This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of the contemporary debates within political Islam, providing an in-depth analysis of the specific movements, countries and regions in the Arab world and Israel. The contributors contend that the evolution of Islamic movements is contextual rather than ideological. Therefore, Islamic movements are best understood individually within their own historical, socio-political and cultural setting. Political Islam is an essential reference for academics, researchers and the media, as well as general readers with an interest in Islamic political debates. Contributors include Abdullah Baabood, Youcef Bouandel, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Kamal Helbawy, Roel Meijer, Ibrahim Moussawi, Tariq Ramadan, Tilde Rosmer, Murad Batal al-Shishani, Sara Silvestri and Camille Tawil.

Irreconcilable differences drive the division between progressive and conservative Christians-is there a divorce coming? Much attention has been paid to political polarization in America, but far less to the growing schism between progressive and conservative Christians. In this groundbreaking new book, George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk offer the provocative contention that progressive and conservative Christianities have diverged so much in their core values that they ought to be thought of as two separate religions. The authors draw on both quantitative data and interviews to uncover how progressive and conservative Christians determine with whom they align themselves religiously, and how they distinguish themselves from each other. They find that progressive Christians emphasize political agreement relating to social justice issues as they determine who is part of their in-group, and focus less on theological agreement. Among conservative Christians, on the other hand, the major concern is whether one agrees with them on core theological points. Progressive and conservative Christians thus use entirely different factors in determining their social identity and moral values. In a time when religion and politics have never seemed so intertwined, One Faith No Longer offers a timely and compelling reframing of an age-old conflict.

Much has been written on the relationship between violence and religious militancy, but there has been less research on constructive methods of confronting religious violence. This book represents an innovative attempt to integrate the study of religion with the study of conflict resolution. Marc Gopin offers an analysis of contemporary religious violence as a reaction to the pressures of modernity and the increasing economic integration of the world. He contends that religion is one of the most salient phenomena that will cause massive violence in the next century. He also argues, however, that religion can play a critical role in constructing a global community of shared moral commitments and vision - a community that can limit conflict to its nonviolent, constructive variety.

In Paul's day, producing and delivering a letter was time-consuming and costly. Informed by historical evidence and features of the biblical texts, E. Randolph Richards examines the whole process and offers a new perspective on Paul the letter writer.

Pastors and counselors regularly minister to people whose marriages or families are in crisis. Tempers run high and feelings are brought low when a marriage is hurting or a family is in disarray. Pastors and counselors need practical, biblical help in order to connect their theological training to the reality of modern messy relationships. These how-to training manuals provide relevant, user-friendly equipping for pastors, counselors, lay leaders, educators, and students, enabling them to competently and compassionately relate God's Word to marriage and family life.

Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy (OOC) is a method of chaplaincy care that emphasizes achieving, describing, measuring, and improving the outcomes that result from a chaplain's work, alongside the parallel framework of evidence-based healthcare. This book examines the underlying principles of OOC and incorporates first-hand accounts of chaplains who have made a measured difference to patients and their families. Brent Peery draws on more than fifteen years of experience within the field of Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy, exploring its evolution and history within the complex culture of healthcare, and how its underlying principles of assessments, interventions, outcomes and documentation are most effectively put into practice. This practical guide will benefit chaplains interested in the approach of OOC, and identify a framework for providing the best spiritual care for those facing life's most difficult moments.

St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow (Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, 1865D1925) is one of the most important figures of both Russian and Orthodox Church history in the 20th century. Yet 90 years after his death this remains the only complete biography ever published in the English language. It has now been updated and revised with a new preface and bibliography, together with revised and additional endnotes, by Scott M. Kenworthy. The biography reveals a picture of a man whom no one expected to be chosen as Patriarch, yet who nevertheless humbly accepted the call of God and the people to guide the Church during the most turbulent of times as it faced both internal upheavals and external persecution. Both specialists and general readers will become better acquainted with St. Tikhon through this modest but carefully crafted monograph.

