This book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.

Much post-Holocaust Jewish thought published in North America has assumed that the Holocaust shattered traditional religious categories that had been used by Jews to account for historical catastrophes. But most traditional Jewish thinkers during the war saw no such overwhelming of tradition in the death and suffering delivered to Jews by Nazis. Through a comparative reading of postwar North American and wartime Orthodox Jewish texts about the Holocaust, Barbara Krawcowicz shows that these sources differ in the paradigms-modern and historicist for North American thinkers, traditional and covenantal for Orthodox thinkers-in which they employ historical events.

In this study of everyday religious culture in early modern Syria and Palestine, James Grehan offers a social history that looks beyond conventional ways of thinking about religion in the Middle East. The most common narratives about the region introduce us to the separate traditions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, highlighting how each one has created its own distinctive traditions and communities. Twilight of the Saints offers a reinterpretation of religious and cultural history in two countries that are today associated with division and violence, by exploring everyday religious habits of ordinary people from the late seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century, when the region was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Grehan shows that members of different religious groups participated in a common, overarching religious culture that was still visible at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Most obvious in the countryside, though present everywhere, this religious mainstream thrived in a society where few people had access to formal religious teachings. This older, folk religious culture was steeped in notions and rituals that the modern world, with its mainly theological conception of religion, has utterly repudiated. Only by uncovering this lost lived religion, argues Grehan, can we appreciate the largely unacknowledged revolution in religion that has taken place over the last century. As this book demonstrates, the people of Syria and Palestine today would hardly recognize religion as it was experienced in the not-so-distant past.

The miracle stories of the founders and saints of the major world religions have much in common. Written by international experts, this Companion provides an authoritative and comparative study of miracles in not only Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, but also, indigenous religions. The authors promote a discussion of the problems of miracles in our largely secular culture, and of the value of miracles in religious belief. The miracles of Jesus are also contextualized through chapters on the Hebrew Bible, classical culture to the Romans, Second Temple and early rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. This book provides students with a scholarly introduction to miracles, which also covers philosophical, medical and historical issues.

Humanity's long history of intermittent conflicts and contemporary violence undermines Christian's (and their Jewish and Muslim fellow believers) religious confidence in and moral commitment to world peace. The principal issue is the ambiguity of God's presence and action in the world as we experience it. In A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace, this problem is addressed by relating biblical theology to contemporary philosophical and theological perspectives to motivate and sustain the practice of love and justice in the context of civil religion.

This book presents a unique approach to person-centered anthropology, providing a new form of practice theory that incorporates and explains sources of cultural change. Built around the learning and use of autobiographical narrative forms, it draws from, and expands on, phenomenological, psychological, and moral anthropological traditions. The author draws on extensive original fieldwork in Thailand to explore questions including: how Buddhism has dealt with the appearance of global capitalism; and why some Thais continue to pursue nirvana-oriented Buddhist practices when karma-oriented reward-systems seem to be more satisfying as a whole. Where previous person-centered ethnographies have explored the ways in which social forces cause individuals to conform to cultural norms, this work advances the analysis by focusing on how ideas are transmitted from individuals to into wider society. This book will provide fresh insights of particular interest to psychological, phenomenological and narrative anthropologists; as well as to researchers working in the fields of religious and Asian studies.

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity and the Theopolitical Problem is a book about the encounter between Jewish and Christian thought and the fact-value divide that invites the unsettling recognition of the dramatic acosmism that shadows and undermines a considerable number of modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought systems. By exposing the forced option presented to Jewish and Christian thinkers by the continued appropriation of the fact-value divide, Nature and Norm motivates Jewish and Christian thinkers to perform an immanent critique of the failure of their thought systems to advance rational theopolitical claims and exercise the authority and freedom to assert their claims as reasonable hypotheses that hold the potential for enacting effective change in our current historical moment.

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.

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.

This book offers fresh insights into the contemporary state of Ecumenism. Following the election of Pope Francis, there has been a significant thaw in ecumenical relations, and there are grounds for thinking that this will continue into the future. The twelve chapters, written both by experienced ecumenical theologians as well as younger scholars, that have been gathered together in this collection, offer one of the first detailed assessments of the impact of Francis' papacy on ecumenical dialogue. Drawing on ecumenical methodology, as well as many practical examples and illustrations, the authors discuss the developments in culture and missiology as these affect the practice of ecumenism, particularly in response to theologies of hope as well as inter-religious dialogue and pluralism. What emerges is a clear sense of hope for the future in a rapidly changing world and even a sense of optimism that real ecumenical progress might be made.

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.

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.

