This book examines the politics of Islam and the state in Indonesia over recent decades, during which time there has been a notable resurgence of Islamic political movements. It argues that after a period in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the state worked to bring religious authority and institutions within state-prescribed limits in order to support the official state ideology and political stability, there was a change whereby Suharto incorporated Muslim interests within the political system. One unintended consequence of this was to raise Muslims' political expectations and to mobilise Muslim political interests in the context of broadening 'pro-democracy' opposition which contributed to the downfall of Suharto's regime. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with participants, the book charts the shifts in relations between Islam and the Indonesian state over time, assessing the impact on other groups, and on the cohesion of Indonesia overall.

Ethno-religious violence in Indonesia illustrates in detail how and why previously peaceful religious communities can descend into violent conflict. From 1999 until 2000, the conflict in North Maluku, Indonesia, saw the most intense communal violence of Indonesia's period of democratization. For almost a year, militias waged a brutal religious war which claimed the lives of almost four thousand lives. The conflict culminated in ethnic cleansing along lines of religious identity, with approximately three hundred thousand people fleeing their homes. Based on detailed research, this book provides an in depth picture of all aspects of this devastating and brutal conflict. It also provides numerous examples of how different conflict theories can be applied in the analysis of real situations of tensions and violence, illustrating the mutually reinforcing nature of mass level sentiment and elite agency, and the rational and emotive influences on those involved. This book will be of interest to researchers in Asian Studies, conflict resolution and religious violence.

This guide concentrates on resources that are useful, in an easy-to-use format to enable architects, designers and engineers to access a wealth of knowledge. Information allows users to find, evaluate and contact the resources that can save time and money in day-to-day practice.

This guide concentrates on resources that are useful, in an easy-to-use format to enable architects, designers and engineers to access a wealth of knowledge. Information allows users to find, evaluate and contact the resources that can save time and money in day-to-day practice.

Time pressure, speed and the desire for instant consumption pervade accounts of contemporary lives. Why is it that people feel pressed for time, in what ways have societies changed to create this condition, and with what implications? This book examines critical contentions in the field of time and society, ranging from the emergence and dominance of 'clock time' and time discipline, the time pressures associated with consumer culture, through to technological innovation and the acceleration of everyday lives. Through extensive analysis of empirical studies of the changing ways in which people organise and experience home, work, leisure, consumption and personal relationships, time pressure is shown to be a problem of the coordination and synchronization of activities. Appreciation of temporal rhythms - formed and reproduced through the organisation and performance of social practices - is necessary to tackle the challenges of coordination, and offers new avenues for analysing social issues such as sustainable consumption, health and well-being. This book is essential reading for all of those interested in social change, consumption and time, including researchers and students from across the social sciences.

Taking the contentious debates surrounding historical evidence and history writing between secularists and Hindu nationalists as a starting point, this book seeks to understand the origins of a growing historical consciousness in contemporary India, especially amongst Hindus. The broad question it poses is: Why has history become such an important site of identity, conflict and self-definition amongst modern Hindus, especially when Hinduism is known to have been notoriously impervious to history? As modern ideas regarding notions of history came to India with colonialism, it turns to the colonial period as the moment of encounter with such ideas.

The book examines three distinct moments in the Hindu self through the lives and writings of lower-caste public figure Jotiba Phule, moderate nationalist M. G. Ranade and Hindu nationalist V. D. Savarkar. Through a close reading of original writings, speeches and biographical material, it is demonstrated that these three individuals were engaged with a modern historical and rationalist approach. However, the same material is also used to argue that Phule and Ranade viewed religion as living, contemporaneous and capable of informing both their personal and political lives. Savarkar, the explicitly Hindu leader, on the contrary, held Hindu practices and traditions in contempt, confining them to historical analysis while denying any role for religion as spirituality or morality in contemporary political life.

While providing some historical context, this volume highlights the philosophical/ political ideas and actions of the three individuals discussed. It integrates aspects of their lives as central to understanding their politics.

This book explores the notion of interreligious friendship. Friendship is one of the outcomes as well as conditions for advancing interfaith relations. However, for friendship to advance, there must be legitimation from within and a theory of how interreligious relations can be justified from the resources of different faith traditions. The present volume explores these very issues, seeking to develop a robust theory of interreligious friendship, from the resources of each of the participating traditions. It also seeks to feature particular individual cases as models and precedents for such relations. In particular, the friendship of Gandhi and Charlie Andrews, his closest personal friend, emerges as the model for the project.

