The book analyses the influence of religion on political parties and party politics in contemporary democracies. To do so, it compares five cases of democracies belonging to different geographic-cultural areas, and marked by different religious majorities: India, Israel, Italy, Turkey, and the US. The time span of the analysis is the period between 1980 (year which can be conventionally regarded as a turning point for the return of religion in the public and the political spheres at the global level), and the present day. Unlike most works on religion and parties, this book does not simply take into account officially "religious" parties, but all "religiously oriented parties" (with an influence of religion on party manifestos, constituencies and/or factions) even if they are officially secular. The theoretical framework is provided by the "cleavages theory", which considers some relevant traumatic social events as the origin of specific kinds (or families) of political parties; and by a typology of religiously oriented parties dividing them into five categories: conservative, fundamentalist, progressive, nationalist, and camp party.

This book examines race, religion, and politics in the United States, illuminating their intersections and what they reveal about power and privilege. Drawing on both historic and recent examples, Stephanie Mitchem introduces readers to the ways race has been constructed in the United States, discusses how race and religion influence each other, and assesses how they shape political influence. Mitchem concludes with a chapter looking toward possibilities for increased rights and justice for all.

Ist Schwarz eine Farbe oder nur Kontrastgeber? Ist Schwarz ein einziger Farbton oder sind es mehrere? Sind Einstellungen zur Farbe Schwarz kulturell gepragt? Wenn man Schwarz sagt, meint man dann tatsachlich auch Schwarz? Es heisst, Schwarz ist die am wenigsten verstandene aller Farben. Insofern ist es eine besondere Herausforderung, die Sinngebung der Farbe Schwarz in den kulturhistorischen Landschaften der Welt auszuleuchten. Eben dies wird in dieser Studie angestrebt, wobei der Diskussion uber Farbmetaphorik besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird. Hier werden Erkenntnisse der verschiedensten Fachdisziplinen ausgewertet - darunter der Kunstgeschichte, der Anthropologie, der Linguistik, der Forschung uber kulturelle Stereotypen und der Religionsgeschichte - und zu einer Gesamtschau verdichtet. Dieses Buch ist in einem verstandlichen Essaystil geschrieben und spricht damit den allgemein interessierten akademischen Leser an. Daruber hinaus eignet es sich nach seinem Inhalt und der Vielzahl an Quellenverweisen ebenso als Forschungsinstrument fur die verschiedensten Fachvertreter.

Using an innovative methodological approach combining field experiments, case studies, and statistical analyzes, this book explores how the religious beliefs and institutions of Catholics and Muslims prompt them to be generous with their time and resources. Drawing upon research involving more than 1,000 Catholics and Muslims in France, Ireland, Italy, and Turkey, the authors examine Catholicism and Islam in majority and minority contexts, discerning the specific factors that lead adherents to help others and contribute to social welfare projects. Based on theories from political science, economics, religious studies and social psychology, this approach uncovers the causal connections between religious community dynamics, religious beliefs and institutions, and socio-political contexts in promoting or hindering the generosity of Muslims and Catholics. The study also provides insight into what different religious beliefs mean to Muslims and Catholics, and how they understand those concepts.

Mead takes a broad look at past and present changes in the church, and postulates a future to which those changes are calling us. Denominations, once structured to deliver resources to far-off lands of foreign mission, now encounter the mission field in the layperson's workplace and the community surrounding the local congregation. Thus, the church is called to reinvention for this new mission frontier

This Element provides a comprehensive overview of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) Movement and its offshoots. Several early assessments of the as a cult and/or new religious movement are helpful, but are brief and somewhat dated. This Element examines the TM movement's history, beginning in India in 1955, and ends with an analysis of the splinter groups that have come along in the past twenty-five years. Close consideration is given to the movement's appeal for the youth culture of the 1960s, which accounted for its initial success. The Element also looks at the marketing of the meditation technique as a scientifically endorsed practice in the 1970s, and the movement's dramatic turn inward during the 1980s. It concludes by discussing the waning of its popular appeal in the new millennium. This Element describes the social and cultural forces that helped shape the TM movement's trajectory over the decades leading to the present and shows how the most popular meditation movement in America distilled into an obscure form of Neo-Hinduism.

Create a small, strong congregation that is dedicated to advancing God's mission The twenty-first century is the century of small, strong congregations. More people will be drawn to small, strong congregations than any other kind of congregation. Yes, there are mega-congregations; Their number is increasing greatly. Nevertheless, across the planet, the vast majority of congregations will be small and strong, and the vast majority of people will be in these congregations. With uncommon wisdom Kennon L. Callahan--today's most noted church consultant--moves ahead of conventional thinking and in Small, Strong Congregations offers his unique vision of the church of the future. This important book chronicles the emergence of a vast number of congregations that are questioning the bigger-is-better notion in church membership. These congregations are deliberately small, active, and happy in their dedication to creating strong church communities that advance God's mission. Step by step, Kennon Callahan shows pastors and other church leaders how they can develop the values and specific qualities helpful to shape and strengthen their own small congregations.Written to be a hands-on guide, Small, Strong Congregations offers practical suggestions for creating mission and service, compassion and shepherding, community and belonging, self-reliance and self-sufficiency, worship and hope, teams and leaders, space and facilities, and giving and generosity. This wise resource is filled with illustrative examples that show clearly how myriad small churches have created solid, vigorous congregations.

