America today is a hypersexual society. Sexual discourse, erotica, and pornography are pervasive in the culture. Sexual materials, many times extending into erotica and pornography, are found in the consumer world, academia, sex therapy, the publishing world, mass media (especially radio, television and movies) and the Internet. The sexual materials found in all these areas of American society provoke relentless opposition by groups and individuals who want to repress or censor sexual materials. The combined effects of those who promote and produce sexual materials, and those who try to supress them, add up to a cacophony of sexual discourse.

Many Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers in the United States take a strong interest in US policies that affect their "brothers and sisters" abroad. In fact, when the policies of their native government pose significant dangers to their people internationally, these US citizens engage actively in a variety of political processes in order to protect and advance the interests of the transnational religious communities to which they belong. In this provocative examination of the place of religion in world politics, Timothy A. Byrnes focuses on three Catholic communities -- Jesuit, Maryknoll, and Benedictine -- and how they seek to shape US policy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Based on years of fieldwork and on-the-ground interviews, "Reverse Mission" details the transnational bonds that drive the political activities of these Catholic orders.

This fascinating book reveals how the men and women of these orders became politically active in complex and sometimes controversial causes and how, ultimately, they exert a unique influence on foreign policy that is derived from their communal loyalties rather than any ethnic or national origin.

Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, William Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in Western society over the last 500 years - from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous end-times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarised nations; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colourful as their motivation, invariably 'the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next.' As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania as he observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognise it more readily in our own time and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Women often appear invisible in what is widely perceived as the male-oriented society of Islam. Women in the Medieval Islamic World seeks to redress the balance with a series of original essays on women in the pre-modern phase of Islamic history. The reader will encounter here a colorful portrait gallery of rulers, politicians, poets and patrons, as well as some larger than life fictitious females from the pages of Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature. No less authentic are the accounts of quiet or troubled lives of ordinary women preserved in the court records of Mamluk Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, reminders that historical research can resuscitate the lives of subaltern as well as elite women from the past. For people who believe that Muslim women, especially medieval Muslim women, have no history, this book demonstrates the ways in which research by twenty international scholars--sometimes working in their own distinct fields and sometimes in overlapping areas--can bring into focus the role and contribution of women in the development of Islamic history. There will no longer be an excuse for their exclusion.

This book explores the role of evangelicalism in the conflict in Northern Ireland and discusses how it may contribute to a peaceful political transition. Ganiel analyzes the 'traditional' evangelicals who are associated with the Reverend Ian Paisley, as well as a new breed of 'mediating' evangelicals who have broken with the traditions of the past. Comparing evangelical politics in Northern Ireland to the U.S. and Canada, this book sheds light on future directions for Northern Irish evangelicalism. The conclusion has global reverberations as it reflects on the place of 'strong' religions-such as evangelicalism and other forms of fundamentalism-in contemporary world politics.

This book examines evangelical dieting and fitness programs and provides a systematic approach of this diverse field with its wide variety of programs. When evangelical Christians engage in fitness and dieting classes in order to "glorify God," they often face skepticism. This book approaches devotional fitness culture in North America from a religious studies perspective, outlining the basic structures, ideas, and practices of the field. Starting with the historical backgrounds of this current, the book approaches both practice and ideology, highlighting how devotional fitness programs construe their identity in the face of various competing offers in religious and non-religious sectors of society. The book suggests a nuanced and complex understanding of the relationship between sports and religion, beyond 'simple' functional equivalency. It provides insights into the formation of secular and religious body ideals and the way these body ideals are sacralized in the frame of an evangelical worldview.

This exciting new and original collection locates dance within the spectrum of urban life in late modernity, through a range of theoretical perspectives. It highlights a diversity of dance forms and styles that can be witnessed in and around contemporary urban spaces: from dance halls to raves and the club striptease; from set dancing to ballroom dancing, to hip hop and swing, and to ice dance shows; from the ballet class, to fitness aerobics; and 'art' dance which situates itself in a dynamic relation to the city.

Youth, Religion, and Identity in a Globalizing Context: International Perspectives investigates the ways that young people navigate the intersections of religion and identity. As part of the Youth in a Globalizing World series, this book provides a broad discussion on the various social, cultural, and political forces affecting youth and their identities from an international comparative perspective. Contributors to this volume situate the experiences of young people in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Australia within a globalized context. This volume explores the different experiences of youth, the impact of community and processes of recognition, and the reality of ambivalence as agency. Youth, Religion, and Identity in a Globalizing Context: International Perspectives is now available in paperback for individual customers.

Few studies of Middle East wars go beyond a narrative of events and most tend to impose on this subject the rigid scheme of superpower competition. The Gulf War of 1991, however, challenges this view of the Middle East as an extension of the global conflict. The failure of the accord of both superpowers to avoid war even once regional superpower competition in the Middle East had ceased must give rise to the question: Do regional conflicts have their own dynamic? Working from this assumption, the book examines local-regional constraints of Middle East conflict and how, through escalation and the involvement of extra-regional powers, such conflicts acquire an international dimension. The theory of a regional subsystem is employed as a framework for conceptualising this interplay between regional and international factors in Tibi's examination of the Middle East wars in the period 1967-91. Tibi also provides an outlook into the future of conflict in the Middle East in the aftermath of the most recent Gulf War.

