A history of mainline Protestant responses to immigrants and refugees during the twentieth century Open Hearts, Closed Doors uncovers the largely overlooked role that liberal Protestants played in fostering cultural diversity in America and pushing for new immigration laws during the forty years following the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. These efforts resulted in the complete reshaping of the US cultural and religious landscape. During this period, mainline Protestants contributed to the national debate over immigration policy and joined the charge for immigration reform, advocating for a more diverse pool of newcomers. They were successful in their efforts, and in 1965 the quota system based on race and national origin was abolished. But their activism had unintended consequences, because the liberal immigration policies they supported helped to end over three centuries of white Protestant dominance in American society. Yet, Pruitt argues, in losing their cultural supremacy, mainline Protestants were able to reassess their mission. They rolled back more strident forms of xenophobia, substantively altering the face of mainline Protestantism and laying foundations for their responses to today's immigration debates. More than just a historical portrait, this volume is a timely reminder of the power of religious influence in political matters.

From ISIS attacks to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Sacred Fury explores the connections between faith and violence in world religions. Author Charles Selengut looks at religion as both a force for peace and for violence, and he asks key questions such as how "religious" is this violence and what drives the faithful to attack in the names of their beliefs? Revised throughout, the third edition features new material on violence in Buddhism and Hinduism, the rise of ISIS, "lone wolf terrorists," and more. This up-to-date edition draws on a variety of disciplines to comprehend forms of religious violence both historically and in the present day. The third edition of Sacred Fury is an essential resource for understanding the connections between faith and violence.

Anna Bernard untersucht Motive, Vorgehen und Erfolg von Staat und Kirche bei der Revokation des Edikts von Nantes auf zentraler und regionaler Ebene (Provence und Dauphine). Im Mittelpunkt stehen die weltlichen und geistlichen Institutionen und Personen, die an der Konzeption und Ausfuhrung der Protestantenpolitik beteiligt waren. Der Erfolg ihrer Politik wird u.a. an der Reaktion und am Widerstand der Protestanten gemessen. So verdeutlicht sich am Beispiel der Protestantenpolitik, wie der Absolutismus funktionierte. Gleichzeitig geben die Methoden zur Durchsetzung der Politik Aufschluss daruber, ob und inwieweit die Revokation des Edikts von Nantes als Bestandteil eines fruhneuzeitlichen Prozesses der Konfessionalisierung zu verstehen ist. Anna Bernard ist Redakteurin beim ZDF in Berlin."

This illuminating, in-depth studypresents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence-not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence-but also more prevalent forms. The author, an anthropologist, devotes separate chapters to: * sacrifice (both animal and human); * self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom); * religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts); * ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia); * religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews' wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars); * and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and "dowry death," among other manifestations). In the final chapter, "Religion and Nonviolence," the author examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict. This book goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.

In the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, African Catholic and Sunni Muslim leaders addressing HIV and AIDS are faced with a unique challenge. On the one hand, they are called to attend to the spiritual wellbeing of the infected individual; on the other hand, they are increasingly charged with serving as the stewards of the physical bodies of those negatively affected by such a physiologically debilitating and social stigmatized disease through certain identifiable interreligious traditions common to both faiths. This book explores this development firsthand. While conducting fieldwork in Nairobi, Carey interviewed Muslim and Catholic leaders working in three areas-HIV and AIDS prevention, education, and destigmatization. These recorded observations and accounts help to illustrate that religious officials from within African Catholicism and Sunni Islam are attempting to provide the common inter-religious traditions of mercy, hospitality, and justice in a holistic manner for those living with the virus in the city. The research that produced this book involved six weeks of fieldwork during the summer of 2014 to help fill in the interstices between anthropological, sociological, and ethnographic accounts provided by other leading academics in their respective fields. It presumed that religious traditions in Kenya exhibit a susceptibility to culture and context and a practical openness to its social environment which then affords this particular work a unique theological perspective in its attempt to identify and analyze patterns of social behavior and religious organization.

