This is a rich, informative, and inspiring compendium of the Christian tradition of prayer and contemplation from the earliest days of the Church to the present day. Included are selections from St. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, St. Clement of Rome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, John Cassian, St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Sinai, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, Lancelot Andrewes, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Edith Stein, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. Levering has selected readings that capture how Christian saints and spiritual leaders through the ages have understood what prayer is, why we pray, and how we pray. The selections also integrate the Eastern Orthodox and Western understandings of prayer and contemplation. The book is perfect for study, meditation, and inspiration.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book explores two kinds of universalist thought that circulated among Jews in the Greco-Roman world. The first, which is founded on the idea that all people may worship the One True God in an engaged and sustained manner, originates in biblical prophetic literature. The second, which underscores a common ethic that all people share, arose in the second century bce. This study offers one definition of Jewish universalism that applies to both of these types of universalist thought: universalist literature presumes that all people, regardless of religion and ethnicity, have access to a relationship with the Israelite God and the benefits promised to those loyal to this God, without demanding that they participate in the Israelite community as a Jew. This book opens with an exploration of four types of relationships between Israelites and non-Israelites in biblical prophetic literature: Israel as Subjugators, Israel as Standard-Bearers, Naturalized Nations, and Universalized Worship. In all of these relationships, the foreign nations will acknowledge the One True God, but it is only the Universalized Worship model that offers a truly universalist vision of the end-time. The second section of this book examines how these four relationship models are expressed in Second Temple literature, and the third section studies late Second Temple texts that employ a second kind of universalist thought that emphasizes ethical behavior. This book closes with the suggestion that Ethical Universalist ideas expressed in late Second Temple texts reflect exposure to Stoic thinkers who were developing universalist ideas in the second century BCE.

This book examines the state of Christianity in the United States, considering trends in religious beliefs and affiliation over the last forty years. It seeks to explain why so many of America's largest denominations have witnessed such a dramatic decline during this period. It argues that, although there are many elements to this decline, the shrinking families of Americans-including American Christians-are a primary explanation for our aging and shrinking Christian congregations. Beyond establishing this explanation for organized decline, this book also offers a survey of the relevant research explaining why more and more Americans are deferring family formation and having fewer (in many cases, zero) children. It discusses the relevant social science research on this subject, which focuses heavily on the role of economic change. It also summarizes the relevant research on cultural change and the family, particularly the relationship between religious beliefs and activities and changing family norms.

In this volume, The Buddhist Society presents Yoka Daishi's Realizing the Way, a T'ang Dynasty Chinese text known as Zhang Dao Ge, or Shodoka in Japanese. This 12th century Japanese edition has been translated by the Venerable Myokyo-ni and accompanied throughout by her own commentary on the text. The title, which is variously translated, is most commonly known as 'The Song of Enlightenment'. With vivid imagery and striking turns of phrase, these verses weave in and out of the various Mahayana doctrines. Each section of the Song is accompanied here by extensive and illuminating commentary.

In thirty-one biblical, highly personal meditations, Nancy Stafford leads us to the edge of an endless sea--the vast, incomprehensible ocean of God's love. Nancy reflects upon the terrible beauty of His love, the wonder of forgiveness, waiting in His love, mystery and intimacy, and the calming reality of love that never fails. Each meditation includes a Scripture to ponder and an opportunity to respond to God in prayer. Here are memorable thoughts to cling to through the hours of the day...and night

Spirituality Research Studies in Higher Education offers two uniquely designed sections that showcase a group of talented scholars from major research institutions. This edited volume by Terence Hicks provides the reader with topics such as spiritual aspects of the grieving college students, spirituality and sexual identity among lesbian and gay students, spirituality driven strategies among first-generation students, the role of spirituality in home-based education, and counseling and spiritual support among women.

These 24 studies on specific symbols, images and icons from the Muslim tradition authored by scholars from around the world. Divided into four sections, the Divine, the Spiritual, the Physical, and the Societal, the work examines theological issues, such as divine unity, creation, wrath, and justice; spiritual subjects, such as the straight path, servitude, perfection, the jinn, intoxication, and the status of Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Essays also explore the symbolism of physical elements such as water, trees, seas, ships, food, the male sexual organ, eyebrows, and camels; and the significance of more socially-centred subjects such as the centre, ijtihad, governance, otherness, ""Ashura"", and Arabic. Drawing from the Qur'an and Sunnah, these topics are all tackled with tact and respect from a position that appreciates exegetical diversity while remaining within the realm of unity.

