Since Martin Luther, vocations or callings have had a close relationship with daily work. It is a give-and-take relationship in which the meaning of a vocation typically negotiates with the kinds of work available (and vice-versa) at any given time. While "vocation language" still has currency in Western culture, today's predominant meaning of vocation has little to do with the actual work performed on a job. Jeffrey Scholes contends that recent theological treatments of the Protestant concept of vocation, both academic and popular, often unwittingly collude with consumer culture to circulate a concept of vocation that is detached from the material conditions of work. The result is a consumer-friendly vocation that is rendered impotent to inform and, if necessary, challenge the political norms of the workplace. For example, he classifies Rick Warren's concept of "purpose" in his best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Life, as a functional equivalent of vocation that acts in this way. Other popular uses of vocation along with insights culled from traditional theology and consumer culture studies help Scholes reveal the current state of vocations in the West. Using recent scholarship in the field of political theology, he argues that resisting commodification is a possibility and a prerequisite for a "political vocation," if it is at all able to engage the norms that regulate and undermine the pursuit of justice in many modern workplaces.

It has been well documented that American Catholics tend to be Catholics on their own terms, or choose to remain Catholic while selectively embracing official Church doctrine. But why do Catholics who disagree with official Church teachings on major issues such as homosexuality, women’s ordination, or abortion, and are thus institutionally marginalized, choose to remain Catholic? Why do they stay, when the cost of staying and being stigmatized would seem to be greater than the benefits they might gain from switching to religious groups whose doctrines would validate their beliefs on these issues? Michele Dillon, drawing upon in-depth interviews with Catholics who are openly gay or lesbian, advocates of women’s ordination, and pro-choice, investigates why and how pro-change Catholics continue to remain actively involved with the Church, despite their rejection of the Vatican’s teaching on sexuality and gender.

This Open access book brings a cultural lens, and a distinctive analytical framework, to the problem of transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon future.  The world faces a seemingly impossible hurdle – to radically alter long-established social, economic and technological systems in order to live within the biophysical limits of the globe, while ensuring a just and enduring transition.  The overarching premise of this book is that this cannot be achieved without widespread cultural change.  ‘We need a change in culture’ is often used rhetorically, but what does this really mean? Stephenson starts by exploring culture’s elusiveness, describing its divergent interpretations before identifying core features of culture that are common across most definitions.  These characteristics form the core of the cultures framework, an extensively tested approach to studying the links between culture and sustainability outcomes. The framework makes culture an accessible concept which can be analytically applied to almost any sustainability problem. Using many examples from around the world, Stephenson illustrates how cultural stability, cultural flexibility and cultural transformation all have a part to play in the sustainability transition.  She guides the reader in the use of the cultures framework for policy development and to underpin research undertaken by individuals or by multi-disciplinary teams. Clearly and engagingly written, Culture and Sustainability is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers and indeed anyone interested in a sustainable future. 

The outcome of an international scholarly collaboration, this collection examines how religions from South Asia have been reconstructed within Western settings and how identity is shaped, not only by migrants, but also by subsequent generations.
Focusing on Britain, USA, Canada and Australia, chapters address the religions, social and political issues facing South Asian diasporas and examines how they have been effected by 9/11 and Britain's 7/7 as well as the bombings in Bali and Mumbai.

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Fuller Seminary theologian William Pannell decried the sentiment among white evangelicals that racism was no longer an urgent matter. In The Coming Race Wars? he meticulously unpacked reasons why our nation-and the church-needed to come to terms with our complicity in America's racial transgressions before we face a more dire reckoning. Pannell was among a small number of Black evangelical leaders at the time who called the evangelical church to account on issues of racial justice. Now, nearly thirty years later, his words are as timely as ever. Some would even argue that the "race war" he predicted has arrived. In The Coming Race Wars: A Cry for Justice, from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, Pannell revisits his provocative book with an expanded edition that connects its message to current events. With a new introduction by bestselling historian Jemar Tisby and a new afterword by Pannell, this compelling, heartfelt plea to the church will help today's readers take a deeper look at the complexities of institutional racism and the unjust systems that continue to confound us. This new edition of The Coming Race Wars will inspire you to open your eyes wider, discover a more holistic view of Christ's gospel, and become an active participant in addressing America's racial injustices.

This book examines the development of opposed Nationalist and Unionists identities as products of different economies, symbolically represented in religious differences, that impelled conflicting cultures and ideals of best interest that were fundamentally incompatible within a single identity.

This was the first in-depth examination of relations between the Church of England and other faiths in the Prison Service Chaplaincy. It shows how the struggle for equal opportunities in a multi-faith society is politicising relations between the Church, the state and religious minorities. Drawing on a wealth of data, it considers the increasingly controversial role of Anglican chaplains in facilitating the religious and pastoral care of prisoners from non-Christian backgrounds, whose numbers among the prison population have been growing. Comparison with the United States underlines the closeness of the tie between the state and Christian churches in English prisons, and this book argues that it is time to reconsider the practice of keeping ethnic and religious minorities dependent on Anglican 'brokering' of their access to prison chaplaincy.

