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Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form
By Basil Pennington. 1979
A book that combines the best of Eastern Christian spiritual exercises with a spirituality for the world of today, Centering…
Prayer offers practical suggestions for overcoming the problems that discourage people from praying well. From the Trade Paperback edition.Abortion: Global Positions and Practices, Religious and Legal Perspectives
By Alireza Bagheri. 2021
Rather than providing a global solution to the problem of abortion —to abort or not to abort—this volume sheds light on…
different but equally critical dimensions of abortion in global debate and practice. The aim is to elaborate on different value systems and policies in order to empower individuals to make well-informed decisions about abortion guided by moral reflection. The twenty one chapters of this volume are written by distinguished scholars in each of the religious and non-religious schools of thought, offering an exhaustive survey of the differing religious and legal views on abortion within the international community. The contributors present authoritative discussions in favor of or against abortion based on their perspectives and practices. As a result, the content of this book provides a foundational platform for better understanding, meaningful dialogue, and tolerance on a social issue which has divided individuals, philosophers, theologians, policy makers, and legislators within and across societies for centuries.Waiting for God (Routledge Classics)
By Simone Weil. 2021
'You cannot get far in these essays without sensing yourself in the presence of a writer of immense intellectual power…
and fierce independence of mind.' - Janet Soskice, from the Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist who worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times,' her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity. Waiting for God is one of her most remarkable books, full of piercing spiritual and moral insight. The first part comprises letters she wrote in 1942 to Jean-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest, and demonstrate the intense inner conflict Weil experienced as she wrestled with the demands of Christian belief and commitment. She then explores the 'just balance' of the world, arguing that we should regard God as providing two forms of guidance: our ability as human beings to think for ourselves; and our need for both physical and emotional 'matter.' She also argues for the concept of a 'sacred longing'; that humanity's search for beauty, both in the world and within each other, is driven by our underlying desire for a tangible god. Eloquent and inspiring, Waiting for God asks profound questions about the nature of faith, doubt and morality that continue to resonate today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Janet Soskice and retains the Foreword to the 1979 edition by Malcolm Muggeridge.Death, Immortality, and Eternal Life (The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion Series)
By T. Ryan Byerly. 2021
This book offers a multifaceted exploration of death and the possibilities for an afterlife. By incorporating a variety of approaches…
to these subjects, it provides a unique framework for extending and reshaping enduring philosophical debates around human existence up to and after death. Featuring original essays from a diverse group of international scholars, the book is arranged in four main sections. Firstly, it addresses how death is or should be experienced, engaging with topics such as near-death experiences, continuing bonds with the deceased, and attitudes toward dying. Secondly, it looks at surviving death, addressing the metaphysics of human persons, the nature of time, the nature of the true self, and the nature of the divine. It then evaluates the value of mortality and immortality, drawing upon the resources of the history of philosophy, meta-analysis of contemporary debates, and the analogy between individual death and species extinction. Finally, it explores what an eternal life might be like, examining the place of selflessness, embodiment, and racial identity in such a life. This volume allows for a variety of philosophical and theological perspectives to be brought to bear on the end of life and what might be beyond. As such, it will be a fascinating resource for scholars in the philosophy of religion, theology, and death studies.When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen
By Norman Fischer. 2021
From beloved Zen teacher Norman Fischer, a collection of essays spanning a life of inquiry into Zen practice, relationship, social…
engagement, and spiritual creativity. "Looking backwards at a life lived, walking forward into more life to live built on all that, trying not to be too much influenced by what's already been said and done, not to be held to a point of view or an identity previously expressed, trying to be surprised and undone and maybe even dismayed by what lies ahead."--Norman FischerNorman Fischer is a Zen priest, poet, and translator whose writings, teachings, and commitment to interfaith dialogue have supported and inspired Buddhist, Jewish, and other spiritual practitioners for decades. When You Greet Me I Bow spans the entirety of Norman Fischer's career and is the first collection of his writings on Buddhist philosophy and practice. Broken into four sections--the joy and catastrophe of relationship; thinking, writing, and emptiness; cultural encounters; and social engagement--this book allows us to see the fascinating development of the mind and interests of a gifted writer and profoundly committed practitioner.Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India (Thinking from Elsewhere)
