Rather than wield religion as a weapon or a ruse in irrational appeals, the book attempts to reimagine a shared American mythos and ethos, by reminding us of our shared stake in creating an America committed to the life of all peoples and species and to the full developments of our capabilities as an exercise of liberty.

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

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

"Sharot makes a substantial contribution to the maturation of the comparative sociology of religion. A distinctive feature of the book is its accent on popular religion, a much studied phenomenon these days ."Martin Marty

The many books on the world's religions typically emphasize doctrine ( religion "in the air"), while sociology of religion books typically emphasize behavior (religion "on the ground"). Stephen Sharot does both in this masterful study, the product of many years of research. His book should have great classroom potential as well as a prominent place on religion scholars' bookshelves."--Phillip Hammond, D. Mackenzie Brown Professor of Religious Studies, University of California Santa Barbara

"This book belongs in libraries of all sorts. It strikes me as a paradigm of analytical comprehension that should set a standard for the field."
-- "Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion," September 2002

"This is a commendably ambitious project...The coverage is excellent."
--"Journal of Religion"

"In his fine study Sharot succeeds in discerning a specific trajectory of popular religions. He has assembled a tremendous amount of evidence and arguments in favor of the independent existence and development of popular religion, effective still in the secularized world."
--"History of Religions"

"He is adept at articulating overarching patterns of similarity and differences, and furnishes a much-needed synthesis of recent scholarship concerning many of the major religious traditions."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

A Sociology of World Religions presents a comparative analysis of the world's religions, focusing on the differences and interrelationshipsbetween religious elites and lay masses. In each case the volume contextualizes how the relationships between these two religious forms fit within, and are influenced by, the wider socio-political environment.

After introducing the book's major themes, the volume introduces and builds upon an analysis of Weber's model of religious action, drawing on Durkheim, Marxist scholars, and the work of contemporary sociologists and anthropolgists. The following chapters each focus on major religious cultures, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, and the religions of China and Japan. This ambitious project is the first to offer a comparison of the popular, or folk, forms of religion around the world.

Sharot's accessible introductions to each of the world religions, synthesizing a vast literature on popular religion from sociology, anthropology, and historians of religion, make the project ideal for course use. His comparative approach and original analyses will prove rewarding even for experts on each of the world religions.

Originally published in 1966, the full Georgian text of the oldest version of this Christian version of this matchless classic of Oriental wisdom literature is made accessible to a wider readership in an English translation. Based on a unique manuscript preserved in the Greek Patriarchate at Jerusalem, this rendering should appeal to those interested in comparative religion, Buddhism, medieval Christianity, the history of monasticism and in the literature of the Georgians and other ancient nations of the former Soviet Union.

This book brings together case studies dealing with historical as well as recent phenomena in former socialist nations, which testify the transfer of knowledge about religion and atheism. The material is connected on a semantic level by the presence of a historical watershed before and after socialism as well as on a theoretical level by the sociology of knowledge. With its focus on Central and Eastern Europe this volume is an important contribution to the research on nonreligion and secularity. The collected volume deals with agents and media within specific cultural and historical contexts. Theoretical claims and conceptions by single agents and/or institutions in which the imparting of knowledge about religion and atheism was or is a central assignment, are analyzed. Additionally, procedures of transmitting knowledge about religion and atheism and of sustaining related institutionalized norms, interpretations, roles and practices are in the focus of interest. The book opens the perspective for the multidimensional and negotiating character of legitimation processes, being involved in the establishment or questioning of the institutionalized opposition between religion and atheism or religion and science.

