SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE! (Valid until 3 months after publication) No collection of this sort has yet been conceived of, let alone accomplished, in this field. In part that may well be due to the extraordinarily nascent character of the field of comparative religious ethics, described as that (as opposed to Christian ethics, for example). Yet the aim is not simply to gather together a number of pieces, but -- with the appropriate modesty and tentativeness -- to offer one picture of how the field ought to understand itself: its past, present, and perhaps its future. A critical mass of scholars has now emerged in this area, and the institutional dynamics of religious studies departments, which are increasingly seeing the attractions of classes in "comparative ethics," are favorable as well. By gathering together both "classic" statements, exemplifying paradigmatic approaches in the field, and recent, ground-breaking and innovative works, the ambition is to make this collection the gold standard for anyone working on the field of comparative religious ethics in coming decades.

New religious movements (NRMs) and other minority faiths have regularly been the focus of legal cases around the world in recent decades. This is the first book to focus on important aspects of the relationship of smaller faiths to the societies in which they function by using specific legal cases to examine social control efforts. The legal cases involve group leaders, a groups' practices or alleged abuses against members and children in the group, legal actions brought by former members or third parties, attacks against such groups by outsiders including even governments, and libel and slander actions brought by religious groups as they seek to defend themselves. These cases are sometimes milestones in the relation between state authorities and religious groups. Exploring cases in different parts of the world, and assessing the events causing such cases and their consequences, this book offers a practical insight for understanding the relations of NRMs and other minority religions and the law from the perspective of legal cases. Chapters focus on legal, political, and social implications. Including contributions from scholars, legal practitioners, actual or former members, and authorities involved in such cases from various jurisdictions, this book presents an objective approach to understanding why so many legal actions have involved NRMs and other minority faiths in recent years in western societies, and the consequences of those actions for the society and the religious group as well.

This detailed book is a resource for students, practitioners, and leaders interested in how the major world religions have understood poverty and responded to the poor. Poverty is a universal phenomenon across history, regardless of country or culture. Today, the demographics of the poor are on the rise globally: it is a critical issue. Religious traditions are another universal aspect of human societies, and nearly all religions include directives on how to respond to the poor and systemic poverty. How do the various religious traditions conceptualize poverty, and what do they view as the proper response to the poor? Poverty and the Poor in the World's Religious Traditions: Religious Responses to the Problem of Poverty brings together specialists on the religions of the world and their diverse viewpoints to identify how different religious traditions interact with poverty and being poor. It also contains excerpts of religious texts that readers can use as primary documents to illustrate themes such as identifying the poor, religious reasons for being poor, and responses (like charity and development) to the existence of poverty. This book serves as a powerful resource for students of subjects like international development, missiology, comparative religion, theology, social ethics, economics, and organizational leadership as well as for any socially concerned clergy of various faiths.

A reprint of Evelyn Underhill's timeless study on the the nature and principles of worship and the main forms in which they find expression in Christianity. In the belief that religious experience is the starting point of theological reconstruction, the author analyses here the nature, characteristics and principles of how man relates to God. The way and degree in which ritual, symbol, sacrament and sacrifice become part of worship is also examined and, subsequently, its principles are illustrated, as embodied in the main types of cults.

In this daring debut, Zayin Cabot challenges the wise homebodies of academia. A profoundly interdisciplinary approach to comparative scholarship, Ecologies of Participation offers a methodology whereby we can face our shared planetary predicament. It is grounded in process philosophy, and asserts the importance of a new ontology of agency. It traces the importance of Levy-Bruhl and Levi-Strauss's early work, while offering new insight into the ontological turn in anthropology. This book sets out to destabilize modern reductionist trends toward scientific materialism, without falling into postmodern cultural constructivism. It does not assume the givenness of nature or culture. By advancing a multi-ontology approach, this work offers robust interventions into decolonial and critical studies. Cabot takes contemporary scholarship in new and exciting directions-offering an unstable ground from which to examine our shared worlds, both human and other. Throughout the last chapters of the book, these threads are illuminated through a detailed ethics of comparison and participation.

