Religion and Society : oso

The Viper on the Hearth

Terryl L. Givens — 2013-05-23

Author:: Terryl L. Givens
ISBN:: 9780199933808
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199933808.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

In 1997 this book was praised as a new classic in Mormon studies. In the wake of Mormon-inspired and -created artistic, literary, and political activity—today's “Mormon moment”—this book has now been revised and updated to address the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture. It provides a comprehensive study of how Mormons have been constructed in popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Interdisciplinary research in this book relies on historical and literary sources. The book also provides novel scholarship on religious formation, identity, and persecution.

Remembering Iosepa

Matthew Kester — 2013-05-23

Author:: Matthew Kester
ISBN:: 9780199844913
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844913.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

Remembering Iosepa tells the story of the origins, founding, and development of Iosepa, a community of Native Hawaiian converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Great Basin from 1889 to 1917. The book connects the expansion of the United States into the Pacific that brought Mormon missionaries west and Native Hawaiians east, culminating in a unique, religiously based community of Pacific Islanders in the American West. Remembering Iosepa chronicles the arrival of the earliest missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the motivation for Native Hawaiian converts to gather at Salt Lake City, and the history of the community from its founding in 1889 to its dissolution in 1917. Remembering Iosepa also investigates the ways that the public memory of Iosepa, fostered through annual commemorative gatherings, family narratives, and restoration of the town site itself, has become a powerful historical metaphor for the lived experiences of Pacific Islander Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley today. Remembering Iosepa brings together the history of the Pacific and the American West and reflects on the way that religion structures the narratives, actions, and historical sensibilities of diasporic communities in the American West.

Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict

Steve Clarke, Russell Powell, and Julian Savulescu — 2013-05-23

Author:: SteveClarkeSenior Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Australia and Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.RussellPowellAssistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Boston UniversityJulianSavulescuUehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199640911
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religious Studies, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199640911.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

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

Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth

Carys Moseley — 2013-05-23

Author:: Carys Moseley
ISBN:: 9780199668922
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668922.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

Defining and recognizing nationhood as distinct from the state is an important though underappreciated task in Karl Barth’s theology. It flows out of his deep concern for the capacity for nationalist dogma—that every nation must have its own state—to promote warfare. The problem motivated him to make his famous break with German liberal Protestant theology. This book traces how Barth reconceived nationhood in the light of a lifelong interest in the exegesis and preaching of the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2. It shows how his responsibilities as a pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church required preaching on this text as part of the church calendar, and thus how his defence of the inclusion of the filioque clause in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed stemmed from his ministry, homiletics, and implicit missiology. The concern to deny that nations exist primordially in creation was a crucial reason for Barth’s dissent from his contemporaries over the orders of creation, and that his polemic against ‘natural theology’ was largely driven by rejection of the German liberal idea that the rise and fall of nations is part of a cycle of nature which simply reflect divine action. Against this conceit, Barth advanced his famous doctrine of the election of Israel as part of the election of the community of the people of God. This is the way into understanding the division of the world into nations, and the divine recognition of all nations as communities wherein people are meant to seek God.

Medical Saints

Jacalyn Duffin — 2013-05-23

Author:: Jacalyn Duffin
ISBN:: 9780199743179
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743179.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

The hematologist author was consulted as an expert on a case leukemia, by reading a set of bone marrow samples “blind” without clinical information. The patient had clearly been treated with chemotherapy, but the doctor was later surprised to learn that she considered herself healed through the intercession of a woman who had been dead for 200 years. This cure was deemed miraculous, and on its strength, Marguerite d’Youville became the first Canadian-born saint. Now more sensitized to saints, Duffin soon noticed that the ancient twin physicians, Saints Cosmas and Damian, were enjoying a robust revival in Canada and the United States. She began a search to find out why. The work led her to sociological, genealogical, and psychological theories, and to libraries, archives, great cities and obscure villages across North America and Europe. She also conducted surveys with pilgrims at feast-day celebrations. The investigation eventually produced some surprising connections with medical greats and with twins healers from other religions. But, for her, the biggest discovery was a new perspective on medicine and its parallel functions with religion. A scholarly work written autobiographically, Medical Saints is not only the history of the veneration of Cosmas and Damian, and other healing saints; it is a history of the research project itself.

Going Dutch in the Modern Age

John Halsey Wood — 2013-05-23

Author:: John Halsey Wood
ISBN:: 9780199920389
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199920389.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancienrégime to the “age of mobilization,” from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders, and organizational tactics. Abraham Kuyper was a key instigator in this cultural transformation as the populist organizer of the Netherlands’ first modern political party (and eventually prime minister), as a newspaper editor who used modern media to educate and mobilize his popular base, as one who broadened enfranchisement in church and political society, and as the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands’ first private university. Before any of these things, however, Kuyper was a pastor in the Netherlands Reformed Church, and amid this upheaval the Netherlands Reformed Church faced an unprecedented crisis as it lost its taken-for-granted social standing. The church would have to “go Dutch,” so to speak. It would have to pay its own way, metaphorically and in some respects literally. This book examines the new legitimation that Abraham Kuyper offered the church through hisCalvinistfree church theology and how various other aspects of his theology, including his theology of sacraments, particularly baptism, church and state,and public theology, developed in conjunction with his ecclesiology. Kuyper’s ecclesiology provides a window onto problems that ecclesiology in general faced due to the social and cultural shifts of the nineteenth century.

The Fragmentation of a Sect

David V. Barrett — 2013-05-23

Author:: David V. Barrett
ISBN:: 9780199861514
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199861514.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

The Worldwide Church of God was a largely American 20th century Christian sect (or new religious movement: NRM) with heterodox beliefs and practices. It was Sabbatarian, millenarian, British Israelite and legalistic. After the death of its charismatic founder Herbert W. Armstrong in 1986 his successor changed the Church’s distinctive doctrines, leading it towards an increasing convergence with mainstream Evangelical Christianity. Ministers and members faced massive cognitive dissonance: whether to accept or reject the authority of the Church leadership which had abandoned the authority of the founder’s teachings. Groups of ministers left to form new Churches, taking thousands of members with them. These schismatic Churches in the “Worldwide family” in turn faced continuing schism, resulting in over 400 offshoot Churches by 2009. This sociological study examines some of the processes involved in schism, including the legitimation of authority, within both Worldwide and its range of offshoots, from hardline to comparatively liberal. Religions frequently face a period of turmoil and readjustment following their founder’s death. This book offers a new typological model for categorising various outcomes, including schism, and explores the usefulness of this model by applying it to both the Worldwide Church of God and a wide variety of other religions. It also extends Stark and Finke’s rational choice concepts of “social capital” and “religious capital” when people make religious choices, specifically reaffiliation between movements; it introduces a third factor, “moral capital”, covering for example past problems with leaders, and tests the relative strengths of these factors.

eGods

William Sims Bainbridge — 2013-05-23

Author:: William Sims Bainbridge
ISBN:: 9780199935819
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199935819.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

Computer games, especially those embodied in complex online virtual worlds where hundreds of people can interact through avatars, are a remarkable postmodern art form and medium of communication. As such, they draw heavily upon supernatural ideas, while implying that all such notions are fantasies, even traditional religions. The first chapter provides an introduction to the different kinds of games involved, contrasting strategy games with role-playing games, giving several examples of each that highlight religion, and sketching the ethnographic research methods used in this study. The second chapter then shows that computer games harmonize with one side in the current culture wars, the liberal or secular humanist faction, while suffering attacks from political conservatives who abhor the accusation that their own faith is merely a fantasy. The following nine chapters cover rich topics in the social science of religion, as reflected in computer games: deities, souls, priests, shrines, magic, morality, cults, death, and quests for meaning. The perspective is the New Paradigm in the social science of religion, which documents the ways in which religion is a fantasy that emerged in society to assuage the pains experienced in real life, compensating people psychologically for their unsatisfied desires. All arts also serve this function, so computer games may reflect a cultural transition in which all faiths vanish, to be replaced by new forms of art in which people can live out their personal fantasies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No Longer Invisible

Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen and Douglas Jacobsen — 2012-09-20

Author:: Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, Douglas Jacobsen
ISBN:: 9780199844739
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844739.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Religion is a major force in the contemporary world, and the college and universities that are preparing society’s future leaders must learn how to engage with religion in all its forms, both positive and negative. This book uses careful definitions of historic, public, and personal religion along with illustrations drawn from campuses across the country to show how religion has the potential to enhance American higher education. The first half of the book focuses on the history and current context of religion (and secularism) in American society as a whole and within higher education in particular. The second half of the volume explores six key topics where religion intersects with the goals of college and university education: religious literacy, interfaith etiquette, framing knowledge, civic engagement, convictions, and character and vocation. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of university professors, co-curricular educators, administrators, and students across the United States, the book develops a framework for conducting fruitful conversations about religion in higher education.

The Ming Prince and Daoism

Richard G. Wang — 2012-09-20

Author:: Richard G. Wang
ISBN:: 9780199767687
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199767687.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book argues that while the promotion of Daoism was a national policy of the Ming (1368–1644) court, the activities and maintenance of local Daoist institutions were the result of royal support from the Ming princes (wang) enfeoffed in provinces. Barred from any serious political or military engagement due to the fanjin (“restrictions towards princes”) system, the Ming princes were ex officio managers of state rituals at the local level, with Daoist priests as key performers, and for this reason they became very closely involved in Daoist clerical and liturgical life. In addition, as the regional overlords, the Ming princes saw financing and organizing temple affairs and rituals, patronizing Daoist priests, or collecting and producing Daoist books as a chance to maintain their influence and show off their power. The prosperity of Daoist institutions also demonstrated the princes’ political success. Like the Six Dynasties Southern aristocrats, or the local elites in Jiangxi and Jiangnan in late imperial times, the Ming princes were subordinated to a higher authority. By aligning themselves in this way with local religious traditions, including Daoism, spiritually as well as politically, the Ming princes ensured themselves a place on the winning side. This kind of enforced relinquishment of autonomy turned many members of Ming princedoms to the spiritual planes not completely controlled by the Confucian state ideology and scholar-officials. In presenting the role the Ming princes played in local religion, this book shows that the princedom served to mediate between the official religious policy and the commoners’ interests.