In these firsthand accounts of the early church, the spirit of Pentecost burns with prophetic force through the fog enveloping the modern church. A clear and vibrant faith lives on in these writings, providing a guide for Christians today. Its stark simplicity and revolutionary fervor will stun those lulled by conventional Christianity. The Early Christians is a topically arranged collection of primary sources. It includes extra-biblical sayings of Jesus and excerpts from Origen, Tertullian, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Irenaeus, Hermas, Ignatius, and others. Equally revealing material from pagan contemporaries - critics, detractors, and persecutors - is included as well.

Since 2012, hundreds of men and women have left Western countries to join jihadist groups fighting in Syria. Many are still there, many have been killed, but some have chosen to return to their countries of origin. French Journalist David Thomson met some of those who came back. Bilel, Yassin, Zoubeir, Lena, each has a different profile and story. Some have returned disgusted by the violence of the Syrian battlefields, or the terrorist attacks that have struck across Europe; they try to become forgotten, living under extreme surveillance. Others return seriously wounded or psychologically destroyed. Others still are in jail, a breeding ground for broader radicalization. And some have come back to continue to carry out jihad in Europe. In utmost secrecy, David Thomson gathered their testimonies and recounts them in this remarkable and revealing book. With ISIS losing ground on all fronts, the steady flow of jihadists returning to Europe represents one of the greatest challenges facing countries across the continent. This nuanced analysis of the social, religious, political, familial and psychological factors that push people to violent extremism is more necessary now than ever. It will be essential reading for all those seeking to understand how we might address this threat.

Behind a gruesome ISIS beheading video lies the untold story of the men in orange and the faith community that formed these unlikely modern-day saints and heroes. In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants behead twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach. In the West, daily reports of new atrocities may have displaced the memory of this particularly vile event. But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction. He finds himself welcomed into simple concrete homes through which swallows dart. Portraits of Jesus and Mary hang on the walls along with roughhewn shrines to now-famous loved ones. Mosebach is amazed time and again as, surrounded by children and goats, the bereaved replay the cruel propaganda video on an iPad. There is never any talk of revenge, but only the pride of having a martyr in the family, a saint in heaven. "The 21" appear on icons crowned like kings, celebrated even as their community grieves. A skeptical Westerner, Mosebach finds himself a stranger in this world in which everything is the reflection or fulfillment of biblical events, and facing persecution with courage is part of daily life. In twenty-one symbolic chapters, each preceded by a picture, Mosebach offers a travelogue of his encounter with a foreign culture and a church that has preserved the faith and liturgy of early Christianity - the "Church of the Martyrs." As a religious minority in Muslim Egypt, the Copts find themselves caught in a clash of civilizations. This book, then, is also an account of the spiritual life of an Arab country stretched between extremism and pluralism, between a rich biblical past and the shopping centers of New Cairo.

What does it cost to follow Jesus? For these men and women, the answer was clear. They were ready to give witness to Christ in the face of intense persecution, even if it cost them their lives. From the stoning of Stephen to Nigerian Christians persecuted by Boko Haram today, these stories from around the world and through the ages will inspire greater faithfulness to the way of Jesus, reminding us what costly discipleship looks like in any age. Since the birth of Christianity, the church has commemorated those who suffered for their faith in Christ. In the Anabaptist tradition especially, stories of the boldness and steadfastness of early Christian and Reformation-era martyrs have been handed down from one generation to the next through books such as Thieleman van Braght's Martyrs Mirror (1660). Yet the stories of more recent Christian witnesses are often unknown. Bearing Witness tells the stories of early Christian martyrs Stephen, Polycarp, Justin, Agathonica, Papylus, Carpus, Perpetua, Tharacus, Probus, Andronicus, and Marcellus, followed by radical reformers Jan Hus, Michael and Margaretha Sattler, Weynken Claes, William Tyndale, Jakob and Katharina Hutter, Anna Janz, Dirk Willems. But the bulk of the book focuses on little-known modern witness including Veronika Loehans, Jacob Hochstetler, Gnadenhutten, Joseph and Michael Hofer, Emanuel Swartzendruber, Regina Rosenberg, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, Johann Kornelius Martens, Ahn Ei Sook, Jakob Rempel, Clarence Jordan, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, Tulio Pedraza, Stanimir Katanic, Samuel Kakesa, Kasai Kapata, Meserete Kristos Church, Sarah Corson, Alexander Men, Jose Chuquin, Norman Tattersall, Katherine Wu, and Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria. This book is part of the Bearing Witness Stories Project, a collaborative story-gathering project involving Anabaptist believers from many different traditions.