The book is about Ubuntu-loosely translated-I am because we are-or, our common humanity in Zulu, about Unity, and global solidarity. It proves again how alike and universal we are as societies across the globe despite this deadly pandemic. On a personal and social basis, each of the six chapters is a call to action to find commonality, and this is the third book of Jahid's amelioration on Covid-19 Trilogy. And the Appendix is something special for the readership. Ubuntu tells us about the Indigenous healing keys: empathy, compromise, learning, non-violence, change, forgiveness, restorative justice, love, spirituality and hope. The book was written by a highly diverse team of contributors, both from the Global South and North, and is multidisciplinary in nature, and attempting of Commoning the Communities. The authors hail from the fields of social work, anthropology, and education, and have been working with local communities in the ongoing struggle to identify and address complicit oppression and inequalities. Offering a beacon of hope for today and tomorrow, the book will appeal to social science researchers, policy planners, and the general public alike

Robert Eisler, the polymathic Jewish Austrian scholar and Holocaust survivor, faded into obscurity after his death in 1949. A contemporary and associate of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Gershom Scholem, Eisler spent his early years in fin-de-siecle Vienna and trained as an art historian and economist. In this book, the first in English devoted to Eisler's life and thought, Brian Collins takes us through the development of Eisler's ideas about the philosophy of values, comparative mythology, Christianity, psychoanalysis, monetary policy, and anthropology. Collins also explores the bizarre and sometimes tragic events that defined Eisler's life, including his arrest for art theft in 1907, his controversial reconstruction of a physical description of Jesus, and the fifteen months he spent in Dachau and Buchenwald, the inspiration for his final book, Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy.

This volume will concentrate its search for religious individuality on texts and practices related to texts from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity. Texts offer opportunities to express one's own religious experience and shape one's own religious personality within the boundaries of what is acceptable. Inscriptions in public or at least easily accessible spaces might substantially differ in there range of expressions and topics from letters within a sectarian religious group (which, at the same time, might put enormous pressure on conformity among its members, regarded as deviant by a majority of contemporaries). Furthermore, texts might offer and advocate new practices in reading, meditating, remembering or repeating these very texts. Such practices might contribute to the development of religious individuality, experienced or expressed in factual isolation, responsibility, competition, and finally in philosophical or theological reflections about "personhood" or "self". The volume develops its topic in three sections, addressing personhood, representative and charismatic individuality, the interaction of individual and groups and practices of reading and writing. It explores Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin texts.

Religion, like any other domain of culture, is mediated through symbolic forms and communicative behaviors, which allow the coordination of group conduct in ritual and the representation of the divine or of tradition as an intersubjective reality. While many traditions hold out the promise of immediate access to the divine, or to some transcendent dimension of experience, such promises depend for their realization as well on the possibility of mediation, which is necessarily conducted through channels of communication and exchange, such as prayers or sacrifices. An understanding of such modes of semiosis is therefore necessary even and especially when mediation is denied by a tradition in the name of the 'ineffability" of the deity or of mystical experience. This volume models and promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-cultural perspective on these issues by asking prominent semioticians, historians of religion and of art, linguists, sociologists of religion, and philosophers of law to reflect from a semiotic perspective on the topic of mediation and immediacy in religious traditions.

Colonialism, globalization and consumerism have devastated large parts of our world. For the past five centuries, the West has nurtured self-worth through the accumulation of worldly goods, serving our own selfish interests and exploiting others. This has been disastrous not only to human beings but to the whole ecology of the planet. Consumerism drives trade, but consumer buying is now like an unchained beast with tooth and claw causing han (unjust suffering) for exploited peoples as well as for other species and even for planet Earth. This book will examine ways of rethinking and reimagining ourselves, helping us to work in more just directions for a safer, sustainable planet. Empowering ourselves to act more justly includes reimagining and renewing our inspiration from God who is the transformative Spirit who gives, sustains and empowers life to all.

