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A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American
Par Kathleen Sprows Cummings. 2019
What drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest, full of twists and turns over more than a century, to win…
an American saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints had left many of the faithful feeling spiritually unmoored. But while canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, reveals Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this panoramic, passionate chronicle of American sanctity. Catholics had another reason for petitioning the Vatican to acknowledge an American holy hero.A home-grown saint would serve as a mediator between heaven and earth, yes, but also between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was also about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton to many others that are failed, forgotten, or still under way—represented evolving national values as Catholics made themselves at home. Cummings's vision of American sanctity shows just how much Catholics had at stake in cultivating devotion to men and women perched at the nexus of holiness and American history—until they finally felt little need to prove that they belonged.Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States
Par Bethany Moreton, Gillian Frank, Heather R. White. 2018
At a moment when "freedom of religion" rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion…
have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation's changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics. The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D'Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion (Religion and American Culture)
Par Michael D. McNally. 2009
Like many Native Americans, Ojibwe people esteem the wisdom, authority, and religious significance of old age, but this respect does…
not come easily or naturally. It is the fruit of hard work, rooted in narrative traditions, moral vision, and ritualized practices of decorum that are comparable in sophistication to those of Confucianism. Even as the dispossession and policies of assimilation have threatened Ojibwe peoplehood and have targeted the traditions and the elders who embody it, Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe communities have been resolute and resourceful in their disciplined respect for elders. Indeed, the challenges of colonization have served to accentuate eldership in new ways.Using archival and ethnographic research, Michael D. McNally follows the making of Ojibwe eldership, showing that deference to older women and men is part of a fuller moral, aesthetic, and cosmological vision connected to the ongoing circle of life-a tradition of authority that has been crucial to surviving colonization. McNally argues that the tradition of authority and the authority of tradition frame a decidedly indigenous dialectic, eluding analytic frameworks of invented tradition and naïve continuity. Demonstrating the rich possibilities of treating age as a category of analysis, McNally provocatively asserts that the elder belongs alongside the priest, prophet, sage, and other key figures in the study of religion.Beyond Sacred and Secular: Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey
Par Sultan Tepe. 2008
The global rise of political religion is one of the defining and most puzzling characteristics of current world politics. Since…
the early 1990s, religious parties have achieved stunning electoral victories around the world. Beyond Sacred and Secular investigates religious politics and its implications for contemporary democracy through a comparison of political parties in Israel and Turkey. While the politics of Judaism and Islam are typically seen as outgrowths of oppositionally different beliefs, Sultan Tepe's comparative inquiry shows how limiting this understanding of religious politics can be. Her cross-country and cross-religion analysis develops a unique approach to identify religious parties' idiosyncratic and shared characteristics without reducing them to simple categories of religious/secular, Judeo-Christian/Islamic, or democratic/antidemocratic. Tepe shows that religious parties in both Israel and Turkey attract broad coalitions of supporters and skillfully inhabit religious and secular worlds simultaneously. They imbue existing traditional ideas with new political messages, blur conventional political lines and allegiances, offer strategic political choices, and exhibit remarkably similar political views. This book's findings will be especially relevant to those who want to pass beyond rudimentary typologies to better assess religious parties' capacities to undermine and contribute to liberal democracy. The Israeli and Turkish cases open a window to better understand the complexities of religious parties. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the characteristics of religious political parties—whether Jewish, Muslim, or yet another religion—can be as striking in their similarities as in their differences.Motivated by a theology that declared missionary work was independent of secular colonial pursuits, Protestant missionaries from Germany operated in…