Learn to conduct a client-centered assessment of spiritualityand use the findings to enhance your interventions as well as your clients' psychospiritual coping abilities Even to clinicians practiced in helping clients to manage their stress, the impact of clients' spirituality upon their mental health can be difficult to discern and discuss. Moreover, ethical dilemmas can arise when clinicians feel compelled to intervene with a client's negative religious coping. Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications can help. This thought-provoking guide for mental health professionals and pastoral counselors provides you with a framework to assess and incorporate client-based spirituality into your practice. The author provides case examples and clinical models related to spirituality and mental health, as well as useful questionnaires for assessing clients. He provides a client-centered ethical framework for integrating spirituality into treatment, and then discusses how to apply it to clients' problems, especially those related to life crises, resentment over past offenses, guilt over past mistakes, and substance abuse. He also discusses how mindfulness meditation can enhance clients' coping ability. Finally, he includes a useful Leader's Guide for the psychoeducational spirituality group, which is designed to educate patients and church groups. Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications shows how professionals in the above disciplines can address the impact of spirituality on clients by: gaining an understanding of the construct of spirituality assessing spirituality and its interface with clients' presenting problems, particularly when spirituality is central to their values. intervening sensitively in ways that use clients' spiritual perspectives and practices to enhance their coping mechanisms. using the included Leader's Guide to the 5-session psychoeducational spirituality group As the baby boom generation ages, faith becomes a more integral part of that generation's consciousness. Whether you are a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a social worker, or a pastoral counselor, Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications is a resource that you'll return to again and again as you work to improve the lives of your clients.

In her more than forty years as a minister, Rev. Donna Schaper has been approached hundreds of times by people wanting to know how to prepare for the end of life in both practical and spiritual matters. Countless others have turned to her for guidance on how to handle the death of a loved one. From making a will and planning a memorial service to finding peace in the toughest circumstances, Approaching the End of Life offers practical and spiritual guidance to anyone wrestling with the end of a life. With sensitivity and humor Rev. Schaper helps readers face aging and mortality with freedom rather than fear. She encourages readers to find a spiritual home of some kind-even if it is far from the doors of a church-and offers helpful suggestions on memorials and funeral services that will be well suited to the departed while serving the loved ones in their grief and celebration. The book also includes practical resources such as a service planning checklist, a template for a funeral or memorial service, and more.

Why does God feel so far away? The reason--and the solution--is in your attachment style. We all experience moments when God's love and presence are tangible. But we also experience feeling utterly abandoned by God. Why? The answer is found when you take a deep look at the other important relationships in your life and understand your attachment style. Through his years working in trauma recovery programs, extensive research into attachment science, and personal experiences with spiritual striving and abuse, licensed therapist Krispin Mayfield has learned to answer the question: Why do I feel so far from God? When you understand your attachment style you gain a whole new paradigm for a secure and loving relationship with God. You'll gain insights about: How you relate to others--both your strengths and weaknesses The practical exercises you can use to grow a secure spiritual attachment to God How to move forward on the spirituality spectrum and experience the Divine connection we all were created for You'll learn to identify and remove mixed messages about closeness with God that you may have heard in church or from well-meaning Christians. With freedom from the past, you can then chart a new path toward intimate connection with the God of the universe.

Most people in the United States today no longer live their lives under the guidance of local institutionalized religious leadership, such as rabbis, ministers, and priests; rather, liberals and conservatives alike have taken charge of their own religious or spiritual practices. This shift, along with other social and cultural changes, has opened up a perhaps surprising space for chaplains--spiritual professionals who usually work with the endorsement of a religious community but do that work away from its immediate hierarchy, ministering in a secular institution, such as a prison, the military, or an airport, to an ever-changing group of clients of widely varying faiths and beliefs. In A Ministry of Presence, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan explores how chaplaincy works in the United States--and in particular how it sits uneasily at the intersection of law and religion, spiritual care, and government regulation. Responsible for ministering to the wandering souls of the globalized economy, the chaplain works with a clientele often unmarked by a specific religious identity, and does so on behalf of a secular institution, like a hospital. Sullivan's examination of the sometimes heroic but often deeply ambiguous work yields fascinating insights into contemporary spiritual life, the politics of religious freedom, and the never-ending negotiation of religion's place in American institutional life.

