This comprehensive collection brings out the rich and deep philosophical resources of the Zhuangzi. It covers textual, linguistic, hermeneutical, ethical, social/political and philosophical issues, with the latter including epistemological, metaphysical, phenomenological and cross-cultural (Chinese and Western) aspects. The volume starts out with the textual history of the Zhuangzi, and then examines how language is used in the text. It explores this unique characteristic of the Zhuangzi, in terms of its metaphorical forms, its use of humour in deriding and parodying the Confucians, and paradoxically making Confucius the spokesman for Zhuangzi's own point of view. The volume discusses questions such as: Why does Zhuangzi use language in this way, and how does it work? Why does he not use straightforward propositional language? Why is language said to be inadequate to capture the "dao" and what is the nature of this dao? The volume puts Zhuangzi in the philosophical context of his times, and discusses how he relates to other philosophers such as Laozi, Xunzi, and the Logicians.

This detailed study by Jutta Sperber shows how the magisterium of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and various parts of the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Iran have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogues. The mainly anthropological topics range from tolerance and human dignity, the position of women and children, media and education, to mission, resources and nationalism. They paint an interesting picture of the position of Man before God and the world in both Christianity and Islam.

This study takes a Christian perspective on the entire Bible, rather than simply the New Testament. David Wenkel asks: Why did Jesus have to be beaten before his death on the cross? Christian theology has largely focused on Jesus' death but has given relatively little attention to his sufferings. Wenkel's answer contextualizes Jesus' crucifixion sufferings as informed by the language of Proverbs. He explains that Jesus' sufferings demonstrate the wisdom of God's plan to provide a substitute for foolish sinners. Jesus was beaten as a fool - even though he was no fool, in order to fulfill God's loving plan of salvation. This analysis is then placed within the larger storyline of the whole bible - from the Garden of Eden to the story of Israel and beyond.

The essays create an interdisciplinary conversation about the nature and function of sacred and devotional objects across the globe during the medieval and Early Modern period. Topics include the veneration of relics of the Buddha, the cult of the saints in medieval and early modern Ireland, medieval surveys of pagan and Christian Rome.

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

This book is an exploration into the paradoxical structure of pluralistic thinking as illuminated by both Western and Eastern insights-especially Jainism. By calling into question the most fundamental assumptions of religious pluralists, the author hopes to contribute to a paradigm shift in discourse on religious pluralism and conflicting truth claims.

As an atheistic religious tradition, Buddhism conventionally stands in opposition to Christianity, and any bridge between them is considered to be riddled with contradictory beliefs on God the creator, salvific power and the afterlife. But what if a Buddhist could also be a Classical Theist? Showing how the various contradictions are not as fundamental as commonly thought, Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik Baldwin challenge existing assumptions and argue that Classical Theism is, in fact, compatible with Buddhism. They draw parallels between the metaphysical doctrines of both traditions, synthesize their ethical and soteriological commitments and demonstrate that the Theist can interpret the Buddhist’s religious experiences, specifically those of emptiness, as veridical, without denying any core doctrine of Classical Theism. By establishing that a synthesis of the two traditions is plausible, this book provides a bold, fresh perspective on the philosophy of religion and reinvigorates philosophical debates between Buddhism and Christianity.

