Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview-rich with bibliographic resources-to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.

The Book of Common Prayer is a remarkable book, a sacred book in more than one sense. It is primarily a liturgical text, meant to be used in corporate worship, and at the same time a literary landmark, a cultural icon, and a focus of identity for Anglican Christianity. This brief, accessible account of the Prayer Book, as it is often called, describes the contents of the classical version of the text, with special emphasis on the services for which it has been used most frequently since it was issued in 1662. Charles Hefling also examines the historical and theological context of the Prayer Book's origins, the changes it has undergone, the controversies it has touched off, and its reception in England, Scotland, and America. Readers are introduced to the political as well as the spiritual influence of the Book of Common Prayer, and to its enduring place in English-speaking religion.

Approved by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, and Scotland, as the basis for the new Lectionary (2022) and all future liturgical texts used by Catholics.

This study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantium's turbulent seventh century, the monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). Building on newer biographical research and a growing international body of scholarship, as well as on fresh examination of his diverse literary corpus, Paul Blowers develops a profile integrating the two principal initiatives of Maximus's career: first, his reinterpretation of the christocentric economy of creation and salvation as a framework for expounding the spiritual and ascetical life of monastic and non-monastic Christians; and second, his intensifying public involvement in the last phase of the ancient christological debates, the monothelete controversy, wherein Maximus helped lead an East-West coalition against Byzantine imperial attempts doctrinally to limit Jesus Christ to a single (divine) activity and will devoid of properly human volition. Blowers identifies what he terms Maximus's "cosmo-politeian" worldview, a contemplative and ascetical vision of the participation of all created beings in the novel politeia, or reordered existence, inaugurated by Christ's "new theandric energy". Maximus ultimately insinuated his teaching on the christoformity and cruciformity of the human vocation with his rigorous explication of the precise constitution of Christ's own composite person. In outlining this cosmo-politeian theory, Blowers additionally sets forth a "theo-dramatic" reading of Maximus, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which depicts the motion of creation and history according to the christocentric "plot" or interplay of divine and creaturely freedoms. Blowers also amplifies how Maximus's cumulative achievement challenged imperial ideology in the seventh century-the repercussions of which cost him his life-and how it generated multiple recontextualizations in the later history of theology.

Explore the haunted history of Salem, Massachusetts.

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1148 - 1210) wrote prolifically in the disciplines of theology, Quranic exegesis, and philosophy. He composed treatises on jurisprudence, medicine, physiognomy, astronomy, and astrology. His body of work marks a momentous turning point in the Islamic tradition and his influence within the post-classical Islamic tradition is striking. After his death in 1210 his works became standard textbooks in Islamic institutions of higher learning. Razi investigates his transformative contributions to the Islamic intellectual tradition. One of the leading representatives of Sunni orthodoxy in medieval Islam, Razi was the first intellectual to exploit the rich heritage of ancient and Islamic philosophy to interpret the Quran. Jaffer uncovers Razi's boldly unconventional intellectual aspirations. The book elucidates the development of Razi's unique appropriation of methods and ideas from ancient and Islamic philosophy into a unified Quranic commentary-and consequently into the Sunni worldview. Jaffer shows that the genre of Quranic commentary in the post-classical period contains a wealth of philosophical material that is of major interest for the history of philosophical ideas in Islam and for the interaction of the aqli ("rational") and naqli ("traditional") sciences in Islamic civilization. Jaffer demonstrates the ways Razi reconciled the opposing intellectual trends of his milieu on major methodological conflicts. A highly original work, this book brilliantly repositions the central aims of Razi's intellectual program.