Faced with crisis, lack of direction, or just plain "stuckness," many congregations and their leaders are content to deal only with surface issues and symptoms only to discover that the same problems keep recurring, often in different, and more serious, ways. In The Hidden Lives of Congregations, Christian educator and consultant Israel Galindo takes leaders below the surface of congregational life to provide a comprehensive, holistic look at the corporate nature of church relationships and the invisible dynamics at play. Informed by family systems theory and grounded in a wide-ranging ecclesiological understanding, Galindo unpacks clearly the factors of congregational lifespan, size, spirituality, and identity and shows how these work together to form the congregation s hidden life. He provides useful tools for diagnosing and understanding how one s congregation fits into the various categories he names and suggests what leadership skills are necessary to get beyond the impasse of surface issues and help the congregation achieve its mission. The Hidden Lives of Congregations provides one of the most far-reaching looks into the invisible nature of faith communities written in recent years. For seminaries and divinity schools, it provides a standard text for getting a solid start in congregational practices; for experienced pastors, it provides support for renewing ministry; for lay leaders and committees, it offers insight to deepening mutual ministry. Israel Galindo has written an indispensable manual that leaders will return to repeatedly for new wisdom and guidance"

The Alleluia Community is a unique Christian community of over three hundred committed charismatic Christians in Augusta, Georgia, who live a covenant and ecumenical lifestyle. Emerging from the Charismatic Renewal Movement of the 1960s, members of Alleluia have maintained a lively charismatic dimension of the Christian tradition with a willingness to make a life-time covenant commitment to each other. Since 1973, this group of people has exhibited heroic virtue, self-sacrifice, humility, deference for one another, and service to others outside their boundaries. They claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit in their daily lives. Their leaders lead with a strong sense of service and Christian love and a willingness to lay down their own agendas. A major feature of these covenant makers is that they strive for daily Christian unity while being committed to one of the twelve-plus various denominations and fellowships. Swenson had the opportunity of living among these people for twenty months. During this time, he used a mixed method approach involving over one hundred interviews and three hundred instruments to create both qualitative and quantitative measures of the lives of these people. To structure their story, he used the dilemmas of the institutionalization of religion from the scholarship of Thomas O'Dea and secularization theory. The data gathered give abundant evidence that these Alleluia faithful have substantively resisted the secular influence so common in Western culture.

This is the first Polish ethnological monograph to present how biblical themes function in folk culture in the context of rituals, customs and iconographic records and is based on ethnographic sources collected in Polish rural communities from central Poland to diasporas in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine in 1989-96. It shows how biblical plots used to undergo interpretation, at the same time, infiltrating common sense knowledge. The novelty here is the joint analysis of themes from both Testaments, presenting the narrations in accordance to the way the local community perceived its identity. The biblical typology, influencing culture through tradition and liturgy, inspired a symbolic order adjusted to cyclic conceptions of time and space, characteristic of rural culture

* Spiritual resource for Bible study and reflection/discussion prior to church meetings * Passages deal with common issues of group life (conflict, change, leadership, vision, burnout) After years as a member of parish staffs and as a congregational and diocesan consultant, Judith Carlson became increasingly aware how seldom Bible study or some spiritual component is incorporated into church meetings. Even when they want to, busy lay people worry it will take "too much time" or aren't sure what scripture to use or fear they "don't know enough" about the Bible. Clergy too, despite good intentions, often have trouble finding time to prepare something. This simple model provides a way to add the missing (and needed) spiritual dimension. First Order of Business contains 36 brief sessions, 12 minutes a piece. Each has a scripture passage and three open-ended reflection questions-open-ended to fit a variety of situations (though not automatically suggesting "right answers") and allowing some genuine reflection in a non-threatening way. Carlson's hope is that allowing "space" for the Spirit's presence can transform ordinary "business as usual" into a broader, more spiritual context for a group's work of mission or ministry.

This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolution. Fundamentalists fought to maintain cultural control of education. As this book reveals for the first time, the successes and the failures of these fundamentalist campaigns transformed both the fundamentalist movement and the nature of education in America. In turn, those transformations determined many of the positions of the "culture wars" that raged throughout the twentieth century.