The twentieth century has been marked by an unprecedented outburst of religious activity on a world-wide scale, and in particular by a mushrooming of numerous religious movements. This work, first published in 1987, takes a fresh approach to the understanding of this phenomenon, an approach which takes into account new concepts of human nature and of religion.

Discussions of any religion can easily raise passions. But arguments tend to become even more heated when the religion under discussion is characterized as new. Divisions around the study of new religious movements (NRMs), or cults, or nontraditional or alternative or emergent religions are so acute that there is even controversy over what to call them. John Saliba strives to bring balance to these discussions by offering perspectives on new religions from different academic perspectives: history, psychology, sociology, law, theology, and counseling. This approach provides rich descriptions of a broad range of movements while demonstrating how the differing aims of the disciplines can create much of the controversy around NRMs. The new second edition has been updated and revised throughout and includes a new foreword by noted historian of religion, J. Gordon Melton. For classes in religion or the social sciences, or for interested individuals, Understanding New Religious Movements offers the most objective introduction possible.

There is a growing interest in studies that document the relationship between science and medicine - as ideas, practices, technologies and outcomes - across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource across many Asian nations - from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia - as well as in Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds - i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine - and the ways that local practices change how such "science" gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical knowledge and practice.

Originally published in 1992, this remarkable book challenges many of the assumptions governing the Sociology of Religion and the Sociology of Culture by arguing that Western religion is neither science nor morality - it is the promise of happiness. Learned and incisive, it will be essential reading for students of religion, culture and anyone interested in the character of Modernity.

Sustaining a Hindu universe at an everyday life level requires an extraordinary range of religious specialists and ritual paraphernalia. At the level of practice, devotional Hinduism is an embodied religion and grounded in a materiality, that makes the presence of specific physical objects (which when used in worship also carry immense ritual and symbolic load) an indispensable part of its religious practices. Traditionally, both services and objects required for worship were provided and produced by occupational communities. The almost sacred connection between caste groups and occupation/profession has been clearly severed in many diasporic locations, but importantly in India itself. As such, skills and expertise required for producing an array of physical objects in order to support Hindu worship have been taken over by clusters of individuals with no traditional, historical connection with caste-related knowledge. Both the transference and disconnect just noted have been crucial for the ultimate commodification of objects used in the act of Hindu worship, and the emergence of an analogous commercial industry as a result. These developments condense highly complex processes that need careful conceptual explication, a task that is exciting and carries enormous potential for theoretical reflections in key fields of study. Using the lens of 'visuality' and 'materiality,' Sinha offers insights into the everyday material religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations--particularly Singapore, Malaysia, and Tamilnadu--where religious objects have become commodified.

Society is made up of various cultural groups trying to live together. We aim for social cohesion, but how do we do this as society becomes increasingly complex, aided and abetted by political correctness? Steve Bell peels back the complex layers of our multi-cultural society to reveal the inner workings of our national life. Using the metaphor of a mountain range, he identifies the major obstacles to meaningful and mutually respectful interaction between Christians and Muslims and encourages intelligent Christian engagement with western culture. It seems mountains can move, but only when grace and truth are involved in all spheres of society, as fair-minded people of all faiths and none, learn to model the necessary attitude and actions. Content Benefits: - Looks at the issues of living in a multi-cultural society and asks how we can achieve social cohesion in a mutually respectful manner. - Metaphor of a mountain range allows the various obstacles in our national life to be challenged - Examines issues such as the legacy of colonialism, racism, political correctness and Christian/Muslim relations - Unpacks the idea that minority social groups are now at odds among themselves - Shows that with mutual respect in all spheres that there is a way forward to social cohesion - Encourages honest and respectful debate by learning how to 'face facts' about one another without 'fuelling fear' of one another - Will enable us to understand why we think as we do in our country, and how that insight can help bring change - Engenders mutual respect that can lead to new and constructive dialogue that facilitates change - Suitable for anyone who wants to see a more cohesive society - Helpful for anyone in leadership, whether faith based or secular - Ideal reading for students engaging in multi culturalism/ interfaith dialogue - Author is an internationally recognised communicator with forty years' experience in cross-cultural issues

Religious Studies: The Key Concepts is an accessible, A-Z resource, defining and explaining key terms and ideas central to the study of religion. Exploring broad and recurring themes which are applicable in both eastern and western religions, cross-cultural examples are provided for each term to give a comprehensive overview of the subject.

