'Secularization' has been hotly debated since it was first subjected to critical attention in the mid-sixties by David Martin, before he sketched a 'General Theory' in 1969. 'On Secularization' presents David Martin's reassessment of the key issues: with particular regard to the special situation of religion in Western Europe, and questions in the global context including Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa. Concluding with examinations of Pluralism, Christian Language, and Christianity and Politics, this book offers students and other readers of social theory and sociology of religion an invaluable reappraisal of Christianity and Secularization. It represents the most comprehensive sociology of contemporary Christianity, set in historical depth.

For good or ill, most, if not all, of the great institutions which have formed the framework of society have had their roots in the idea of Deity as a beneficent providential order of transcendental reality. In being handed down through countless generations the beliefs, concepts and customs have assumed a great variety of new outward forms in the process of transmission and development. To determine their true meaning and function as a cohesive force and as an expression of ultimate reality, the comparative and historical methods can be employed with considerable advantage. This book, first published in 1950, provides a valuable comparative study of religion.

This book offers a philosophical approach to religion that acknowledges both the diversity of religions and the many and varied dimensions of the religious life. Rather than restricting itself to Christian theism, it covers a wide range of religious traditions, examining their beliefs in the context of the actual practice of the religious life. After outlining the aims of religion, the book focuses on claims to knowledge. What kinds of knowledge do religions purport to offer? In what idiom is it couched? From what sources do devotees draw their claims to knowledge? Are these sources reliable? Rather than trying to settle age-old questions about religious belief, the book offers its readers a set of criteria with which they can make informed decisions in matters of faith.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 instantly heightened the American public's sensitivity toward matters of religious difference. Many Americans realized not only that non-Muslims need to learn more about Islam, but also that Muslims must better understand and articulate their own faith to themselves and others. In this volume, Jane Idleman Smith examines the current American Christian-Muslim dialogue, contextualized both through the history of Islam and of the contemporary West. As we approach the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Smith dares to ask what progress has been made through this dialogue, what happens when that dialogue fails, and what direction it will take in the years to come.
Smith examines the recent theological writings of both Catholics and Protestants about dialogue and pluralism, and shows that since 9/11 a few Muslim scholars in the West have also begun to write about these issues. Now, she argues, many Christians and Muslims are expressing their desire to move beyond theological discussion into what is often called the "dialogue of engagement." As evidence, she points to initiatives among young people, women, and African Americans as they attempt to find ways to work together in local projects of justice and community service. Throughout the book, one hears the personal voices of these Muslim and Christian participants in the American interfaith dialogue.
While many of the encounters between Islam and Christianity over the past 14 centuries have been peaceful, Americans know little about the history of religious interaction beyond the Crusades or the fear Europe felt in the face of the invasions of the Turks. This volume is intended to educate Americans about thegreat diversity of Muslims in this country while illustrating how Christians and Muslims are coming together, not only to talk to each other, but to work together for the common good.

This book critically examines three distinct interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, those of George Lindbeck, David Tracy, and David Burrell, while paying special attention to the topic of interreligious disagreement. In theological and philosophical work on interreligious communication, Ludwig Wittgenstein has been interpreted in very different, sometimes contradicting ways. This is partly due to the nature of Wittgenstein's philosophical investigation, which does not consist of a theory nor does it posit theses about religion, but includes several, varying conceptions of religion. In this volume, Gorazd Andrejc illustrates how assorted uptakes of Wittgenstein's conceptions of religion, and the differing theological perspectives of the authors who formulated them, shape interpretations of interreligious disagreement and dialogue. Inspired by selected perspectives from Tillichian philosophical theology, the book suggests a new way of engaging both descriptive and normative aspects of Wittgenstein's conceptions of religion in the interpretation of interreligious disagreement.