The object of this book is to provide an opportunity for voices of other religions to be heard as Australia celebrates its first Catholic saint, Mary MacKillop of the Cross. It is the first publication that seeks to bring together a representative collection of contributions. Here are reflections on sainthood and heroes of faith from within different religious traditions and different Christian denominations. The direction given to contributors was that they illustrate how holy persons and heroes are esteemed in their own tradition and how this might frame that tradition's appreciation of Mary MacKillop. From this, it is hoped that the collection will provide an example of how she might contribute to the wider Australian religious landscape. Herein, the reader will find critical yet appreciative reflections from Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist to Jewish and Muslim writers. Some have taken the brief as an opportunity to reveal more of the heroes and saints of their own tradition and how they came to be esteemed. Others have directly described how their own tradition esteems saints and heroes in general in order to bring distinct and evocative appreciations of Mary MacKillop, now given hues from a Protestant, Orthodox or Lutheran palette. But whether Baptist or Anglican or traditions beyond Christianity, the writers have extended the capacity of Australians to appreciate Mary MacKillop as an Australian saint and hero, albeit remaining within a religious framework.

Keys to understanding our shrinking world

A generation ago almost everyone a Christian encountered went to church--or at least knew he or she should. Today, with the world at America's doorstep, evangelical Christians more than ever need to understand their neighbors and their changing beliefs.

The Compact Guide to World Religions is a complete, easy-to-use handbook of the origins, basic beliefs, and evangelistic challenges and opportunities of the world's major religions in clear, easy-to-use chapters and charts.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Is time a creation of God? How can God be considered eternal, if he is responsible for the existence of time? Is God temporal or is he timeless? The relationship between God and time has been an object of inquiry in philosophical and theological traditions around the world for centuries. This volume takes up these and other questions, presenting a range of answers not only as brought forth in European philosophical traditions and in early Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but also positions taken by mediaeval Indian theologians and in the influential traditions of early Buddhism. Traditionally, discussions have focused on questions such as whether time is a necessary concomitant of God's existence, or whether time should be identified with God. But there is a further question: did these traditions develop their own unrelated and independent view of God and time? Or are there similarities in their reflections? This volume, with contributions of scholars from various relevant fields, offers a novel approach to these inquiries. When taken as a whole, it provides new momentum to contemplation on an age-old enigma.

Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred is a thoughtful collection of bisexual, polysexual and pansexual scholarship on religion and spirituality. It examines how religious and spiritual traditions address sexuality, whilst also exploring the ways in which bisexually-, polysexually-, and pansexually-active people embrace religious and spiritual practice. The volume offers a comprehensive analysis of these prevalent themes by focusing on five main areas of discussion: Christian and Unitarian Discourses; Indigenous and Decolonizing Spiritual Discourses; Feminist Spiritual Discourses; Buddhist Discourses; and Neo/Pagan Discourses. Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred offers an accessible yet scholarly treatment of these topics through a collection of critical essays by academics of theology, humanities, cultural studies and social sciences, as well as sexology professionals and clergy from various faith and spiritual traditions. It gives readers an insight into the intersection of sexualities and spiritualities, and attempts to disrupt this very dichotomy through its careful consideration of a wide variety of discourses. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

This book elucidates the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases in Central and Eastern Europe. Though those analyses, the authors show how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness. Starting with the pre-modern era in this region, the book examines the long-term transformation of religious, political, and social situations of the region. In addition, the book considers the impact of imperial powers, which tended to be linked with a universal religion. It finally sheds light on the multifaceted nature of nations in this region, which contributes to evoke a new vision of the historical transformation of the region that enriches the general theories of nationalism.

Religious diversity is an ever present, and increasingly visible, reality in cities across the world. It is an issue of immediate concern to city leaders and members of religious communities but do we really know what ordinary members of the public, the people who live in the city, really think about it? Major news items, inter-religious violence and notorious public events often lead to negative views being expressed, especially among those who would not consider themselves to have a religious identity of their own. Martin Stringer explores the highly complex series of discourses around religion and religious diversity that are held by ordinary members of the city; discourses that are often contradictory in themselves and discourses that show that attitudes to religion vary considerably depending on context and wider local or national narratives. Drawing on examples from UK (particularly Birmingham, one of the UK's most diverse cities), Europe and the United States, Stringer offers some practical suggestions for ways in which discourses of religious diversity can be managed in the future. Students in the fields of religious studies, sociology, anthropology and urban studies; practitioners involved in inter-religious debates; and church and other faith leaders and politicians should all find this book an invaluable addition to ongoing debates.