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads

Sohail H. Hashmi — 2012-09-20

Author:: Sohail H.HashmiMount Holyoke College
ISBN:: 9780199755042
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755042.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book explores the development of ideas of morally justified or legitimate war in Western and Islamic civilizations. Historically, these ideas have been grouped under three labels: just war, holy war, and jihad. The twenty chapters of this book explore two broad questions: What historical evidence exists that Christian and Jewish writers on just war and holy war and Muslim writers on jihad knew of the other tradition? What is the evidence in treatises, chronicles, speeches, ballads, and other historical records, or in practice, that either tradition influenced the other? The book surveys the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day. Part One surveys the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war. Part Two probes developments during the Crusades. Part Three focuses on the early modern period in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, followed by analysis of the era of European imperialism in Part Four. Part Five brings the discussion into the present period, with chapters analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad.

Just and Unjust Peace

Daniel Philpott — 2012-09-20

Author:: Daniel Philpott
ISBN:: 9780199827565
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827565.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

In the wake of massive injustice, how can justice be achieved and peace restored? This book offers an innovative and hopeful response to these questions. It challenges the approach to peacebuilding that dominates the United Nations, Western governments, and the human rights community. While this book shares their commitments to human rights and democracy, it argues that these values alone cannot redress the wounds caused by war, genocide, and dictatorship. Both justice and the effective restoration of political order call for a more holistic, restorative approach. The book answers that call by proposing a form of political reconciliation that is deeply rooted in three religious traditions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—as well as the restorative justice movement. These traditions offer the fullest expressions of the core concepts of justice, mercy, and peace. By adapting these ancient concepts to modern constitutional democracy and international norms, the book crafts an ethic that has widespread appeal and offers real hope for the restoration of justice in fractured communities. From the roots of these traditions, the book develops six practices—building just institutions and relations between states, acknowledgment, reparations, restorative punishment, apology and, most important, forgiveness—which the book then applies to real cases, identifying how each practice redresses a unique set of wounds. Focusing on places as varied as Bosnia, Iraq, South Africa, Germany, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Chile, and many others—and drawing on the actual experience of victims and perpetrators—this book offers a fresh approach to the age-old problem of restoring justice in the aftermath of widespread injustice.

The Dancing Dead

Walter E. A. van Beek — 2012-09-20

Author:: Walter E. A. van Beek
ISBN:: 9780199858149
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858149.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

The Kapsiki/Higi, one of the many groups living in the Mandara Mountains, straddle the border between North Cameroon and Northeast Nigeria. This book describes their religion, with a particular focus on ritual. Throughout, the Kapsiki/Higi history as a refuge area against slave raiding shines through in their dealings with “the other world” and with each other. This is a religion of long-time political insecurity. In contrast to many traditional religions in Africa, ancestors are not part of their belief system; instead, an intricate system of a flexible religious cosmology emerges, directed at the individual more than the collective. Using Ingold’s “dwelling” perspective as one central notion, the text develops this into a close understanding of a religion deeply embedded in its environment, both ecological and historical. The book’s approach to ritual uses Whitehouse’s “modes of religiosity” theory, expanding this approach further into the realm of ritual. Two basic kinds of ritual are distinguished, those of dwelling and those of belonging. The first are dominated by sacrifice, the second by a close integration of the rites of passage inside the yearly ritual calendar. The book results from the author’s life-long involvement with the Kapsiki/Higi and thus offers a diachronic perspective of almost half a century, so the dynamics change in this traditional religion are integrated throughout the descriptions and analyses.

The Catonsville Nine

Shawn Francis Peters — 2012-09-20

Author:: Shawn Francis Peters
ISBN:: 9780199827855
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827855.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

On May 17th, 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists burst into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records (which they called “death certificates”), and burned the documents in a fire fueled by homemade napalm. The bold actions of the “Catonsville Nine” quickly became international news and captured headlines throughout the summer and fall of 1968 when the activists, defended by radical attorney William Kunstler, were tried in federal court. This book, written by a Catonsville native, offers a comprehensive account of this key event in the history of this protest. While thousands of supporters thronged the streets outside the courthouse, the Catonsville Nine—whose ranks included activist priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan—delivered passionate indictments of the war in Vietnam and the brutality of American foreign policy. The proceedings reached a stirring climax, as the nine activists led the entire courtroom (the judge and federal prosecutors included) in the Lord's Prayer. The book gives readers vivid, blow-by-blow accounts of the draft raid, the trial, and the ensuing manhunt for the Berrigans, George Mische, and Mary Moylan, who went underground rather than report to prison. It also examines the impact of Daniel Berrigan's play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, and the larger influence of this remarkable act of civil disobedience. More than forty years after they stormed the draft board, the Catonsville Nine are still invoked by both secular and religious opponents of militarism.

Between God and Green

Katharine K. Wilkinson — 2012-09-20

Author:: Katharine K. Wilkinson
ISBN:: 9780199895885
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199895885.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

For three decades, scientists' warnings of global climate change have resounded in the public sphere, but our collective response has been slow and inadequate. Tackling a challenge of this magnitude demands more than action in fits and starts; it hinges on complementary efforts at an unprecedented scale from individuals, the institutions in which we live, work, and play, and our varied levels of government. Despite environmentalists' best efforts, the necessary political will and public engagement to fuel robust action on climate change remain in short supply. Meanwhile, skepticism lingers and a partisan divide deepens. Contrary to popular expectations, faith-based efforts are emerging and strengthening to address this gap. In the US today, perhaps none is more significant than evangelical climate care. Drawing on interview, focus group, and textual research, this book explores the phenomenon of climate care—its historical roots, theological grounding, visionary leaders, and advocacy initiatives. It tracks the burgeoning movement's reception within the broader evangelical community—from pew to pulpit—at times winning allies but also provoking resistance. Engaging with climate change as a matter of private faith and public life, these leaders challenge traditional boundaries around the evangelical agenda, partisan politics, and established alliances and hostilities. They view sea-level rise as a moral calamity, lobby for legislation written on both sides of the aisle, and partner with atheist scientists. While others countdown the rapture, their hope is for a renewal of God's creation. Through their efforts, evangelical climate advocates are reshaping not only the landscape of American climate action but also the contours of their own religious community. Though the movement faces dynamic and complex challenges—some of which test its own fabric—climate care leaders continue to leverage evangelicalism's size, dominance, cultural position, ethical resources, and mechanisms of communication to further their cause.

Worship across the Racial Divide

Gerardo Marti — 2012-05-24

Author:: Gerardo Marti
ISBN:: 9780195392975
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392975.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Church leaders believe worship is key to congregational diversity, and the demand for music that appeals across racial and ethnic cultures has prompted great speculation producing fights amid values, assumptions, theological convictions, and cherished practices. But misguided worship practices based on faulty racial assumptions are dangerous in that they can accentuate rather than relieve the pervasive racial tensions in American Christianity. Drawing on twelve successfully multiracial churches from a wide variety of Protestant traditions and interviews with over 170 of their members—including church leaders, church musicians, and regular attendees—about experiences in their congregations, Worship across the Racial Divide moves away from assumption and speculation to examine how music and worship actually “works” in successfully diverse congregations. Despite popular belief, a particular style, genre, or approach to worship music is not the secret to congregational diversity. Instead, the demand for “conspicuous color” motivates recruitment of racially and ethnically diverse individuals. This book reveals how participation in worship practices—both on and off the platform—effectively promotes cross-racial relationships.

A Theology of Higher Education

Mike Higton — 2012-05-24

Author:: Mike Higton
ISBN:: 9780199643929
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199643929.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book provides a constructive critique of Higher Education policy and practice in the UK, the US and beyond, from the standpoint of Christian theology. It focuses on the role universities can and should play in forming students and staff in intellectual virtue, in sustaining vibrant communities of inquiry, and in serving the public good. It argues both that modern secular universities can be a proper context for Christians to pursue their calling as disciples to learn and to teach, and that Christians can contribute to the flourishing of such universities as institutions devoted to learning for the common good. In the process, the book sets out a vision of the good university as secular and religiously plural, as socially inclusive, and as deeply and productively entangled with the surrounding society. Along the way, it engages with a range of historical examples (the medieval University of Paris, the University of Berlin in the nineteenth century, and John Henry Newman’s work in Oxford and Dublin) and with a range of contemporary writers on Higher Education from George Marsden to Stanley Hauerwas and from David Ford to Rowan Williams.

