This book advances that history by exploring stories, images and discourses across a worldwide range of geographical, cultural and confessional contexts. Its twelve authors not only enrich our understanding of the significance of the contextual method, but also produce a new range of original ways of doing theology in contemporary situations. The authors discuss some prioritised thematic perspectives with an emphasis on liberating paths, and expand the ongoing discussion on the methodology of theology into new areas. Themes such as interreligious plurality, global capitalism, ecumenical liberation theology, eco-anxiety and the anthropocene, postcolonialism, gender, neo-pentecostalism, world theology, and reconciliation are examined in situated depth. Additionally, voices from Indigenous lands, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe and North America enter into a dialogue on what it means to contextualise theology in an increasingly globalised and ever-changing world. Such a comprehensive discussion of new ways of thinking about and doing contextual theology will be of great use to scholars in Theology, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Science, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Global Studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies is the first comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Indigenous scholarship. The book is ambitious in scope, ranging across disciplines and national boundaries, with particular reference to the lived conditions of Indigenous peoples in the first world. The contributors are all themselves Indigenous scholars who provide critical understandings of indigeneity in relation to ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing), and axiology (ways of doing) with a view to providing insights into how Indigenous peoples and communities engage and examine the worlds in which they are immersed. Sections include: * Indigenous Sovereignty * Indigeneity in the 21st Century * Indigenous Epistemologies * The Field of Indigenous Studies * Global Indigeneity This handbook contributes to the re-centring of Indigenous knowledges, providing material and ideational analyses of social, political, and cultural institutions and critiquing and considering how Indigenous peoples situate themselves within, outside, and in relation to dominant discourses, dominant postcolonial cultures and prevailing Western thought. This book will be of interest to scholars with an interest in Indigenous peoples across Literature, History, Sociology, Critical Geographies, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Native Studies, Maori Studies, Hawaiian Studies, Native American Studies, Indigenous Studies, Race Studies, Queer Studies, Politics, Law, and Feminism.

This book concentrates on female shamanisms in Asia and their relationship with the state and other religions, offering a perspective on gender and shamanism that has often been neglected in previous accounts. An international range of contributors cover a broad geographical scope, ranging from Siberia to South Asia, and Iran to Japan. Several key themes are considered, including the role of bureaucratic established religions in integrating, challenging and fighting shamanic practices, the position of women within shamaniccomplexes, and perceptions of the body,. Beginning with a chapter that places the shamaness at the centre of the discussion, chapters then approach these issues in a variety of ways, from historically informed accounts, to presenting the findings of extensive ethnographic research by the authors themselves. Offering an important counterbalance to male dominated accounts of shamanism, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Indigenous Peoples across Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Gender Studies.

This book reflects on major themes present at the interface between religion and human security in Africa. It probes the extent to which religion is both a threat to and a resource for human security in Africa by examining specific issues occurring across the continent. A team of contributors from across Africa provide valuable reflections on the conceptualisation and applicability of the concept of human security in the context of religion in Africa. Chapters highlight how themes such as knowledge systems, youth, education, race, development, sacred texts, the media, sexual diversity, health and others have implications for individual and group security. In order to bring these themes into perspective, chapters in the first section reflect on the conceptual, historical and contextual factors at play. The chapters that follow demonstrate the theories put forward by means of case studies from countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana and Ghana that look at African religion, Islam and Christianity. This is a detailed and informative volume that provides new insights into the discourse on religion and human security. As such, it will be of significant use to any scholar of Religion and Violence, Religion in Africa and Religious Studies, as well as African and Security Studies more generally.

Around the Sacred Fire is a compelling cultural history of intertribal activism centered on the Indian Ecumenical Conference, an influential movement among native people in Canada and the U.S. during the Red Power era. Founded in 1969, the Conference began as an attempt at organizing grassroots spiritual leaders who were concerned about the conflict between tribal and Christian traditions throughout Indian country. By the mid-seventies thousands of people were gathering each summer in the foothills of the Rockies, where they participated in weeklong encampments promoting spiritual revitalization and religious self-determination.
Most historical overviews of native affairs in the sixties and seventies emphasize the prominence of the American Indian Movement and the impact of highly publicized confrontations such as the Northwest Coast fish-ins, the Alcatraz occupation, and events at Wounded Knee. The Indian Ecumenical Conference played a central role in stimulating cultural revival among native people, partly because Conference leaders strategized for social change in ways that differed from the militant groups. Drawing on archival records, published accounts, oral histories, and field research, James Treat has written the first comprehensive study of this important but overlooked effort at postcolonial interreligious dialogue.

