Can the Christian life be lived alone? When her husband left Christianity several years into their marriage, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook was left "spiritually single"-struggling to live the Christian life on her own, taking her kids to church by herself, and wrestling with her own questions and doubts. In this memoir, Kielsmeier-Cook tells the story of her mixed-faith marriage and how she found community in an unexpected place: an order of Catholic nuns in her neighborhood. As she spent time with them and learned about female Catholic saints, she began to see that she was not "spiritually single" after all-and that no one really is.

In From Faith to Works: How Religion Inspires Confidence, Community, and Sacrifice, Michael K. Abel builds on key principles from past theories of religion and group solidarity to determine the origins of religious confidence and explain the essential role doctrinal content plays in the establishment of cohesive religious communities. This book addresses an enduring question: Why do people sacrifice their own personal interests to conform to religious expectations? While religious adherents have long acknowledged their faith as a primary motivator of action, social scientists have tended to minimize its importance. From Faith to Works rectifies this shortcoming by placing faith at the center of its analysis. The information presented in this book will appeal to readers of all faiths as well as those of no faith. Combining theoretical arguments and compelling statistics, From Faith to Works proves a fascinating and unique contribution to social scientific thinking on religion.

In No Jim Crow Church, Louis Venters recounts the unlikely emergence of a cohesive, interracial fellowship in South Carolina, tracing the history of the community from the end of the nineteenth century through the Civil Rights era. By joiing the Baha'i faith, blacks and whites not only defied Jim Crow but also rejected their society's religious and social restrictions. The religion which emphasizes the spiritual unity of all humankind, arrived in the United States from the Middle East via northern urban areas. As early as 1910, Baha'i teachers began settling in South Carolina. Venters presents an organizational, social, and intellectual history of South Carolina's early Baha'i movement and relates developments within the community to changes in society at large, with particular attention to race relations and the civil rights struggle.

Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate."

Thoughts in Solitude stands alongside The Seven Storey Mountain as one of Merton's most uring and popular works.Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentiethcentury. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968.

Was Jesus a wisdom sage or an apocalyptic prophet? Did later followers view him as the Danielic "Son of Man" or did he use this expression for himself? These are familiar questions among historical Jesus scholars, and there has been much debate over Jesus' eschatological outlook since the controversial work of the Jesus Seminar. This book asks what is at stake in these debates and explores how scholarly constructions of Christian origins participate in contemporary efforts to confirm or challenge particular understandings of the essence of Christianity. Proposing that a Jesus-centered perspective has overly shaped our interpretation of the sayings source Q, Johnson-DeBaufre offers alternative readings to key Q texts, readings that place an interest in the community that shaped Jesus at the center of inquiry.

In Friesach, der altesten Stadt Karntens, grundete der Dominikanerorden sein erstes Kloster im deutschen Sprachraum. Mit dem Abzug seiner Predigerbruder wurde ein fast 800 Jahre wahrendes Kapitel Klostergeschichte geschlossen. Anlass genug, die Entwicklungsgeschichte dieses Konvents zu beleuchten und auf dessen vielgestaltige Rolle im stadtischen Gefuge hinzuweisen. Das Buch gibt einen Einblick in die einstige Strahlkraft des Klosters - mit dem Ziel, seinen Ruf als ehemals geistiges und soziokulturelles Zentrum fur die Zukunft zu bewahren. Unter Zugrundelegung noch vorhandener Quellen wird ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Stadtgeschichte Friesachs prasentiert. Die Geschichte der jahrhundertelangen Anwesenheit des Dominikanerordens in dieser Stadt erfahrt ihre verdiente Wurdigung.

The Dalai Lama has represented Buddhism as a religion of non-violence, compassion, and world peace, but this does not reflect how monks learn their vocation. This book shows how monasteries use harsh methods to make monks of men, and how this tradition is changing as modernist reformers - like the Dalai Lama - adopt liberal and democratic ideals, such as natural rights and individual autonomy. In the first in-depth account of disciplinary practices at a Tibetan monastery in India, Michael Lempert looks closely at everyday education rites - from debate to reprimand and corporal punishment. His analysis explores how the idioms of violence inscribed in these socialization rites help produce educated, moral persons but in ways that trouble Tibetans who aspire to modernity. Bringing the study of language and social interaction to our understanding of Buddhism for the first time, Lempert shows and why liberal ideals are being acted out by monks in India, offering a provocative alternative view of liberalism as a globalizing discourse.

