Pilgrimages can be analysed as acts of conflict - such as the Crusades - or also as platforms for relationship building and rapprochement between religions. With a set of contributions from leading experts in the field, this book explores the concept of pilgrimage in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Some specific examples of pilgrimages that helped to strengthen links between different religions or civilisations are explored, ranging from Europe to Asia and from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Even though every pilgrimage that is investigated here has helped to link different worlds, the case studies show that this relationship rarely led to a better in inter-understanding. Nowadays, peaceful coexistence seems to be its greatest achievement.

Despite growing cultural and economic homogenization across the globe, the visible presence of immigrant communities stands out in many metropolises of the world. In almost all major cities the cultural and physical presence of various ethnic or religious groups is very much in evidence. Yet, until now, the academic treatment of international migration has mostly been confined to limited case studies, single ethnic groups, or single locations. Crossing Over offers an alternative to this method, bringing together a diverse group of academics charged with submitting new research that juxtaposes experiences and draws on comparisons between aspects of migration in Europe and the United States. The essays focus on two main issues: security issues-heightened by recent terrorist activities-and the question of citizenship, identity, and host-guest interaction. The result is a collection of accessible research essays that shed light on both the parallels and differences that exist for immigrant groups across continents and cultures.

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.

"Pretty much like the rest of the country, only more so." This quip from Wallace Stegner well-represents the Pacific region's religious culture. California, Nevada, and Hawaii emerged more recently, more quickly and with more diversity and fluidity than the other United States. Although influenced by Mexican Catholicism, Native Traditions, Asian Religions, and Euro-American Christianity, no religious tradition dominates, and a secular ethos usually reigns. But this very religious indifference makes California and the rest of the region open to all sorts of missionary movements and religious innovations. New organizational forms, new spiritual therapies, and new religious hybrids all compete for residents' attention along with secular ways for making meaning. With all these options, residents of the region mix, match, and move between religious identities more than other Americans. Without ignoring its diversity, Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Region highlights the key aspects of the region's fluctuating religions and its spirituality's impact on political life.

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 volume brings together 11 experts from a range of religious backgrounds, to consider how each tradition has interpreted matters of violence and peace in relation to its sacred text. The traditions covered are Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. The role of religion in conflict, war, and the creation of peaceful settlements has attracted much academic attention, including considerations of the interpretation of violence in sacred texts. This collection breaks new ground by bringing multiple faiths into conversation with one another with specific regard to the handling of violence and peace in sacred texts. This combination of close attention to text and expansive scope of religious inclusion is the first of its kind.

Although Indonesia is generally considered to be a Muslim state, and is indeed the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, it has a sizeable Christian minority as a legacy of Dutch colonialism, with Christians often occupying relatively high social positions. This book examines the management of religion in Indonesia. It discusses how Christianity has developed in Indonesia, how the state, though Muslim in outlook and culture, is nevertheless formally secular, and how the principal Christian church, the Java Christian Church, has adapted its practices to fit local circumstances. It examines religious violence and charts the evolution of the state's religious policies, analysing in particular the impact of the 1974 Marriage Law showing how it enabled extensive state regulation, but how in practice, rather than reinforcing religious divisions, inter-religious marriage, involving the conversion of one party, is widespread. Overall, the book shows how Indonesia is developing its own brand of secularism, neither a full-blooded Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, nor an outright secular state like Turkey.

German-Turkish relations, which have a long history and generally unrecognized depth, have rarely been examined as mutually formative processes. Isolated instances of influence have been examined in detail, but the historical and still ongoing processes of mutual interaction have rarely been seriously considered. The ruling assumption has been that Germany may have an impact on Turkey, but not the other way around. Religion, Identity and Politics examines this mutual interaction, specifically with regard to religious identities and institutions. It opposes the commonly held assumption that Europe is the abode of secularism and enlightenment, while the lands of Islam are the realm of backwardness and fundamentalism. Both historically and contemporarily, Germany has treated religion as a core aspect of communal and civilizational identity and framed its institutions accordingly; the book explores how there has been, and continues to be, a mutual exchange in this regard between Germany and both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. The authors show that the definition of identity and regulation of communities have been explicitly based on religion until the early and since the late twentieth century; the period in between- the age of secular nationalism- which has always been treated as the norm, now appears more clearly as an exception. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, politics, history and religion.

Exploring religious and spiritual intentional communities active in the world today, Spiritual and Visionary Communities provides a balanced introduction to a diverse range of communities worldwide. Breaking new ground with its focus on communities which have had little previous academic or public attention, the authors explore a part of contemporary society which is rarely understood. Communities studied include: Israeli kibbutzim, Mandarom, the Twelve Tribes, 'The Farm' and the Camphill movement. Written from a range of perspectives, this collection includes contributions from members of the groups themselves, former members, and academic observers, and as such will offer a unique and invaluable discussion of religious and spiritual communities in the U.S., Europe, and beyond.

This book not only seeks to theoretically analyze the concept, chief characteristics and framework of "social mentality", but also explores the influence of social mentality on such elements of social functioning as individuals, groups, societies, markets and countries, and the influence of such elements as cultural, social, economic, political and mental factors on social mentality. Besides, this book discusses the structure of social mentality, tools for measuring it, and an indicator system. What's more, it explores the role of the social mentality mechanism in the construction of harmonious societies.

