|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > General
The central character in Susan Naquin's extraordinary new book is
the city of Peking during the Ming and Qing periods. Using the
city's temples as her point of entry, Naquin carefully excavates
Peking's varied public arenas, the city's transformation over five
centuries, its human engagements, and its rich cultural imprint.
This study shows how modern Beijing's glittering image as China's
great and ancient capital came into being and reveals the shifting
identities of a much more complex past, one whose rich social and
cultural history Naquin splendidly evokes. Temples, by providing a
place where diverse groups could gather without the imprimatur of
family or state, made possible a surprising assortment of
community-building and identity-defining activities. By revealing
how religious establishments of all kinds were used for fairs,
markets, charity, tourism, politics, and leisured sociability,
Naquin shows their decisive impact on Peking and, at the same time,
illuminates their little-appreciated role in Chinese cities
generally. Lacking most of the conventional sources for urban
history, she has relied particularly on a trove of commemorative
inscriptions that express ideas about the relationship between
human beings and gods, about community service and public
responsibility, about remembering and being remembered. The result
is a book that will be essential reading in the field of Chinese
studies for years to come.
On September 11, 1857, a small band of Mormons led by John D. Lee
massacred an emigrant train of men, women, and children heading
west at Mountain Meadows, Utah. News of the Mountain Meadows
Massacre, as it became known, sent shockwaves through the western
frontier of the United States, reaching the nation's capital and
eventually crossing the Atlantic. In the years prior to the
massacre, Americans dubbed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints the "Mormon problem" as it garnered national attention for
its "unusual" theocracy and practice of polygamy. In the aftermath
of the massacre, many Americans viewed Mormonism as a real
religious and physical threat to white civilization. Putting the
Mormon Church on trial for its crimes against American purity
became more important than prosecuting those responsible for the
slaughter. Religious historian Janiece Johnson analyzes how
sensational media attention used the story of the Mountain Meadows
Massacre to enflame public sentiment and provoke legal action
against Latter-day Saints. Ministers, novelists, entertainers,
cartoonists, and federal officials followed suit, spreading
anti-Mormon sentiment to collectively convict the Mormon religion
itself. This troubling episode in American religious history sheds
important light on the role of media and popular culture in
provoking religious intolerance that continues to resonate in the
present.
On September 11, 1857, a small band of Mormons led by John D. Lee
massacred an emigrant train of men, women, and children heading
west at Mountain Meadows, Utah. News of the Mountain Meadows
Massacre, as it became known, sent shockwaves through the western
frontier of the United States, reaching the nation's capital and
eventually crossing the Atlantic. In the years prior to the
massacre, Americans dubbed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints the "Mormon problem" as it garnered national attention for
its "unusual" theocracy and practice of polygamy. In the aftermath
of the massacre, many Americans viewed Mormonism as a real
religious and physical threat to white civilization. Putting the
Mormon Church on trial for its crimes against American purity
became more important than prosecuting those responsible for the
slaughter. Religious historian Janiece Johnson analyzes how
sensational media attention used the story of the Mountain Meadows
Massacre to enflame public sentiment and provoke legal action
against Latter-day Saints. Ministers, novelists, entertainers,
cartoonists, and federal officials followed suit, spreading
anti-Mormon sentiment to collectively convict the Mormon religion
itself. This troubling episode in American religious history sheds
important light on the role of media and popular culture in
provoking religious intolerance that continues to resonate in the
present.
In this theoretically rich work, Mason Kamana Allred unearths the
ways Mormons have employed a wide range of technologies to
translate events, beliefs, anxieties, and hopes into reproducible
experiences that contribute to the growth of their religious
systems of meaning. Drawing on methods from cultural history, media
studies, and religious studies, Allred focuses specifically on
technologies of vision that have shaped Mormonism as a culture of
seeing. These technologies, he argues, were as essential to the
making of Mormonism as the humans who received, interpreted, and
practiced their faith. While Mormons' uses of television and the
internet are recent examples of the tradition's use of visual
technology, Allred excavates older practices and technologies for
negotiating the spirit, such as panorama displays and magic lantern
shows. Fusing media theory with feminist new materialism, he
employs media archaeology to examine Mormons' ways of performing
distinctions, beholding as a way to engender radical visions, and
standardizing vision to effect assimilation. Allred's analysis
reveals Mormonism as always materially mediated and argues that
religious history is likewise inherently entangled with media.
In this theoretically rich work, Mason Kamana Allred unearths the
ways Mormons have employed a wide range of technologies to
translate events, beliefs, anxieties, and hopes into reproducible
experiences that contribute to the growth of their religious
systems of meaning. Drawing on methods from cultural history, media
studies, and religious studies, Allred focuses specifically on
technologies of vision that have shaped Mormonism as a culture of
seeing. These technologies, he argues, were as essential to the
making of Mormonism as the humans who received, interpreted, and
practiced their faith. While Mormons' uses of television and the
internet are recent examples of the tradition's use of visual
technology, Allred excavates older practices and technologies for
negotiating the spirit, such as panorama displays and magic lantern
shows. Fusing media theory with feminist new materialism, he
employs media archaeology to examine Mormons' ways of performing
distinctions, beholding as a way to engender radical visions, and
standardizing vision to effect assimilation. Allred's analysis
reveals Mormonism as always materially mediated and argues that
religious history is likewise inherently entangled with media.
Comments from Sri Swami Satchidananda on the yogic perspective on
that portion of the Holy Bible known as the Beatitudes. This
booklet has the flavor of a public talk; it is illustrated with
photographs.
How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her
saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the
crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his
passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night?
These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic
language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the
fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice,
the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it
turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his
infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen,
autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly
knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making
love.
This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these
Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of
songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides
context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and
historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain
their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing
devices.
The translators, who are poets as well as highly respected
scholars, render the poems with intelligence and tenderness.
Unusual for their combination of overt eroticism and devotion to
God, these poems are a delight to read.
In this important new book, Paul T. Phillips argues that most
professional historians - aside from a relatively small number
devoted to theory and methodology - have concerned themselves with
particular, specialized areas of research, thereby ignoring the
fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning. This is less
so in the thriving general community of history enthusiasts beyond
academia, and may explain, in part at least, history's sharp
decline as a subject of choice by students in recent years.
Phillips sees great dangers resulting from the thinking of extreme
relativists and postmodernists on the futility of attaining
historical truth, especially in the age of "post-truth." He also
believes that moral judgment and the search for meaning in history
should be considered part of the discipline's mandate. In each
section of this study, Phillips outlines the nature of individual
issues and past efforts to address them, including approaches
derived from other disciplines. This book is a call to action for
all those engaged in the study of history to direct more attention
to the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning.
|
|