There is a paradox in American Christianity. According to Gallup, nearly eight in ten Americans regard the Bible as either the literal word of God or the inspired by God. At the same time, surveys have revealed gaps in these same Americans' biblical literacy. These discrepancies reveal the complex relationship between American Christians and Holy Writ, a subject that is widely acknowledged but rarely investigated. The Bible in American Life is a sustained, collaborative reflection on the ways Americans use the Bible in their personal lives. It also considers how other influences, including religious communities and the internet, shape individuals' comprehension of scripture. Employing both quantitative methods (the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study) and qualitative research (historical studies for context), The Bible in American Life provides an unprecedented perspective on the Bible's role outside of worship, in the lived religion of a broad cross-section of Americans both now and in the past. The Bible has been central to Christian practice, and has functioned as a cultural touchstone, throughout American history, but too little is known about how people engage it every day. How do people read the Bible for themselves outside of worship? How have denominational and parachurch publications influenced the interpretation and application of scripture? How have clergy and congregations influenced individual understandings of scripture? These questions are especially pressing in a time when denominations are losing much of their traditional cultural authority, technology is changing reading and cognitive habits, and subjective experience is continuing to eclipse textual authority as the mark of true religion. From the broadest scale imaginable, national survey data about all Americans, down to the smallest details, such as the portrayal of Noah and his ark in children's Bibles, this book offers insight and illumination from scholars across the intellectual spectrum. It will be useful and informative for scholars seeking to understand changes in American Christianity as well as clergy seeking more effective ways to preach and teach about scripture in a changing environment.

Who Are My People? explores the complex relationship between identity, violence, and Christianity in Africa. In Who Are My People?, Emmanuel Katongole examines what it means to be both an African and a Christian in a continent that is often riddled with violence. The driving assumption behind the investigation is that the recurring forms of violence in Africa reflect an ongoing crisis of belonging. Katongole traces the crisis through three key markers of identity: ethnicity, religion, and land. He highlights the unique modernity of the crisis of belonging and reveals that its manifestations of ethnic, religious, and ecological violence are not three separate forms of violence but rather modalities of the same crisis. This investigation shows that Christianity can generate and nurture alternative forms of community, nonviolent agency, and ecological possibilities. The book is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the philosophical and theological issues related to the question of African identity. Part Two includes three chapters, each of which engages a form of violence, locating it within the broader story of modern sub-Saharan Africa. Each chapter includes stories of Christian individuals and communities who not only resist violence but are determined to heal its wounds and the burden of history shaped by Africa’s unique modernity. In doing so, they invent new forms of identity, new communities, and a new relationship with the land. This engaging, interdisciplinary study, combining philosophical analysis and theological exploration, along with theoretical argument and practical resources, will interest scholars and students of theology, peace studies, and African studies.

Hykie Berg, bekende akteur, topverkoperskrywer en entrepreneur, gee praktiese riglyne oor hoe jy suksesvol kan leef. Hykie inspireer jou en gee raad oor hoe ook jy jou drome kan waarmaak: Bou selfdissipline; tree doelbewus; raak ontslae van verskonings; los die slagoffermentaliteit; vind uit wat jou dryf; ontleed jou verskonings en besef watter denkpatrone nie geldig is nie. Jy hoef nie bloot ’n gemiddelde lewe te leef nie. Jy kan ’n uitstekende lewe leef. Dìt is wat God vir jou wil hê.

The discipline of religious studies has, historically, tended to focus on discrete ritual mistakes that occur in the context of individual performances outlined in ethnographic or sociological studies, and scholars have largely dismissed the fact that there are extensive discussions of ritual mistakes in many indigenous traditions' religious literature. And yet ritual mistakes (ranging from the simple to the complex) happen all the time, and they continue to carry ritual "weight," even when no one seriously doubts their impact on the efficacy of a ritual. In Ritual Gone Wrong, Kathryn McClymond approaches ritual mistakes as an integral part of ritual life and argues that religious traditions can accommodate mistakes and are often prepared for them. McClymond shows that many traditions even incorporate the regular occurrence of errors into their ritual systems, developing a substantial literature on how rituals can be disrupted, how these disruptions can be addressed, and when disruptions have gone too far. Using a series of case studies ranging from ancient India to modern day Iraq, and from medieval allegations of child sacrifice to contemporary Olympic ceremonies, McClymond explores the numerous ways in which ritual can go wrong, and demonstrates that the ritual is by nature fluid, supple, and dynamic-simultaneously adapting to socio-cultural conditions and, in some cases, shaping them.