Teaching the Tradition

John J. Piderit and Melanie M. Morey — 2012-05-24

Author:: John J.PideritCatholic Education InstituteMelanie M.MoreyCatholic Education Institute
ISBN:: 9780199795307
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795307.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

The essential activity of Catholic colleges and universities at the undergraduate level is teaching material that is enlightened, contrasted, or highlighted by Catholic perspectives. Until about forty years ago this task was carried out predominantly by priests, sisters, and brothers. Bound to the Catholic Church in a special way, these people are no longer represented in significant numbers at Catholic institutions of higher education, and laypeople are now responsible for teaching in the Catholic tradition. The challenge is that priests, nuns, and brothers received extensive training in how the Catholic faith is related to the specific academic discipline they taught. Laypeople need “Catholic resources” if, following in the footsteps of the sisters, brothers, and priests, they wish to share the Catholic intellectual tradition with their students. At a Catholic institution a layperson in a particular academic discipline is expected to address religious themes that amplify or nuance the normal material presented in the secular discipline. Theology and philosophy are central to Catholic institutions of higher education. But laypeople who are inclined to include religious themes in their usual undergraduate classes play a vital role in strengthening the Catholic mission, identity, and character of a Catholic institution. This book provides resources for faculty members at Catholic institutions who want to incorporate Christian religious themes in the academic disciplines in which they are specialists.

Teaching Religion and Violence

Brian K. Pennington — 2012-05-24

Author:: Brian K.PenningtonMaryville College
ISBN:: 9780195372427
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372427.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book represents the accumulated professional insights and experience of expert college and university instructors who teach and write about the intersections of religion and violence. The introduction discusses the pedagogical challenges that any instructor faces when they design and deliver a course on religion and violence for undergraduates entering college in the post-9/11 world. Its first section, “Traditions,” provides historical and topical overviews of the teachings of several major religious traditions of the world on such topics as warfare, sacrifice, terrorism, and the coercive propagation of a faith. Its authors examine the primary texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Sikh tradition as well as recent global events to provide teachers the resources and classroom strategies that are effective for cultivating critical thinking and interdisciplinary inquiry among college students about these topics and about the role of religious discourse in human civilization. In the book’s second section, “Approaches,” other professors describe their own courses and classroom experience. In describing how they teach contested sacred space, film, popular culture, Gandhi, American religious history, and the Just War Tradition, these seasoned professionals share the lessons they have learned about how to foster careful analysis among a generation of students coming of age in an increasingly media-saturated, conflict-ridden world.

The Sacred in the Modern World

Gordon Lynch — 2012-05-24

Author:: Gordon Lynch
ISBN:: 9780199557011
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557011.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

The central aim of this book is to provide a theoretical framework for using the concept of the sacred as a tool for social and cultural analysis. It differentiates between ontological theories of the sacred which locate the sacred in the essence of the cosmos or the human person, and a cultural sociological approach which understands the sacred as culturally constructed. Adopting the latter, a critical re-reading is given of Emile Durkheim’s understanding of the sacred, and of later theoretical contributions made by Edward Shils, Robert Bellah, and Jeffrey Alexander. Using this framework, the intersection of multiple sacred forms is used to analyse the cultural meanings surrounding the systemic abuse and neglect of children within the Irish industrial school system. The role of public media in circulating sacred meanings is also discussed, and the case of the BBC’s refusal to air a humanitarian appeal for Gaza in 2009 is explored to demonstrate the tensions between the sacred function of public media and journalistic notions of impartiality. The book concludes by examining whether human society without sacred forms is possible, and argues that the communicative structure of the sacred underlies the very notion of moral, human society. A critical approach to the sacred is required which involves both a recognition of the harm that can be done through the pursuit of sacred commitments, and the development of critical practices that make it possible to understand the significance of the sacred in social life.

Rethinking Religion and World Affairs

Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft — 2012-05-24

Author:: Timothy SamuelShahBerkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown UniversityAlfredStepanColumbia UniversityMonica DuffyToftKennedy School of Government, Harvard University
ISBN:: 9780199827978
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827978.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

In recent years, the importance of religion in the study and conduct of international affairs has come precipitously into view. This book seeks both to interrogate the problematic neglect of religion in extant scholarship and to take the first steps towards its rectification. Drawing on the work of leading scholars across many disciplines as well as policy makers and analysts, this books aims to form an authoritative guide to the interconnections of religion and global politics. The chapters aim to convey a sense for the big puzzles, issues, and questions in six major areas. Chapters critically revisit the “secularization thesis,” which proclaimed the steady erosion of religion's public presence as an effect of modernization; explore the relationship between religion, democracy, and the juridico-political discourse of human rights; assess the role of religion in fomenting, ameliorating, and redressing violent conflict; and consider the value of religious beliefs, actors, and institutions to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the fostering of socio-economic development. Later chapters address the representation of religion in the burgeoning global media landscape and the unique place of religion in American foreign policy and the dilemmas that it presents.

Paul Tillich and the Possibility of Revelation through Film

Jonathan Brant — 2012-05-24

Author:: Jonathan Brant
ISBN:: 9780199639342
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199639342.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This monograph considers the possibility of religious revelation through film. It begins with a reading of Paul Tillich’s theology of revelation through culture and continues with the design and enactment of an original project of empirical, qualitative research which grounds this theoretical account in the experiences of filmgoers. The empirical research takes place in Latin America where the intellectual puzzle and central research questions that drive the thesis arose and developed. The combination of theoretical and empirical research provides fresh insights into the way in which film functions and impacts its viewers and also offers an unusual perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of Tillich’s theology of revelation, which is seen to focus on the saving and healing power of revelation rather than its communicative content. The grounding of the theory by the empirical data results in an increased appreciation of the sensitivity of Tillich’s theology to the uniqueness of each film‐to‐viewer encounter and the empirical data also suggests a new construal of the revelatory potential of film. Tillich’s account is found to be sensitive and compelling precisely because of its phenomenological attentiveness to real life experience of the power of art. However, it is also suggested that it might be helpful to identify a stronger link than Tillich allows between the subject matter of the artwork, the content of revelation and the effect of revelation.

The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life

Daniel K. Finn — 2012-05-24

Author:: Daniel K.FinnSt. John's University
ISBN:: 9780199858354
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858354.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the “social” encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict’s thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy. This book engages Benedict’s analysis of “relation,” the characteristics of contemporary social and economic relationships, and the implications of a relational, Trinitarian God for daily human life. Crucial here is the Pope’s notion of “reciprocity,” an economic relationship characterized by help freely given, but which forms an expectation that the recipient will “reciprocate,” either to the donor or, often, to someone else. This “logic of gift,” Benedict argues, should influence daily economic life, especially within what he calls “hybrid” firms, which make a profit and invest a share of that profit in service to needs outside the firm. Similarly, development—whether of an individual or of a nation—must be integral, neither simply economic nor personal nor psychological nor spiritual, but a comprehensive development that engages all dimensions of a flourishing human life. The chapters engage, extend, and critique Benedict’s views on these issues, as well as his call for deeper dialogue and a morally based transformation of social and economic structures.

The Headscarf Controversy

Hilal Elver — 2012-05-24

Author:: Hilal Elver
ISBN:: 9780199769292
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199769292.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book deals with an ongoing controversy of the Muslim women’s headscarf from the legal and sociological perspective in democratic countries. It depicts headscarf controversy and argues with the interaction of religion/secularism, law/politics, multiculturalism, and gender politics. In recent years, there have been major public policy debates, court decisions and laws about the acceptability of Islamic practices, specifically women and girls wearing a headscarf or “hijab”. These has produced concerns in the West and to some extend Muslim secular countries, about how to accept, accommodate, and tolerate the Muslim women’s forms of religious observance. It is an interdisciplinary study that compares the legal, sociological and political debates on this issue particularly in Turkey and in various European countries (such as France and Germany), and parallel practices and patterns in the United States. At first glance, the main preoccupation of all these countries is to strike the proper balance between liberal constitutional principles and the accommodation of Islamic practices. Beyond this, there are unacknowledged desires and political ambitions that skilfully manipulated policy pertaining to headscarf issue. This book calls attention to these hidden preoccupations and explores the exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of human rights, women's rights, equality, secularism, democracy, and liberalism. The book relies on comparative law method, and by so doing highlights some aspects of the headscarf debate that are ignored if scholarship is directed only at a single country.

Handel's Israelite Oratorio Libretti

Deborah W. Rooke — 2012-05-24

Author:: Deborah W. Rooke
ISBN:: 9780199279289
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279289.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Handel's Israelite oratorios are today little known among non-specialists, but in their own day they were unique, pioneering and extremely popular. Dating from the period 1732–52, they combine the musical conventions of Italian opera with dramatic plots in English that are adaptations of Old Testament narratives. They are thus a form of biblical interpretation, but to date, there has been no thoroughgoing study of the theological ideas or the attitudes towards the biblical text that might be conveyed in the oratorios' libretti. This book therefore aims to fill that gap from an interdisciplinary perspective. Combining the insights of present-day biblical studies with those of Handelian studies, it examines the libretti of ten oratorios—Esther, Deborah, Athalia, Saul, Samson, Joseph and his Brethren, Judas Macchabaeus, Solomon, Susanna, and Jephtha—and evaluates the relationship between each libretto and the biblical story on which it is based. It comments on each biblical text from a modern scholarly perspective, and then compares the modern interpretation with the version of the biblical narrative that appears in the relevant libretto. Where the libretto is based on a prior dramatic or literary adaptation of the biblical narrative, the book also discusses the prior adaptation and how it relates to both the biblical text and the corresponding oratorio libretto. In this way the distinctive nuances of the oratorio libretti are highlighted, and each libretto is then analysed and interpreted in the light of eighteenth-century religion, scholarship, culture, and politics. The result is a fascinating exploration not only of the oratorio libretti but also of how culture and context determines the nature of biblical interpretation.

