In the last few decades, all major presidential candidates have openly discussed the role of faith in their lives, sharing their religious beliefs and church commitments with the media and their constituencies. And yet, to the surprise of many Americans, God played almost no role in the 2012 presidential campaign. During the campaign, incumbent Barack Obama minimized the role of religion in his administration and in his life. This was in stark contrast to his emphasis, in 2008, on how his Chicago church had nurtured him as a person, community organizer, and politician, which ultimately backfired when incendiary messages preached by his liberationist pastor Jeremiah Wright went viral. The Republican Party faced a different kind of problem in 2012, with the increasing irrelevance or absence of founders of the Religious Right such as Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Furthermore, with Mormon Mitt Romney running as the GOP candidate, party operatives avoided shining a spotlight on religion, recognizing that vast numbers of Americans remain suspicious of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The absence of God during the 2012 election reveals that the United States is at a crossroads with regards to faith, even while religion continues to play a central role in almost every facet of American culture and political life. The separation of church and state and the disestablishment of religion have fostered a rich religious marketplace characterized by innovation and entrepreneurship. As the generation that launched the culture wars fades into history and a new, substantially more diverse population matures, the question of how faith is functioning in the new millennium has become more important than ever. In Faith in the New Millennium historians, sociologists, and religious studies scholars tackle contemporary issues, controversies, and policies ranging from drone wars to presidential campaigns to the exposing of religious secrets in order to make sense of American life in the new millennium. This melding of past and present offers readers a rare opportunity to assess Americans' current wrestling with matters of faith, and provides valuable insight into the many ways that faith has shaped and transformed the age of Obama and how the age of Obama has shaped American religious faith.

Hindu Christian Faqir compares two colonial Indian saints from Punjab, the neo-Vedantin Hindu Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) and the Christian convert Sundar Singh (1889-1929). Timothy S. Dobe shows that varied asceticisms, personal exemplary models, and material religion exuded their ambivalent and powerful public presence in Protestant metropolitan centers as much as in colonial peripheries. Challenging ideas of the invention of modern Hinduism, the transparent translation of Christianity, and the construction of saints by devotees, this book focuses on the long-standing, shared religious idioms on which these two men creatively drew to appeal to transnational audiences and to pursue religious perfection. Following both men's usage of Urdu, the book adopts the word "faqir" to examine the vernacular and performative dimensions of Indian holy man traditions, thereby calling special attention to missionary and Orientalist anti-ascetic accounts of the "fukeer" indigenous Islamic traditions and this-worldly religion. Exploring Rama Tirtha and Sundar Singh's global tours in Europe and America, self-conscious sartorial styles, and intimate autobiographical writings, Dobe demonstrates that the vernacular holy man traditions of Punjab provided resources that both men drew on to construct their forms of modern monkhood. The rise of heroic, anti-colonial sannyasis or sadhus of modern Hinduism like Swami Vivekananda is thus repositioned in relation to global Christianity, Sufi, bhakti, and Sikh regional practices, religious boundary-crossing, contestation and conversion. A comparative and contextualized story of two Punjabi holy men's particular performance of sainthood, Hindu Christian Faqir reveals much about the broad, interactional history of religious modernities.

Jeffrey L. Broughton offers an annotated translation of the Whip for Spurring Students Onward Through the Chan Barrier Checkpoints, which he abbreviates to Chan Whip. This anthology is a classic of Chan (Zen) Buddhism that has served as a Chan handbook in both China and Japan since its publication in 1600. It is a compendium of extracts, over eighty percent of which are drawn from an enormous Chan corpus dating from the late 800s to about 1600-a survey that covers most of the history of Chan literature. The rest of the text consists of complementary extracts from Buddhist sutras and treatises. The extracts, many of which are accompanied by Chan master Dahui Zhuhong's commentary, deliberately eschew abstract discussions of theory in favor of sermons, exhortations, sayings, autobiographical narratives, letters, and anecdotal sketches dealing frankly and compassionately with the concrete experiences of lived practice.
While there are a number of publications in English on Zen practice, none contain the vivid descriptions found within the Chan Whip. This translation thus fills a large gap in the English-language literature on Chan, and by including the original Chinese text as well Broughton has produced an invaluable tool for scholars and practitioners alike.