By Vaibhav Saria. 2021
Winner, 2021 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social SciencesHijras, one of India’s third gendered or trans populations, have…
been an enduring presence in the South Asian imagination—in myth, in ritual, and in everyday life, often associated in stigmatized forms with begging and sex work. In more recent years hijras have seen a degree of political emergence as a moral presence in Indian electoral politics, and with heightened vulnerability within global health terms as a high-risk population caught within the AIDS epidemic. Hijras, Lovers, Brothers recounts two years living with a group of hijras in rural India. In this riveting ethnography, Vaibhav Saria reveals not just a group of stigmatized or marginalized others but a way of life composed of laughter, struggles, and desires that trouble how we read queerness, kinship, and the psyche.Against easy framings of hijras that render them marginalized, Saria shows how hijras makes the normative Indian family possible. The book also shows that particular practices of hijras, such as refusing to use condoms or comply with retroviral regimes, reflect not ignorance, irresponsibility, or illiteracy but rather a specific idiom of erotic asceticism arising in both Hindu and Islamic traditions. This idiom suffuses the densely intertwined registers of erotics, economics, and kinship that inform the everyday lives of hijras and offer a repertoire of self-fashioning beyond the secular horizons of public health or queer theory.Engrossingly written and full of keen insights, the book moves from the small pleasures of the everyday—laughter, flirting, teasing—to impossible longings, kinship, and economies of property and substance in order to give a fuller account of trans lives and of Indian society today.Reason, Revelation and Law in Islamic and Western Theory and History (Islam and Global Studies)
By R. Charles Weller, Anver M. Emon. 2021
This book engages the diverse meanings and interpretations of Islamic and Western law which have affected people and societies across…
the globe, past and present, in correlation to the epistemological groundings of those meanings and interpretations. The volume takes a distinctively comparative approach, advancing dialogue on crucial transnational and global debates over the history of Western and Islamic approaches to law, politics and society and their relevance for today. It discusses how fundamental concepts are understood and even translated from one historical or political context or one semantic domain to another. The book provides focused studies of key figures and theories in a manageable, accessible format useful for specialized academic courses and research as well as general audiences.The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God
By Amos Yong. 2011
Inspiring and challenging study that rethinks the Bible’s teaching on disabilityA theologian whose life experience includes growing up alongside a…
brother with Down syndrome, Amos Yong in this book rereads and reinterprets biblical texts about human disability, arguing that the way we read biblical texts, not the Bible itself, is what causes us to marginalize persons with disabilities. Revealing and examining the underlying stigma of disability that exists even in the church, Yong shows how the Bible offers good news to people of all abilities — and he challenges churches to become more inclusive communities of faith.Congregations in America
By Mark Chaves. 2004
More Americans belong to religious congregations than to any other kind of voluntary association. What these vast numbers amount to--what…
people are doing in the over 300,000 churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples in the United States--is a question that resonates through every quarter of American society, particularly in these times of "faith-based initiatives," "moral majorities," and militant fundamentalism. And it is a question answered in depth and in detail in Congregations in America. Drawing on the 1998 National Congregations Study--the first systematic study of its kind--as well as a broad range of quantitative, qualitative, and historical evidence, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the most significant form of collective religious expression in American society: local congregations. Among its more surprising findings, Congregations in America reveals that, despite the media focus on the political and social activities of religious groups, the arts are actually far more central to the workings of congregations. Here we see how, far from emphasizing the pursuit of charity or justice through social services or politics, congregations mainly traffic in ritual, knowledge, and beauty through the cultural activities of worship, religious education, and the arts. Along with clarifying--and debunking--arguments on both sides of the debate over faith-based initiatives, the information presented here comprises a unique and invaluable resource, answering previously unanswerable questions about the size, nature, make-up, finances, activities, and proclivities of these organizations at the very center of American life.Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai
By Paul P. Mariani. 2011
By 1952 the Chinese Communist Party had suppressed all organized resistance to its regime and stood unopposed, or so it…