Devoted to Death

R. Andrew Chesnut — 2012-05-24

Author:: R. Andrew Chesnut
ISBN:: 9780199764662
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764662.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin Americans and immigrants in the U.S. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia now outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Judetwo other giants of Mexican religiosity. In particular, the book shows Santa Muerte has become the patron saint of drug traffickers, playing an important role as protector of peddlers of crystal meth and marijuana; DEA agents and Mexican police often find her altars in the safe houses of drug smugglers. Yet Saint Death plays other important roles: she is a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer, and angel of death. She has become without doubt one of the most popular and powerful saints on both the Mexican and American religious landscapes.

The Bible, the School, and the Constitution

Steven K. Green — 2012-05-24

Author:: Steven K. Green
ISBN:: 9780199827909
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827909.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

The Bible, the School, and the Constitution traces the origins of one of the more contentious controversies heard by the United States Supreme Court: the intersection of religion and education. The book demonstrates that the legal basis for the modern Court’s decisions regarding Bible reading in the public schools and the public funding of religious schools arose during the nineteenth century, culminating in the decade following the Civil War. This controversy—called the “School Question” —coincided with the evolution of American public education and asked whether the nation should support a religiously based education system. Public education during the century faced competing pressures: a widespread belief that schooling required a moral if not religious basis; a belief among many Protestants that Catholic immigration presented a threat to Protestant culture and to republican values; the need to accommodate an increasing religious pluralism in the schools; and evolving understandings of constitutional principles. The book argues that attitudes about the relationship between religion and education were neither static nor two-dimensional (i.e., pro or con). The book makes two important points that run contrary to popular perceptions. First, the modern Supreme Court’s decisions on school funding and Bible reading did not create new legal doctrines or abolish dominant practices but built on legal concepts and educational trends that had been developing since the early nineteenth century. Second, while public reaction to a growing Catholic presence was a leading factor in this development, it was but one element in the rise of the legal doctrines the high court would embrace in the mid-twentieth century.

Teaching Mysticism

William B. Parsons — 2012-01-19

Author:: William B.ParsonsRice University
ISBN:: 9780199751198
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751198.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

In the academic study of religion the term mysticism has been widely employed and deeply debated, creating multiple tensions within both religious traditions and the academic discourse found within Religious Studies. This book, aimed at teachers and scholars, insiders and outsiders, the educated layperson and those simply interested in mysticism and spirituality, engages not only the what of mysticism but also the how to communicate its complex features in a classroom setting. In order to render intelligible the diverse literature surrounding mysticism, this volume is organized with respect to four interrelated parts: (I) Presenting the Mystical Element: Tradition and Context (devoted to unpacking the mystical element found in multiple religious traditions); (II) Negotiating Mysticism: Expanding the Map (which engages traditions and religio-cultural strands [i.e., Native American, African American, and Western Esotericism] where mysticism meets linked terms [i.e., shamanism, esotericism, Gnosticism] and widens its purview); (III) Investigating Mysticism: Perspectives, Theories, and Institutional Spaces (which focuses on multiple definitional strategies, perspectives, and methodological approaches, as well as multiple theoretical debates played out with respect to varying social spaces); (IV) Tracking Mysticism: Pedagogy and Contemporary Culture (which discusses how contemporary social issues and movements have influenced the meaning, study, and pedagogy of mysticism). Taken together, the essays present pedagogical reflections on how best to communicate mysticism from a variety of institutional spaces. It surveys the broad range of the meanings of mysticism; its use in the traditions, the theories, and methods used to understand it; and the multiple controversies that have ensued as a result.

Subversive Spiritualities

Frederique Apffel-Marglin — 2012-01-19

Author:: Frederique Apffel-Marglin
ISBN:: 9780199793853
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199793853.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book takes as a starting premise the insight that non-humans have agency, which was established predominantly in the field of science studies. It argues that rituals engage not “supernatural beings” but humans with other-than-humans. Other-than-humans are entities characterized by an entanglement of the human and the non-human aspects of the world. The book rejects the label “supernatural beings” since it implies a realm of nature as a pre-given universal reality outside and independent of human observation. These other-than-humans are entities stabilized through iterative ritual enactments that have acquired names, personalities and narratives that embody both aspects of the non-human place and aspects of the human collectivities in that place. Using the insights of one of the founding figures of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, and his theory of complementarity as interpreted by physicist-cum-philosopher Karen Barad, the book argues that neither time, space, or nature are universal pre-givens. Rather, these come into being through specific acts of observation. The book argues that rituals are akin to quantum experimental acts of observation insofar as they enact or perform a particular instance of the real. Ritual action is iterative because it aims at stabilizing enacted worlds that are inherently dynamic; rituals seek to establish the continuity of those enacted worlds as livable worlds. This view challenges the understanding of ritual as involving an imaginative projection on the part of humans onto the non-human and/or social human world, a move that is both anthropocentric and dualist. It also offers an alternative to the onto-epistemology of representationalism that divides the representing human mind from the represented world.

Sacred High City, Sacred Low City

Steven Heine — 2012-01-19

Author:: Steven Heine
ISBN:: 9780195386202
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386202.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Many observers have commented on what appears to be a fundamental contradiction concerning the ways that traditional religions function in Japan. On the one hand, the presence of temples and shrines is pervasive throughout most countryside and urban areas, which means that there are countless examples of festivals and rituals on display creating a sense of vibrancy and involvement. At the same time, observers often get the impression that neither Buddhism nor Shinto is as spiritually dynamic an institution as might be expected. In reality, however, religion functions as an integral part of daily life from cradle to grave, so much so that it is probably taken for granted by Japanese themselves. Any level of apparent disinterest masks a fundamental commitment to participating regularly in diverse though diffused religious practices. “Sacred High City, Sacred Low City” uses case studies of religious sites at two representative but contrasting Tokyo neighborhoods as a basis for reflecting on this apparently contradictory quality in order to examine a variety of issues regarding how contemporary Japanese society regards the role of traditional religion. In what ways does Japan continue to carry on and adapt tradition, and to what extent has modern secular society lost touch with the traditional elements of religion? Or, does Japanese religiosity reflect another, possibly postmodern alternative beyond the dichotomy of sacred and secular, in which religious differences as well as a seeming indifference to religion are encompassed as part of the contemporary lifestyle? The aim of the book is to use the micro-level of analyzing sacred sites in particular Tokyo neighborhoods as representative case studies that constitute a vehicle for probing and reevaluating the macro-level regarding the overall meaning and significance of religiosity in contemporary Japan. Considering the two conundrums of religious structure and motivation in tandem helps answer the overriding question about sacred space: What makes religiosity “tick” in an increasingly secular environment that would seem to detract from and cause it to deteriorate?

Religion, Civil Society, and Peace in Northern Ireland

John D. Brewer, Gareth I. Higgins, and Francis Teeney — 2012-01-19

Author:: John D. Brewer, Gareth I. Higgins, Francis Teeney
ISBN:: 9780199694020
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society, Church History
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199694020.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This study is written by three ‘insiders’ to church peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, who are also sociologists and bring to their analysis a wealth of experience and analytic insight, based on four years of qualitative interviewing amongst church leaders and rank‐and‐file members of political parties, prime ministers, paramilitary organizations, community development, and civil society groups, as well as government politicians and advisors. It seeks to correct various misapprehensions about the role of the churches by pointing to their major achievements in both the social and political dimensions of the peace process, by small-scale, lesser‐known religious peacebuilders as well as major players. The book is replete with hard sociological realism; it does not treat the churches lightly or sentimentally but highlights major weaknesses in their contribution. It challenges the view that ecumenism was the main religious driver of the peace process; focusing instead on the role of evangelicals, it warns against romanticizing civil society, pointing to its regressive aspects and counter‐productive activities, and queries the relevance of the idea of ‘spiritual capital’ to understanding the role of the churches in post-conflict reconstruction, which the churches largely ignore. The study develops a conceptual framework to understand religious peacebuilding in a comparative perspective, allowing the Northern Irish case study to speak to other conflicts where religion is thought to be problematic.

Religion in China

Fenggang Yang — 2012-01-19

Author:: Fenggang Yang
ISBN:: 9780199735655
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735655.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

What has happened to religion in China since the Communist revolution? Against all the odds of eradication measures dictated by the atheist ideology and secularization effects of modernization, religion has survived and has been reviving and thriving despite Communist rule. This book presents a comprehensive overview of Chinese versions of Marxist atheism, evolving religious policies, and the religious change in China under Communism. It presents a fresh definition of religion for the social scientific study that classifies the religious and religion-like phenomena into a clear order. Working within the new paradigm in the sociology of religion that explains religious vitality instead of secularization, the book adopts a political economic approach. It contends that the dominant “supply-side explanations” in the new paradigm is not suitable to explain the religious change in China. The author articulates the triple religious market model in a shortage economy of religion under heavy regulation, which is very much a demand-driven economy of religion. Moreover, China is only one case of religious oligopoly, where a selected few religions are sanctioned by the state. Oligopoly is the most common type of religion-state relations in the world today. What has happened to religion in China may be indicative of religious dynamics in other oligopoly societies under heavy regulation.

Race and Religion in American Buddhism

Joseph Cheah — 2012-01-19

Author:: Joseph Cheah
ISBN:: 9780199756285
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756285.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

In Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation, the author maintains that while race is often bracketed in the works on American Buddhism, the issues concerning race and racialization have remained not far below the surface of the wider discussion among white Buddhists and sympathizers regarding representations of American Buddhism and adaptations of Buddhist practices to the American scene. The book argues that the prevailing ideology of white supremacy that has been operative in these and other issues reflects the intimate ways in which race and religion has been circumscribed in representations of American Buddhism. Focusing primarily on Therav?da tradition, this book examines rearticulations of Asian Buddhism by white Buddhists and sympathizers through the lens of race and racialization. Using Omi and Winant’s racial formation theory, this book illustrates how Asian meditative practices have been rearticulated into specific but deliberately chosen form that helps preserve the prevailing system of racial hegemony. Furthermore, this book offers a complex view of Burmese immigrant community as they resist to not only assimilation forces in the United States but also to the Burmese military junta’s transnational reach.