During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving secular fairs, devoted exclusively to trade with no religious content of any kind, were suppressed. However, once China embarked on its path of free market reform and openness, secular commodity exchange fairs were again authorized, and sometimes encouraged in the name of political economy as a means of stimulating rural commodity circulation and commerce.

This book reveals how once these secular "temple-less temple fairs" were in place, they came to serve not only as venues for the proliferation of a great variety of popular cultural performance genres, but also as sites where a revival or recycling of popular religious symbols, already underway in many parts of China, found familiar and fertile ground in which to spread. Taking this shift in the Chinese state s attitudes and policy towards temple fairs as its starting point, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China shows how state-led economic reforms in the early 1980s created a revival in secular commodity exchange fairs, which were granted both the geographic and metaphoric space to function. In turn, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the temple fair phenomenon, examining its economic, popular cultural, popular religious and political dimensions and demonstrates the multifaceted significance of the fairs which have played a crucial role in expanding the boundaries of contemporary acceptable popular discourse and expression.

Based upon extensive fieldwork, this unique book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese religion, Chinese culture, Chinese history and anthropology.

Here is a critique of religion and a random composite of fanciful tales. (World Religions))

This book presents an anthology of English-language archaeological and anthropological writings by Li Chi, the founding father of modern archaeology in China. It is divided into 15 chapters; in the first two, Dr. Li sets the stage by introducing the principal characters involved in the first "act" of this modern archaeological drama; in the third and fourth chapters, he describes the status of Chinese archaeology during the early years of the twentieth century and highlights the contributions of prominent foreigners. Starting with the fifth chapter, Dr. Li begins detailing the excavations and describes the principle finds of the Anyang expedition. In turn, the book's closing chapters present a summary of the findings and descriptions of some of the major publications that this monumental project has yielded. For readers who are interested in Chinese civilization, what will appeal to them most are the details of the excavations of Yin Hsu (the ruins of the Yin Dynasty), including building foundations, bronzes, chariots, pottery, stone and jade, and thousands of oracle bones, which are vividly shown in historical pictures. These findings transformed the Yin Shang culture from legend into history and thus moved China's history forward by hundreds of years, shocking the world. The anthology also includes Li Chi's reflections on central problems in Chinese anthropology, which are both enlightening and thought-provoking.

With the onset of a more conservative political climate in the 1980s, social and especially labour history saw a decline in the popularity that they had enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This led to much debate on its future and function within the historical discipline as a whole. Some critics declared it dead altogether. Others have proposed a change of direction and a more or less exclusive focus on images and texts. The most constructive proposals have suggested that labour history in the past concentrated too much on class and that other identities of working people should be taken into account to a larger extent than they had been previously, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity. Although class as a social category is still as valid as it has been before, the questions now to be asked are to what extent non-class identities shape working people's lives and mentalities and how these are linked with the class system. In this volume some of the leading European historians of labour and the working classes address these questions. Two non-European scholars comment on their findings from an Indian, resp. American, point of view. The volume is rounded off by a most useful bibliography of recent studies in European labour history, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

Faith stories explains systems of cultural value that are articulated through faith. Drawing on ethnography, interviews, focus groups for adults and arts workshops for their children, Anna Hickey-Moody examines belonging, attachment, faith, belief and 'what really matters' in diverse areas in England and Australia. Her research finds surprising similarities in how people are connected to daily life through faith, and how others postpone their involvement in the everyday with the hope of being rewarded after death. Children bring together their religious worlds with imagined solutions to everyday problems. Indeed, in their artwork they save the planet from threats of war, climate change and recuperate their geographically divided families, suggesting that other worlds are possible. Their parent's faith shows this too. In such increasingly divided times, work like this is needed now more than ever. -- .