Art and the Challenge of Markets Volumes 1 & 2 examine the politics of art and culture in light of the profound changes that have taken place in the world order since the 1980s and 1990s. The contributors explore how in these two decades, the neoliberal or market-based model of capitalism started to spread from the economic realm to other areas of society. As a result, many aspects of contemporary Western societies increasingly function in the same way as the private enterprise sector under traditional market capitalism. This second volume analyses the relationships of art with contemporary capitalist economies and instrumentalist cultural policies, and examines several varieties of capitalist-critical and alternative art forms that exist in today's art worlds. It also addresses the vexed issues of art controversies and censorship. The chapters cover issues such as the culturalization of the economy, aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, the societal benefits of works of art, art's responsibility to society, "artivism", activist arts as protest and capitalism-critical works, and controversies over nudity in art, as well as considering the marketisation of emerging visual arts worlds in East Asia. The book ends with the a concluding chapter suggesting that even in today's marketized and commercialized environments, art will find a way. Both volumes provide students and scholars across a range of disciplines with an incisive, comparative overview of the politics of art and culture and national, international and transnational art worlds in contemporary capitalism.

From a South African Passion Play to Turkish Sufi tourism, from contemporary street preaching in America to public Hindu rites in India, from cloistered prayer in 17th century France to the queer politics of 'the closet' today, Performing Religion in Public brings together an international array of voices that grapple with the important role of religious performance in our secular public lives. Because traditional notions of the public sphere have emphasized rational discourse in a secular setting, religion has often been excluded. But religious life is not impersonal argument; rather, it is passionately performed, crossing boundaries between public and private, the personal and the political, and claiming a significant role in modern democracies, from everyday cultural interactions to political advocacy. By focusing on the performative nature of both religion and publics, this timely volume offers a fresh and fruitful re-conception of the relationship between religion and the public sphere.

The Orthodox Christian tradition has all too often been sidelined in conversations around contemporary religion. Despite being distinct from Protestantism and Catholicism in both theology and practice, it remains an underused setting for academic inquiry into current lived religious practice. This collection, therefore, seeks to redress this imbalance by investigating modern manifestations of Orthodox Christianity through an explicitly gender-sensitive gaze. By addressing attitudes to gender in this context, it fills major gaps in the literature on both religion and gender. Starting with the traditional teachings and discourses around gender in the Orthodox Church, the book moves on to demonstrate the diversity of responses to those narratives that can be found among Orthodox populations in Europe and North America. Using case studies from several countries, with both large and small Orthodox populations, contributors use an interdisciplinary approach to address how gender and religion interact in contexts such as, iconography, conversion, social activism and ecumenical relations, among others. From Greece and Russia to Finland and the USA, this volume sheds new light on the myriad ways in which gender is manifested, performed, and engaged within contemporary Orthodoxy. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that employing the analytical lens of gender enables new insights into Orthodox Christianity as a lived tradition. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of both Religious Studies and Gender Studies.

Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations. Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the very latest social and cultural developments in the environments in which it exists. They raise fundamental questions concerning new media and religious expression, religious youth cultures, the links between spirituality, personal development and consumer culture, and contemporary intersections of religion, identity and politics. Together the chapters demonstrate how belief in the superempirical is negotiated relative to secular concerns in the twenty-first century.

We live in a multicultural society. But Christians often do not know how to engage those of other faiths. As a result, many Christians hesitate to talk about Christianity with others in any kind of evangelistic way. Jay Moon and Bud Simon unpack the intercultural dynamics that Christians need to understand when encountering people from different communities and cultural backgrounds. Regarding evangelism from the perspective of four major worldviews (guilt/justice, shame/honor, fear/power, and indifference/belonging with purpose), this book demonstrates contextual evangelism approaches that are relevant, biblical, and practical. The authors draw on new research conducted with hundreds of participants that reveal concrete ways to communicate the gospel effectively across cultures. Sharing one's faith does not require attacking other religions; rather, we can engage at the worldview level in order to address people's deepest concerns. Greater understanding provides us with better skills for relational connection, empathy, and effective witness.

Works of liturgical theology tend to be produced by experts who draw from the sources and explain the meaning of the liturgy to the lay people. When such explanations are firmly grounded in the sources, the academy accepts and celebrates them as genuine works of liturgical theology. Liturgical theology requires an examination from a different perspective: the lay people's. How do the lay people explain their understanding of the liturgy in their own words? Drawing from the results of parish focus groups and a clergy survey, The People's Faith presents the liturgical theology of the lay people in the Orthodox Churches of America. The People's Faith presents original findings on how ordinary laity experience the Divine Liturgy, Holy Communion, Lent and Easter, liturgical change, and gender roles in the Liturgy. The author brings the laity's views into dialog with the prevailing liturgical theology in the Orthodox Church and identifies several topics worthy of theological reflection. The people's veneration for tradition tops a list of liturgical issues worthy of further research, including ecumenical aspects of the Eucharist, the relationship between liturgy and theological anthropology, and a desire to receive divine compassion during ritual celebration.

