This book demonstrates the close link between medicine and Buddhism in early and medieval Japan. It may seem difficult to think of Japanese Buddhism as being linked to the realm of medical practices since religious healing is usually thought to be restricted to prayers for divine intervention. There is a surprising lack of scholarship regarding medicinal practices in Japanese Buddhism although an overwhelming amount of primary sources proves otherwise. A careful re-reading of well-known materials from a study-of-religions perspective, together with in some cases a first-time exploration of manuscripts and prints, opens new views on an understudied field. The book presents a topical survey and comprises chapters on treating sight-related diseases, women's health, plant-based materica medica and medicinal gardens, and finally horse medicine to include veterinary knowledge. Terminological problems faced in working on this material - such as 'religious' or 'magical healing' as opposed to 'secular medicine' - are assessed. The book suggests focusing more on the plural nature of the Japanese healing system as encountered in the primary sources and reconsidering the use of categories from the European intellectual tradition.

In this extensively illustrated volume, Joseph Campbell explores the feminine divine. He traces its blossoming from one great goddess to the many goddesses of the mythic imagination by weaving together Marija Gimbutas' studies of neolithic old Europe, the Greek Eleusinian mystery cult, Arthurian legends of the Middle Ages, and the neoplatonic renaissance.

Rationalism is a cornerstone of the modern Occident s conception of itself. However, as shown by the post-colonial reading of the term found in Max Weber s comparative studies of religion, the concept of rationalism is also an instrument for hierarchization and essentialization. Rationalism is by no means the privilege of modern Western civilization, as shown by this study on the theological history of Ismailism. The study s decolonized perspective furnishes a new approach for the historical comparison of religions."

The central Christian belief in salvation through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ remains one of the most intractable mysteries of Christian faith. Throughout history, it has given rise to various theories of atonement, many of which have been subject to critique as they no longer speak to contemporary notions of evil and sin or to current conceptions of justice. One of the important challenges for contemporary Christian theology thus involves exploring new ways of understanding the salvific meaning of the cross. In Atonement and Comparative Theology, Christian theologians with expertise in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and African Religions reflect on how engagement with these traditions sheds new light on the Christian understanding of atonement by pointing to analogous structures of sin and salvation, drawing attention to the scandal of the cross as seen by the religious other, and re-interpreting aspects of the Christian understanding of atonement. Together, they illustrate the possibilities for comparative theology to deepen and enrich Christian theological reflection.

This book makes a valuable contribution to the fascinating global debate on the meaning and scope of freedom of religion or belief and the relations between state, society and religion. It offers a cross-thematic approach to law and religion from the Global South. Law and religion have been consolidated to form a specific area of study in recent years. However, due to language barriers, most of the regional and national debates within Latin America have not been accessible to interested audiences from other parts of the world. Despite the specificities of the Latin American context, the issues, arrangements and processes that have been negotiated and developed in this part of the Global South make a valuable contribution to addressing the challenges that have arisen in other regions. The book analyses the intersections and interactions between religion and other far-reaching subjects such as politics and democracy, traditional cultures, national and ethnic groups, majorities and minorities, public education, management of diversity, intolerance and violence, as well as secularism and equality. The collection of essays is of interest not only to legal scholars and practitioners, but also to sociologists, political scientists and theologians, as well as to policymakers and civil society organizations.