This unique book is an essential resource for interdisciplinary research and scholarship on the phenomenon of feeling called to a life path or vocation at the interface of science and religion. According to Gallup polls, more than 40 percent of Americans report having had a profound religious experience or awakening that changed the direction of their life. What are the potential mental, spiritual, and even physical benefits of following the calling to take a particular path in life? This standout book addresses the full range of calling experiences, from the "A-ha!" moments of special insight, to pondering what one is meant to do in life, to intense spiritual experiences like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. Drawing upon the collective knowledge and insight of expert authors from Australia, China, Eastern Europe, Italy, the UK, and the United States, the work provides a comprehensive examination of the topic of callings suitable for collegiate students, professors, and professional scholars interested in topics at the interface of science and religion. It will also benefit general readers seeking the expertise of psychologists, neuroscientists, and theologians from various backgrounds and worldviews who explain why it is important to "do what you were meant to do." Offers religious, spiritual, scientific, and secular avenues of understanding experiences of calling Creates an opening for a new dialogue between psychology and spirituality Provides readers with sound, practical advice on how to find one's own calling or ideal direction in life in the modern world Includes contributions by well-known scholars and scientists such as Dr. Martin Seligman, who discovered learned helplessness and founded positive psychology; Dr. Andrew Newberg, who pioneered the neuroscience of spiritual experiences; and Dr. Ralph Hood, a renowned expert on mystical experiences

In Indigenous and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue, Allen G. Jorgenson asks what Christian theologians might learn from Indigenous spiritualties and worldviews. Jorgenson argues that theology in North America has been captive to colonial conceits and has lost sight of key resources in a post-Christendom context. The volume is especially concerned with the loss of a sense of place, evident in theologies written without attention to context. Using a comparative theology methodology, wherein more than one faith tradition is engaged in dialogical exploration, Jorgenson uses insights from Indigenous understandings of place to illumine forgotten or obstructed themes in Christianity. In this constructive theological project, "kairotic" places are named as those that are kenotic, harmonic, poetic and especially enlightening at the margins, where we meet the religious other.

This book features detailed analysis of an ancient secret scroll from the Middle East known as the Rivers Scroll or Diwan Nahrawatha, providing valuable insight into the Gnostic Mandaean religion. This important scroll offers a window of understanding into the Mandaean tradition, with its intricate worldview, ritual life, mysticism and esoteric qualities, as well as intriguing art. The text of the Rivers Scroll and its artistic symbolism have never before been properly analyzed and interpreted, and the significance of the document has been lost in scholarship. This study includes key segments translated into English for the first time and gives the scroll the worthy place it deserves in the history of the Mandaean tradition. It will be of interest to scholars of Gnosticism, religious studies, archaeology and Semitic languages.

Beyond the Threshold introduces readers to afterlife beliefs and experiences in world religions. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout, including a new chapter on afterlife beliefs and practices in selected African traditions, new research on the afterlife and near-death experiences, the addition of key words and definitions to each chapter, and more. Christopher M. Moreman offers an introduction to afterlife beliefs in ancient cultures, which are essential to understanding the roots of many modern ideas about death. He examines the folklore and doctrines of major world religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese religions, and several African traditions. He also discusses psychic phenomena across traditions, such as mediums, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and past-life memories. While ultimately the afterlife remains unknowable, the second edition of this unique, in-depth exploration of both beliefs and experiences can help readers reach their own understanding of the afterlife and how to live.

Drawn from over fifty-eight individual, in-depth, qualitative interviews with women of faith in Malaysia and Britain, Women of Faith and the Quest for Spiritual Authenticity is a multifaith, multicultural and cross-cultural comparative focus that explores women's religious expressions, as derived from practising Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans and Druids among others. Despite social advances towards women's emancipation and the lacerating critiques from feminist theologians across the Abrahamic religions and beyond, women's religious experiences remain submerged beneath the weight of patriarchal religious leadership and ongoing masculinised, dogmatic interpretations. Even feminism itself has yet to move the spiritual onto their main agenda of inequity in women's lives. This extensive, feminist research monograph challenges these exclusions to centre and amplify women's voices in speaking powerfully of their religious experiences, interpretations and practices. This is an ecumenical and entertaining ethnography where women's narratives and life stories ground faith as embodied, personal, painful, vibrant, diverse, illuminating and shared. This book will of interest not only to academics and students of the sociology of religion, feminist and gender studies, politics, ethnicity and Southeast Asian studies, but is equally accessible to the general reader broadly interested in faith and feminism.

