Difference, diversity and disagreement are inevitable features of our ethical, social and political landscape. This collection of new essays investigates the ways that various ethical and religious traditions have dealt with intramural dissent; the volume covers nine separate traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, liberalism, Marxism, South Asian religions and natural law. Each chapter lays out the distinctive features, history and challenges of intramural dissent within each tradition, enabling readers to identify similarities and differences between traditions. The book concludes with an Afterword by Michael Walzer, offering a synoptic overview of the challenge of intramural dissent and the responses to that challenge. Committed to dialogue across cultures and traditions, the collection begins that dialogue with the common challenges facing all traditions: how to maintain cohesion and core values in the face of pluralism, and how to do this in a way that is consistent with the internal ethical principles of the traditions.

Winner, French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. When it comes to giving, philosophers love to be the most generous. For them, every form of reciprocity is tainted by commercial exchange. In recent decades, such thinkers as Derrida, Levinas, Henry, Marion, Ricoeur, Lefort, and Descombes, have made the gift central to their work, haunted by the requirement of disinterestedness. As an anthropologist as well as a philosopher, Henaff worries that philosophy has failed to distinguish among various types of giving. The Philosophers' Gift returns to Mauss to reexamine these thinkers through the anthropological tradition. Reciprocity, rather than disinterestedness, he shows, is central to ceremonial giving and alliance, whereby the social bond specific to humans is proclaimed as a political bond. From the social fact of gift practices, Henaff develops an original and profound theory of symbolism, the social, and the relationship between self and other, whether that other is an individual human being, the collective other of community and institution, or the impersonal other of the world.

In Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures: The Same God?, D. E. Buckner argues that all reference is story-relative. We cannot tell which historical individual a person is talking or writing about or addressing in prayer without familiarity with the narrative (oral or written) which introduces that individual to us, so we cannot understand reference to God, nor to his prophets, nor to any other character mentioned in the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scriptures, without reference to those very scriptures. In this context we must understand God as the person who "walked in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8), and who is continuously referred to in the books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, as well as the Quran. Further developing ideas presented by the late Fred Sommers in his seminal The Logic of Natural Language, Buckner argues that singular reference and singular conception is empty outside such a context.

In this interfaith book Lucinda Mosher investigates different understandings of destiny, loss, death, and remembrance in America's many religions. Using stories and interviews with a variety of religious adherents and health professionals, the book wrestles with questions such as: how can our religion guide us in making decisions about certain kinds of medical treatment options? What religion-related issues would it be helpful for a healthcare provider to know? How do different religious traditions help manage our grief? In a globalized society religious traditions sit alongside each other as never before, and the need for religious literacy and multifaith chaplaincy is increasingly recognized. By looking at multireligious America, this book provides an essential exploration of different attitudes to death, helping members of all faith communities to become more literate with each other's religious traditions.

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.

One of the critical issues in interreligious relations today is the connection, both actual and perceived, between sacred sources and the justification of violent acts as divinely mandated. "Fighting Words" makes solid text-based scholarship accessible to the general public, beginning with the premise that a balanced approach to religious pluralism in our world must build on a measured, well-informed response to the increasingly publicized and sensationalized association of terrorism and large-scale violence with religion.
In his introduction, Renard provides background on the major scriptures of seven religious traditions--Jewish, Christian (including both the Old and New Testaments), Islamic, Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Sikh. Eight chapters then explore the interpretation of select facets of these scriptures, focusing on those texts so often claimed, both historically and more recently, as inspiration and justification for every kind of violence, from individual assassination to mass murder. With its nuanced consideration of a complex topic, this book is not merely about the religious sanctioning of violence but also about diverse ways of reading sacred textual sources.

This book examines the long-term effects of violence on the everyday cultural and religious practices of a younger generation of Ahmadis and Sikhs in Frankfurt, Germany and Toronto, Canada. Comparative in scope and the first to discuss contemporary articulations of Sikh and Ahmadiyya identities within a single frame of reference, the book assembles a significant range of empirical data gathered over ten years of ethnographic fieldwork. In its focus on precarious sites of identity formation, the volume engages with cutting-edge theories in the fields of critical diaspora studies, migration and refugee studies, religion, secularism, and politics. It presents a novel approach to the reading of Ahmadi and Sikh subjectivities in the current climate of anti-immigrant movements and suspicion against religious others. Michael Nijhawan also offers new insights into what animates emerging movements of the youth and their attempts to reclaim forms of the spiritual and political.