Superhero phenomena exploded into 20th- and 21st-century popular culture by way of the visual medium of comic books. In an increasingly secular (yet spiritual) culture that has largely renounced "the gods" (and even religion), what does the return of the superhero through our own pop cultural mythologies say to us-or even about us? This collection of essays from leading and up-and-coming scholars in the fields of comparative mythology and depth psychology considers the return of the superhero as representative of our own unique emergent modern mythology: a wildly diverse pantheon that reflects back to us our most far-reaching hopes and (im)possible (super)human desires. In placing the interpretive tools of comparative mythology and depth psychology alongside the comic book phenomenon, a super-powered palette emerges that unveils the hidden potential of modern readers' own heightened imaginations. The essays in this anthology examine select comic book and superhero characters from the "Silver Age" 1960s through contemporary 21st-century adaptations and innovations, as readers are invited to discover and uncover what the (re)emergence of these perennial gods and goddesses have to say about our own secret super selves today.

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.

This volume presents interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interreligious approaches exploring a pneumatological theology in its broadest sense, especially in attempting to conceive of a spirit-filled world. The authors seek to discern the spiritual dimensions in the wider domains of the history, culture, the polis, the cosmos, sciences, and religions. The essays are driven by an intuition: that pneumatological sensibilities, categories, and insights can both inform the construction of a more robust doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the world and enable the appreciation that we inhabit what can rightly be called a Spirit- and spirit-filled world.

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 Religions of the World and Their Relations to Christianity (1847) derives from a series of eight lectures by the renowned theologian and political radical F. D. Maurice (1805-1872). They were given in a series established by Robert Boyle in 1691 as a stipulation of his will and intended 'for proving the Christian Religion against notorious Infidels'. Maurice both abides by and transforms this charge, examining 'the great Religious Systems ... not going into their details ... but enquiring what was their main characteristical principle.' In this important early work of comparative religious scholarship, Maurice investigates the theological foundations of the major world religions - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism - as well as what he calls the 'defunct' faiths of ancient Greek, Rome, Egypt, Persia and Scandinavia. The resulting text is a rich work of theological enquiry and a valuable testament to a central nineteenth-century religious thinker.

This book derives from a series of lectures given in 1888 by Monier Monier-Williams, who was Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford for over 30 years and whose work broke new ground in the Western understanding of Buddhism and other South Asian religions. This substantial historical survey of Buddhism begins with an account of the Buddha and his earliest teaching, as well as a brief description of the origin and composition of the scriptures containing the Buddha's law (Dharma). Monier-Williams explains the early constitution of the Buddha's order of monks (Sangha), and outlines the philosophical doctrines of Buddhism together with its code of morality and theory of perfection, culminating in Nirvana. He also describes formal and popular rituals and practices, and sacred places and objects. The book is an example of Victorian Orientalist scholarship which remains of interest to historians of religious studies, Orientalism, and the British Empire.

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.

Through an examination of Christian interaction with other religions, Paul S. Chung constructs a theology of comparative religion. In the course of this construction, he employs the work of Ernst Troeltsch, Robert Bellah, and Karl Barth, while offering case studies of transformative interaction between Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Chung's interdisciplinary approach opens up new avenues for inter-religious understanding and melding, for instance exploring the development of a Protestant Islam. Throughout, he provides innovative conceptions of the religions involved and the realities they assert.

Throughout their shared history, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches have lived through a very complex and sometimes tense relationship - not only theologically, but also politically. In most cases such relationships remain to this day; indeed, in some cases the tension has increased. In July 2019, scholars of both traditions gathered in Stuttgart, Germany, for an unprecedented conference devoted to exploring and overcoming the division between these churches. This book, the first in a two-volume set of the essays presented at the conference, explores historical and theological themes with the goal of healing memories and inspiring a direct dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Like the conference, the volume brings together representatives of these Churches, as well as theologians from different geographical contexts where tensions are the greatest. The published essays represent the great achievements of the conference: willingness to engage in dialogue, general openness to new ideas, and opportunities to address difficult questions and heal inherited wounds.

This book examines how the racialization of religion facilitates the diasporic formation of ethnic Vietnamese in the U.S. and Cambodia, two communities that have been separated from one another for nearly 30 years. It compares devotion to female religious figures in two minority religions, the Virgin Mary among the Catholics and the Mother Goddess among the Caodaists. Visual culture and institutional structures are examined within both communities. Thien-Huong Ninh invites a critical re-thinking of how race, gender, and religion are proxies for understanding, theorizing, and addressing social inequalities within global contexts.

This book offers scholars who ground their research in compassion and pacifism a new framework for the socio-political analysis of current global events. By tackling a broad range of critical themes in various disciplines, the essays compose a critical narrative of the ways in which power and violence shape society, culture, and belief. In addition to the contemporary dynamics of international economics, political murder, and the rhetorical antagonism between Christianity and Islam, the book addresses cultural strife in the West, the societal effects of neoconservative hegemony in the United States and the world, and the overall question of religious credence in connection with political action. All such topics are discussed with a view toward providing solutions and policies that are informed by a comprehensive desire to resist violence and war, on the one hand, and to foment cohesion and harmony at the community level, on the other.