This book investigates the role of religion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Africa. Building on a diverse range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, the book reflects on how religion, politics and health have interfaced in Southern African contexts, when faced with the sudden public health emergency caused by the pandemic. Religious actors have played a key role on the frontline throughout the pandemic, sometimes posing roadblocks to public health messaging, but more often deploying their resources to help provide effective and timely responses. Drawing on case studies from African indigenous knowledge systems, Islam, Rastafari and various forms of Christianity, this book provides important reflections on the role of religion in crisis response. This book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of African Studies, Health, Politics and Religious Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Then We'll Sing a New Song is a fascinating examination of how African religions have shaped belief and practices in America. Not just the story of the development of African American religions or the black church, this book tells the often-unrecognized, but important story of how African religions have shaped religion in America more broadly. Mary Ann Clark introduces readers to the cultures of three African kingdoms that contributed significant numbers of their population to the African slave trade, and also profoundly shaped religion in America-the Kingdom of Kongo, the Oyo Empire, and the Kingdom of Dahomey. Each of these groups has a unique history within the long history of the Atlantic slave trade and interacts with the Americas at a specific point in history. Clark shows how each may have had an influence on contemporary American beliefs and culture, sometimes in surprising ways. The book features a glossary, timeline, and maps.

Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, this book uses a close analysis of James R. Walker's 1917 monograph on the Lakota Sun Dance to explore how the Sun Dance communal ritual complex - the most important Lakota ceremony - creates moral community, providing insights into the cosmology and worldview of Lakota tradition. The book uses Walker's primary source to conduct a reading of the Sun Dance in its nineteenth-century context through the lenses of Lakota metaphysics, cosmology, ontology, and ethics. The author argues that the Sun Dance constitutes a cosmic ethical drama in which persons of all types - human and nonhuman - come together in reciprocal actions and relationships. Drawing on contemporary animist theory and a perspectivist approach that uses Lakota worldview assumptions as the basis for analysis, the book enables a richer understanding of the Sun Dance and its role in the Lakota moral world. Offering a nuanced understanding that centers Lakota views of the sacred, this book will be relevant to scholars of religion and animism, and all those interested in Native American cultures and lifeways.

By exploring how the religious beliefs, scientific knowledge, and social surroundings of African-American sufferers of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) impacts their understanding of the condition, this book develops a new model of effective adult learning. Presenting the findings of rigorous qualitative research undertaken with five individuals with T2DM, this volume considers how individuals' educational background, their personal experiences, and their relationship with African-American theism have impacted on their efforts to understand and manage the disease. Identification of the social and spiritual dynamics which govern adults' acceptance of a chronic condition such as diabetes, and their ability to manage the illness according to modern medical principles, informs the development of a new theory of adult learning known as permeated learning. This model, which extends beyond transformative learning to recognize the influence of social constructs specific to African-American communities, will have broad application to adult education and the management of chronic diseases. This scholarly text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and policymakers in the field of adult education, African-American education, transformative learning, lifelong learning, and multicultural education.

Indigenous religion(s) are afterlives of a particular sort, shaped by globalising discourses on what counts as an indigenous religion on the one hand and the continued presence of local traditions on the other. Focusing on the Norwegian side of Sapmi since the 1970s, this book explores the reclaiming of ancestral pasts and notions of a specifically Sami religion. It connects religion, identity and nation-building, and takes seriously the indigenous turn as well as geographical and generational distinctions. Focal themes include protective activism and case studies from the art and culture domain, both of which are considered vital to the making of indigenous afterlives in indigenous formats. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of Global Indigenous studies, Sami cultural studies and politics, Ethnicity and emergence of new identities, Anthropology, Studies in religion, and folklore studies.

This book sets out to document and analyse the Sami narrative tradition. It considers the worldviews inherent in the narratives and links them to traditional cosmology and other cultural expressions (such as joik and duodji). The chapters address a variety of issues, including care for children, the perception of nature, disputes over land and natural resources, local justice, the spiritual world of everyday life, and Laestadianism. Sketching Sami history and the cultural context of storytelling, Nergard also considers the modern challenge for the narrative tradition. Drawing on long-term fieldwork and research, the volume is valuable reading for Indigenous studies and disciplines such as anthropology.