The number of non-religious men and women has increased dramatically over the past several decades. Yet scholarship on the non-religious is severely lacking. In response to this critical gap in knowledge, The Nonreligious provides a comprehensive summation and analytical discussion of existing social scientific research on the non-religious. The authors present a thorough overview of existing research, while also drawing on ongoing research and positing ways to improve upon our current understanding of this growing population. The findings in this book stand out against the corpus of secular writing, which is comprised primarily of polemical rants critiquing religion, personal life-stories/memoirs of former believers, or abstract philosophical explorations of theology and anti-theology. By offering the first research- and data-based conclusions about the non-religious, this book will be an invaluable source of information and a foundation for further scholarship. Written in clear, jargon-free language that will appeal to the increasingly interested general readers, this book provides an unbiased, thorough account of all relevant existing scholarship within the social sciences that bears on the lived experience of the non-religious.

What could Roman Catholicism and Mormonism possibly have to learn from each other? On the surface, they seem to diverge on nearly every point, from their liturgical forms to their understanding of history. With its ancient roots, Catholicism is a continuous tradition, committed to the conservation of the creeds, while Mormonism teaches that the landscape of Christian history is riddled with sin and apostasy and is in need of radical revision and spiritual healing. Moreover, successful proselyting efforts by Mormons in formerly Catholic strongholds have increased opportunities for misunderstanding, polemic, and prejudice. However, in this book a Mormon theologian and a Catholic theologian in conversation address some of the most significant issues that impact Christian identity, including such central doctrines as authority, grace, Jesus, Mary, and revelation, demonstrating that these traditions are much closer to each other than many assume. Both Catholicism and Mormonism have ambitiously universal views of the Christian faith, and readers will be surprised by how close Catholics and Mormons are on a number of topics and how these traditions, probed to their depths, shed light on each other in fascinating and unexpected ways. Catholic-Mormon Dialogue is an invitation to the reader to engage in a discussion that makes understanding the goal, and marks a beginning for a dialogue that will become increasingly important in the years to come.

In Union Made, Heath W. Carter advances a bold new interpretation of the origins of American Social Christianity. While historians have often attributed the rise of the Social Gospel to middle-class ministers, seminary professors, and social reformers, this book places working people at the very center of the story. The major characters-blacksmiths, glove makers, teamsters, printers, and the like-have been mostly forgotten, but as Carter convincingly argues, their collective contribution to American Social Christianity was no less significant than that of Walter Rauschenbusch or Jane Addams. Leading readers into the thick of late-19th-century Chicago's tumultuous history, Carter shows that countless working-class believers participated in the heated debates over the implications of Christianity for industrializing society, often with as much fervor as they did in other contests over wages and the length of the workday. Throughout the Gilded Age the city's trade unionists, socialists, and anarchists advanced theological critiques of laissez faire capitalism and protested "scab ministers" who cozied up to the business elite. Their criticisms compounded church leaders' anxieties about losing the poor, such that by the turn-of-the-century many leading Christians were arguing that the only way to salvage hopes of a Christian America was for the churches to soften their position on "the labor question." As denomination after denomination did just that, it became apparent that the Social Gospel was, indeed, ascendant-from below.

A down-to-earth book which explains the essential Anglican approach to worship, the scriptures, spirituality, doctrine, rityeaosial and moral questions, dialogue with people of other faiths and much more.