How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I presents a systematic account of the teachings of the Christian faith to offer a vision, from a human, created, and limited perspective, of the ways all things might be understood from the divine perspective. It explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual. In the first of four volumes, Graham Ward examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, the Summa, and Protestant dogmatics. He outlines a methodology for exploring and practicing systematic theology that captures how the faith is lived in cultural, social, and embodied engagements. Ward then unpicks several fundamental theological concepts and how they are to be understood from the point of view of an engaged systematics: truth, revelation, judgement, discernment, proclamation, faith seeking understanding, and believing as it relates to and grounds the possibilities for faith. This groundbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary investigation through poetry, art, film, the Bible and theological discourse, analysing the human condition and theology as the deep dream for salvation. The final part relates theology as a lived and ongoing pedagogy concerned with individual and corporate formation to biological life, social life, and life in Christ. Here an approach to living theologically is sketched that is the primary focus for all four volumes: ethical life.

This book contains fifteen essays, each first presented as the annual Tanner Lecture at the conference of the Mormon History Association by a leading scholar. Renowned in their own specialties but relatively new to the study of Mormon history at the time of their lectures, these scholars approach Mormon history from a wide variety of perspectives, including such concerns as gender, identity creation, and globalization. Several of these essays place Mormon history within the currents of American religious history-for example, by placing Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints in conversation with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nat Turner, fellow millenarians, and freethinkers. Other essays explore the creation of Mormon identities, demonstrating how Mormons created a unique sense of themselves as a distinct people. Historians of the American West examine Mormon connections with American imperialism, the Civil War, and the wider cultural landscape. Finally the essayists look at continuing Latter-day Saint growth around the world, within the context of the study of global religions. Examining Mormon history from an outsider's perspective, the essays presented in this volume ask intriguing questions, share fresh insights and perspectives, analyze familiar sources in unexpected ways, and situate research on the Mormon past within broader scholarly debates.

This book supplies fundamental information about the diverse religious beliefs of Africa, explains central tenets of the African worldview, and overviews various forms of African spiritual practices and experiences. Africa is an ancient land with a significant presence in world history-especially regarding the history of the United States, given the ethnic origins of a substantial proportion of the nation's population. This book presents a broad range of information about the diverse religious beliefs of Africa that serves to describe the beliefs, practices, deities, sacred places, and creation stories of African religions. Readers will learn about key forms of spiritual practices and experiences, such as incantations and prayer, dance as worship, and spirit possession, all of which pepper African American religious experiences today. The entries also discuss central tenets of the African worldview-for example, the belief that humankind is not to fight nature, but to integrate into the natural environment. This volume is specifically written to be highly accessible to students. It provides a much-needed source of connections between the religious traditions and practices of African Americans and those of the people of the continent of Africa. Through these connections, this work will inspire tolerance of other religions, traditions, and backgrounds. The included selection of primary documents provides users first-hand accounts of African religious beliefs and practices, serving to promote critical thinking skills and support Common Core State Standards. Presents approximately 100 alphabetically arranged entries written by a team of expert contributors Overviews the plurality of African religious cultures and identifies the distant origins of African American religious experiences today Includes primary documents discussing African religious beliefs and practices