The Predicament of Belief

Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp — 2012-01-19

Author:: Philip Clayton, Steven Knapp
ISBN:: 9780199695270
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695270.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Can those who appreciate the explanatory power of modern science still believe in traditional religious accounts of the nature and purpose of the universe? This book is intended for those who care about that question and are dissatisfied with the rigid dichotomies that dominate the contemporary debate. The extremists won’t be interested – those who assume that science answers all the questions that matter, and those so certain of their religious faith that dialogue with science, philosophy, or other faith traditions seems unnecessary. But far more people today recognize that matters of faith are complex, that doubt is endemic to belief, and that dialogue is indispensable in our day. In eight probing chapters, the authors of The Predicament of Belief consider the most urgent reasons for doubting that religious claims – in particular, those embedded in the Christian tradition – are likely to be true. They develop a version of Christian faith that preserves the tradition’s core insights but also gauges the varying degrees of certainty with which those insights can still be affirmed. Along the way, they address such questions as the ultimate origin of the universe, the existence of innocent suffering, the challenge of religious plurality, and how to understand the extraordinary claim that an ancient teacher rose from the dead. They end with a discussion of what their conclusions imply about the present state and future structure of churches and other communities in which Christian affirmations are made.

Parley P. Pratt

Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow — 2012-01-19

Author:: Terryl L. Givens, Matthew J. Grow
ISBN:: 9780195375732
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195375732.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

In 1853, Parley P. Pratt mused that his personal history would be “far more strange” than “the thousand volumes of Modern Fiction.” He wrote, “I have been a farmer, a servant, a fisher, a digger, a beggar, a preacher, an author, an editor, a senator, a traveler, a merchant, an elder and an Apostle of Jesus Christ.” Pratt’s literary instincts were correct; the narrative of his life could have formed the basis of a gripping novel. After Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, no other figure so powerfully shaped early Mormon history, culture, and theology. Pratt’s life was not only foundational to early Mormonism, but also serves as a window onto nineteenth-century American religious, cultural, and intellectual history. Pratt joined Mormon movement in 1830, six months after its founding. In 1835, Smith called Pratt as a member of the newly-formed Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a position he served in for the remainder of his life. Pratt thus played a key leadership role for the Mormons in Missouri, Illinois, and the American West. He also contributed to the expansion and internationalization of early Mormonism, serving crucial missions for the Latter-day Saints throughout the United States, Canada, England, and Chile. He exerted his influence most powerfully through his writing, as he organized, popularized, and expanded upon Smith’s theology in widely read books and pamphlets. His widespread missionary travels and influential writings meant that Pratt played a similar role for early Mormonism as Paul in early Christianity. In 1857, to the cheers of the national media and the laments of the Latter-day Saints, Pratt was murdered in Arkansas by the estranged husband of his twelfth plural wife. Based on Pratt’s voluminous public and private writings, this biography narrates his compelling story and weaves a rich religious, intellectual, and cultural history of antebellum America.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Thomas A. Robinson and Lanette D. Ruff — 2012-01-19

Author:: Thomas A. Robinson, Lanette D. Ruff
ISBN:: 9780199790876
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790876.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

The 1920s is often viewed as the period of the most striking revolution in manners and morals that has marked North American society, affecting almost every aspect of life, from dress and drink to sex and salvation. Protestant Christianity split between traditionalist and modernist elements, debating the degree to which beliefs and practices should be altered by scientific study and more secular attitudes. Fundamentalism, with its biblical inerrancy and anti-evolution stance was born from these tensions. During this decade, hundreds of young girl preachers joined the Fundamentalist cause, proclaiming traditional values and condemning modern experiments with the new morality. Some of the girls drew crowds into the thousands. But the stage these girls gained went far beyond their revivalist platform. The girl evangelist phenomenon was recognized in the wider society as well, and the contrast to the flapper worked well for the press and the public. Quickly, girl evangelists stood out as the counter-type of the flapper, who had come to define the modern girl. The image of feminine these girls exhibited against that of the racy flapper served as an effective contrast for Fundamentalism and revivalism in the clash of cultures of the 1920s. The girl evangelist became such a fixture in the popular mind that she became a stock character in secular literature of the period. Sometimes the move to the world of fiction played more with the sexual aspect of the girl evangelists, a matter less openly addressed or admitted within the revivalist community.

The New Heretics of France

Susan Palmer — 2012-01-19

Author:: Susan Palmer
ISBN:: 9780199735211
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735211.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Since the Age of Enlightenment, France has upheld clear constitutional guidelines that protect human rights and religious freedom. Today, however, intolerant attitudes and discriminatory practices towards unconventional faiths have become acceptable and even institutionalized in public life. This book offers an examination of France's most stigmatized new religions, or sects, and the public management of religious and philosophical minorities by the state. The book tracks the mounting government-sponsored anticult movement in the wake of the shocking mass suicides of the Solar Temple in 1994, and the negative impact of this movement on France's most visible religious minorities, whose names appeared on a “blacklist” of 172 sects commissioned by the National Assembly. Drawing on extensive interviews and field research, the book describes the controversial histories of well-known international NRMs (the Church of Scientology, Raelian Movement, and Unificationism) in France, as well as esoteric local groups. The book also reveals the partisanship of Catholic priests, journalists, village mayors, and the passive public who support La Republique's efforts to control minority faiths—all in the name of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”.

Negotiating Rites

Ute Husken and Frank Neubert — 2012-01-19

Author:: Ute Husken, Frank Neubert
ISBN:: 9780199812295
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812295.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Ritual is often seen as an undisputed and indisputable part of all sorts of traditions, religious and secular. However, a close look at ritual actions and texts points toward the fact that rituals not only are frequently disputed, but that they also constitute a field in which vital and sometimes even violent negotiations take place. This insight opens up fruitful new perspectives on ritual procedures, on the interactions that constitute these procedures, and on their contexts. The rituals or ritualized behavior investigated in this volume represent a broad spectrum, such as worship in a Tibetan Buddhist tradition practiced in Canada, animist mortuary rituals in northern India, a New Year’s festival in Swahili society, atonement rituals in ancient Indian texts, rituals of Tibetan “Treasure Revealers”, initiation rituals in Tibetan Buddhism and in Wiccan religion in the U.S.A., Jewish same-sex wedding rituals in the U.S.A. and Canada, rites connected to imperial power in eleventh-century China, festivities commemorating Martin Luther in the former East Germany, “hook-swinging” ritual as viewed by colonial, Brahmanic and subaltern actors in South India, the historical development of the interpretation of Indian Tantric rites, and scholarly discourse on ritual. Not only are the actions and corresponding discourses diverse, but also the materials that form the basis of the individual case studies: some contributors use texts, some analyze ritual performance; others use both, textual analysis and qualitative field study. This book shows that negotiations are ubiquitous in ritual contexts, either in relation to the ritual itself, or in relation to the realm beyond any given ritual performance. In fact, ritual’s embeddedness in negotiation processes is one of its central features.

Lost in Transition

Christian Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, and Patricia Snell Herzog — 2012-01-19

Author:: Christian Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog
ISBN:: 9780199828029
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828029.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. This book draws on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages between eighteen and twenty-three) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. The book identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture—a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, the book argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, the book suggests the need for what it calls “realistic concern”—and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices—that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.

Homies and Hermanos

Robert Brenneman — 2012-01-19

Author:: Robert Brenneman
ISBN:: 9780199753840
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199753840.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Central American transnational youth gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha and the Eighteenth Street gang promote a hyper-machismo that idealizes violent, risk-prone codes of conduct and lifelong affiliation. Central American evangelical churches promote a strict piety that prohibits drinking and promotes domestic ideals of marriage and fatherhood. Yet several studies suggest that conversion to evangelical Christianity is a common pathway out of the gang. Using semi-structured interviews with sixty-four former gang members in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, this book examines why many ex-gang members consider joining an evangelical or Pentecostal church the safest and most effective means of leaving the gang. Religious conversion provides former gang members with new access to social and symbolic resources crucial for keeping safe, building trust, and finding work after leaving the gang. But more than strategic use of cultural “tools” is involved in religious conversion. In some cases, emotional conversion experiences actually helped to bring about gang exit by occasioning embodied, emotional experiences that violated the macho feeling rules of the gang. Highly public emotional conversion experiences also provided some exiting gang members with opportunities for discharging chronic shame. The author argues that an important factor in the ongoing popularity of Pentecostal-ized evangelical Christianity in Central America is its promotion of ritual contexts for effectively dealing with shame. While progressive Catholicism seeks to attack the social sources of shame, evangelical-Pentecostalism offers powerful interaction rituals for dealing with the emotion itself at the individual level.

Godly Ambition

Alister Chapman — 2012-01-19

Author:: Alister Chapman
ISBN:: 9780199773978
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773978.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

John Stott was one of the most influential leaders of the evangelical movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Called the pope of evangelicalism by many, he did as much as anyone to shape a global religious movement that was growing rapidly during his career. This is the first scholarly biography of Stott and is based on research in his personal papers. The story begins in England and explores how Stott's education, social class, and involvement in the Church of England shaped him. There are chapters on his ministry to students, his work at All Souls Langham Place, London, and his attempts to increase evangelical influence in the Church of England. By the mid-1970s, Stott was feted much more abroad than he was at home. The book looks at Stott's leadership in the evangelical Lausanne movement, which gathered evangelicals from almost every country in the world. It recounts Stott's struggles to help evangelicals forsake conservatism and anti-intellectualism. Along the way, the book presents a picture of a movement that was as dysfunctional as it was dynamic.

