This textbook not only provides a historical overview of Mexican American religious traditions but also focuses on society today. Making this a very comprehensive overview of the subject areas. This is the first book to attempt to focus on this topic. Each chapter includes a helpful pedagogy including a general overview, case studies, suggestions for further reading, questions for discussion, and a glossary. Making this the ideal textbook for students approaching the topic for the first time. The use of case studies and first person narratives provides a much needed 'lived religion' approach to the subject area. Helping students to apply their learning to the world around them.

This book presents a collection of original research about every day, innovative, interactive, and multiple religiosities among Sri Lankan Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and devotees of New Religious Movements in post-war Sri Lanka. The book uses a novel analytic framework of 'innovative religiosity' to escape both the epistemological and ethnographic isolation of studies that limit themselves to one form of religious practice. This book is an important resource for researchers studying Anthropology, Asian Religion, Religion in Context and South Asian Studies.

This textbook not only provides a historical overview of Mexican American religious traditions but also focuses on society today. Making this a very comprehensive overview of the subject areas. This is the first book to attempt to focus on this topic. Each chapter includes a helpful pedagogy including a general overview, case studies, suggestions for further reading, questions for discussion, and a glossary. Making this the ideal textbook for students approaching the topic for the first time. The use of case studies and first person narratives provides a much needed 'lived religion' approach to the subject area. Helping students to apply their learning to the world around them.

Rather than being ephemeral fads, new religious movements (NRMs) have always been and will always be with us. So will their study. Offering an assessment of the state-of-the-field of the study of NRMs, Visioning New and Minority Religions begins by considering the analytical tools for the study of new or minority religions, drawing on the perspectives of diverse academic disciplines. The second part focuses on individual groups in a variety of geographical settings. Chapters in this section review the histories of particular groups in order to extrapolate future developments. They cover new religions that have persisted well past the first generation, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Christian Scientists, and groups with comparatively shorter histories, such as various forms of contemporary Paganism, Soka Gakkai, and the Diamond Way Buddhist group. This volume will be of interest to scholars from across religious studies and sociology, as well as members of new and minority religious groups and those in "cult watching" groups.

The Death of Sacred Texts draws attention to a much neglected topic in the study of sacred texts: the religious and ritual attitudes towards texts which have become old and damaged and can no longer be used for reading practices or in religious worship. This book approaches religious texts and scriptures by focusing on their physical properties and the dynamic interactions of devices and habits that lie beneath and within a given text. In the last decades a growing body of research studies has directed attention to the multiple uses and ways people encounter written texts and how they make them alive, even as social actors, in different times and cultures. Considering religious people seem to have all the motives for giving their sacred texts a respectful symbolic treatment, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the ritual procedures of disposing and renovating old texts. This book fills this gap, providing empirical data and theoretical analyses of historical and contemporary religious attitudes towards, and practices of text disposals within, seven world religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Exploring the cultural and historical variations of rituals for religious scriptures and texts (such as burials, cremations and immersion into rivers) and the underlying beliefs within the religious traditions, this book investigates how these religious practices and stances respond to modernization and globalization processes when new technologies have made it possible to mass-produce and publish religious texts on the Internet.

Rodnoverie was one of the first new religious movements to emerge following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its development providing an important lens through which to view changes in post-Soviet religious and political life. Rodnovers view social and political issues as inseparably linked to their religiosity but do not reflect the liberal values dominant among Western Pagans. Indeed, among the conservative and nationalist movements often associated with Rodnoverie in Russia, traditional anti-Western and anti-Semitic rhetoric has recently been overshadowed by anti-Islam and anti-migrant tendencies. Providing a fascinating overview of the history, organisations, adherents, beliefs and practices of Rodnoverie this book presents several different narratives; as a revival of the native Russian or Slavic religion, as a nature religion and as an alternative to modern values and lifestyles. Drawing upon primary sources, documents and books this analysis is supplemented with extensive fieldwork carried out among Rodnoverie communities in Russia and will be of interest to scholars of post-Soviet society, new religious movements and contemporary Paganism in general.