Demonstrates how race and power help to explain American religion in the twenty-first century When White people of faith act in a particular way, their motivations are almost always attributed to their religious orientation. Yet when religious people of color act in a particular way, their motivations are usually attributed to their racial positioning. Religion Is Raced makes the case that religion in America has generally been understood in ways that center White Christian experiences of religion, and argues that all religion must be acknowledged as a raced phenomenon. When we overlook the role race plays in religious belief and action, and how religion in turn spurs public and political action, we lose sight of a key way in which race influences religiously-based claims-making in the public sphere. With contributions exploring a variety of religious traditions, from Buddhism and Islam to Judaism and Protestantism, as well as pieces on atheists and humanists, Religion Is Raced brings discussions about the racialized nature of religion from the margins of scholarly and religious debate to the center. The volume offers a new model for thinking about religion that emphasizes how racial dynamics interact with religious identity, and how we can in turn better understand the roles religion-and Whiteness-play in politics and public life, especially in the United States. It includes clear recommendations for researchers, including pollsters, on how to better recognize moving forward that religion is a raced phenomenon. With contributions by Joseph O. Baker, Kelsy Burke, James Clark Davidson, Janine Giordano Drake, Ashley Garner, Edward Orozco Flores, Sikivu Hutchinson, Sarah Imhoff, Russell Jeung, John Jimenez, Jaime Kucinskas, Eric Mar, Gerardo Marti, Omar M. McRoberts, Besheer Mohamed, Dawne Moon, Jerry Z. Park, Z. Fareen Parvez, Theresa W. Tobin, and Rhys H. Williams.

Jacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and contested pilgrimage placesGround Zero and Devils Tower in the United States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraqhe poses a number of crucial questions. What and who has made these sites important, and why? How are they shared, and how and why are they contested? What is at stake in their contestation? How are the particular identities of place and space established? How are individual and collective identity intertwined with space and place? Challenging long-accepted, clean divisions of the religious world, Kinnard explores specific instances of the vibrant messiness of religious practice, the multivocality of religious objects, the fluid and hybrid dynamics of religious places, and the shifting and tangled identities of religious actors. He contends that sacred space is a constructed idea: places are not sacred in and of themselves, but are sacred because we make them sacred. As such, they are in perpetual motion, transforming themselves from moment to moment and generation to generation. Places in Motion moves comfortably across and between a variety of historical and cultural settings as well as academic disciplines, providing a deft and sensitive approach to the topic of sacred places, with awareness of political, economic, and social realities as these exist in relation to questions of identity. It is a lively and much needed critical advance in analytical reflections on sacred space and pilgrimage.

In Hell and Damnation , bestselling author Marq de Villiers takes readers on a journey into the strange richness of the human imaginings of hell, deep into time and across many faiths, back into early Egypt and the 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. This urbane, funny, and deeply researched guide ventures well beyond the Nine Circles of Dante's Hell and the many medieval Christian visions into the hellish descriptions in Islam, Buddhism, Jewish legend, Japanese traditions, and more.

The Book of Certitude, by BahC!'u'llC!h, author of the BahC!'C- Revelation, is arguably one of the most important scriptural works in all of religious history. In it Baha'u'llah explains the underlying unity of the world's religions, describes the universality of the revelations humankind has received from the Prophets of God, explains their fundamental teachings, and elucidates allegorical passages from the New Testament and the Qur'C!n that have given rise to misunderstandings among religious leaders, practitioners, and the public. Written in the span of two days and two nights, The Book of Certitude is, in the words of its translator, Shoghi Effendi, "the most important book written on the spiritual significance" of the BahC!'C- Faith.

Il profeta islamico Maometto diede avvio a un programma teologico in forma teocratica. Poiche il Corano, in molti modi, si rivolge ai cristiani e agli ebrei e li invita a fare dichiarazioni, una risposta propriamente teologica e legittima e necessaria. Tenendo conto delle attuali ricerche scientifiche sull'Islam, questo libro tratta le fonti del Corano, le fondamentali caratteristiche del suo rapporto con l'ebraismo e la sua percezione di Gesu. Cio conduce ad una valutazione realistica dell'Islam e ad impulsi per una rinnovata autocomprensione cristiana. Il quarto capitolo presenta le affermazioni largamente sconosciute del filosofo ebreo Franz Rosenzweig e del teologo Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI sull'Islam che sono un aiuto decisivo per l'orientamento al di la della sottomissione.

