The essays in this book not only examine the variety of atheist expression and experience in the Western context, they also explore how local, national and international settings may contribute to the shaping of atheist identities. By addressing identity at these different levels, the book explores how individuals construct their own atheist-or non-religious-identity, how they construct community and how identity factors into atheist interaction at the social or institutional levels. The book offers an interdisciplinary comparative approach to the analysis of issues relating to atheism, such as demography, community engagement, gender politics, stigmatism and legal action. It covers such themes as: secularization; the social context of atheism in various Western countries; the shifting of atheist identities based on different cultural and national contexts; the role of atheism in multicultural settings; how the framework of "reasonable accommodation" applies to atheism; interactions and relationships between atheism and religion and how atheism is represented for political and legal purposes. Featuring contributions by international scholars at the cutting edge of atheism studies, this volume offers unique insights into the relationship between atheism and identity. It will serve as a useful resource for academics, journalists, policy makers and general readers interested in secular and religious studies, identity construction and identity politics as well as atheism in general.

In Africa, the twenty-first century began with new challenges surrounding and regarding philosophical discourses. Questions of economic and political liberation, the displacement of populations and the process of urbanization present ongoing challenges, linked to problems such as endemic diseases and famine, the restructure of the traditional family, gender and the position of women, the transmission of culture from past to future generations. Changes in labor relations resulting from introduction of financial speculation, cutting edge technologies, and differential access to digital and older cultural forms have placed real demands on Africans and Africanists working in philosophy. This volume explores the ways in which African philosophies express "transitional acts," those acts by which thought interacts with history as it is being made and by which it assures its own renewal in proposing provisional solutions to historical problems. A transitional act combines both the audacity of confrontation and the novelty of creation, prudence in the face of risks and anticipation in the face of the unexpected. Influential and emerging thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic consider this dual activity in the realm of criticism and imagination, public spaces in Africa, and the relationship between historical politics and historical poetics.

The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. * Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism * Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies * Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. * Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech

This step-by-step guide to making soul contact and awakening your heart centers was given to Sanaya Roman by Orin, a wise and gentle spirit teacher. As you read, you will be taking a wonderful journey of adventure and growth. You will prepare your personality, journey to the soul plane, and receive energy from the Enlightened Ones as you meet and blend with your soul. You will learn how to make your soul a part of your daily life, tapping into its strength, light, love, and other powers to assist you with daily living. You will culminate your journey by creating wheels of love to transform your relationships with friends, family, colleagues, and groups you are a part of. You will join in a call to the Great Ones, to ask for love to be sent to awaken the heart centers of humanity, volunteering, if you choose, to become a shining light for others. You will experience the power of love, the most powerful energy in the universe.

A collection of essays on Scottish witchcraft and witch-hunting, which covers the whole period of the Scottish witch-hunt, from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. Includes studies of particular witchcraft panics such as a reassessment of the role of King James VI. Covers a wide range of topics concerned with Scottish witch-hunting and places it in the context of other topics such as gender relations, folklore, magic and healing, and moral regulation by the church and state. Provides a comparative dimension of witch-hunting beyond Scotland - one on the global context, and one comparing Scotland with England. It is a showcase for the latest thinking on the subject and will be of interest to all scholars studying witchcraft in early modern Europe, as well as the general reader wanting to move beyond shallow and sensational accounts of a subject of compelling in. -- .

Austrian philosopher, playwright, and artist Rudolf Steiner (1861 1925) is perhaps best known as an educational philosopher and reformer, the founder of Steiner (or Waldorf) schools located around the world. These schools' philosophy represents the priorities Steiner discusses in Theosophy: the development of body, soul, and spirit. Goethe was an important influence on Steiner, and he edited the poet's scientific works (1889 1896). Steiner was an active member and leader of the German branch of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, eventually broke away from theosophy, as he developed his own spiritual philosophy termed 'anthroposophy'; this philosophical movement asserted the potential of realizing a spiritual reality through cognition. This 1910 translation by Elizabeth Douglas Shields is of the book's third German edition; it was first published in 1904. This work will be of particular interest to historians of philosophy, of spiritual movements and of education.