Religious diversity is an ever present, and increasingly visible, reality in cities across the world. It is an issue of immediate concern to city leaders and members of religious communities but do we really know what ordinary members of the public, the people who live in the city, really think about it? Major news items, inter-religious violence and notorious public events often lead to negative views being expressed, especially among those who would not consider themselves to have a religious identity of their own. Martin Stringer explores the highly complex series of discourses around religion and religious diversity that are held by ordinary members of the city; discourses that are often contradictory in themselves and discourses that show that attitudes to religion vary considerably depending on context and wider local or national narratives. Drawing on examples from UK (particularly Birmingham, one of the UK's most diverse cities), Europe and the United States, Stringer offers some practical suggestions for ways in which discourses of religious diversity can be managed in the future. Students in the fields of religious studies, sociology, anthropology and urban studies; practitioners involved in inter-religious debates; and church and other faith leaders and politicians should all find this book an invaluable addition to ongoing debates.

Uncovers the influence of Yoruba culture on women’s religious lives and leadership in religions practiced by Yoruba people Women in Yoruba Religions examines the profound influence of Yoruba culture in Yoruba religion, Christianity, Islam, and Afro-Diasporic religions such as Santeria and Candomblé, placing gender relations in historical and social contexts. While the coming of Christianity and Islam to Yorubaland has posed significant challenges to Yoruba gender relations by propagating patriarchal gender roles, the resources within Yoruba culture have enabled women to contest the full acceptance of those new norms. Oyeronke Olademo asserts that Yoruba women attain and wield agency in family and society through their economic and religious roles, and Yoruba operate within a system of gender balance, so that neither of the sexes can be subsumed in the other. Olademo utilizes historical and phenomenological methods, incorporating impressive data from interviews and participant-observation, showing how religion is at the core of Yoruba lived experiences and is intricately bound up in all sectors of daily life in Yorubaland and abroad in the diaspora.

A unique interreligious dialogue provides needed context for deeper understanding of interfaith relations, from ancient to modern times Freedom is far from straightforward as a topic of comparative theology. While it is often identified with modernity and even postmodernity, freedom has long been an important topic for reflection by both Christians and Muslims, discussed in both the Bible and the Qur'an. Each faith has a different way of engaging with the idea of freedom shaped by the political context of their beginnings. The New Testament emerged in a region under occupation by the Roman Empire, whereas the Qur'an was first received in tribal Arabia, a stateless environment with political freedom. Freedom: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, edited by Lucinda Mosher, considers how Christian and Muslim faith communities have historically addressed many facets of freedom. The book presents essays, historical and scriptural texts, and reflections. Topics include God's freedom, human freedom to obey God, autonomy versus heteronomy, autonomy versus self-governance, freedom from incapacitating addiction and desire, hermeneutic or discursive freedom vis-a-vis scripture and tradition, religious and political freedom, and the relationship between personal conviction and public order. The rich insights expressed in this unique interfaith discussion will benefit readers-from students and scholars, to clerics and community leaders, to politicians and policymakers-who will gain a deeper understanding of how these two communities define freedom, how it is treated in both religious and secular texts, and how to make sense of it in the context of our contemporary lives.

Sustainability is now key to international and national policy, manufacture and consumption. It is also central to many individuals who try to lead environmentally ethical lives. Historically, religion has been a significant part of many visions of sustainability. Pragmatically, the inclusion of religious values in conservation and development efforts has facilitated relationships between people with different value structures. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the interdependence of sustainability and religion, and no significant comparisons of religious and secular sustainability advocacy. Religion and Sustainability presents the first broad analysis of the spiritual dimensions of sustainability-oriented social movements. Exploring the similarities and differences between the conceptions of sustainability held by religious, interfaith and secular organizations, the book analyses how religious practice and discourse have impacted on political ideology and process.

This collection of essays examines responses to the Millennium and whether or not the year 2000 could be claimed as a specifically Christian time. It also considers how other religions reacted to the moment and what millennial celebrations reveal about religion in a secular age.

Faithful Neighbors outlines an introduction to the rationale for interfaith work through both theological and practical viewpoints, using stories from real experiences of interfaith cooperation to offer encouragement, inspiration, and practical steps to do the same. The book has eight chapters in three main sections. Section one provides a Christian and Muslim rationale for engaging with the Other. Section two outlines stories of those involved in interfaith work in a series of contexts: academic research, intercultural, pastoral care, youth work, and peace work. The concluding section details recommendations and resources for best practice. Faithful Neighbors exhorts both Muslims and Christians to be faithful neighbors drawing on their traditions and real life practice for the sake of life-giving community.

