Religion : oso

Why are Women more Religious than Men?

Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce — 2013-01-24

Author:: Marta Trzebiatowska, Steve Bruce
ISBN:: 9780199608102
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society, Religious Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608102.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of ‘New Age’ spirituality and are far more superstitious than men. This book reviews the now-sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. It critiques competing explanations of such differences as we find. It concludes that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences — responsibility for managing birth, child‐rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health — over‐lapping and reinforcing each other. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears.

Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England

Philip Lockley — 2013-01-24

Author:: Philip Lockley
ISBN:: 9780199663873
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199663873.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The millenarian movement founded by Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), enjoyed a complex relationship with political radicalism in early nineteenth-century England. Southcott opposed radicalism during her lifetime, encouraging her followers to await a messianic agent of the millennium, called Shiloh. By the 1830s – close to two decades after Southcott’s dramatic death expecting to give birth to the Shiloh – a section of surviving Southcottians were noted radicals, anticipating the millennium’s appearance through radical reform, trades unionism and Robert Owen’s socialism. This book presents a new explanation why – an explanation that reveals how millennial theologies may combine expectations of both divine and human agency in changing the world. Utilising a substantial range of radical and Southcottian sources, many previously unstudied, this book narrates a new history of this significant plebeian sect between 1815 and 1840. It argues that millenarian radicalism bore no connection to the social or gender makeup of Southcottianism; indeed, contrary to existing histories, the sect had no distinct appeal to women. Instead, an altered attitude towards political action emerged through the religious experience, ideas and practices of Southcottians and their personal acquaintanceship with radical freethinkers. The book provides the most extensive academic study to date of several leading Southcottians, including John Wroe (1782-1863), John ‘Zion’ Ward (1781-1837), and James Elishama Smith (1801-57) – a notable yet understudied early socialist, whose reflections on the relationship between socialism and religion shed new light on an emerging tension between Christian and secular visions of transformation which have shaped the modern world.

Types of Pentecostal Theology

Christopher A. Stephenson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Christopher A. Stephenson
ISBN:: 9780199916795
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916795.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book is the first critical study of the major academic theologians within pentecostalism, one of the fastest growing and influential religious traditions worldwide. As a typological study, it establishes four original categories that classify recent pentecostal theologians’ methodologies in systematic/constructive theology. After assessing the methodological types, the book offers a suggestion for pentecostal theological method that builds on the strengths of each methodological type, while also advancing an original constructive contribution. Specifically, it argues for a reciprocal relationship between pentecostal spirituality and doctrine that follows the pattern of lex orandi, lex credendi. The book then develops a doctrine of the Lord’s supper as an initial exercise in this reciprocal relationship. This book is concerned with such issues as the relationship between theology and philosophy, the dynamic between scripture and tradition, fundamental and philosophical theology, and similarities and differences between recent pentecostal theology and other currents in contemporary theology. As a synthesis and analysis of a large amount of primary source literature, this book introduces readers to the scholars leading current theological conversations within pentecostalism.

Toward an Islamic Enlightenment

M. Hakan Yavuz — 2013-01-24

Author:: M. Hakan Yavuz
ISBN:: 9780199927999
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Islam
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199927999.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The Republic of Turkey has recently gone through remarkable political and socioeconomic transformations. As Turkish democracy and civilian rule have been consolidated, the country has also witnessed a transformation in national orientation, once again playing a leadership role in the heart of the Muslim world. Turkey's example of being a dynamic Muslim democracy and emerging economic power has inspired reformists in the Arab world and beyond. In order to fully grasp these historic transformations, one has to consider the central intellectual and social rule played by the followers of the Turkish religious leader and reformist Fethullah Gülen. Gülen and his movement have been hailed by supporters as being pivotal in forging a Muslim path toward modernity that is compatible with liberal democracy and socioeconomic development. Critics, however, view the movement as being far from benign and argue that it promotes a covert authoritarian and fundamentalist agenda. This book provides a critical understanding of Gülen and his movement. The book examines the interplay between ideology, faith, and socioeconomic and political factors in fostering pathways to specific forms of modernity and development. This book provides a theoretically guided and empirically rooted narrative of alternative Islamic forms of modernity by focusing on Turkey and the Gülen movement. It argues that the Gülen movement represents not only an alternative Islamic form of modernity but also a force to recast the boundary between state and society; the self and community; and between reason and revelation. The book concludes that the Gülen movement embodies Janus‐faced features of modernity: liberal yet communitarian; cosmopolitan yet puritan; both national and transnational. By tracing the movement's historical and social development, the book provides a convincing narrative of how a marginalized and persecuted pietistic community evolved into a major transnational religious and social reform movement with the aim of fostering an Islamic Enlightenment. The book's analysis and conclusions are highly relevant for not only understanding transformational developments in Turkey but also potentially in a number of other major Muslim countries as well.

Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture

Robert MacSwain and Taylor Worley — 2013-01-24

Author:: RobertMacSwainAssistant Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at The School of Theology of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.TaylorWorleyAssociate Dean for Spiritual Life and Assistant Professor of Christian Thought and Tradition at The School of Theology and Missions at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.
ISBN:: 9780199646821
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199646821.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

David Brown is a widely-respected British theologian who initially made his mark in analytic discussions of Christian doctrine, such as the Trinity. However, with the publication of Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (1999) his career entered a distinctly new phase, focused on theology, imagination, and the arts. Four related volumes followed, dealing with biblical interpretation, Christian discipleship, art and icons, place and space, the body, music, metaphor, drama, liturgy, the sacraments, religious experience, and popular culture. According to Brown, the fundamental thesis underlying all five volumes is that both natural and revealed theology are in crisis, and the only way out is to give proper attention to the cultural embeddedness of both. This book attempts to assess the significance of this remarkable series, and a distinctive feature is sustained consideration of Browns analysis of popular culture.

Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament

David C. Parker — 2013-01-24

Author:: David C. Parker
ISBN:: 9780199657810
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Biblical Studies, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657810.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

As a result of the advent of the computer, the concept and realization of critical editions are being rethought. This book, originally the Lyell Lectures in Bibliography at Oxford University, explores textual criticism and editing in the digital age. It argues that textual scholarship has been an important influence in the development of the concept of the ‘New Testament’. Starting with the observation that a text is a process, not an object, the book proposes a new way of understanding the relationship between documents, texts, and the work they represent as the basis for critical scholarship. This leads him to challenge the idea of a ‘Greek New Testament manuscript’, and thus to reconsider the nature of the New Testament as a collection of works and the nature and purpose of critical editions. By studying new tools for studying how manuscripts are related to each other, he shows how the modern digital edition of the New Testament has overcome the impasses created by the failure of Lachmannian stemmatics to deal with the problem of contamination. Exploring the emergence of the critical edition in modern scholarship, Parker discusses the ways in which a digital edition advances scholarship and gives the reader more opportunities both to scrutinize the quality of the edition and to access the raw data on which it is based. The whole book uses New Testament research as a paradigm of wider changes in textual scholarship.

Temples for a Modern God

Jay M. Price — 2013-01-24

Author:: Jay M. Price
ISBN:: 9780199925957
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199925957.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

In the decades following World War II, Americans undertook one of the biggest religious building booms in their history, erecting synagogues, churches, cathedrals, chapels, retreat centers, and shrines in unprecedented numbers. While building committees struggled to balance style, cost, theology, and functionality, in the background was a turbulent and shifting landscape where religious and architectural concepts unfolded in new directions. A new generation of theologians, consultants, and clergy embraced liturgy and sought to adapt ancient traditions to contemporary daily life. Architecturally, a civil war between revival styles and modernism reached its climax, while companies that specialized in everything from roof construction to food service worked to meet changing tastes. As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, organizations from the Church Architectural Guild of America to the National Council of Churches to the figures connected to Vatican II’s reforms tried to maintain a hold on the changes taking place around them, while new groups and approaches started redefining the very nature of American religion in directions few anticipated. It was one of the most dynamic periods in the history of religious architecture, one that has molded the role and look of houses of worship ever since.

The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet

Jennie Barbour — 2013-01-24

Author:: Jennie Barbour
ISBN:: 9780199657827
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Biblical Studies, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657827.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book is a study of the making of collective memory within early Judaism in a seminal text of the Western canon. The book of Ecclesiastes and its speaker Qohelet are famous for saying that there is nothing new under the sun, and in the literary tradition of the modern West that has been taken as the motto of a book that is universal in scope, Greek in its patterns of thought, and floating free from the particularism and historical concerns of the rest of the Bible. Jennie Barbour argues that reading the book as a general compendium in this way causes the reader to miss a strong undercurrent in the text. While Ecclesiastes says nothing about the great founding events of Israel’s story, it is haunted by the decline and fall of the nation and the Babylonian exile, as the trauma of the loss of the kingdom of Solomon persists through a spectrum of intertextual relationships. The view of Qohelet from the throne in Jerusalem takes in the whole sweep of Israel’s remembered historical experiences; Ecclesiastes is revealed as not simply as a piece of marketplace philosophy, but as a learned essay in processing a community’s memory, with strong ties to the rest of Jewish and Christian scripture.

Spirituality

Roger S. Gottlieb — 2013-01-24

Author:: Roger S. Gottlieb
ISBN:: 9780199738748
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738748.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This view of spirituality from traditional religion to contemporary culture reveals the common thread that joins Mahayana Buddhism and Hasidic Judaism, the Islamic Sufi poet Rumi and the Catholic St. Thomas a Kempis, people of every traditional religion and people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” This book describes spiritual life as the simple but extraordinarily difficult choice to face life's rigors and disappointments by developing certain key virtues. As we become more mindful, accepting, grateful, compassionate, and lovingly connected to others, we become more spiritual. These virtues oppose both the conventional social ego's attachment and arrogance, and any habitual, unreflective religiosity; and the spiritual path towards them can be shared equally by people inspired by belief in one God or many, the divinity of nature or the sacredness of life. The book spiritual teachings from both within and outside of traditional faiths, explains the origins and meaning of today's widespread spiritual detachment from institutional religion, and offers illuminating accounts of practices such as yoga, meditation, and prayer. The book also contains innovative and penetrating accounts of the role of spirituality in modern medicine, nature and the environmental crisis, and political activism.

Spirit Cure

Joseph W. Williams — 2013-01-24

Author:: Joseph W. Williams
ISBN:: 9780199765676
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Church History
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765676.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book tells the story of pentecostals’ changing healing practices in the United States since the early 1900s. While early believers’ attracted attention due to their widespread rejection of mainstream medicine and their overt spiritualization of disease and its cure, later generations of pentecostals and their charismatic successors made significant modifications to the healing paradigms that they inherited. Claims of dramatic divine intervention never disappeared, yet strident denunciations of the medical profession often gave way to “natural” healing methods associated with scientific medicine, natural substances, and to a certain degree psychology. As evidence of the success of adherents’ retooled approaches to healing, by the turn of the twenty-first century figures such as the pentecostal preacher T. D. Jakes appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, other healers marketed their books at mainstream retailers such as Wal-Mart, and some developed lucrative nutritional products that sold online and in health food stores across the nation. By chronicling adherents’ embrace of competitors’ healing practices, including alternative healing methodologies rooted in a “metaphysical” tradition in American religion, the book illuminates pentecostals’ dramatic transition from a despised minority to major players in the world of American evangelicalism and mainstream American culture. In exploring the interconnections, resonances, as well as continued points of tension that that existed throughout the movement’s history between adherents and some of their fiercest rivals, the book also reveals how even the earliest pentecostals never were quite as distinct from their competitors in the American healing marketplace as it may have first appeared.

The Sikh Ẓafar-nāmah of Guru Gobind Singh

Louis E. Fenech — 2013-01-24

Author:: Louis E. Fenech
ISBN:: 9780199931439
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931439.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book deals with one of the only Persian compositions attributed to the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the Ẓafar-nāmah or “Epistle of Victory.” Written as a masnavi or Persian poem this letter was originally sent to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (d. 1707) rebuking his most unbecoming conduct. Yet the missive does far more than censure. By teasing out the letter’s direct and subtle references to the Iranian national epic, the Sh āh-nāmah, the epistle’s mythic template, and to Shaikh Sadi’s thirteenth-century Būstān, from which the letter’s most popular couplet derives, the book demonstrates how this letter served as a form of Indo-Islamic verbal warfare, ensuring the tenth Guru’s moral and symbolic victory over the legendary and powerful Mughal empire. In the process of analyzing the Ẓafar-nāmah, this book resurrects one of the key components of the Sikh tradition, its Islamicate aspect.

Sandalwood and Carrion

James McHugh — 2013-01-24

Author:: James McHugh
ISBN:: 9780199916306
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916306.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book explores the topic of smell in pre-modern Indian religion and culture. The book provides a comprehensive study of all aspects of smell, covering a period from the turn of the Common Era to the early second millennium CE, and referring to a wide range of sources from poetry to medical texts. In pre-modern South Asia, smells mattered. The sophisticated arts of perfumery that developed in temples, monasteries and courts relied on exotic aromatics, connecting olfactory aesthetics to long-distance ocean trade. A sophisticated religious discourse on the goals of life emphasized that the pleasures of the senses were a valid end in themselves. Fragrances and stinks were also an ideal model for describing other values, be they aesthetic or ethical, and in a system where karmic results often had a sensory impact—where evil often literally stank—the ethical and aesthetic are often difficult to distinguish. Sandalwood and Carrion explores smell in pre-modern India from many perspectives, covering such topics as philosophical accounts of smell perception, odors in literature, the history of perfumery in India, the significance of sandalwood in Buddhism, as well as the question of why people offered perfumes to the gods.