This is Laurence Gardner's final book, written shortly before his death in 2010 and is the accompanying book to his Origin of God (published 2011 by dash house publishing). Together with Origin of God, this book outlines an irrefutable and searing indictment of conventional belief and exposes the evils and absurdities perpetuated over the millenia in the name of Christianity. In Revelation of the Devil, Laurence Gardner traces the history of the Devil, from its roots in Mesopotamia and the Old Testament all the way up to the modern world of today. Travelling through the New Testament, as well as the Koran, and then passing in turn through the Inquisitions, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, he unmasks what he has called "the myth of evil and the conspiracy of Satan." For nearly 2,000 years a supernatural entity known as the Devil has been held responsible by Church authorities for bringing sin and wickedness into the world. Throughout this period, the Devil has been portrayed as a constant protagonist of evil, although his origin remains a mystery and his personality has undergone many interpretive changes, prompting questions such as: If God is all good and all powerful, then why does evil exist? How can it exist? If God created everything, then where did the Devil come from? If the Devil exists, then why does he not feature in any pre-Christian document? Revelation of the Devil follows the Devil's sinister history, in the manner of a biography, from his scriptural introduction to the dark satanic cults of the present day. In a strict chronological progression, we experience the mood of each successive era as the Devil's image was constantly manipulated to suit the changing motives of his creators in their bid for threat-driven clerical control.

The term "Manifest Destiny" has traditionally been linked to U.S. westward expansion in the nineteenth century, the desire to spread republican government, and racialist theories like Anglo-Saxonism. Yet few people realize the degree to which "Manifest Destiny" and American republicanism relied on a deeply anti-Catholic civil-religious discourse. John C. Pinheiro traces the rise to prominence of this discourse, beginning in the 1820s and culminating in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Pinheiro begins with social reformer and Protestant evangelist Lyman Beecher, who was largely responsible for synthesizing seemingly unrelated strands of religious, patriotic, expansionist, and political sentiment into one universally understood argument about the future of the United States. When the overwhelmingly Protestant United States went to war with Catholic Mexico, this "Beecherite Synthesis" provided Americans with the most important means of defining their own identity, understanding Mexicans, and interpreting the larger meaning of the war. Anti-Catholic rhetoric constituted an integral piece of nearly every major argument for or against the war and was so universally accepted that recruiters, politicians, diplomats, journalists, soldiers, evangelical activists, abolitionists, and pacifists used it. It was also, Pinheiro shows, the primary tool used by American soldiers to interpret Mexico's culture. All this activity in turn reshaped the anti-Catholic movement. Preachers could now use caricatures of Mexicans to illustrate Roman Catholic depravity and nativists could point to Mexico as a warning about what America would be like if dominated by Catholics. Missionaries of Republicanism provides a critical new perspective on ''Manifest Destiny,'' American republicanism, anti-Catholicism, and Mexican-American relations in the nineteenth century.

The emergence of formative Judaism has traditionally been examined in light of a theological preoccupation with the two competing religious movements, 'Christianity' and 'Judaism' in the first centuries of the Common Era. In this book Ariel Schremer attempts to shift the scholarly consensus away from this paradigm, instead privileging the rabbinic attitude toward Rome, the destroyer of the temple in 70 C.E., over their concern with the nascent Christian movement. The palpable rabbinic political enmity toward Rome, says Schremer, was determinative in the emerging construction of Jewish self-identity. He asserts that the category of heresy took on a new urgency in the wake of the trauma of the Temple's destruction, which demanded the construction of a new self-identity. Relying on the late 20th-century scholarly depiction of the slow and measured growth of Christianity in the empire up until and even after Constantine's conversion, Schremer minimizes the extent to which the rabbis paid attention to the Christian presence. He goes on, however, to pinpoint the parting of the ways between the rabbis and the Christians in the first third of the second century, when Christians were finally assigned to the category of heretics.

Joseph W. Williams examines the changing healing practices of pentecostals in the United States over the past 100 years, from the early believers, who rejected mainstream medicine and overtly spiritualized disease, to the later generations of pentecostals and their charismatic successors, who dramatically altered the healing paradigms they inherited. Williams shows that over the course of the twentieth century, pentecostal denunciations of the medical profession often gave way to ''natural'' healing methods associated with scientific medicine, natural substances, and even psychology. By 2000, figures such as the pentecostal preacher T. D. Jakes appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, other healers marketed their books at mainstream retailers such as Wal-Mart, and some developed lucrative nutritional products that sold online and in health food stores across the nation. Exploring the interconnections, resonances, and continued points of tension between adherents and some of their fiercest rivals, Spirit Cure chronicling adherents' embrace of competitors' healing practices and illuminates pentecostals' dramatic transition from a despised minority to major players in the world of American evangelicalism and mainstream American culture.