In Recovering American Catholic Inculturation, McNeil follows the case of Bishop John England, who chose to govern the Diocese of Charleston with a Constitution that assigned rights and responsibilities to the church's membership. He argues that this was not a case of simple accommodation to Enlightenment rationality and autonomous individuality. Bishop England's adaptation of Catholicism should be understood as both a retrieval and an application of theoretical thinking to the practical judgment of specific contexts on the basis of reason and pragmatic esthetics. Social conflicts of interest are resolved through the allowance of an exercise of faith and reason within contexts wherein we understand and experience the truth of the situation is never final and that "good" and the "better" are not private, subjective, static nor simply progressive. Contemporary critics have often resorted more to static categories and political projections onto the earlier American experience than is warranted by a close study of the original texts of the founders of the American Republic or, particularly for this study, a personage such as John England. The study concludes that a re-embarkation on the road of inculturation is long overdue for American Catholicism. This book holds appeal for American historians, philosophers interested in the liberal tradition and autonomous individualism, epistemologists exploring rationality, aesthetics, and knowledge, Catholic theologians and Church historians, and all educated Catholics.

The Talmud chronicles the early development of rabbinic Judaism through the writings and commentaries of the rabbis whose teachings form its foundation. However, this key religious text is expansive, consisting of 63 books containing extensive discussions and interpretations of the Mishnah accumulated over several centuries. Sifting through the huge number of names mentioned in the Talmud to find information about one figure can be tedious and time-consuming, and most reference guides either provide only brief, unhelpful entries on every rabbi, including minor figures, or are so extensive that they can be more intimidating than the original text. In Essential Figures in the Talmud, Dr. Ronald L. Eisenberg explains the importance of the more than 250 figures who are most vital to an understanding and appreciation of Talmudic texts. This valuable reference guide consists of short biographies illustrating the significance of these figures while explaining their points of view with numerous quotations from rabbinic literature. Taking material from the vast expanse of the Talmud and Midrash, this book demonstrates the broad interests of the rabbis whose writings are the foundation of rabbinic Judaism. Both religious studies and rabbinical students and casual readers of the Talmud will benefit from the comprehensive entries on the most-frequently discussed rabbis and will gain valuable insights from this reader-friendly text. Complete in a single volume, this guide strikes a satisfying balance between the sparse, uninformative books and comprehensive but overly complex references that are currently the only places for inquisitive Talmud readers to turn. For any reader who wishes to gain a better understanding of Talmudic literature, Eisenberg's text is just as "essential" as the figures listed within.

This book is a sequel to Biblical Historiography and Historical Geography; published in 1998. It comprises further studies in the field of biblical historiography, literary history of the biblical historical narratives and the quest for their veracity. They rely on a study of the tangible data of territorial history and the testimony elicited from the patterned historical concepts that figure in the texts. This line of research is based on a historical evaluation of literary testimonies interrelated with the archaeological evidence and regional history.

This study sets out to interpret the Marcan Temple incident (Mark 11,15-19) as a distancing device, by which the Marcan faction differentiates itself from other Jews, especially the anti-Roman revolutionaries who had turned the temple in Jerusalem into ‘a den of bandits’ during the Jewish revolt between 66 and 74 CE. It concentrates on the interactions between the Marcan faction and other Jewish factions in the context of its Jewish symbolic universe. The study concludes that the Marcan faction is ‘Jewish but differently’.

The Labrang Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Amdo and its extended support community are one of the largest and most famous in Tibetan history. This crucially important and little-studied community is on the northeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau in modern Gansu Province, in close proximity to Chinese, Mongol, and Muslim communities. It is Tibetan but located in China; it was founded by Mongols, and associated with Muslims. Its wide-ranging Tibetan religious institutions are well established and serve as the foundations for the community's social and political infrastructures. The Labrang community's borderlands location, the prominence of its religious institutions, and the resilience and identity of its nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures were factors in the growth and survival of the monastery and its enormous estate. This book tells the story of the status and function of the Tibetan Buddhist religion in its fully developed monastic and public dimensions. It is an interdisciplinary project that examines the history of social and political conflict and compromise between the different local ethnic groups. The book presents new perspectives on Qing Dynasty and Republican-era Chinese politics, with far-reaching implications for contemporary China. It brings a new understanding of Sino-Tibetan-Mongol-Muslim histories and societies. This volume will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate student majors in Tibetan and Buddhist studies, in Chinese and Mongol studies, and to scholars of Asian social and political studies.

This volume studies how the literary elements in the Qur'an function in conveying its religious message effectively. It is divided into three parts. Part one includes studies of the whole Qur'an or large segments of it belonging to one historical period of its revelation; these studies concentrate on the analysis of its language, its style, its structural composition, its aesthetic characteristics, its rhetorical devices, its imagery, and the impact of these elements and their significance. Part two includes studies on individual suras of the Qur'an, each of which focuses on the sura's literary elements and how they produce meaning; each also explores the structure of this meaning and the coherence of its effect. Part three includes studies on Muslim appreciations of the literary aspects of the Qur'an in past generations and shows how modern linguistic, semantic, semiotic, and literary scholarship can add to their contributions.

