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Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (The Princeton-China Series #10)
By Tongdong Bai. 2020
What might a viable political alternative to liberal democracy look like? In Against Political Equality, Tongdong Bai offers a possibility…
inspired by Confucian ideas.Bai argues that domestic governance influenced by Confucianism can embrace the liberal aspects of democracy along with the democratic ideas of equal opportunities and governmental accountability to the people. But Confucianism would give more political decision-making power to those with the moral, practical, and intellectual capabilities of caring for the people. While most democratic thinkers still focus on strengthening equality to cure the ills of democracy, the proposed hybrid regime—made up of Confucian-inspired meritocratic characteristics combined with democratic elements and a quasi-liberal system of laws and rights—recognizes that egalitarian qualities sometimes conflict with good governance and the protection of liberties, and defends liberal aspects by restricting democratic ones. Bai applies his views to the international realm by supporting a hierarchical order based on how humane each state is toward its own and other peoples, and on the principle of international interventions whereby humane responsibilities override sovereignty.Exploring the deficiencies posed by many liberal democracies, Against Political Equality presents a novel Confucian-engendered alternative for solving today’s political problems.Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt
By Alec Ryrie. 2019
Long before philosophers started making the case for atheism, powerful, affectively laden cultural currents were sowing doubt in Europe. Alec…
Ryrie looks to the history of the Reformation and argues that emotions—anger at priestly corruption and anxieties attending the erosion of time-honored certainties—were the handmaidens of atheism.Iran, Revolution, and Proxy Wars (Middle East Today)
By Ofira Seliktar, Farhad Rezaei. 2020
This book analyzes the historical quest of the Islamic Republic of Iran to export its revolution to the Muslim countries…
in the Middle East and beyond. The authors argue that Iran exported its revolution by using proxies such as Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shite militias, and the Houthis. The study unravels the casual chain behind less-known cases of Iranian sponsorship of al Qaeda (Central) and al Qaida in Iraq. It combines rigorous theory with detailed empirical analysis which can add to the current debate about ways to roll back Iran’s revolutionary export.Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf
By Kristina K. Groover. 2019
Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf offers an expansive interdisciplinary study of spirituality in Virginia Woolf's writing,…
drawing on theology, psychology, geography, history, gender and sexuality studies, and other critical fields. The essays in this collection interrogate conventional approaches to the spiritual, and to Woolf’s work, while contributing to a larger critical reappraisal of modernism, religion, and secularism. While Woolf’s atheism and her sharp criticism of religion have become critical commonplaces, her sometimes withering critique of religion conflicts with what might well be called a religious sensibility in her work. The essays collected here take up a challenge posed by Woolf herself: how to understand her persistent use of religious language, her representation of deeply mysterious human experiences, and her recurrent questions about life's meaning in light of her disparaging attitude toward religion. These essays argue that Woolf's writing reframes and reclaims the spiritual in alternate forms; she strives to find new language for those numinous experiences that remain after the death of God has been pronounced.Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood)
By Lucy Underwood, Tali Berner. 2019
This edited collection examines different aspects of the experience and significance of childhood, youth and family relations in minority religious…
groups in north-west Europe in the late medieval, Reformation and post-Reformation era. It aims to take a comparative approach, including chapters on Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities. The chapters are organised into themed sections, on 'Childhood, religious practice and minority status', 'Family and responses to persecution', and 'Religious division and the family: co-operation and conflict'. Contributors to the volume consider issues such as religious conversion, the impact of persecution on childhood and family life, emotion and affectivity, the role of childhood and memory, state intervention in children's religious upbringing, the impact of confessionally mixed marriages, persecution and co-existence. Some chapters focus on one confessional group, whilst others make comparisons between them.Decolonizing the Spirit in Education and Beyond: Resistance and Solidarity (Spirituality, Religion, and Education)
By Njoki Nathani Wane, Kimberly L. Todd, Miglena S. Todorova. 2019
This multidisciplinary collection probes ways in which emerging and established scholars perceive and theorize decolonization and resistance in their own…