The Sacred Is the Profane

William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon — 2013-01-24

Author:: William Arnal, Russell T. McCutcheon
ISBN:: 9780199757114
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199757114.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

It has become increasingly recognized in the field of religious studies that the very idea of “religion”—the founding concept of our area of study—is an idea with a history, specifically a modern and Western history. Yet this recognition has not extended beyond the narrow boundaries of theoretical discourse in the field, and so has had little influence on how “religious” data are actually described and studied, and even on how they are explained. This book argues that the concept of a particular, bounded, and distinctive realm of human behavior that can be designated as “religion” is a political invention of modernity, and that its salience persists only because of its continued political utility. In essence, “religion” is a modern folk category that derives its cogency only from Western political projects, and as such carries too much baggage to help us classify the imaginative productions of culture, a task for which it was never designed. This argument ends up being important in several ways: In this book's approach to the data, it designates “religious” and the kinds of analyses of this data that are found satisfying for theorizing “religion” as a human (i.e., nonsupernatural, but also more or less universal) phenomenon, and for the ways in which we understand our putatively nonreligious behaviors, symbols, and discourses.

Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic

Mark David Hall — 2013-01-24

Author:: Mark David Hall
ISBN:: 9780199929849
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199929849.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Roger Sherman was the only founder to sign the Declaration and Resolves (1774), Articles of Association (1774), Declaration of Independence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1777, 1778), and Constitution (1787). He served on the five-man committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and he was among the most influential delegates at the Constitutional Convention. As a Representative and Senator in the new republic, he played important roles in determining the proper scope of the national government's power and in drafting the Bill of Rights. Even as he was helping to build a new nation, Sherman was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly and a Superior Court judge. In 1783, he and a colleague revised all of the state's laws. This book explores Sherman's political theory and shows how it informed his many contributions to America's founding. A central thesis of the work is that Sherman, like many founders, was heavily influenced by Calvinist political thought. This tradition had a significant impact on the founding generation's opposition to Great Britain, and it led them to develop political institutions designed to prevent corruption, promote virtue, and protect rights. Contrary to oft-repeated assertions by jurists and scholars that the founders advocated a strictly secular polity, this book argues persuasively that most founders believed Christianity should play an important role in the new American republic.

The Rise of Liberal Religion

Matthew S. Hedstrom — 2013-01-24

Author:: Matthew S. Hedstrom
ISBN:: 9780195374490
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374490.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The story of liberal religion in the twentieth century, this book contends, is a story of cultural ascendency. This may come as a surprise. Most scholarship in American religious history, after all, equates the decline of the Protestant mainline with the failure of religious liberalism. Yet a look beyond the pews, into the wider culture, reveals instead a story of “cultural victory.” The defining features of religious liberalism—its cosmopolitanism; its engagement with the latest historical and scientific thought; its ethics; its focus on psychology, mysticism, and individual religious experience—arose among a spiritual vanguard in the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, but by the middle decades of the twentieth century had become commonplace among the American middle class. This book tells how that happened. This book attends especially to the critically important yet little-studied arena of religious book culture—particularly the religious middlebrow of mid-century—as the site where religious liberalism was most effectively popularized. By looking at book weeks, book clubs, public libraries, new publishing enterprises, key authors and bestsellers, wartime reading programs, and fan mail, this book provides an on-the-ground account of the men, women, and organizations that drove religious liberalism's cultural rise in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Critically, by the post-World War II period the religious middlebrow had expanded beyond its Protestant roots, using mystical and psychological spirituality as a platform for interreligious exchange. The conclusion relates these trends to the religious transformations of the 1960s and 1970s, and on into the twenty-first century.

Repentance in Late Antiquity

Alexis C. Torrance — 2013-01-24

Author:: Alexis C. Torrance
ISBN:: 9780199665365
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665365.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The call to repentance is central to the message of early Christianity. While this is undeniable, the precise meaning of the concept of repentance for early Christians has rarely been investigated to any great extent, beyond studies of the rise of penitential discipline. In this study, the rich variety of meanings and applications of the concept of repentance are examined, with a particular focus on the writings of several key ascetic theologians of the fifth to seventh centuries: SS Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus. It is shown how they predominantly see repentance as a positive, comprehensive idea that serves to frame the whole of Christian life, not simply one or more of its parts. While the modern dominant understanding of repentance as a moment of sorrowful regret over past misdeeds, or as equivalent to penitential discipline, is present to a degree, such definitions by no means exhaust the concept for these ascetics. The path of repentance is depicted as stretching from an initial about-face completed in baptism, through the living out of the baptismal gift by keeping the Gospel commandments, culminating in the idea of intercessory repentance for others, after the likeness of Christ’s innocent suffering for the world. While this overarching role for repentance in Christian life is clearest in the works of these ascetics, their thought is thoroughly contextualized through assessments of the concept of repentance in Scripture, the early church, apocalyptic texts, and canonical material.

Religious Lessons

Kathleen Holscher — 2013-01-24

Author:: Kathleen Holscher
ISBN:: 9780199781737
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199781737.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book tells the story of Zellers v. Huff, a lawsuit that challenged the employment of nearly 150 Catholic religious in public schools across New Mexico in 1948. The “Dixon case” was the most famous in a series of mid-century suits targeting what opponents dubbed “captive schools.” Spearheaded by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the publicity campaign built around Zellers drew on centuries-old rhetoric of Catholic captivity to remind Americans about the threat of Catholic power in the post-War era, and the danger sisters dressed in Catholic habits posed to the nation’s public education. While Zellers never reached the U.S. Supreme Court, it was familiar to hundreds of thousands of citizens who read about it in magazines and heard about it in church. For many Americans, Catholics and non-Catholics, the scenario of nuns in religious garb teaching children became the main occasion to assess the implications of the Court’s recent mandate for church–state separation in their lives. Through the study of Zellers, the book brings together the perspectives of legal advocacy groups, Catholic sisters, and ordinary citizens. The account posits the captive school crusade as a transitional episode in the Protestant–Catholic conflicts that dominate American church–state history. The book also goes beyond legal discourse to consider the interests of Americans—women religious included—who didn’t formally articulate convictions about the separation principle. It emphasizes the everyday experiences that defined the church–state relationship for these people and made constitutional questions about sisters relevant to them.

Religion, Science, and Empire

Peter Gottschalk — 2013-01-24

Author:: Peter Gottschalk
ISBN:: 9780195393019
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393019.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

In Beyond Hindu and Muslim (2000), Peter Gottschalk explored the contexts in which contemporary Indians engage one another through multiple identities, including but not restricted to religious ones. In Religion, Science, and Empire, he investigates historically how Britons and Indians came to characterize the subcontinent as inherently divided into mutually antagonistic religious communities. Not accidentally, the period of British Indian imperial rule coincided with the crystallization of new forms of knowledge that became academic disciplines. Cartography, anthropology, demography, ethnology, archaeology, folklore studies, and the secular study of religion each drew from and contributed to the imperial endeavor. Each was molded by the intertwined forces of Christian ideology and scientific practice. Britons used these disciplines in an episteme that classified the world in new ways. While not inventing Hindu-Muslim antipathy, British ways of understanding Indians definitively divided Indians into mutually exclusive categories modeled on biological taxonomy, and influenced by medieval Christian assumptions. Like others dominated by Europeans, many Indians contributed to both the British state and its scientific efforts, while also increasingly understanding themselves through the prism of Western-originated sciences. Far from government centers and academic offices, local officials, travellers, and missionaries–both Indian and British–in rural India contributed to the gathering hegemony of new empirical sciences and the scientific method. They did so by creating on-the-spot representations for the imperial state and metropolitan scholarship, while gradually disseminating to the broader Indian population a scientism that today has become central to our globalized world.

Religion on the Edge

Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt, and David Smilde — 2013-01-24

Author:: CourtneyBenderColumbia UniversityWendyCadgeBrandeis UniversityPeggyLevittWellesley CollegeDavidSmildeUniversity of Georgia
ISBN:: 9780199938629
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199938629.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The thirteen chapters in this volume offer a challenge to conventional scholarly approaches to the sociology of religion. They urge readers to look beyond congregational settings, beyond the United States, and to religions other than Christianity, and encourage critical engagement with religion's complex social consequences. By expanding conceptual categories, the chapters reveal how aspects of the religious have always been part of allegedly non-religious spaces and show how, by attending to these intellectual blind spots, we can understand aspects of identity, modernity, and institutional life that have long been obscured. The book addresses a number of critical questions: What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the US or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in the categories we use? The book offers new methodologies and models, bringing to light conceptual lacunae, re-centering what is unsettled by their use, and inviting a significant reordering of long-accepted political and economic hierarchies. The book shows how social scientists across the disciplines can engage with the sociology of religion.

The Record of Linji

Jeffrey Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe — 2013-01-24

Author:: Jeffrey Broughton, Elise Yoko Watanabe
ISBN:: 9780199936410
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199936410.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The Linjilu (Record of Linji or LJL) is one of the foundational texts of Chan/Zen Buddhist literature, and an accomplished work of baihua (vernacular) literature. Its indelibly memorable title character, Master Linji—infamous for the shout, the whack of the rattan stick, and the declaration that sutras are toilet paper—is himself an embodiment of the very teachings that he propounds to his students: he is a “true person,” free of dithering; he exhibits the non-verbal, unconstrained spontaneity of the buddha-nature; he is always active, never passive; and he is aware that nothing is lacking at all, at any time, in his round of daily activities. This new translation transmits the LJL’s living expression of Chan/Zen’s “personal-realization-of-the-meaning-beyond-words,” as interpreted by ten commentaries produced by Japanese Zen monks, over a span of over four centuries. Ranging from the late 1300s, when Five-Mountains Zen flourished in Kyoto and Kamakura, through the early 1700s, an age of thriving interest in the LJL, these Zen commentaries form a body of vital, in-house interpretive literature never before given full credit or center stage in previous translations of the LJL. Here, their insights are fully incorporated into the translation itself, allowing the reader unimpeded access throughout, with more extensive excerpts available in the notes. Also provided are translations of the earliest extant material on Linji, including a neglected transmission-record entry relating to his associate Puhua, which indicate that the LJL is a full-fledged work of literature that has undergone editorial changes over time to become the compelling work we know today.

Political Affections

Joshua Hordern — 2013-01-24

Author:: Joshua Hordern
ISBN:: 9780199646814
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199646814.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

While political experience is clearly replete with affectivity, the affective dimension of politics has typically been under-conceptualised in political theory. This book considers the nature of affections such as joy, compassion, sorrow, and shame and the role they play in politics, arguing that affections have a cognitive aptitude whereby they become enduring features of shared political reasoning. The central claim is that Christian political theology and contemporary theory of emotions can shed light on these questions and, in so doing, analyse the democratic deficit which troubles contemporary political life. In conversation with Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Roger Scruton, Oliver O'Donovan, and other political thinkers both classical and contemporary, the book interrelates affections with memory, moral order, death, suffering, virtue, neuroscience, familial life, national identity, and constitutional patriotism. In contrast to dualisms which separate reason from affection and theology from politics, affections' role in politics is explored through examining the eschatological commitments of political thought. Through close attention to Deuteronomy, Luke and Acts, the book considers the role of affections in institutions of political representation, law, and healthcare. Over against post-national visions which underplay locality in human identity, the account of political affectivity which emerges suggests that civic participation, critical patriotic loyalties, social trust and international concern will be primarily galvanised by the renewal of local affections through effective political representation. The book concludes by describing the vocation of churches to embody the joyful, hopeful life of the Kingdom of God and so bring renewal to contemporary political experience.

Perceiving Reality

Christian Coseru — 2013-01-24

Author:: Christian Coseru
ISBN:: 9780199843381
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199843381.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Combining epistemological insights from Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, and Kamalaśīla, but also drawing on the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and on recent work in analytic philosophy and phenomenology, this book defends the view that perception is intentionally constituted and, under certain circumstances, represents a type of implicit knowing that precludes (or at least minimizes) the possibility of error. The book also explores the classic debate between Buddhists philosophers and their opponents, principally the Naiyāyikas and the Mīmāmsakas, on such issues as establishing reliable means of belief formation, the relation between language and conceptual thought, and the structure of awareness. It also provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist epistemological defence of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness, namely that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence. From a methodological point of view, the book advances an innovative approach to Buddhist philosophy of mind under the guise of phenomenological naturalism—which allows for cognitive awareness to be understood in causal terms without reducing the contents of awareness to non-cognitive elements—and moves beyond comparative approaches to philosophy by emphasizing the continuity of concerns between the discourses of Buddhist and Western philosophers.

Other Dreams of Freedom

Yvonne C. Zimmerman — 2013-01-24

Author:: Yvonne C. Zimmerman
ISBN:: 9780199942190
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199942190.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Focusing on the public face of the federal government's anti–human trafficking project during the presidential administration of George W. Bush, this book explores how the religious values of Protestant Christianity regarding sexual morality and gender propriety intersected with and shaped the United States' federal initiative to eliminate human trafficking. From perceptions of what human trafficking essentially is, to the understanding of the moral harm human trafficking causes, to a normative conception of what freedom from trafficking substantively entails, the way human trafficking has been understood and addressed is shaped by and reflects the religious heritage and moral imagination of American Protestantism. Contending that conceptions of freedom that reflect and enact such a religiously and culturally particular moral imagination of freedom are not universally applicable in a religiously, culturally, and politically plural world, the book aims to create theoretical space and moral necessity for considering ways of thinking about and organizing freedom from trafficking that are not rooted in the moral sensibilities and forms of social relation that characterize American Protestant Christianity.

