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Provides a thematic discussion and case studies on the history and development of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the countries of South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia.
Video game studies are a relative young but flourishing academic discipline. But within game studies, however, the perspective of religion and spirituality is rather neglected, both by game scholars and religion scholars. While religion can take different shapes in digital games, ranging from material and referential to reflexive and ritual, it is not necessarily true that game developers depict their in-game religions in a positive, confirming way, but ever so often games approach the topic critically and disavowingly. The religion criticisms found in video games can be categorized as follows: religion as (1) fraud, aimed to manipulate the uneducated, as (2) blind obedience towards an invisible but ultimately non-existing deity/ies, as (3) violence against those who do not share the same set of religious rules, as (4) madness, a deranged alternative for logical reasoning, and as (5) suppression in the hands of the powerful elite to dominate and subdue the masses into submission and obedience. The critical depictions of religion in video games by their developers is the focus of this special issue.
Building on long-time research and extensive interviews, this ground-breaking study offers a portrait of pentecostal / charismatic immigrants from the global South who do not define themselves as victims but as expatriate agents with a calling to change Europe.
In The Spirit of Praise, Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong bring together a multidisciplinary, scholarly exploration of music and worship in global pentecostal-charismatic Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Spirit of Praise contends that gaining a full understanding of this influential religious movement requires close listening to its songs and careful attention to its patterns of worship. The essays in this volume place ethnomusicological, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives into dialogue. By engaging with these disciplines and exploring themes of interconnection, interface, and identity within musical and ritual practices, the essays illuminate larger social processes such as globalization, sacralization, and secularization, as well as the role of religion in social and cultural change. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Peter Althouse, Will Boone, Mark Evans, Ryan R. Gladwin, Birgitta J. Johnson, Jean Ngoya Kidula, Miranda Klaver, Andrew Mall, Kimberly Jenkins Marshall, Andrew M. McCoy, Martijn Oosterbaan, Dave Perkins, Wen Reagan, Tanya Riches, Michael Webb, and Michael Wilkinson.
Christianity Today 2013 Book Award Winner Winner of The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship's 2012 Award of Excellence 2011 Book of the Year, Christianbook.com's Academic Blog Most modern prejudice against biblical miracle reports depends on David Hume's argument that uniform human experience precluded miracles. Yet current research shows that human experience is far from uniform. In fact, hundreds of millions of people today claim to have experienced miracles. New Testament scholar Craig Keener argues that it is time to rethink Hume's argument in light of the contemporary evidence available to us. This wide-ranging and meticulously researched two-volume study presents the most thorough current defense of the credibility of the miracle reports in the Gospels and Acts. Drawing on claims from a range of global cultures and taking a multidisciplinary approach to the topic, Keener suggests that many miracle accounts throughout history and from contemporary times are best explained as genuine divine acts, lending credence to the biblical miracle reports.
The main subjects of analysis in the present book are the stages of initiation in the grand scheme of Theosophical evolution. These initiatory steps are connected to an idea of evolutionary self-development by means of a set of virtues that are relative to the individual’s position on the path of evolution. The central thesis is that these stages were translated from the “Hindu” tradition to the “Theosophical” tradition through multifaceted “hybridization processes” in which several Indian members of the Theosophical Society partook. Starting with Annie Besant’s early Theosophy, the stages of initiation are traced through Blavatsky’s work to Manilal Dvivedi and T. Subba Row...
Offers a new perspective on the making of colonial education and the history of modern schooling in India.
In Transnational Religious Organization and Practice Stanley John provides the first in-depth analysis of a migrant Christian community in the Arabian Gulf. The book explores how Kerala (South India) Pentecostal churches in Kuwait organize and practice their Christian faith, given the status of their congregants as temporary economic migrants and noting that the transient status heightens their transnational orientation toward their homeland in India. The research follows a twofold agenda: first, examining the unique sociopolitical and migrational context within which the KPCs function, and second, analyzing the transnational character and structural patterns that have emerged in this context. The ethnographic research identifies and analyzes the emerging structures and practices of the KPCs through three lenses: networks, agents, and mission. This study concludes with a proposal for an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to be employed in the study of transnational religious communities.
In Lewi Pethrus’ Ecclesiological Thought 1911-1974: A Transdenominational Pentecostal Ecclesiology, Tommy Davidsson presents a chronological survey of the ecclesiology of the Swedish Pentecostal pioneer, Lewi Pethrus (1884-1974). The presentation is the first study of its kind and it demonstrates by means of a historical analysis the underlying factors that contributed to the formation of ecclesiological beliefs among Pentecostals. The insights from the historical analysis are then applied to a global setting. By employing Roger Haight’s Transdenominational Ecclesiology, Davidsson proposes a methodology that serves as a helpful tool when assessing the unifying values that characterise highly diverse Pentecostal communities worldwide.
Early Christianity varied in appearance as much as the geography and terrain of the ancient Middle East. Often "variety" became pitted against "orthodoxy." Montanism, or the New Prophecy, was founded by a Phrygian named Montanus along with two ecstatic prophetesses, Maximilla and Priscilla. Even the North African Church Father Tertullian was a supporter of the New Prophecy movement. The Montanist variety of Christianity, however, soon fell into disfavor by those later deemed "orthodox", also because women played an influential role in this movement. Today we know about Montanism only partially and that mainly from the writings of its Christian rivals. One tenet of Montanism was the belief th...