One of the critical issues in interreligious relations today is the connection, both actual and perceived, between sacred sources and the justification of violent acts as divinely mandated.
Wild Religion is a wild ride through recent South African history from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the football World Cup in 2010.
Iconic images of medieval pilgrims, such as Chaucer's making their laborious way to Canterbury, conjure a distant time when faith was the only refuge of the ill and infirm, and thousands traveled great distances to pray for healing.
Every summer, thousands gather from around the world in the blistering heat of Nevada's Black Rock Desert for the seven-day celebration of art, community, and fire known as Burning Man.
This pathbreaking synthesis of history, anthropology, and linguistics gives an unprecedented view of the first two hundred years of the Spanish colonization of the Yucatec Maya.
In this innovative and deeply felt work, Bron Taylor examines the evolution of "e;green religions"e; in North America and beyond: spiritual practices that hold nature as sacred and have in many cases replaced traditional religions.
This landmark work presents the most illuminating portrait we have to date of goddesses and sacred female imagery in Western culture-from prehistory to contemporary goddess movements.
In the Course of a Lifetime provides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lives.
A complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines sexuality, sensual pleasure, and the full range of physical experience with the religious life-Tantra has held a central yet conflicted role within the Western imagination ever since the first "e;discovery"e; of Indian religions by European scholars.
Motivated variously by the desire to reject consumerism, to live closer to the earth, to embrace voluntary simplicity, or to discover a more spiritual path, homesteaders have made the radical decision to go "e;back to the land,"e; rejecting modern culture and amenities to live self-sufficiently and in harmony with nature.
Sexuality and the occult arts have long been associated in the western imagination, but it was not until the nineteenth century that a large and sophisticated body of literature on sexual magic-the use of sex as a source of magical power-emerged.
UFO phenomena entered American consciousness at the beginning of the Cold War, when reports from astonished witnesses of encounters with unknown aerial objects captured the attention of the United States military and the imagination of the press and the public.
Rara is a vibrant annual street festival in Haiti, when followers of the Afro-Creole religion called Vodou march loudly into public space to take an active role in politics.
Finally, social scientists have begun to attempt to understand religious behavior rather than to discredit it as irrational, ignorant, or foolish-and Rodney Stark and Roger Finke have played a major role in this new approach.
Recent decades have seen a revival of paganism, and every summer people gather across the United States to celebrate this increasingly popular religion.
The long twentieth century in China and Taiwan has seen both a dramatic process of state-driven secularization and modernization and a vigorous revival of contemporary religious life.
Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly ranging essays in which Robert Bellah interprets the interplay of religion and society in concrete contexts from Japan to the Middle East to the United States.
How Christian leaders adapted the governmental practices and political thought of their Muslim rulers in the Abbasid caliphateThe Imam of the Christians examines how Christian leaders adopted and adapted the political practices and ideas of their Muslim rulers between 750 and 850 in the Abbasid caliphate in the Jazira (modern eastern Turkey and northern Syria).
A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic eraHow did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process?
This book looks at two contradictory ethical motifs-the warrior and the pacifist-across four major faith traditions-Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-and their role in shaping our understanding of violence and the morality of its use.
This book looks at two contradictory ethical motifs-the warrior and the pacifist-across four major faith traditions-Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-and their role in shaping our understanding of violence and the morality of its use.
Nothing is more difficult today than deciding what to do about abortion, gay marriage, economic injustice, war, torture, global warming, euthanasia, capital punishment, and a host of other controversies, particularly in a world in which people of varying religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds commonly live side by side.
Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue.
Nothing is more difficult today than deciding what to do about abortion, gay marriage, economic injustice, war, torture, global warming, euthanasia, capital punishment, and a host of other controversies, particularly in a world in which people of varying religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds commonly live side by side.
Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue.
The ethical treatment of non-human animals is an increasingly significant issue, directly affecting how people share the planet with other creatures and visualize themselves within the natural world.
The ethical treatment of non-human animals is an increasingly significant issue, directly affecting how people share the planet with other creatures and visualize themselves within the natural world.