Subjects covered include:

• Afterlife
• Comparative religion
• Festivals
• Ethics
• Gender
• Monotheism
• World religions
• Modernity
• Pilgrimage
• Sacred
• Theism
• Secularization

With cross referencing and further reading provided throughout, this book provides an inclusive map of the discipline, and is an essential reference for all students, academics and researchers.

Drawn from extensive, new and rich empirical research across the UK, Canada and USA, Queer Spiritual Spaces investigates the contemporary socio-cultural practices of belief, by those who have historically been, and continue to be, excluded or derided by mainstream religions and alternative spiritualities. As the first monograph to be directly informed by 'queer' subjectivities whilst dealing with divergent spiritualities on an international scale, this book explores the recently emerging innovative spaces and integrative practices of queer spiritualities. Its breadth of coverage and keen critical engagement mean it will serve as a theoretically fertile, comprehensive entry point for any scholar wishing to explore the queer spiritual spaces of the twenty-first century.

The United States is the world's primary creator and exporter of popular mass culture and arguably one of the most religious countries in modern history. As a result, the coexistence of American religion with popular culture has created a fertile yet caustic environment for new religious belief structures, new texts, and new worldviews that are uniquely American. This work considers ways in which American television, advertising, music, and video games have played a significant role in creating, representing, and influencing contradictory religious identities. The authors examine three distinct segments of popular culture that ""rescript the sacred,"" including popular religious texts (e.g. the Christian fantasy novels of Frank Peretti), secular works that nonetheless reflect and influence popular religions (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and works that contain a central element of religious content but no clear didactic intent (e.g. The Da Vinci Code).

Discussions of any religion can easily raise passions. But arguments tend to become even more heated when the religion under discussion is characterized as new. Divisions around the study of new religious movements (NRMs), or cults, or nontraditional or alternative or emergent religions are so acute that there is even controversy over what to call them. John Saliba strives to bring balance to these discussions by offering perspectives on new religions from different academic perspectives: history, psychology, sociology, law, theology, and counseling. This approach provides rich descriptions of a broad range of movements while demonstrating how the differing aims of the disciplines can create much of the controversy around NRMs. The new second edition has been updated and revised throughout and includes a new foreword by noted historian of religion, J. Gordon Melton. For classes in religion or the social sciences, or for interested individuals, Understanding New Religious Movements offers the most objective introduction possible.

This book explores the relationship between mainstream and marginal or subaltern religious practice in the Indian subcontinent, and its entanglement with ideas of nationhood, democracy and equality. With detailed readings of texts from Marathi and Hindi literature and criticism, the book brings together studies of Hindu devotionalism with issues of religious violence.

Drawing on the arguments of Partha Chatterjee, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, the author demonstrates that Indian democracy, and indeed postcolonial democracies in general, do not always adhere to Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality, and that religion and secular life are inextricably enmeshed in the history of the modern, whether understood from the perspective of Europe or of countries formerly colonized by Europe. Therefore subaltern protest, in its own attempt to lay claim to history, must rely on an idea of religion that is inextricably intertwined with the deeply invidious legacy of nation, state, and civilization. The author suggests that the co-existence of acts of social altruism and the experience of doubt born from social strife - miracle and violence - ought to be a central issue for ethical debate. Keeping in view the power and reach of genocidal Hinduism, this book is the first to look at how the religion of marginal communities at once affirms and turns away from secularized religion.

This important contribution to the study of vernacular cosmopolitanism in South Asia will be of great interest to historians and political theorists, as well as to scholars of religious studies, South Asian studies and philosophy.