Other and Brother

Neta Stahl — 2013-01-24

Author:: Neta Stahl
ISBN:: 9780199760008
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199760008.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This work explores the striking metamorphosis of the figure of Jesus from Other to brother in 20th century Hebrew and Yiddish literature and culture. Jesus and Christianity function in this book as the window through which the author presents and examines major shifts in Jewish self-perception. This historical journey follows changes in Jewish life before and after the Holocaust and Israeli statehood. Zionist writers of the 1920s and 1930s associated Christian symbols and places mentioned in the New Testament like Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee with the enthusiasm and the hardships of redeeming the Holy Land. Post-Israeli statehood poets exhibit attraction to Jesus as the absolute Other. The new generation of poets, free from personal experience of living under the cross, identified with Jesus whom they associated with European culture and aesthetics in an attempt to transcend the actual and imagined borders of their parochial lives in Israel. Twentieth century Jewish writers redeem Jesus from his traditional status as the Other, from the Christian Church, and even from his exile in Europe, reconstructing through this contradictory figure their own new selves. The book provides a panoramic overview of Twentieth Century Jewish Literature and its towering figures—U.Z. Greenberg, Abraham Shlonsky, Zalman Shneor, Scholem Asch, S.Y. Agnon, Avot Yeshurun, Yona Wollach, Yoel Hoffman, and Yitzhak Laor—from a unique and unconventional angle.

Orthodox Readings of Aquinas

Marcus Plested — 2013-01-24

Author:: Marcus Plested
ISBN:: 9780199650651
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Church History, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199650651.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book is an exploration of the remarkable odyssey of Thomas Aquinas in the Orthodox Christian world. It centres on the surprisingly enthusiastic welcome which Aquinas received across the theological spectrum of the late Byzantine world. By contrast with the Byzantine era, modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas have been resoundingly negative, routinely presenting Aquinas as the archetype of a specifically Western form of theology against which the Orthodox East must set its face. This study rejects such hackneyed dichotomies, arguing instead for a properly catholic or universal construal of Orthodoxy — one in which Thomas might once again find a place. In its probing of the East–West dichotomy, this book also questions the widespread juxtaposition of Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas as archetypes of opposing Greek and Latin theological traditions. Indeed, Palamas' own Byzantine scholastic inheritance and sympathy with Latin theology prepared the way for many Palamites to embrace Thomas. Close attention is also paid to those Orthodox theologians who struggled against union with Rome but remained devoted to Aquinas. The long period between the Fall of Constantinople and the Russian Revolution, conventionally written off as an era of sterility and malformation for Orthodox theology, is also viewed with a fresh perspective. Study of the reception of Thomas in this period reveals a theological sophistication and a generosity of vision that is rarely accounted for. The book radically re-thinks the history of Orthodox theology through the prism of the fascinating and largely untold story of Orthodox engagement with Aquinas.

The Origins of the World's Mythologies

E.J. Michael Witzel — 2013-01-24

Author:: E.J. Michael Witzel
ISBN:: 9780195367461
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367461.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book is an ambitious work on mythology. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics, and human population genetics, this book reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this “Out of Africa” mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, this book suggests that these common myths—recounted by the communities of the “African Eve”—are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, the book shows, survive today in all major religions.

No Establishment of Religion

T. Jeremy Gunn and John Witte — 2013-01-24

Author:: T. JeremyGunnAl Akhawayn UniversityJohnWitteEmory University
ISBN:: 9780199860371
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860371.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The focus of the volume is the historical background and meaning of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, from the seventeenth century to the present. The text does not emphasize modern jurisprudence or current court decisions or current law, but the historical meaning of terms and concepts such as “religious freedom,” “separation of church and state,” “original intent,” “federalism,” “establishment of religion,” and “disestablishment.” The individual chapters approach their subjects from a variety of ideological and historical perspectives. Several chapters include discussions of the role of the 1947 Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education in launching the modern debate about the historical meaning of the Establishment Clause. Among the historical issues emphasized in the chapters are the seventeenth-century examples of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. The roles and opinions of many figures from the founding period are particularly scrutinized, including James Madison (and his “Memorial and Remonstrance”), Thomas Jefferson (and his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom”), and George Washington (and his “Farewell Address”). Several authors examine nineteenth-century discussions of church state controversies, the separation of church and state, school-funding controversies, and the 1876 Blaine amendment debates.

Mystery Unveiled

Paul C. H. Lim — 2013-01-24

Author:: Paul C. H. Lim
ISBN:: 9780195339468
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195339468.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers an examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period. Through analysis of these heated polemics, the book shows how Trinitarian God-Talk became untenable in many ecclesiastical and philosophical circles, which led to the emergence of Unitarianism. It also demonstrates that those who continued to embrace Trinitarian doctrine articulated their piety and theological perspectives in an increasingly secularized culture of discourse. Drawing on both unexplored manuscripts and well-known treatises of Continental and English provenance, the book unearths the complex layers of the polemic: from biblical exegesis to reception history of patristic authorities, from popular religious radicalism during the Civil War to Puritan spirituality, from Continental Socinians to English Anti-Trinitarians who avowed their relative independent theological identity, from the notion of the Platonic captivity of primitive Christianity to that of Plato as “Moses Atticus.” Among this book's surprising conclusions are the findings that Anti-Trinitarian sentiment arose from a Puritan ambience, in which Biblical literalism overcame rationalistic presuppositions, and that theology and philosophy were not as unconnected during this period as previously thought.

Muslims and Others in Sacred Space

Margaret Cormack — 2013-01-24

Author:: MargaretCormackCollege of Charleston
ISBN:: 9780199925049
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Islam
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199925049.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The articles in this volume examine different types of “sacred spaces” and the ways in which Muslims and members of other religious groups legitimize them and/or interact with each other at such real or imagined locations. The roles and identities of individuals considered holy (and why they are so designated) are discussed

The Mount of Vision

Christopher Z. Hobson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Christopher Z. Hobson
ISBN:: 9780199895861
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199895861.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Prophetic denunciation, warning, and promise are major themes in African American religion. From the 1780s to the mid-twentieth century, African American ministers and others used biblical prophetic models to confront U.S. slavery and communicate belief in God’s justice. Prophetic thinkers differed on whether the United States could be redeemed through struggle or was so sunk in sin that it must be destroyed or abandoned. A distinct millennial-apocalyptic tradition provided sustaining hope and cross-fertilized other traditions. The reformative traditions and an associated prophetic integrationism were historically dominant and most consistent in struggling for justice. The conclusion examines prophecy’s relevance today.

Modern Hindu Personalism

Ferdinando Sardella — 2013-01-24

Author:: Ferdinando Sardella
ISBN:: 9780199865918
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199865918.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book explores the life and work of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī (1874–1937), a guru of the Chaitanya (1486–-1534) school of Vaishnavism, who, at a time when various interpretations of nondualistic Hindu thought were most prominent, managed to establish a pan-Indian movement for the modern revival of personalist bhakti-a movement that today encompasses both Indian and non-Indian populations throughout the world. To most historians, the period between 1815 and 1914 is known as Britain's Imperial Century, when the power of British cultural influence was at its height, most especially in Calcutta, regarded as the “jewel” of the British crown. Here the profound admixture of Western and Indic societies, values and ideas gave rise to a new indigenous middle-class known as the bhadralok. This class was responsible for producing such figures as Swami Vivekananda, who, as many others of his generation, believed that nondualism was the primary expression of Indic thought. As a result, modern Hinduism gradually came to be identified with Vedantic nondualism in both India and the West-an outcome that has historically obscured personalist bhakti strands. To redress this imbalance, the book explores Bhaktisiddhānta's background, motivation and thought, especially as it relates to his forging of the Gaudiya Math, a modern institution, for the global revival of Chaitanya Vaishnava bhakti. This institution has a number of contemporary offshoots, the best known of which is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement. The book carries implications for the understanding of modern Hinduism and its development from pre-modern to postmodern times.

The Materiality of the Past

Anne Murphy — 2013-01-24

Author:: Anne Murphy
ISBN:: 9780199916276
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916276.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers an exploration of the material aspects of Sikh identity, showing how material objects, as well as holy sites, and texts, embody and represent the Sikh community as an evolving historical and social construction. Widening traditional scholarly emphasis on holy sites and texts alone to include consideration of iconic objects, such as garments and weaponry, the book moves further and examines the parallel relationships among sites, texts, and objects. It reveals that objects have played dramatically different roles across regimes—signifers of authority in one, mere possessions in another—and like Sikh texts, which have long been a resource for the construction of Sikh identity, material objects have served as a means of imagining and representing the past.

Love's Subtle Magic

Aditya Behl and Wendy Doniger — 2013-01-24

Author:: Aditya BehlWendyDonigerUniversity of Chicago
ISBN:: 9780195146707
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146707.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The encounter between Muslim and Hindu remains one of the defining issues of South Asian society today. This encounter began as early as the eighth century, and the first Muslim kingdom in India would be established at the end of the twelfth century. This powerful kingdom, the Sultanate of Delhi, eventually reduced to vassalage almost every independent kingdom on the subcontinent. This book uses a little-understood genre of Sufi literature to paint an entirely new picture of the evolution of Indian culture during the earliest period of Muslim domination. These curious romantic tales transmit a deeply serious religious message through the medium of lighthearted stories of love. Although composed in the Muslim courts, they are written in a vernacular Indian language. Until now, they have defied analysis, and been mostly ignored by scholars east and west. The book shows that the Sufi authors of these charming tales purposely sought to convey an Islamic vision via an Indian idiom. They thus constitute the earliest attempt at the indigenization of Islamic literature in an Indian setting. More important, however, the book's analysis brilliantly illuminates the cosmopolitan and composite culture of the Sultanate India in which they were composed. This in turn compels us completely to rethink the standard of the opposition between Indian Hindu and foreign Muslim and recognize that the Indo‐Islamic culture of this era was already significantly Indian in many important ways.

Looking for Mary Magdalene

Anna Fedele — 2013-01-24

Author:: Anna Fedele
ISBN:: 9780199898404
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199898404.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book provides a detailed ethnography of alternative pilgrimages to Catholic shrines in contemporary France that are dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene or house black Madonna statues. Based on more than three years of fieldwork it describes the way in which pilgrims with a Christian background from Italy, Spain, Britain and the United States interpret Catholic figures, symbols and sites according to spiritual theories and practices derived from the transnational Neopagan movement. The book pays particular attention to the life stories of the pilgrims, the crafted rituals they perform and the spiritual-esoteric literature they draw upon. Among other questions, the book examines how rituals, as for menstruation and menopause, are invented; what effects they have and what they can tell us about rituals in general; why this kind of spirituality is increasingly attractive for Westerners and is related to The Da Vinci Code; and how anthropological literature has influenced the pilgrims. Among these pilgrims spirituality is lived and negotiated in interaction with each other and with their readings. Jungian psychology, Goddess mythology and “indigenous” traditions flow together into a corpus of theories and practices centered upon the worship of divinities such as the Goddess and Mother Earth and the sacralization of the reproductive cycle. The pilgrims’ rituals present a critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the medical establishment, as well as of contemporary discourses on gender.

Little Buddhas

Vanessa R. Sasson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Vanessa R.SassonMarianopolis College
ISBN:: 9780199860265
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860265.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Buddhism has often been pronounced an anti-family religion. Narratives of child abandonment seem to overshadow whatever role family relationships might otherwise play. The Vessantara Jātaka is a case in point: here, the future Buddha delivers his own children into the hands of an evil taskmaster in order to pursue his commitment to perfect generosity. In his final life story, the Buddha-to-be abandons his wife and newborn son for a life of homelessness in pursuit of an abstract ideal. With celibacy as a central value, the primary hero repeatedly abandoning his progeny from one lifetime to the next and his fellow monks following suit, not to mention the many stories in the Therīgātha in which women seem to require the death of their children for spiritual advancement to become possible, the conclusion that Buddhism idealizes asceticism at the family’s expense is not difficult to comprehend. But Buddhism is not limited to these narratives or to these interpretations. As the scholarship in this volume attests, Buddhist literature and lived realities exhibit many examples in which children and childhoods play a significant role. Children may be viewed as a hindrance to practice in some contexts, but there are many other narratives, rituals, and lived realities that tell a different story.

The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus

David Burns — 2013-01-24

Author:: David Burns
ISBN:: 9780199929504
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199929504.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book contends that the influence of biblical criticism in America was more widespread than previously thought. It proves this point by uncovering the hidden history of the radical historical Jesus, a construct created and sustained by freethinkers, feminists, socialists, and anarchists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. This exploration provides a new narrative revealing that Cyrenus Osborne Ward, Caroline Bartlett, George Herron, Bouck White, and other radical religionists had an impact on the history of religion in America rivaling that of recognized religious intellectuals such as Shailer Mathews, Charles Briggs, Francis Peabody, and Walter Rauschenbusch. The methods and approaches utilized by radical religionists were different than those employed by elite liberal divines, however, and part of a larger struggle over the relationship between religion and civilization. There were numerous reasons for this conflict, but the primary one was that radicals used Ernest Renan’s The Life of Jesus to create an imaginative brand of biblical criticism that struck a balance between the demands of reason and the doctrines of religion. Thus, while radical religionists like Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene Debs were secular-minded thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural dimensions, they believed the religious imagination that enabled modern-day radicals to make common cause with an ancient peasant from Galilee was something wonderful.

