In the late 1850s and early 1860s, the attention of the Catholic and Protes tant religious communities around the world focused on a few small settle ments of French-Canadian immigrants in north-central Illinois. Soon after arriv ing in their new home, a large number of these immigrants, led by Father Charles Chiniquy, the charismatic Catholic priest who had brought them there, converted to Protestantism. In this anthropological history, Caroline B. Bretell explores how Father Chiniquy took on both the sacred and secular authority of the Catholic Church to engineer the religious schism and how the legacy of this rift affected the lives of the immigrants and their descendants for generations. Brettell chronicles how Chiniquy came to lead approximately one thousand French-Ca nadian families to St. Anne, Illinois in the early 1850s and how his conflict with the Catholic hierarchy led to his excommuni cation. This intriguing study of a relatively unknown example of nineteenth-century migration of French-Canadians to the American Midwest offers an innovative perspective on the immigrant experience in America.

Examining the law and public policy relating to religious liberty in Western liberal democracies, this book contains a detailed analysis of the history, rationale, scope, and limits of religious freedom from (but not restricted to) an evangelical Christian perspective. Focussing on United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and EU, it studies the interaction between law and religion at several different levels, looking at the key debates that have arisen. Divided into three parts, the book begins by contrasting the liberal and Christian rationales for and understandings of religious freedom. It then explores central thematic issues: the types of constitutional frameworks within which any right to religious exercise must operate; the varieties of paradigmatic relationships between organized religion and the state; the meaning of 'religion'; the limitations upon individual and institutional religious behaviour; and the domestic and international legal mechanisms that have evolved to address religious conduct. The final part explores key subject areas where current religious freedom controversies have arisen: employment; education; parental rights and childrearing; controls on pro-religious and anti-religious expression; medical treatment; and religious group (church) autonomy. This new edition is fully updated with the growing case law in the area, and features increased coverage of Islam and the flashpoint debates surrounding the accommodation of Muslim beliefs and practices in Anglophone nations.

This book is a study of contemporary Buddhist-Christian encounter in Thailand. Case studies, which include a Buddhist nationalist group, a charismatic church movement, and a village community, describe the variety and nature of Buddhist-Christian relations. Arising issues - nationalism, identity, notions of the religious other - are discussed with regard to Thai history and modern society. The book also highlights cultural notions of avoidance and the Buddhist concept of friendship as Thai offerings to the field of interreligious dialogue. The study is based on qualitative research and draws on different academic disciplines, including religious studies, theology, and political studies. It makes a distinctive contribution to the fields of Thai Studies and global Buddhist-Christian Studies.

This volume highlights points of agreement and disagreement on the subject of religious pluralism. The dialogue partners in the discussion are Paul F. Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, and Harold A Netland, professor of Mission and Evangelism and director of Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

The Temiar are a Mon-Khmer-speaking group living in the uplands of northern Peninsular Malaysia. People in the region once practised Mahayana Buddhism and later Islam, but when Geoffrey Benjamin began his fieldwork in 1964, the Temiar practised a localised and unexportable animistic religion. Over a period of nearly 50 years he has followed the Temiar community, witnessing a series of changes that have seen them become ever more embedded in broader Malaysian society. Benjamin's work traces a process of religious enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment, as the Temiars reacted in various ways to Baha'i, Islam and Christianity, including developing their own new religion. In a text enriched by detailed ethnographic reportage, Benjamin draws on the Temiar experience to set out a novel theory of religion, and to explore the changing intellectual framework of anthropology over the past half-century.

Many observers greeted the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) as the most important religious event in the twentieth century. Its implementation and impact are still being felt in the Catholic Church, the wider Christian world, and beyond. One sea change that Vatican II brought concerned Roman Catholic attitudes towards Judaism, Islam, and other religions. Gerald O'Collins breaks fresh ground by examining in detail five documents from the Council which embodied a new mindset about other religious faiths and mandated changes that quickly led to international and national dialogues between the Catholic Church and the followers of non-Christian religions. The book also includes chapters on the insights that prepared the way for the rethinking expressed by Vatican II, and on the follow-up to the Council's teaching found in the work of Pope John Paul II and Jacques Dupuis. O'Collins ably illustrates how the Council made a startling advance in official Catholic teaching about followers of other living faiths. Carefully researched, the book is written in the clear, accessible style that readers of previous works by O'Collins will recognize.

