These astute essays describe the way ordinary people value human relationships and reason through the commonplace contradictions of their local way of life in a global age, rather than measure the actions of their subjects as evidence of either universal rationality or shared cultural beliefs. Each contributor conveys the ways in which people challenge the ascribed moral standards of custom, religious belief, bureaucratic policies through passionate words such as anecdotes, joke, rumors, and gossip. By evaluating moral reasoning at a local level, contributors work to answer the question, what is a good life?

Pacifism. Jihad. Militarism. Are these our only alternatives for dealing with global injustice today? J. Daryl Charles leads us to reconsider a Christian view of the use of force to maintain or reestablish justice. He shows how love for a neighbor can warrant the just use of force. Reviewing and updating the widely recognized but not necessarily well-understood just-war teaching of the church through the ages, Charles shows how it captures many of the concerns of the pacifist position while deliberately avoiding, on the other side, the excesses of jihad and militarism. Aware of our contemporary global situation, Charles addresses the unique challenges of dealing with international terrorism.

This book is an insightful guide to the diverse ways that religious faith is practiced and spirituality is understood. Discussing contemporary issues such as post-modernism and the emergence of a "new paradigm," the new realities of geopolitics, globalization and global warming, this book explores the importance of religion in people's lives to provide direction in the society today. This book demonstrates the common quest among the world religions for a deeper and more profound spirituality. Describing the spiritual pathways of the various world religions, it assesses the ways that the beliefs, values and practices of these traditions can be life-giving, leading to personal and social responsibility and transformation, but also sometimes harmful and divisive, even used for dangerous purposes. Promoting constructive engagements between the world's religions, this book will connect social justice and ethical engagements with core religious practices and spiritualities. This is an ideal introductory text for students of world religions, spirituality and interfaith relations, broadening their understanding of these lived faiths.

A 2004 ECPA Gold Medallion Finalist One of Preaching magazine's 2004 "Top Ten Books Every Preacher Should Read" Neo-paganism. The paranormal. Astrology. Nature religion. Holistic thinking. Healing. New Age. New spirituality. A massive shift in Western religious attitudes has taken place almost without our noticing it. The Judeo-Christian tradition of Western culture has slowly but steadily been eclipsed by a new way of viewing spirituality. This shift has been in the making for some three hundred years. James A. Herrick tells the story of how the old view has been dismantled and a new one created not primarily through academic or institutional channels but by means of popular religious media--books, speeches, magazines and pamphlets, as well as movies, plays, music, radio interviews, television programs and websites. Although the new spirituality is diffuse and eclectic in its sources and manifestations, Herrick demonstrates a significant convergence of ideas, beliefs, assumptions, convictions and images in the myriad ways this New Religious Synthesis makes its way into our culture. In fact, the new spirituality, says Herrick, directly calls into question each major tenet of Judeo-Christian tradition and so represents a radical alternative to it. Interest in spirituality increases while participation in institutional religion wanes. Many welcome this evolution of religion. However, few are familiar with its roots, and fewer still have critically examined its prospects. As we stand at a spiritual crossroad, Herrick questions whether we are wise to discard the Western religious tradition and adopt the new spirituality.

Is there no sympathy for the Devil? Misunderstood and vilified by the world's major religions, Satan has decided to strike back at his accusers. In his own words, Satan makes the case that he is only carrying out God's commands and that he is unjustly blamed for the woes of the world.

Simultaneously controversial and entertaining, "The Parallax from Hell" delivers a new perspective of religious doctrine from the point of view of God's fallen angel, Satan. Aided by his unwitting accomplice, Satan examines the tenants of the major organized religions, giving first a generic summary of their respective beliefs and then following up with his own very different slant. To take care of the credibility problem, he even footnotes his sources for skeptics.

Tongue in cheek at times, Satan makes his case and then enlists his minions in Hell to contribute short essays and commentary. The result is a comprehensive analysis that covers not only religion, but history, theology, science, and philosophy. Wry and engaging, Satan's observations challenge you to think critically about your religiously held assumptions as well as the beliefs of other organized religions.

Definitely not your ordinary theological critique, "The Parallax from Hell" seeks to serve as an unorthodox vehicle for opening hearts and minds.