Liberalism versus Postliberalism

John Allan Knight — 2013-01-24

Author:: John Allan Knight
ISBN:: 9780199969388
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religious Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969388.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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 Last Segregated Hour

Stephen R. Haynes — 2013-01-24

Author:: Stephen R. Haynes
ISBN:: 9780195395051
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395051.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

On Palm Sunday 1964, at Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, a group of black and white students began a “kneel-in” to protest the church's policy of segregation, a protest that would continue in one form or another for more than a year and eventually force the church to open its doors to black worshippers. This book tells the story of this dramatic yet little studied tactic, which was the strategy of choice for bringing attention to segregationist policies in Southern churches. “Kneel-ins” involved surprise visits to targeted churches, usually during Easter season, and often resulted in physical standoffs with resistant church people. The spectacle of kneeling worshippers barred from entering churches made for a powerful image that invited both local and national media attention. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including extensive interviews with the students who led non-violent protests against church segregation and church people who witnessed these protests, the book tells the story of the Memphis kneel-ins and their legacy, including ongoing efforts at truth-telling and reconciliation on the part the churches that were the targets of kneel-in protests during the 1960s.

The Language of Disenchantment

Robert A. Yelle — 2013-01-24

Author:: Robert A. Yelle
ISBN:: 9780199924998
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924998.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book explores how Protestant ideas concerning language influenced British colonial attitudes toward Hinduism and proposals for the reform of that tradition. Protestant literalism, mediated by a new textual economy of the printed book, inspired colonial critiques of Indian mythological, ritual, linguistic, and legal traditions. Central to these developments was the transposition into the domain of language of the Christian opposition between monotheism and polytheism or idolatry. Various polemics against verbal idolatry—including the elevation of a scriptural canon over heathenish custom, the attack on the personifications of mythological language, and the critique of “vain repetitions” in prayers and magic spells—that had been applied previously to Catholic and sectarian practices in Britain were applied by colonialists to Indian linguistic practices. As a remedy for these diseases of language, British attempted to standardize and codify Indian traditions as a step toward both Anglicization and Christianization. The colonial understanding of a perfect language as the fulfilment of the monotheistic ideal echoed earlier Christian myths according to which the Gospel had replaced the obscure discourses of pagan oracles and Jewish ritual. The recovery of the historical roots of the British reordering of South Asian discourses in Protestantism challenges representations of colonialism, and of the modernity that it ushered in, as simply rational or secular.

Kierkegaard's Kenotic Christology

David R. Law — 2013-01-24

Author:: David R. Law
ISBN:: 9780199698639
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698639.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation affirms that Christ is both truly divine and truly human. This, however, raises the question of how these two natures can co-exist in the one, united person of Christ without undermining the integrity of either nature. Kenotic theologians address this problem by arguing that Christ ‘emptied’ himself of his divine attributes or prerogatives in order to become a human being. This book contends that a type of kenotic Christology is present in Kierkegaard's works, developed independently of the Christologies of contemporary kenotic theologians. Like many of the classic kenotic theologians of the 19th century, Kierkegaard argues that Christ underwent limitation on becoming a human being. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in emphasizing the radical nature of this limitation and in bringing out its existential consequences. The aim of Kierkegaard's Christology is not to provide a rationally satisfying theory of the incarnation, but to highlight the existential challenge with which Christ confronts each human being. Kierkegaard advances ‘existential kenoticism’, a form of kenotic Christology which extends the notion of the kenosis of Christ to the Christian believer, who is called upon to live a life of kenotic discipleship in which the believer follows Christ's example of lowly, humble, and suffering service. Kierkegaard thus shifts the problem of kenosis from the intellectual problem of working out how divinity and humanity can be united in Christ's Person to the existential problem of discipleship.

Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy

Kenneth Oakes — 2013-01-24

Author:: Kenneth Oakes
ISBN:: 9780199661169
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661169.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Karl Barth is often assumed to have been hostile to philosophy, willfully ignorant of it, or too indebted to its conclusions for his own theological good. These truisms of twentieth-century theology are challenged in this original and comprehensive account of Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Drawing upon a range of material from Barth’s earliest writings (1909) up until interviews and roundtable discussions that took place shortly before his death (1968), this book offers a developmental account of Barth’s thoughts on philosophy and theology. Beginning with the nineteenth-century intellectual background to Barth’s earliest theology, this work presents the young and ‘liberal’ Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy and then tracks this understanding throughout the rest of Barth’s career. While Barth never finally settled on a single, fixed account of theology and philosophy, there was still a great deal of continuity regarding this topic in Barth’s oeuvre. Looking through the lens of theology and philosophy, one can clearly see Barth’s continual indebtedness to nineteenth-century modern theology as well as his attempts and struggles to move beyond it. In addition to locating Barth’s account of theology and philosophy historically, attention is given to the specific doctrines and theological presuppositions that inform Barth’s different portrayals of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Consideration is given to how and why Barth used material from the doctrines under consideration—such as revelation, theological ethics, Christology—to talk about theology and philosophy. What emerges is a Barth not only concerned about the integrity and independence of theological discourse but also concerned that theology does not lose its necessary and salutary interactions with philosophy.

Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism

Jonathan Klawans — 2013-01-24

Author:: Jonathan Klawans
ISBN:: 9780199928613
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928613.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book reexamines the theological positions attributed to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, by the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. The analysis attends to Josephus’s overall literary concerns, while carefully comparing Josephus’s accounts with relevant biblical, rabbinic, and Dead Sea texts. The book argues that Josephus provides a relatively accurate picture of Jewish theological diversity in his day. This book also examines Josephus’s own theologizing. It argues that Josephus articulated a largely Pharisaic theology, in line with his claim to have adopted this group’s ways. This book also establishes that Josephus’s own theology points in many of the directions that later, rabbinic Judaism was to follow in its reaction to the destruction of the second temple. Without denying the importance of Jewish law—and recognizing Josephus’s embellishments and exaggerations—this project calls for a renewed focus on Josephus’s testimony, and models an approach to ancient Judaism that gives theological questions a deserved place alongside matters of legal concern. Ancient Jewish theology was indeed diverse. Jewish theologizing was also sufficiently robust to be able to offer answers to the historical challenges faced by Jews at that time.

Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation

Oliver D. Crisp — 2013-01-24

Author:: Oliver D. Crisp
ISBN:: 9780199755295
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755295.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely regarded as a philosopher and theologian of the first rank, sometimes even as “America's Theologian.” This study offers a major revisionist account of his views on the relationship between God and creation, and a fresh analysis of other central issues in Edwardsian philosophical theology, such as the divine nature and attributes, the doctrine of the Trinity, and eschatology. A number of recent Edwards scholars have argued that he reconceived the doctrine of God and creation along dispositional lines—God and the world being dispositions, not substances with attributes. By contrast, this work argues that Edwards was very much a Reformed theologian standing in the tradition of scholastic and Puritan theology. He did not think of his work as a break with this tradition. Instead, he sought to revision Calvinistic theology for an early modern audience using ideas culled from philosophers like Locke, Malebranche, Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists. Ironically, he ended up with a much more exotic picture of the God-world relation than many other Reformed divines. This included his commitment to continuous creationism, occasionalism, an idiosyncratic doctrine of the Trinity that is inconsistent with divine simplicity, panentheism, and a doctrine of theosis. The upshot of this is an interpretation of Edwards's thought that does justice to his theological conservatism while also explaining how he ended up embracing novel, even unusual metaphysical views.

The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude

David A. deSilva — 2013-01-24

Author:: David A. deSilva
ISBN:: 9780195329001
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Biblical Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195329001.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Jews have sometimes been reluctant to claim Jesus as one of their own; Christians have often been reluctant to acknowledge the degree to which Jesus' message and mission were at home amidst, and shaped by, the Judaism(s) of the Second Temple Period. This book introduces readers to the ancient Jewish writings known as the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and examines their formative impact on the teachings and mission of Jesus and his half-brothers, James and Jude. Knowledge of this literature bridges the perceived gap between Jesus and Judaism. Where our understanding of early Judaism is limited to the religion reflected in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus will appear more as an outsider speaking “against” Judaism and introducing more that is novel. Where our understanding of early Judaism is also informed by the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Jesus and his half-brothers appear more fully at home within Judaism, and giving us a more precise understanding of what is essential, as well as distinctive, in their proclamation. This study engages several critical issues. How can we recover the voices of Jesus, James, and Jude? How can we assess a particular text's influence on Jews in early first-century Palestine? The result is a portrait of Jesus that is fully at home in Roman Judea and Galilee, and perhaps an explanation for why these extra-biblical Jewish texts continued to be preserved in Christian circles.

Jacob Arminius

Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall — 2013-01-24

Author:: Keith D. Stanglin, Thomas H. McCall
ISBN:: 9780199755660
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755660.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The impact of “Arminianism” upon Protestantism is undeniable, yet the theology of Jacob Arminius is not broadly known or well understood. This book seeks to provide a reliable account of this theology. Working to understand Arminius both as a Protestant scholastic and pastoral theologian, the book situates his theology within his intellectual context. Unpacking his doctrines of God and creation, the book shows not only that he is committed to a “classically theistic” understanding of the nature and attributes of God, but also that he sees this very theology—and particularly the doctrines of divine wisdom, justice, goodness, simplicity, and glory—as vitally important for understanding divine action in creation, providence, and predestination. Arminius’s controversial views of divine omniscience and predestination are explored, as are his doctrines of original sin, freedom of the will, grace, justification, sanctification, perseverance, and assurance. What emerges is a contextually sensitive and historically well-informed overview of Arminius’s theology, one that shows the heartbeat of a pastoral scholastic theologian insistent upon a proper understanding of divine greatness, glory, and goodness—and indeed of the gospel itself.

Ibn `Arabī’s Mystical Poetics

Denis E. McAuley — 2013-01-24

Author:: Denis E. McAuley
ISBN:: 9780199659548
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Islam, Religion and Literature
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659548.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn `Arabī (1165–1240) has been one of the most influential figures in the development of Sufism. Although his prose works have been hugely influential, his prolific poetry has received very little attention. This book contains an in-depth analysis of one collection of his poetry, the Būlāq Dīwān. Chapter 1 argues that the Dīwān has been neglected because of its complex and unusual nature, which confounds readers’ expectations. Chapter 2 discusses Ibn `Arabī’s understanding of poetics, which is closely intertwined with his metaphysics and poetic inspiration: the rhythms of poetry echo those of creation, and meaning combines with form just as the spirit descends on matter. The following chapters embark on a close reading of selected poems, exploring such peculiar verse forms as poetic responses to chapters of the Qur’an; imitations of earlier poets; a set of poems using the same metre and rhyme; poems that use only one rhyme word; and cycles of acrostic poems. Frequent comparisons are made with other medieval Arabic, Persian, and European poets, many of whom are virtually unstudied in their own right. Chapter 9 summarizes the findings and explores the poet’s mixed reception in later centuries. Ibn `Arabī emerges as a highly original poet whose work casts a fresh light on the period and on classical Arabic literature as a whole.

Gregorius

Brian Murdoch — 2013-01-24

Author:: Brian Murdoch
ISBN:: 9780199596409
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Church History, Religion and Literature
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596409.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling, leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother’s land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope if it avoids despair. The story probably originated in medieval England or France, but is found in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, and more or less continuously down to and even beyond. It is a truly European theme.

The Future of Religious Freedom

Allen D. Hertzke — 2013-01-24

Author:: Allen D.HertzkeUniversity of Oklahoma
ISBN:: 9780199930890
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199930890.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

What is the status of religious freedom in the world today? What barriers does it face? What are the realistic prospects for improvement, and why does this matter? This book addresses these critical questions by assembling in one volume some of the best forward thinking and empirical research on religious liberty, international legal trends, and societal dynamics. Chapters explore the status, value, and challenges of religious liberty around the world—with illustrations from a wide range of historical situations, contemporary contexts, and constitutional regimes. With a thematic focus on the nature of religious markets and statecraft, the book surveys conditions in different regions, from the Muslim arc to Asia to Eastern Europe. It probes dynamics in both established and emerging democracies. It features up-to-date treatments of such pivotal nations as China, Russia, and Turkey. It illuminates new threats to conscience and religious autonomy in the cradle of liberty, the United States, and in kin countries of the English speaking world. Finally, it demonstrates the vital contribution of religious freedom to inter-religious harmony, thriving societies, and global security, and applies these findings to the momentous issue of advancing freedom and democracy in Islamic cultures.

The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea

Joan E. Taylor — 2013-01-24

Author:: Joan E. Taylor
ISBN:: 9780199554485
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism, Biblical Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554485.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Ever since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves near the site of Qumran in 1947, this mysterious cache of manuscripts has been associated with the Essenes, a ‘sect’ configured as marginal and isolated. Scholarly consensus has held that an Essene library was hidden ahead of the Roman advance in 68 CE, when Qumran was partly destroyed. With much doubt now expressed about aspects of this view, the book systematically reviews the surviving historical sources, and supports an understanding of the Essenes as an influential legal society, at the centre of Judaean religious life, held in much esteem by many and protected by the Herodian dynasty, thus appearing as ‘Herodians’ in the Gospels. Opposed to the Hasmoneans, the Essenes combined sophisticated legal expertise and autonomy with an austere regimen of practical work, including a specialisation in medicine and pharmacology. Their presence along the north-western Dead Sea is strongly indicated by two independent sources, Dio Chrysostom and Pliny the Elder, and coheres with the archaeology. The Dead Sea Scrolls represent not an isolated library, quickly hidden, but burials of manuscripts from numerous Essene collections, placed in jars in caves for long-term preservation. The historical context of the Dead Sea area itself, and its extraordinary natural resources, as well as the archaeology of Qumran, confirm the Essenes’ patronage by Herod the Great, and indicate that they harnessed the medicinal material the Dead Sea zone provides to this day.