Fourth Maccabees is a superbly craft ed oration that presents a case for the Jewish way of life couched almost entirely in terms of Greek ethical ideals. Using an expansion upon previous scriptural narratives as an opportunity for philosophical exposition, its author delights in the Torah, the Law of Moses, as the divinely given path to becoming our best selves now. Moreover, drawing upon Greek logic tradition, he develops an elaborate rationalisation of that law based upon the promise of eternal life with God. In this collection of essays spanning two decades of study, David deSilva examines the formative training that produced such an author, the rhetorical craft present in his work, and the author's creative use of both Jewish and Greek literary resources. Finally, he demonstrates the book's enduring message and legacy in the Christian church, from theological influence on Origen to textual relations within Codex Sinaiticus.

In this study, Paul S. Chung charts the history of social scientific study of religion from the axial age to the present day, and thereby lays a foundation for a new model of constructive theology in the comparative study of religion, culture and society. Analysing the thought of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer and others, Chung deals effectively with material interests, power relations and the history of race, gender and sexuality. The result is a synthesis that is at once innovative, critical, and applicable to current methodology in theology and the social sciences.

Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew Rippin, is a collection of essays on the Qur'an, qur'anic exegesis, the early history of Islam, the relationship of the qur'anic text to writings from other religious traditions, and the use of the Qur'an in modern discussions and debates. Its scope is medieval and modern contexts and it covers regions right across the Muslim world. The essays are based on and reflect Rippin's broad interests and methodological innovations; his studies of text transmissions, hermeneutical studies of the Qur'an; careful unpacking of the complex relations between qur'anic exegesis and historical contexts; and exploring potential new methodologies for future research. With contributions by: Herbert Berg, Stefano Bigliardi, Majid Daneshgar, Bruce Fudge, Claude Gilliot, Andreas Goerke Feras Hamza, Gerald Hawting, Aaron W. Hughes, Tariq Jaffer, Marianna Klar, Jane McAuliffe, Arnold Yasin Mol, Angelika Neuwirth, Gordon Nickel, Johanna Pink, Michael E. Pregill, Gabriel S. Reynolds, Peter G. Riddell, Walid A. Saleh, Nicolai Sinai, Roberto Tottoli

This volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to some pivotal topics of (de-) colonization. It examines the early modern debate on just war, transatlantic conquest and slavery, followed by the shift of the debate in the 18th and 19th centuries towards assertions of racial hierarchies based on supposed matters of fact, and finally the philosophical discussion regarding decolonization. Two central themes emerge: first, the political circumstances and the exploitation of the available terminology resulted in the production of new meanings or "translations" during the 17th and 18th centuries, and second, the adoptions of established justifications of colonial activities and enslavement brought about models of natural science that increasingly developed a momentum of their own.

On November 22, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. All three believed, in different ways, that death is not the end of human life. Suppose they were right, and suppose they met after death. How might the conversation go? Peter Kreeft imagines their discussion as part of the great conversation that has been going on for centuries about life's biggest questions. Does human life have meaning? Is it possible to know about life after death? What if one could prove that Jesus was God? With Kennedy taking the role of a modern humanist, Lewis representing Christian theism and Huxley advocating Eastern pantheism, the dialogue is lively and informative. With clarity and wit, Between Heaven and Hell presents insightful responses to common objections to the Christian faith. This classic apologetics work is now available as part of the IVP Signature Collection, which features special editions of iconic books in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of InterVarsity Press.

This volume explores how religious leaders can contribute to cultures of peace around the world. The essays are written by leading and emerging scholars and practitioners who have lived, taught, or worked in the areas of conflict about which they write. Connecting the theory and practice of religious peacebuilding to illuminate key challenges facing interreligious dialogue and interreligious peace work, the volume is explicitly interreligious, intercultural, and global in perspective. The chapters approach religion and peace from the vantage point of security studies, sociology, ethics, ecology, theology, and philosophy. A foreword by David Smock, the Vice President of Governance, Law and Society and Director of the Religion and Peacebuilding Center at the United States Institute of Peace, outlines the current state of the field.