There is a striking similarity between Marian devotional songs and secular love songs of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Two disparate genres-one sacred, the other secular; one Latin, the other vernacular-both praise an idealized, impossibly virtuous woman. Each does so through highly stylized derivations of traditional medieval song forms - Marian prayer derived from earlier Gregorian chant, and love songs and lyrics from medieval courtly song. Yet despite their obvious similarities, the two musical and poetic traditions have rarely been studied together. Author David Rothenberg takes on this task with remarkable success, producing a useful and broad introduction to Marian music and liturgy, and then coupling that with an incisive comparative analysis of this devotional form with the words and music of secular love songs of the period. The Flower of Paradise examines the interplay of Marian devotional and secular poetics within polyphonic music from c. 1200 to c. 1500. Through case studies of works that demonstrate a specific symbolic resonance between Marian devotional and secular song, the book illustrates the distinctive ethos of this period in European culture. Rothenberg makes use of an impressive command of liturgical and religious studies, literature and poetry, and art history to craft a study with wide application across disciplinary boundaries. With its broad scope and unique, incisive analysis, this book is suited for scholars, students, and general readers alike. Undergraduate and graduate students of musicology, Medieval and Renaissance studies, comparative literature, art history, Western reglious history, and music history-especially that of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and sacred music-will find this book a useful and informative resource on the period. The Flower of Paradise is also of interest to those with a particular dedication to any of its diverse subject areas. For individuals involved in religious organizations or those who frequent Medieval or Renaissance cultural sites and museums, this book will deepen their knowledge and open up new ways of thinking about the history and development of secular and sacred music and the Marian tradition.

For an understanding of the early Christian movement, two matters are essential. One is the size of the movement. The other is the distribution of the movement. In regard to the first matter, it has been widely assumed that there were 6 million Christians (or 10% of the population of the Roman Empire) around the year 300. But those kinds of calculations have no substantial ancient bases or any modern method by which such numbers can be established. As to the distribution of the movement, the consensus view is that Christianity was an urban movement until the conversion of Emperor Constantine. On close examination, these two popular views-an urban Christianity of 6 million-would nearly saturate every urban area of the entire Roman Empire with Christians, leaving no room for Jews or pagans. That scenario simply does not work. But where does the solution lie? Were there fewer Christians in the Roman world? Was the Roman world much more urbanized that we previously thought? Did large numbers of Jews convert to Christianity? Or, as Thomas Robinson argues, is the urban thesis defective, and the neglected countryside must now be considered in any reconstruction of early Christian growth? In Who Were the First Christians? Robinson deconstructs the "urban thesis, " and then goes further; he asks what was the makeup of the typical Christian congregation, and whether it was a lower-class movement or an upwardly mobile middle-class movement. In answering these questions, Robinson engages with the influential writings of Wayne Meeks, Rodney Stark, and Ramsay MacMullen, among others. He argues persuasively that more attention needs to be given to the countryside and to the considerable contingent of the marginal and the rustic even within urban populations. The result is that this book effectively dismantles the long-accepted urban thesis, and proves that a profoundly revised vision of early Christian growth and development is required.