This book offers the first, full academic analysis of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup. Adopting an international relations perspective, the authors critically interrogate the politics and controversy that has surrounded arguably the most controversial sports event ever. In doing so, this text offers up an imperative examination of Qatar's desired objectives through their investment in global sport and sports events, as well as provides readers with an academic explanation on why major event hosts - such as Qatar - receive so much international scrutiny in the pre-event stage of the event hosting process. On the back of this international scrutiny, this text also provides the first full analysis on how such negative scrutiny has forced Qatar to implement various social-political changes at home.

Building Noah's Ark for Migrants, Refugees, and Religious Communities examines religion within the framework of refugee studies as a public good, with the spiritual and material use of religion shedding new light on the agency of refugees in reconstructing their lives and positioning themselves in hostile environments.

The famed thinker and writer, C.S. Lewis, addressed issues that were paramount and pressing for religious persons in his time. In this volume, and in honor of Lewis, experts in their fields examine topics and challenges that face Christians living their faith today. Originally delivered as invited public lectures in a decade-long series--The Annual C.S. Lewis Legacy Lectures at Westminster College in Missouri--they include faith and reason, theological imagination, religion and ecology, the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, antisemitism, Native American spirituality, science and religion, racism and poverty in the ministry and social action of Martin Luther King, Jr., misconceptions of Islam, religious pluralism, and religion and violence. The authors argue that these issues must be acknowledged and confronted in order for Christianity to remain, or to become relevant, in the current century.

This exploration of one of the most concentrated immigrant communities in Britain combines a fascinating narrative history, an original theoretical analysis of the evolving relationship between progressive left politics and ethnic minorities, and an incisive critique of political multiculturalism. It recounts and analyses the experiences of many of those who took part in over six decades of political history that range over secular nationalism, trade unionism, black radicalism, mainstream local politics, Islamism and the rise and fall of the Respect Coalition. Through this Bengali case study and examples from wider immigrant politics, it traces the development and adoption of the concepts of popular frontism, revolutionary stages theory and identity politics. It demonstrates how these theories and tactics have cut across class-based organisation and acted as an impediment to addressing socio-economic inequality; and it argues for a left materialist alternative. -- .

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become 'legitimised'. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes.

This book proposes a radical shift in the way the world thinks about itself by highlighting the significance of Cross-Cultural Conversations. Moving beyond conventional boundaries, it examines the language in which histories are written; analyzes how scientific technology is changing the idea of identity; and highlights the need for a larger identity across nationality, race, religion, gender, ethnicity and class. It asks for a concerted effort to engage each other in open conversational forums on a range of contemporary global issues, alter our attitudes toward self and the other, and unlearn prejudices that perpetuate the practice of divisive identities. The book also explores critical themes such as political actions, solidarity-in-diversity, clash of social identities, tensions between nationalism and globalism, the quest for global peace and authentic meeting of world religions. Further, it discusses the evolving connection between science and religion, focusing on key philosophical ideas that have permeated the Indian cultural soil. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, religious studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies.

Religion can heal, but it can hurt as well. This collection of essays addresses some key issues of religious stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, and considers a wide range of important topics which haunt our societies today. When stereotyping becomes the oxygen we inhale, when it is so important to us that we cannot see how we can survive without it - what can and should we do? Twenty-two scholars from Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America explore the anatomy of various forms of stereotyping and ways to oppose them.

This book presents a systematic approach to the literary analysis of cultural practices. Based on a postcolonial framework of diaspora, the book utilizes literary theory to investigate cultural phenomena such as food preparation and song. Razia Parveen explores various diverse themes, including the female voice, genealogy, space, time, and diaspora, and applies them to the analysis of community identity. This volume also demonstrates how a literary analysis of oral texts helps to provide insight into women's lived narratives. For example, Parveen discusses how the notion of the 'third space' creates a distinctly feminine spatiality.

Godly Love: Impediments and Possibilities examines the theory of "Godly Love," understood as including a vertical axis denoting the love of God and a horizontal axis involving the love of others, is at the core of a new field of research that studies how divine love influences the love of others and vice-versa. It is a multidisciplinary research program into the benevolent expressions of the Great Commandment of the Christian tradition involving the theological and social sciences. Theological and social scientific essays that ask why there is not more Godly Love in this world and what might be done to change the situation. This book focuses on the problems confronting, challenging, prohibiting, and perhaps even resisting the concrete expression of Godly Love in the world, utilizing a range of theological and especially social scientific methodologies.

This book explores the contours of a transformational sociology which seeks to reconsider the horizons of sociological imagination. It questions accepted modernist assumptions such as the equation of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Arguing that contemporary sociology suffers from what Ulrich Beck calls the Nato-like fire power of western sociology, it argues that sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about self, culture and society. The book also challenges scholars to go beyond a privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology and puts forward a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology. It underscores the limitations of established conventions of sociology and considering an alternative sociology based upon Confucian vision and practice of self-transformation. This collection offers a way to go beyond dominant structures of modern sociology and contemporary dominant ways of thinking about and doing sociology helping us cultivate a transdisciplinary sociology.