This book provides a comparative analysis of cosmopolitan (esoteric) religious movements, such as Theosophy, Groupe Independent des Etudes Esoteriques, Anthroposophy, and Monism, in England, France, Germany, and India during the late nineteenth-century to the interwar years. Despite their diversity, these factions manifested a set of common features-anti-materialism, embrace of Darwinian evolution, and a belief in universal spirituality-that coalesced in a transnational field of analogous cosmopolitan spiritual affinities. Yet, in each of their geopolitical locations these groups developed vastly different interpretations and applications of their common spiritual tenets. This book explores how such religious innovation intersected with the social (labor and economic renewal), cultural (education and religious innovation) and political (Empire and anti-colonial) dynamics in these vastly different national domains. Ultimately, it illustrates how an innovative religious discourse converged with the secular world and became applied to envision a new social order-to spiritually re-engineer the world.

This book is a discourse on creation hypothesis in light of new scientific findings made in the 20th and 21st centuries, incorporating sacred texts of different religions. It also addresses the universal phenomena of information and mathematics within this context. The discourse makes an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about creationism, intelligent design, and the problems of science vs. religion.

Value and Vulnerability brings together scholars of many religions-including Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Islam, and Humanism-to identify and examine conceptions and interpretations of dignity within different religious and philosophical perspectives and their applications to contemporary issues of conflict, such as gendered, religious, and racial violence, immigration, ecology, and religious peacemaking. Value and Vulnerability also includes response chapters that clarify and refine these interpretations from interfaith perspectives. Through this volume, Matthew R. Petrusek and Jonathan Rothchild offer recommendations for advancing the conversation about dignity within and among traditions and for addressing urgent global issues and threats to dignity. Together, Petrusek, Rothchild, and the contributors create a comparative framework constituted by seven questions: What sources justify dignity's existence, nature, and purpose? What is the relationship between the divine and human dignity? What is the relationship between dignity and the human body? Is dignity vulnerable or invulnerable to moral harm? Is dignity inherent or attained? Is dignity universal and equal? Is dignity practical? Through its systematic, comparative, interdisciplinary, and practical dimensions, Value and Vulnerability fills in the gaps in contemporary theological, philosophical, and ethical discourses on dignity. Contributors: Matthew R. Petrusek, Jonathan Rothchild, Darlene Fozard Weaver, Kristin Scheible, Karen B. Enriquez, Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel Nevins, Christopher Key Chapple, David P. Gushee, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Zeki Saritoprak, William Schweiker, Hille Haker, Nicholas Denysenko, Terrence L. Johnson, William O'Neill, Victor Carmona, Dawn Nothwehr, OSF, and Ellen Ott Marshall.

This volume is a collection of essays by former students of Judith Berling based on her revolutionary interreligious pedagogy. Her pedagogy can be summarized as a student centered, collaborative, and engaging teaching and learning process sparked by various ways of boundary-crossing. In this enterprise, each chapter explores the importance of understanding and negotiating "differences" through dialogue. The authors provide theoretical frameworks for engagements across conventional borders, and explore how the collaborative teaching model can be utilized in various teaching settings. As an example of her dialogical approach, Judith Berling herself provides a response to the chapters.

Packed with ideas for the primary school teacher, this book includes stories, songs and drama activities from six major world religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. The book is helpfully split into topic areas which include: New Beginnings Places of Worship Friends Festivals Rites of Passage Water Themes Animals and Birds Inspirational Leaders. There is also a useful section on background information with pronunciation guides for teachers for the different world religions featured. Multi-faith Activity Assemblies combines Elizabeth Peirce's previous books, Activity Assemblies for Christian Collective Worship 5-11 and Activity Assemblies for Multi-racial Schools 5-11. Taking the best ideas from both and adding new material, it will be invaluable to headteachers, deputy headteachers, primary school teachers or any trainee teacher who is looking for a collection of assembly ideas that promotes tolerance and understanding of the multi-faith society in which we live.

Mystics who have spoken of their union with God have come under suspicion in all three major religious traditions, sometimes to the point of condemnation and execution in the case of Christianity and Islam. Nevertheless, in all three religions the tradition of unio mystica is deep and long. Many of the spiritual giants of these three faiths have seen the attainment of mystical union as the heart of their beliefs and practices. Despite its importance, mystical union has rarely been investigated in itself, apart from the wider study of mysticism, and even more rarely from the aspect of comparative studies, especially those based upon broad and expert knowledge of the inner life of the three related monotheistic faiths. This text brings together essays that equally explore the broader idea of unio mystica as well as the mystic traditions within each religion.