For nearly two-thousand years, courageous men and women have been tortured and killed because of their confessions of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

This updated edition of Foxes Book of Martyrs, contains stories of persecution up to 2001. Stories of heroic courage and overcoming faith. Stories of love of God and Christ. Stories of the amazing grace of God that enabled men, women, and children to endure persecutions and often horrible deaths.

Thousands of men and women were executed for incompatible religious views in sixteenth-century Europe. The meaning and significance of those deaths are studied here comparatively for the first time, providing a compelling argument for the importance of martyrdom as both a window onto religious sensibilities and a crucial component in the formation of divergent Christian traditions and identities.

Brad Gregory explores Protestant, Catholic, and Anabaptist martyrs in a sustained fashion, addressing the similarities and differences in their self-understanding. He traces the processes and impact of their memorialization by co-believers, and he reconstructs the arguments of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities responsible for their deaths. In addition, he assesses the controversy over the meaning of executions for competing views of Christian truth and the intractable dispute over the distinction between true and false martyrs. He employs a wide range of sources, including pamphlets, martyrologies, theological and devotional treatises, sermons, songs, woodcuts and engravings, correspondence, and legal records. Reconstructing religious motivation, conviction, and behavior in early modern Europe, Gregory shows us the shifting perspectives of authorities willing to kill, martyrs willing to die, martyrologists eager to memorialize, and controversialists keen to dispute.

The author defines Yesterday's Radicals as nineteenth-century Anglican Broad Churchmen and Unitarians, and aims in his book to demonstrate the affinities between them and the manners in which they influenced each other. The Broad Churchmen constituted the progressive wing of the Anglican Church, who were interested in science, Biblical criticism, a rational approach to religion, and who were leaders in the attempt to relate the Church's teaching to the new thoughts and conditions of the nineteenth century. But they were not alone. The Unitarians were possessed of a similar spirit, and came to regard reason and conscience as the criteria of belief and practice. This book demonstrates the growing respect between them, as they tried to grapple with the problems of their day. It lucidly takes the reader through the ramifications and complexities of Biblical criticism, and discusses the answers given to the problems of Biblical inspiration and miracles, amongst others. It demonstrates how Unitarians and Broad Churchmen affected each other, and that much of which is now taken for granted in enlightened theological circles was developed by Yesterday's Radicals. The author traverses territory not previously opened up in this way, for the affinity between these groups has hitherto not been the subject of analysis. This pioneering study was awarded the Earl Morse Wilbur Prize for Historical Research.

'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out.' Hugh Latimer's famous words of consolation to Nicholas Ridley as they are both about to be burnt alive for heresy come from John Foxe's magisterial Acts and Monuments, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs. This vast collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution exerted as great an influence on early modern England and New England as the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It contains many stirring stories of the apprehension, interrogation, imprisonment, and execution of alleged heretics. The narratives not only attest to the fortitude of individuals who suffered for their faith not many years before the birth of Shakespeare, but they also constitute exciting tales filled with graphic details and verbal wit. This modernized selection also includes some of the famous woodcuts that illustrated the original text, as well as providing a comprehensive introduction to Foxe's life and times and the martyrology narrative. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Shinners, dissos, and dissenters is a long-term analysis of the development of Irish republican media activism since 1998 and the tumultuous years that followed the end of the Troubles. It is the first in-depth analysis of the newspapers, magazines and online spaces in which strands of Irish republicanism developed and were articulated in a period in which schism and dissent underscored a return to violence for dissidents. Based on an analysis of Irish republican media outlets as well as interviews with the key activists that produced them, this book provides a compelling snap shot of a political ideology in transition as it is moulded by the forces of the Peace Process and often violent internal ideological schism that threatened a return to the 'bad old days' of the Troubles. -- .