fields of work, from education to political and social studies, to psychology, medicine, and beyond. In this time of renewed global spiritual awakening, indigenous communities are revisiting ways of knowing and evoking theories of resistance informed by communal theories of solidarity. Using an intersectional lens, chapter authors present or imagine modes of solidarity, resistance, and political action that subvert colonial and neocolonial formations. Placing emphasis on the importance of theorizing the spirit, a discourse that is deeply embedded in our unique cultures and ancestries, this book is able to capture and better understand these moments and processes of spiritual emergence/re-emergence.Negotiating Science and Religion In America: Past, Present, and Future
By Greg Cootsona. 2020
Science and religion represent two powerful forces that continue to influence the American cultural landscape. Negotiating Science and Religion in…
America sketches an intellectual-cultural history from the Puritans to the twenty-first century, focusing on the sometimes turbulent relationship between the two. Using the past as a guide for what is happening today, this volume engages research from key scholars and the author’s work on emerging adults’ attitudes in order to map out the contours of the future for this exciting, and sometimes controversial, field. The book discusses the relationship between religion and science in the following important historical periods: from 1687 to the American Revolution the revolutionary period to 1859 after Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species 1870–1925: the rise of religious modernism and pluralism to the Scopes Trial from Scopes to 1966 the present: 1966 to 2000 the third millennium: the voices of Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Francis Collins the future and its contours. This is the ideal volume for any student or scholar seeking to understand the relationship between religion and science in society today.Exploring the response of evangelicals to the collapse of ‘Greater Christian Britain’ in Australia in the long 1960s, this book…
provides a new religious perspective to the end of empire and a fresh national perspective to the end of Christendom. In the turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and unexpectedly collapsed. ‘Christendom’, marked by the dominance of discursive Christianity in public culture, and ‘Greater Britain’, the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with startling speed. To illuminate these contemporaneous global shifts, this book takes as a case study the response of Australian evangelical Christian leaders to the cultural and religious crises encountered between 1959 and 1979. Far from being a narrow national study, this book places its case studies in the context of the latest North American and European scholarship on secularisation, imperialism and evangelicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, it examines critical figures such as Billy Graham, Fred Nile and Hans Mol, as well as issues of empire, counter-cultural movements and racial and national identity. This study will be of particular interest to any scholar of Evangelicalism in the twentieth century. It will also be a useful resource for academics looking into the wider impacts of the decline of Christianity and the British Empire in Western civilisation.Men, Masculinities and Honour-Based Abuse
By Mohammad Mazher Idriss. 2020
This book explores the largely neglected relationship between men, masculinities and honour-based abuse (HBA). There is a common misconception that…
HBA – whether physical violence, emotional abuse or so-called ‘honour’ killings – occurs only against women. This book addresses the gap in the current literature concerning the relationship between men, masculinities and HBA. With contributions from an international and interdisciplinary range of both academics and professionals, the book examines HBA and forced marriages specifically from male-victim perspectives, both in the UK and internationally. Providing a clear understanding of the main theoretical and sociological explanations of HBA against male victims, the book demonstrates that, although men are indeed the main perpetrators of HBA, state agencies must address the fact that many men are also victims. This book is essential reading for students, academics, and practitioners alike.Guided Buddhist Meditations: Essential Practices on the Stages of the Path
By Thubten Chodron. 2019
A new edition of a Buddhist classic, an accessible introduction to the stages of the path (lamrim)--including 14 hours of…
downloadable audio meditations.The Stages of the Path, or lamrim, presentation of Buddhist teachings (a step-by-step method to tame the mind) is a core topic of Buddhist study. The lamrim meditations remind us that the process of transforming the mind, unlike so much of our frantic modern society, is a slow and thoughtful one. Best-selling author and Buddhist teacher Thubten Chodron here provides clear explanations of the stages of the path, as well as an accompanying downloadable audio program containing over fourteen hours of guided meditations on each of the topics covered in the text. Chodron discusses how to establish a daily practice and presents the meditations in detail, followed by advice for newcomers, instructions for working with distractions, antidotes to mental afflictions, and suggestions on how to deepen Dharma practice. Each practitioner will find meaning and insight according to their own skill level.Unlocking Orthodoxies for Inclusive Theologies: Queer Alternatives (Gender, Theology and Spirituality)
By Joseph N. Goh, Robert E. Shore-Goss. 2020
This book enters a new liminal space between the LGBTQ and denominational Christian communities. It simultaneously explores how those who…