Leading scholars use the lenses of history, sociology, political science, psychology, philosophy, religion, and literature to examine, disentangle, and remove the disguises of the many forms of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that have inhabited or targeted the English-speaking world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although in principle one can be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, authors document and trace the numerous parallels and continuities between the hoary tropes attached for centuries to the Jewish people and the more recent vilifications of the Jewish state. They evaluate-and discredit-many of the central claims anti-Zionists have promoted in their relentless effort to delegitimize the Jewish state. They show how mainstream anti-racist communities, courses and texts have ignored-or denied-the antisemitic hatred that pervades much of the Muslim world.

The impact of faith on modern society is without question. Religion is frequently at the centre of global issues and cultural conflict, and continues to provoke intense debate. It is more important than ever that we engage intelligently and respectfully with the thought and practices of those who follow the world's various faiths. This book examines the discipline of religious studies and clearly explains the origins, beliefs, sacred texts, customs and practices of eight religious traditions. Every chapter is written by a leading expert, all but one of whom are also members of the faith communities they write about. The information given is authoritative and balanced, but also provides the believer's perspective so that the reader may understand and appreciate people of different faiths. Glossaries at the end of each chapter provide clear and concise definitions of key terms. Questions throughout the book invite personal reflection from the reader and further reading lists point the way to additional study. A Guide to Religious Thought and Practices is ideal for those following an introductory course on religious traditions or for anyone interested in learning about other faiths.

Soulless Matter, Seats of Energy: Metals, Gems and Minerals in South Asian Traditions investigates the way in which Indian culture has represented inorganic matter and geological formations such as mountains and the earth itself. The volume is divided into four sections, each discussing from different angles the manifold dimensions occupied by minerals, gems and metals in traditions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The various chapters offer a rigorous analysis of a variety of texts from different South Asian regions from a range of perspectives such as history, philology, philosophy, hermeneutics and ethnography. The themes discussed include literature (myth and epics), ritual, ethics, folklore, and sciences such as astrology, medicine, alchemy and cosmetics. The volume critically reflects on the concept of "inanimate world" and shows how Indian traditions have variously interpreted the concept of embodied life and lifelessness.Ranging from worldviews and disciplines which regard metals, minerals, gems as alive, sentient or inhabited by divine presences and powers to ideas which deny matter possesses life and sentience, the Indian Subcontinent proves to be a challenge for taxonomic investigations but at the same time provides historians of religions and philosophers with stimulating material.

First delivered in 1974 as one of the Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, this book considers and compares traditional or pre-modern and post-traditional or post-modern religions. It assesses the processes as well as the images of change in various cultures - principally Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism - and examines how these religions handle the dialects of rejection, appropriation and integration.

The book is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Polish-Belarusian borderland. It examines the dynamics of symbolic boundaries between the Catholic and Orthodox believers in their everyday lives. By analyzing the space of local cemeteries, rituals, and attitudes related to death, eating practices, and food sharing, the author points to the changing sense of ethnic identity and the feeling of familiarity and otherness. Confessionally mixed neighborhoods and families enable different forms of religious bivalency and become a crucial factor in bridging and crossing ethnic boundaries. Socio-cultural norms and social relations shape the ethnic identity of the borderland's residents more than the institutional frames of both churches.

The idea of a Jewish Church has been banned from the Christian horizon for almost two millennia. But things are changing. Since the middle of the 70s the Messianic Jewish movement has strived to build an ecclesial home for all Jewish believers in Christ. This new phenomenon brings to life issues that had disappeared since the first centuries of the Church. What does it mean to be a Jew in the Church? Should there be a distinction between Jews and non-Jews among believers in Christ? Is such a distinction compatible with the unity of the whole Body of Christ so ardently preached by Paul? What lifestyle should this Church promote? In his various works, Mark Kinzer, a prominent Messianic Jewish theologian, has attempted to provide substantial answers to these questions. Antoine Levy is a Dominican priest. With Kinzer, Levy has launched the "Helsinki Consultation", a cross-denominational gathering of Jewish theologians. In Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism, Levy examines Kinzer's positions critically, bringing forward an alternative vision of what a "Jewish Church" could and should be. This is only the beginning of what promises to be a fascinating discussion.