What can we learn from the Saint of the Gutters? How might her wisdom and intercession help us in our present needs? After all, Mother Teresa was very small in stature, even frail in some respects, and she was a woman-the supposed "weaker sex." However, this petite woman's "yes" to God truly changed the world forever. She opened the world's eyes to our duties to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and told us that a far worse hunger exists in our Western world. She continues to encourage us to reach out in love to those in need. Through this novena of prayer, our faith is energized as we "sit at St. Teresa of Calcutta's feet" to learn lessons of love, and invoke her intercession for our urgent, as well as our lesser needs-big and small-she will help!

Sowohl in der biblischen Traditionals auch im Bereich der Neurowissenschaften steht die "Leiblichkeit" des Menschen im Zentrum der Wahrnehmung. Dies darf als gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt fur ein konstruktives Gesprach zwischen biblischer Theologie und gegenwartiger Neurowissenschaft festgehalten werden. Der Blick richtet sich auch auf die "Dimension der' Geschichtlichkeit', die fur das alttestamentliche Verstandnis des Menschen von fundamentaler Bedeutung ist, aber auch den neurowissenschaftlichen Blick auf den Menschen sehr stark pragt. Die "Identitat" eines Menschen begegnet uns als eine "narrative Konstruktion". Die' Seele' wird dazu aufgefordert, nicht zu vergessen, was ihr an Gutem widerfahren ist. Dabei begegnet uns die biblische Tradition als grosse Hoffnungsg schichte.

Monastic Bodies Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe Caroline T. Schroeder "Caroline Schroeder presents the first analysis of the ascetic ideology of one of the most important figures in early Egyptian monasticism, Shenoute of Atripe."--David Brakke, Indiana University "This remarkable study focuses on the leadership style . . . developed by Shenoute of Atripe, the third leader of the elaborate complexes for men and women monastics established in the mid-fourth century in Upper Egypt."--"Journal of Religion" Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoute's letters, sermons, and treatises--one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery--provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism. In "Monastic Bodies," Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoute's arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk. Shenoute's ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius. Caroline T. Schroeder teaches at the University of the Pacific. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion 2007 248 pages 6 x 9 5 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3990-4 Cloth $79.95s 52.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0338-7 Ebook $79.95s 52.00 World Rights Religion, Biography Short copy: An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture.

a oeRulings in Ecclesiastical Matters Since 1946a ]The collection of rulings publishes the administration of justice by governmental courts in the Federal Republic of Germany pertaining to the relationship of church and state, and also regarding further problems which are characterized by the relevance of religious concerns.

Newly revised edition of the classic course/workbook on confirmation instruction continues the tradition of providing readers with a meaningful approach to living as Christians.

This book assumes no prior knowledge of Judaism, and is aimed at students and general readers. Containing an account of the Jewish people and the main lines of their history, as well as eight chapters examining subjects including the Torah and tradition, worship, the Bible, law, ethics, mysticism, theology, eschatology and the problems facing Judaism today.

Presents a unique contemporary Eucharist that remains similar to the liturgy celebrated in a Celi De community in the early ninth century. Following the classic shape of the Eucharist--Entrance, The Ministry of the Word, The Peace, The Offertory, The Holy Communion, and the Dismissal--this service draws together texts from Scripture, mainstream Irish, Scottish, and Welsh traditions, and contemporary Celtic spirituality to create a remarkably original service that encourages fresh appreciation of the Eucharist. Easily adaptable to formal or informal settings, this book can be used inconjunction with modern lectionary cycles.

Good and evil, clean and unclean, rich and poor, self and other. The nature and function of such binary oppositions have long intrigued scholars in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the opening chapters of Genesis, in which God separates day from night, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate throughout the Hebrew Bible. In this groundbreaking work melding critical exegesis and contemporary theory, Saul M. Olyan considers the prevalence of polarities in biblical discourse and expounds their significance for the social and religious institutions of ancient Israel. Extant biblical narrative and legal texts reveal a set of socially constructed and culturally privileged binary oppositions, Olyan argues, which instigate and perpetuate hierarchical social relations in ritual settings such as the sanctuary.

Focusing on four binary pairs--holy/common, Israelite/alien, clean/unclean, and whole/blemished--Olyan shows how these privileged oppositions were used to restrict access to cultic spaces, such as the temple or the Passover table. These ritual sites, therefore, became the primary contexts for creating and recreating unequal social relations. Olyan also uncovers a pattern of challenge to the established hierarchies by nonprivileged groups. Converging with contemporary issues of power, marginalization, and privileging, Olyan's painstaking yet lucid study abounds with implications for anthropology, classics, critical theory, and feminist studies.

Traces of Glory is the first in a three-volume collection of prayers and other resources based on the new Common Worship Lectionary used in many parts of the Anglican Communion, and very similar to lectionaries in use in the United States. Written in the Celtic style for which the author is known, and linked to the Sunday readings, these prayers and intercessions may be used by congregations for the Prayers of the People, as well as by individuals seeking to supplement their own devotions.