A comparative analysis of both secular and religious communal groups in contemporary America, this study, originally published in 1978, shows that contemporary communalists stand in relation to collectivism much the same as early Protestants stood in relation to individualism - as the self-proclaimed pioneers of the new age. There is great diversity among communal groups, a diversity which is found to stem from alternative orientations towards time and alternative assumptions about the cognitive status of the social world. The author has made use of a phenomenologically derived typological framework to organize the data he has obtained through living in and visiting a number of communal groups. Within this framework, Alfred Schutz's 'mundane' phenomenology and Max Weber's interpretive sociology are employed as ways of approaching the situated sociology of knowledge in various communal groups. Six ideal types of communal groups are described: the commune, the intentional association, the community, the warring sect, the other-worldly sect and the ecstatic association. Two of these types - the intentional association and the community - are identified as participants' efforts to demonstrate 'worldly utopian' models for the reconstruction of society at large.

Global Justice and Our Epochal Mind explores the mind of our epoch, defined as the period since the Nuremberg Trial and the establishment of the United Nations in 1945. Xunwu Chen examines four defining ideas of this epoch-global justice, cosmopolitanism, crimes against humanity, and cultural toleration-as well as the structural relationships among these ideas. Chen argues that the mind of our epoch is essentially the mind of humanity. Its world view, horizon, standpoint, norms, standards, and vocabularies are of humanity, by humanity, and for humanity, and all are embodied in human institutions and practices throughout the globe. Meanwhile, our epochal mind has a dialectical relationship with particular cultures bearing normative force. As a metaphysical subjectivity and substance, humanity is the source of all human values in our epoch and defines what can and should be human values and virtues. Humankind, therefore, are a people with socio-political and legal sovereignty, sharing a common fate. This novel study brings a cross-cultural approach and will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, sociology, and the humanities more broadly.

Partiality and Impartiality in African Philosophy fills the lacuna in African philosophy literature on the inherent tension between requirements of partiality (favoritism) and impartiality (equality). Motsamai Molefe deploys two strategies to philosophically resolve the tension between partiality and impartiality. The first strategy involves applying the moral theories of Kwasi Wiredu, Thaddeus Metz, and Kwame Gyekye to the problem. Finding their views useful in some ways and seriously limited in others, Molefe turns to the second strategy in which he invokes the salient normative concept of personhood in African cultures. Molefe argues that the concept of personhood adjoins theories of human dignity and moral perfection (virtue). The major insight that emerges is a robust ethical theory qua personhood that accommodates both partiality and impartiality. He grounds requirements of impartiality on human dignity, which operates largely as a macro-ethical concept that normatively informs the character of our social institutions (politics). Politics is characterized by fairness, equality, and impartiality. Partiality (the agent-and-other-centred forms of it) is directly connected with the agent's chief moral duty to achieve her own virtue (moral perfection), which operates as a micro-ethical concept. These two kinds of moral partialism, self-favoritism and close ties such as family, are justified by appeal to the project's view, instead of the individuals-and-relationships view typically invoked to justify moral partiality in the literature.

Craft your own magic with this comprehensive guide to creating, customizing, and casting unique spells, charms, and potions. Make your own magic! Spellcrafting is a step-by-step guide to writing your own spells and timing them for the best effect. As a spellcrafter, you may know how to create spells but you're ready to learn more. From different types of spells to the intentions and powers of different ingredients, you will have everything you need to create unique magic that works best for you. Spellcrafting goes beyond basic spell books to explore how and why your magic works, what you can do to improve and strengthen it, and how to troubleshoot when things don't go as planned. Now you can take your magic into your own hands and create a completely personalized spell for wherever life may take you.

Noted historian John Chasteen traces the global history of marijuana, exploring its rich heritage with captivating insight. Among the first domesticated plants, Surprisingly, though, only infrequently has it been used as a recreational drug. Instead, there is a vibrant spiritual dimension to its long history that has been continually ignored.

Noted historian John Chasteen traces the global history of marijuana, exploring its rich heritage with captivating insight. Among the first domesticated plants, Surprisingly, though, only infrequently has it been used as a recreational drug. Instead, there is a vibrant spiritual dimension to its long history that has been continually ignored.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the 'decline of religion' and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the 'rise of non-religion' itself. While the label of 'post-communism' might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.

Prudentius' Crown of Martyrs offers an English translation, with introduction and commentary, of the Liber Peristephanon, Prudentius' vivid collection of lyric hymns in honor of Christian martyrs. To render Prudentius' metrically varied lines for twenty-first-century readers, Len Krisak relies on the inherent iambic nature of English. The introduction offers insight into social, political, and literary features of the fourth century, the life of Prudentius, the poet's other works, his Latinity and mastery of ancient meters, and the manuscript tradition and the reception of Prudentius in the Middle Ages and beyond. Given Prudentius' central place in the history of Latin poetry, this translation is a welcome resource for general readers interested in Western literary history. It will also find a home with scholarly audiences working on Late Antique and Early Christian literature and culture, in a wide variety of college classrooms and in academic libraries.