ways that contradict current and prevailing interpretations of nineteenth-century missionary work. As a result of their travels, these missionaries contributed to Germany’s colonial culture. Because of their theology of Christian universalism, they worked against the bigoted racialism and ultra-nationalism of secular German empire-building. Heavenly Fatherland provides a detailed political and cultural analysis of missionaries, mission societies, mission intellectuals, and missionary supporters. Combining cases studies from East Africa with studies of the metropole, this book demonstrates that missionaries’ ideas about race and colonialism influenced ordinary Germans’ experience of globalization and colonialism at the same time that the missionaries shaped colonial governance. By bringing together religious and colonial history, the book opens new avenues of inquiry into Christian participation in colonialism. During the Age of Empire, German missionaries promoted an internationalist vision of the modern world that aimed to create a multinational, multiracial "heavenly Fatherland" spread across the globe.Ibn Sina’s Remarks and Admonitions: An Analysis and Annotated Translation
Par Shams C. Inati. 2014
Al-Isharat wal-Tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions) is one of the most mature and comprehensive philosophical works by Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037).…
Grounded in an exploration of logic (which Ibn Sina described as the gate to knowledge) and happiness (the ultimate human goal), the text illuminates the divine, the human being, and the nature of things through a wide-ranging discussion of topics. The sections of Physics and Metaphysics deal with the nature of bodies and souls as well as existence, creation, and knowledge. Especially important are Ibn Sina's views of God's knowledge of particulars, which generated much controversy in medieval Islamic and Christian philosophical and theological circles and provoked a strong rejection by eleventh-century philosopher al-Ghazali.This book provides the first annotated English translation of Physics and Metaphysics and edits the original Arabic text on which the translation is based. It begins with a detailed analysis of the text, followed by a translation of the three classes or groups of ideas in the Physics (On the Substance of Bodies, On the Directions and Their Primary and Secondary Bodies, and On the Terrestrial and Celestial Souls) and the four in the Metaphysics (On Existence and Its Causes, Creation Ex Nihilo and Immediate Creation, On Ends, on Their Principles, and on the Arrangement [of Existence], and On Abstraction. The Metaphysics closes with a significant discussion of the concepts of providence, good, and evil, which Ibn Sina uses to introduce a theodicy.Researchers, faculty, and students in philosophy, theology, religion, and intellectual history will find in this work a useful and necessary source for understanding Ibn Sina's philosophical thought and, more generally, the medieval Islamic and Christian study of nature, the world beyond, psychology, God, and the concept of evil.Judaism in Motion: The Making of Same-Sex Parenthood in Israel (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion)
Par Sibylle Lustenberger. 2020
In Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate wields historically sanctioned influence over the legal definitions of marriage and parenthood, same-sex parenthood…
raises important questions such as what constitutes belonging to the national collective, who has the authority to define the norms of reproduction, and where the boundaries of Orthodox Judaism begin and end. Judaism in Motion addresses these questions from a transgenerational perspective that pays heed to how religiously informed rules, norms, and practices of transferring material properties, names, and societal belonging are adopted and transformed. It presents a detailed ethnographic account of the dynamic interaction between kinship, religion, and the state that complicates the commonly held assumption that places same-sex parenthood in a radically secular sphere that stands in stark opposition to Orthodox Judaism. Taking same-sex parenthood as a prism through which society at large is reflected, this volume further explores how transformations of societal structures take place, and what flexibility and leeway exist in organized religions.This volume brings together diverse Asian religious perspectives to address critical issues in the encounter between tradition and modern western…
evolutionary thought. Such thought encompasses the biological theories of Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Earnest Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, and later “neo-Darwinians,” as well as the more sociological evolutionary theories of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Henri Bergson. The essays in this volume cover responses from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist (Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Tibetan), Confucian, Daoist, and Muslim traditions. These responses come from the decades immediately after publication of The Origin of Species up to the present, with attention being paid to earlier perspectives and teachings within a tradition that have affected responses to Darwinism and western evolutionary thought in general. The book focuses on three critical issues: the struggle for survival and the moral implications read into it; genetic variation and its seeming randomness as related to the problems of meaning and purpose; and the nature of humankind and human exceptionalism. Each essay deals with one or more of the three issues within the context of a specific tradition.Women In The Priesthood?: A Systematic Analysis In The Light Of The Order Of Creation And Redemption