This book shows that new centers of Christianity have taken root in the global south. Although these communities were previously poor and marginalized, Stephen Offutt illustrates that they are now socioeconomically diverse, internationally well connected, and socially engaged. Offutt argues that local and global religious social forces, as opposed to other social, economic, or political forces, are primarily responsible for these changes.

The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. -from "Chapter VII: Incarnate Human Gods" In 1890, James George Frazer began publishing The Golden Bough, his monumental study of myth, ritual, and religion, which would, by 1936, run to 13 volumes and establish him as a pioneer in the study of religion as an aspect of culture. This abridged edition, assembled in 1922, condenses this fundamental work to one readable volume that is still a source for modern anthropology, thanks to its expansive discussions ancient cultish practices and their connections to the rites of modern Christianity. In eloquent prose, Frazer discusses legends of the woods, sympathetic magic, magicians as kings, the worship of trees, the concept of the sacred marriage, the links between priestly and royal power, ritual royal sacrifices, the concept of "eating the god," the myths of Osiris, Adonis, Isis, and other ancient deities, and much more. Lovers of mythology will be enraptured by this book, which draws all of human belief under one unifying umbrella, celebrating myth and ritual as part of the basis of all human culture. Scottish anthropologist SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER (1854-1941) also wrote Man, God, and Immortality (1927) and Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies (1935).

Religion Across Television Genres: Community, Orange Is the New Black, The Walking Dead, and Supernatural connects communication theories to the religious content of TV programs across an array of platforms and content genres, specifically the NBC comedy Community, the critically acclaimed Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, AMC's international megahit The Walking Dead, and the CW's long-running fan favorite Supernatural. Its contemporary relevancy makes Religion Across Television Genres ideal for use as a library resource, scholarly reference, and textbook for both undergraduate and graduate courses in mass media, religious studies, and popular culture.

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.

Religion is considered a key predictor of volunteering: the more religious people are, the more likely they are to volunteer. This positive association enjoys significant support in current research; in fact, it could be considered the ‘default perspective’ on the relationship between both phenomena. In this book, the authors claim that, although the dominant approach is legitimate and essential, it nonetheless falls short in grasping the full complexity of the interaction between religion and volunteering. It needs to be recognized that there are tensions between religion and volunteering, and that these tensions are intensifying as a result of the changing meaning and role of religion in society. Therefore, the central aim and contribution of this book is to demonstrate that the relationship between religion and volunteering is not univocal but differentiated, ambiguous and sometimes provocative. By introducing the reader to a much wider landscape of perspectives, this volume offers a richer, more complex and variable understanding. Apart from the established positive causality, the authors examine tensions between religion and volunteering from the perspective of religious obligation, religious change, processes of secularization and notions of post-secularity. They further explore how actions that are considered altruistic, politically neutral and motivated by religious beliefs can be used for political reasons. This volume opens up the field to new perspectives on religious actors and on how religion and volunteering are enacted outside Western liberal and Christian societies. It emphasizes interdisciplinary perspectives, including theology, philosophy, sociology, political science, anthropology and architecture.

Although research on contemporary pilgrimage has expanded considerably since the early 1990s, the conversation has largely been dominated by Anglophone researchers in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and religious studies from the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Northern Europe. This volume challenges the hegemony of Anglophone scholarship by considering what can be learned from different national, linguistic, religious and disciplinary traditions, with the aim of fostering a global exchange of ideas. The chapters outline contributions made to the study of pilgrimage from a variety of international and methodological contexts and discuss what the 'metropolis' can learn from these diverse perspectives. While the Anglophone study of pilgrimage has largely been centred on and located within anthropological contexts, in many other linguistic and academic traditions, areas such as folk studies, ethnology and economics have been highly influential. Contributors show that in many traditions the study of 'folk' beliefs and practices (often marginalized within the Anglophone world) has been regarded as an important and central area which contributes widely to the understanding of religion in general, and pilgrimage, specifically. As several chapters in this book indicate, 'folk' based studies have played an important role in developing different methodological orientations in Poland, Germany, Japan, Hungary, Italy, Ireland and England. With a highly international focus, this interdisciplinary volume aims to introduce new approaches to the study of pilgrimage and to transcend the boundary between center and periphery in this emerging discipline.