What is ISIS? A quasi-state? A terrorist group? A movement? An ideology? As ISIS has transformed and mutated, gained and lost territory, horrified the world and been its punch line, media have been central to understanding it. The changing, yet constant, relationship between ISIS and the media, as well as its adversaries' dependency on media to make sense of ISIS, is central to this book. More than just the images of mutilated bodies that garnered ISIS its initial infamy, the book considers an ISIS media world that includes infographics, administrative reports, and various depictions of a post-racial utopia in which justice is swift and candy is bought and sold with its own currency. The book reveals that the efforts of ISIS and its adversaries to communicate and make sense of this world share modes of visual, aesthetic, and journalistic practice and expression. The short tumultuous history of ISIS does not allow for a single approach to understanding its relation to media. Thus, the book's contributions are to be read as contrapuntal analyses that productively connect and disconnect, providing a much-needed complex account of the ISIS-media relationship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

While religious conflict receives plenty of attention, the everyday negotiation of religious diversity does not. Questions of how to accommodate religious minorities and of the limits of tolerance resonate in a variety of contexts and have become central preoccupations for many Western democracies. What might we see if we turned our attention to the positive narratives and success stories of the everyday working out of religious difference? Rather than 'tolerance' and 'accommodation', and through the stories of ordinary people, this book traces deep equality, which is found in the respect, humour, and friendship of seemingly mundane interactions. Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity shows that the telling of such stories can create an alternative narrative to that of diversity as a problem to be solved. It explores the non-event, or micro-processes of interaction that constitute the foundation for deep equality and the conditions under which deep equality emerges, exists, and sometimes flourishes. Through a systematic search for and examination of such narratives, Lori G. Beaman demonstrates the possibility of uncovering, revealing, and recovering deep equality-a recovery that is vital to living in an increasingly diverse society. In achieving deep equality, identities are fluid, shifting in importance and structure as social interaction unfolds. Rigid identity imaginings, especially religious identities, block our vision to the complexities of social life and press us into corners that trap us in identities that we often ourselves do not recognize, want, or know how to escape. Although the focus of this study is deep equality and its existence and persistence in relation to religious difference, deep equality is located beyond the realm of religion. Beaman draws from the work of those whose primary focus is not in fact religion, and who are doing their own 'deep equality' work in other domains, illustrating especially why equality matters. By retelling and exploring stories of negotiation it is possible to reshape our social imaginary to better facilitate what works, which varies from place to place and time to time.

We may think we know what defines religious fanaticism: violent action undertaken with dogmatic certainty. But the term fanatic, from the European Reformation to today, has never been a stable one. Then and now it has been reductively defined to justify state violence and to delegitimize alternative sources of authority. Unknowing Fanaticism rejects the simplified binary of fanatical religion and rational politics, turning to Renaissance literature to demonstrate that fanaticism was integral to how both modern politics and poetics developed, from the German Peasants' Revolt to the English Civil War. The book traces two entangled approaches to fanaticism in this long Reformation moment: the targeting of it as an extreme political threat and the engagement with it as a deep epistemological and poetic problem. In the first, thinkers of modernity from Martin Luther to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke positioned themselves against fanaticism to pathologize rebellion and abet theological and political control. In the second, which arose alongside and often in response to the first, the poets of fanaticism investigated the link between fanatical self-annihilation-the process by which one could become a vessel for divine violence-and the practices of writing poetry. Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton recognized in the fanatic's claim to be a passive instrument of God their own incapacity to know and depict the origins of fanaticism. Yet this crisis of unknowing was a productive one. It led these writers to experiment with poetic techniques that would allow them to address fanaticism's tendency to unsettle the boundaries between human and divine agency and between individual and collective bodies. These poets demand a new critical method, which this book attempts to model: a historically-minded and politicized formalism that can attend to the complexity of the poetic encounter with fanaticism.

