Figuring Religions

Figuring Religions
Author: Shubha Pathak
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438445393

Figuring Religions offers new ways of comparing prominent features of the world's religions. Comparison has been at the heart of religious studies as a modern academic discipline, but comparison can be problematic. Scholars of religion have been faulted for ignoring or reinterpreting differences to create a universal paradigm. In reaction, many of today's scholars have placed chief emphasis on the differences between traditions. Seeking to reinvigorate comparison and avoid its excesses, contributors to this volume use theories of metaphor and metonymy from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology to look at religious ideas, images, and activities. Traditions considered include Hinduism, ancient Greek religions, Judaism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. By applying trope theories, contributors reveal elements of these religions in and across their cultural contexts.

Figuring the Sacred

Figuring the Sacred
Author: Paul Ricœur
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 358
Release:
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781451415704

The thought of Paul Ricoeur continues its profound effect on theology, religious studies and biblical interpretation. The 28 papers contained in this volume constitute the most comprehensive overview of Ricoeur's writings in religion since 1970. Ricoeur's hermeneutical orientation and his sensitivity to the mystery of religious language offer fresh insight to the transformative potential of sacred literature, including the Bible.

Ecological Imaginations in the World Religions

Ecological Imaginations in the World Religions
Author: Tony Watling
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2009-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441174605

The field of religion and ecology is an emerging and growing movement that is becoming relevant and influential in the world. It seeks to analyse, encourage, inspire, use, compare, and combine religious traditions to engage and shape environmental issues. Tony Watling seeks to ethnographically analyse this important field and its expressions. In particular, he analyses and compares its explorations of different world religions for ecological themes and the resulting expressions of ecological visions, in what he terms 'religious ecotopias' - idealized, environmentally-friendly re-imaginings of nature and humanity, and correspondingly religion, which seek to influence environmental attitudes.

Finding Your Religion

Finding Your Religion
Author: Scotty McLennan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2000-12-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0060653469

An Indispensable Guidebook for Those Seeking a New Spiritual Path, or Wishing to Reconnect to the Religion of Their Youth

Magico-Religious Groups and Ritualistic Activities

Magico-Religious Groups and Ritualistic Activities
Author: Tony M. Kail
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2008-03-20
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 1040081150

More than just a litany of artifacts, rituals, and symbols, this valuable book provides a cultural bridge for emergency responders. It places the information in a relevant context and offers crucial keys to communication, assessment, and treatment in culturally sensitive situations. Beginning with the importance of trans-cultural communication, the book separates fact from fantasy regarding Neo-Paganism, Santeria, Bantu religion (Palo Mayombe), Voodoo, and Curanderismo. Promoting functional cultural competency, this book provides the tools to properly assess situations, open lines of communication, protect cultural diversity, and provide effective emergency treatment.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology
Author: John Hart
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1118465563

In the face of the current environmental crisis—which clearly has moral and spiritual dimensions—members of all the world’s faiths have come to recognize the critical importance of religion’s relationship to ecology. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology offers a comprehensive overview of the history and the latest developments in religious engagement with environmental issues throughout the world. Newly commissioned essays from noted scholars of diverse faiths and scientific traditions present the most cutting-edge thinking on religion’s relationship to the environment. Initial readings explore the ways traditional concepts of nature in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and other religious traditions have been shaped by the environmental crisis. Readings then address the changing nature of theology and religious thought in response to the challenges of protecting the environment. Various conceptual issues and themes that transcend individual traditions—climate change, bio-ethics, social justice, ecofeminism, and more—are then analyzed before a final section examines some of the immediate challenges we face in caring for the Earth while looking to the future of religious environmentalism. Timely and thought-provoking, Companion to Religion and Ecology offers illuminating insights into the role of religion in the ongoing struggle to secure the future well-being of our natural world. With a foreword by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, and an Afterword by John Cobb

Impact of Christianity on Indian and Australian Societies

Impact of Christianity on Indian and Australian Societies
Author: Ashok Rathore
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2017-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1514494612

