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What Is a Person?
The task of understanding human beings, what we ourselves are, our constitution and condition, is a perennial problem in philosophy and related disciplines. Smith argues here that our understanding of human persons is threatened by technological development and capricious academic theories alike, seeking to deny or relativize the personhood of humanity. Smith's book puts a stake in the ground, in defense of a view of the human that is genuinely humanistic in the traditional sense and capable of sustaining with intellectual coherence things like modern human rights and universal benevolence.
The Bible Made Impossible
Biblicism, an approach to the Bible common among some American evangelicals, emphasizes together the Bible's exclusive authority, infallibility, clarity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability. Acclaimed sociologist Christian Smith argues that this approach is misguided and unable to live up to its own claims. If evangelical biblicism worked as its proponents say it should, there would not be the vast variety of interpretive differences that biblicists themselves reach when they actually read and interpret the Bible. Far from challenging the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Smith critiques a particular rendering of it, encouraging evangelicals to seek a more responsible, coherent, and defensible approach to biblical authority. This important book has generated lively discussion and debate. The paperback edition adds a new chapter responding to the conversation that the cloth edition has sparked.
To Flourish Or Destruct
Christian Smith is a force to conjure with in sociology, both in its empirical forays (studies of youth and religious life) and in its higher reaches of theory, where his work sets out to move culture, morality, and identity to the center of social thought. We published his 2011 book, What Is a Person?, to critical plaudits and healthy sales. Striking a middle path between extremes of positivist science and relativism, Smith’s theory of personhood teased out how we can know what is good in personal and social life, and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. To Flourish or Destruct is a sequel. It builds on the earlier book to explore the question of human motivations fo...
The Scientist and the Psychic
Weaving together the story of his fractured relationship to his mother with research into her paranormal abilities, Dr. Christian Smith has created, in The Scientist and the Psychic, a captivating, one-of-a-kind memoir of belief, skepticism and familial love. Christian Smith realized his mother was different in the autumn of 1977 when he was eight years old. Before then, he'd witnessed séances at home and the kids at school sometimes teased him about his mom being a witch--so he sensed that his life wasn't typical. But it wasn't until he was backstage at a renowned concert venue in Toronto, watching from behind a curtain as Geraldine commanded an audience of 2,000 with her extrasensory read...
Soul Searching : The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
In innumerable discussions and activities dedicated to better understanding and helping teenagers, one aspect of teenage life is curiously overlooked. Very few such efforts pay serious attention to the role of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents. But many teenagers are very involved in religion. Surveys reveal that 35% attend religious services weekly and another 15% attend at least monthly. 60% say that religious faith is important in their lives. 40% report that they pray daily. 25% say that they have been "born again." Teenagers feel good about the congregations they belong to. Some say that faith provides them with guidance and resources for knowing how to live...
Handing Down the Faith
"This book is about how American religious parents approach the handing on of their religious practices and beliefs to their children. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission and factors that influence its effectiveness. But we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves when it comes to the intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice"--
Moral, Believing Animals
In Moral, Believing Animals, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory.
Souls in Transition
Based on candid interviews with thousands of young people tracked over a five-year period, this book reveals how the religious practices of the teenagers portrayed in Soul Searching have been strengthened, challenged, and often changed as they have moved into adulthood.
Religion
A groundbreaking new theory of religion Religion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past. Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place—uniquely so as a species—and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which religious scholarship has been stuck for so long. Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.
The Emergence of Liberation Theology
Liberation theology is a school of Roman Catholic thought which teaches that a primary duty of the church must be to promote social and economic justice. In this book, Christian Smith explains how and why the liberation theology movement emerged and succeeded when and where it did.