We hopeaeven as we doubtathat the environmental crisis can be controlled. Public awareness of our speciesa self-destructiveness as material beings in a material world is growingabut so is the destructiveness. The practical interventions needed for saving and restoring the earth will require a collective shift of such magnitude as to take on a spiritual and religious intensity.This transformation has in part already begun. Traditions of ecological theology and ecologically aware religious practice have been preparing the way for decades. Yet these traditions still remain marginal to society, academy, and church. With a fresh, transdisciplinary approach, Ecospirit probes the possibility of a green shift radical enough to permeate the ancient roots of our sensibility and the social sources of our practice. From new language for imagining the earth as a living ground to current constructions of nature in theology, science, and philosophy; from environmentalismas questioning of postmodern thought to a garden of green doctrines, rituals, and liturgies for contemporary religion, these original essays explore and expand our sense of how to proceed in the face of an ecological crisis that demands new thinking and acting. In the midst of planetary crisis, they activateimagination, humor, ritual, and hope.

In Care of Souls, David Benner offers a timely reminder of the benefits of recapturing the place of the spiritual in psychological work. Among the many benefits for individuals who receive a combination of the best of modern therapy and biblical guidance are an increased feeling of personal value and a willingness to put God's priorities above their own.

A Comprehensive Christian Resource for Treating Sexual Addiction and Problematic Sexual Behavior An estimated three to five percent of the U.S. population meet the criteria for sexual addiction, and many more engage in problematic sexual behavior or have been harmed by it. The statistics are startling: 77% of Christian men between 18 and 30 watch pornography monthly 35% of Christian men have had an extramarital affair 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls have been sexually abused Americans spend $13 billion a year on pornography, the regular viewing of which is linked to higher acceptance of violence against women and adversarial sexual beliefs. Therapists and pastors are not always adequately equipped to address the unique demands of competent care for those struggling with sexually addictive behaviors. Reclaiming Sexual Wholeness, edited by Todd Bowman, presents cutting-edge research from a diverse group of experts in a single, comprehensive resource intended for therapists, clergy, and others in helping professions. Contributors include Forest Benedict, Bill Bercaw, Ginger Bercaw, Todd Bowman, Marnie Ferree, Floyd Godfrey, Joshua Grubbs, Josh Hook, Fr. Sean Kilcawley, Debbie Laaser, Mark Laaser, Kevin Skinner, Bill Struthers, and Curt Thompson Reclaiming Sexual Wholeness moves beyond rote cognitive-behavioral approaches and treating sexual addictions solely as lust, adopting a biopsychosocial perspective that incorporates insights from attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology. The result is a thoroughly faith-integrated, up-to-date resource useful for the classroom, ongoing professional studies, and as a counseling resource.

Our current neoliberal capitalist economic system is based on unethical values. The twentieth century economist John Maynard Keynes recognized this and wrote of a time in the future when we could transcend those values. Unfortunately Keynes believed that this would somehow happen automatically, and did not grasp the necessity of the need now to directly challenge the values on which our society is based, instead of simply waiting for them to fade away. The Buddha identified the vital importance of working to uproot the poisons of greed and hatred in the human psyche and in human society, and to replace them with their counterparts of generosity and loving kindness, in order to allow a different society to come into being.

Judaism and the Economy is an edited collection of sixty-nine Jewish texts relating to economic issues such as wealth, poverty, inequality, charity, and the charging of interest. The passages cover the period from antiquity to the present, and represent many different genres. Primarily fresh translations, from their original languages, many appear here in English for the first time. Each is prefaced by an introduction and the volume as a whole is introduced by a synthetic essay. These texts, read together and in different combinations, provide a new lens for thinking about the economy and make the case that religion and religious values have a place in our own economic thinking. Judaism and the Economy is a useful new resource for educators, students, and clergy alike.

Drawing on a range of approaches developed by paediatric chaplaincy teams worldwide, this edited collection provides best principles, practices and skills of chaplaincy work with neonates, infants, children, young people and their families. By engaging with paediatric chaplaincy from an international, multifaith perspective, contributors from around the world and different faith traditions show what good spiritual, religious and pastoral care for children and their families looks like. The book contains contributions from specialists who work with children with mental health issues or profound disabilities, as well as chapters that focus on how best to provide palliative and bereavement care. Includes resources and activities for use in specialist care situations and tools for assessment, making this a must-have for any paediatric chaplaincy team working in a hospital or hospice.

