"I'm extremely impressed by Johnson's book. "Diaspora Conversions" offers an outstanding combination of theoretical acuity, erudition, and ethnographic prowess. It is bound to become highly influential in the study of religion in motion."--Manuel A. Vasquez, co-author of "Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas"
"Johnson's work bursts through the present conversations on African diaspora and brings us onto entirely new ground, shattering simplistic ideas and replacing them with critical distinctions. This smart and talented ethnographer succeeds in combining detailed and rich ethnographic fieldwork with an unrelentingly critical and sophisticated analysis. Johnson's work brings to life one of the most central, perhaps the most central, classic question of African American anthropology: "How is Black culture constituted, even through dislocation and displacement?"--Elizabeth McAlister, author of "Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora"
""Diasporic Conversions" convincingly breaks new ground by showing how the meaning of 'homeland' is fundamentally a product of historically situated and contested forms of collective imagination. What will make Johnson's book a benchmark in the study of the African diaspora, and diasporic situations more generally, is that it is not just a richly documented and rigorously argued ethnography, but a genuine anthropology of historical consciousness."--Stephan Palmie, author of "Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition"

This colorful, richly textured account of spiritual training and practice within an American Indian social network emphasizes narrative over analysis. Thomas Buckley's foregrounding of Yurok narratives creates one major level of dialogue in an innovative ethnography that features dialogue as its central theoretical trope. Buckley places himself in conversation with contemporary Yurok friends and elders, with written texts, and with twentieth-century anthropology as well. He describes Yurok Indian spirituality as "a significant field in which individual and society meet in dialogue--cooperating, resisting, negotiating, changing each other in manifold ways. 'Culture, ' here, is not a thing but a process, an emergence through time."

In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English and Julian Hayden, an archaeologist, recorded Allison's words verbatim. The resulting document, the "Hohokam Chronicles", is the most complete natively articulated Pima creation narrative ever written and a rare example of a single-narrator myth. Now this extraordinary work, composed of thirty-six separate stories, is presented in its entirety for the first time. Beautifully expressed, the narrative constitutes a kind of scripture for a native church, beginning with the creation of the universe out of the void and ending with the establishment in the sixteenth century of present-day villages. Central to the story is the murder/resurrection of a god-man, Siuuhu, who summoned the Pimas and Papagos (Tohono O'odham) as his army of vengeance and brought about the conquest of his murderers, the ancient Hohokam. Donald Bahr extensively annotates the text and supplements it with other Pima-Papago versions of similar stories. Important as a social and historic document, this book adds immeasurably to the growing body of Native American literature and to our knowledge of the development of Pima-Papago culture.

Among the topics considered in this classic study are world origins and supernatural powers, attitudes toward the dead, the medicine man and shaman, hunting and gathering rituals, war and planting ceremonies, and newer religions, such as the Ghost Dance and the Peyote Religion.
"The distinctive contribution of ["Red Man's Religion"] is the treatment of topics, the insight and the perspective of the author, and her ability to transmit these to the reader. . . . Trais and aspects of religion are not treated as abstract entitites, to be enumerated and summated, assigned a geographic distribution, and then abandoned. No page is a dry recital; each is an illumination. Insight and wisdom are framed in poetic prose. An offering of information in such a medium merits gratitude."--"American Anthropologist"

Children born and raised on the religious fringe are a distinctive yet largely unstudied social phenomenon -they are irreversibly shaped by the experience having been thrust into a radical religious culture by birth. The religious group is all encompassing. It accounts for their family, their school, social networks, and everything that prepares them for their adult life. The inclusion of a second generation of participants raises new concerns and legal issues. Perfect Children examines the ways new religious movements adapt to a second generation, how children are socialized, what happens to these children as they mature, and how their childhoods have affected them. Amanda van Twist conducted over 50 in-depth interviews with individuals born into new religious groups, some of whom have stayed in the group, some of whom have left. She also visited the groups, their schools and homes, and analyzed support websites maintained by those who left the religious groups that raised them. She also attended conferences held by NGOs concerned with the welfare of children in "cults." The main groups she studies include the Bruderhof, Scientology, the Family International, the Unification Church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Children born into new religions often start life as "special children" believed to be endowed with heightened spiritual capabilities. But as they mature into society at large they acquire other labels. Those who stay in the group are usually labeled as "goodies" and "innovators". Those who leave tend to be labeled as "baddies" or seen as "troubled." Whether they stay or leave, children raised on the religious fringe experience a unique form of segregation in adulthood. Van Twist analyzes group behavior on an organizational/institutional level as well as individual behavior within groups, and how these affect one another. Her study also raises larger questions about religious freedom in the light of the State's responsibility towards children, and children's rights against the rights of parents to raise their children within their religion.