Craig Parton argues that religions fail the simplest tests of admissibility for their respective claims, and few religions bother to make testable assertion, relying instead at best on subjective and existential appeal. This work challenges the prevailing viewpoint that all religions are making the same, or even similar, allegations. More troubling than this prevailing view, is that the religions of the world remain diametrically opposed on the issues of the nature of humanity, the reality of evil, the nature of history, and the way of salvation. The author succeeds in sorting out the clashing claims of religions and in bringing insight and clarity to matters normally thought to be solely in the domain of philosophers and theologians.

Spiritual Grammar identifies a genre of religious literature that until now has not been recognized as such. In this surprising and theoretically nuanced study, F. Dominic Longo reveals how grammatical structures of language addressed in two medieval texts published nearly four centuries apart, from distinct religious traditions, offer a metaphor for how the self is embedded in spiritual reality. Reading The Grammar of Hearts (Nahw al-qulub) by the great Sufi shaykh and Islamic scholar 'Abd al-Karim al-Qushayri (d. 1074) and Moralized Grammar (Donatus moralizatus) by Christian theologian Jean Gerson (d. 1429), Longo reveals how both authors use the rules of language and syntax to advance their pastoral goals. Indeed, grammar provides the two masters with a fresh way of explaining spiritual reality to their pupils and to discipline the souls of their readers in the hopes that their writings would make others adept in the grammar of the heart.

This fascinating collection of essays examines religious experience and tradition. The first part focuses on the nature and sources of authority in each of six major religions and considers how freedom is perceived by them. It goes on to examine the religious contexts of two examples of nations divided within themselves: Northern Ireland and Israel. The second part of the book looks at the process of education, the tensions between freedom and authority and their implications for religious education.

Offers an overarching definition and framework for the study of religion as it manifests itself in everyday life Look around you as you walk down the street; somewhere, usually hidden in plain sight, there will be traces of religion. Perhaps it is the person who walks past with a Christian tattoo or a Muslim hijab. Perhaps it is the poster announcing a charity auction at the local synagogue. Or perhaps you open your Instagram feed to see what inspiring images and meditations have been posted by spiritual guides to help start the day. Studying Lived Religion examines religious practices wherever they happen-both within religious spaces and in everyday life. Although the study of lived religion has been around for over two decades, there has not been an agreed-upon definition of what it encompasses, and we have lacked a sociological theory to frame the way it is studied. This book offers a definition that expands lived religion's geographic scope and a framework of seven dimensions around which we can analyze lived religious practice. Examples from multiple traditions and disciplines show the range of methods available for such studies, offering practical tips for how to begin. The volume opens up how we understand the category of lived religion, erasing the artificial divide between what happens in congregations and other religious institutions and what happens in other settings. Nancy Tatom Ammerman draws on examples ranging from Singapore to Accra to Chicago to show how deeply religion permeates everyday lives. In revealing the often overlooked ways that religion shapes human experience, she invites us all into new ways of seeing the world around us.

Victorian Cosmopolitanism and English Catholicity in the Mid-Century Novel argues that the Creedal doctrines of "the communion of saints" and the "holy Catholic Church" provided Victorian novelists-both Roman Catholic and Protestant-with a means of exploring religious forms of cosmopolitanism. Building on research exploring the divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in Victorian literature and culture, Teresa Huffman Traver considers the extent to which anti-Catholicism, domesticity, and national identity were linked. Huffman Traver connects this research with cosmopolitan theory, and analyzes how the conception of Catholicity could be used to reach beyond national identity towards a transnational community. Investigating the idea of a "rooted" cosmopolitanism, grounded in the local and limited in scope, this Pivot book offers a new angle on how religion, domesticity, and national identity were constructed in nineteenth-century British culture.