Since September 11, 2001, the profile of religion's role in our global society has increased significantly. Religion has long been a force in people's lives as numerous studies and polls show, yet we continue to struggle with understanding differing religious traditions and what they mean for our common life. There are few places where Americans can meet together to learn about each other and to share in the common construction of our futures. One such place for many is public education. The purpose of this book is to illustrate the complexity of the social, cultural, and legal milieu of schooling in the United States in which the improvement of religious literacy and understanding must take place. Public education is the new commons. We must negotiate this commons in two meanings of that term: first, we must come to mutual understandings and agreement about how to proceed toward a common horizon of a religiously plural America; second, we must work our way through the obstacles in these settings in practical ways to achieve results that work.

There Is No God: Atheists in America answers several questions pertaining to how the atheist population has grown from relatively small numbers to have a disproportionately large impact on important issues of our day, such as the separation of church and state, abortion, gay marriage, and public school curricula. Williamson and Yancey answer the common questions surrounding atheism. Just how common is the dismissal and derision of religion expressed by atheists? How are we to understand the world view of atheists and their motivations in political action and public discourse? Finally, is there any hope for rapprochement in the relationship of atheism and theism? In There Is No God, the authors begin with a brief history of atheism to set the stage for a better understanding of contemporary American atheism. They then explore how the relationship between religious and atheistic ideologies has evolved as each attempted to discredit the other in different ways at different times and under very different social and political circumstances. Although atheists are a relatively small minority, atheists appear to be growing in number and in their willingness to be identified as atheists and to voice their non-belief. As those voices of atheism increase it is essential that we understand how and why those who are defined by such a simple term as "non-believers in the existence of God" should have such social and political influence. The authors successfully answer the broader question of the apparent polarization of the religious and non-religious dimensions of American society.

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.

Since September 11, 2001, the profile of religion's role in our global society has increased significantly. Religion has long been a force in people's lives as numerous studies and polls show, yet we continue to struggle with understanding differing religious traditions and what they mean for our common life. There are few places where Americans can meet together to learn about each other and to share in the common construction of our futures. One such place for many is public education. The purpose of this book is to illustrate the complexity of the social, cultural, and legal milieu of schooling in the United States in which the improvement of religious literacy and understanding must take place. Public education is the new commons. We must negotiate this commons in two meanings of that term: first, we must come to mutual understandings and agreement about how to proceed toward a common horizon of a religiously plural America; second, we must work our way through the obstacles in these settings in practical ways to achieve results that work.

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.

This book carries an ethnographic signature in approach and style, and is an examination of a small Brooklyn, New York, African-American, Pentecostal church congregation and is based on ethnographic notes taken over the course of four years. The Pentecostal Church is known to outsiders almost exclusively for its members' "bizarre" habit of speaking in tongues. This ethnography, however, puts those outsiders inside the church pews, as it paints a portrait of piety, compassion, caring, love-all embraced through an embodiment perspective, as the church's members experience these forces in the most personal ways through religious conversion. Central themes include concerns with the notion of "spectacle" because of the grand bodily display that is highlighted by spiritual struggle, social aspiration, punishment and spontaneous explosions of a variety of emotions in the public sphere. The approach to sociology throughout this work incorporates the striking dialectic of history and biography to penetrate and interact with religiously inspired residents of the inner-city in a quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this rapidly changing, surprising and highly contradictory late-modern church scene. The focus on the individual process of becoming Pentecostal provides a road map into the church and canvasses an intimate view into the lives of its members, capturing their stories as they proceed in their Pentecostal careers. This book challenges important sociological concepts like crisis to explain religious seekership and conversion, while developing new concepts such as "God Hunting" and "Holy Ghost Capital" to explain the process through which individuals become tongue-speaking Pentecostals. Church members acquire "Holy Ghost Capital" and construct a Pentecostal identity through a relationship narrative to establish personal status and power through conflicting tongue-speaking ideas. Finally, this book examines the futures of the small and large, institutionally affiliated Pentecostal Church and argues that the small Pentecostal Church is better able to resist modern rationalizing forces, retaining the charisma that sparked the initial religious movement. The power of charisma in the small church has far-reaching consequences and implications for the future of Pentecostalism and its followers.