Based in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the Yezidi people claim their religion - a unique combination of Christian, Islamic, and historical faiths - to be the oldest in the world. Yezidi identity centres on their religion, Sharfadin, which has evolved into a highly complex pantheon of one God with many incarnations, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. The Yezidi faith can be traced to a range of pre-Islamic belief systems, such as Sufism, some extreme Shi'ite sects, Gnosticism and other traditions surviving from the ancient world. This particular formulation has served to unify Yezidi religious identity and ethnicity. Based on extensive fieldwork, The Religion of the Peacock Angel presents the first detailed examination of the Yezidi pantheon. The idea of one God and his chief incarnations is first analysed, then the various 'deity figures,' saints, holy patrons and divinized personalities in the Yezidi belief system are considered in the context of related religious traditions. The study determines the place of all these characters in the system of the Yezidi faith, defining their main functions, features, and genealogies.

The twenty-first century began with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Much has been written and debated on the relationship between faith and violence, with acts of terror at the forefront. However, the twentieth century also gave rise to many successful nonviolent protest movements. Nonviolence in the World's Religions introduces the reader to the complex relationship between religion and nonviolence. Each of the essays delves into the contemporary and historical expressions of the world's major religious traditions in relation to nonviolence. Contributors explore the literary and theological foundations of a tradition's justification of nonviolence; the ways that nonviolence has come to expression in its beliefs, symbols, rituals, and other practices; and the evidence of nonviolence in its historic and present responses to conflict and warfare. The meanings of both religion and nonviolence are explored through engagement with nonviolence in Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Jain, and Pacific Island religious traditions. This is the ideal introduction to the relationship between religion and violence for undergraduate students, as well as for those in related fields, such as religious studies, peace and conflict studies, area studies, sociology, political science, and history.

The twenty-first century began with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Much has been written and debated on the relationship between faith and violence, with acts of terror at the forefront. However, the twentieth century also gave rise to many successful nonviolent protest movements. Nonviolence in the World's Religions introduces the reader to the complex relationship between religion and nonviolence. Each of the essays delves into the contemporary and historical expressions of the world's major religious traditions in relation to nonviolence. Contributors explore the literary and theological foundations of a tradition's justification of nonviolence; the ways that nonviolence has come to expression in its beliefs, symbols, rituals, and other practices; and the evidence of nonviolence in its historic and present responses to conflict and warfare. The meanings of both religion and nonviolence are explored through engagement with nonviolence in Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Jain, and Pacific Island religious traditions. This is the ideal introduction to the relationship between religion and violence for undergraduate students, as well as for those in related fields, such as religious studies, peace and conflict studies, area studies, sociology, political science, and history.

This volume studies the representation of religion in South Asian Anglophone literature of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It traces the contours of South Asian writing through the consequences of the complex contesting forces of blasphemy and secularization. Employing a cross-disciplinary approach, it discusses various key issues such as religious fundamentalism, Islamophobia, religious majoritarianism, nationalism, and secularism. It also provides an account of the reception of this writing within the changing conceptions of racial "Others" and cultural difference, particularly with respect to minority writers, in terms of ethnic background and lack of access to social mobility. The volume features chapters on key texts, including The Hungry Tide, The Enchantress of Florence, In Times of Seige, One Part Woman, Anil's Ghost, The Book of Gold Leaves, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, The Black Coat and Swarnalata, among others. An important contribution to the study of South Asian literature, the book will be indispensable for students and researchers of literary studies, religious studies, cultural studies, literary criticism, and South Asian studies.

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of Asian Christianity and Theology, with emphasis on how it has developed in different parts of the continent and in the different eras, especially since the end of colonialism in Asia. Asian Theology refers to a unique way of theological reflection characterized by specific methodologies that evolved in postcolonial Asia. Premised on the thinking of Asian Church leaders and scholars, its focus is on the dialogue with the many cultures (inculturation), many religions (interreligious dialogue), and many poor (integral liberation) of Asia. The book looks at each of these ministries in detail, foregrounding Asian biblical hermeneutics, Christianity's engagement with Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islam, Asian Women's Theology, and the rise of Pentecostalism. The volume is valuable reading for scholars of religious studies, theology, world Christianity, Asian religions, and Asian studies.

Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. Drawing on Tradition examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption through a methodological synthesis of narrative and visual analysis, history, and ethnography. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, Jolyon BarakaThomas shows that authors and audiences create and re-create "religious frames of mind" through their imaginative and ritualised interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with traditional religious doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such traditional tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen religious ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasising throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration (i.e., the whimsical or parodic representation of religious figures, doctrines, and imagery). Building on recent developments in academic studies of manga and anime-as well as on recent advances in the study of religion as related to art and film-Thomas demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that religious institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate new audiences. Drawing on Tradition will appeal to both the dilettante and the specialist: Fans and self-professed otaku will find an engaging academic perspective on often overlooked facets of the media and culture of manga and anime, while scholars and students of religion will discover a fresh approach to the complicated relationships between religion and visual media, religion and quotidian practice, and the putative differences between "traditional" and "new" religions.

The famed medium and author of Talking to Heaven presents an inspirational collection of structured meditations and reflections designed to help readers follow their own personal journeys of self-awareness and psychic discovery. Original. 17,500 first printing.

Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular subject matter: Jediism developed from George Lucas' Star Wars films; the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded by 26-year-old student Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools; Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius which retain strong followings and participation rates among college students. The Church of All Worlds' focus on Gaia theology and environmental issues makes it a popular focus of attention. The continued success of these groups of Invented Religions provide a unique opportunity to explore the nature of late/post-modern religious forms, including the use of fiction as part of a bricolage for spirituality, identity-formation, and personal orientation.

Caribbean Diaspora in the USA presents a new cultural theory based on an exploration of Caribbean religious communities in New York City. The Caribbean culture of New York demonstrates a cultural dynamism which embraces Spanish speaking, English speaking and French speaking migrants. All cultures are full of breaks and contradictions as Latin American and Caribbean theorists have demonstrated in their ongoing debate. This book combines unique research by the author in Caribbean New York with the theoretical discourse of Latin American and Caribbean scholars. Focusing on Caribbean religious communities, including Cuban/Puerto Rican SanterA a (Regla de Ocha), Haitian Vodou, Shango (Orisha Baptist) from Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazilian Pentecostal church, Schmidt's observations lead to the construction of a cultural concept that illustrates a culture in an ongoing state of change, with more than one form of expression depending on situation, time and context. Showing the creativity of religions and the way immigrants adapt to their new surroundings, this book fills a gap between Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Goddess as Nature makes a significant contribution to elucidating the meaning of a female and feminist deity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Bridging the gap between the emergent religious discourse of thealogy - discourse about the Goddess - and a range of analytical concerns in the philosophy of religion, the author argues that thealogy is not as incoherent as many of its critics claim. By developing a close reading of the reality-claims embedded within a range of thealogical texts, one can discern an ecological and pantheistic concept of deity and reality that is metaphysically novel and in need of constructive philosophical, thealogical and scholarly engagement. Philosophical thealogy is, in an age concerned with re-conceiving nature in terms of agency, chaos, complexity, ecological networks and organicism, both an active possibility and a remarkably valuable academic, feminist and religious endeavour.

Over recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in early modern Catholic missions in Asia as laboratories of cultural contact. This book builds on recent ground-breaking research on early modern Catholic missions, which has shown that missionaries in Asia cooperated with and accommodated the needs of local agents rather than being uncompromising promoters of post-Tridentine doctrine and devotion. Bringing together some of the most renowned and innovative researchers from Anglophone countries and continental Europe, this volume investigates how missionaries' entanglements with local societies across Asia contributed to processes of localization within the early modern Catholic church. The focus of the volume is on missionaries' adaptation to four ideal-typical social settings that played an eminent role in early modern Asian missions: (1) the symbolically loaded princely court; (2) the city as a space of especially dense communication; (3) the countryside, where missionary presence was only rarely permanent; (4) and the household - a central arena of conversion in early modern Asian societies. Shining a fresh light onto the history of early modern Catholic missions and the early modern Eurasian cultural exchange, this will be an important book for any scholar of religious history, history of cultural contact/global history and early modern history in Asia.