The emergence of religious fundamentalism in a globalized, post-colonial world poses a significant challenge to the "End of History" narratives common in academic and non-academic literature alike. Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism proposes that we must seek new explanations for this phenomenon that recasts the relationship between globalization, modernity and religion. One model through which this possible is that of a dialectical kaleidoscopic methodology - one that applies a variety of theoretical tools and takes a truly multi-dimensional perspective. Through the overlapping and complementary approaches of systems theory, field theory and network theory, this book redefined the concepts of globalization, modernity and religion itself by challenging the inherent misconceptions of ethnocentric biases. It also provides a thorough historical analysis of religious systems from antiquity to the present to show the integration of modern and archaic elements within the structure of religious fundamentalism. Interdisciplinary in nature, Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as geopolitics, history of race and ethnicity, postcolonialism, globalization and sociology of religion.

In light of modern warfare and modern Catholic teaching, Duffey examines and assesses three Christian approaches to peace and war. Through extensive ethical analysis of the Gulf War, he examines the role of the churches to avert war, the use of economic sanctions and the aftereffects of the war in the Middle East. Duffey also evaluates the use of military force to overcome the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia and recent successful resolutions.

On January 20, 1994 the worshippers at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church began to feel the Holy Spirit move them. They began to laugh uncontrollably, collapse to the floor, stagger as if drunk. But what was truly startling in this occurrence now commonly known as the Toronto Blessing is that these manifestations keep appearing at the Toronto church and have sparked a worldwide charismatic revival. Visitors from around the world have come and started revivals in their home churches upon return. In Main Street Mystics, Margaret Poloma explains what is happening with this contemporary charismatic revival without explaining it away. From her unique position as both a scholar and a pilgrim, Poloma offers an intimate account of the movement while always attempting to understand it through the lenses of social science. She looks at Pentecostalism as a form of mysticism, but a mysticism that engages Pentecostals and charismatics in the everyday world. With its broad overview and up-close portraits, Main Street Mystics is essential for anyone wanting to understand the ever renewing movement of Pentecostalism.

In this study, E. Frances King explores how people first learn to relate to the images and artefacts of religious belief within their domestic environments. As a sense of religious belonging is instilled on a daily basis in the home, it also becomes emotionally linked to family, community, and homeland, resulting in two different genealogies - one to do with faith and one to do with motherland - that become entangled.

This volume is an attempt to serve as a venue for giving a voice to queer people from all faiths and no faiths to describe how they negotiate or have negotiated spiritual violence in their lives, as well as the voices of heterosexual allies who strive for the inclusion of queer people as a counter narrative to spiritual violence of full inclusion and embracement and demonstrate that some communities of faith do not operate from paradigms of violence, but instead operate with love, affirmation, and inclusion. These counter narratives are important. This volume is a collection of narratives that describe a variety of experiences - stories of pain and rejection, joy, and overcoming and transformation. The voices of the authors in this collection are a mixture of personal narratives, theoretical or academic thought, and because art and spirituality often go hand-in-hand, some of the authors offer the reader more creative writing that reflects their ideas.

On January 20, 1994 the worshippers at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church began to feel the Holy Spirit move them. They began to laugh uncontrollably, collapse to the floor, stagger as if drunk. But what was truly startling in this occurrence-now commonly known as the Toronto Blessing-is that these manifestations keep appearing at the Toronto church and have sparked a worldwide charismatic revival. Visitors from around the world have come and started revivals in their home churches upon return. In Main Street Mystics, Margaret Poloma explains what is happening with this contemporary charismatic revival without explaining it away. From her unique position as both a scholar and a pilgrim, Poloma offers an intimate account of the movement while always attempting to understand it through the lenses of social science. She looks at Pentecostalism as a form of mysticism, but a mysticism that engages Pentecostals and charismatics in the everyday world. With its broad overview and up-close portraits, Main Street Mystics is essential for anyone wanting to understand the ever renewing movement of Pentecostalism.

In the late nineteenth century, melodramas were spectacular entertainment for Americans. They were also a key forum in which elements of American culture were represented, contested, and inverted. This book focuses specifically on the construction of the Mormon villain as rapist, murderer, and Turk in anti-Mormon melodramas. These melodramas illustrated a particularly religious world-view that dominated American life and promoted the sexually conservative ideals of the cult of true womanhood. They also examined the limits of honorable violence, and suggested the whiteness of national ethnicity. In investigating the relationship between theatre, popular literature, political rhetoric, and religious fervor, Megan Sanborn Jones reveals how anti-Mormon melodramas created a space for audiences to imagine a unified American identity.