In Contemporary Philosophical Theology, Charles Taliaferro and Chad Meister focus on key topics in contemporary philosophical theology within Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. The volume begins with a discussion of key methodological tools available to the philosophical theologian, such as faith and reason, science and religion, revelation and sacred scripture, and authority and tradition. The authors use these tools to explore subjects including language, ineffability, miracles, evil, and the afterlife. They also grapple with applied philosophical theology, including environmental concerns, interreligious dialogue, and the nature and significance of political values. A concluding discussion proposes that philosophical theology can contribute to important reflections and action concerning climate change.

This volume is an interdisciplinary consideration of late medieval art and texts, falling into two parts: first, the iconography and context of the great Doom wall painting over the tower arch at Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, and second, Carthusian studies treating fragmentary wall paintings in the Carthusian monastery near Coventry; the devotional images in the Carthusian Miscellany; and meditation for "simple souls" in the Carthusian Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Emphasis is on such aspects as memory, participative theology, devotional images, meditative practice, and techniques of constructing patterns of sacred imagery.

The Archetype of the Dying and Rising God in World Mythology is the first global treatment of the dying and rising god archetype since that classification was called into serious doubt in the final decades of the twentieth century. While assaults on the concept have focused on the Classical and ancient Near Eastern (Biblical) traditions, this study goes beyond but also includes these areas to encompass world mythology. Beginning with an interrogation of the most influential criticisms, the author then examines evidence for the archetype's validity by analyzing dying and rising god myths from ancient Near Eastern, Classical, and non-Classical sources from around the world. He treats implications of the archetype for religious studies, literature, and psychology, both in discussing the myths themselves and in separate chapters dedicated to these fields. The focused treatment on single myths makes this book a useful reference source. At the same time, its inductive approach to evidence provides a conclusive argument on the question with applications that warrant reading it from cover to cover. Additional distinctive features of this book include a thematic interpretation of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land, a new perspective on the Jungian archetypes, and a call for a neo-archetypal approach to literary criticism.

The field encompassed by this collection on 'Religion, Sexuality, and Spirituality' is a vast and controversial one. It encompasses both normative and non-normative sexual identities and behaviours in the so-called 'world religions' (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) and also such modes of being and conduct in the multitudinous indigenous religions, new religions and spiritualities, and smaller long-established traditions (for example, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Shinto, and so on).

In every culture, in every epoch, human beings have yearned for heaven--the kingdom of God, abode of the elect, fount of enlightenment, mirror of hopes and desires. Now, in The Book of Heaven, Carol and Philip Zaleski provide the first wide-ranging anthology of writings about heaven, drawing from scriptures, myths, epics, poems, prayers, sermons, novels, hymns and spells, to illuminate a vast spectrum of beliefs about the world beyond.

The Zaleskis present a fascinating array of ancient and modern, solemn and comic meditations, as they explore such topics as the often treacherous journey to heaven, heaven's colorful inhabitants, its topographic features, and its moral architecture. The emphasis is on great literature, with substantial excerpts taken from classic works such as The Iliad, St. Augustine's Confessions, The Prose Edda, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, and The Pilgrim's Progress; from sacred texts such as the Bible, the Upanishads, the Qu'ran, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Bhagavata Purana; and from diverse writers such as Plato, Cicero, Thomas Traherne, Henry Fielding, Emanuel Swedenborg, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Hans Christian Andersen, William James, G. K. Chesterton, C. G. Jung, Rupert Brooke, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Selections highlight both the diversity and the universality of reflection on heaven: the sacred chants of the Buddhist Pure Land sutras reverberate alongside John Donne's holy sonnets, and Shaker songs complement Jewish mystical hymns.

From the words of Sioux holy man Black Elk, to a sermon by Jonathan Edwards, to humorous musings by Mark Twain and fantastical passages from The Chronicles of Narnia, this rich anthology will deepen our understanding of the myriad ways in which human beings have envisioned heaven.

Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations, Third Edition is the ideal textbook for those coming to the study of religion for the first time, as well as for those who wish to keep up-to-date with the latest perspectives in the field. This third edition contains new and upgraded pedagogic features, including chapter summaries, key terms and definitions, and questions for reflection and discussion. The first part of the book considers the history and modern practices of the main religious traditions of the world, while the second analyzes trends from secularization to the rise of new spiritualities. Comprehensive and fully international in coverage, it is accessibly written by practicing and specialist teachers.

Global health-related efforts today are usually shaped by two very different ideological approaches. They either reflect a human rights-based approach to health and equity, often associated with public health, medicine, or economic development activities; or they express religious or humanitarian "aid," usually motivated by personal beliefs about charity, philanthropy, missional dynamics, and/or a ministry of "mercy." The underlying differences between these two approaches can create tensions and even outright hostility that affects and may even undermine the best intentions of those involved. In Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights, Susan R. Holman-a scholar in both religion and the history of medicine-challenges this stereotypical polarization through stories designed to help shape a new lens on global health, one that envisions a multidisciplinary integration of respect for religion and culture with an equal respect for and engagement with human rights and social justice. The book's six chapters range broadly, from pilgrimage texts in the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions, to the effect of ministry and public policy on the 19th century poorhouse; the story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as it shaped economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights; a "religious health assets" approach based in Southern Africa; and the complex dynamics of gift exchange in the modern faith-based focus on charity, community, and the common good. The book will appeal to readers interested in global health, faith-based aid, public policy, humanitarian response, liberation theology, charity, gift exchange, and a good story.

Aristotle accurately characterized humans as political animals. Whether through birth or from choice, people naturally cluster into groups for protection, advancement, and the pursuit of well-being. But Aristotle's description does not hint at the powerful binary tension within this human tendency. Leaders enhance a social group's sense of identity by appealing to the members' commitments and shared traditions, to their hopes, strengths, sacrifices, and fears. Often, however, they cultivate not only an awareness of difference but even a sense of superiority, since for every social group there are those outsider, the "them". Maintaining a group's solidarity can too easily lead to the righteousness of intolerance towards those who are excluded. The reinforcement of group-identity in this way runs so deep in human nature that holding up a mirror to ourselves inevitably reveals a split image: the people we want to see and the people we're glad we're not. Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey presents stark examples of how the "us" have treated the "them". The papers in this volume hold up various unflattering mirrors of intolerance from the areas of History, Law, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. The authors of these scholarly studies do not condemn. Rather, their research compels us to look at ourselves as the political animals we are. Intolerance: Political Animals and Their Prey is the product of a year-long multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty members of Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. The project involved parallel seminar courses at both institutions along with Joint Sessions, all focused on the central theme of intolerance, and culminated in a three-day academic Conference at Bard in the Spring of 2015. This volume inaugurates a new series being published by Hamilton Books under the general title, Dialogues on Social Issues: Bard College and West Point.

This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.

In this original study, Joshua Brown seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of Chinese philosophy for Christian theology by using Confucianism to reread, reassess, and ultimately expand the Christology of the twentieth-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Taking up the critically important Confucian idea of xiao (filial piety), Brown argues that this concept can be used to engage anew Balthasar's treatment of the doctrine of Christ's filial obedience, thus leading us to new Christological insights. To this end, Brown first offers in-depth studies of the early Confucian idea of xiao and of Balthasar's Christology on their own terms and in their own contexts. He then proposes that Confucianism affirms certain aspects of Balthasar's insights into Christ's filial obedience. Brown also shows how the Confucian understanding of xiao provides reasons to criticize some of Balthasar's controversial claims, such as his account of intra-Trinitarian obedience. Ultimately, by rereading Balthasar's Christology through the lens of xiao, Balthasar in Light of Early Confucianism employs Confucian and Balthasarian resources to push the Christological conversation forward. Students and scholars of systematic theology, theologically educated readers interested in the encounter between Christianity and Chinese culture, and comparative theologians will all want to read this exceptional book.

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.

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.

How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project. In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediations-imperial, colonial, and indigenous - in which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Muller's dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard's and John Buchan's fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Bois' studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.