This book explores three schools of fascinating, talented, and gifted scholars whose philosophies assimilated the Jewish and secular cultures of their respective homelands: they include halakhists from Rabbi Ettlinger to Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz; Jewish philosophers from Isaac Bernays to Yeshayau Leibowitz; and biblical commentators such as Samuel David Luzzatto and Rabbi Umberto Cassuto.Running like a thread through their philosophies is the attempt to reconcile the Jewish belief in revelation with Western culture, Western philosophy, and the conclusions of scientific research. Among these attempts is Luzzatto's "dual truth" approach. The Dual Truth is the sequel to the Ephraim Chamiel's previous book The Middle Way, which focused on the challenges faced by members of the "Middle Trend" in nineteenth-century Jewish thought.

Mit dem amerikanischen Transzendentalismus entwickelt sich zwischen 1830 und 1860 die erste eigenstandige Philosophietradition der Vereinigten Staaten. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller und andere wenden sich kritisch gegen jede Form von historischer oder erkenntnistheoretischer Autoritat und verfechten eine Philosophie, die von einem Vertrauen auf die naturliche Einsichtsfahigkeit des Menschen getragen wird. UEberzeugungen und Theorien, so die Grundintuition des Transzendentalismus, mussen sich in der individuellen Lebenspraxis, die immer auch soziale Lebenspraxis ist, bewahren, ohne uberzeitliche Geltung beanspruchen zu koennen. Damit bereiten die Transzendentalisten den Boden fur den klassischen Pragmatismus und vermessen die Grundlagen von Politik, Ethik und Padagogik neu.

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.

This book in two volumes is devoted to examining the first encounter between traditional Judaism and modern European culture, and the first thinkers who sought to combine the Torah with science, revelation with reason, prophecy with philosophy, Jewish ethics with European culture, worldliness with sanctity, and universalism with the particular redemption of the Jews. These religious thinkers of the nineteenth century struggled with challenges of the modern age that continue to confront the modern Jews to this day. This objective work of scholarship, neither simplistic and isolationist nor destructive and arrogant, will be of interest to the modern thinker and to scholars of the history of religions. It is relevant to comparative study between Judaism and the various denominations of Christianity and other faiths that seek to find a middle way between their traditions and modernity.

"An admirable and impressive work of synthesis that will give insight and satisfaction to thousands of lay readers."
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
In this stunningly intelligent book, Karen Armstrong, one of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical philsophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Karen Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one superbly readable volume, destined to take its place as a classic.

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.

Vatican II opened new pathways to engagement with societies shaped by modernity. Its project could be read as an attempt to interpret the stance of the church in relation to the whole project of modernity. The fundamental presumption of this collection of essays is that it is timely, indeed imperative, to keep alive the question of the church's self-understanding in its journey alongside "the complex, often rebellious, always restless mind of the modern world." Cornelius J. Casey and Fainche Ryan have assembled some of the most prominent commentators on ecclesiastical and social-political engagements from the fields of theology, political philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism. The contributors present differing perspectives on the role of the church. Some argue that pluralism is here to stay. Others point out that the liberal pluralism of contemporary society is aggressively powered by global corporate consumerism. This book, with its variety of voices, explores these issues largely from within the Catholic tradition. The role of the church in a pluralist society is a narrative that is being written by many people at many different levels of the church. Contributors: J. Bryan Hehir, Terry Eagleton, Patrick J. Deneen, Hans Joas, William T. Cavanaugh, Massimo Faggioli, Fainche Ryan, Patrick Riordan, and Cornelius J. Casey

"We are surrounded by a world that talks, but we don't listen. We are part of a community engaged in a vast conversation, but we deny our role in it." In the face of climate change, species loss, and vast environmental destruction, the ability to stand in the flow of the great conversation of all creatures and the earth can feel utterly lost to the human race. But Belden C. Lane suggests that it can and must be recovered, not only for the sake of endangered species and the well-being of at-risk communities, but for the survival of the world itself. The Great Conversation is Lane's multi-faceted treatise on a spiritually centered environmentalism. At the core is a belief in the power of the natural world to act as teacher. In a series of personal anecdotes, Lane pairs his own experiences in the wild with the writings of saints and sages from a wide range of religious traditions. A night in a Missourian cave brings to mind the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola; the canyons of southern Utah elicit a response from the Chinese philosopher Laozi; 500,000 migrating sandhill cranes rest in Nebraska and evoke the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. With each chapter, the humility of spiritual masters through the ages melds with the author's encounters with natural teachers to offer guidance for entering once more into a conversation with the world.