The Buddha and Aristotle offer competing visions of the best possible life to which human beings can aspire. In this volume, Seth Zuiho Segall compares Theravada and Mahayana accounts of enlightenment with Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of eudaimonia, and proposes a syncretic model of eudaimonic enlightenment that, given prevalent Western beliefs about well-being and human flourishing, provides a credible new end-goal for modern Western Buddhist practice. He then demonstrates how this proposed synthesis is already deeply reflected in contemporary Western Buddhist rhetoric. Segall re-evaluates traditional Buddhist teachings on desire, attachment, aversion, nirvana, and selfhood from the eudaimonic enlightenment perspective, and explores the perspective's ethical and metaphysical implications.

This book presents personal narratives and collective ethnography of the emergence and development of Asian and Asian American women’s scholarship in theology and religious studies. It demonstrates how the authors’ religious scholarship is based on an embodied epistemology influenced by their social locations. Contributors reflect on their understanding of their identity and how this changed over time, the contribution of Asian and Asian American women to the scholarship work that they do, and their hopes for the future of their fields of study. The volume is multireligious and intergenerational, and is divided into four parts: identities and intellectual journeys, expanding knowledge, integrating knowledge and practice, and dialogue across generations.

Learning Love from a Tiger explores the vibrancy and variety of humans' sacred encounters with the natural world, gathering a range of stories culled from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mayan, Himalayan, Buddhist, and Chinese shamanic traditions. Readers will delight in tales of house cats who teach monks how to meditate, shamans who shape-shift into jaguars, crickets who perform Catholic mass, rivers that grant salvation, and many others. In addition to being a collection of wonderful stories, this book introduces important concepts and approaches that underlie much recent work in environmental ethics, religion, and ecology. Daniel Capper's light touch prompts readers to engage their own views of humanity's place in the natural world and question longstanding assumptions of human superiority.

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept-that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal

Carl Clemen (1865-1940) nimmt in der Forschungsgeschichte der Religionswissenschaft einen besonderen Platz ein. Er war der Erste, der das Fach in Deutschland nicht an einer Theologischen, sondern an einer Philosophischen Fakultat vertreten hat. Dieses Buch zeichnet seinen Weg von der Theologie und der Beschaftigung mit den Religionen in der Umwelt des fruhen Christentums zu einer historisch-philologisch arbeitenden Religionswissenschaft nach. Vor dem Hintergrund der internationalen Fachgeschichte stellt der Autor seine Beitrage sowohl zur Erforschung einzelner Religionen als auch zur Klarung systematischer Fragestellungen vor. Abschliessend verfolgt er seine Tatigkeit nach der altersbedingten Emeritierung im Jahr 1933, die ihn als einen konsequenten Gegner des Nationalsozialismus ausweist.

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept-that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal

Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders, Islam and Turks in Belgium examines the interdependence between Muslim community and association. With a focus on social groups, religious structures and circles within Turkish populations, this book demonstrates how communal and associative movements operate through a combination of relationships of proximity and distance. Proximity is a way in which Muslim organisations establish religious, social, and cultural ties with communities. Distance, on the other hand, takes into account social, historical, and political elements from abroad, and refers to the relationship with the Muslim world more broadly. As this reciprocal web of relations gives rise to Islamic mobilisations, it leads to the emergence or persistence of different figures of authority within associations and communities who articulate traditional, charismatic, and bureaucratic legitimacies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of religion, migration, race, ethnicity and Islamic studies.

Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84) was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in nineteenth-century Bengal. A religious leader and social reformer, his universalist interpretation of Hinduism found mass appeal in India, and generated considerable interest in Britain. His ideas on British imperial rule, religion and spirituality, global history, universalism and modernity were all influential, and his visit to England made him a celebrity. Many Britons regarded him as a prophet of world-historical significance. Keshab was the subject of extreme adulation and vehement criticism. Accounts tell of large crowds prostrating themselves before him, believing him to be an avatar. Yet he died with relatively few followers, his reputation in both India and Britain largely ruined. As a representative of India, Keshab became emblematic of broad concerns regarding Hinduism and Christianity, science and faith, India and the British Empire. This innovative study explores the transnational historical forces that shaped Keshab's life and work. It offers an alternative religious history of empire, characterised by intercultural dialogue and religious syncretism. A fascinating and often tragic portrait of Keshab's experience of the imperial world, and the ways in which he carried meaning for his contemporaries.