identify as queer can find a home in church and how those leading welcoming, or indeed unwelcoming, congregations can better serve both communities. The primary argument is that queer inclusion must not merely mean an assimilation into existing heteronormative respectability and approval. Chapters are written by a diverse collection of Asian, Latin American, and U.S. theologians, religious studies scholars and activists. Each of them writes from their own social context to address the notion of LGBTQ alternative orthodoxies and praxes pertaining to God, the saints, failure of the church, queer eschatologies, and erotic economies. Engaging with issues that are not only faced by those in the theological academy, but also by clergy and congregants, the book addresses those impacted by a history of Christian hostility and violence who have become suspicious of attempts at "acceptance". It also sets out an encouragement for queer theologians and clergy think deeply about how they form communities where queer perspectives are proactively included. This is a forward-looking and positive vision of a more inclusive theology and ecclesiology. It will, therefore, appeal to scholars of Queer Theology and Religious Studies as well as practitioners seeking a fresh perspective on church and the LGBTQ community.What is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions
By John M. Rist. 2020
In this book, John M. Rist offers an account of the concept of 'person' as it has developed in the…
West, and how it has become alien in a post-Christian culture. He begins by identifying the 'Mainline Tradition' about persons as it evolved from the time of Plato to the High Middle Ages, then turns to successive attacks on it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then proceeds to the 'Five Ways' in which the Tradition was savaged or distorted in the nineteenth century and beyond. He concludes by considering whether ideas from contemporary philosophical movements, those that combine a closer analysis of human nature with a more traditional metaphysical background may enable the Tradition to be restored. A timely book on a theme of universal significance, Rist ponders whether we persons matter, and how we have reached a position where we are not sure whether we do.Chaplaincy and the Soul of Health and Social Care: Fostering Spiritual Wellbeing in Emerging Paradigms of Care
By Ken Donaldson, Steve Nolan, George Fitchett, Julian Raffay, Madeleine Parkes, Derek Fraser, Carlo Leget, Neil Pembroke, Daniel Nuzum, Daniel Grossoehme, George Handzo, Tim Bennison, Don Bryant, Eva Buelens, Hans Evers, David Fleenor, Kevin Franz, Cheryl Holmes, Jo Kennedy, Raymond Reddicliffe, Austyn Snowden, Ian Stirling, Mark Stobert, Iain Telfer, Anne Vandenhoeck. 2020
Gathering together thoughts and visions of experienced practitioners, academics, educators and strategic leaders from around the world, this edited volume…
sheds light on the nature of chaplaincy and its role and significance within ever-changing contemporary healthcare systems.A wide range of issues central to spiritual care delivery are covered, including reflections on what it feels like to be cared for by a chaplain through illness; the nature of chaplaincy as a profession; and how chaplains can engage with healthcare institutions in ways that have integrity yet are also deeply spiritual. The focus throughout is that chaplaincy should not only be guidance for people in distress, as a form of crisis intervention, but is rather about helping to promote wellbeing and enhance people's quality of life.Where specialisms tend to fragment systems and individuals, this book seeks to show that true health and wellbeing can only be found through a holistic approach, and shows how chaplaincy can bring this to the table. This book is for anyone who recognises the centrality of spirituality for wellbeing, and wishes to see what that might look like in practice.Irene Eber was one of the foremost authorities on Jews in China during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—a field that,…
in contrast to the study of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Americas, has been critically neglected. This volume gathers fourteen of Eber’s most salient articles and essays on the exchanges between Jewish and Chinese cultures, making available to students, scholars, and general readers a representative sample of the range and depth of her important work in the field of Jews in China.Jews in China delineates the centuries-long, reciprocal dialogue between Jews, Jewish culture, and China, all under the overarching theme of cultural translation. The first section of the book sets forth a sweeping overview of the history of Jews in China, beginning in the twelfth century and concluding with a detailed assessment of the two crucial years leading up to the Second World War. The second section examines the translation of Chinese classics into Hebrew and the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Chinese. The third and final section turns to modern literature, bringing together eight essays that underscore the cultural reciprocity that takes place through acts of translation.The centuries-long relationship between Judaism and China is often overlooked in the light of the extensive discourse surrounding European and American Judaism. With this volume, Eber reminds us that we have much to learn from the intersections between Jewish identity and Chinese culture.While topics such as death, funerary cult, and the netherworld have received considerable scholarly attention in the context of the…