In the human quest for orientation vis-a-vis personal life and comprehensive reality the worldviews of religionists and humanists offer different answers, and science also plays a crucial role. Yet it is the ordinary, embodied experience of meaningful engagement with reality in which all these cultural activities are rooted. Human beings have to relate themselves to the entirety of their lives to achieve orientation. This relation involves a non-methodical, meaningful experience that exhibits the crucial features for understanding worldviews: it comprises cognition, volition, and emotion, is embodied, action-oriented, and expressive. From this starting-point, religious and secular worldviews articulate what is experienced as ultimately meaningful. Yet the plurality and one-sidedness of these life stances necessitates critical engagement for which philosophy provides indispensable means. In the end, some worldviews can be ruled out, but we are still left with a plurality of genuine options for orientation.

In this volume, Mordechai Z. Cohen explores the interpretive methods of Rashi of Troyes (1040-1105), the most influential Jewish Bible commentator of all time. By elucidating the 'plain sense' (peshat) of Scripture, together with critically selected midrashic interpretations, Rashi created an approach that was revolutionary in the talmudically-oriented Ashkenazic milieu. Cohen contextualizes Rashi's commentaries by examining influences from other centers of Jewish learning in Muslim Spain and Byzantine lands. He also opens new scholarly paths by comparing Rashi's methods with trends in Latin learning reflected in the Psalms commentary of his older contemporary, Saint Bruno the Carthusian (1030-1101). Drawing upon the Latin tradition of enarratio poetarum ('interpreting the poets'), Bruno applied a grammatical interpretive method and incorporated patristic commentary selectively, a parallel that Cohen uses to illuminate Rashi's exegetical values. Cohen thereby brings to light the novel literary conceptions manifested by Rashi and his key students, Josef Qara and Rashbam.

The Nun in the Synagogue documents the religious and cultural phenomenon of Judeocentric Catholicism that arose in the wake of the Holocaust, fueled by survivors who converted to Catholicism and immigrated to Israel as well as by Catholics determined to address the anti-Judaism inherent in the Church. Through an ethnographic study of selected nuns and monks, Emma O'Donnell Polyakov explores how this Judeocentric Catholic phenomenon began and continues to take shape in Israel. This book is a case study in Catholic perceptions of Jews, Judaism, and the state of Israel during a time of rapidly changing theological and cultural contexts. In it, Polyakov listens to and analyzes the stories of individuals living on the border between Christian and Jewish identity-including Jewish converts to Catholicism who continue to harbor a strong sense of Jewish identity and philosemitic Catholics who attend synagogue services every Shabbat. Polyakov traces the societal, theological, and personal influences that have given rise to this phenomenon and presents a balanced analysis that addresses the hermeneutical problems of interpreting Jews through Christian frameworks. Ultimately, she argues that, despite its problems, this movement signals a pluralistic evolution of Catholic understandings of Judaism and may prove to be a harbinger of future directions in Jewish-Christian relations. Highly original and methodologically sophisticated, The Nun in the Synagogue is a captivating exploration of biographical narratives and reflections on faith, conversion, Holocaust trauma, Zionism, and religious identity that lays the groundwork for future research in the field.

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.

In dieser Studie werden die umfassenden Veranderungen im Leben der Moenchsgemeinschaft auf dem Heiligen Berg Athos analysiert. Ein Fokus liegt dabei auf den Modernisierungsprozessen, die seit der Eintragung des Heiligen Berges Athos in die UNESCO-Welterbeliste im Jahr 1988 erfolgten. Zu diesen Prozessen gehoeren sowohl die Einfuhrung von technischen Neuerungen wie Strom, Autos und Computer als auch die Intensivierung der politischen Kontakte und der demographische Wandel. Das Material fur diese Untersuchung wurde im Laufe von Forschungsaufenthalten in zahlreichen Interviews mit den Moenchen auf dem Berg Athos gesammelt. Die Studie wirft daher einen einzigartigen Blick auf das gegenwartige Moenchsleben auf dem Athos.