This book offers a major contribution to the study and analysis of divination, based on continuing fieldwork with the Mambila in Cameroon. It seeks to return attention to the details of divinatory practice, using the questions asked and life histories to help understand the perspective of the clients rather than that of the diviners. Drawing on a corpus of more than 600 cases, David Zeitlyn reconsiders theories of divination and compares Mambila spider divination with similar systems in the area. A detailed case study is examined and analysed using conversational analytic principles. The regional comparison considers different kinds of explanation for different features of social organization, leading to a discussion of the continuing utility of moderated functionalism. The book will be of interest to area specialists and scholars concerned with religion, rationality, and decision-making from disciplines including anthropology, African studies, and philosophy.

This book offers a unique comparative study of ubuntu, a dominant ethical theory in African philosophy, and western monotheism. It is the first book to bring ubuntu to bear on the axiology of theism debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. A large motivating force behind this book is to explore the extent to which there is intersubjective ethical agreement and disagreement between ubuntu and Western worldviews like monotheism and naturalism. First, the author assesses the various arguments for anti-theism and pro-theism on the assumption that ubuntu is true. Ubuntu's communitarian focus might be so different from the Western tradition that it completely changes how we evaluate theism and atheism. Second, the author assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the truth of ubuntu for the world. Third and finally, he assesses the axiological status of faith for both monotheism and ubuntu. Ubuntu and Western Monotheism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students specializing in philosophy of religion, African religion and philosophy, and religious ethics.

Contextualizing Eschatology in African Cultural and Religious Beliefs addresses the African consciousness and nuances of eschatological beliefs as part and parcel of the holistic African Indigenous worldviews within the context of the people's traditional heritage. The concept of eschatology is usually explained from the perspective of "endtimes" in relation to either the human individual or the cosmos. Within these contexts, the primary interests, particularly with regard to human eschatology, have centred on the questions of death, afterlife, immortality, destiny, judgment, reward and punishment, and the final destination or eternal "home" of humans. This book explores the characteristic nature, the modes, the process as well as the dynamics associated with the various features culminating the functional expression of the "reality" of eschatological beliefs demonstrated in varied but fundamentally the same subject matter of practices among different African ethnic groups. It also discusses the influences of other religious traditions, particularly Christianity and Islam, on contemporary African eschatological thoughts and their attendant consequences. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African studies, eschatology, religious studies, and the philosophy of religion.

This book critically examines contemporary Pentecostalism in South Africa and its influence on some of the countries that surround it. Pentecostalism plays a significant role in the religious life of this region and so evaluating its impact is key to understanding how religion functions in Twenty-First Century Africa. Beginning with an overview of the roots of Pentecostalism in Southern Africa, the book moves on to identify a current "fourth" wave of this form of Christianity. It sets out the factors that have given rise to this movement and then offers the first academic evaluation of its theology and practice. Positive aspects as well as extreme or negative practices are all identified in order to give a balanced and nuanced assessment of this religious group and allow the reader to gain valuable insight into how it interacts with wider African society. This book is cutting-edge look at an emerging form of one of the fastest-growing religions in the world. It will, therefore, be of great use to scholars working in Pentecostalism, Theology, Religious Studies and African Religion as well as African Studies more generally.

The key theme addressed by all the contributors to this book is the relationship between South Africa's indigenous churches (AICs) to modernity. The key question asked by each of the contributors is to what extent, if any, do AICs serve as bridges to tradition or as facilitators for modernizing practices? Although the researchers do not agree on the answer to this question--some argue for the return to tradition, others argue for the facilitation perspective--they do provide provocative and timely insights for prospective researchers interested in exploring concepts and methodologies for understanding modernity and modernization. Based on a number of case studies of AICs in South Africa, this book will also be of great interest to scholars of comparative religion and the role churches play in negotiating the complex terrains of politics, society, and economy in this era of globalization.

This collaboration between two scholars from different fields of religious studies draws on three comparative data sets to develop a new theory of purity and pollution in religion, arguing that a culture's beliefs about cosmological realms shapes its pollution ideas and its purification practices. The authors of this study refine Mary Douglas' foundational theory of pollution as "matter out of place," using a comparative approach to make the case that a culture's cosmology designates which materials in which places constitute pollution. By bringing together a historical comparison of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, an ethnographic study of indigenous shamanism on Jeju Island, Korea, and the reception history of biblical rhetoric about pollution in Jewish and Christian cultures, the authors show that a cosmological account of purity works effectively across multiple disparate religious and cultural contexts. They conclude that cosmologies reinforce fears of pollution, and also that embodied experiences of purification help generate cosmological ideas. Providing an innovative insight into a key topic of ritual studies, this book will be of vital interest to scholars and graduate students in religion, biblical studies, and anthropology.