Ugaritic textual corpus, the related concept of life has been relatively neglected. Life and Mortality in Ugaritic takes as its premise that one cannot grasp the significance of mwt ("to die") without first having wrestled with the concept of ḥyy ("to live"). In this book, Matthew McAffee takes a lexical approach to the study of life and death in the Ugaritic textual corpus. He identifies and analyzes the Ugaritic terms most commonly used to talk about life and mortality in order to construct a more representative framework of the ancient perspective on these topics, and he concludes by synthesizing the results of this lexical study into a broader literary discussion that considers, among other things, the implications for our understanding of the first-millennium Katumuwa stele from Zincirli.McAffee’s study complements previous scholarly work in this area, which has tended to rely on conceptual and theoretical treatment of mortality, and advances the discussion by providing a more focused lexical analysis of the Ugaritic terms in question. It will be of interest to Semitic scholars and those who study Ugaritic in particular, in addition to students of the culture of the ancient Levant.For more than a century, scholars have debated whether Paul the apostle was a faithful follower of Jesus or a…
corruptor of Jesus’s message and the true founder of Christianity. Signs of Continuity intervenes in this debate by exploring a largely overlooked element of similarity between the two men: the place of miracles in their ministries.In his close analysis of the miracles performed by Jesus and Paul, Greg Rhodea points to signs of continuity between these two historical figures of Christianity. He argues that both Jesus and Paul understood their miracles as accompanying and actualizing a message of gracious inclusion of the marginalized, resisted proving their ability to work miracles to those who asked for a sign despite the importance of miracle-working to their personal authentication, and interpreted miracles as proof of the presence of the eschatological kingdom. Based on these similarities, Rhodea concludes that Paul the apostle knew of Jesus’s miracles and that he imitated Jesus in his own ministry of miracle-working.In highlighting this previously unexplored area of continuity, Rhodea makes a significant contribution to the debate over the relationship between Jesus and Paul. Biblical scholars and students interested in this debate will find Signs of Continuity enlightening and informative.This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook…
and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic.The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic.Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.The Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals and traces the transformation of ancient Jewish symbols, rituals, archetypes and narratives deployed in these…
sites. Demonstrating how cloaking the 'secular' history of the Holocaust in sacred garb, memorial museums generate redemptive yet conflicting visions of the meaning and utility of Holocaust memory.Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement (Middle East Today)
By Paola Rivetti. 2020
This book examines the unintended consequences of top-down reforms in Iran, analysing how the Iranian reformist governments (1997–2005) sought to…
utilise gradual reforms to control independent activism, and how citizens responded to such a disciplinary action. While the governments successfully ‘set the field’ of permitted political participation, part of the civil society that took shape was unexpectedly independent. Despite being a minority, independent activists were not marginal: without them, in fact, the Green Movement of 2009 would not have taken shape. Building on in-depth empirical analysis, the author explains how autonomous activism forms and survives in a semi-authoritarian country. The book contributes to the debate about the implications of elite-led reforms for social reproduction, offering an innovative interpretation and an original analysis of social movements from a political science perspective.Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition
By Jane Moore, William Moore. 2019
Antislavery white clergy and their congregations. Radicalized abolitionist women. African Americans committed to ending slavery through constitutional political action. These…
diverse groups attributed their common vision of a nation free from slavery to strong political and religious values. Owen Lovejoy’s gregarious personality, formidable oratorical talent, probing political analysis, and profound religious convictions made him the powerful leader the coalition needed. Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality examines how these three distinct groups merged their agendas into a single antislavery, religious, political campaign for equality with Lovejoy at the helm. Combining scholarly biography, historiography, and primary source material, Jane Ann and William F. Moore demonstrate Lovejoy's crucial role in nineteenth-century politics, the rise of antislavery sentiment in religious spaces, and the emerging commitment to end slavery in Congress. Their compelling account explores how the immorality of slavery became a touchstone of political and religious action in the United States through the efforts of a synergetic coalition led by an essential abolitionist figure.