has been believed. Internal party documents—declassified just long enough for historian Paul Mariani to send copies out of China—disclose that one group deemed an enemy of the state held out after the others had fallen. A party report from Shanghai marked “top-secret” reveals a determined, often courageous resistance by the local Catholic Church. Drawing on centuries of experience in struggling with the Chinese authorities, the Church was proving a stubborn match for the party. Mariani tells the story of how Bishop (later Cardinal) Ignatius Kung Pinmei, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Youth resisted the regime’s punishing assault on the Shanghai Catholic community and refused to renounce the pope and the Church in Rome. Acting clandestinely, mirroring tactics used by the previously underground CCP, Shanghai’s Catholics persevered until 1955, when the party arrested Kung and 1,200 other leading Catholics. The imprisoned believers were later shocked to learn that the betrayal had come from within their own ranks. Though the CCP could not eradicate the Catholic Church in China, it succeeded in dividing it. Mariani’s secret history traces the origins of a deep split in the Chinese Catholic community, where relations between the “Patriotic” and underground churches remain strained even today.Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion
By Thomas A. Tweed. 2008
Beginning with a Cuban Catholic ritual in Miami, this book takes readers on a momentous theoretical journey toward a new…
understanding of religion. At this historical moment, when movement across boundaries is of critical importance for all areas of human life—from media and entertainment to economy and politics—Thomas Tweed offers a powerful vision of religion in motion, dynamic, alive with crossings and flows. A deeply researched, broadly gauged, and vividly written study of religion such as few American scholars have ever attempted, Crossing and Dwelling depicts religion in place and in movement, dwelling and crossing. Tweed considers how religion situates devotees in time and space, positioning them in the body, the home, the homeland, and the cosmos. He explores how the religious employ tropes, artifacts, rituals, and institutions to mark boundaries and to prescribe and proscribe different kinds of movements across those boundaries; and how religions enable and constrain terrestrial, corporeal, and cosmic crossings. Drawing on insights from the natural and social sciences, Tweed's work is grounded in the gritty particulars of distinctive religious practices, even as it moves toward ideas about cross-cultural patterns. At a time when scholars in many fields shy away from generalizations, this book offers a responsible way to think broadly about religion, a topic that is crucial for understanding the contemporary world. Lucid in explanations, engaging in presentation, rich in examples, Crossing and Dwelling has profound implications for the study and teaching of religion in our day.Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea
By Anthony Grafton. 2006
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books…
and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.Ancient Religions: A Guide (Blackwell Ancient Religions Ser. #8)
By Sarah Iles Johnston. 2007
Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic…
practitioners journeying from place to place peddled their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; and vessels decorated with illustrations of myths traveled with them. New gods encountered in foreign lands by merchants and conquerors were sometimes taken home to be adapted and adopted. This collection of essays by a distinguished international group of scholars, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religions of the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass
By Martin Shaw. 2021
"With potent, lyrical language and a profound knowledge of storytelling, Shaw encourages and illuminates the mythic in our own lives.…
He is a modern-day bard." – Madeline Miller, author of Circe and The Song of Achilles At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives—identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic—celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high. Smoke Hole is a passionate call to arms and an invitation to use these stories to face the complexities of contemporary life, from fake news, parenthood, climate crises, addictive technology and more. Shaw urges us to reclaim our imagination and untangle ourselves from modern menace, letting these tales be our guide. More Praise: "I can still remember the first time I heard Martin Shaw tell a story. The tale that emerged was like a living thing, bounding around, throwing itself at us there listening. I had never heard anything like it before." – Paul Kingsnorth, Booker shortlisted author of The Wake "Martin Shaw’s work is so very beautiful. A new animal. His love of images is deep and contagious." – Coleman Barks, author of The Essential Rumi "Through feral tales and poetic exegesis, Martin Shaw makes you re-see the world, as a place of adventure, and of initiation, as perfect home, and as perfectly other. What a gift." – David Keenan, author of Xstabeth "Shaw has so much wisdom and knowledge about the old stories, it emanates from his pores." – John Densmore, The DoorsWorld Christianity and Indigenous Experience: A Global History, 1500–2000
By David Lindenfeld. 2021
In this book, David Lindenfeld proposes a new dimension to the study of world history. Here, he explores the global…