During the past few decades there has been renewed interest in the twentieth-century French Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861-1949) and his influence on modern and contemporary theology, but little scholarship has been published in the English-speaking world. In Maurice Blondel: Transforming Catholic Tradition, Robert Koerpel examines Blondel's work, the historical and theological development of the idea of tradition in modern Catholicism, tradition's relation to reason and revelation, and Blondel's influence on Catholicism's understanding of tradition. The book presents aspects of Blondel's thought that deserve to be more widely known and contributes to important debates in current theology on modern French Catholic thought and the emerging conversations surrounding them. Koerpel looks to the cultural context from which Blondel's thought emerges by situating it within the broader conceptual, historical, and theological developments of modernity. He examines the problem of reason and revelation in modern Catholicism, the role and nature of tradition, and the relationships between theology and history, truth and change, nature and grace, and scripture and the development of doctrine. This book provides readers with an appreciation of Blondel's conceptually creative answer to how tradition represents the Word of God in human history and why it is one of his most important contributions to modern and contemporary theology. They will discover how his contribution restores the animated vitality between the institutional and liturgical dimensions of tradition essential to the living, dynamic nature of Catholicism.

While scholars, media, and the public may be aware of a few extraordinary government raids on religious communities, such as the U.S. federal raid on the Branch Davidians in 1993, very few people are aware of the scope and frequency with which these raids occur. Following the Texas state raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints in 2008, authors Stuart Wright and Susan Palmer decided to study these raids in the aggregate-rather than as individual cases-by collecting data on raids that have taken place over the last six decades. They did this both to establish for the first time an archive of raided groups, and to determine if any patterns could be identified. Even they were surprised at their findings; there were far more raids than expected, and the vast majority of them had occurred since 1990, reflecting a sharp, almost exponential increase. What could account for this sudden and dramatic increase in state control of minority religions? In Storming Zion, Wright and Palmer argue that the increased use of these high-risk and extreme types of enforcement corresponds to expanded organization and initiatives by opponents of unconventional religions. Anti-cult organizations provide strategic "frames" that define potential conflicts or problems in a given community as inherently dangerous, and construct narratives that draw on stereotypes of child and sexual abuse, brainwashing, and even mass suicide. The targeted group is made to appear more dangerous than it is, resulting in an overreaction by authorities. Wright and Palmer explore the implications of heightened state repression and control of minority religions in an increasingly multicultural, globalized world. At a time of rapidly shifting demographics within Western societies this book cautions against state control of marginalized groups and offers insight about why the responses to these groups is often so reactionary.

Whether on a national or a personal level, everyone has a complex relationship with their closest neighbors. Where are the borders? How much interaction should there be? How are conflicts solved? Ancient Israel was one of several small nations clustered in the eastern Mediterranean region between the large empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia in antiquity. Frequently mentioned in the Bible, these other small nations are seldom the focus of the narrative unless they interact with Israel. The ancient Israelites who produced the Hebrew Bible lived within a rich context of multiple neighbors, and this context profoundly shaped Israel. Indeed, it was through the influence of the neighboring people that Israel defined its own identity-in terms of geography, language, politics, religion, and culture. Ancient Israel's Neighbors explores both the biblical portrayal of the neighboring groups directly surrounding Israel-the Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Arameans-and examines what we can know about these groups through their own literature, archaeology, and other sources. Through its analysis of these surrounding groups, this book will demonstrate in a direct and accessible manner the extent to which ancient Israelite identity was forged both within and against the identities of its close neighbors. Animated by the latest and best research, yet written for students, this book will invite readers into journey of scholarly discovery to explore the world of Israel's identity within its most immediate ancient Near Eastern context.