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest centre of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behaviour and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s,the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality,and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not.

Westminster Abbey was one of the wealthiest and most influential monastic houses in medieval England: c.1300 it held some 38,000 acres, largely in the Home Counties and West Midlands, and its revenues at the Dissolution exceeded GBP2,800 p.a. These assets supported a complement of 50 to 60 monks in the fourteenth century. This volume publishes 75 documents providing overviews ('states') of the Westminster estate and its revenues, as administered by the abbot and convent separately between c.1300 and 1422. The states provided crucial information at a period of great social and economic change either side of the Black Death, assisting in decisions about farming estates directly or leasing them - and to historians today they provide rich evidence of the agricultural economy of medieval England, the systems of provisioning monasteries, and the men who shaped them. The states are of two types. The first gives estimates of corn, stock and cash on the manors, made partway through the financial year - this is unusual information to survive across substantial parts of an estate. The second group has little parallel: summarising the manorial accounts across either the abbot's or the convent's portion of the lands, the states add information about the management of the estate, its value, arrears and so on. In this edition, the Latin text is given of the accounts up to 1375, after which the material is presented in calendared form. The texts are supplemented by a word list and glossary, and an appendix on the abbot's estate officials. Part 1 of this two-part volume contains the Introduction, the Word List and Glossary, the memoranda and states for the abbot's estates from 1348 to c.1422, along with an appendix on the abbot's estate officials. It also includes the texts of the views and states of the convent's estates from c.1300 up to 1334, all the material of this nature that survives from before the Black Death.

"Almost a prerequisite for any serious study of Sufism in European languages": this was the verdict of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his review of the first edition of "A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-Alawi his Spiritual Heritage and Legacy".---In this work, the author, Dr Martin Lings, presents a vivid picture of the unforgettable figure of the Algerian Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi through a short biography by his French doctor and the translation of the Shaykh al-Alawi's own autobiography. These are followed by expositions of the Shaykh al-Alawi's teachings which are based on pure metaphysics and gnosis. Finally, Dr Martin Lings translates selections from Shaykh al-Alawi's aphorisms and mystical poetry. The whole work immerses the reader in the world of North African Sufism both as an intellectual tradition and a living reality.

Westminster Abbey was one of the wealthiest and most influential monastic houses in medieval England: c.1300 it held some 38,000 acres, largely in the Home Counties and West Midlands, and its revenues at the Dissolution exceeded GBP2,800 p.a. These assets supported a complement of 50 to 60 monks in the fourteenth century. This volume publishes 75 documents providing overviews ('states') of the Westminster estate and its revenues, as administered by the abbot and convent separately between c.1300 and 1422. The states provided crucial information at a period of great social and economic change either side of the Black Death, assisting in decisions about farming estates directly or leasing them - and to historians today they provide rich evidence of the agricultural economy of medieval England, the systems of provisioning monasteries, and the men who shaped them. The states are of two types. The first gives estimates of corn, stock and cash on the manors, made partway through the financial year - this is unusual information to survive across substantial parts of an estate. The second group has little parallel: summarising the manorial accounts across either the abbot's or the convent's portion of the lands, the states add information about the management of the estate, its value, arrears and so on. In this edition, the Latin text is given of the accounts up to 1375, after which the material is presented in calendared form. The texts are supplemented by a word list and glossary, and an appendix on the abbot's estate officials. Part 2 completes the publication of the documentation for the convent's estates, with the states and dockets from 1352 to 1415. It includes the Bibliography and the Index to both volumes.

Himalayan Hermitess is a vivid account of the life and times of a Buddhist nun living on the borderlands of Tibetan culture. Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration, defied tradition, and composed one of the most engaging autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition.
The Life of Orgyan Chokyi is the oldest known autobiography authored by a Tibetan woman, and thus holds a critical place in both Tibetan and Buddhist literature. In it she tells of the sufferings of her youth, the struggle to escape menial labor and become a hermitess, her dreams and visionary experiences, her relationships with other nuns, the painstaking work of contemplative practice, and her hard-won social autonomy and high-mountain solitude. In process it develops a compelling vision of the relation between gender, the body, and suffering from a female Buddhist practitioner's perspective.
Part One of Himalayan Hermitess presents a religious history of Orgyan Chokyi's Himalayan world, the Life of Orgyan Chokyi as a work of literature, its portrayal of sorrow and joy, its perspectives on suffering and gender, as well as the diverse religious practices found throughout the work. Part Two offers a full translation of the Life of Orgyan Chokyi. Based almost entirely upon Tibetan documents never before translated, Himalayan Hermitess is an accessible introduction to Buddhism in the premodern Himalayas.