Examines the Spiritualist movement's role in disseminating eugenic and hard hereditarian thought. Studying transatlantic spiritualist literature from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, Christine Ferguson focuses on its incorporation and dissemination of bio-determinist and eugenic thought. She asks why ideas about rational reproduction, hereditary determinism and race improvement became so important to spiritualist novelists, journalists and biographers in this period. She also examines how these concerns drove emerging Spiritualist understandings of disability, intelligence, crime, conception, the afterlife and aesthetic production. The book draws on rare material, including articles and serialized fiction from Spiritualist periodicals such as Light, The Two Worlds and The Medium and Daybreak as well as on Spiritualist healing, parentage and sex manuals. Key Features: *The first major study of Transatlantic Spiritualism's sustained commitment to eugenics, bio-determinism and hard hereditarianism *Devotes a chapter to eugenic and raciological writing of Paschal Beverly Randolph, the nineteenth-century African-American Rosicrucian and sex magician whose work has only recently been rediscovered by scholars * Interdisciplinary and historicist methodology * The rich transatlantic reading demonstrates the continuity and influence between British and American Spiritualist writings on the body, reproduction and mental fitness

With great spiritual insight and unparalleled scholarship, Dr. Taitetsu Unno--the foremost authority in the United States on Shin or Pure Land Buddhism--introduces us to the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan. Unique among the various practices of Buddhism, this "new" form of spiritual practice is certain to enrich the growing practice of Buddhism in the United States, which is already quite familiar with Zen and Tibetan traditions. River of Fire, River of Water is the first introduction to the practice of Pure Land Buddhism from a trade publisher and is written for readers with or without prior experience with it.



The Pure Land tradition dates back to the sixth century c.e., when Buddhism was first introduced in Japan. Unlike Zen, its counterpart which flourished in remote monasteries, the Pure Land tradition was the form of Buddhism practiced by common people. Consequently, its practice is harmonious with the workings of daily life, making it easily adaptable for seekers today. Despite the difference in method, though, the goal of Pure Land is the same as other schools--the awakening of the true self.



Certain to take its place alongside great works such as Three Pillars of Zen, The Miracle of Mindfulness, and Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind--River of Fire, River of Water is an important step forward for American Buddhism.

What, if anything remains of religion after the demise of traditional theism and the theologies based upon it? What are the consequences of so-called Post-theism for the modern scholarly study of religion (in Religionswissenschaft and philosophical theology or church dogmatics, in the philosophy of religion as well as in the more recent phenomenon of comparitive religious studies)? This volume collects some thirty articles written in honor of Professor Hendrik Johan Adriaanse whose intellectual trajectory, recounted here in extensive personal reflections, has lead to an incisive inquiry into the possibilities of thinking and experiencing "After Theism" (the title of a fundamental article reprinted here). Post-theism : Refraiming the Judeo-Christian Tradition raises this question from three different perspectives : first, by spelling out the historical and intellectual backgrounds that have led to the supposed end of theism as it had been known through the ages; secondly, by discussing the systematic relationship between the disciplines of theology and competing concepts of rationality; and, thirdly, by sketching out the contours of a philosophical thought that ventures beyond the most tenacious classical and modern presuppositions of theism. Along the way, the contributors explore a variety of ways in which the concepts and arguments, imagery and rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian traditions are in need and in the process of being constantly displaced. Henri Krop, Arie L. Molendijk and Hent de Vries teach Philosophy, the history of Christianity, and Metaphysics, respectively, at the Erasmus University, The University of Groningen, and the University of Amsterdam.

The "sobbing" vocal quality in many traditional songs of northwestern California Indian tribes inspired the title of Richard Keeling's comprehensive study. Little has been known about the music of aboriginal Californians, and "Cry for Luck" will be welcomed by those who see the interpretation of music as a key to understanding other aspects of Native American religion and culture.;Among the Yurok, Hupa and Karok peoples, medicine songs and spoken formulas were applied to a range of activities from hunting deer to curing an upset stomach or gaining power over an uninterested member of the opposite sex. Keeling inventories 216 specific forms of "medicine" and explains the cosmological beliefs on which they were founded. This music is a living tradition, and many of the public dances he describes are still performed today. Keeling's comparative, historical perspective shows how individual elements in the musical tradition can relate to the development of local cultures and the broader sphere of North American prehistory.