In The Reformation of Feeling, Susan Karant-Nunn looks beyond and beneath the formal doctrinal and moral demands of the Reformation in Germany to examine the emotional tenor of the programs that the emerging creeds-revised Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism/Reformed theology-developed for their members. As revealed by the surviving sermons from this period, preaching clergy of each faith both explicitly and implicitly provided their listeners with distinct models of a mood to be cultivated. To encourage their parishioners to make an emotional investment in their faith, all three drew upon rhetorical elements that were already present in late medieval Catholicism and elevated them into confessional touchstones.
Looking at archival materials containing direct references to feeling, Karant-Nunn focuses on treatments of death and sermons on the Passion. She amplifies these sources with considerations of the decorative, liturgical, musical, and disciplinary changes that ecclesiastical leaders introduced during the period from the late fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Within individual sermons, Karant-Nunn also examines topical elements-including Jews at the crucifixion, the Virgin Mary's voluminous weeping below the Cross, and struggles against competing denominations-that were intended to arouse particular kinds of sentiment. Finally, she discusses surviving testimony from the laity in order to assess at least some Christians' reception of these lessons on proper devotional feeling.
This book is exceptional in its presentation of a cultural rather than theological or behavioral study of the broader movement to remake Christianity. As Karant-Nunn conclusively demonstrates, in the eyes of the Reformation's formative personalities strict adherence to doctrine and upright demeanor did not constitute an adequate piety. The truly devout had to engage their hearts in their faith.

In a groundbreaking examination of the antislavery origins of liberal Protestantism, Molly Oshatz contends that the antebellum slavery debates forced antislavery Protestants to adopt an historicist understanding of truth and morality. Unlike earlier debates over slavery, the antebellum slavery debates revolved around the question of whether or not slavery was a sin in the abstract. Unable to use the letter of the Bible to answer the proslavery claim that slavery was not a sin in and of itself, antislavery Protestants, including William Ellery Channing, Francis Wayland, Moses Stuart, Leonard Bacon, and Horace Bushnell, argued that biblical principles opposed slavery and that God revealed slavery's sinfulness through the gradual unfolding of these principles. Although they believed that slavery was a sin, antislavery Protestants' sympathy for individual slaveholders and their knowledge of the Bible made them reluctant to denounce all slaveholders as sinners. In order to reconcile slavery's sinfulness with their commitments to the Bible and to the Union, antislavery Protestants defined slavery as a social rather than an individual sin. Oshatz demonstrates that the antislavery notions of progressive revelation and social sin had radical implications for Protestant theology. Oshatz carries her study through the Civil War to reveal how emancipation confirmed for northern Protestants the antislavery notion that God revealed His will through history. She describes how after the war, a new generation of liberal theologians, including Newman Smyth, Charles Briggs, and George Harris, drew on the example of antislavery and emancipation to respond to evolution and historical biblical criticism. The theological innovations rooted in the slavery debates came to fruition in liberal Protestantism's acceptance of the historical and evolutionary nature of religious truth.

One of Aquinas's best known works after the Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles is a theological synthesis that explains and defends the existence and nature of God without invoking the authority of the Bible. A detailed expository account of and commentary on this famous work, Davies's book aims to help readers think about the value of the Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) for themselves, relating the contents and teachings found in the SCG to those of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life and his likely intentions in writing the SCG, the volume works systematically through all four books of the text. It is, therefore, a solid and reflective introduction both to the SCG and to Aquinas more generally. The book is aimed at students of medieval philosophy and theology, and of Aquinas in particular. It will interest teachers of medieval philosophy and theology, though it does not presuppose previous knowledge of Aquinas or of his works. Davies's book is the longest and most detailed account and discussion of the SCG available in English in one volume.

In September, 1219, as the armies of the Fifth Crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Francis of Assisi went to Egypt to preach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil.
Although we in fact know very little about this event, this has not prevented artists and writers from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, unencumbered by mere facts, from portraying Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love, and understanding. Al-Kamil, on the other hand, is variously presented as an enlightened pagan monarch hungry for evangelical teaching, a cruel oriental despot, or a worldly libertine.
Saint Francis and the Sultan takes a detailed look at these richly varied artistic responses to this brief but highly symbolic meeting. Throwing into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim-Christian encounters have inspired in European artists and writers in the centuries since, it gives a uniquely broad but precise vision of the evolution of Western attitudes towards Islam and the Arab world over the last eight hundred years."