Earth-honoring Faith

Larry L. Rasmussen — 2013-01-24

Author:: Larry L. Rasmussen
ISBN:: 9780199917006
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199917006.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

“The unit of survival of human society is not human society. Its unit of survival is nature comprehensively. Our origin, ongoing life, and destiny reside here. The belonging we are born to is ecospheric and cosmic. Religions and moralities that do not account for these dimensions somewhere near their pulsing centers are now quaint and dangerous.” These lines, taken from the book, lead into the two-fold aim of this work. (1) To recast religious ethics so as to re-center the moral universe from (abstracted and disembodied) human society to the full community of life and its primal elements—earth, air, fire, water. And (2) to reconcile the deep traditions of spirituality—mysticism, sacramentalism, asceticism, prophetic/liberative practices, wisdom—with ecological ethics. Part I of the book undertakes the first aim, Part II the second. Both parts are precipitated by a planet in jeopardy at human hands, both parts are governed by the quest for Earth-honoring faith and morality, and both parts share the conviction that religious communities have indispensable resources for a robust Earth faith and ethics. Yet the millennial traditions of religions also require a conversion to Earth as they face their own ecological phase in a new geological era, the Anthropocene. All told, this is religious ethics in a new key, a song (Earth-honoring faith) of many different songs (multiple traditions) in a re-framed moral universe.

The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism

Michael David Kaulana Ing — 2013-01-24

Author:: Michael David Kaulana Ing
ISBN:: 9780199924899
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924899.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book describes how early Confucians coped with situations where their rituals failed to achieve their intended aims. In contrast to most contemporary interpreters of Confucianism, the book demonstrates that early Confucian texts can be read as arguments for ambiguity in ritual failure. If, as discussed in one text, Confucius builds a tomb for his parents unlike the tombs of antiquity, and rains fall causing the tomb to collapse, it is not immediately clear whether this failure was the result of random misfortune or the result of Confucius straying from the ritual script by building a tomb incongruent with those of antiquity. The Liji (Record of Ritual)—one of the most significant, yet least studied, texts of Confucianism—poses many of these situations and suggests that the line between preventable and unpreventable failures of ritual is not always clear. Ritual performance, in this view, is a performance of risk. It entails rendering oneself vulnerable to the agency of others; and resigning oneself to the need to vary from the successful rituals of past, thereby moving into untested and uncertain territory. This book challenges some common assumptions of contemporary interpreters of Confucian ethics, in particular the assumption that a cultivated ritual agent is able to recognize which failures are within his sphere of control to prevent and thereby render his happiness invulnerable to ritual failure.

Drama of the Divine Economy

Paul M. Blowers — 2013-01-24

Author:: Paul M. Blowers
ISBN:: 9780199660414
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660414.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book investigates the relation between Creator and creation as an object of constructive theology and religious devotion in the early church. Initial chapters revisit the challenges and legacies of Greco-Roman and Hellenistic‐Jewish cosmological traditions, and the formative pre‐Nicene rules of discourse for a Christian theology of creation. Subsequent chapters engage Greek, Syriac, and Latin patristic theological interpretation of Genesis 1 and other relevant writings like the Psalms, Deutero‐Isaiah, Wisdom literature, and major New Testament texts interconnecting creation and salvation. Patristic commentators read the six‐day creation account as a “thick” prophetic narrative of the beginning and end of the world. They also developed intertextual links among diverse biblical witnesses to construct the doctrine of creation as a dramatic “script” unveiling the strategy of the triune Creator in his creative and redemptive resourcefulness. Classic issues (e.g. the nature of the “beginning”; notions of “simultaneous” creation; creation ex nihilo and ex Deo) are examined afresh, as is patristic interpretation of distinctive biblical themes. An entire chapter details patristic teaching on the concrete operations of “Christ the Creator” and the “Creator Spirit” in inaugurating the new, eschatological creation. A final chapter explores how early Christians embodied their theology of creation in actual devotional and ritual practices, including “natural contemplation,” liturgical mimesis, and the stewardship of created things. The resonant theme is that beyond cosmogony or philosophical cosmology, the engrossing cosmic theo‐drama or “drama of the divine economy” held the key to the origins and teleology of creation in early Christian understanding and experience.

Disorienting Dharma

Emily T. Hudson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Emily T. Hudson
ISBN:: 9780199860760
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860760.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book explores the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and religion in classical Indian literature and literary theory by focusing on one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts to emerge from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahābhārata. This text, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious, social, and political thought, is a foundational text of the Hindu tradition(s) and considered to be a major transmitter of dharma (moral, social, and religious duty), perhaps the single most important concept in the history of Indian religions. However, in spite of two centuries of Euro-American scholarship on the epic, basic questions concerning precisely how the epic is communicating its ideas about dharma and precisely what it is saying about it have not been satisfactorily answered. Disorienting Dharma brings to bear a variety of interpretive lenses (Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics) to answer these questions. One of the first book-length studies to explore the subject from the lens of Indian aesthetics, it argues that such a perspective yields startling new insights into the nature of the depiction of dharma in the epic through bringing to light one of the principle narrative tensions of the epic: the vexed relationship between dharma and suffering. In addition, it seeks to make the Mahābhārata interesting and accessible to a wider audience by demonstrating how reading the Mahābhārata, perhaps the most harrowing story in world literature, is a fascinating, troubling, disorienting, and ultimately transformative experience.

The Devil’s Party

Per Faxneld and Jesper Aa. Petersen — 2013-01-24

Author:: PerFaxneldStockholm UniversityJesper Aa.PetersenNorwegian University of Science and Technology
ISBN:: 9780199779239
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, World Religions
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199779239.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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.

Christ Meets Me Everywhere

Michael Cameron — 2013-01-24

Author:: Michael Cameron
ISBN:: 9780199751297
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751297.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book studies the earliest biblical reading practices of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), the greatest of the Latin Church Fathers. As a Manichee he had dismissed the Scriptures of ancient Israel as crudely written and unspiritual. But when Ambrose of Milan suggested that familiar rhetorical devices were at work in them, he began to read the Old and New Testaments together figuratively as a single Book. That breakthrough catalyzed his return to Catholicism. Augustine's earliest works searched Scripture for a philosophically oriented spiritual understanding. But when surprise ordination made him responsible for the welfare of ordinary people, Augustine became more concerned with Scripture's ongoing function in the Christian life. With help from the Apostle Paul, Augustine read the old Scriptures differently, especially certain Psalms that became words of the crucified Christ impersonating the voice of his people. His insight into Christ's “astounding exchange” provided not only a way to articulate Christian redemption but also a way to practice Christian reading. This book examines works from the first fifteen years of Augustine's Christian life in order to follow the course of his development. His reflections on the craft of hermeneutics advanced not only specifically theological reading practices but also the humane art of textual interpretation. Augustine's rationale for figurative reading in the tens of thousands of Scripture references that filled hundreds of sermons, letters, and treatises made him the most widely read commentator on the Christian Scriptures in the west for more than a thousand years.

Chosen People

Jacob S. Dorman — 2013-01-24

Author:: Jacob S. Dorman
ISBN:: 9780195301403
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301403.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers new insights into the rise of Black Israelite religions in America, faiths ranging from Judaism to Islam to Rastafarianism, all of which believe that the ancient Hebrew Israelites were Black and that contemporary African Americans are their descendants. The book traces the influence of Israelite practices and philosophies in the Holiness Christianity movement of the 1890s and the emergence of the Pentecostal Movement in 1906. An examination of Black interactions with white Jews during slavery supports the contention that the original impetus for Christian Israelite movements was not a desire to practice Judaism but rather a studied attempt to recreate the early Christian church, following the strictures of the Hebrew Scriptures. A second wave of Black Israelite synagogues arose during the Great Migration of African Americans and West Indians to Northern cities. One of the most fascinating of the Black Israelite pioneers was Arnold Josiah Ford, a Barbadian musician who moved to Harlem, joined Marcus Garvey's Black nationalist movement, started his own synagogue, and led African Americans to resettle in Ethiopia in 1930. The effort failed, but the Black Israelite theology had captured the imagination of settlers who returned to Jamaica and transmitted it to Leonard Howell, one of the founders of Rastafarianism and himself a member of Harlem's religious subculture. After Ford's resettlement effort, the Black Israelite movement was carried forward in the U.S. by several Harlem rabbis, including Wentworth Arthur Matthew, another West Indian rabbi, who creatively combined elements of Judaism, Pentecostalism, Freemasonry, the British Anglo-Israelite movement, Afro-Caribbean faiths, and occult kabbalah. This book provides a vivid portrait of Black Israelites, showing them as part of the creative ferment of spirituality, art, and commerce that characterized African American life in the era of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Challenge of Received Tradition

Naomi Grunhaus — 2013-01-24

Author:: Naomi Grunhaus
ISBN:: 9780199858408
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858408.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

During the medieval period of intense Bible study, one of the most vexing problems facing Jewish interpreters of the Hebrew Bible was how to forge ahead using the new interpretive strategy of uncovering the plain, contextual meaning (peshat), without neglecting revered ancient rabbinic modes of interpretation (derash). This book investigates the ubiquity and necessity of derash‐type interpretations in the biblical commentaries of Radak (R. David Kimhi, c. 1160–1232), a preeminent thirteenth century exegete, analyzing the standard structures in his commentaries with their consistent juxtaposition of peshat and derash-type rabbinic comments. Carefully parsing Radak’s methodological statements and each of the structures he typically employs, the book demonstrates how at times he uses rabbinic traditions to resolve textual questions that arise in exegesis, while at other times, these traditions perform only ancillary functions in his commentaries. The book also examines in detail Radak’s criteria when challenging rabbinic teachings, both in narrative and legal contexts, concluding that most often he rejects rabbinic traditions when they appear to contradict textual biblical evidence, but occasionally also on the grounds of implausibility. Particularly noteworthy is Radak’s questioning rabbinic legal interpretations of Scriptures, which most other exegetes hesitated to do. The book considers the anomaly of Radak’s ample quotation of rabbinic traditions, constantly relying on traditional authority in multiple ways, while simultaneously challenging this same authority by rejecting some rabbinic interpretations. Ultimately, the book concludes that Radak did not find this quotation and challenging of rabbinic traditions as contradictory

Calvin's Company of Pastors

Scott M. Manetsch — 2013-01-24

Author:: Scott M. Manetsch
ISBN:: 9780199938575
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199938575.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book examines the pastoral theology and practical ministry activities of Geneva’s reformed ministers from the time of Calvin’s arrival in Geneva in 1536 until the beginning of the seventeenth century. During these seven decades, more than 130 men were enrolled in Geneva’s Venerable Company of Pastors (as it was called), including notable reformed leaders such as Guillaume Farel, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza, Simon Goulart, and Lambert Daneau. Aside from these better-known epigones, Geneva’s pastors from this period have remained hidden from view, cloaked in Calvin’s long shadow, even though they played a strategic role in preserving and reshaping Calvin’s pastoral legacy. These “forgotten” reformed pastors, together with Calvin himself, are the central characters of this book. Making extensive use of archival materials, published sermons, catechisms, prayer books, personal correspondence, and theological writings, this monograph offers an engaging and vivid portrait of pastoral life in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Geneva, exploring the manner in which Geneva’s ministers conceived of their pastoral office and performed their daily responsibilities of preaching, conducting public worship, moral discipline, catechesis, administering the sacraments, and pastoral care. This book demonstrates that Calvin and his colleagues saw themselves as spiritual shepherds of Christ’s Church, a self-understanding that shaped to a significant degree their daily work as pastors and preachers. This careful study of religious life in Geneva from 1536 to 1609 will also show that the clerical office in Geneva changed in subtle ways during the half-century after Calvin’s death, even as the Company of Pastors remained committed to the reformer’s pastoral vision.

Bridges across an Impossible Divide

Marc Gopin — 2013-01-24

Author:: Marc Gopin
ISBN:: 9780199916986
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916986.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers an exploration of Arab/Israeli peace partnerships: unlikely friendships created among people who have long been divided by bitter resentments, deep suspicions, and violent sorrows. The book shows how the careful examination of their inner spiritual lives has enabled Jewish and Arab individuals to form peace partnerships, and that these partnerships may someday lead to peaceful coexistence. The peacemakers in this book have no formal experience in conflict resolution or diplomacy. Instead, through trial and error, they have devised their own methods of reaching out across enemy lines. The obstacles they face are unimaginable, the pressure from both sides to desist is constant, and the guilt-ridden thoughts of betrayal are pervasive and intense. Peace partners have found themselves deserted by their closest friends, family members, and neighbors. This book tells their stories—stories not of saints, but of singular people who overcame seemingly unbeatable odds in their dedication to work toward peace with their estranged neighbors. The book provides insightful analysis of the lessons to be learned from these peacebuilders, outlining the characteristics that make them successful. It argues that lasting conflict and misery between enemies is the result of an emotional, cognitive, and ethical failure to self-examine, and that the true transformation of a troubled society is brought about by the spiritual introspection of extraordinary, determined individuals.

The Blue Sapphire of the Mind

Douglas E. Christie — 2013-01-24

Author:: Douglas E. Christie
ISBN:: 9780199812325
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religious Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812325.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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.

The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness

Brent A. Strawn — 2013-01-24

Author:: Brent A.StrawnCandler School of Theology, Emory University
ISBN:: 9780199795734
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Biblical Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795734.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book investigates the meaning of happiness in light of biblical scholarship and developments in the study of happiness, especially via positive psychology. Nine chapters that focus on the Bible (five on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, four on the New Testament) are accompanied by three that evaluate the theme and the biblical chapters via the disciplines of systematic theology, practical theology, and counselling psychology. An introduction frames the project in terms of the meaning (often vaguely or ill-defined) of happiness, and a conclusion offers a first attempt at writing a biblical theology of happiness.