Par Manfred Hauke, David Kipp. 1988
A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses: Tales of the Feminine Divine from India and Beyond
Par Michael Slouber. 2020
Imagining the divine as female is rare—even controversial—in most religions. Hinduism, by contrast, preserves a rich and continuous tradition of…
goddess worship. A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses conveys the diversity of this tradition by bringing together a fresh array of captivating and largely overlooked Hindu goddess tales from different regions. As the first such anthology of goddess narratives in translation, this collection highlights a range of sources from ancient myths to modern lore. The goddesses featured here battle demons, perform miracles, and grant rare Tantric visions to their devotees. Each translation is paired with a short essay that explains the goddess’s historical and social context, elucidating the ways religion adapts to changing times.Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice
Par Thaddeus J. Williams. 2020
God does not suggest, he commands that we do justice.Social justice is not optional for the Christian. All injustice affects…
others, so talking about justice that isn't social is like talking about water that isn't wet or a square with no right angles. But the Bible's call to seek justice is not a call to superficial, kneejerk activism. We are not merely commanded to execute justice, but to "truly execute justice." The God who commands us to seek justice is the same God who commands us to "test everything" and "hold fast to what is good."Drawing from a diverse range of theologians, sociologists, artists, and activists, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, by Thaddeus Williams, makes the case that we must be discerning if we are to "truly execute justice" as Scripture commands. Not everything called "social justice" today is compatible with a biblical vision of a better world. The Bible offers hopeful and distinctive answers to deep questions of worship, community, salvation, and knowledge that ought to mark a uniquely Christian pursuit of justice. Topics addressed include:RacismSexualitySocialismCulture WarAbortionTribalismCritical TheoryIdentity PoliticsConfronting Injustice without Compromising Truth also brings in unique voices to talk about their experiences with these various social justice issues, including:Michelle-Lee BarnwallSuresh BudhaprithiEddie ByunFreddie CardozaBecket CookBella DanusiarMonique DusonOjo OkeyeEdwin RamirezSamuel SeyNeil ShenviWalt SobchakIn Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Thaddeus Williams transcends our religious and political tribalism and challenges readers to discover what the Bible and the example of Jesus have to teach us about justice. He presents a compelling vision of justice for all God's image-bearers that offers hopeful answers to life's biggest questions.Between a Man and a Woman?: Why Conservatives Oppose Same-Sex Marriage (Gender, Theory, and Religion)
Par Ludger H. Viefhues-Bailey. 2010
Through a probing investigation of conservative Christianity and its response to an issue that, according to the statistics of conservative…
Christian groups, affects only a small number of Americans, Ludger Viefhues-Bailey alights on a profound theological conundrum: in today's conservative Christian movement, both sexes are called upon to be at once assertive and submissive, masculine and feminine, not only within the home but also within the church, society, and the state. Therefore the arguments of conservative Christians against same-sex marriage involve more than literal readings of the Bible or nostalgia for simple gender roles.Focusing primarily on texts produced by Focus on the Family, a leading media and ministry organization informing conservative Christian culture, Viefhues-Bailey identifies two distinct ideas of male homosexuality: gender-disturbed and passive; and oversexed, strongly masculine, and aggressive. These homosexualities enable a complex ideal of Christian masculinity in which men are encouraged to be assertive toward the world while also being submissive toward God and family. This web of sexual contradiction influences the flow of power between the sexes and within the state. It joins notions of sexual equality to claims of "natural" difference, establishing a fraught basis for respectable romantic marriage. Heterosexual union is then treated as emblematic of, if not essential to, the success of American political life-yet far from creating gender stability, these tensions produce an endless striving for balance. Viefhues-Bailey's final, brilliant move is to connect the desire for stability to the conservative Christian movement's strategies of political power.Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet
Par Janet Gyatso. 2015
Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a…
Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization.Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.Paleobiology of the Polycystine Radiolaria (TOPA Topics in Paleobiology)
Par Noritoshi Suzuki, David Lazarus, Yoshiyuki Ishitani, Kozo Takahashi. 2021
Polycystine radiolaria are exclusively marine protists and are found in all ocean waters, from polar regions to the tropics, and at all water depths.…
There are approximately 600 distinct described living species and several thousand fossil species of polycystines. Radiolarians in general, and polycystines in particular, have recently been shown to be a major component of the living plankton and important to the oceanic carbon cycle. As fossils radiolarians are also fairly common, and often occur in sediments where other types of fossils are absent. This has made them very valuable for certain types of geologic research, particularly estimating the geologic age of the sediments containing them, and as guides to past oceanic water conditions. As our current understanding of the biology, and even taxonomy of the living fauna is still very incomplete, evolutionary studies based on living polycystines are still rare. However, the common occurrence of numerous specimens for many species, and in a wide variety of oceanic environments, provides an excellent opportunity to study the processes of biologic evolution in the fossil record. Paleobiology of the Polycystine Radiolaria is the first major book on radiolarians to appear in the western literature since 2001. Focusing on living and fossil siliceous shelled radiolarians, it is notable for its emphasis not upon morphologic or taxonomic detail but on concepts and applications. The book attempts to provide a balanced, critical review of what is known of the biology, ecology, and fossil record of the group, as well as their use in evolutionary, biostratigraphic and paleoceanographic research. Full chapters on the history of study, and molecular biology, are the first ever in book form. Written for an audience of advanced undergraduate to doctoral students, as well as for a broad range of professionals in the biological and Earth sciences, Paleobiology of the Polycystine Radiolaria summarizes current understanding of the marine planktonic protist group polycystine radiolaria, both in living and fossil form.Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (Columbia Series in Science and Religion)
Par Alan Wallace. 2003
Buddhism and Science brings together distinguished philosophers, Buddhist scholars, physicists, and cognitive scientists to examine the contrasts and connections between…
the worlds of Western science and Eastern spirituality. This compilation was inspired by a suggestion made by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, himself one of the contributors, after one of a series of cross-cultural scientific dialogues in Dharamsala, India, sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute. Other contributors such as William L. Ames, Matthieu Ricard, and Stephen LaBerge assess not only the fruits of inquiry from East and West but also shed light on the underlying assumptions of these disparate worldviews. Their essays creatively address a broad range of topics: from quantum theory's surprising affinities with the Buddhist concept of emptiness, to the increasing need in the West for a more contemplative science attuned to the first-person investigation of the mind, to the important ways in which the psychological study of "lucid dreaming" maps similar terrain to the cultivation of the Tibetan Buddhist discipline of dream yoga. Reflecting its wide variety of topics, Buddhism and Science is comprised of three sections. The first presents two historical overviews of the engagements between Buddhism and modern science or, rather, how Buddhism and modern science have defined, rivaled, or complemented one another. The second describes the ways Buddhism and the cognitive sciences inform each other; the third addresses points of intersection between Buddhism and the physical sciences. On the broadest level this work illuminates how different ways of exploring the nature of human identity, the mind, and the universe at large can enrich and enlighten one another.The Buddhist Visnu: Religious Transformation, Politics, and Culture
Par John Holt. 2004
John Holt's groundbreaking study examines the assimilation, transformation, and subordination of the Hindu deity Visnu within the contexts of Sri…
Lankan history and Sinhala Buddhist religious culture. Holt argues that political agendas and social forces, as much as doctrinal concerns, have shaped the shifting patterns of the veneration of Visnu in Sri Lanka.Holt begins with a comparative look at the assimilation of the Buddha in Hinduism. He then explores the role and rationale of medieval Sinhala kings in assimilating Visnu into Sinhala Buddhism. Offering analyses of texts, many of which have never before been translated into English, Holt considers the development of Visnu in Buddhist literature and the changing practices of deity veneration. Shifting to the present, Holt describes the efforts of contemporary Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka to discourage the veneration of Visnu, suggesting that many are motivated by a reactionary fear that their culture and society will soon be overrun by the influences and practices of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.Boundaries of Toleration (Religion, Culture, and Public Life #16)