This collection of seven essays offers wide-ranging and in-depth studies of locations sacred to Muslims, of the histories of these sites (real or imagined), and of the ways in which Muslims and members of other religions have interacted peaceably in sacred times and spaces.
After a theoretical introduction by Peter Gottschalk, David Damrel discusses historic and modern controversies surrounding Muslim practices at shrines in South Asia. Lance Laird presents a case study of a shrine holy to Palestinian Christians, who identify its patron as St. George, as well as to Palestinian Muslims, who believe that its patron is al Kha?r/Khi?r. Ethel Sara Wolper illustrates how al Khi?r's patronage was used also to show Muslim connections to Christian sites in Anatolia, and JoAnn Gross's essay explores oral and written traditions linking shrines in Tajikistan to traditional Muslim locations and figures. A chapter by the late Thomas Sizgorich examines how Christian and Muslim authors used monastic settings to reimagine the relationship between the two religions, and Alexandra Cuffel offers a study of attitudes towards the mixing of religious groups in religious festivals in eleventh- to sixteenth-century Egypt. Eric Ross shows how the Layenne Sufi order incorporates a singular combination of Christian and Muslim figures and festivals in its history and practices.
Muslims and Others in Sacred Space will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the complex meanings of sacred sites in Muslim history.

With globalization helping those who assert incompatible differences between their respective faiths, clashes of faith are increasingly common in different parts of the world. As a result, the study of religious conflict is also increasing. This book reverses that perspective by addressing a case of peaceful religious coexistence and social cohesion, namely in the South Indian village of Tranquebar (Tharangambadi) in Tamil Nadu. The birthplace of the Lutheran mission to India in 1706, this former Danish colonial settlement is now a famous heritage site. Although badly hit by the 2004 tsunami and today numerically dominated by members of a Hindu fishermen's caste, so far the town has managed to steer clear of the kind of religious conflicts too often found in a number of states in present-day India, including Tamil Nadu. This in-depth study, based on post-tsunami field studies in 2006 and 2007, examines the ways in which Hindus, Muslims and different Christian denominations interact in their day-to-day lives. Further, it demonstrates that the role played by religion - as far as social cohesion is concerned - is invariably tied up with several other factors (social stratification, economic development, educational institutions and such social communities as caste councils, etc.) and may serve as a basis for unity as well as division.

Joseph Palmisano explores the interreligious significance of empathy for Jewish-Christian understanding. Drawing on the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and Edith Stein (1891-1942), he develops a phenomenological category of empathy defined as a way of ''re-membering'' oneself with the religious other. Palmisano follows Heschel's and Stein's personal and spiritual journeys through the darkest years of Nazi Germany. He shows that Heschel's call to Christian interlocutors for a return to God is an ecumenical call to humanity to embrace perceived others: a call to live life as a response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic answer in Edith Stein's witness of empathy with regard to the Holocaust. Stein, a Catholic, creates a dialectical bridge with the Jewish 'other,' neither distancing herself nor denying her Jewish roots. Stein's simultaneously Jewish and Christian fidelity is a model for interreligious relations. It is also a challenge to Catholics to remember their religion's Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with others. Beyond the Walls is a critical contribution to the fostering of interreligious understanding, offering both a model of the ideal Jewish-Christian relationship in Heschel and Stein and criteria with which to evaluate contemporary initiatives and controversies concerning interreligious dialogue.