Salomon Munk (1803-1867) belonged to a group of German-Jewish scholars who pioneered the systematic study of Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and Islamic philosophy in Western Europe in the nineteenth century, as part of a movement that came to be known as the Science of Judaism. The Science of Judaism applied the tools of modern science (in particular philology) to the study of Judaism, seeking to shed light on its manifold aspects and historical contexts-an undertaking which eventually led to the birth of Jewish studies as an academic discipline. Munk's ground-breaking studies of Arabic and Judeo-Arabic sources were to play a central role in this process, exerting a major influence on nineteenth century German and French Oriental studies as well as on modern philosophical historiography, and paving the way for the scientific study of the relationship between medieval Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thought. This book is an attempt to restore this extraordinary representative of German Jewry to the pantheon of the Science of Judaism, and in the process, to illustrate the fascinating origins of the academic field of Jewish and Islamic Studies.

Thinking about ultimate reality is becoming increasingly transreligious. This transreligious turn follows inevitably from the discovery of divine truths in multiple traditions. Global communications bring the full range of religious ideas and practices to anyone with access to the internet. Moreover, the growth of the "nones" and those who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" creates a pressing need for theological thinking not bound by prescribed doctrines and fixed rituals. This book responds to this vital need. The chapters in this volume each examine the claim that if the aim of theology is to know and articulate all we can about the divine reality, and if revelations, enlightenments, and insights into that reality are not limited to a single tradition, then what is called for is a theology without confessional restrictions. In other words, a Theology Without Walls. To ground the project in examples, the volume provides emerging models of transreligious inquiry. It also includes sympathetic critics who raise valid concerns that such a theology must face. This is a book that will be of urgent interest to theologians, religious studies scholars, and philosophers of religion. It will be especially suitable for those interested in comparative theology, inter-religious and interfaith understanding, new trends in constructive theology, normative religious studies, and global philosophy of religion.

Internationally recognized scholars from many parts of the world provide a critical survey of recent developments and achievements in the global field of religious studies. The work follows in the footsteps of two former publications: Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Jacques Waardenburg (1973), and Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Frank Whaling (1984/85). New Approaches to the Study of Religion completes the survey of the comparative study of religion in the twentieth century by focussing on the past two decades. Many of the chapters, however, are also pathbreaking and point the way to future approaches.

We live in a multicultural society. But Christians often do not know how to engage those of other faiths. As a result, many Christians hesitate to talk about Christianity with others in any kind of evangelistic way. Jay Moon and Bud Simon unpack the intercultural dynamics that Christians need to understand when encountering people from different communities and cultural backgrounds. Regarding evangelism from the perspective of four major worldviews (guilt/justice, shame/honor, fear/power, and indifference/belonging with purpose), this book demonstrates contextual evangelism approaches that are relevant, biblical, and practical. The authors draw on new research conducted with hundreds of participants that reveal concrete ways to communicate the gospel effectively across cultures. Sharing one's faith does not require attacking other religions; rather, we can engage at the worldview level in order to address people's deepest concerns. Greater understanding provides us with better skills for relational connection, empathy, and effective witness.

Will the followers of other religions who have not heard of the gospel be saved? Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic church has been grappling with this question, culminating in a recent document, Dominus Iesus in 2000. In the post-DI climate, the British theologian, Gavin D'Costa, has been described as a "representative post-DI theologian of religions." And with good reason, since other theologians such as Jacques Dupuis whose work along the lines of "neo-Rahnerianism" have been curtailed by DI. D'Costa's work has spanned the past three decades and is aimed at developing a theology that echoes developments within the Catholic church's efforts to grapple with the existence of other religions. In doing so, he has appropriated the doctrine of the Trinity by reasoning it provides the very resources for interacting with "Others" and developed a form of Trinitarian inclusivism. Based on the work of patristic theologians such as Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes and their conception of a "Pro-Nicene" theological matrix, this book is an attempt to assess whether D'Costa's utilization of trinitarian resources for contemporary concerns is faithful to the tradition. The book concludes that while there is much to commend in D'Costa's system, there remain some features not fully consonant with classical Trinitarianism.