Much has changed for the priests at the Minakshi Temple, one of the most famous Hindu temples in India. In "The Renewal of the Priesthood," C. J. Fuller traces their improving fortunes over the past 25 years. This fluidly written book is unique in showing that traditionalism and modernity are actually reinforcing each other among these priests, a process in which the state has played a crucial role.

Since the mid-1980s, growing urban affluence has seen more people spend more money on rituals in the Minakshi Temple, which is in the southern city of Madurai. The priests have thus become better-off, and some have also found new earnings opportunities in temples as far away as America. During the same period, due partly to growing Hindu nationalism in India, the Tamilnadu state government's religious policies have become more favorable toward Hinduism and Brahman temple priests. More priests' sons now study in religious schools where they learn authoritative Sanskrit ritual texts by heart, and overall educational standards have markedly improved.

Fuller shows that the priests have become more "professional" and modern-minded while also insisting on the legitimacy of tradition. He concludes by critiquing the analysis of modernity and tradition in social science. In showing how the priests are authentic representatives of modern India, this book tells a story whose significance extends far beyond the confines of the Minakshi Temple itself.

Anne Blackburn explores the emergence of a predominant Buddhist monastic culture in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka, while asking larger questions about the place of monasticism and education in the creation of religious and national traditions. Her historical analysis of the Siyam Nikaya, a monastic order responsible for innovations in Buddhist learning, challenges the conventional view that a stable and monolithic Buddhism existed in South and Southeast Asia prior to the advent of British colonialism in the nineteenth century. The rise of the Siyam Nikaya and the social reorganization that accompanied it offer important evidence of dynamic local traditions. Blackburn supports this view with fresh readings of Buddhist texts and their links to social life beyond the monastery.

Comparing eighteenth-century Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic education to medieval Christian and other contexts, the author examines such issues as bilingual commentarial practice, the relationship between clerical and "popular" religious cultures, the place of preaching in the constitution of "textual communities," and the importance of public displays of learning to social prestige. Blackburn draws upon indigenous historical narratives, which she reads as rhetorical texts important to monastic politics and to the naturalization of particular attitudes toward kingship and monasticism. Moreover, she questions both conventional views on "traditional" Theravadin Buddhism and the "Buddhist modernism" / "Protestant Buddhism" said to characterize nineteenth-century Sri Lanka. This book provides not only a pioneering critique of post-Orientalist scholarship on South Asia, but also a resolution to the historiographic impasse created by post-Orientalist readings of South Asian history.

Constantina, daughter of the fourth-century emperor Constantine who so famously converted to Christianity, deserves a place of her own in the history of Christianity. As both poet and church-builder, she was an early patron of the Roman cult of the virgin martyr Agnes and was buried ad sanctam in a sumptuously mosaicked mausoleum that still stands. What has been very nearly forgotten is that the twice-married Constantina also came to be viewed as a virgin saint in her own right, said to have been converted and healed of leprosy by Saint Agnes. This volume publishes for the first time critical editions and English translations of three Latin hagiographies dedicated to the empress, offering an introduction and commentaries to contextualize these virtually unknown works. The earliest and longest of them is the anonymous Life of Saint Constantina likely dating to the mid or late sixth century, reflecting a female monastic setting and featuring both a story of pope Silvester's instruction of Constantina and a striking dialogue between Constantina and twelve virgins who offer speeches in praise of virginity as the summum bonum. A second, slightly later work, On the Feast of Saint Constantia (the misnaming of the saint reflecting common confusion), is a more streamlined account apparently tailored for liturgical use in early seventh-century Rome; this text is reworked and expanded by the twelfth-century Roman scholar Nicolaus Maniacoria in his Life of the Blessed Constantia, including a question-and-answer dialogue between Constantina and her two virginal charges Attica and Artemia. These works will be of great interest to students of late ancient and medieval saints' cults, hagiography, monasticism, and women's history.