In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. Written in the fourteenth century, the Book is a captivating blend of fact and fantasy, an extraordinary travel narrative that offers some revealing and unexpected attitudes towards other races and religions. It was immensely popular, and numbered among its readers Chaucer, Columbus, and Thomas More. Here Mandeville tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun. Forceful and opinionated, the narrator is by turns learned, playful, and moralizing, with an endless curiosity about different cultures.
Anthony Bale provides a lively new translation along with an introduction that considers questions of authorship and origins, the early travel narrative, Crusading and religious difference, fantasy and the European Age of Discovery, and Mandeville's pervasive popularity and influence. The book includes helpful notes on historical context that provide insights into medieval culture and attitudes. There are also three maps, an index of places and a general index, and a note on medieval measurements.
About the Series For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum 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, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This title presents an exploration of divine designations in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and Qur'an, using comparative theology to ascertain if there is common language for interfaith dialogue. This book offers a welcome solution to the growing need for a common language in interfaith dialogue; particularly between the three Abrahamic faiths in our modern pluralistic society. The book suggests that the names given to God in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an, could be the very foundations and building blocks for a common language between the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. On both a formal interfaith level, as well as between everyday followers of each doctrine, this book facilitates a more fruitful and universal understanding and respect of each sacred text; exploring both the commonalities and differences between the each theology and their individual receptions. In a practical application of the methodologies of comparative theology, Maire Byrne shows that the titles, names and epithets given to God in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam contribute towards similar images of God in each case, and elucidates the importance of this for providing a viable starting point for interfaith dialogue.

This title is an introduction to the World's major religions from a Catholic Perspective. There is no single standard textbook that outlines the official Roman Catholic theological position in relation to other religions which then explicates this orientation theologically and phenomenologically in relation to the four main religions of the world and the flowering of new religious movements in the west. The present project will cover this serious gap in the literature. After outlining the teaching of Vatican II and the magisterium since then (chapter one), each subsequent chapter will be divided equally between an exposition of the history and features of the religion or movement being studied; and a serious theological analysis of these features, showing how these religions do have elements in common, as well as how they differ in fundamental ways from Catholicism.

This brief survey text tells the story of Judaism. Through the lens of modern biblical scholarship, Christine Elizabeth Hayes explores the shifting cultural contextsthe Babylonian exile, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine period, the rise of Christianitythat affected Jewish thought and practice, and laid the groundwork for the Talmudic era and its modern legacy. Thematic chapters explore the evolution of Judaism through its beginnings in biblical monotheism, the Second Temple Period in Palestine, the interaction of Hellenism and Judaism, the spread of rabbinic authority, and the essence of ethno-religious Jewish identity.

This is an extraordinary collection on the sin of torture. This collection of essays suggests that American counterterrorism policies in the Bush years were immoral, unwise, and un-American, and offers considerable detailed analysis to back up such claims. Several dozen specialists in various aspects of law, ethics, politics, and religion analyze both how our nation drifted into such egregious policies and what resources can be drawn upon to pull us out of them, once and for all. The book is unique in its interdisciplinary and interfaith quality. It contains insider accounts from people who served in the military during the Bush years as well as those who have been to Guantanamo and represented clients there. It offers probing religious and ethical analysis from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim perspectives. This is the most decisive analysis and repudiation of Bush detainee policies to be found anywhere in print. The book should be appealing to activists who have worked on this issue, people of multiple faith perspectives, academics from various disciplines, and concerned and interested citizens.

There exists today a rich and abounding diversity of religions in the world-a diversity with respect to both belief and practice. But it is a diversity that poses many challenges and raises many questions, most especially in a pluralistic milieu. How do we engage in effective dialogue with religious others? What should public education reflect in a religiously pluralistic context? What role might the diversity of religions play in developing a global ethic? How do the various religious traditions deal with the plurality of religious belief and practice? What role does gender play in such discourse? The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity is a volume of thirty-three original chapters that cover numerous issues in religious diversity and draw readers into the heart of the current dialogue. It is divided into three parts: Contours of Religious Diversity, Key Issues Relevant to Religious Diversity, and Differing Perspectives on Religious Diversity. Chapters in the first part trace the general features of religious diversity discussions from four different fields: history, religious studies, philosophy, and sociology. Part two explores key theological, philosophical, sociological, and public policy issues relevant to religious diversity. The third and final part provides differing analyses of religious diversity from multi-faith, gender, and global points of view. An indispensable guide for scholars and students, the Handbook makes a state-of-the-art contribution to the field with essays crafted by experts representing a wide variety of religious and philosophical perspectives.