Holy War, Just War explores the 'dark side' in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism by examining how the concept of ultimate value contributes to religious violence. The book states that religion has within its own conceptual tools the resources to understand its own dark side and that religious people must subject their religion to a moral vision of goodness and constrain those parts that make for violence and hatred.

Over the centuries, theological studies have grappled with the comprehension of Truth and Goodness. However, theology, unlike philosophy, has neglected serious scrutiny of the study of Beauty or Aesthetics. Jo Ann Davidson's Toward a Theology of Beauty investigates this omission. Why should aesthetic dimensions be ignored in theology's quest for ultimate truth? Davidson convincingly states that these would contribute to the ongoing search for a more comprehensive perception of the divine. This book contends that theology is incomplete and impoverished without fundamental deliberations within aesthetic values. A survey of the literature up to the present currently reveals that theological studies, by and large, do not yet realize the extent to which it might be enriched by the biblical aesthetic. God's own nature, His Word in both Testaments including narratives, poetry, literary structures, and vocabulary are all embedded in aesthetic expressions. A systematic study of the biblical aesthetic is one that calls for attention and this book offers a solid and thought-provoking beginning.

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty explores the religious freedom implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly appraisal to date of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. It explores two principal questions. First, exactly what kind of religious freedom conflicts are likely to emerge if society embraces same-sex marriage? A redefinition of marriage would impact a host of laws where marital status affects legal rights-in housing, employment, health-care, education, public accommodations, and property, in addition to family law. These laws, in turn, regulate a host of religious institutions-schools, hospitals, and social service providers, to name a few-that often embrace a different definition of marriage. As a result, church-state conflicts will follow. This volume anticipates where and how these manifold disputes will arise. Second, how might these conflicts be resolved? If the disputes spark litigation under the Free Speech, Free Exercise, or Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, who will prevail and why? When, if ever, should claims of religious liberty prevail over claims of sexual liberty? Drawing on experience in analogous areas of law, the volume explores whether it is possible to avoid these constitutional conflicts by statutory accommodation, or by separating religious marriage from civil marriage.

KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 5In the twenty years after the end of World War II, a "Third World" was added to the Cold War concepts of the First and Second worlds, and postwar decolonization ushered in an era of development. For the first time, theories and policies designed to eradicate underdevelopment became prominent on the agenda of the United Nations. This international evolution inevitably had a dramatic impact on socialism and Christian democracy, two major ideologies with their roots in Western Europe. Both became part of the global political dialogues taking place beyond Europe's borders. The result was a sometimes violent clash of Western and non-Western belief systems.In Towards an Era of Development, Peter Van Kemseke explores the questions of whether political ideologies were being used as vehicles for promoting national interests and if socialism and Christian democracy were forced on developing nations or naturally spread to new parts of the globe. Van Kemseke also offers an assessment of the success of these ideologies in their new territories.

From the earliest interactions of Christians with the Roman Empire to today's debates about the separation of church and state, the Christian churches have been in complex relationships with various economic and political systems for centuries. Renowned theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether analyzes the ways the Christian church has historically interacted with powerful systems such as patriarchy, racism, slavery, and environmentalism, while looking critically at how the church shapes these systems today. With a focus on the United States, Christianity and Social Systems provides an introductory analysis of the interactions between the churches and major systems that have shaped western Christian and post-Christian society. Ruether discusses ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism, and includes three country case studies-Nicaragua, South Africa, and North and South Korea-to further illustrate the profound influences Christianity and social systems have with each other. This book is neither an attack on the relationship between Christianity and these systems, nor an apology, but rather a nuanced examination of the interactions between them. By understanding how these interactions have shaped history, we can more fully understand how to make ethical decisions about the role of Christianity in some of today's most pressing social issues, from economic and class disparities to the environmental crisis.

Divided into four parts-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-this book takes an elemental approach to the study of religion and ecology. It reflects recent theoretical and methodological developments in this field which seek to understand the ways that ideas and matter, minds and bodies exist together within an immanent frame of reference. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature focuses on how these matters materialize in the world around us, thereby addressing key topics in this area of study. The editors provide an extensive introduction to the book, as well as useful introductions to each of its parts. The volume's international contributors are drawn from the USA, South Africa, Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia, and South Korea, and offer a variety of perspectives, voices, cultural settings, and geographical locales. This handbook shows that human concern and engagement with material existence is present in all sectors of the global community, regardless of religious tradition. It challenges the traditional methodological approach of comparative religion, and argues that globalization renders a comparative religious approach to the environment insufficient.