The Bible and the Believer

Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and Daniel J. Harrington — 2013-01-24

Author:: Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, Daniel J. Harrington
ISBN:: 9780199863006
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Biblical Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199863006.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This volume seeks to show how Jews, Catholics, and Protestants can and do read the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament simultaneously from a critical and religious perspective. It points out the similarities and differences in how biblical texts are read, interpreted, and applied in each tradition. In particular, it explores how biblical criticism, especially the historical-critical method, can provide a sound basis for a religious reading. While the authors were trained academically in biblical criticism and teach it in their classes, they continue to read the Bible as a meaningful religious document central to their lives. The heart of the book is three essays on reading the Bible critically and religiously from a Jewish (Brettler), Catholic (Harrington), and Protestant (Enns) perspective; each author also offers a response to each of his colleague’s essays. Also included are an introduction to the history of biblical interpretation, a brief conclusion, and a glossary of technical terms.

Beyond the Walls

Joseph Palmisano — 2013-01-24

Author:: Joseph Palmisano
ISBN:: 9780199925025
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199925025.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Empathy is a way of re-membering oneself with the religious other that buttresses an interreligious unity-in-diversity. This book therefore proposes a way of strengthening the bonds of friendship and dialogue between Judaism and Catholicism is through a more detailed consideration of the phenomenological category of empathy vis-à-vis Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) and Edith Stein (1891–1942). The book's methodology is phenomenological and narrative in approach, and is therefore necessarily contextual in so far as it takes seriously the post-Shoah situation. Heschel's call for a prophetic return to God, a call that is “ecumenically” expansive and supportive of humanity's need to receive otherness, is a call to live life in the form of response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic response through Edith Stein's interreligiously attuned scholarship and witness of empathy, as narratively “drawn” from within the chiarascuro horizon of the Shoah. Stein's portrait rises in the typology of “mandorla” figure—as one capable of dialectically bridging sameness with otherness—conveying an em-pathos in word and deed that is less narrow and more interreligious in kind, precisely because her “way” of martyrdom is as a re-memberer with the religious other(s) who is same: she neither distances herself nor denies her consanguinity with the Jewish people. Stein's Jewish and Christian fidelity, while being an archetype for interreligious relations, also challenges Catholicism to do the teshuva work of remembering its Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with otherness.

Between Heaven and Hell

Mohammad Hassan Khalil — 2013-01-24

Author:: Mohammad HassanKhalilMichigan State University
ISBN:: 9780199945399
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Islam
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199945399.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

In this groundbreaking volume, eminent and up-and-coming scholars, representing a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints, address the question of non-Muslim salvation: according to the Islamic ethos (however understood), what can be said about the status and fate of non-Muslims? Each of the volume’s contributors responds to this often asked “salvation question”—a question with profound theological and practical implications—from different angles: while some limit themselves to its historical dimensions, others approach it as theologians and philosophers, yet others focus on the relationship between this-worldly relations with Others and next-worldly conceptions of salvation. Individually and collectively, the essays comprising this volume advance the discourse on religious diversity and our understanding of Islamic thought and Muslim societies. Between Heaven and Hell is possibly the first ever multi-authored volume on salvation in Islamic thought, at least in English. It does not conclude with neat resolutions; instead, it offers fascinating expositions, debates, and points of departure for further contemplation. Aside from the editor of the volume, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, and the author of the foreword, Tariq Ramadan, the contributors include William C. Chittick, Farid Esack, Mohammad Fadel, David M. Freidenreich, Marcia Hermansen, Jerusha Lamptey, Bruce B. Lawrence, Muhammad Legenhausen, Yasir Qadhi, A. Kevin Reinhart, Sajjad Rizvi, Reza Shah-Kazemi, and Tim Winter.

The Anti-Pelagian Christology of Augustine of Hippo, 396-430

Dominic Keech — 2013-01-24

Author:: Dominic Keech
ISBN:: 9780199662234
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662234.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Falling outside of the usual categories of Patristic Christological discourse, Augustine’s Christology remains a relatively neglected area of his thought. This study focuses on his understanding of the humanity of Christ as it emerged in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it, it argues that Augustine’s reading of Origen lay at the heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is, therefore, situated within the network of fourth- and fifth-century Western theologians concerned to defend Origen’s orthodoxy—and the orthodoxy of a broader Christian Platonism—against their opponents. Opening with a survey of scholarship in the areas of both Augustinian Christology and Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism, it proceeds by detailing Augustine’s engagement with the issues and personalities involved in both the Origenist and Pelagian controversies. Chapter 3 examines the importance of Augustine’s understanding of Christ ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom 8.3) within his anti-Pelagian works; Chapter 4 traces the dependence of this motif on Origen’s exegesis. The fifth chapter considers Augustine’s treatment of Christ’s soul in relation to his understanding of Apollinarianism. The study concludes by exploring Augustine’s handling of the origin of the soul, suggesting that the inconsistencies in his Christology can be explained by recourse to an Origenian framework, in which the soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its relationship to the eternal Word after the Fall of souls to embodiment

The Allure of Decadent Thinking

Carl Olson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Carl Olson
ISBN:: 9780199959839
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199959839.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion. It shows that religious studies is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions. The author examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault and Edward W. Said. He contrasts the thought of traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The book concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, it suggests all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.

Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism

Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr — 2013-01-24

Author:: HenrikBogdanUniversity of Gothenburg, SwedenMartin P.Starr
ISBN:: 9780199863075
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199863075.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers an examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive occult iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a study in contradictions. He was born into a Fundamentalist Christian family, and then he was educated at Cambridge where he experienced both an intellectual liberation from his religious upbringing and a psychic awakening that led him into the study of magic. He was a stock figure in the tabloid press of his day, vilified during his life as a traitor, drug addict and debaucher; yet he became known as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. The practice of the occult arts was understood in the light of contemporary developments in psychology, and its advocates, such as William Butler Yeats, were among the intellectual avant-garde of the modernist project. Crowley took a more drastic step and declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was a thoroughly eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawing from Western European ceremonial magical traditions as practiced in the nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley also pioneered in his inclusion of Indic sources for the parallel disciplines of meditation and yoga. The summa of this journey of self-liberation was harnessing the power of sexuality as a magical discipline, an instance of the “sacrilization of the self” as practiced in his co-masonic magical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom under the law of “Do what thou wilt.” The influence of Aleister Crowley is not only to be found in contemporary esotericismȔhe was, for instance, a major influence on Gerald Gardner and the modern witchcraft movement—but can also be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. This book provides insight into Crowley's critical role in the study of western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.

Abrahamic Religions

Aaron W. Hughes — 2013-01-24

Author:: Aaron W. Hughes
ISBN:: 9780199934645
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religious Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199934645.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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.

Writing the Self

Jeanne Openshaw — 2012-10-18

Author:: Jeanne Openshaw
ISBN:: 9780198062479
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062479.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

Renowned as the wandering minstrels and mystics from India and Bangladesh, Bauls have attained an iconic status as representatives of the ‘spiritual East’. This book investigates the largely unexplored terrain of the lives of Baul gurus by studying the autobiography of Baul guru, Raj Krishna, and situating Baul songs in a larger socio-historical perspective. The author examines the life, ‘lineage’, and legacy of Raj Krishna in the context of the Renaissance in colonial Bengal, the growth of urban middle classes, transforming identities and the development of spiritual philosophy in the subcontinent. She traces the life and beliefs of Raj and his disciples through oral as well as written sources. This volume also provides a comprehensive picture of the religious and socio-cultural aspirations of the people being addressed by the Baul gurus. The volume also contains transliteration of the original text and discussions on the methods of dating and analysing Baul texts.

Visualizing a Buddhist Sutra

Laxman S. Thakur — 2012-10-18

Author:: Laxman S. Thakur
ISBN:: 9780195673142
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195673142.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book discusses the analysis of Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra.The Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra is a grand scripture covering a number of complicated themes and intricate Buddhist ideas. The study is confined to the principal idea of Bodhisattvahood versus Śrāvakahood, the concept of dharmadhātu: The realm of reality, and the Bodhisattva’s ten stages. It also describes the schematic arrangement of surviving inscriptional panels, and the eleven manuscripts of the Avataṁsakasūtra. In addition, the methodology and dialectics between form and contents as well as the interconnection between murals and inscriptions are elaborated. Finally, it summarizes the functionality of both murals and inscriptions.

Relocating Gender in Sikh History

Doris Jakobsch — 2012-10-18

Author:: Doris Jakobsch
ISBN:: 9780195679199
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195679199.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book charts the history of gender construction in Sikhism by focusing on the Singh Sabha Reform Movement spearheaded by British educated Sikhs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The volume is based on a theoretical analysis of gender construction as a variable in social organization, and the time period examined is the colonial milieu following the annexation of Punjab by the British East India Company in 1849. Gender construction as a theoretical framework is combined with an investigation of two critical phases of Sikh history: the guru period, and the Singh Sabha Reform Movement that took place under the watchful eye of the British. The book also addresses how gender constructs in England during the Victorian era informed newly articulated Sikh educational and religious reform initiatives among the Sikh elite wanting recognition by the British administration. The book tries to fill the gap created by a dearth of writing on women in Sikhism and the absence gender analysis within Sikh studies. While touching on the roles of specific players, this book deals with other political, social, and religious structures of colonial Punjab from the perspective of gender construction.

Modern Hindu Thought

Arvind Sharma — 2012-10-18

Author:: Arvind Sharma
ISBN:: 9780195676389
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676389.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

In both classical and modern Hinduism, the ultimate reality is called brahman. While the time-honoured distinction between nirguna and saguna brahman remains important, it is somewhat less significant in the context of modern Hinduism as compared to the classical. The main issue for the Vedāntins, who came after Śankara (ninth century), was whether brahman was nirguna or saguna. Ramana Maharni (1879–1950) represents the tradition of emphasizing the nirguna aspect, whereas Devendranath Tagore (1817–1905) represents the saguna aspect. This book analyses the concepts of modern Hindu thought. It is conceptually divided into three parts. Part 1 examines the historical context of modern Hindu thought, Part 2 presents the key concepts of modern Hinduism in relation to each other, and Part 3 explores each term constitutive of the modern Hindu world-view. These terms and concepts associated with Hinduism include Brahman, Íśvara, Devī, trimūrti, brahmā, Visnu, Śiva, Jīva, samsṁra, karma, dharma, māyā, moksa, jñāna-yoga, bhakti-yoga, karma yoga, varna, Āśrama, purusārthas, and Vedas.

Life and Work of Guru Arjan

Pashaura Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Pashaura Singh
ISBN:: 9780195679212
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195679212.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book presents a scholarly treatment of the life and work of Guru Arjan (1563–1606), the fifth Guru of the Sikhs. First, it discusses the theoretical framework of a religious biography, and follows a multidisciplinary paradigm to reconstruct Guru Arjan's life based upon history, tradition, memory, and mythic representation. In constructing the historical setting of Guru Arjan's times, the book focuses on major influences in the formation of his thought before he became a Guru, and discusses his role as the leader of the growing Sikh Panth. It also explores the major institutional developments as well as the formation of the Sikh canon during his reign, his teachings, and the social and political context of his life that contributed to his rise to cultural pre-eminence as one of the world's great religious leaders. Moreover, it examines the various causes that led to Guru Arjan's execution at the hands of the Mughals, and how his martyrdom influenced the crystallisation of the Sikh Panth.

A History of the Sikhs

Khushwant Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Khushwant Singh
ISBN:: 9780195673098
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195673098.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This second volume of A History of the Sikhs, recounts a variety of issues related to the Sikh, as they struggle to survive as a separate community. It is divided into five parts, which examine a century’s worth of Sikh history. Part I begins with the death of Ranjit Singh and the power struggle among his seven sons, who were all deemed unworthy to inherit the throne. It is followed by an account of the British invasion of the Punjab, as well as a small rebellion in Multan. This rebellion would give the British the perfect excuse to annex all of the Sikh Kingdom, which is discussed in detail in Part II. Part II expands on the events post-mutiny, such as the digging of canals and the creation of Punjabi colonies. Part III looks at social and religious reforms. It identifies the various religious movements present in the Punjabi, and introduces the protest society Singh Sabha. Part IV centres on the national, sectarian, and Marxist political movements, and Part V discusses the events leading up to the incessant demands for an independent and free Sikh homeland.

A History of the Sikhs

Khushwant Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Khushwant Singh
ISBN:: 9780195673081
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195673081.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

The first volume of The History of the Sikh provides a detailed account of the religious, political, and social background that eventually brought about the formation of the Sikh religion during the fifteenth century. It outlines the development of Sikhism and the Punjab monarchy. This volume is divided into three parts. Part I begins with a description of the Sikh homeland, including its climate, available flora and fauna, and landscapes. From here the chapters turn to the founding of Sikhism by Guru Nanak, and the development of this religion through the exploits of his successors. Prominent gurus — such as Arjun, Gobind Singh, and Hargobind — and their achievements and failures are presented. Part II talks about the agrarian uprising, from the rise of Banda Bahadur and the peasant rebellion, to the formation of the misls. Part III captures the history of Ranjit Singh, the esteemed Maharajah of the Punjab. His efforts in creating a unified Punjab are highlighted, as well as his various military exploits against the Afghans and the British. The volume ends with a summary of Singh's achievements and some features of his life.

Hinduism and Its Sense of History

Arvind Sharma — 2012-10-18

Author:: Arvind Sharma
ISBN:: 9780195665314
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195665314.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

The study of Hinduism for the past two centuries has been based on the view that the Hindus have lacked a sense of history. The evidence marshalled in this book renders this assumption, which has had far-reaching consequences, implausible. The book consists of four chapters, the first of which discusses the history of the notion that Hinduism has no sense of history. The second chapter considers the implications of such a view for Indian Studies. The third chapter addresses Hindu responses to the view that Hindus have no sense of history. The fourth and final chapter re-examines the thesis that Hinduism lacks a sense of history.