Best known as the Saducismus triumphatus (1681), Joseph Glanvill's book on witchcraft is among the most frequently published from the seventeenth century, and its arguments for the reality of diabolic witchcraft elicited passionate responses from critics and supporters alike. Davies untangles the intricate development of this text and explores how Glanvill's roles as theologian, philosopher and advocate for the Royal Society of London converge in its pages. Glanvill's broader philosophical method and unique approach to the supernatural provide a case study that enables the exploration of the interaction between the rise of experimental science and changing attitudes to witchcraft.

This book argues that moral theology has yet to embrace the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council concerning the ways in which it is to be renewed. One of the reasons for this is the lack of consensus between theologians regarding the nature, content and uniqueness of Christian morality. After highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the so-called autonomy and faith ethic schools of thought, Mealey argues that there is little dividing them and that, in some instances, both schools are simply defending one aspect of a hermeneutical dialectic. In an attempt to move away from the divisions between proponents of the faith-ethic and autonomy positions, Mealey enlists the help of the hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricoeur. She argues that many of the disagreements arising from the Christian proprium debate can be overcome if scholars look to the possibilities opened up by Ricoeur's hermeneutics of interpretation. Mealey also argues that the uniqueness of Christian morality is more adequately explained in terms of a specific identity (self) that is constantly subject to change and revision in light of many, often conflicting, moral sources. She advocates a move away from attempts to explain the uniqueness of Christian morality in terms of one specific, unchanging context, motivation, norm, divine command or value. By embracing the possibilities opened up by Ricoeurian hermeneutics, Mealey explains how concepts such as revelation, tradition, orthodoxy and moral conscience may be understood in a hermeneutical way without being deemed sectarian or unorthodox.

Taking the long view of conflicts between truth and political powerWhat role does truth play in government? In context of recent political discourse around the globe and especially in the United States it is easy to believe that truth, in the form of indisputable facts, is a matter of debate. But it's also important to remember that since ancient times, every religious and philosophical tradition has wrestled with this question. In this volume, scholars representing ten traditions Western and Eastern, religious and secular address the nature of truth and its role in government. Among the questions they address: When is deception permissible, or even a good thing? What remedies are necessary and useful when governments fail in their responsibilities to be truthful? The authors consider the relationship between truth and governance in democracies, but also in non-democratic regimes. Although democracy is distinctive in requiring truth as a fundamental basis for governing, non-democratic forms of government also cannot do without truth entirely. If ministers cannot give candid advice to rulers, the government's policies are likely to proceed on false premises and therefore fail. If rulers do not speak truthfully to their people, trust will erode. Each author in this book addresses a common set of issues: the nature of truth; the morality of truth-telling; the nature of government, which shapes each tradition's understanding of the relationship between governance and truth; the legitimacy and limits of regulating speech; and remedies when truth becomes divorced from governance. Truth and Governance will open readers' eyes to the variety of possible approaches to the relationship between truth and governance. Readers will find views they thought self-evident challenged and will come away with a greater understanding of the importance of truth and truth-telling, and of how to counter deliberate deception.

In this book, former Yeshiva student turned secularist Bruce Ledewitz proposes a Reformation in secular thinking. He shows that in opposition to today's aggressive Atheism, religious sources are necessary if secularism is to promote fulfilling human relationships and peaceful international relations. Amid signs that secularism is growing in unhealthy ways, Ledewitz proposes a new secular way to live, in which elements of religion, humanism, and materialism are combined to create something at once quite old and startlingly new.

http: //www.hallowedsecularism.org/

The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts analyzes a large corpus of early Christian texts and Pseudepigraphic materials to understand how the authors of these texts used, abused and silenced enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions. The focus is on excavating the texts "from below" or "against the grain" in order to notice the slaves, and in so doing, to problematize and (re)imagine the narratives. Noticing the slaves as literary iterations means paying attention to broader theological, ideological, and rhetorical aims of the texts within which enslaved bodies are constructed. The analysis demonstrates that by silencing slaves and using a rhetoric of violence, the authors of these texts contributed to the construction of myths in which slaves functioned as a useful trope to support the combined power of religion and empire. Thus was created not only the perfect template for the rise and development of a Christian discourse of slavery, but also a rationale for subsequent violence exercised against slave bodies within the Christian Empire. The study demonstrates the value of using the tools and applying the insights of subaltern studies to the study of the Pseudepigrapha and in early Christian texts. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars of early Christianity, but also to those working on the history of slavery and subaltern studies in antiquity.