Religion in China survived the most radical suppression in human history--a total ban of any religion during and after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1979). All churches, temples, and mosques were closed down, converted for secular uses, or turned to museums for the purpose of atheist education. China remains under Communist rule. But in the last three decades, religion has revived and thrived. Christianity has been the fastest growing religion for decades. Many Buddhist and Daoist temples have been restored. The state even sponsors large Buddhist gatherings and ceremonies to venerate Confucius and the legendary ancestors of the Chinese people. Traditional Chinese temples have sprung up in some areas. On the other hand, quasi-religious qigong practices, once ubiquitous in public parks throughout the country, are now rare. All the while, the authorities have carried out waves of atheist propaganda, anti-superstition campaigns, severe crackdowns on the underground Christian churches and various ''evil cults.'' How do we explain the religious situation in China today? How do we explain the religious situation in China today? How did religion survive the eradication measures in the 1960s and 1970s? How do various religious groups manage to revive despite strict regulations? Why have some religions grown fast in the reform era? Why have some forms of spirituality gone through dramatic turns? In Religion in China, Fenggang Yang provides a comprehensive overview of the religious change in China under Communism, drawing on his ''political economy'' approach to the sociology of religion.

The doctrine of "the covenant of works" arose to prominence in the late sixteenth century and quickly became a regular feature in Reformed thought. Theologians believed that when God first created man he made a covenant with him: all Adam had to do was obey God's command to not eat from the tree of knowledge and obey God's command to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth. The reward for Adam's obedience was profound: eternal life for him and his offspring. The consequences of his disobedience were dire: God would visit death upon Adam and his descendants. In the covenant of works, Adam was not merely an individual but served as a public person, the federal head of the human race. The Covenant of Works explores the origins of the doctrine of God's covenant with Adam and traces it back to the inter-testamental period, through the patristic and middle ages, and to the Reformation. The doctrine has an ancient pedigree and was not solely advocated by Reformed theologians. The book traces the doctrine's development in the seventeenth century and its reception in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Fesko explores the reasons why the doctrine came to be rejected by some, even in the Reformed tradition, arguing that interpretive methods influenced by Enlightenment thought caused theologians to question the doctrine's scriptural legitimacy.

"None of that people should be spared, not even the babe in its cradle." With these chilling words, the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan declared his intention to destroy the Ismailis, one of the most intellectually and politically significant Muslim communities of medieval Islamdom. The massacres that followed convinced observers that this powerful voice of Shi'i Islam had been forever silenced. Little was heard of these people for centuries, until their recent and dramatic emergence from obscurity. Today they exist as a dynamic and thriving community established in over twenty-five countries. Yet the interval between what appeared to have been their total annihilation, and their modern, seemingly phoenix-like renaissance, has remained shrouded in mystery. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources gathered from many countries around the globe, The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation is a richly nuanced and compelling study of the murkiest portion of this era. In probing the period from the dark days when the Ismaili fortresses in Iran fell before the marauding Mongol hordes, to the emergence at Anjudan of the Ismaili Imams who provided a spiritual centre to a scattered community, this work explores the motivations, passions and presumptions of historical actors. With penetrating insight, Shafique N. Virani examines the rich esoteric thought that animated the Ismailis and enabled them to persevere. A work of remarkable erudition, this landmark book is essential reading for scholars of Islamic history and spirituality, Shi'ism and Iran. Both specialists and informed lay readers will take pleasure not only in its scholarly perception, but in its lively anecdotes, quotations of delightful poetry, and gripping narrative style. This is an extraordinary book of historical beauty and spiritual vision.