This book explores representations of Obeah - a name used in the English/Creole-speaking Caribbean to describe various African-derived, syncretic Caribbean religious practices - across a range of prose fictions published in the twentieth century by West Indian authors. In the Caribbean and its diasporas, Obeah often manifests in the casting of spells, the administration of baths and potions of various oils, herbs, roots and powders, and sometimes spirit possession, for the purposes of protection, revenge, health and well-being. In most Caribbean territories, the practice - and practices that may resemble it - remains illegal. Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature analyses fiction that employs Obeah as a marker of the Black 'folk' aesthetics that are now constitutive of West Indian literary and cultural production, either in resistance to colonial ideology or in service of the same. These texts foreground Obeah as a social and cultural logic both integral to and troublesome within the creation of such a thing as 'West Indian' literature and culture, at once a product of and a foil to Caribbean plantation societies. This book explores the presentation of Obeah as an 'unruly' narrative subject, one that not only subverts but signifies a lasting 'Afro-folk' sensibility within colonial and 'postcolonial' writing of the West Indies. Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature will be of interest to scholars and students of Caribbean Literature, Diaspora Studies, and African and Caribbean religious studies; it will also contribute to dialogues of spirituality in the wider Black Atlantic.

Originally published in 1978 Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America is an incredibly diverse and comprehensive bibliography on published works containing ethnographic data on, and analysis of, spirit possession and spirit mediumship in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and in some Afro-American communities in the Western Hemisphere. The sources on Western Afro-American communities were chosen to shed light on the African continent and the Americas. The bibliography, while not exhaustive, provides extensive research on the area of research in spiritualism in Africa and Afro-America. The bibliography also provides unique sources on spirit cults, ritual or ethnic groups and will be of especial interest to researchers. Although published in the late 70s, this book will still provide an incredibly useful research tool for academics in the area of religion, with a focus on spiritualism and non-western religions.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies is the first comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Indigenous scholarship. The book is ambitious in scope, ranging across disciplines and national boundaries, with particular reference to the lived conditions of Indigenous peoples in the first world. The contributors are all themselves Indigenous scholars who provide critical understandings of indigeneity in relation to ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing), and axiology (ways of doing) with a view to providing insights into how Indigenous peoples and communities engage and examine the worlds in which they are immersed. Sections include: * Indigenous Sovereignty * Indigeneity in the 21st Century * Indigenous Epistemologies * The Field of Indigenous Studies * Global Indigeneity This handbook contributes to the re-centring of Indigenous knowledges, providing material and ideational analyses of social, political, and cultural institutions and critiquing and considering how Indigenous peoples situate themselves within, outside, and in relation to dominant discourses, dominant postcolonial cultures and prevailing Western thought. This book will be of interest to scholars with an interest in Indigenous peoples across Literature, History, Sociology, Critical Geographies, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Native Studies, Maori Studies, Hawaiian Studies, Native American Studies, Indigenous Studies, Race Studies, Queer Studies, Politics, Law, and Feminism.

Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this two-volume set, first published in 1926. Alongside extensive reference material, including Westermarck's system of transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and districts mentioned in the text, the chapters discuss such areas as the influences on and relationship between religion and magic in Morocco, the origins of beliefs and practices, curses and witchcraft. This is the first volume of two dealing with the same subject, and will fascinate any student or researcher of anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and religion in Morocco.

The development and adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was a huge success for the global indigenous movement. This book offers an insightful and nuanced contemporary evaluation of the progress and challenges that indigenous peoples have faced in securing the implementation of this new instrument, as well as its normative impact, at both the national and international levels. The chapters in this collection offer a multi-disciplinary analysis of the UNDRIP as it enters the second decade since its adoption by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Following centuries of resistance by Indigenous peoples to state, and state sponsored, dispossession, violence, cultural appropriation, murder, neglect and derision, the UNDRIP is an achievement with deep implications in international law, policy and politics. In many ways, it also represents just the beginning - the opening of new ways forward that include advocacy, activism, and the careful and hard-fought crafting of new relationships between Indigenous peoples and states and their dominant populations and interests. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this two-volume set, first published in 1926. The first volume contains extensive reference material, including Westermarck's system of transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and districts mentioned in the text. The chapters in this, the second volume, explore such areas as the rites and beliefs connected with the Islamic calendar, agriculture, and childbirth. This title will fascinate any student or researcher of anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and religion in Morocco.