First published in 1979, The Second Coming is an experiment in the writing of popular history - a contribution to the history of the people who have no history and an exploration of some of the ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking of ordinary men and women in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Millenarianism is a conceptual tool with which to explore some aspects of popular thought and culture. It is also seen as an ideology of social change and as a continuing tradition, traced from the end of the seventeenth century to the 1790s, and is shown to be embedded in folk culture. Abundant in rich and lively descriptions of such colourful characters as Richard Brothers, Joanna Southcott, John Wroe, Zion Ward and Sir William Courtenay, as well as studies of the Shakers, early Mormons and Millerites, the result is a window into the world of ordinary people in the Age of Romanticism.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the ethical parameters of paganism when considered as a world religion alongside Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The issues of evil, value and idolatry from a pagan perspective are analyzed as part of the Western ethical tradition from the Sophists and Platonic schools through the philosophers Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche to such contemporary thinkers as Grayling, Mackie, MacIntyre, Habermas, Levinas, Santayana, etc. From a more practical viewpoint, a delineation of applied pagan ethics is then presented in connection with current moral issues such as same-sex union, recreational drugs, environmental awareness, abortion and terrorism. Finally, overviews of sectarian pagan ethics (Shinto, Santeria, Heathenism, Druidry, Romuva, Slavic, Kemeticism, Classical and Wicca) provide both the general and pagan reader with an understanding of the provocative range and differentiation of pagan ethical thought. The book approaches the Western ethical tradition as an historical development and a continuing dialogue. The novelty of this approach lies in its consideration of paganism as a legitimate voice of religious spirituality rather than a satanic aberration or ridiculous childish behavior. The book is aimed at both the contemporary Western pagan and anyone with an interest in the moral dilemmas of our times and the desire to engage in the global ethical discussion. Among the more important features of the book are its presentation of a re-evaluation of idolatry, the notion of the virtue value, the richness of the pagan tradition, and the expansion of Western ethics beyond its Christian heritage.

In the burgeoning literature on law and religion, scholarly attention has tended to focus on broad questions concerning the scope of religious freedom, the nature of toleration and the meaning of secularism. An under-examined issue is how religion figures in the decisions, actions and experiences of those charged with performing public duties. This point of contact between religion and public authority has generated a range of legal and political controversies around issues such as the wearing of religious symbols by public officials, prayer at municipal government meetings, religious education and conscientious objection by public servants. Authored by scholars from a variety of disciplines, the chapters in this volume provide insight into these and other issues. Yet the volume also provides an entry point into a deeper examination of the concepts that are often used to organise and manage religious diversity, notably state neutrality. By examining the exercise of public authority by individuals who are religiously committed - or who, in the discharge of their public responsibilities, must account for those who are - this volume exposes the assumptions about legal and political life that underlie the concept of state neutrality and reveals its limits as a governing ideal.

Although numerous studies of religious rituals have been conducted by religious studies scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, it is rare to find a work that brings scholars from different disciplines together to discuss the similarities and differences in their research. This book represents contributions by leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this topic.

The goals of the chapters are to consider where the field currently stands in understanding religious rituals and what novel ideas can improve our knowledge about these practices; and furnish innovative applications of theory by discussing particular examples which are drawn from the authors? fieldwork. The chapters cover Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic rituals, thus providing a view of how ritual practices vary across the globe, but also how they share some important characteristics.

Based upon a survey of five faith-based volunteer groups, Promising Practices offers valuable insights and fresh perspectives into the ways women's participation in religious civic organizations may work as a gateway toward participatory democracy. By approaching women's faith-based volunteering as a social practice, the book engages with three of the most important dimensions of civil society: gender, religion, and democracy. Cavaliere teases out the complexity of interactions among these three dimensions of civic life through stories of individual women who volunteer for three different religious organizations. The volume examines how faith-based volunteering is experienced by women in contemporary Japan and how it becomes a site of empowering and disempowering practices through which women balance the benefits and the costs of personal shifts, socio-economic changes and democratic transformation.

In the emerging fields of religious and interreligious peacebuilding, the question of monitoring and evaluation is a challenging, yet necessary process. The need to develop comprehensive yet fitting evaluation models for religious and interreligious peacebuilding is not only important for donor interests, but also critical as a means of documenting and learning for peacebuilders themselves. Theories and best practices in monitoring and evaluation have become prevalent in many fields, yet the amount of literature on evaluating intercultural and, especially, religious and interreligious projects remains scant in comparison. This volume offers a unique contribution that not only looks at several of the challenges and implications faced by religious and interreligious peacebuilders but also provides concrete examples of new models and tools for monitoring and evaluating religious and interreligious peacebuilding projects. In doing so, this volume serves as a tool and point of reference for individuals and organizations developing and implementing interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding projects.

Israel Kamudzandu explores the legacy of how the Shona found in the figure of Abraham himself a potent resource for cultural resistance, and makes intriguing comparisons with the ways the apostle Paul used the same figure in his interaction with the ancestry of Aeneas in imperial myths of the destiny of the Roman people. The result is a groundbreaking study that combines the best tradition-historical insights with postcolonial-critical acumen. Kamudzandu offers at last a model of multi-cultural Christianity forged in the experience of postcolonial Zimbabwe.

"Instead of seeing the family as a "monolithic" entity, as though separate from its surroundings, this new approach draws attention to assemblages of various types that in different constellations and through different transactions relate people to each other as families and kin"--

This book explores how Islam in western Europe has developed from early immigration and settlement to the point where a native generation is developing ways of being European and Muslim. England is given special attention as a case study, but as the discussion moves into the present and the future, reference is made to all of western Europe. Factors in this process not only arise from the Muslim communities themselves but also from the inherited structures of European society and state. Although the issues are complex and tense, the author is generally optimistic about the outcome.