Winner of the Henry J. Benda Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines premodern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. By looking at modern sermons, and even television programs and websites, he traces how pedagogical techniques found in premodern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education. As the first comprehensive study of monastic education in Thailand and Laos, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words will appeal to a wide audience of scholars and students interested in religious studies, anthropology, social and intellectual history, and pedagogy.

Winner of the Henry J. Benda Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines premodern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. By looking at modern sermons, and even television programs and websites, he traces how pedagogical techniques found in premodern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education. As the first comprehensive study of monastic education in Thailand and Laos, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words will appeal to a wide audience of scholars and students interested in religious studies, anthropology, social and intellectual history, and pedagogy.

La vita monastica non cessa di attrarre uomini e donne. Senza ulteriori "strategie" pastorali essa annuncia il Vangelo del Regno e invita a seguire Cristo, unico Salvatore del mondo. Ne era convinto san Gregorio Magno, ne era convinto san Bonifacio, apostolo della Germania. Ecco, allora, un piccolo libro per mettersi alla loro scuola, nella scia antica e tradizionale del monachesimo. Per poter seguire il Signore Gesu nella conversione della propria vita, nella fedelta ad un ideale e in un'obbedienza vera e liberatrice. In un parola, per essere nel nostro tempo monaci e missionari. La fraternita riconosce in san Bonifacio, vescovo e martire, apostolo della Germania, un riferimento perenne da approfondire e cui sempre ritornare per scoprire le radici della propria chiamata. In modo particolare egli e un punto di riferimento: Per la preminenza dell'Amore di Dio su ogni altra realta creata Per l'amore alla Chiesa universale, ad ogni Chiesa locale e al Romano Pontefice Per l'importanza della vita monastica e per l'attenzione alla cultura Per il desiderio di peregrinare pro amore Dei e il suo ardore missionario Per lo stile dell'evangelizzazione fondato sulla costituzione di comunita di monaci e monache Per la bellezza della vita fraterna e lo stile di amicizia che la anima Per l'appello continuo alla riforma della propria vita in vista della salvezza Per l'aspirazione a donare la vita al Signore e al suo Vangelo fino all'effusione del sangue

The real-life stories of the novice monks in Little Angels reflect the lives of many youths in rural Thailand who are trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life. Each individual story, heartrending as it may be, subtly shows what Phra Peter sees and hopes to show to others: the 'human face' of Thai Buddhism.

What is life like in contemporary American communes? How do families fit into communal life? What are communal families, and what impact do families have on how communes are run and how they develop? As the only contemporary exploration of communal families, this book investigates the assumptions that scholars and others have made regarding the status of the family within communes, and debunks current myths about communes and communal families. While some groups are predisposed to families, other communal groups become replacements or substitutes for the nuclear family. William L. Smith investigates a variety of practices, including monogamy, polygamy, pantagamy, and celibacy, as implemented by intentional communities in dealing with family life. Drawing on the history of communes in the United States, Smith discusses various communal groups, such as the Shakers, the Mormons, the Oneida Community, the Amana Colonies, as well as contemporary rural and urban communal groups such as Twin Oaks, Jesus People USA, and the Hutterites.

Families and Communes provides students and researchers with an intriguing study of a unique social group that is often overlooked.