Hindu Revivalism in Bengal c.1872-1905

Amiya P. Sen — 2012-10-18

Author:: Amiya P. Sen
ISBN:: 9780195655391
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195655391.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This work is an intensive study of certain facets of social and intellectual life in Bengal between 1872 and 1905, particularly Hindu revivalism. The period under discussion represents significant progress in the area of social and religious reform as well as a period which witnessed hostile attitudes towards such reforms. This is probably the first major work concerning the controversy that surrounded the Brahmo Marriage Bill of 1868–72 and the Consent Bill of 1890–92. The major source material for this book comprises contemporary Bengali literature, including essays, newspaper articles and correspondence, novels, short stories, drama and poetry. Though this study purports to be a history of intellectual life in Bengal and the broader intellectual trends and movements, it is largely an examination of certain developments centred in or around Calcutta.

The Guru Granth Sahib

Pashaura Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Pashaura Singh
ISBN:: 9780195663341
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195663341.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book examines three closely related questions in the process of canon formation in the Sikh tradition: how the text of the Adi Granth came into being, the meaning of gurbani, and how the Adi Granth became the Guru Granth Sahib. The censure of scholarly research on the Adi Granth was closely related to the complex political situation of Punjab and brought the whole issue of academic freedom into sharper focus. This book addresses some of these issues from an academic perspective. The Adi Granth, the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, means ‘first religious book’ (from the word ‘adi’ which means ‘first’ and ‘granth’ which means ‘religious book’). Sikhs normally refer to the Adi Granth as the Guru Granth Sahib to indicate a confession of faith in the scripture as Guru. The contents of the Adi Granth are commonly known as bani (utterance) or gurbani (the utterance of the Guru). The transcendental origin (or ontological status) of the hymns of the Adi Granth is termed dhur ki bani (utterance from the beginning). This particular understanding of revelation is based upon the doctrine of the sabad, or divine word, defined by Guru Nanak and the succeeding Gurus. This book also explores the revelation of the bani and its verbal expression, devotional music in the Sikh tradition, the role of the scripture in Sikh ceremonies, and the hymns of Guru Nanak and Guru Arjan.

Classical Hindu Thought

Arvind Sharma — 2012-10-18

Author:: Arvind Sharma
ISBN:: 9780195658712
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195658712.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book sets out to explore the doctrinal dimension of classical Hinduism (eighth century BCE to circa 1000 CE.), and is organized in terms of its key concepts: brahman, karma, karma-yoga, etc. which are discussed in their logical connection as well as in the context of a period of Hinduism which is chronologically connected with those that precede and succeed it. In textual terms, this covers the period from the Upanishads down to the late Purānas, and all that comes between them: the Smrtis (law books), the Itihāsas (epics), the Purānas (ancient lore), the Āgamas (liturgical manuals) and Darśanas (philosophical literature), etc. The purpose of the book is to synchronically and systematically present the governing concepts of classical Hinduism and their operation during the delimited period of classical Hinduism. Three features of the book to enable readers to use it to full advantage: (1) the first chapter constitutes the text of an oral presentation made at the Smithsonian Institution, designed to present classical Hindu thought in a concise and accessible manner. It forms a useful introduction to the conceptual framework of Hinduism, as the key ideas have deliberately been presented in a simple and direct manner. Their complexities and nuances are uncovered under the specific chapters that follow. (2) The rest of the book may be viewed as a magnification of the first chapter. (3) Among the essentials of classical Hindu thought, special and detailed consideration has been accorded to the concept of varna.

The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib

Pashaura Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Pashaura Singh
ISBN:: 9780195662696
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195662696.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

This book analyses the key issues concerning the phenomenon of scriptural adaptation in a cross-cultural spirit. Specifically, it seeks to addresses three questions closely related to the process of scriptural adaptation in the Adi Granth: How was the Bhagat Bani collected and canonized in the Adi Granth? Why did certain hymns of the poet-saints of Sant, Sufi, and Bhakti origin receive direct comments from the Sikh Gurus? What is the status of the Bhagat Bani in the Sikh scriptural tradition? The volume explores the interaction between early Sikhism and other religious movements in the Punjab, focusing particularly on those saints from devotional tradition who find a place in the Guru Granth Sahib. It examines Sikh gurus responses to the work of Shaikh Farid; Kabir and Sant tradition of north India; Vaishnava bhakti tradition represented by various bhagats. It offers a new understanding of religious pluralism, stressing the need to enter into dialogue with an ‘open attitude’ by honouring the individual commitments and maintaining differences in mutual respect and dignity.

Bahudhā and the Post 9/11 World

Balmiki Prasad Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Balmiki Prasad Singh
ISBN:: 9780195693553
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195693553.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

Today, in the age of terrorism and an unsafe world, there is a fresh need to understand the core meaning of the world religions, to reshape the educational system, and to strengthen the United Nations (UN) in a manner that can help people to build a better future. Drawing upon sources from the ancient roots of Indian culture and his experience as an international civil servant, B.P. Singh presents an essential framework for addressing the core twenty-first century global conflict and rebuilding for the post-September 11 world, while integrating the concept of the bahudhā philosophy. The futility of promoting violence and conflict in the name of religion is obvious to all except a few. Together, people have to recognize that many factors drive public opinion, including education and media, and that a global view is required. Underlining the need to transcend age-old peace mechanisms and reconstruct the language of discourse, this book propounds the concept of bahudhā — an eternal reality or continuum, a dialogue of harmony, and peaceful living. Bahudhā recognizes the distinction between plural societies and pluralism, facilitates exchange of views, and promotes understanding of the collective good. This book argues that the answer to terrorism lies in respecting human rights and appreciating various cultures and value systems. This is crucial for facilitating and enhancing dialogue processes eventually leading to amity and a peaceful world.

White Men's Magic

Vincent L. Wimbush — 2012-09-20

Author:: Vincent L. Wimbush
ISBN:: 9780199873579
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199873579.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book is a transdisciplinary analysis of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, first published in England in 1789. It was one of the earliest and remains to this day one of the best-known English language “slave” narratives. This now famous work was not really meant to be in any simple respects autobiographical; and it does not unproblematically register the several interests and motivations of a slave, spiritual, or travel narrative. Notwithstanding the inclusion of some formal elements of all these genres, it is best read as something else altogether—as a reflexive social-political commentary and criticism disclosed by a simple narratological framework. What Equiano wrote was not so much his life story as it was his creative effort to describe, critique, and reshape dominant society through his mimetics of what he, as strategically positioned “stranger,” understood to be—and named as—the “magic” that was the (British-inflected) practice of scripture reading, reflected within the structure of discourse and power relations that the author calls “scripturalization”. The book uses Equiano’s narrative to think with; it is a site for historical and contemporary social-critical excavation, using scriptures as social-cultural phenomenon and dynamics as analytical wedge. This scripturalizing mimetics open an analytical window onto the dynamics and structuring of British (and by extension Euro-American) civilization as a kind of ideological-discursive and social-psychological slavery, the representations of which are the deeper interest of this book. The form of enslavement identified as scripturalization in turn poignantly raises the possibility—with Equiano the ex-slave as model—of a particular type of negotiation or escape: ideological-psychological marronage, if not freedom in absolute terms. In Equiano’s reflexive thinking and discursive are the elements for the construction of “the African,” or “the Ethiopian,” the complex self within a reconceptualized modern, pluralistic society.

Well-Mannered Medicine

Dagmar Wujastyk — 2012-09-20

Author:: Dagmar Wujastyk
ISBN:: 9780199856268
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Hinduism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199856268.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

When is it right for a doctor to lie to a patient? What is more important: a patient's health, or his dignity? When should a patient refuse to follow the doctor's orders? What is acceptable medical risk? Whose fault is it if a patient dies under a doctor's care? Who cares for the patient? And who pays the bill? About two thousand years ago, physicians in ancient India could find answers to these questions in the then new, and now classic ayurvedic textbooks. Held in great respect, and used for ayurvedic training even today, the early ayurvedic treatises offer many guidelines on good medical practice: They define what made a physician a good physician, or a patient a good patient. They describe the formal procedures of medical education and lay out the rules for subsequent practice. They determine the duties or obligations doctors and patients had to each other, providing a catalogue of rules of professional conduct that physicians were bound to, including guidelines on appropriate interactions both with patients as well as with colleagues. Translating and discussing the original Sanskrit texts of the core ayurvedic treatises, the book offers a survey and analysis of the ayurvedic moral discourses on professional conduct in a medical setting and explores in what relationship the ethical tenets found in the ayurvedic works stand to those from other broadly contemporaneous South Asian sources.

Victorian Religious Revivals

David Bebbington — 2012-09-20

Author:: David Bebbington
ISBN:: 9780199575480
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Church History
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575480.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Revivals were outburst of religious enthusiasm in which there were numerous conversions. They occurred in many places across the globe, but revealed the shared characteristics of evangelical Protestantism. In this book the phenomenon of revival is set in its broad historical context and a chapter discusses the ways in which the subject has been addressed by previous historians. Seven chapters provide detailed case-studies of awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America, and Australia, showing that the distinctive features of particular revivals were the result less of national differences than of denominational variations. There is full exploration of the preconditions of revival, giving attention to the cultural setting of each episode as well as the form of piety displayed by the participants. No single cause can be assigned to the awakenings, but it is evident that occupational structure was one of the chief factors behind them and that striking instances of death were often a precipitant. It becomes apparent that ideas were far more involved in these events than historians have normally supposed, so that the case-studies demonstrate some of the main patterns in religious thought at a popular level during the Victorian period. Laymen and women played a disproportionate part in their promotion and converts were usually drawn in large numbers from the young. There was a trend over time away from traditional spontaneity towards more organised methods entailing interdenominational co-operation. The local studies reveal a great deal about global religious tendencies.

Tragic Soul-Life

Terrence L. Johnson — 2012-09-20

Author:: Terrence L. Johnson
ISBN:: 9780195383980
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383980.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Contemporary debates on the role of religion in American public life ignore the overlap between religion and race in the formation of American democratic traditions and more often than not imagine democracy within the terrain of John Rawls’s political liberalism. This kind of political liberalism, which focuses on political commitments at the expense of our religious beliefs, fosters the necessary conditions to open historically closed doors to black bodies, allows blacks to sit at the King’s table and creates the necessary safeguards for black protest against discrimination within a constitutional democracy. By implication of its emphasis on rights and inclusion, political liberalism assumes that the presence of black bodies signifies the materialization of a robust American democracy. However, political liberalism discounts the historical role of religion in forming and fashioning the nation’s construction of race. This book argues that the collision between religion and politics during U.S. slavery and segregation created the fragments from which emerged a firm but shifting moral disdain for blackness within the nation’s collective moral imagination. The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the moral crisis facing democracy.

Ties That Bind

Reiko Ohnuma — 2012-09-20

Author:: Reiko Ohnuma
ISBN:: 9780199915651
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199915651.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book is an exploration of maternal imagery and discourse in premodern South Asian Buddhism, drawing primarily on textual sources preserved in Pali and Sanskrit. It argues that Buddhism in India had a complex and ambivalent relationship with mothers and motherhood—symbolically, affectively, and institutionally. Symbolically, motherhood was a double-edged sword, sometimes extolled as the most appropriate symbol for buddhahood itself, and sometimes denigrated as the most paradigmatic manifestation possible of attachment and suffering. On an affective level, too, motherhood was viewed with the same ambivalence: In Buddhist literature, warm feelings of love and gratitude for the mother’s nurturance and care frequently mingle with submerged feelings of hostility and resentment for the unbreakable obligations thus created, and positive images of self-sacrificing mothers are counterbalanced by horrific depictions of mothers who kill and devour. Institutionally, the formal definition of the Buddhist renunciant as one who has severed all familial ties seems to co-exist uneasily with an abundance of historical evidence demonstrating monks’ and nuns’ continuing concern for their mothers, as well as other familial entanglements. Some of the topics covered in the book are Buddhist depictions of maternal love and maternal grief, the role played by the Buddha’s own mothers, Māyā and Mahāprajāpatī, the use of pregnancy and gestation as metaphors for the attainment of enlightenment, the use of breastfeeding as a metaphor for the compassionate deeds of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the relationship between Buddhism and motherhood as it actually existed “on the ground.”

Sufism for Non-Sufis?

Sherman A. Jackson — 2012-09-20

Author:: Sherman A. Jackson
ISBN:: 9780199873678
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Islam
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199873678.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This work is a scholarly introduction and translation of an important classical work on spiritual wisdom and refinement of the self by one of Sufism's most illustrious and influential masters. The introduction situates the text in the context of the modern controversy over Sufism, alongside the relevance of this tradition to the challenges confronting Islam and Muslims in the modern world, including the relationship between Islam and the West. The translation captures the tone, essence, and illocutionary force of the author's presentation in the straddled context(s) of the pre-modern and modern Islamic traditions.

Sikhism in Global Context

Pashaura Singh — 2012-09-20

Author:: PashauraSingh
ISBN:: 9780198075547
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Sikhism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198075547.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

The Sikh community has made its presence felt throughout the world. Focusing on globalization, this book presents Sikh history, politics, identity, music, ethics, material culture, the worldwide Sikh diaspora, and the history and current state of scholarship in the field of Sikh Studies. The book describes the internal differences of caste, community, and gender within Sikhism, as well as the use of modern media to disseminate and construct the frameworks of Sikhism. It also stresses the importance of internal dynamics within the Sikh community and external factors (such as local experiences in different countries) for comprehending the processes of change visible among Sikhs from the global point of view. The essays question the conventional premises of Sikh studies by breaking away from an emphasis on history and text, and look at Sikh practices from the ‘lived religion perspective.’ The place of the Guru Granth Sahib as a perennial source of human understanding, non-violent movements in Sikh history, Sikh music, and Sikh miracles are also discussed.