The African AIDS epidemic has sparked fierce debate over the role of religion. Some scholars and activists argue that religion is contributing to the spread of HIV and to the stigmatization of people living with AIDS. Others claim that religion reduces the spread of HIV and promotes care and support for the sick and their survivors.
Religion and AIDS in Africa offers the first comprehensive empirical account of the impact of religion on the AIDS epidemic. Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb draw upon extensive fieldwork in Malawi, including hundreds of interviews with religious leaders and lay people, and survey data from more than 30 other sub-Saharan African countries. Their research confirms the importance of religious narratives and institutions in everything related to AIDS in Africa. Among other key findings, Trinitapoli and Weinreb show that a combination of religious and biomedical approaches to prevention reduces risk most effectively; that a significant minority of religious leaders encourage condom use; that Christian congregations in particular play a crucial role in easing suffering among the sick and their dependents; and that religious spaces in general are vital for disseminating information and developing new strategies for HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation.
For anyone wishing to move beyond the rhetoric and ideology that plague debates about one of the most challenging crises of our time, Religion and AIDS in Africa is the authoritative account. It will change the way readers think about religious life and about AIDS in the region.

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.

In this third volume of his acclaimed chronicle of faith in twentieth-century America, Martin E. Marty presents the first authoritative account of American religious culture from the entry of the United States into World War II through the Eisenhower years.
"Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960" is the first book to systematically address religion and the roles it played in shaping the social and political life of mid-century America. A work of exceptional clarity and historical depth, it will interest general readers as well as historians of American and church history.
"The series will become a standard account of the nation's variegated religious culture during the current century. The four volumes, the fruition of decades of research, may rank as much honored Marty's most significant contribution to U.S. studies."--Richard N. Ostling, "Time"
"When America needs some advice or commentary on the state of modern theology, the person it turns to is Martin Marty."--"Publishers Weekly"

What are we to make of the Latina schoolteacher who considers herself a good Catholic, rarely attends Mass, but meditates daily at her home altar (where she mixes images of the Virgin of Guadalupe with those of Frida Kahlo, and traditional votive candles with healing crystals), yet feels particularly spiritual while preparing food for religious celebrations in her neighborhood? Diverse religious practices such as these have long baffled scholars of contemporary religion, whose research started with the assumption that Individuals commit, or refuse to commit, to an entire institutionally-defined package of beliefs and practices. Social surveys typically ask respondents to self-identify by denominational or other broad religious categories. Sociologists attempt to measure religiosity according to how well individuals conform to the official religious standards, such as frequency of church attendance, scripture-reading, or prayer. In this book Meredith McGuire points the way forward toward a new way of understanding and studying religious behavior. Rather than try to fit people into prearranged packages, she argues, scholars must begin to study religion as it is actually lived and experienced in peoples' everyday lives. Drawing on her own extensive fieldwork, as well as recent work by other scholars, McGuire explores the many ways that people express themselves spiritually and shows that they rarely fit neatly into the categories we've developed. Challenging those who see declining church attendance as the death of religion in the Western world, McGuire demonstrates that religion is as widespread, potent, and vital as ever, if you know where to look.

Plant life has figured prominently in Indian culture. Archaeobotanical findings and Vedic texts confirm that plants have been central not only as a commodity (sources of food; materia medica; sacrificial matter; etc.) but also as powerful and enduring symbols. Roots of Wisdom, Branches of Devotion. Plant Life in South Asian Traditions explores how herbs, trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables have been studied, classified, represented and discussed in a variety of Indian traditions such as Vedism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, indigenous cultures and Islam. Moving from an analysis of the sentience of plants in early Indian philosophies and scientific literature, the various chapters, divided in four thematic sections, explore Indian flora within devotional and mystic literature (bhakti and Sufism), mythological, ritual and sacrificial culture, folklore, medicine, perfumery, botany, floriculture and agriculture. Arboreal and floral motifs are also discussed as an expression of Indian aesthetics since early coinage to figurative arts and literary figures.Finally, the volume reflects current discourses on environmentalism and ecology as well as on the place of indigenous flora as part of an ancient yet still very much alive sacred geography.

