Frances Henry's book explores various African religions as part of a cultural system, relevant to national identity in the island of Trinidad The book deals with the dynamic doctrinal and ideological changes that have taken place within the religions, and documents both the legislative and social acceptance of African religion today. This study is an important documentation of contemporary history and religious debate. It analyzes the process by which marginalized religions move toward the mainstream and the various internal and external tensions such movements engender. It makes a particularly strong contribution in its discussions of ritual authenticity. The work is based on a three-year period of fieldwork in Trinidad. Of interest to students and scholars interested in Caribbean Studies, especially African-oriented studies.

Those who teach courses in Native American religious traditions know the difficulty of finding quality books that deal in concise yet reliable fashion with a number of tribal traditions and are suitable for use in the classroom. In this volume, Lawrence Sullivan seeks to help fill this lacuna.

"You shall have no other gods besides Me." This injunction, handed down through Moses three thousand years ago, marks one of the most decisive shifts in Western culture: away from polytheism toward monotheism. Despite the momentous implications of such a turn, the role of idolatry in giving it direction and impetus is little understood. This book examines the meaning and nature of idolatry--and, in doing so, reveals much about the monotheistic tradition that defines itself against this sin.

The authors consider Christianity and Islam, but focus primarily on Judaism. They explore competing claims about the concept of idolatry that emerges in the Hebrew Bible, as a "whoring after false gods." Does such a description, grounded in an analogy of sexual relations, presuppose the actual existence of other gods with whom someone might sin? Or are false gods the product of "men's hands," simply a matter of misguided belief? The authors show how this debate, over idolatry as practice or error, has taken shape and has in turn shaped the course of Western thought--from the differentiation between Jewish and Christian conceptions of God to the distinctions between true and false belief that inform the tradition of religious enlightenment.

Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G. E. Moore, this brilliant account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities. Its insights into pluralism and intolerance, into the logic and illogic of the arguments religions aim at each other, make "Idolatry" especially timely and valuable inthese days of dark and implacable religious difference.

A Study of the Disputation between Bartlome de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda on the religious and iltellectual capacity of the American Indians.

Die Autoren des Buches stellen die Geschichte der Budweiser Dioezese dar und reflektieren hierbei aktuelle Forschungsansatze. Das Buch zeichnet ein komplexes Bild der Entstehung und territorialen wie verwaltungstechnischen Entwicklung der Dioezese in den Jahren 1785-1850. Die Autoren arbeiten mit neuen Perspektiven die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen heraus und dokumentieren die Tatigkeit der einzelnen Bischoefe, des bischoeflichen Konsistoriums und Kapitels. Dieses Buch bietet eine grundliche und systematische Analyse verschiedener Facetten des Lebens der Geistlichen in Sudboehmen: besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt ihrer sozialen und nationalen Herkunft, ihrer Ausbildung und Erziehung sowie ihrem Alltag und ihren Aktivitaten.

This enthnographic study describes and analyzes the ritual cycle celebrated by Zulu kinship groups at birth, maturity, marriage, sickness and death as understood and interpreted by the Zulus themselves. The Zulu world view emerges as a logical and coherent system of thought, expressed primariliy through rites, rituals and symbols Axel-Ivar Berglund spent his childhood in Zululand as the son of Swedish missionaries serving there.