In Religion and the News journalists and religious leaders reflect on their interactions with one another and their experiences of creating news. Through a series of original contributions, leading practitioners shed light on how religious stories emerge into the public domain. Experienced journalists and religious representatives from different faith traditions critically consider their role in a rapidly evolving communicative environment. Aimed at journalists, faith representatives, religious leaders, academics and students this book offers a timely exploration of the current state of religious news coverage and makes an original contribution to the emerging media, religion and culture literature, as well as to media and communication studies. Religion and the News presents insights from leading journalists and religious leaders, many well-known figures, writing openly about their experiences. Contributors include: Jolyon Mitchell, Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues Edinburgh University; Christopher Landau, Religious Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Service; Andrew Brown, The Guardian; Professor Lord Harries of Pentregarth, former Bishop of Oxford; Dr Indarjit Singh, Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations; Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Director, Jewish Information and Media Service; Imam Monawar Hussain, Muslim Tutor, Eton College; Charlie Beckett, Director, Polis; Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, The Times; Catherine Pepinster, Editor, The Tablet; Riazat Butt, Religious Affairs Correspondent, The Guardian; Professor the Worshipful Mark Hill QC, Barrister and Fellow, Centre for Law and Religion, Cardiff University.

In Religion and the News journalists and religious leaders reflect on their interactions with one another and their experiences of creating news. Through a series of original contributions, leading practitioners shed light on how religious stories emerge into the public domain. Experienced journalists and religious representatives from different faith traditions critically consider their role in a rapidly evolving communicative environment. Aimed at journalists, faith representatives, religious leaders, academics and students this book offers a timely exploration of the current state of religious news coverage and makes an original contribution to the emerging media, religion and culture literature, as well as to media and communication studies. Religion and the News presents insights from leading journalists and religious leaders, many well-known figures, writing openly about their experiences. Contributors include: Jolyon Mitchell, Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues Edinburgh University; Christopher Landau, Religious Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Service; Andrew Brown, The Guardian; Professor Lord Harries of Pentregarth, former Bishop of Oxford; Dr Indarjit Singh, Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations; Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Director, Jewish Information and Media Service; Imam Monawar Hussain, Muslim Tutor, Eton College; Charlie Beckett, Director, Polis; Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, The Times; Catherine Pepinster, Editor, The Tablet; Riazat Butt, Religious Affairs Correspondent, The Guardian; Professor the Worshipful Mark Hill QC, Barrister and Fellow, Centre for Law and Religion, Cardiff University.

A collection of essays that aim to consider broad questions of the role of religion in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain by studying a single geographical area. Coalbrookdale in the parish of Madeley, Shropshire is seen as the "birthplace of the industrial revolution" while remaining one of the last examples of a Methodist parish in England. These works engage with a variety of areas of study: Methodism's roots and growth in relation to the Church of England, religion and gender in eighteenth century Britain, and religion and the emergence of an industrial society, and do so from a variety of different approaches: historical, theological, economic and sociological. The result is not only a through examination of a single parish but a consideration of its relation to larger themes in eighteenth-century Britain and the impact of English Methodism on nineteenth-century American Methodism.

This volume illustrates both theoretically and empirically the differences between religious diversity and religious pluralism. It highlights how the factual situation of cultural and religious diversity may lead to individual, social and political choices of organized and recognized pluralism. In the process, both individual and collective identities are redefined, incessantly moving along the continuum that ranges from exclusion to inclusion. The book starts by first detailing general issues related to religious pluralism. It makes the case for keeping the empirical, the normative, the regulatory and the interactive dimensions of religious pluralism analytically distinct while recognizing that, in practice, they often overlap. It also underlines the importance of seeking connections between religious pluralism and other pluralisms. Next, the book explores how religious diversity can operate to contribute to legal pluralism and examines the different types of church-state relations: eradication, monopoly, oligopoly and pluralism. The second half of the book features case studies that provide a more specific look at the general issues, from ways to map and assess the religious diversity of a whole country to a comparison between Belgian-French views of religious and philosophical diversity, from religious pluralism in Italy to the shifting approach to ethnic and religious diversity in America, and from a sociological and historical perspective of religious plurality in Japan to an exploration of Brazilian religions, old and new. The transition from religious diversity to religious pluralism is one of the most important challenges that will reshape the role of religion in contemporary society. This book provides readers with insights that will help them better understand and interpret this unprecedented transition.

In a world where the global engagement and international dialogue intensifies, some areas of cultivated knowledge suffer from this dialogue and this has consequences for people and communities. We propose education to be such a case. The global dialogue in education tends to be restricted to and mediated by standardized measurements. Such standards are meant to measure qualities of education and of student behavior and create the sought for condition for normative comparability and competition. The obvious drawback is that cultural variability - in local living as well as in education - is rendered irrelevant. Are there alternatives? The book insists on maintaining the discussion about education on a global level, but rather than moving towards homogenization and standardization of education, the attention is drawn towards the potential for learning from creative fits - and misfits - between concrete local cultures, institutional practices and global aims and standards of education. This work brings together a group of educational and developmental researchers and scholars grappling to find culturally informed and sensitive modes of educating people and communities. Case studies and examples from four geographical contexts are being discussed: China, Brazil, Australia and Europe. While being embedded in these local cultures, the authors share a conceptual grounding in cultural developmental theorizing and a vision for a culturally informed globalized perspective on education. As the theme of the book is learning from each other, the volume also includes commentaries from leading scholars in the field of cultural psychology and education.