Showdown in the Sonoran Desert

Ananda Rose — 2012-09-20

Author:: Ananda Rose
ISBN:: 9780199890934
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199890934.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Set in the Sonoran desert, at the U.S.–Mexico border, in the shadow of migrant deaths, this book examines one of the most daunting ethical questions of our time: How should we treat the strangers who have entered the United States illegally? Gathering a mosaic of opinions, from Civil Militia groups, Border Patrol agents, Catholic nuns, interfaith aid workers, left-wing protestors, ranchers, and other ordinary citizens in southern Arizona, the book provides a stage for different ideological voices to be heard concerning the issue of illegal immigration in the United States. The book focuses on the tragedy of migrant deaths in the Tucson Sector of Arizona resulting from heightened border security measures that have pushed migrants into more remote and perilous areas of southern Arizona. An ethnographic investigation, the book objectively juxtaposes the viewpoints of interfaith activists who turn to a biblically inspired model of hospitality, which stresses love of stranger and a “borderless” sort of compassion, with the viewpoints of law enforcement personnel and supporters, who advocate notions of safety, security and strict respect of international borders, ultimately challenging readers to consider the moral complexities of today’s immigration debate.

Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700

Jimmy Yu — 2012-09-20

Author:: Jimmy Yu
ISBN:: 9780199844906
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844906.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Self-inflicted violence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a constituent and sanctioned aspect of the Chinese cultural life. As a category, self-inflicted violence allows us to see scholarly biases that tend to marginalize certain phenomena in Chinese culture while highlighting others. This book brings to light other, larger and more systemic preconceived ideas that attend analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual. It examines a range of practices including blood writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, and ritual exposure and self-immolation, which constitute the four substantive chapters of the book. These practices examined were public, scripted, signaling certain sets of cultural expectations, and highly intelligible to both the person doing the act and those who debated about them. As a distinctive refrain, these practices cut across and run through multiple cultural options, in effect blurring the religious boundaries of Chinese Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and popular religions. They were also productive. Performers engaged in them to exercise power and to affect people and the environment, which enabled them to graphically and viscerally demonstrate moral values, reinstitute order, forge new social relations, and secure boundaries against the threat of moral ambiguity. To date, there is no book that systematically analyzes several forms of self-inflicted violence in premodern China under a single cover.

Sacred History

Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan — 2012-09-20

Author:: KatherineVan LiereProfessor, Department of History, Calvin CollegeSimonDitchfieldReader in History, University of YorkHowardLouthanProfessor, Department of History, University of Florida
ISBN:: 9780199594795
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity, Religion and Literature
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594795.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book surveys early modern ‘sacred history’, i.e. the historiography of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries c.1450–1650. Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres of historical writing, inherited from medieval culture, included saints’ lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in Western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, Central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the Church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.

The Russian Cosmists

George M. Young — 2012-09-20

Author:: George M. Young
ISBN:: 9780199892945
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892945.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a controversial school of Russian thinkers emerged, convinced that humanity was entering an advanced stage of evolution and must assume a new, active, managerial role in the cosmos. This book offers a dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the lives and ideas of the Russian Cosmists. Although they wrote as scientists, theologians, and philosophers, the Cosmists addressed topics traditionally confined to occult and esoteric literature. Their writings explored the extension of the human life span to establish universal immortality; the restoration of life to the dead; the regulation of nature so that all manifestations of blind natural force were under rational human control; the effect of cosmic rays and other particles of energy on human history; and practical steps toward eventual human control over the flow of time. Suppressed during the Soviet period and little noticed in the West, the ideas of the Cosmists have in recent decades been rediscovered and embraced by many Russian intellectuals. The book offers a sympathetic analysis of the ideas of the Cosmists within the contexts of Russian philosophy, Russian religious thought, and Western esotericism.

Rethinking Pluralism

Adam B. Seligman and Robert P. Weller — 2012-09-20

Author:: Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller
ISBN:: 9780199915262
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199915262.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

How can we order the world while still accepting its enduring ambiguities? This book suggests a new approach to the problem of ambiguity and social order, which goes beyond the default modern position of “notation” (resort to rules and categories to disambiguate). The book argues that alternative, more particularistic modes of dealing with ambiguity through ritual and shared experience better attune to contemporary problems of living with difference. It retrieves key aspects of earlier discussions of ambiguity evident in Rabbinic commentaries, Chinese texts, and Greek philosophical and dramatic works, and applies those texts to modern problems. The book is a work of recuperation that challenges contemporary constructions of tradition and modernity. In this, it draws on the tradition of pragmatism in American philosophy, especially John Dewey’s injunctions to heed the particular, contingent, and experienced as opposed to the abstract, general, and disembodied. Only in this way can new forms of empathy emerge congruent with the deeply plural nature of our present experience. While we cannot avoid the ambiguities inherent to the categories through which we construct our world, the book urges us to reconceptualize the ways in which we think about boundaries—not just the solid line of notation, but also the permeable membrane of ritualization and the fractal complexity of shared experience.

Remembering Eden

Peter Thacher Lanfer — 2012-09-20

Author:: Peter Thacher Lanfer
ISBN:: 9780199926749
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199926749.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

There are few texts as central to the mythology of Jewish and Christian literature as the Garden of Eden and its attendant motifs. Yet the direct citation of this text within the biblical corpus is surprisingly rare. Even more conspicuous is the infrequent reference to creation, or to the archetypal first human pair. In fact, most covenantal texts in the Hebrew Bible begin with Abraham or with the Exodus rather than with the story of the garden. However, attention to Eden and the drama of the garden narrative increases in Jewish and Christian sources of the first centuries BCE and CE in which exegetes renew their interest in the earth’s creation. This exegetical shift is both to the former, first creation, as well as to the hope for an eschatological new creation. Most studies of Gen 2–3 omit analysis of the expulsion narrative of verses 22–24 altogether, leaving this section off as a late editorial addition with little relevance to the Eden Narrative as a whole. This choice is perplexing given the prominent place given by later interpreters to the motifs contained in these verses. The Tree of Life, the problem of wisdom, and the removal of access to the Garden become more important for Eden’s interpreters than Adam and Eve, the serpent, or the curses placed upon them. This book analyzes the expulsion narrative as an ideological insertion into the Garden of Eden narrative of Genesis 2–3 in response to the ascendency of scribal wisdom in the late seventh- and early sixth-centuries BCE. Additionally, this book proposes a new method of textual analysis, which places limits of reasonable constraint on the possibilities of interpretation, arguing that the essential dialogues of the redacted Eden narrative are reflected in the reception history of Eden’s interpreters.

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Nicholas P. Miller — 2012-09-20

Author:: Nicholas P. Miller
ISBN:: 9780199858361
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858361.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation, an outgrowth of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, helped promote religious liberty and religious disestablishment in the early modern West. This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation. It describes a continuous strand of this religious thought—as well as the thinkers who spread it—from the early Protestant Reformation, across the European continent, through the English reformation, civil war, and restoration, into the American colonies. It examines eight key thinkers, as well as a number of other figures, who played a major role in the development of this religious trajectory as it came to fruition in the American political and legal contexts. The seven main figures are Martin Luther, William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison. The connections of ideas and beliefs between these figures are traced, either directly or through other background figures who provided these connections. The project aims to show that religion played more than a pragmatic role in contributing to religious disestablishment in America. It argues that one main theme of dissenting Protestant tradition contributed to the ideology behind disestablishment among both American common people as well as among the educated elite.Law and Religion.

Religion and Human Security

James K. Wellman and Clark Lombardi — 2012-09-20

Author:: James K.WellmanJackson School of International Studies, University of WashingtonClarkLombardiUniversity of Washington
ISBN:: 9780199827732
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827732.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book explores the long-unstudied relationship between religion and human security throughout the world. The 1950s marked the beginning of a period of extraordinary religious revival, during which religious political-parties and non-governmental organizations gained power around the globe. Until now, there has been little systematic study of the impact that this phenomenon has had on human welfare, except of a relationship between religious revival to violence. The chapters in this book show that religion can have positive as well as negative effects on human wellbeing. They address a number of crucial questions about the relationship between religion and human security: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors tend to advance human welfare, and under what circumstances do they tend to threaten it? Are members of some religious groups more likely to engage in welfare-enhancing behavior than in others? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups while other policies tend to promote security-threatening ones? In cases where religious actors are harming the welfare of a population, what responses could eliminate that threat without replacing it with another? This book shows that many states tend to underestimate the power of religious organizations as purveyors of human security. Governments overlook both the importance of human security to their populations and the religious groups who could act as allies in securing the welfare of their people. This book offers a variety of theoretical perspectives on the nuanced relationship between religion and human security. Through case studies ranging from Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, to the United States, Northern Ireland, and Zimbabwe, it provides important suggestions to policy makers of how to begin factoring the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.

Religion and AIDS in Africa

Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb — 2012-09-20

Author:: Jenny Trinitapoli, Alexander Weinreb
ISBN:: 9780195335941
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335941.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book provides an empirical account of how religion affects the interpretation, prevention, and mitigation of AIDS in the world's most religious continent. Drawing upon their extensive fieldwork in Malawi and survey data from 26 other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the book identifies religious patterns in HIV prevalence, shows how religion shapes interpretations and understandings of AIDS, examine religious differences in risk and preventive behaviors, and discusses the role of religion in providing assistance to the sick and to their survivors. In so doing, it puts to rest longstanding debates about whether religion has either facilitated or reduced the spread of HIV. The book confirms the central role played by religious narratives and institutions in the epidemic. But the book also highlights some important differences between religious traditions and denominations on some of these dimensions—particularly those related to the congregational mechanisms for the care of the sick and their survivors—arguing that these have implications for the future trajectory of religious change in Africa, and for social solidarity in African societies more generally.

Reforming Hollywood

William D. Romanowski — 2012-09-20

Author:: William D. Romanowski
ISBN:: 9780195387841
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387841.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book chronicles for the first time the long and varied efforts of American Protestants—from Presbyterians and Episcopalians to fundamentalists and evangelicals—to influence the film industry. Representing the reigning religious and cultural establishment at the dawn of the cinema, Protestants struggled to formulate a constructive approach to Hollywood, which was a crucial site where non-Protestant and non-Christian players gained a new voice in the public arena. Drawing on personal interviews and previously untouched archival sources, this interdisciplinary study describes how mainline church leaders lobbied filmmakers to promote the nation’s moral health and, perhaps surprisingly, how they have by and large opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience. Tensions with Catholics, too, loomed large—many Protestant clergy feared the influence of the Legion of Decency more than Hollywood’s corrupting power. The rise of the evangelical movement in the 1970s radically altered the picture in contradictory ways. Even as born-again clergy denounced “Hollywood elites,” major studios began exploiting the emergence of a lucrative evangelical market. This book presents an original historical exploration that provides a corrective to the overemphasis on Catholic influence and makes a compelling case for a reassessment of the role that Protestants played in film regulation throughout the last century.

The Reformation of Suffering

Ronald K. Rittgers — 2012-09-20

Author:: Ronald K. Rittgers
ISBN:: 9780199795086
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, History of Christianity
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795086.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Protestant reformers sought to effect a radical change in the way their contemporaries understood and coped with the suffering of body and soul that were so prominent in the early modern period. The reformers did so because they believed that many traditional approaches to suffering were not sufficiently Christian; that is, they thought that these approaches were unbiblical. This book examines the Protestant reformation of suffering and shows how it was a central part of the larger Protestant effort to reform church and society. Despite its importance, no other book has directly examined this reformation of suffering, certainly not in sufficient depth. Focusing especially on Wittenberg Christianity, this book examines the genesis of Protestant doctrines of suffering among the leading reformers, traces the transmission of these doctrines from the reformers to the common clergy, and also examines the reception of these ideas by laypeople. This book underscores the importance of consolation in early modern Protestantism and thus seeks to challenge a scholarly trend that has emphasized the themes of discipline and control in Wittenberg Christianity. The book shows how Protestant clergymen and burghers could be remarkably creative and resourceful as they sought to convey solace to one another in the midst of suffering and misfortune. The Protestant reformation of suffering had a profound impact on church and society in the early modern period and contributed significantly to the shape of the modern world—in this book, it receives the serious scholarly attention that it has deserved for some time.

Rabbis as Romans

Hayim Lapin — 2012-09-20

Author:: Hayim Lapin
ISBN:: 9780195179309
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179309.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

The Rabbinic Movement emerged in Palestine by the late second century. Although frequently studied for its significance to the history of Judaism, it is more rarely studied as an example of a provincial social movement in a Roman province. Rabbis as Romans addresses this latter aspect of the Rabbis’ history, studying their origins in the late first or early second century to the end of the fourth century. After a detailed treatment of the process of provincialization in Palestine—political annexation, revolt, and the political, administrative, and economic reorganization that followed—the book turns to the history of the Rabbinic movement itself, arguing that Rabbis are best understood as a movement of literate urban men of some means. This is a social stratum deeply touched by Romanization, with the material means to make choices about legal practices, education for themselves and sons, language, and culture. This observation requires a revised understanding of the development of the rabbinic movement, but also recognizes rabbinic texts and the history of the movement as important resources for the history of provincialization in the Roman Near East. In addition to a history of the origins and formation of the rabbinic movement, the book studies Rabbis’ role as judges, a role they seem to have had especially for adherents, and a series of legal and non-legal texts that locate Rabbis’ cultural self-fashioning within wider cultural debates in the Roman empire.