The New Atheists' claim that religion always leads to fanaticism is baseless. State-backed religion results in tyranny. Sacred humanists work to implement their highest values that will improve this world; separation of church and state, eliminating denigration of nonbelievers, assuring just governance, and preventing human trafficking.

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

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.

Responding to a recent upsurge of Jewish interest in Buddhism, Sasson undertakes the first serious academic effort to uncover the common ground between the founders of the two religions, Moses and the Buddha. Because this is a study of traditions rather than a historical investigation, Sasson is able to synthesize various kinds of materials, from biblical and non-biblical, adn from early Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist sources. She notes the striking similarities between the life-patterns of the two leaders. Both were raised as princes and both eventually left their lavish upbringings only to discover something higher. Their mothers play prominent roles in the narratives of their births, while their fathers are often excluded from view. They were both born surrounded by light and embodying miraculous qualities. But there are also some rather consequential differences, which allow these two colossal figures to maintain their uniqueness and significance. Moses was a man chosen for a particular mission by a higher power, a human being serving as the deity's tool. By contrast, the Buddha was a man whose mission was self-determined and actualized over time. Moses lived one life; the Buddha lived many. The Buddha became the symbol of human perfection; Moses was cherished by his tradition despite - or possibly because of - his personal failings. And although Moses is often presented as the founder of Israelite religion, the Buddha was simply following the blueprint outlined by the Buddhas before him. The programme of this study goes further than to compare and contrast the two figures. Sasson argues that the comparative model she adopts can highlight doctrines and priorities of a religion that may otherwise remain hidden. In that way, the birth of Moses and the Buddha may serve as a paradigm for the comparative study of religions.

This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic 'represents' to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner's perspective but through the victim's lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.

All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both historically and philosophically to the constructions of the category of "religion" as a distinct subject of study. Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995) provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into nine theses on the study of religion. Drawing on these theses--and Wasserstrom's opus more generally--a distinguished group of his colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can, and must, be understood through encounters in real time and space, through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, and between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Religion and Secularity traces the history of the conceptual binary of religion and secularity in Europe and the repercussions it had in other regions and cultures of the Eurasian continent during the age of imperialism and beyond. Twelve authors from a wide range of disciplines, deal in their contributions with the trajectory, the concepts of "religion" and "secularity/secularization" took, as well as with the corresponding re-configurations of the religious field in a variety of cultures in Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. Taken together, these in-depth studies provide a broad comparative perspective on a penomenon that has been crucial for the development of globalized modernity and its regional interpretations.

The richness and vibrancy of Vietnamese spirituality are vividly portrayed in these twelve essays that shed light on the remarkable reflorescence of religion in this communist country. Ancestor worship, mediumship, sacrifices, and communal rituals have not only survived Vietnam's reintegration into the capitalist world; they are intrinsic to the dramatic reshaping of its contemporary social and cultural life. Transnational Buddhism and Christianity challenge the political status quo as they answer conflicting aspirations for enlightenment, justice, national development and cultural identity. Making conceptual contributions to anthropology and comparative religion, this book provides insights from post-revolutionary Vietnam into the diverse passages to re-enchantment in the modern world.

Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.

In this warm and personal book the author looks at what Muslims believe and how this affects--and often doesn't affect--their behavior. Phil Parshall compares and contrasts Muslim and Christian views on the nature of God, sacred scriptures, worship, sin, and holiness.

Ritual has emerged as a major focus of academic interest. As a concept, the idea of ritual integrates the study of behavior both within and beyond the domain of religion. Ritual can be both secular and religious in character. There is renewed interest in questions such as: Why do rituals exist at all? What has been, and continues to be, their place in society? How do they change over time? Such questions exist against a backdrop of assumptions about development, modernization, and disenchantment of the world.Written with the specific needs of students of religious studies in mind, " Ritual: Key Concepts in Religion" surveys the field of ritual studies looking at it both historically within anthropology and in terms of its contemporary relevance to mass phenomena.

In this volume, an interdisciplinary group of scholars uses history, sociology, anthropology, and semiotics to approach Transcendence as a human phenomenon, and shows the unavoidability of thinking with and through the Beyond. Religious experience has often been defined as an encounter with a transcendent God. Yet humans arguably have always tried to get outside or beyond themselves and society. The drive to exceed some limit or condition of finitude is an eduring aspect of culture, even in a "disenchanted" society that may have cut off most paths of access to the Beyond. The contributors to this volume demonstrate the humanity of Transcendence in various ways: as an effort to get beyond our crass physical materiality; as spiritual entrepreneurship; as the ecstasy of rituals of possession; and as a literary, aesthetic, and semiotic event. These efforts build from a shared conviction that Transcendene is thoroughly human, and accordingly avoid purely confessional and parochial approches while taking seriously the various claims and behavioral expressions of traditions in which Transcendence has been understood in theological terms.