The Globalization of Hate: Internationalizing Hate Crime? is the first book to examine the impact of globalization on our understanding of hate speech and hate crime. Bringing together internationally acclaimed scholars with researchers, policy makers and practitioners from across the world, it critically scrutinises the concept of hate crime as a global phenomenon, seeking to examine whether hate crime can, or should, be conceptualised within an international framework and, if so, how this might be achieved. Beginning with the global dynamics of hate, the contributions analyse whether hate crime can be defined globally, whether universal principles can be applied to the phenomenon, how hatred is spread, and how it impacts upon our global society. The middle portion of the book moves beyond the broader questions of globalisation to jurisdictional examples of how globalization impacts upon our understanding of, and also our responses to, hate crime. The chapters explore in greater detail what is happening around the world and how the international concepts of hate crime are being operationalised locally, drawing out the themes of globalization and internationalization that are relevant to hate crime, as evidenced by a number of jurisdictions from Europe, the US, Asia, and Africa. The final part of the book concludes with an examination of the different ways in which hate speech and hate crime is being combatted globally. International law, internet regulation and the use of restorative practices are evaluated as methods of addressing hate-based conflict, with the discussions drawn from existing frameworks as well as exploring normative standards for future international efforts. Taken together, these innovative and insightful contributions offer a timely investigation into the effects of hate crime, offering an interdisciplinary approach to tackling what is now a global issue. It will be of interest to scholars and students of criminology, sociology and criminal justice, as well as criminal justice practitioners, police officers and policy makers.

This book analyzes the systematic construction of the image of the Other (that is, non-Muslims) by two radical Islamic Groups, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia. The author documents discourse patterns in the groups' publications and speeches stereotyping non-Muslims as hostile towards Islam and imagining Islam's imminent victory after an inevitable clash with all other civilizations. Although these groups do not engage in physical violence, the author categorizes their efforts to stereotype non-Muslims as "symbolic violence" and counterproductive because of the religious and ethnic pluralism of Indonesian society. Muhammad Iqbal Ahnaf is a lecturer and researcher at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University and at Darul Ulum Islamic University, Lamongan, Indonesia.

The modern notion of tolerance-the welcoming of diversity as a force for the common good-emerged in the Enlightenment in the wake of centuries of religious wars. First elaborated by philosophers such as John Locke and Voltaire, religious tolerance gradually gained ground in Europe and North America. But with the resurgence of fanaticism and terrorism, religious tolerance is increasingly being challenged by frightened publics. In this book, Denis Lacorne traces the emergence of the modern notion of religious tolerance in order to rethink how we should respond to its contemporary tensions. In a wide-ranging argument that spans the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian republic, and recent controversies such as France's burqa ban and the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, The Limits of Tolerance probes crucial questions: Should we impose limits on freedom of expression in the name of human dignity or decency? Should we accept religious symbols in the public square? Can we tolerate the intolerant? While acknowledging that tolerance can never be entirely without limits, Lacorne defends the Enlightenment concept against recent attempts to circumscribe it, arguing that without it a pluralistic society cannot survive. Awarded the Prix Montyon by the Academie Francaise, The Limits of Tolerance is a powerful reflection on twenty-first-century democracy's most fundamental challenges.

A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.

The ways in which religious communities interact with one another is an increasing focus of scholarly research and teaching. Issues of interreligious engagement, inclusive of dialogue more specifically and relations more generally, attract widespread interest and concern. In a religiously pluralist world, how different communities get along with each other is not just an academic question; it is very much a focus of socio-political and wider community attention. The study of religions and religion in the 21st century world must necessarily take account of relations within and between religions, whether this is approached from a theological, historical, political, or any other disciplinary point of view. Understanding Interreligious Relations is a reference work of relevance to students and scholars as well as of interest to a wider informed public. It comprises two main parts. The first provides expositions and critical discussions of the ways in which 'the other' has been construed and addressed from within the major religious traditions. The second presents analyses and discussions of key issues and topics in which interreligious relations are an integral constituent. The editors have assembled an authoritative and scholarly work that discusses perspectives on the religious 'other' and interreligious relations that are typical of the major religious traditions; together with substantial original chapters from a cross-section of emerging and established scholars on main debates and issues in the wider field of interreligious relations.

This book is an exploration of the perceptions of the American and British governments about Islam and Muslims based upon their experiences over the past two centuries. It provides a response to the accusation that US and British governments are inherently anti-Islamic and are seeking the destruction of that faith through their policy decisions. The book uses primary documents from the US and British governments to examine the attitudes of politicians and officials in a variety contexts ranging from the 'War on Terror', the Iranian Revolution and the 'Trojan Horse' Scandal to the conversion of Alexander Russell Webb to Islam, Islamic Finance and Mosque-building. In so doing it provides a wide-angle lens on the diversity of issues and experiences which have shaped the views of officials and politicians about Islam.