expansion of Christianity since 1500 from the perspectives of the indigenous people who were affected by it, and helped change it, giving them active agency. Integrating the study of religion into world history, his volume surveys indigenous experience in colonial Latin America, Native North America, Africa and the African diaspora, the Middle East, India, East Asia, and the Pacific. Lindenfeld demonstrates how religion is closely interwoven with political, economic, and social history. Wide-ranging in scope, and offering a synoptic perspective of our interconnected world, Lindenfeld combines in-depth analysis of individual regions with comprehensive global coverage. He also provides a new vocabulary, with a spectrum ranging from resistance to acceptance and commitment to Christianity, that articulates the range and complexity of the indigenous conversion experience. Lindenfeld's cross-cultural reflections provide a compelling alternative to the Western narrative of progressive development.The Holy Land and the Early Modern Reinvention of Catholicism
By Megan C. Armstrong. 2021
A shared biblical past has long imbued the Holy Land with special authority as well as a mythic character that…
has made the region not only the spiritual home for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but also a source of a living sacred history that informs contemporary realities and religious identities. This book explores the Holy Land as a critical site in which early modern Catholics sought spiritual and political legitimacy during a period of profound and disruptive change. The Ottoman conquest of the region, the division of the Western Church, Catholic reform, the integration of the Mediterranean into global trading networks, and the emergence of new imperial rivalries transformed the Custody of the Holy Land, the venerable Catholic institution that had overseen Western pilgrimage since 1342, into a site of intense intra-Christian conflict by 1517. This contestation underscored the Holy Land's importance as a frontier and center of an embattled Catholic tradition.Dieses Buch vereint soziologische Theoriebildung mit Studien zum Nahen Osten und zum Islam. Die Vielfalt von Modernitäten, die in unsere…
Welt beobachtet werden kann, wird dabei mit dem Anspruch verbunden, gleichzeitig in einer globalen Moderne, in einer Weltgesellschaft zu leben. Das Buch untermauert diesen Anspruch mit zahlreichen Exkursen in die islamische Geschichte. Es kritisiert die Auffassung, dass Modernisierung mit Verwestlichung gleichzusetzen wäre und betrachtet unterschiedliche Projekte von spezifisch islamischen Modernitäten als integrale Teile der Weltgesellschaft. Aus dieser Perspektive leistet die Studie einen Beitrag zur „Provinzialisierung“ der europäischen Geschichte im zeitgenössischen sozialwissenschaftlichen Denken. Entgegen den mit der Aufforderung zur Provinzialisierung Europas verbundenen Theorien des Postkolonialismus hält dieses Buch aber an wesentlichen Traditionen der klassischen Soziologie fest. Es will damit einen Beitrag zur sozialtheoretischen Diskussion um die Moderne leisten, der empirisch mit Hilfe von Daten aus der Geschichte des Nahen Ostens und des Islams untermauert wird.Irish Anglican Literature and Drama: Hybridity and Discord
By David Clare. 2021
This book discusses key works by important writers from Church of Ireland backgrounds (from Farquhar and Swift to Beckett and Bardwell),…
in order to demonstrate that writers from this Irish subculture have a unique socio-political viewpoint which is imperfectly understood. The Anglican Ascendancy was historically referred to as a “middle nation” between Ireland and Britain, and this book is an examination of the various ways in which Irish Anglican writers have signalled their Irish/British hybridity. “British” elements in their work are pointed out, but so are manifestations of their proud Irishness and what Elizabeth Bowen called her community’s “subtle … anti-Englishness.” Crucially, this book discusses several writers often excluded from the “truly” Irish canon, including (among others) Laurence Sterne, Elizabeth Griffith, and C.S. Lewis.Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil
By Gottfried Leibniz. 1985
In order to be truly free, must you act arbitrarily? If an event did not happen, could it have happened?…
Since there is evil, and God could have made the world without evil, did God fail to pick the best course? Grappling with such simple--yet still intriguing--puzzles, Leibniz was able to present attractively his new theories of the real and the phenomenal, freewill and determinism, and the relation between minds and bodies. Theodicy was Leibniz's only book-length work to be published in his lifetime, and for many years the work by which he was known to the world. Fully at home with the latest scientific advances, Leibniz ultimately rejected the new atomistic philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes, and drew upon the old cosmology of Aristotelian scholasticism. There could be no conflict, he argued between faith and reason, freedom and necessity, natural and divine law. Ingeniously defending his postulate of pre-established harmony, Leibniz made important advances in the precise analysis of concepts.From the Sunday Times number one bestselling author Lorna Byrne.In this short ebook Lorna, who sees angels with as much…
clarity as the rest of us see people, tells of the special angels she sees at Christmas. She movingly describes the Christmas angels she has seen since she was a child, dropping balls of light onto each and every home, helping us to reconnect with our memories of Heaven. Lorna tells of the blessing angels who she sees walking down from the sky at this time of the year, moving in a way that no other angel does, and reaching out to touch each one of us. This book will awaken the Christmas spirit within all of us with its message that Christmas is about much more than material things - that Christmas is above all at time for kindness and love. THIS CHRISTMAS THEMED BOOK CONTAINS:*The special Christmas Message of Hope chapter from Lorna Byrne's number one bestselling A Message of Hope from the Angels*A Christmas prayer*An interview with Lorna Byrne