Across the world from personal relationships to global politics, differences-cultural, religious, racial, gender, age, ability-are at the heart of the most disruptive and disturbing concerns. While it is laudable to nurture an environment promoting the tolerance of difference, Creative Encounters, Appreciating Difference argues for the higher goal of actually appreciating difference as essential to creativity and innovation, even if often experienced as stressful and complex. Even encounters that are apparently harmful and negatively valued (arguments, conflict, war, oppression) usually heighten the potential for creativity, innovation, movement, action, and identity. Drawing on classic encounters that have played a significant role in the founding of the academic study of religion and the social sciences, this book explores in some depth the dynamics of encounter to reveal both its problematic and creative aspects and to develop perspectives and strategies to assure encounters both include the appreciation of difference and also are recognized as creative and innovative. The two examples most extensively considered show that the academic study of the peoples indigenous to North America and to Australia involved creative constructions (concoctions) of primary examples in order to establish and give authority to academic theories and definitions. Rather than damning these examples as "bad scholarship," this book considers them to be encounters engendering creative constructions that are distinctive to academia, yet their potential for harm must be understood. Most important to the book is a persistent development of perspectives and strategies for understanding and approaching encounters in order to assure the appreciation of difference is accompanied by the potential for creativity and innovation. Specific perspectives and strategies are related to naming, moving, gesture, and play and, particularly relevant to religion, the development of an aesthetic of impossibles. Since these historical examples engage highly relevant present concerns -the distinction of real and fake, truth and lie, map and territory-the threading essays show how these more or less classic examples might contribute to appreciating these contemporary concerns that are generated in the presence of difference.

In Growing in Love and Wisdom, Susan Stabile draws on a unique dual perspective to explore the value of interreligious dialogue, the essential spiritual dynamics that operate across faith traditions, and the many fruitful ways Buddhist meditation practices can deepen Christian prayer. Raised as a Catholic, Stabile devoted 20 years of her life to practicing Buddhism and was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun before returning to Catholicism in 2001. She begins the book by examining the values and principles shared by the two faith traditions, focusing on the importance of prayer-particularly contemplative prayer-to both Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. Both traditions seek to effect a fundamental transformation in the lives of believers, and both stress the need for experiences that have deep emotional resonance, that go beyond the level of concepts to touch the heart. Stabile illuminates the similarities between Tibetan Buddhist meditations and Christian forms of prayer such as Ignatian Contemplation and Lectio Divina; she explores as well such guided Buddhist practices as Metta and Tonglen, which cultivate compassion and find echoes in Jesus' teachings about loving one's enemies and transcending self-cherishing. The heart of the book offers 15 Tibetan Buddhist practices adapted to a contemplative Christian perspective. Stabile provides clear instructions on how to do these meditations as well as helpful commentary on each, explaining its purpose and the relation between the original and her adaptation. Throughout, she highlights the many remarkably close parallels in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. Arguing that engagement between religions offers mutual enrichment and greater understanding of both traditions, Growing in Love and Wisdom shows how Buddhist meditation can be fruitfully joined to Christian prayer.

An examination of the practice and philosophy of sacrifice in three religious traditions In the book of Genesis, God tests the faith of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice the life of his beloved son, Isaac. Bound by common admiration for Abraham, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also promote the practice of giving up human and natural goods to attain religious ideals. Each tradition negotiates the moral dilemmas posed by Abraham's story in different ways, while retaining the willingness to perform sacrifice as an identifying mark of religious commitment. This book considers the way in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to "sacrifice"-not only as ritual offerings, but also as the donation of goods, discipline, suffering, and martyrdom. Weddle highlights objections to sacrifice within these traditions as well, presenting voices of dissent and protest in the name of ethical duty. Sacrifice forfeits concrete goods for abstract benefits, a utopian vision of human community, thereby sparking conflict with those who do not share the same ideals. Weddle places sacrifice in the larger context of the worldviews of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, using this nearly universal religious act as a means of examining similarities of practice and differences of meaning among these important world religions. This book takes the concept of sacrifice across these three religions, and offers a cross-cultural approach to understanding its place in history and deep-rooted traditions.

Nearly every form of religion or spirituality has a vital connection with art. Religions across the world, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, have been involved over the centuries with a rich array of artistic traditions, both sacred and secular. In its uniquely multi-dimensional consideration of the topic, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts provides expert guidance to artistry and aesthetic theory in religion. The Handbook offers nearly forty original essays by an international team of leading scholars on the main topics, issues, methods, and resources for the study of religious and theological aesthetics. The volume ranges from antiquity to the present day to examine religious and artistic imagination, fears of idolatry, aesthetics in worship, and the role of art in social transformation and in popular religion-covering a full array of forms of media, from music and poetry to architecture and film. An authoritative text for scholars and students, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts will remain an invaluable resource for years to come.

