This book is a microsociological study of religious practice, based on fieldwork with Conservative Jews, Bible Belt Muslims, white Baptists, black Baptists, Buddhist meditators, and Latino Catholics. In each case, the author scrutinizes how a congregation's ritual strategies help or hinder their efforts to achieve a transformative spiritual encounter, an intense feeling that becomes the basis of their most fundamental understandings of reality. The book shows how these transformative spiritual encounters routinely depend on issues that can seem rather mundane by comparison, such as where the sanctuary's entrance is located, how many misprints end up in the church bulletin, or how long the preacher continues to preach beyond lunchtime. The spirit responds to other dynamics, as well, such as how congregations collectively imagine outsiders, or how they talk about ideas like individualism and patriarchy. Building on provocative theories from sociologists such as Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Randall Collins, and Anne Warfield Rawls, this book shows how "interaction ritual theory" opens compelling new pathways for sociological scholarship on religion. Micro-level specifics from fieldwork in Texas are supplemented with large-scale survey analysis of a wide array of religious organizations from across the United States.

The 7th International Conference on Scour and Erosion (ICSE 2014) was organised by the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering and the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems at the University of Western Australia under the guidance of the Technical Committee 213 for Scour and Erosion of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). This biennial conference draws together leading academics, scientists and engineers engaged in scour and erosion research to present and exchange their latest scientific findings. These proceedings, together with the six previous proceedings dating from 2002, present a rare collection of technical and scientific developments in scour and erosion research which have been established over the last 12 years. This book includes state-of-the-art papers in scour and erosion from ICSE 2014, covering the 6 themes of: internal erosion, sediment transport, advanced numerical modelling of scour and erosion, terrestrial scour and erosion, river/bridge scour and erosion, and marine scour and erosion. The proceedings include 5 keynote lectures from world leading researches cutting across the themes of scour and erosion, together with 87 peer-reviewed papers from 19 countries. This book is ideal for researchers and industry working at the forefront of scour and erosion, both with application to rivers and marine operations.

This book is a microsociological study of religious practice, based on fieldwork with Conservative Jews, Bible Belt Muslims, white Baptists, black Baptists, Buddhist meditators, and Latino Catholics. In each case, the author scrutinizes how a congregation's ritual strategies help or hinder their efforts to achieve a transformative spiritual encounter, an intense feeling that becomes the basis of their most fundamental understandings of reality. The book shows how these transformative spiritual encounters routinely depend on issues that can seem rather mundane by comparison, such as where the sanctuary's entrance is located, how many misprints end up in the church bulletin, or how long the preacher continues to preach beyond lunchtime. The spirit responds to other dynamics, as well, such as how congregations collectively imagine outsiders, or how they talk about ideas like individualism and patriarchy. Building on provocative theories from sociologists such as Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Randall Collins, and Anne Warfield Rawls, this book shows how "interaction ritual theory" opens compelling new pathways for sociological scholarship on religion. Micro-level specifics from fieldwork in Texas are supplemented with large-scale survey analysis of a wide array of religious organizations from across the United States.

This book challenges the reader to understand the importance of "the freedom of religion" concept granted by our forefathers, and further enumerates the agenda of the Christian-Right, and compares their behavior with the original life, work, and teachings of Christ The conclusions force us to see the Christian-Right as neither being Christ-like nor right (correct, ) a true oxymoron, in and of itself.