Through the Virgin Mary, Remensnyder examines the dynamics of Christian and non-Christian identity in the pre-modern Spanish world. Rather than focusing on the Virgin Mary, she instead uses the Virgin as a lens to understand how people established identities for themselves in the contexts of domination and devotion. The first half of the book looks at how Spanish Christians used the Virgin's martial functions to draw lines of demarcation between themselves and non-Christians both metaphoric differences such as doctrinal differences and religious polemic and physical ones of war. She could also embody religious borderlands, the places of hybrid and fluid spiritual identities. The second half of the book looks at how the Virgin served as a place of passage where religious lines could be crossed through conversion. The book considers Christian stories that depict Mary as a particularly effective agent in the conversion of Jews, Muslims, and natives of the Americas. The project also examines those Jews, Muslims, and Indians who converted to Christianity: the Virgin was a figure of power through whom they could express their new hybrid identities.

In this book, Yaroslav Komarovski argues that the Tibetan Buddhist interpretations of the realization of ultimate reality both contribute to and challenge contemporary interpretations of unmediated mystical experience. The model used by the majority of Tibetan Buddhist thinkers states that the realization of ultimate reality, while unmediated during its actual occurrence, is necessarily filtered and mediated by the conditioning contemplative processes leading to it, and Komarovski argues that therefore, in order to understand this mystical experience, one must focus on these processes, rather than on the experience itself. Komarovski also provides an in-depth comparison of seminal Tibetan Geluk thinker Tsongkhapa and his major Sakya critic Gorampa's accounts of the realization of ultimate reality, demonstrating that the differences between these two interpretations lie primarily in their conflicting descriptions of the compatible conditioning processes that lead to this realization. Komarovski maintains that Tsongkhapa and Gorampa's views are virtually irreconcilable, but demonstrates that the differing processes outlined by these two thinkers are equally effective in terms of actually attaining the realization of ultimate reality. Tibetan Buddhism and Mystical Experience speaks to the plurality of mystical experience, perhaps even suggesting that the diversity of mystical experience is one of its primary features.

This collection of essays by leading international philosophers considers central themes in the ethics of Danish philosopher Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1905–1981). Løgstrup was a Lutheran theologian much influenced by phenomenology and by strong currents in Danish culture, to which he himself made important contributions. The essays in What Is Ethically Demanded? K. E. Løgstrup's Philosophy of Moral Life are divided into four sections. The first section deals predominantly with Løgstrup's relation to Kant and, through Kant, the system of morality in general. The second section focuses on how Løgstrup stands in connection with Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Levinas. The third section considers issues in the development of Løgstrup's ethics and how it relates to other aspects of his thought. The final section covers certain central themes in Løgstrup's position, particularly his claims about trust and the unfulfillability of the ethical demand. The volume includes a previously untranslated early essay by Løgstrup, "The Anthropology of Kant’s Ethics," which defines some of his basic ethical ideas in opposition to Kant’s. The book will appeal to philosophers and theologians with an interest in ethics and the history of philosophy. Contributors: K. E. Løgstrup, Svend Andersen, David Bugge, Svein Aage Christoffersen, Stephen Darwall, Peter Dews, Paul Faulkner, Hans Fink, Arne Grøn, Alasdair MacIntyre, Wayne Martin, Kees van Kooten Niekerk, George Pattison, Robert Stern, and Patrick Stokes.

Does a consumer who bought a shirt made in another nation bear any moral responsibility when the women who sewed that shirt die in a factory fire or in the collapse of the building? Many have asserted, without explanation, that because markets cause harms to distant others, consumers bear moral responsibility for those harms. But traditional moral analysis of individual decisions is unable to sustain this argument. Distant Harms, Distant Markets presents a careful analysis of moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. Because of its individualistic methods, mainstream economics as a discipline is not equipped to understand the causality entailed in the long chains of social relationships that make up the market. Critical realist sociology, however, has addressed the character and functioning of social structures, an analysis that can helpfully be applied to the market. The True Wealth of Nations research project of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sociologists, economists, moral theologians, and others to describe these causal relationships and articulate how Catholic social thought can use these insights to more fully address issues of economic ethics in the twenty-first century. The result was this interdisciplinary volume of essays, which explores the causal and moral responsibilities that consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.