In light of the widespread public perception of incompatibility between Islam and Christianity, this book provides a much-needed straightforward comparison of these two great faith traditions from a broad theological perspective. Award-winning scholar John Renard illuminates the similarities as well as the differences between Islam and Christianity through a clear exploration of four major dimensions - historical, creedal, institutional, and ethical and spiritual. Throughout, the book features comparisons between concrete elements such as creedal statements, prayer texts, and writings from major theologians and mystics. It also includes a glossary of technical theological terms. For western readers in particular, this balanced, authoritative work overturns some common stereotypes about Islam, especially those that have emerged in the decade since September 11, 2001.

How Christianity's Unmatched Truth Answers the Deepest Longings of Every Human Heart To the popular objection Aren't all religions basically the same? pastor and author Jared Wilson answers with an enthusiastic No! Christianity is not merely one among many similar options. It is categorically different--and it's these differences that make it so compelling. In Unparalleled, Wilson holds up the teachings of the Bible to the clear light of day, revealing how Christianity rises above every other religion and philosophy of the world, and how its unmatched truth answers the deepest longings of every human heart. He provides an overview of Christianity's key claims showing how, from top to bottom, it is distinct from all other competing ideologies, religious and secular. Christians will come away with a fresh sense of the truth of their faith and nonbelievers will be compelled to consider the relevant claims of Christianity in a drastically new light.

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.

Although the demographics of World Christianity demonstrate a population shift to the Global South, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, the preponderance of biblical scholarship continues to be dominated by Western scholars in pursuit of their contextual questions that are influenced by an Enlightenment-oriented worldview. Unfortunately, nascent methodologies used to bridge this chasm often continue to marginalize indigenous voices. In contradistinction, Beth E. Elness-Hanson's research challenges biblical scholars to engage stronger methods for dialogue with global voices, as well as encourages Majority World scholars to share their perspectives with the West. Elness-Hanson's fundamental question is: How do we more fully understand the "generational curses" in the Pentateuch? The phrase, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation," appears four times in the Pentateuch: Exod 20:4-6; Exod 34:6-7; Num 14:18; and Deut 5:8-10. While generational curses remain prevalent within the Maasai worldview in East Africa, an Enlightenment-influenced worldview diminishes curses as a phenomenon. However, fuller understandings develop as we listen and learn from each other. This research develops a theoretical framework from Hans-Georg Gadamer's "fusion of horizons" and applies it through Ellen Herda's anthropological protocol of "participatory inquiry." The resulting dialogue with Maasai theologians in Tanzania, builds bridges of understanding across cultures. Elness-Hanson's intercultural analysis of American and Maasai interpretations of the Pentateuchal texts on the generational curses demonstrates that intercultural dialogues increase understandings, which otherwise are limited by one worldview.

This book proves that each religious dogma, in any of their components, contain in an encoded manner a specific ranking of human comprehensive mega-objectives, implicitly, a specific preference for absolute wealth or, in a more common parlance, for the objective of economic performance. In turn, that specific preference, under ceteris paribus condition, determines the share of believer's general resources which is channeled to economic performance. An in-depth or correct understanding of a religious dogma, which makes sense for terrestrial social realities, is impossible without a specific model of decoding. Additionally, such a model is simply impossible within an orthodox Western, that is, non-transcultural perspective. There is no accident that all Western efforts to decode religions, economic or non-economic, have failed. Understanding religion based on its face story is very precarious, if not even dangerous.

The academic study of religion recently has turned to the investigation of emotion as a crucial aspect of religious life. Researchers have set out in several directions to explore that new terrain and have brought with them an assortment of instruments useful in charting it. This volume collects essays under four categories: religious traditions, religious life, emotional states, and historical and theoretical perspectives. In this book, scholars engaged in cutting edge research on religion and emotion describe the ways in which emotions have played a role in Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religions. They analyze the manner in which key components of religious life - ritual, music, gender, sexuality and material culture - represent and shape emotional performance. Some of the essays included here take a specific emotion, such as love or hatred, and observe the place of that emotion in an assortment of religious traditions and cultural settings. Other essays analyze the thinking of figures such as St. Augustine, Soren Kierkegaard, Jonathan Edwards, Emile Durkheim, and William James. This collection offers a range of critical perspectives on the academic study of religion and emotion, in the form of syntheses, provocations, and prospective observations, that will inform the work of those already engaged in the field. Taken together, the writings included in this handbook serve as an ideal entry point for anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the new academic study of religion and emotion.