The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America

Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd — 2012-01-19

Author:: MatthewHarrisColorado State University-PuebloThomasKiddBaylor University
ISBN:: 9780195326499
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326499.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. This book offers an examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume—writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers—show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were “created” equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. This book shows that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.

Faith No More

Phil Zuckerman — 2012-01-19

Author:: Phil Zuckerman
ISBN:: 9780199740017
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740017.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

More and more Americans are opting out of religion. Who are these people that reject religion, and what motivates them? What actually causes a person to lose his or her faith? This book offers an in-depth exploration of the reasons, experiences, and values of people who were once religious but are no longer. By analyzing their personal stories of how they transitioned from religiosity to secularity, key patterns are explored and many insights provided. Rather than living up to the cliché of the angry, nihilistic atheist, apostates are life-affirming, courageous, highly intelligent and inquisitive, and deeply moral. It is predicted that this trend toward nonbelief will likely continue and the sooner we recognize that religion is frequently and freely rejected by all sorts of men and women, the sooner our understanding of the human condition will improve. The first book of its kind, Faith No More will appeal to anyone interested in the ‘‘New Atheism” and indeed to anyone wishing to more fully understand our changing relationship to religious faith.

Catholic High Schools

James L. Heft — 2012-01-19

Author:: James L. Heft
ISBN:: 9780199796656
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796656.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Catholic high schools in the United States have been undergoing three major changes: the shift to primarily lay leadership and teachers; the transition to a more consumerist and pluralist culture; and the increasing diversity of students attending Catholic high schools. This book argues that to navigate these changes successfully, leaders of Catholic education need to inform lay teachers more thoroughly, conduct a more profound social analysis of the culture, and address the real needs of students. After presenting the history of Catholic schools in the United States and describing the major legal decisions that have influenced their evolution, the book describes the distinctive and compelling mission of a Catholic high school. Two chapters are devoted to leadership, and other chapters to teachers, students, alternative models of high schools, financing, and the key role of parents, who today may be described as “post-deferential” to traditional authorities, including bishops and priests.

Bringing the Sacred Down to Earth

Corinne G. Dempsey — 2012-01-19

Author:: Corinne G. Dempsey
ISBN:: 9780199860333
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860333.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Bringing the Sacred Down to Earth celebrates the merits of carefully contextualized comparison as an illuminating approach to the study of religion. Drawing from ethnographical work in several sites over a period of sixteen years, Dempsey juxtaposes Hindu and Christian, Indian and Euroamerican religious expressions that take shape as folklore figures, democratizing theologies, sanctified terrain, and extraordinary human abilities. She uncovers how these expressions, all of which lend sacred meaning and power to the material realities of religious participants, push against systems promoting otherworldly abstractions. The book’s comparison of these religious modes deepens insights into the qualities and interpretations of the earthbound sacred, sheds light on contours otherwise obscured, and suggests possibilities for bridging human contingencies across religious and cultural divides. The method and structure of this book represent a two-tiered rebuttal to two similarly constructed critiques. A complaint commonly lodged against comparison is that it imposes abstractions that erase culturally embedded realities. Critics of religion view religious systems as likewise imposing spiritualized conceptions that neglect earthly realities. As both sets of critics see it, scholarly comparison and religion, dictated from above, easily lend themselves to imperialistic structures of oppression. Unsurprisingly, as frameworks that name and claim varieties of power, both are often guilty as charged. Yet by comparing contextually across religious and cultural divides, this book demonstrates how practitioners variously engage with religious forms and experiences that meet earthly concerns and dismantle oppressive abstractions in the process.

Believing in Belonging

Abby Day — 2012-01-19

Author:: Abby Day
ISBN:: 9780199577873
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577873.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

The book draws on empirical research exploring mainstream religious belief and identity in Euro-American countries. Starting from a qualitative study based in northern England, and then broadening the data to include Europe and North America, the book explores how people ‘believe in belonging’, choosing religious identifications to complement other social and emotional experiences of ‘belongings’. The concept of ‘performative belief‘ helps explain how otherwise non-religious people can bring into being a Christian identity related to social belongings. Further, it is argued that what is often dismissed as ‘nominal‘ belief is far from an empty category, but one loaded with cultural ‘stuff‘ and meaning. Day introduces an original typology of natal, ethnic and aspirational nominalism that challenges established disciplinary theory in both the European and North American schools of the sociology of religion that assert that most people are ‘unchurched‘ or ‘believe without belonging‘ while privately maintaining beliefs in God and other ‘spiritual‘ phenomena. Day creates a unique analysis and synthesis of anthropological and sociological understandings of belief and proposes a holistic, organic, multidimensional analytical framework to allow rich cross cultural comparisons. Chapters focus in particular on: methods for researching belief without asking religious questions, the acts of claiming cultural identity, youth, gender, the ‘social‘ supernatural, fate and agency, morality and a distinction between anthropocentric and theocentric orientations that provides a richer understanding of belief than conventional religious/secular distinctions.

Animals and World Religions

Lisa Kemmerer — 2012-01-19

Author:: Lisa Kemmerer
ISBN:: 9780199790678
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790678.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book focuses on core religious teachings that explain how human beings ought to behave in relation to other animals, with the intent that this information be considered in light of contemporary practices and consumer choices. The book explores sacred literature, the lives of religious exemplars, and core ethics to expose animal-friendly teachings in indigenous, Vedic, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious traditions. Each chapter explores specific topics, such as sacred nature, key philosophical concepts (such as oneness of being, universal peace, and the afterlife), core ethics (on subjects such as compassion, humility, and diet), rightful relations between human beings and animals (kinship), and the activist nature of religious commitment, introducing famous figures such as Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Tolstoy, as well as contemporary animal advocates from within each religious tradition. A thoughtful introduction and conclusion outline the parameters of the book, as well as the intent of the author, and provide focus for this landmark publication. Finally, the appendix explains industrial farming and fishing—including the environmental degradation associated with both—and explores terms such as ”free-range,” ”cruelty-free,” and ”organic.”

Who Shall Lead Them?

Larry A. Witham — 2011-10-03

Author:: Larry A. Witham
ISBN:: 9780195315936
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315936.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The clergy today faces mounting challenges in an increasingly secular world, where declining prestige makes it more difficult to attract the best and the brightest young Americans to the ministry. As Christian churches dramatically adapt to modern changes, some are asking whether there is a clergy crisis as well. Whatever the future of the clergy, the fate of millions of churchgoers will also be at stake. This book takes the pulse of both the Protestant and Catholic ministry in America and provides a mixed diagnosis of the calling's health. Drawing on dozens of interviews with clergy, seminarians and laity, and using newly available survey data including the 2000 Census, this book reveals the trends in a variety of traditions. While evangelicals are finding innovative paths to ministry, the Catholic priesthood faces a severe shortage. In mainline Protestantism, ministry as a second career has become a prominent feature. Ordination ages in the Episcopal and United Methodist churches average in the 1940s today. The quest by female clergy to lead from the pulpit, meanwhile, has hit a “stained glass ceiling” as churches still prefer a man as the principal minister. While deeply motivated by the mystery of their “call” to ministry, America's priests, pastors, and ministers are reassessing their roles in a world of new debates on leadership, morality, and the powers of the mass media.

United by Faith

Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim — 2011-10-03

Author:: Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim
ISBN:: 9780195152159
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152159.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

In the last four decades, desegregation has revolutionized almost every aspect of life in the United States: schools, businesses, government offices, even entertainment. But there is one area that remains largely untouched, and that is the church. Now comes a major new call for multiracial congregations in every possible setting—a call that is surprisingly controversial, even in the 21st century. This book looks at relationships between the races in the United States. It notes, however, that a belief persists that racial segregation is an acceptable, even useful practice. The book examines this question from biblical, historical, and theological perspectives to make its case. Chapters explore the long history of interracialism in the church, with specific examples of multiracial congregations in the United States. They cite examples ranging from the abolitionist movement to an astonishing 1897 camp meeting in Alabama that brought together hundreds of whites and blacks literally into the same tent. Here, too, is a critical account of the theological arguments in favor of racial separation, as voiced in the African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American, and white contexts. The chapters respond in detail, closing with a foundation for a theology suited to sustaining multiracial congregations over time.

This Side of Heaven

Robert J. Priest and Alvaro L. Nieves — 2011-10-03

Author:: Robert J.PriestTrinity Evangelical Divinity SchoolAlvaro L.NievesWheaton College, Illinois
ISBN:: 9780195310566
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195310566.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book contains chapters written by a team of interracial and interethnic scholars representing diverse disciplines on the historical linkage of race, ethnicity, and Christianity. The chapters explore the ways in which constructive change can be achieved. The volume is the product of a long-term study funded by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology. In the course of this study it emerged that many Christian institutions now offer courses on race and ethnicity, but that there is very little relevant literature written from the standpoint of rigorous Christian scholarship. The chapters address such questions as: What has been the history of Christian churches and leaders in relation to slavery, segregation, and apartheid? Which biblical texts and doctrines have historically been employed on behalf of racial projects, and which are relevant to the racial and ethnic crises of our day? How have religious leaders constructively engaged such crises? How do congregations shape the values, civic commitments, understandings and sensitivities of their membership? How can local congregations be sites for racial reconciliation and justice initiatives? Are there positive models for how churches and other religious institutions have helped to bring healing to racial and ethnic tensions and divides? How might Christians in the professions work to bring justice to business, education, government, and other areas of society? When good intentions fail to accomplish desired ends, how do we analyze what went wrong?

