-century Genevan context, dealing respectively with aristocracy as an orienting principle in Calvin’s own political theory and ecclesiology; Calvin’s notorious passion for work; Calvin’s authorial style, which exercised a crucial influence on French prose; and the particularities of Calvin’s church in Geneva. There follows a study on Calvin’s relations with the Swiss Reformed churches, which gave his system a particular stamp. The seventh study explores the global nature of Calvin’s influence while chapters 8 to 15 branch out into considering various Calvinisms—which the chapters show conclusively to be more or less removed from Calvin’s thought while still claiming his name and label. These include a study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political Calvinisms, as well as studies of his theological reception from the seventeenth until the nineteenth century. The two final studies deal respectively with the links between the reformer’s thought and the British Evangelicals and with the complex issue of Calvin and South African apartheid.

This study examines the contentious claim that much Evangelicalism is Fundamentalist in character. Within Protestantism, the term ‘Fundamentalism’ denotes not only a movement but also a mentality which has greatly affected evangelicals, and which involves preserving as factual a reading of scripture as possible. Here the development and dismantling of the fundamentalist mentality is examined in light of philosophical influences upon Evangelicalism over the last three centuries, notably: Common Sense Realism, neo-Calvinism, and modern hermeneutical philosophy. Particular attention is paid to James Barr's critique of Fundamentalism and to evangelical rejoinders. This book proposes that the Fundamentalist mentality does not do justice to evangelical experience since it is more concerned with the Bible's factual truthfulness than with its life-giving effects. An appendix on Global Fundamentalism brings together two rarely united fields of study: Protestant Fundamentalism's relation to Evangelicalism, and its relation to resurgent movements in other religions.

Beneath our culture's obsession with wealth and power, status and celebrity, millions of Americans are quietly engaged in a deeply religious struggle to wake up from petty selfishness and to embrace a life of benevolence and compassion. Drawing on a random survey of 1,200 men and women across the United States, this book sheds new light on how Americans wake up to the reality of divine love and how that transformative experience expresses itself in concrete acts of benevolence. The book finds that the vast majority of Americans (eight out of ten) report that they have felt God's love increasing their compassion for others, one of many important revelations uncovered by the survey. In order to more fully flesh out the meaning of the survey's results, 120 in-depth interviews were conducted with Christian women and men from all walks of life and from across the country who are engaged in benevolent service. Their stories offer compelling examples of how receiving God's love, loving God, and expressing this love to others has made a difference in the world and given their lives deeper significance. As a result, some provide community service, others strive for social justice, still others seek to redefine religion and the meaning of “church” in America. Interviewees who may have grown up with judgmental images of God tended to trade them in for a loving and accepting God more consistent with their own emotionally powerful personal experiences.

Western intellectual history has benefited from a rich and sophisticated conversation between theology and science, leaving us with centuries of scientific and theological literature on the subjects. Yet the Hindu traditions are virtually unused in responding to the challenging questions raised in the science and religion dialogue. This book replies to the sciences by drawing from an important Hindu text called the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, as well as its commentaries and philosophical disciplines such as Sāṁkhya-yoga. One of the greatest challenges facing Hindu traditions since the nineteenth century is their own self-understanding in light of science and technology. Hoping to establish the conceptual foundations for a mutually beneficial dialogue between the Hindu theologies and the Western sciences, this book faces that challenge directly. Since so much of the Hinduism–science discussion is tangled in misconstrual, this book clarifies fundamental issues in each tradition, for example the definition of consciousness, the means of generating knowledge, and the goal of knowledge itself. It argues that although Darwinian theory seems to entail a materialistic view of consciousness, the Bhāgavata’s views provide an alternative framework for thinking about Darwinian theory. Furthermore, it argues that objectivity is a hallmark of modern science, and this is an intellectual virtue shared by the Bhāgavata. Lastly, it critiques the view that science and religion have different objects of knowledge (that is, the natural world vs. God), arguing that many Western scientists and theologians have found science helpful in thinking about God in ways similar to that of the Bhāgavata.

The divide between liberal and postliberal theology is one of the most important and far-reaching methodological disputes in twentieth-century theology. Their divergence in method brought related differences in their approaches to hermeneutics and religious language. The split between liberals and postliberals in their understanding of religious language is widely acknowledged, but rigorous philosophical analysis and assessment of these divergent understandings is seldom seen. Liberalism vs. Postliberalism provides just such analyses, using remarkable developments in analytic philosophy of language over the past forty years. The book provides an original analysis of the “theology and falsification” debates of the 1950s and 60s, placing them in the context of developments in analytic philosophy of language out of which they arose. These debates then supply the philosophical lens that brings into focus the centrality of the issue of religious language in the methodological dispute between liberal and postliberal theologians in the latter part of the twentieth century. Knight argues that recent developments in analytic philosophy of language reveal serious problems with both positions. In the course of the argument, the author makes important recent work in analytic philosophy accessible to theologians, religious studies scholars and their students. This philosophical work clears the ground for a more inclusive method that takes seriously the aspirations of both liberal and postliberal theologians. The book thus makes an important contribution to contemporary theological method, to the understanding of liberal and postliberal theologies in their similarities and differences, and to our understanding of the role of analytic philosophy in contemporary theology and religious studies.

The relationship between religion, intolerance, and conflict has been the subject of intense discussion, particularly in the wake of the events of 9-11 and the ongoing threat of terrorism. The chapters in this book investigate the following themes: the role of religion in promoting social cohesion and the conditions under which it will tend to do so; the role of religion in enabling and exacerbating conflict between different social groups and the conditions under which it will tend to do so; and the policy responses that we may be able to develop to ameliorate violent conflict and the limits to compromise between different religions. The book also contains two commentaries that distil, synthesize, and critically evaluate key aspects of the individual chapters and central themes that run throughout the volume.