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.

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.

Nicholson, one of the UK's leading historians of the medieval military orders...has a flair for clear and uncluttered explanations enlivened with telling detail and quotation. And her account is comprehensive. An attractive volume. HISTORY This short study of the history of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, is intended as an introduction to the Order for academics working in other fields, as well as the interested general reader. Beginning with a consideration of the origins of the Order as a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem in the eleventh century, it traces the Hospitaller's development into a military order during the first part of the twelfth century, and its military activities on the frontiers of Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean, Spain and eastern Europe during the middle ages and into early modern period: its role in crusades and in wars against non-Christians on land and at sea, as well as its role in building and maintaining fortresses. It also considers the Order's activities away from the frontiers of Christendom: its economic activities and its relations with patrons and rulers throughout Europe, as well as its hospitaller work and its religious life. The focus of the study is on the medieval period down to the loss of Rhodes in 1522, but the final chapters of the book consider the Order'shistory on Malta from the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and from the loss of Malta in 1798 to the present day. HELEN NICHOLSON is Senior Lecturer in History, Cardiff University.

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.

Is New York a post-secular city? Massive immigration and cultural changes have created an increasingly complex social landscape in which religious life plays a dynamic role. Yet the magnitude of religion's impact on New York's social life has gone unacknowledged.

New York Glory gathers together for the first time the best research on religion in contemporary New York City. It includes contributors from every major research project on religion in New York to provide a comprehensive look at the current state of religion in the city. Moving beyond broad surveys into specific case studies of communities and institutions, it provides a window onto the diversity of religious life in New York.

From Italian Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and Russian Jews to Zen Buddhists, Rastafarians, and Pentecostal Latinas, New York Glory both captures the richness of religious life in New York City and provides an important foundation for our understanding of the current and future shape of religion in America.

The twenty-first century has seen energy passing between religious and political worldviews, kicking up dust around the identity- and conviction-based fault lines in American society. While many evangelical Christians have developed and deployed a "worldview theory" to describe and locate themselves within the world's ideological strife, Jacob Cook argues this approach has, in effect, compelled those listening to adopt the world's divisive modes of dealing with difference rather than living out a compelling alternative. As a popular framework for theology in recent history, world-viewing has driven its white evangelical adherents to narrate human lives in this world (including their own) in ways that warp Christian identity as a personal, social, and theological reality. Through close studies of key white evangelical leaders who utilized the worldview concept for political engagement and cultural transformation over the last century, Cook reveals why worldview theory is inept for grasping real human complexity and, moreover, how it forms a barrier to genuine life together as creatures in a world only the living God can really "view." In between these studies, he draws from current conversations in psychology, sociology, critical race studies, and other fields to deliver a vigorous critique of the worldview concept and its use as well as its underlying impulse-and to unmask what world-viewing shares with the history and spirit of whiteness. This book is for those wrestling with the relationship between Christianity and whiteness in America, how the dynamics of whiteness have become transparent and, thus, contentions, and where to go from here if one is to follow Jesus.

The world's "great" religions depend on traditions of serious scholarship, dedicated to preserving their key texts but also to understanding them and, therefore, to debating what understanding itself is and how best to do it. They also have important public missions of many kinds, and their ideas and organizations influence many other important institutions, including government, law, education, and kinship. Anthropology of Eastern Religions: Ideas, Organizations, and Constituencies is a comparative survey of the world's major religious traditions as professional enterprises and, often, as social movements. Documenting the principle ideas behind eastern religious traditions from an anthropological perspective, Murray J. Leaf demonstrates how these ideas have been used in building internal organizations that mobilize or fail to mobilize external support.

Shortlisted for the Herskovits Award, this book throws light on secrecy and violence in Uganda, Rwanda and the Great Lakes area of East Africa. On 17 March 2000 several hundred members of a charismatic Christian sect, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTC), burnt to death in the group's headquarters in the Southwest Ugandan village of Kanungu. Days later the Ugandan police discovered a series of mass graves containing over 400 bodies on various other properties belonging to the sect. Was this mass suicide or mass murder? Based on eight years of historical andethnographic research, Ghosts of Kanungu provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the MRTC and of the events leading up to the inferno. It argues that none of these events can be understood without reference to abroader social history of Southwestern Uganda during the twentieth century, in which anti-colonial movements, Catholic White Fathers missionaries, colonial relocation schemes, the breakdown of the Ugandan state, post-war reconstruction, the onset of HIV/AIDS, and the transformation of the regional Nyabingi fertility cult into a Marian church with worldwide connections, all played their part. RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia Uganda: Fountain Publishers (PB)

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.