This book by Professor (Dr.) Ashok Rathore compares influence of Christianity on Australian Dreamtime belief and Indian Hinduism (Sanatan Dharm) religion. This is innovative work of theology and sociology with mature understanding of Christianity in two Indian subcontinents and Australian continent. The author has worked in America, Australia, and the Philippines and interacted with people of various faiths and religions (Jews, Christians, freemasons, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhists, Unitarians, atheists, and numerous movements). Being a skeptic, the author always asked this question: where and why do we differ and have different religions, and where do we converge? In the world, with over two billion Christians, why is Christianity so popular worldwide? Why does Christianity remained stagnant at 2.3 percent in India? Whereas Christianity arrived in Australia only 227 years ago from Britain and over 70 percent Aborigines were converted to Christianity. The book evince There is no relative superiority of one religion over another. The world needs is a fellowship of faiths for a common goals for a global ethic which rejects conflict, revenge, aggression and retaliation with the foundation of love. The book is expected to serve as an important component to improve relationship for theologians, biblical scholars of different religions at an international level in both countries so that a common set of core values is found in the teachings and understanding of different religions and this will form the basis of a global ethic as recommended by the 1993 Parliament of the World. India is called the Land of Faith and Religion. One can witness the Indians practicing almost all the religions prevalent in the present world - Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism and many others (including many movements and cults). Christianity's greatest contribution to our understanding of God is, Jesus of Nazareth.

Religious Credibility under Fire

Religious Credibility under Fire
Author: Leif-Hagen Seibert
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3658210338

Leif-Hagen Seibert carries out a three-step praxeological analysis of empirical data from field studies in the research project “The ethos of religious peace builders” that allows for novel assessments of societal conjuncture (field theory), subjective meaning (habitus analysis), and the mutual ‘rules of engagement’ of religious practice (the religious nomos). Over the course of this three-step argument, the sociological concept of religious credibility – i.e. the determinants of religious legitimacy – gains more and more contours and facilitates the reevaluation of risks and chances in a peace process where religion is a vector for both peace and division.

Finding Faith Today

Finding Faith Today
Author: Bryan P. Stone
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2018-10-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532651481

How do persons come to faith in our time? Are they active seekers or brought in by others? Is it a journey? Or is it a more sudden conversion? Are spouses, relatives, and friends most important to the process? Do clergy matter? What sorts of values, practices, and lifestyles tend to change for those who newly come to faith? What are the differences among the various religious traditions in how one comes to faith? This book presents the findings of a multi-year study on how people come to faith in the US context. It involves about 1,800 persons who recently made a new profession of faith or some other public commitment across various religious traditions in the US. An initial study was conducted twenty-five years ago on Christian populations in England by Bishop John Finney, but surprisingly little research has been done since then. Finding Faith Today is an expansion and follow-up of that study. The book sheds new light on how people come to faith and what sort of spiritual, practical, and social changes accompany that. The book will be a help to those seeking to open up their communities of faith to others with hospitality and integrity.

The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism

The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism
Author: Anna Strhan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198789610

What does it mean to grow up as an evangelical Christian today? What meanings does 'childhood' have for evangelical adults? How does this shape their engagements with children and with schools? And what does this mean for the everyday realities of children's lives? Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork carried out in three contrasting evangelical churches in the UK, Anna Strhan reveals how attending to the significance of children within evangelicalism deepens understanding of evangelicals' hopes, fears and concerns, not only for children, but for wider British society. Developing a new, relational approach to the study of children and religion, Strhan invites the reader to consider both the complexities of children's agency and how the figure of the child shapes the hopes, fears, and imaginations of adults, within and beyond evangelicalism. The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism explores the lived realities of how evangelical Christians engage with children across the spaces of church, school, home, and other informal educational spaces in a de-christianizing cultural context, how children experience these forms of engagement, and the meanings and significance of childhood. Providing insight into different churches' contemporary cultural and moral orientations, the book reveals how conservative evangelicals experience their understanding of childhood as increasingly countercultural, while charismatic and open evangelicals locate their work with children as a significant means of engaging with wider secular society. Setting out an approach that explores the relations between the figure of the child, children's experiences, and how adult religious subjectivities are formed in both imagined and practical relationships with children, this study situates childhood as an important area of study within the sociology of religion and examines how we should approach childhood within this field, both theoretically and methodologically.