Exploring the subjectivity of the Qur'an's meaning in the world, this book analyses Qur'anic referencing in Muslim political rhetoric. Informed by classical Arabic-Islamic rhetorical theory, the author examines Arabic documents attributed to the 'Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833), whose rule coincided with the maturation of classical Islamic political thought and literary culture. She demonstrates how Qur'anic referencing functions as tropological exegesis, whereby verses in the Qur'an are reinterpreted through the lens of subjective experience. At the same time socio-historical experiences are understood in terms of the Qur'an's moral typology, which consists of interrelated polarities that define good and bad moral characters in mutual orientation. Through strategic deployment of scriptural references within the logical scheme of rhetorical argument, the Caliph constructs moral analogies between paradigmatic characters in the Qur'an and people in his social milieu, and situates himself as moral reformer and guide, in order to persuade his audiences of the necessity of the Caliphate and the religio-moral imperative of obedience to his authority. The Ma'munid case study is indicative of the nature and function of Qur'anic referencing across historical periods, and thus contributes to broader conversations about the impact of the Qur'an on the shaping of Islamic civilization. This book is an invaluable resource for those with an interest in Early Islamic History, Islam and the rhetoric of contemporary Middle East regional and global Islamic politics.

Through a rich variety of case studies, this book provides insight into the patient's needs and the chaplain's perspective, as well as discussions of spiritual assessments and spiritual care interventions. Case studies such as a request to baptise a child complicated due to his admission for 'psychiatric reasons', as well as work with military veterans, such as a female transgender veteran who has been alienated from her faith, show the breadth and complexity of work that chaplains undertake daily. Each section also includes critical responses to the case studies presented from a chaplain and related healthcare professional. This book will enable chaplains to critically reflect on the spiritual care they provide, and provide an informed perspective for healthcare professionals and others involved in chaplaincy services.

Recent years have seen unprecedented attention to faith-based institutions as agents of social change, spurred in part by cuts in public funding for social services and accompanied by controversy about the separation of church and state. The debate over faith-based initiatives has highlighted a small but growing segment of churches committed to both saving souls and serving society. What distinguishes faith-based from secular activism? How do religious organizations express their religious identity in the context of social services? How do faith-based service providers interpret the connection between spiritual methodologies and socioeconomic outcomes? How does faith motivate and give meaning to social ministry? Drawing on case studies of fifteen Philadelphia-area Protestant churches with active outreach, Saving Souls, Serving Society seeks to answer these and other pressing questions surrounding the religious dynamics of social ministry. While church-based programs often look similar to secular ones in terms of goods or services rendered, they may show significant differences in terms of motivations, desired outcomes, and interpretations of meaning. Church-based programs also differ from one another in terms of how they relate evangelism to their social outreach agenda. Heidi Rolland Unruh and Ronald J. Sider explore how churches navigate the tension between their spiritual mission and the constraints on evangelism in the context of social services. The authors examine the potential contribution of religious dynamics to social outcomes as well as the relationship between mission orientations and social capital. Unruh and Sider introduce a new vocabulary for describing the religiouscomponents and spiritual meanings embedded in social action, and provide a typology of faith-based organizations and programs. Their analysis yields a framework for Protestant mission orientations that makes room for the diverse ways that churches interrelate spiritual witness and social compassion. Based on their observations, the authors offer a constructive approach to church-state partnerships and provide a far more objective understanding of faith-based social services than previously available.

This lively book focuses on how different Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities engage with new media. Rather than simply reject or accept new media, religious communities negotiate complex relationships with these technologies in light of their history and beliefs. Heidi Campbell suggests a method for studying these processes she calls the "religious-social shaping of technology" and students are asked to consider four key areas: religious tradition and history; contemporary community values and priorities; negotiation and innovating technology in light of the community; communal discourses applied to justify use.

A wealth of examples such as the Christian e-vangelism movement, Modern Islamic discourses about computers and the rise of the Jewish kosher cell phone, demonstrate the dominant strategies which emerge for religious media users, as well as the unique motivations that guide specific groups.