After offering a brief overview of the role of faith within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, an interdisciplinary analysis of faith, belief, belief systems and the act of believing is undertaken. The debate over the nature of doctrine between George Lindbeck and Alister McGrath brings into focus four ways in which beliefs can be employed: expressive, interpretative, formative and referential/relational. An analysis of monotheistic belief ensues which demonstrates how it can function meaningfully in each of these modes, including the last, where insights from phenomenology and relational ontology, as well as philosophical theology, favour a participatory approach in which God is encountered not as an object of investigation, but as that transcendent Other whose worship is the fulfilment of human being. The study concludes by highlighting convergences between the nature of faith presented in the initial scriptural overview and that developed throughout the rest of the study.

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjold, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with Soren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.
The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the trail offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love.
Backpacking with the Saints is an enchanting exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing--an ecology of the soul."

Ein einzigartiges mehrbandiges Nachschlagewerk zur Religionsphilosophie mit massgeblichen Angaben zu allen wesentlichen Konzepten, Persoenlichkeiten und Stroemungen In voellig neuem Umfang und besonderer Detailtiefe vermittelt die Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion ein ausgewogenes Verstandnis des philosophischen Gedankenguts uber das Wesen des Buddhismus, Christentums, Hinduismus, Islams, Judentums und anderer religioeser Traditionen in aller Welt. In vier umfangreichen Banden enthalt das wegweisende Referenzwerk Hunderte von speziell ausgearbeiteten Beitragen zu den wichtigsten Themen, Denkern, Arbeiten und Konzepten in diesem Bereich. Die Enzyklopadie beschaftigt sich in alphabetischer Reihenfolge mit einer unubertroffenen Bandbreite an historischen und aktuellen Themen, in denen zahlreiche unterschiedliche theoretische und kulturelle Perspektiven zum Ausdruck kommen. Die Eintrage spiegeln eine aussergewoehnliche Vielfalt an Themen wider, von Thomas von Aquin und Kierkegaard uber teleologische und ontologische Argumente bis zur Erkenntnistheorie und Religionspsychologie u. v. m. Jeder der von Fachleuten gepruften Beitrage wurde von einem anerkannten Experten zum jeweiligen Thema verfasst und enthalt eine Kurzbibliographie, Hinweise auf weiterfuhrende Literatur und zahlreiche Querverweise. Das wertvolle Nachschlagewerk richtet sich sowohl an Fachleute als auch an Laien und bietet: + Eine ausgewogene Darstellung der abrahamitischen Religionen sowie verschiedener Traditionen aus Asien, Afrika und anderen geografischen Regionen + UEber 450 Beitrage, die von einem redaktionellen Beirat aus weltweit anerkannten Wissenschaftlern sorgfaltig gepruft wurden + Eine Betrachtung von Themen in verschiedenen historischen Kontexten, zum Beispiel die Beitrage des Judentums und des Islams zur mittelalterlichen Philosophie + Eine Diskussion der aktuellen Entwicklungen und neuen Ansatze beim Studium der Religionsphilosophie + Eine Analyse wichtiger Theorien und Konzepte, darunter von Themen wie freier Wille, Busse, moralische Argumentation, Naturgesetz, Prozesstheologie, Evolutionstheorie und Theismus + Eine durchsuchbare Online-Ausgabe mit samtlichen Querverweisen Als erstes Werk dieser Art ist die Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion ein unverzichtbares Nachschlagewerk fur Wissenschaftler und Studierende der hoeheren Semester in den Fachbereichen Philosophie, Theologie, Religionswissenschaft sowie der entsprechenden Fachbereiche der Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften an weltlichen Universitaten sowie theologischen Hochschulen und Seminaren.

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.