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Discover How Whitmans Spiritual Life and Vision Can Enlighten Your
Own Whitmans collected poems and prose are not an object or icon to
be gazed upon or revered but a transparency we look through to see
ourselves with greater clarity, excitement, and meaning. They wake
us up to our potential, to learning about and from ourselves. To
experience his writing is to experience ourselves more deeply. from
the Preface by Gary David Comstock Walt Whitman was the most
innovative and influential poet of the nineteenth century. The
self-proclaimed American Bard, Whitman challenged his
contemporaries to resist conforming to society and shocked them
with his embrace of the sensual. But beneath his manifesto for
social revolution lies a vigorous call for spiritual revolution as
well. This beautiful sampling of Whitmans most important poetry
from Leaves of Grass, and selections from his prose writings,
offers a glimpse into the spiritual side of his most radical
themeslove for country, love for others, and love of Self. Whitman
seeks to tear down the belief that the spiritual resides only in
the religious and embraces the idea that nothing is more divine
than humankind, nothing greater than the individual soul. Rich with
passion, reverence, and wonder, this unique collection offers
insight into Whitmans quest for self-discovery, which involved an
ongoing mystical experience of the world. Though seemingly
personal, his verse speaks to universal harmony and universal love,
optimism and joy, and celebrates the outwardly mundane details of
life through words electrified with love and spirit.
Publishers' catalogues are full of books on the Church's view of
homosexuality; Gary David Comstock here offers gay views of the
church. Given the often hostile environment, he asks why gay people
stay in religious institutions. Using social scientific methods, he
summarizes 36 surveys of gay attitudes toward religious
communities, including Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and Native American
traditions. He adds data from his survey of gay people in two
mainline Protestant denominations.
This book features interviews with twenty black scholars and
religious leaders who speak out--from various theological
perspectives--against institutional prejudice toward gay and
lesbian people. The interviews are conducted in a conversational
format in language that will be accessible and interesting to lay
readers.
Is it possible to be religious and to be gay, lesbian, or queer?
Until recently, many persons - gay or straight - would have said
no. But over the past decade or so, a vast literature has emerged
of personal narrative, apologetic, and polemic, asserting both the
existence and acceptability of such dual identities. Que(e)rying
Religion includes but moves beyond tradition-based experiential
writing by turning to the academic study of religion. It includes
work that compares or focuses on different religious traditions,
such as various forms of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,
and Native American spiritualities. It also incorporates writing on
various geographical areas and historical time periods. By assuming
a wide definition of religion, it raises questions about the terms
religion and religious themselves. Read together, the contents of
Que(e)rying Religion provide access to a broad selection of work at
the intersection of religious studies and lesbian/gay/queer
studies.
Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men is the first book to reveal
the shocking problem of anti-gay/lesbian violence. Beginning with
an overview of the emergence of lesbian and gay neighbourhoods in
major U.S. cities after World War II, Comstock describes how the
increased visibility of lesbians and gay men was followed by
physical attacks that were illegal but socially sanctioned. He
presents results of his survey on present-day violence and then
studies the perpetrators, using information supplied by survey
participants as well as reports from the media, court records, and
personal interviews. Finally, Comstock proposes a sociological
explanation for the fact that adolescent males are the group most
prone to violence against lesbians and gay men.
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