Tending the Heart of Virtue

Vigen Guroian — 2011-10-03

Author:: Vigen Guroian
ISBN:: 9780195152647
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152647.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

As the popularity of William Bennett's Book of Virtues attests, parents are turning more and more to children's literature to help instill values in their children. This book provides the perfect complement to books such as Bennett's, offering parents and teachers a much-needed roadmap to some of our finest children's stories. The book illuminates the complex ways in which fairy tales and fantasies educate the moral imagination from earliest childhood. Examining a wide range of stories—from “Pinocchio” and “The Little Mermaid” to “Charlotte's Web”, “The Velveteen Rabbit”, “The Wind in the Willows” and the “Chronicles of Narnia”—this book argues that these tales capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, in which characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds. Character and the virtues are depicted compellingly in these stories; the virtues glimmer as if in a looking glass, and wickedness and deception are unmasked of their pretensions to goodness and truth. We are made to face the unvarnished truth about ourselves, and what kind of people we want to be. This book highlights the classical moral virtues such as courage, goodness, and honesty, especially as they are understood in traditional Christianity.

Stages of Thought

Michael Horace Barnes — 2011-10-03

Author:: Michael Horace Barnes
ISBN:: 9780195396270
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195396270.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book examines a pattern of cognitive development that has evolved over thousands of years—a pattern manifest in both science and religion. It describes how the major world cultures built upon our natural human language skills to add literacy, logic, and, now, a highly critical self-awareness. In tracing the histories of both scientific and religious thought, the book shows why we think the way that we do today. Although religious and scientific modes of thought are often portrayed as contradictory—one is highly rational while the other appeals to tradition and faith—the book argues that they evolved together and are actually complementary. Using the developmental thought of Piaget, it argues that cultures develop like individuals in that both learn easier cognitive skills first and master the harder ones later. This is especially true, the book states, because the harder ones often require first the creation of cognitive technology like writing or formal logic as well as the creation of social institutions that teach and sustain those skills. The book goes on to delineate the successive stages of the co-evolution of religious and scientific thought in the West, from the preliterate cultures of antiquity up to the present time. Along the way, it covers topics such as the impact of literacy on human modes of thought; the development of formalized logic and philosophical reflections; the emergence of an explicitly rational science; the birth of formal theologies; and, more recently, the growth of modern empirical science.

The Soul of Recovery

Christopher Ringwald — 2011-10-03

Author:: Christopher Ringwald
ISBN:: 9780195147681
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195147681.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

It is common knowledge that for most alcoholics and addicts recovery programmes like AA seem to hold out the best hope of conquering addiction. Most of us also know that such programmes usually stress reliance on some sort of “higher power.” This book shows that in fact spiritual development is the central factor in the recovery of a significant percentage of substance abusers, and that spirituality is the lynchpin of many if not most recovery programmes in America. The author of this book visited many treatment centres and interviewed hundreds of recovering alcoholics and addicts, counsellors, and family members, many of whose voices are heard within it. His purpose was to find out just how spirituality figures in the individual's recovery and how it is deployed by the treatment programmes. This book explores the differences among a wide range of programmes: twelve-step, Christian, Muslim, Native American, and those based in Eastern religions.

Scientology

James R. Lewis — 2011-10-03

Author:: James R.LewisUniversity of Tromso, Norway
ISBN:: 9780195331493
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331493.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Scientology is arguably the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religious Movements. The Church of Scientology has been involved in battles over tax issues, a ten-year conflict with the Food and Drug Administration, extended turmoil with a number of European governments, and has even been subjected to FBI raids in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Negative publicity, however, has not prevented the Church from experiencing remarkably steady growth. Official national census figures indicate that the number of Scientologists grew significantly in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia throughout the 1990s, and studies show that the Church gained 10,000 members in the United States during that decade. This has led Scientology to begin referring to itself as “The World's Fastest Growing Religion.” But despite its highly public profile, recently enhanced by celebrity spokespersons like Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes, little has been published about the Church, its history, theology, and mission. The present volume brings together an international group of scholars on New Religious Movements to offer an overview and analysis of all of these aspects of Scientology, including the controversies to which it continues to give rise. The book's six parts take a detailed look at the Church, through its similarities to and differences from other religions, conflicts with various groups, overseas missions, and its theology, history, and sociology.

Rite out of Place

Ronald L. Grimes — 2011-10-03

Author:: Ronald L. Grimes
ISBN:: 9780195301441
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301441.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Much ritual studies scholarship still focuses on central religious rites. For this reason, this book argues, dominant theories, like the data they consider, remain stubbornly conservative. The book issues a challenge to these theories and to popular conceptions of ritual, collecting ten chapters originally published in widely varied sources across the previous five years. The book includes chapters that track ritual as it haunts the edges of cultural boundaries—ritual converging with theater, ritual on television, ritual at the edge of natural environments, and so on.

Religion in Public Life

Roger Trigg — 2011-10-03

Author:: Roger Trigg
ISBN:: 9780199543670
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199543670.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

How far can religion play a part in the public sphere, or should it be only a private matter? In this book, the author examines this question in the context of today's pluralist societies, where many different beliefs clamour for attention. Should we celebrate diversity, or are matters of truth at stake? In particular, can we maintain our love of freedom, while cutting it off from religious roots? In societies in which there are many conflicting beliefs, the place of religion is a growing political issue. Should all religions be equally welcomed in the public square? Favouring one religion over others may appear to be a failure to treat all citizens equally, yet for citizens in many countries Christian heritage is woven into their way of life. Whether it is the issue of same-sex marriages, the right of French schoolgirls to wear Islamic headscarves, or just the public display of Christmas trees, all societies have to work out a consistent approach to the public influence of religion.

Religion and Healing in America

Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered — 2011-10-03

Author:: Linda L.BarnesBoston University School of MedicineSusan S.SeredBar Ilan University
ISBN:: 9780195167962
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Throughout much of the modern era, faith healing received attention only when it came into conflict with biomedical practice. During the 1990s, however, American culture changed dramatically and religious healing became a commonplace feature of the country's society. Increasing numbers of mainstream churches and synagogues began to hold held “healing services” and “healing circles”. The use of complementary and alternative therapies—some connected with spiritual or religious traditions—became widespread, and the growing hospice movement drew attention to the spiritual aspects of medical care. At the same time, changes in immigration laws brought to the United States new cultural communities, each with their own approaches to healing. Cuban santeros, Haitian mambos and oungans, Cambodian Buddhist priests, Chinese herbalist-acupuncturists, and Hmong shamans are only a few of the newer types of American religious healers, often found practicing within blocks of prestigious biomedical institutions. This book offers a collection of chapters examining this new reality. It brings together scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore the field of religious healing as understood and practiced in diverse cultural communities in the United States.

Mighty Like a River

Andrew Billingsley — 2011-10-03

Author:: Andrew Billingsley
ISBN:: 9780195161793
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195161793.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Throughout the history of the African American people there has been no stronger resource for overcoming adversity than the black church. From its role in leading a group of free Blacks to form a colony in Sierra Leone in the 1790s to helping ex-slaves after the Civil War, and from playing major roles in the Civil Rights Movement to offering community outreach programs in American cities today, black churches have been the focal point of social change in their communities. Based on extensive research over several years, this book is the first comprehensive account of how black churches have helped shape American society. The author surveys nearly a thousand black churches across the country, including its oldest, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. These black churches, whose roots extend back to antebellum times, have periodically confronted social, economic, and political problems facing the African American community. This book addresses such questions as: How widespread and effective is the community activity of black churches? What are the patterns of activities being undertaken today? How do activist churches confront such problems as family instability, youth development, AIDS and other health issues, and care for the elderly? With profiles of the remarkable black heroes and heroines who helped create the activist church, and a compelling agenda for expanding the black church's role in society at large, this book is an inspirational, visionary, and definitive account of the subject.

Lived Religion

Meredith B. McGuire — 2011-10-03

Author:: Meredith B. McGuire
ISBN:: 9780195172621
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172621.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

What are we to make of the Latina schoolteacher who considers herself a good Catholic, rarely attends Mass, but meditates daily at her home altar (where she mixes images of the Virgin of Guadalupe with those of Frida Kahlo, and traditional votive candles with healing crystals), yet feels particularly spiritual while preparing food for religious celebrations in her neighborhood? Diverse religious practices such as these have long baffled scholars of contemporary religion, whose research started with the assumption that individuals commit, or refuse to commit, to an entire institutionally-defined package of beliefs and practices. Social surveys typically ask respondents to self-identify by denominational or other broad religious categories. Sociologists attempt to measure religiosity according to how well individuals conform to the official religious standards, such as frequency of church attendance, scripture reading, or prayer. This book points the way forward toward a new way of understanding and studying religious behavior. Rather than try to fit people into prearranged packages, the book argues, scholars must begin to study religion as it is actually lived and experienced in peoples' everyday lives. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, as well as recent work by other scholars, the book explores the many ways that people express themselves spiritually and shows that they rarely fit neatly into the categories developed. Challenging those who see declining church attendance as the death of religion in the Western world, the book demonstrates that religion is as widespread and vital as ever, if you know where to look.

Liberation Theology at the Crossroads

Paul E. Sigmund — 2011-10-03

Author:: Paul E. Sigmund
ISBN:: 9780195072747
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195072747.001.0001
Published in print:: 1992
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Drawing on both English and Spanish sources, this critical study examines the history, methods, and doctrines of liberation theology. The book considers the movement's origins in political circumstances in Latin America; provides case studies of its role in such events as the revolution and counter-revolution in Chile; and examines the thought of the major liberation theologians and the position of the Vatican.

Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States

Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda — 2011-10-03

Author:: GastónEspinosaVirgilioElizondoboth at University of California, Santa BarbaraJesseMirandaVanguard University
ISBN:: 9780195162271
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162271.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book presents sixteen chapters addressing important issues, personalities, and movements in Latino religions in America. The book's purpose is to overthrow the longstanding stereotype that Latinos are politically passive and that their churches have supported the status quo, failing to engage in or support that struggle for civil rights and social justice. Individual chapters explore such varied topics as “The Mysticism and Social Action of Cesar Chavez,” “The Challenges of Being Latina, Catholic, and Feminist,” “Hispanic Churches in Faith-Based Community Organizing,” and “The Mexican American Cultural Center and the Politics of Cultural Empowerment”.

Hope in a Democratic Age

Alan Mittleman — 2011-10-03

Author:: Alan Mittleman
ISBN:: 9780199297153
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297153.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

How and why should hope play a key role in a 21st-century democratic politics? This book offers a philosophical exploration of the theme, contending that a modern construction of hope as an emotion is deficient. It revives the medieval understanding of hope as a virtue, reconstructing this in a contemporary philosophical idiom. In this framework, hope is less a spontaneous reaction than it is a choice against despair; a decision to live with confidence and expectation, based on a rational assessment of possibility and a faith in the underlying goodness of life. In cultures shaped by biblical teaching, hope is thought praiseworthy. The book explores the religious origins of the concept of hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, rabbinic literature, and Augustine. It traces the roots of both the praise of hope, in Jewish and Christian thought, and the criticism of hope in Greco-Roman thought and in the tradition of philosophical pessimism. Arguing on behalf of a straightened, sober form of hope, it relates hope-as-a-virtue to the tasks of democratic citizenship. Without diminishing the wisdom found in tragedy, a strong argument emerges in favour of hope as a way of taking responsibility for the world. Drawing on insights from scriptural and classical texts, philosophers, and theologians — ancient and modern, the book builds a compelling case for placing hope at the centre of democratic political systems.

A Greener Faith

Roger S. Gottlieb — 2011-10-03

Author:: Roger S. Gottlieb
ISBN:: 9780195176483
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176483.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

In a time of darkening environmental prospects, frightening religious fundamentalism, and moribund liberalism, the remarkable and historically unprecedented rise of religious environmentalism is a profound source of hope. Theologians are recovering marginalized nature-honoring elements of traditional religions and forging bold new theologies connecting devotion to God and spiritual truth with love for God's creation and care for the Earth. Further, these innovative ideas are giving rise to far-reaching political action. The successes and significance of religious environmentalism are manifest in statements by leaders of virtually all the world's religions, in new and “green” forms of prayer and ritual, in comprehensive religiously motivated criticisms of modern society's economy, politics, and culture, and in solid contributions to real-world environmental struggles. This book chronicles the promises of this critically important movement, illuminating its fundamental ideas, describing the work of its leading prophets, and detailing its important contributions to a global environmentalism. The book shows that when religion engages in environmental action the customary boundaries of “religious issues” in political life are decisively broken. Asserting that environmental degradation is not only a health danger, economic catastrophe, and aesthetic blight, but also sacrilegious, sinful and an offense against God, catapults religions directly into questions of social policy, economic and moral priorities, and the overall direction of secular society. The book contends that a religious perspective applied to the Earth provides the environmental movement with a uniquely appropriate way to voice its passion and hope.

From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation

Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov — 2011-10-03

Author:: YaacovBar-Siman-TovThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem
ISBN:: 9780195166439
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195166439.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

While conflict resolution is believed to cause temporary settlements and brief periods of peace in volatile situations, conventional conflict resolution techniques are not capable of building longterm stability. Instead, this book contends, practitioners of conflict resolution need to focus more on reconciliation (the restoration of confidence, friendship, and harmony between rivals) than on mere conflict resolution. Whereas traditional conflict resolution has focused primarily on halting quarrels with agreements between leaders on each side of a conflict, reconciliation techniques shift the focus in two ways. First, they take more of a grassroots approach, building agreement among the members of rival communities, not only between leaders. Second, reconciliation takes a longterm view of dispute resolution. While the book acknowledges that the role of traditional conflict resolution is important in stopping violence and tension, it argues that negotiators and practitioners of conflict resolution must focus on what is to be done after an agreement is reached.

From Angels to Aliens

Lynn Schofield Clark — 2011-10-03

Author:: Lynn Schofield Clark
ISBN:: 9780195300239
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195300239.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Left Behind series are but the latest manifestations of American teenagers' long-standing fascination with the supernatural and the paranormal. This book explores the implications of this fascination for contemporary religious and spiritual practices. Relying on stories gleaned from more than 250 in-depth interviews with teens and their families, the book seeks to discover what today's teens really believe and why. It finds that as adherence to formal religious bodies declines, interest in alternative spiritualities as well as belief in “superstition” grow accordingly. Ironically, the book argues, fundamentalist Christian alarmism about the forces of evil has also fed belief in a wider array of supernatural entities. Resisting the claim that the media “brainwash” teens, the book argues that today's popular stories of demons, hell, and the afterlife actually have their roots in the US's religious heritage. The book considers why some young people are nervous about supernatural stories in the media, while others comfortably and often unself-consciously blur the boundaries between those stories of the realm beyond that belong to traditional religion and those offered by the entertainment media. At a time of increased religious pluralism and declining participation in formal religious institutions, the book says, we must completely re-examine what young people mean—and what they may believe—when they identify themselves as “spiritual” or “religious”. Offering insights into how the entertainment media shape contemporary religious ideas and practices, the book paints a portrait of the spiritual state of America's youth.

Faith-Based Diplomacy Trumping Realpolitik

Douglas Johnston — 2011-10-03

Author:: Douglas Johnston
ISBN:: 9780195367935
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367935.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

For most of the twentieth century, the most critical concerns of national security have been balance-of-power politics and the global arms race. The religious conflicts of this era and the motives behind them, however, demand a radical break with this tradition. Such situations call for a long-term strategy of cultural engagement and an understanding of how others view the world. In non-Western cultures, religion is a primary motivation for political actions. Historically dismissed by Western policymakers as a divisive influence, religion has significant potential for overcoming the obstacles and conflict. This book looks at five intractable conflicts and explores the possibility of drawing on religion as a force for peace. It builds upon the insights of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (OUP, 1994) — which examined the role that religious or spiritual factors can play in preventing or resolving conflict — while achieving social change based on justice and reconciliation.

The End of Magic

Ariel Glucklich — 2011-10-03

Author:: Ariel Glucklich
ISBN:: 9780195108798
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195108798.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book offers a new approach towards the definition and understanding of magic. Basing the analysis in the Indian city of Banaras, where magic is a familiar part of everyday life, it reviews the major theories that have explained (or explained away) magic over the last century. It argues that all of these theories leave out something critical, namely what it calls “magical consciousness”—a special state of awareness of magicians and their clients which, though extraordinary, is also perfectly natural.

Christianity in the Twenty-First Century

Robert Wuthnow — 2011-10-03

Author:: Robert Wuthnow
ISBN:: 9780195096514
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195096514.001.0001
Published in print:: 1995
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book contributes to those reflections on religion that cropped up at the end of the millennium by offering a sobering, realistic, and hopeful assessment of where the church was at the turn of the millennium, and where the church is heading in the 21st century. The challenges facing the church are institutional, ethical, doctrinal, political, and cultural. They cut across different faith traditions, denominations, ethnic groups, and sectors of the population. They comprise the foundational issues that need to be considered even before more specific forecasts can be made and before attention can be turned by religious bodies to the formulation of specific programs and plans. The basic argument of this book is that the challenges ahead can be met most effectively by understanding the underlying frameworks guiding the ways in which we think about those challenges.

Christianity and Liberal Society

Robert Song — 2011-10-03

Author:: Robert Song
ISBN:: 9780198269335
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269335.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Liberalism forms the dominant political ideology of the modern world, but despite its pervasive influence, this is the first book-length treatment of liberal political thought from a Christian theological perspective. The book discusses the different aspects and interpretations of liberalism with reference to the critiques of three 20th-century theologians: the American Protestant Reinhold Niebuhr on the liberal progressivist philosophy of history; the lesser-known Canadian George Grant on the threat of technology to fundamental liberal values, as articulated in the recent work of John Rawls; and the French Thomist Jacques Maritain on the defence of political pluralism. Further to this, The book explores the implications of this political theology for the issues in fundamental constitutional theory raised by a bill of rights and judicial review of legislation, and concludes with an account of the critical but supportive stance of liberalism Christian theology should take.

Augustine

Carol Harrison — 2011-10-03

Author:: Carol Harrison
ISBN:: 9780198752202
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198752202.001.0001
Published in print:: 2000
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

St. Augustine, the North African bishop of Hippo (AD 354–430), has been much studied. But there has been no systematic attempt to consider the context which shaped his life and thought. Augustine's long and controversial career and his vast literary output provide unrivalled evidence for understanding the diverse ways in which Christianity confronted, assimilated, and finally transformed the traditional society of late antiquity. This book sets Augustine in his cultural and social context showing how, as a Christian, he came to terms with the philosophical and rhetorical ideals of classical culture, and, as a bishop, with the ecclesiastical, ascetic, and political structures of late antique society. According to Augustine, the Fall of man and Original sin fracture and vitiate mankind's ability to know or to will the good. This is revealed as the keystone of his theology, effecting a decisive break with classical ideals of perfection and shaping the distinctive theology of Western Christendom.