It's time to move past talk. It's no longer news to most of us that our society has a deep-seated racism problem. Christians of all ethnic and economic backgrounds are tired of seeing the ugly legacy of racism play out before their eyes and feeling ill-equipped to respond. They watch as friends and family members leave the visible church over this issue, or fall prey to a gospel of White nationalism that is an affront to the cross of Christ. Racism presents itself as an undefeatable foe-a sustained scourge on the reputation of the church. In Faithful Antiracism, Christina Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan take confidence from the truth that Christ has overcome the world, including racism, and offer clear analysis and interventions to challenge and resist its pernicious power. Drawing on brand-new research from the landmark Race, Religion, and Justice Project led by Michael Emerson and others, this book represents the most comprehensive study on Christians and race since Emerson's own book Divided by Faith (2001). It invites readers to put this data to immediate practical use, applying it to their own specific context. Compelled by our grievous social moment and by the timeless truth of Scripture, Faithful Antiracism will equip readers to move past talk and enter the fight against racism in both practical and hopeful ways.

From the "Psalms" in the Bible to the sacred rivers in Hinduism, the natural world has been integral to the world's religions. John Grim and Mary Tucker argue that today's growing environmental challenges make the relationship ever more vital. In this concise primer, they illustrate religion's role in sustaining people and the planet. The authors explore the history of religious traditions and the environment, illustrating how religious teachings and practices both promoted and at times subverted sustainability. Subsequent chapters examine the emergence of religious ecology, as views of nature changed in religious traditions and the ecological sciences. Yet the authors argue that religion and ecology are not the province of institutions or disciplines alone. They describe four fundamental aspects of religious life: orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. Readers then see how these phenomena are experienced in a Native American religion, Orthodox Christianity, Confucianism, and Hinduism. Ultimately, Grim and Tucker argue that the engagement of religious communities is necessary if humanity is to sustain itself and the planet. They recount exemplary stories of groups and individuals who are inspired by their religion to work towards a healthy community of life.

Seitdem John Hick durch seine pluralistische Position den Weg fur eine Annaherung der Religionen geschaffen hat, haben seine Werke viel Aufmerksamkeit von Anhangern und Kritikern erfahren. Dieses Werk setzt sich kritisch mit dem Lebenswerk Hicks auseinander, und vergleicht die Argumente fur seine Ansicht mit denen von Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Alvin Plantinga und Karl Rahner. Der Autor legt die Pramissen der vier Positionen offen, und macht deutlich, warum trotz aller berechtigten Kritik die pluralistische Position die plausibelste Antwort auf die Frage liefert, wieso es mehrere Religionen gibt, wenn laut dem NT (nur) Jesus Christus der Weg, die Wahrheit und das Leben ist.

This edited volume deploys digital ethnography in varied contexts to explore the cultural roles of mobile apps that focus on religious practice and communities, as well as those used for religious purposes (whether or not they were originally developed for that purpose). Combining analyses of local contexts with insights and methods from the global subfield of digital anthropology, the contributors here recognize the complex ways that in-app and on-ground worlds interact in a wide range of communities and traditions. While some of the case studies emphasize the cultural significance of use in local contexts and relationships to pre-existing knowledge networks and/or non-digital relationships of power, others explore the globalizing and democratizing influences of mobile apps as communication technologies. From Catholic confession apps to Jewish Kaddish assistance apps and Muslim halal food apps, readers will see how religious-themed mobile apps create complex sites for potential new forms of religious expression, worship, discussion, and practices.

In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism-among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.

The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University's The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision. This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.