Christianity has changed. Formerly known as the religion of Europe and North America, it is now a religion of the Global South: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, Christianity has never been merely a Western phenomenon - it has always been a borderless religion. Indeed, in six of the world's eight cultural blocks, Christianity is the largest faith. With convenient maps, helpful statistics, and concise histories of each of the world's major cultural blocks, The Changing World of Christianity is a dynamic guide for understanding Christianity's new ethos. From Ireland to Papua New Guinea, Argentina to China, South Africa to Russia, this book provides a clear and encyclopedic look at Christianity, the world's largest and most global religion.

Relations between Christians and Jews over the past two thousand years have been characterised to a great extent by mutual distrust and by Christian discrimination and violence against Jews. In recent decades, however, a new spirit of dialogue has been emerging, beginning with an awakening among Christians of the Jewish origins of Christianity, and encouraging scholars of both traditions to work together. An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations sheds fresh light on this ongoing interfaith encounter, exploring key writings and themes in Jewish-Christian history, from the Jewish context of the New Testament to major events of modern times, including the rise of ecumenism, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel. This accessible theological and historical study also touches on numerous related areas such as Jewish and interfaith studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, international relations and the political sciences.

In Religious Cohesion in Times of Conflict Andrew Holden presents the results and analysis of the key findings of a sociological investigation which seeks to establish the contribution that Christian-Muslim partnerships can make to community cohesion. Beginning with a historical and sociological overview of faith relations, a description of the empirical methodology and a discussion of the evolution of Christian-Muslim partnerships, Andrew Holden goes on to highlight how the fieldwork data demonstrates the challenges of uniting young people in segregated towns and cities. He considers the implications of the findings for education policy, examining some of the ways in which schools and colleges can promote faith cohesion, and further addresses the issue of faith leadership, considering how the changing faith landscape affects the work of Christian and Muslim clerics. He concludes by considering possible ways forward for Christian-Muslim relations both in Britain and in the international context and for the development of new partnerships between faith and secular organizations.>

The Crusades continue to exert a fascination in the West as a story of perceived gallantry and battles against impossible odds. Yet what is less often considered is their effect on the Holy Land, and in particular the response of the Muslim world to the invasions of European Crusaders. In this book, W. B. Bartlett, author of four books on the Crusades, looks at these great events from the Muslim point of view. One of the effects was to unite a previously divided Islamic world against a common enemy. In the process, they gave an unstoppable impetus towards the declaring of jihad against the West, a holy war against Christendom. They also helped to shape the careers of some important figures, most notably Saladin, but also other great men like Sultan Baibars and Nur al-Din. The rise of these great leaders is traced in this book, as are the many great battles that were fought by men just as devoted to their cause as the Crusaders were.

Available in paperback September 2008! Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers struggle for justice polarized the Catholic community in California's Central Valley during the 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike. Because most farmworkers and landowners were Catholic, the American Catholic Church was placed in the challenging position of choosing sides in an intrafaith conflict. Twice Chavez petitioned the Catholic Church for help. Finally, in 1969 the American Catholic hierarchy responded by creating the Bishops? Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor. This committee of five bishops and two priests traveled California's Central Valley and mediated a settlement in the five-year conflict. Within months, a new and more difficult struggle began in California's lettuce fields. This time the Catholic Church drew on its long-standing tradition of social teaching and shifted its policy from neutrality to outright support for Cesar Chavez and his union, the United Farmworkers (UFW). The Bishops? Committee became so instrumental in the UFW's success that Chavez declared its intervention the single most important thing that has helped us.? Drawing upon rich, untapped archival sources at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Marco Prouty exposes the American Catholic hierarchy's internal, and often confidential, deliberations during the California farm labor crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the Church's gradual transition from reluctant mediator to outright supporter of Chavez, providing an intimate view of the Church's decision-making process and Chavez's steadfast struggle to win rights for farmworkers. This lucid, solidly researched text will be an invaluable addition to the fields of labor history, social justice, ethnic studies, and religious history.