From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the relevance of such groups to the mainstream of American social, religious, and economic life. The contributors examine the beliefs and practices of the most prominent utopian communities founded before 1965, including the long-overlooked Catholic monastic communities and Jewish agricultural colonies. Also featured are the Ephrata Baptists, Moravians, Shakers, Harmonists, Hutterites, Inspirationists of Amana, Mormons, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, Janssonists, Theosophists, Cyrus Teed's Koreshans, and Father Divine's Peace Mission. Based on a new conceptual framework known as developmental communalism, the book examines these utopian movements throughout the course of their development--before, during, and after their communal period. Each chapter includes a brief chronology, giving basic information about the group discussed. An appendix presents the most complete list of American utopian communities ever published. The contributors are Jonathan G. Andelson, Karl J. R. Arndt, Pearl W. Bartelt, Priscilla J. Brewer, Donald F. Durnbaugh, Lawrence Foster, Carl J. Guarneri, Robert V. Hine, Gertrude E. Huntington, James E. Landing, Dean L. May, Lawrence J. McCrank, J. Gordon Melton, Donald E. Pitzer, Robert P. Sutton, Jon Wagner, and Robert S. Weisbrot. |Offering the first comprehensive history of Atlanta race relations, Ronald Bayor discusses the impact of racial bias on physical and institutional development of the city from the end of the Civil War through the mayorship of Andrew Young in the 1980s. Bayor explores frequently ignored policy issues through the lens of race--including hospital care, highway placement and development, police and fire services, schools, and park use, as well as housing patterns and employment.

Crusaders were not the only Europeans drawn to the Holy Land during the twelfth century. Many lay people and followers of religious orders made pilgrimages to the East to visit the holy sites, and many felt compelled to stay there, settling as monks or hermits in established monasteries or founding hermitages of their own. So widespread was the exodus that Bernard of Clairvaux spoke out against Cistercian monks who were "deserting the flock." The Perfection of Solitude is the first comprehensive study of the Latin monastic presence in the Holy Land at this time.

Andrew Jotischky looks at the reasons why Latin monks were drawn to the Holy Land (building upon the work of historical geographer J. K. Wright) and what happened after they arrived there. Since very little is known about the history of western monastic settlement in the Holy Land, this book navigates mostly uncharted territory. Jotischky makes use of the recently discovered, but little exploited, writings of Gerard of Nazareth, whose collection of brief lives of twelfth-century Frankish hermits sheds new light on the nature of the Latin Church in the Crusader States. Jotischky's most important conclusions are that solitary and communal monastic practices overlapped each other in the East and that this was due in part to the influence of Eastern practice which was less structured than its counterpart in Europe.

The Coptic Monastery of St. Paul by the Red Sea grew up around the cave where Paul, the first Christian hermit, lived in solitude. The cave served as a shrine in late antiquity, became a church in the middle ages, and expanded again in the early modern period. This visually and intellectually exciting book chronicles the history of a series of devotional paintings in the Cave Church. It explores how the monastic community commissioned painting twice in the church in the 13th century, during one of the greatest eras of Coptic art, and how one of the monks painted it again in the 18th century, helping to inaugurate a Coptic renaissance after centuries of decline. The foundation of this volume is a wall painting conservation project sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt. The book also sets the art and architecture of the Cave Church in its historical context and examines the role of the Monastery of St. Paul as part of the sacred geography of Christian Egypt through time. Published in association with the American Research Center in Egypt, Inc.

The congregation is a distinctly American religious structure, and is often overlooked in traditional studies of religion. But one cannot understand American religion without understanding the congregation.Volume 1: "Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities" chronicles the founding, growth, and development of congregations that represent the diverse and complex reality of American local religious cultures. The contributors explore multiple issues, from the fate of American Protestantism to the rise of charismatic revivalism.Volume 2: "New Perspectives in the Study of Congregations" builds upon those historical studies, and addresses three crucial questions: Where is the congregation located on the broader map of American cultural and religious life? What are congregations' distinctive qualities, tasks, and roles in American culture? And, what patterns of leadership characterize congregations in America?These essays are an indispensable tool for understanding American congregations and American religion as a whole.

Surprising. Provocative. Honest.
For "Unveiled," reporter Cheryl Reed interviewed more than 300 nuns of diverse beliefs, lifestyles, and orders. She lived and prayed with them, witnessed their vows, mourned and celebrated with them, and asked questions no one had ever dared before: about love and sex, life and death, faith and joy, and loss and regret. In the process, Reed would discover more about motherhood, relationships, faith, and feminism than she ever gleaned from the outside world.

Buddhist Monks and Business Matters is the second in a series of collected essays by one of the today's most distinguished scholars of Indian Buddhism. In these articles, all save one published in various places from 1994 through 2001, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.