This book uncovers the Jesuits' mystic theological interpretation in the translation of the Book of Changes (the Yijing) in their mission in China. The book analyzes how Jesuit Figurists incorporated their intralingual translation of the Yijing, the Classical and vernacular use of Chinese language and the imitation of Chinese literati's format, and the divinization of Yijing numbers into their typological exegesis. By presenting the different ways in which Jesuit Figurists Christianized the Yijing and crafted a Chinese version of Jesus and Christian stories onto the Chinese classics, this book reveals the value of Jesuit missionary-translators. The Chinese manuscripts the Figurists left behind became treasures which have been excavated and displayed in this book. These treasures reveal the other side of the story, the side not much shown in past scholarship on the Figurists. These handwritten manuscripts on the Christianized Yijing are a legacy which continues to impact European understanding of Chinese history and civilization in later centuries. A first analysis of these manuscripts in Chinese, the book will be of interest to scholars working on the history of Christianity in China, Translation Studies, and East Asian Religion and Philosophy.

This book explores the key motif of the religious other in devotional (bhakti) literatures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent unmasks processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents. The book reconsiders and challenges inherited notions of the bhakta's or devotee's other. Considering the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having an inter-regional impact-as a force, discourse, network, mythology, ethic-the book critically engages with extant scholarly narratives about what bhakti is and traces when and how those narratives have been used. The sheer diversity of South Asia's devotional traditions renders them an especially rich resource for examining social and religious fault lines, thereby furthering scholarly understanding of how communalism and sectarianism originate and develop on local or regional levels, with wider geographic implications. Bringing together studies from a subcontinent-wide variety of linguistic, geographical, and historical frames for the first time, this book will be an important contribution to the literature on bhakti and will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Religions and Asian Religions.

Exploring how people from Andean communities seek progress and social mobility by moving to the cities, Cecilie A~degaard demonstrates the changing significance of kinship, reciprocity and ritual in an urban context. Through a focus on peopleAs involvement in land occupations and local associations, labour and trade, A~degaard examines the dialectics between popular practices and neoliberal state policies in processes of urbanization. The making and un-making of notions of the Indigenous, communal work, and gender is central in this analysis, and is discussed against the historical backdrop of the land occupations in Peruvian cities since the 1930s. Through its close ethnographic description of everyday life in a new urban neighbourhood, this book reveals how social and spatial categories and boundaries are continually negotiated in peopleAs quest for mobility and progress. Cecilie A~degaard argues that conventional meanings of prosperity and progress are significantly altered in interaction with Andean understandings of reciprocity. By combining a unique ethnographic account with original theoretical arguments, the book provides new insight into the cultural, cosmological and political dimensions of mobility, progress and market participation.

Indigenous Symbols and Practices in the Catholic Church presents views, concepts and perspectives on the relationships among Indigenous Peoples and the Catholic Church, as well as stories, images and art as metaphors for survival in a contemporary world. Few studies present such interdisciplinary interpretations from contributors in multiple disciplines regarding appropriation, spiritual and religious tradition, educational issues in the teaching of art and art history, the effects of government sanctions on traditional practice, or the artistic interpretation of symbols from Indigenous perspectives. Through photographs and visual materials, interviews and data analysis, personal narratives and stories, these chapters explore the experiences of Indigenous Peoples whose lives have been impacted by multiple forces - Christian missionaries, governmental policies, immigration and colonization, education, assimilation and acculturation. Contributors investigate current contexts and complex areas of conflict regarding missionization, appropriation and colonizing practices through asking questions such as, 'What does the use of images mean for resistance, transformation and cultural destruction?' And, 'What new interpretations and perspectives are necessary for Indigenous traditions to survive and flourish in the future?'