A 2001 Christianity Today Award of Merit winner "Arguably, the church's greatest challenge in the next century will be the problem of the scandal of particularity. More than ever before, Christians will need to explain why they follow Jesus and not the Buddha or Confucius or Krishna or Muhammed. But if, while relating their faith to the faiths, Christians treat non-Christian religions as netherworlds of unmixed darkness, the church's message will be a scandal not of particularity but of arrogant obscurantism. "Recent evangelical introductions to the problem of other religions have built commendably on foundations laid by J. N. D. Anderson and Stephen Neill. Anderson and Neill opened up the "heathen" worlds to the evangelical West, showing that many non-Christians also seek salvation and have personal relationships with their gods. In the last decade Clark Pinnock and John Sanders have argued for an inclusivist understanding of salvation, and Harold Netland has shed new light on the question of truth in the religions. Yet no evangelicals have focused--as nonevangelicals Keith Ward, Diana Eck and Paul Knitter have done--on the revelatory value of truth in non-Christian religions. Anderson and Neill showed that there are limited convergences between Christian and non-Christian traditions, and Pinnock has argued that there might be truths Christians can learn from religious others. But as far as I know, no evangelicals have yet examined the religions in any sort of substantive way for what Christians can learn without sacrificing, as Knitter and John Hick do, the finality of Christ. "This book is the beginning of an evangelical theology of the religions that addresses not the question of salvation but the problem of truth and revelation, and takes seriously the normative claims of other traditions. It explores the biblical propositions that Jesus is the light that enlightens every person (Jn 1:9) and that God has not left Himself without a witness among non-Christian traditions (Acts 14:17). It argues that if Saint Augustine learned from Neo-Platonism to better understand the gospel, if Thomas Aquinas learned from Aristotle to better understand the Scriptures, and if John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism, perhaps evangelicals may be able to learn from the Buddha--and other great religious thinkers and traditions--things that can help them more clearly understand God's revelation in Christ. It is an introductory word in a conversation that I hope will go much further among evangelicals." (Gerald McDermott, in the introduction toCan Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?

All religions face the challenge of explaining, in view of God's goodness, the existence of evil and suffering in the world. They must develop theories of the origin and the overcoming of evil and suffering. The explanations in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism of evil and suffering and their origin, as well as these world religions' theories of how to overcome evil and suffering, differ from one another, but are also similar in many respects. The human person is always considered to be the origin of evil, and also to be the focus of aspirations to be able to overcome it. The conviction that evil and suffering are not original and can be overcome is characteristic of and common to the religions. The explanations of the origin of evil are closely related to the explanations of the continuation and propagation of evil in human persons, in nature, and in our technology and culture that have been developed in the religions - in Christianity, for example, as the doctrine of original sin. Finally, the world religions are concerned with how to cope with suffering and offer guidance for overcoming evil and suffering. Leading scholars of five world religions, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, have created with this volume a first-hand source of information, which enables the reader to gain a better understanding of these religions' central teachings about the origin and the overcoming of evil and suffering.

In essentials unity. In nonessentials liberty. In all things charity. Almost daily Christians are bombarded by strange new teachings about Jesus. The worldwide proliferation of new religious movements has created confusion in the church. Are there core beliefs at the heart of the Christian faith? If so, what are they? And how should Christians relate to those who do not embrace these beliefs? In down-to-earth language, Doctrine Twisting addresses and answers these questions. With the firm conviction that God has sufficiently and finally revealed himself in Christ and through the Bible, H. Wayne House and Gordon Carle explore in detail the doctrines of the Trinity, revelation, sin, Christ's divinity, the atonement, faith and works, the second coming and the afterlife. In each chapter they outline the biblical basis for the historic orthodox position and then analyze and refute deviations from these truths. Doctrine Twisting will help Christians more fully serve God and minister to others through a better understanding of the essential doctrines of the Bible and the doctrinal errors of new religious movements.