Though clergy are clearly important religious leaders within American society, their significance extends far beyond the church doors. Clergy are also important figures within American public life. They are so, in part, because houses of worship stand at the center of American civic life. Gathering to worship is a religious activity, but it is also an important public activity in that, beyond its religious qualities, congregational life brings together relatively diverse individuals for sustained periods of time, frequently on a fairly regular basis. Based on data gathered through national surveys of clergy across four mainline Protestant (the Disciples of Christ; the Presbyterian Church, USA; the Reformed Church in America; and the United Methodist Church) and three evangelical Protestant denominations (the Assemblies of God; the Christian Reformed Church; and, the Southern Baptist Convention), Pastors and Public Life examines the changing sociological, theological, and political characteristics of American Protestant clergy. In this book, Corwin E. Smidt examines what has changed and what has stayed the same with regard to the clergy's social composition, theological beliefs, and perspectives related to the public witness of the church within American society across three different points in time over the past twenty-plus years. Smidt focuses on the relationship between clergy and politics, particularly clergy positions on issues of American public policy, norms on what is appropriate for clergy to do politically, as well as the clergy's political cue-giving, their pronouncements on public policy, and political activism. Written in a manner that makes it accessible to pastors and church laity-yet of interest and value to scholars as well-Pastors and Public Life constitutes the first and only published study that systematically examines such changes and continuity over time.

Volume XXIV of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry explores the question of relations between Jews and Protestants in modern times. One of the four major branches of Christianity, Protestantism is perhaps the most difficult to write about; it has innumerable sects and churches within it, from the loosely organized Religious Society of Friends to the conservative Evangelicals of the Bible Belt. Different strands of Protestantism hold vastly different views on theology, social problems, and politics. These views play out in differing attitudes and relationships between mainstream Protestant churches and Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel. In this volume, established scholars from multiple disciplines and various countries delve into these essential questions of the "Protestant-Jewish conundrum." The discussion begins with a trenchant analysis of the historical framework in which Protestant ideas towards Jews and Judaism were formed. Contributors delve into diverse topics including the attitudes of the Evangelical movement toward Jews and Israel; Protestant reactions to Mel Gibson's blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ."; German-Protestant behavior during and after Nazi era; and mainstream Protestant attitudes towards Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict.. Taken as a whole, this compendium presents discussions and questions central to the ongoing development of Jewish-Protestant relations. Studies in Contemporary Jewry seeks to provide its readers with up-to-date and accessible scholarship on questions of interest in the general field of modern Jewish studies. Studies in Contemporary Jewry presents new approaches to the scholarly work of the latest generation of researchers working on Jewish history, sociology, demography, political science, and culture.

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? How might the current debate change if our view of the history of women's ordination were to change?
In The Hidden History of Women's Ordination, Gary Macy offers illuminating and surprising answers to these questions. Macy argues that for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, women were in fact ordained into various roles in the church. He uncovers references to the ordination of women in papal, episcopal and theological documents of the time, and the rites for these ordinations have survived. The insistence among scholars that women were not ordained, Macy shows, is based on a later definition of ordination, one that would have been unknown in the early Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, ordination was understood as the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry in the community. In the early Middle Ages, women served in at least four central ministries: episcopa (woman bishop), presbytera (woman priest), deaconess and abbess. The ordinations of women continued until the Gregorian reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries radically altered the definition of ordination. These reforms not only removed women from the ordained ministry, but also attempted to eradicate any memory of women's ordination in the past.
With profound implications for how women are viewed in Christian history, and for current debates about the role of women in the church, The Hidden History of Women's Ordinationoffers new answers to an old question and overturns a long-held erroneous belief.

India is frequently represented as the quintessential land of religion. Johannes Quack challenges this representation through an examination of the contemporary Indian rationalist organizations: groups who affirm the values and attitudes of atheism, humanism, or free-thinking. Quack shows the rationalists' emphasis on maintaining links to atheism and materialism in ancient India and outlines their strong ties to the intellectual currents of modern European history. At the heart of Disenchanting India is an ethnographic study of the organization ''Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti'' (Organization for the Eradication of Superstition), based in the Indian State of Maharashtra. Quack gives a nuanced account of the Organization's specific "mode of unbelief. " He describes the group's efforts to encourage a scientific temper and to combat beliefs and practices that it regards as superstitious. Quack also shows the role played by rationalism in the day-to-day lives of the Organization's members, as well as the Organization's controversial position within Indian society. Disenchanting India contributes crucial insight into the nature of rationalism in the intellectual life and cultural politics of India.