Contemporary western Paganism is now a global religious phenomenon with Pagans in many parts of the world sharing much in common - from a nature-revering worldview and lifestyle to a host of chants, invocations, ritual tools and magical practices. But there are also locally-specific differences. Local religious contexts, landscapes, histories, traditions, politics, values and norms all impact on local Paganisms. This is nowhere more evident than in a strongly Catholic society, where religion and culture are deeply entwined. Taking the Mediterranean society of Malta as a case study, this book invites readers inside the world of a small, hidden sub-culture. Showing what it is like being Pagan in a society where the vast majority of the population is Roman Catholic, and Catholicism permeates every sphere of public and domestic, social and political life, Rountree reveals that Paganism here is a unique brew of indigenous and global influences. Pagans employ both creativity and borrowing in constructing identities within a cultural context characterized by antagonism as well as continuity. This book explores the intersections of religious and cultural identity, the global and local, Paganism and Christianity, with insights grounded in rich ethnographic detail based on long-term fieldwork. Rountree makes invaluable comparisons with other studies of modern Pagans and their various worlds.

This book seeks to explore historical changes in the lifeworld of the Mi'kmaq Indians of Eastern Canada. The Mi'kmaq culture hero Kluskap serves as a key persona in discussing issues such as traditions, changing conceptions of land, and human-environmental relations. In order not to depict Mi'kmaq culture as timeless, two important periods in its history are examined. Within the first period, between 1850 and 1930, Hornborg explores historical evidence of the ontology, epistemology, and ethics - jointly labelled animism - that stem from a premodern Mi'kmaq hunting subsistence. New ways of discussing animism and shamanism are here richly exemplified. The second study situates the culture hero in the modern world of the 1990s, when allusions to Mi'kmaq tradition and to Kluskap played an important role in the struggle against a planned superquarry on Cape Breton. This study discusses the eco-cosmology that has been formulated by modern reserve inhabitants which could be labelled a 'sacred ecology'. Focusing on how the Mi'kmaq are rebuilding their traditions and environmental relations in interaction with modern society, Hornborg illustrates how environmental groups, pan-Indianism, and education play an important role, but so does reserve life. By anchoring their engagement in reserve life the Mi'kmaq traditionalists have, to a large extent, been able to confront both external and internal doubts about their authenticity.

This book presents a collection of essays, setting out both the special concern of classical Indian thought and some of its potential contributions to global philosophy. It presents a number of key arguments made by different schools about this special concern: the way in which attainment of knowledge of reality transforms human nature in a fundamentally liberating way. It also looks in detail at two areas in contemporary global philosophy - the ethics of difference, and the metaphysics of consciousness - where this classical Indian commitment to the spiritually transformative power of knowledge can lead to critical insights, even for those who do not share its presuppositions. Close reading of technical Indian texts is combined with wide-ranging and often comparative analysis of philosophical issues to derive original arguments from the Indian material through an analytic method that is seldom mastered by philosophers of non-western traditions.

Tabona Shoko contends that religion and healing are intricately intertwined in African religions. This book on the religion of the Karanga people of Zimbabwe sheds light on important methodological issues relevant to research in the study of African religions. Analysing the traditional Karanga views of the causes of illness and disease, mechanisms of diagnosis at their disposal and the methods they use to restore health, Shoko discusses the views of a specific African Independent Church of the Apostolic tradition. The conclusion Shoko reaches about the central religious concerns of the Karanga people is derived from detailed field research consisting of interviews and participant observation. This book testifies that the centrality of health and well-being is not only confined to traditional religion but reflects its adaptive potential in new religious systems manifest in the phenomenon of Independent Churches. Rather than succumbing to the folly of static generalizations, Tabona Shoko offers important insights into a particular society upon which theories can be reassessed, adding new dimensions to modern features of the religious scene in Africa.