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This collection of essays analyzes ‛tradition’ as a category in the historical and comparative study of religion. The book questions the common assumption that tradition is simply the “passing down” or imitation of prior practices and discourses. It begins from the premise that many traditions are, at least in part, social fabrications, often deliberately serving particular ideological ends. Individual chapters examine a wide variety of historical periods and religions (Congolese, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Cree, Esoteric, Hawaiian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, New Religious Movement, and Shinto). Different sections of the book consider tradition's relation to three sets of issues: legitimation and authority; agency and identity; modernity and the West.
This work offers an enlightening look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan's most influential and controversial religious movements and one that is experiencing explosive international growth.
The clash between the religious right and the secular left undermines any serious debate about the role of religion in American public life. Such strident cultural rhetoric often ignores the positive contributions of America's many religions. By contrast, this volume celebrates America's religious diversity, demonstrating that religious pluralism is actually one of democracy's basic building blocks. Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously expands on Barbara A. McGraw's framework for understanding religious participation in public life--a two-tiered public forum, consisting of the civic public forum and the conscientious public forum. The chapters explore how diverse religious communities and traditions, including "newer" and marginalized religions, can make a meaningful contribution to American society and politics.
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion draws on the expertise of an international team of scholars providing both an entry point into the sociological study and understanding of religion and an in-depth survey into its changing forms and content in the contemporary world. The role and impact of religion and spirituality on the politics, culture, education and health in the modern world is rigorously discussed and debated. The study of the sociology of religion forges interdisciplinary links to explore aspects of continuity and change in the contemporary interface between society and religion. Using a combination of theoretical, methodological and content-led approaches, the fifty-s...
Based on a symposium held in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Cultures of Italian Migration allows the adjective 'Italian' to qualify people's movements along diverse trajectories and temporal dimensions. Discussions on migrations to and from Italy meet in that discursive space where critical concepts like 'home,' 'identity,' 'subjectivity,' and 'otherness' eschew stereotyping. This volume demonstrates that interpretations of old migrations are necessary in order to talk about contemporary Italy. New migrations trace new non linear paths in the definition of a multicultural Italy whose roots are unmistakably present throughout the centuries. Some of these essays concentrate on topics that are historically long-term, such as emigration from Italy to the Americas and southern Pacific Ocean. Others focus on the more contemporary phenomena of immigration to Italy from other parts of the world, including Africa. This collection ultimately offers an invitation to seek out new and different modes of analyzing the migratory act.
An introduction to the study of women in diverse religious cultures While women have made gains in equality over the past two centuries, equality for women in many religious traditions remains contested throughout the world. In the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints women are not ordained as priests. In areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan under Taliban occupation girls and women students and their teachers risk their lives to go to school. And in Sri Lanka, fully ordained Buddhist nuns are denied the government identity cards that recognize them as citizens. Is it possible to create families, societies, and religions in which women and men are equal? And ...
In an examination of religion coverage in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Ebony, Christianity Today, National Review, and other news and special interest magazines, Sean McCloud combines religious history and social theory to analyze how and why mass-market magazines depicted religions as "mainstream" or "fringe" in the post-World War II United States. McCloud argues that in assuming an American mainstream that was white, middle class, and religiously liberal, journalists in the largest magazines, under the guise of objective reporting, offered a spiritual apologetics for the dominant social order. McCloud analyzes articles on a wide range of religious movements from the 195...
Drawing on scholarship from an array of disciplines, this volume provides a deep and timely look at the intertwining of race and religion in American politics. The contributors apply the methods of intersectionality, but where this approach has typically considered race, class, and gender, the essays collected here focus on religion, too, to offer a theoretically robust conceptualization of how these elements intersect--and how they are actively impacting the political process. Contributors Antony W. Alumkal, Iliff School of Theology * Carlos Figueroa, University of Texas at Brownsville * Robert D. Francis, Lutheran Services in America * Susan M. Gordon, independent scholar * Edwin I. Herná...