Win the War for Your Own Integrity After Phil Robertson quoted Scripture in an interview with a national magazine, his hit show, Duck Dynasty, put him on "indefinite hiatus." Phil immediately knew what had happened: he had become a target of cancel culture. Since that time, Phil has spoken out against public shaming, strategic campaigns to get Bible-believing employees fired, and other tactics that are wreaking havoc in our society. In a deeply divided country, with so many bent on condemning and silencing others, Phil calls for us to carry out the unifying message of Jesus Christ. In Uncanceled, Phil shares his own experiences with cancel culture as he encourages us to turn to Scripture as we navigate politics, personal conversations, and new cultural norms; helps us see the psychological and political motivations behind silencing conservative voices; reminds us that the goal is not to convince others to like us but to win the war for our own integrity by refusing to bow down to the god of political correctness; and shows us how to trade retaliation for the love and forgiveness that God offers. Uncanceled is a blueprint for standing up for the truth of Jesus Christ in a culture that has forgotten how to have respectful conversations. As Phil reminds us, when we embrace the truth that Jesus Christ already paid an enormous debt to cancel our sins, we find a path to redemption, a way to forgiveness, and a means for godly connection.

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 fascinating volume consists of articles by world-renowned scholars of Zoroastrian, Iranian, Parsi, and Jewish studies. The topics covered range from the prophet Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) and the ancient Indo-Iranians to the modern Zoroastrians and Jews of Iran and India. Insightful descriptions of divinities and demons, priests and laity will capture the attention of readers as will absorbing discussions of good and evil, rituals and documents, and of communities past and present.

Immigration has become a contentious issue in Europe in recent decades, with immigrants being accused of resisting integration and threatening the secular fabric of nationhood. The most extreme form of this unease has invented and demonized an Islamic 'other' within Europe. This book poses central questions about this global staging of difference. How has such anxiety increased exponentially since 9/11? Why has the Muslim veil been singled out as a metaphor in debates about citizenship? Lastly, and most fundamentally, who sets the criteria for constructing the ideal citizen? This study explores the issue of gender and immigration in the national contexts of Germany and France, where the largest minority populations are from Turkey and North Africa, respectively. The author analyzes fictional works by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi OEzdamar and Zafer Senocak and by Francophone writer Malika Mokeddem. All three deconstruct binary oppositions and envision an alternate third space that allows them to break out of the confines of organized religion. In the latter part of the book, the voices of young Muslim women are foregrounded through interviews. The concluding chapter on the pedagogical tool Deliberative Dialogue suggests ways to navigate such contentious issues in the Humanities classroom.

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.

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 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.

Through detailed in-depth exegeses of Proust's literary texts (A la Recherche du temps perdu, Jean Santeuil, and Contre Sainte-Beuve), Judaism in Marcel Proust: Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, and Judaic Perspectives in Art explains anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism as present in actual French literary texts. Unlike other studies about Proust and Judaism, the narrative in this book is in English; the focus is on the actual French texts, not on Proust's biography. Primary Judaic sources such as the Hebrew Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, Moses Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, and Rashi's commentaries illuminate Proust's texts and skillfully demonstrate their anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic subtexts. The principal Proustian themes that are examined in depth include, first of all, the anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism of the characters as informed by Jean-Paul Sartre's Reflexions sur la queston juive; second, Christian interpretations of Judaic biblical references and their anti-Semitic connotations as well as the philo-Semitic references to the Hebrew Bible and to Judaic culture and ritual contained in the Proust texts; third, the importance of references to art in Proust's texts and their Judaic significance. Written in a lively, clear, and accessible style, Judaism in Marcel Proust engages the reader, both Proustophile and Proust scholar alike. It would be an excellent choice for the reading list of courses on Proust as well as for French history and social psychology courses on anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism relating to the Dreyfus case and the Belle Epoque.

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.

Between the years of 1820 and 1913, penitentiaries and reformatories came to be in the states of Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. The rise of these institutions is not simply a result of historical and theological trends, but was directly influenced by the American religious community. Drawing on various primary source materials, the author evaluates the influence of the religious community on the American penal system, with specific emphasis on the role of prison chaplains.