This book offers a fully up-to-date and comprehensive guide to religion in Britain since 1945. A team of leading scholars provide a fresh analysis and overview, with a particular focus on diversity and change. They examine: relations between religious and secular beliefs and institutions the evolving role and status of the churches the growth and 'settlement' of non-Christian religious communities the spread and diversification of alternative spiritualities religion in welfare, education, media, politics and law theoretical perspectives on religious change. The volume presents the latest research, including results from the largest-ever research initiative on religion in Britain, the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. Survey chapters are combined with detailed case studies to give both breadth and depth of coverage. The text is accompanied by relevant photographs and a companion website.

In our rapidly changing and progressively globalized world, Christians and Muslims are faced with the prospect of directly encountering and responding to people of other faiths and cultures. This has pushed us all to address the vital question of how best to live with, work beside, and love one another as fellow citizens of our planet. Using resources from Christian theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, Muslim ethicist Abdulaziz Sachedina, and several others, Winkler argues that we must continually dialogue with one another - not only about the beliefs and practices held in common between us, but also about the ways in which we are distinctively different. Only then can we take the opportunity more comprehensively to understand, appreciate, and cooperate with each other to build just, moral, and cohesive communities of hope in our often uncertain and unsettling times.

Spirit Power explores the manifestation of the American Century in Korean history with a focus on religious culture. It looks back on the encounter with American missionary power from the late nineteenth century, and the long political struggles against the country’s indigenous popular religious heritage during the colonial and postcolonial eras. The book brings an anthropology of religion into the field of Cold War history. In particular, it investigates how Korea’s shamanism has assimilated symbolic properties of American power into its realm of ritual efficacy in the form of the spirit of General Douglas MacArthur. The book considers this process in dialog with the work of Yim Suk-jay, a prominent Korean anthropologist who saw that a radically cosmopolitan and democratic world vision is embedded in Korea’s enduring shamanism tradition.

Built space is both a physical entity as well as a socially and historically constructed place. It constantly interacts with human beings, affecting their behavior, thinking, and feeling. Doing religious work in a particular environment implies acknowledging the surroundings to be integral to theology itself. The contributors to this volume view buildings, scriptures, conversations, prayers, preaching, artifacts, music and drama, and built and natural surroundings as contributors to a contextual theology.

The view of the environment in which religion is practiced as integrated with theology represents not just a new theme but also a necessity if one is to understand religion's own depth. Reflections about space and place and how they reflect and affect religious experience provide a challenge and an urgent necessity for theology. This is particularly important if religious practitioners are to become aware of how theology is given expression in the existential spatiality of life. Can space set theology free? This is a challenging question, one that the editor hopes can be answered, at least in part, in this volume.

The diversity of theoretical concepts in aesthetics, cultural theory, and architecture are not regarded as a problem to be solved by constructing one overarching dominant theory. Instead, this diversity is viewed in terms of its positive potential to inspire discourse about theology and aesthetics. In this discourse, theology does not need to become fully dependent on one or another theory, but should always clearly present its criteria for choosing this or that theoretical framework. This volume shows clearly how different modes of design in sacred spaces capture a sense of the religious.

In this book Sunggu Yang proposes five socio-ecclesial codes as unique faith fundamentals of Korean American Christianity. Drawing from rigorous research and years of ecclesial experience, Yang names the codes as follows: the Wilderness Pilgrimage code, the Diasporic Mission Code, the Confucian Egalitarian code, the Buddhist Shamanistic code, and the Pentecostal Liberation code. These five codes, he asserts, help Korean Americans sustain their lives, culture, faith, and evangelical mission as aliens or "pilgrims" in the American "wilderness." Yang outlines how his five proposed codes serve as liberative and prophetic mechanisms of faith through which Korean Americans can contribute to racial harmony and cultural diversity in North America. In this sense, Korean American Christianity-its theology and spirituality-works not only on behalf of Korean Americans, but also for the sake of all Americans. Yang shows how the Korean American pulpit is the locus where these five codes appear most vividly.

In the early 1970s, accompanying the current wave of globalization, conservative nationalist religious movements began using religion to oppose non-democratic and often Western oriented regimes. Reasserting patriarchal gender relations presumably authorized by religion has been central to these movements. At the Fourth United Nations Congress on Women in Beijing in 1995, Muslim and Catholic delegations from diverse countries united to oppose provisions on sexuality, reproductive rights, women’s health, and women’s rights as human rights. Scholars from eight different Muslim and Catholic communities analyze the political strategies that women are employing in these contexts ranging from acceptance of traditional doctrines to various forms of resistance, religious reinterpretation, innovation, and political action toward change and equal rights.