One of the intriguing questions in the study of the period of the re-formation of Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple is the identity of a group which appears in hundreds of Talmudic sources from those days - the minim.. It is clear that most of these sources reflect different facets of the polemic between Judaism and Christianity, which were both engaged in establishing their identities. This book concentrates mainly on the second century CE, and includes two basic questions: the question of the earliest text of the twelfth blessing of the central Jewish prayer composed at that time, Birkat haMinim; and the question of the identity of those minim who are cursed in this blessing. In the first section of the book, Yaakov Yanki Teppler analyzes the blessing itself. In the second section, which concerns the question of its principal objects, he sets out on a quest for the characterization of the minim, using all the hundreds of sources which deal with them. Having united these two sections in one framework, a proposal is made as to the identity of the minim. This proposal should provide a coherent basis for further research on this subject, laying a firm foundation for understanding the processes of separation between Judaism and Christianity in this stormy and fascinating period.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali was born to a Muslim mother and a Christian father. He studied theology at Cambridge, going on to become only the second non-white bishop in England and the first diocesan bishop. He is a consultant to the Prime Minister on Muslim affairs. Nazir-Ali sets out fundamental guidelines on the role of religion in society and its relationship to nationalism, ideology and political institutions, and examines Christian-Muslim dialogue with particular relationship to the rise of Arab, Indian and Turkish nationalism. Of particular concern is the relationship of religion to law and the justifiability of armed conflict.

This book explores the diverse views of Gentile impurity found in Second Temple and raddinic sources. Christine Hayes seeks to determine the role such views played in the rise and development of sectarianism within late antique Jewish society and in the regulation of Jewish-Gentile others. Hayes discovers that different views on the question of Gentile impurity led to widely varying definitions of group identity and the permeability of group boundaries among the ancient Jews. These differing views of impurity resulted in widely divergent attitudes towards intermarriage and conversion - the two processes by which boundaries may be penetrated. She argues that different views of the possibility of conversion, based on differing ideas about impurity, were the key factors in the formation of Jewish sects in the second temple period, and in the separation of the early Christian Church from what would later be rabbinic Judaism.

Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic and unprecedented shift in Jewish-Christian relations, including signs of a new, improved Christian attitude towards Jews. "Christianity in Jewish Terms" is a Jewish theological response to the profound changes that have taken place in Christian thought. The book is divided into ten chapters, each of which features a main essay, written by a Jewish scholar, that explores the meaning of a set of Christian beliefs. Following the essay are responses from a second Jewish scholar and a Christian scholar. Designed to generate new conversations within the American Jewish community and between the Jewish and Christian communities, "Christianity in Jewish Terms" lays the foundation for better understanding. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001.

Jacobi's groundbreaking osteology study uncovers the history of the Tipu Maya of Belize and their subsequent contact with the Spanish conquistadores and missionaries.

Two cultures collided at Tipu, Belize, in the 1600s: that of the native Maya and that of the Spanish missionaries, who arrived with an agenda of religious subjugation and, ultimately, political control. Combining historical documentation with the results of an archaeological exploration of a Tipu cemetery, Keith Jacobi provides an account of the meshing of these two cultures and the assimilation of Catholic practices by the Tipu.

In particular, Jacobi focuses on the dental remains recovered at this site. A tooth may be the last tangible evidence of a living creature, so teeth can reveal information about an individual's health, diet, cosmetic alteration, trauma, and genetic structure. From the genetic structure the researcher can learn information about an individual's relationship to others in a particular population and between populations.

Jacobi's research reveals how these European and Spanish Catholic practices were assimilated by the Tipu Maya and enables the first description of the prevalent attitudes toward death and burial customs. Through this study of Tipu Maya dentition changes through time, Jacobi sheds light on Spanish intermarriage, Maya familial relationships, and the Tipu genetic affinity with other prehistoric, historic, and modern Maya.