The reader is taken on a journey to Dolpo, one of Nepal's remotest Tibetan enclaves with a large community that follow the Bon religion. The present ethnography regards the landscape of Dolpo as the temporary result of an ongoing cumulative cultural process that emerges from the interaction of the natural environment and the communities that inhabit it and endow it with meaning. Pilgrimage provides the key to structuring the book, which is based on anthropological research and the study of the textual legacy. Along the extensive and richly illustrated Bon pilgrimages through Dolpo, the various strands of the written and the oral, the local and the general, the past and present are unrolled step by step and woven into a pattern that provides a first insight into the partial shift from a landscape inhabited by territorial deities to a Bon landscape. In addition, it presents an overview of the main protagonists who discovered the sacred sites, opened pilgrimages, founded monasteries and disseminated the crucial Bon teachings. A number of well-known Tibetan figures emerge among these players thanks to translations of biographies that have survived in rare and unpublished manuscripts. This book sheds light on how Bon religion emerged in Dolpo and has remained alive.

Theodore Parker was one of the most controversial theologians and social activists in pre-Civil War America. A vocal critic of traditional Christian thought and a militant opponent of American slavery, he led a huge congregation of religious dissenters in the very heart of Boston, Massachusetts, during the 1840s and 1850s. This book argues that Parker's radical vision and contemporary appeal stemmed from his abiding faith in the human conscience and in the principles of the American revolutionary tradition. A leading figure in Boston's resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, Parker became a key supporter of John Brown's dramatic but ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. Propelled by a revolutionary conscience, Theodore Parker stood out as one of the most fearless religious reformers and social activists of his generation.

Peter D. Beaulieu examines the challenge posed by-and to-modernity and historic Islam as they encounter one another. He compares the Western separation of Church and state with the unitary Islamic State, and explores the proposed cultural and societal principles of the Second Vatican Council as potentially influencing long-term events in both arenas. Beaulieu's research is comprehensive and richly documented, yet offers an accessible triangular inquiry into the mosque, the manger, and modernity. By restoring a place at the table for Trinitarian Christianity alongside the engulfing monotheism of Islam and the alternative skepticism of Western rationalism, this inquiry broadens the pallet of inter-religious and intercultural contact points. Beyond Secularism and Jihad? provides balanced attention to the differences as well as the similarities between Christianity, Islam, and modernity. An emerging theme is natural law, which is universal and intrinsic to all mankind and not confined to competing theologies. Neglected in the West that it helped create, natural law might contribute to the needed "grammar" for dialogue between the citizens in the West and the followers of Islam.

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.

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.

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.

What does the Bible say about poverty and our responsibility toward the poor? This book examines the concept of "brother's keeper" in both the ancient Near East and the biblical world. Wafawanaka contends that biblical Israel failed to play the rightful role of brother's keeper and claims that we, too, have strayed from this responsibility. Am I Still My Brother's Keeper? reveals what we can learn about poverty from a biblical context and how we might appropriate those insights to fight poverty in our own communities. Beginning with the biblical mandate in Deuteronomy 15, Wafawanaka surveys the Hebrew Scriptures and challenges those with power and resources to reevaluate their response to the poor. Failure to revisit the notion of "brother's keeper" threatens to create a society that is increasingly disenfranchised and unjust. A glance at our world in light of biblical history suggests that poverty is an endemic global problem that requires a radical global solution.

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.

Addresses the experience of Jesuit missionaries, teachers and writers along the peripheries of the Habsburg lands, which stretched to Moldavia, Ukraine, Serbia and Wallachia, and which was continually riven with ethnic tensions. The time scale of the study is from the "high tide" of the Society (often labeled "the first multinational corporation") in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, until its suppression in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV. The book examines several of the communities situated along the periphery and the records that they left behind about their interactions with the local populations. It constructs a vivid picture of Jesuit life on the frontier that is built up in mosaic fashion and livened by compelling anecdotes. The Jesuits of Royal Hungary exercised a baroque expression modeled after the larger western cities of the Habsburg lands, which was a fragile splendor in part defined by the need to defend Catholicism from the hostility of Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, and others.