Par Charles Taylor, Alfred Stepan. 2014
How can people of diverse religious, ethnic, and linguistic allegiances and identities live together without committing violence, inflicting suffering, or…
oppressing each other? In this volume, contributors explore the limits of toleration and suggest we think beyond them to mutual respect. Salman Rushdie reflects on the once tolerant Sufi-Hindu culture of Kashmir. Ira Katznelson follows with an intellectual history of toleration as a layered institution in the West. Charles Taylor advances a new approach to secularism in our multicultural world, and Akeel Bilgrami responds by offering context and caution to that approach. Nadia Urbinati explores why Cicero's humanist ideal of Concord was not used in response to religious discord. The volume concludes with a refutation of the claim that toleration was invented in the West. Rajeev Bhargava writes on Asoka's India, and Karen Barkey explores toleration within the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Sudipta Kaviraj examines accommodations and conflicts in India, and Alfred Stepan highlights contributions to toleration and multiple democratic secularisms in such Muslim-majority countries as Indonesia and Senegal.August Turak is a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, and award-winning author who attributes much of his success to living and…
working alongside the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey for seventeen years. As a frequent monastic guest, he learned firsthand from the monks as they grew an incredibly successful portfolio of businesses.Service and selflessness are at the heart of the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition's remarkable business success. It is an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. Combining vivid case studies from his thirty-year business career with intimate portraits of the monks at work, Turak shows how Trappist principles can be successfully applied to a variety of secular business settings and to our personal lives as well. He demonstrates that monks and people like Warren Buffett are wildly successful not despite their high principles but because of them. Turak also introduces other "transformational organizations" that share the crucial monastic business strategies so critical for success.Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology
Par Donald R. Prothero. 2013
One of the leading textbooks in its field, Bringing Fossils to Life applies paleobiological principles to the fossil record while…
detailing the evolutionary history of major plant and animal phyla. It incorporates current research from biology, ecology, and population genetics, bridging the gap between purely theoretical paleobiological textbooks and those that describe only invertebrate paleobiology and that emphasize cataloguing live organisms instead of dead objects. For this third edition Donald R. Prothero has revised the art and research throughout, expanding the coverage of invertebrates and adding a discussion of new methodologies and a chapter on the origin and early evolution of life.Premodern Buddhists are sometimes characterized as veritable "mind scientists" whose insights anticipate modern research on the brain and mind. Aiming…
to complicate this story, Dan Arnold confronts a significant obstacle to popular attempts at harmonizing classical Buddhist and modern scientific thought: since most Indian Buddhists held that the mental continuum is uninterrupted by death (its continuity is what Buddhists mean by "rebirth"), they would have no truck with the idea that everything about the mental can be explained in terms of brain events. Nevertheless, a predominant stream of Indian Buddhist thought, associated with the seventh-century thinker Dharmakirti, turns out to be vulnerable to arguments modern philosophers have leveled against physicalism.By characterizing the philosophical problems commonly faced by Dharmakirti and contemporary philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett, Arnold seeks to advance an understanding of both first-millennium Indian arguments and contemporary debates on the philosophy of mind. The issues center on what modern philosophers have called intentionality—the fact that the mind can be about (or represent or mean) other things. Tracing an account of intentionality through Kant, Wilfrid Sellars, and John McDowell, Arnold argues that intentionality cannot, in principle, be explained in causal terms.Elaborating some of Dharmakirti's central commitments (chiefly his apoha theory of meaning and his account of self-awareness), Arnold shows that despite his concern to refute physicalism, Dharmakirti's causal explanations of the mental mean that modern arguments from intentionality cut as much against his project as they do against physicalist philosophies of mind. This is evident in the arguments of some of Dharmakirti's contemporaneous Indian critics (proponents of the orthodox Brahmanical Mimasa school as well as fellow Buddhists from the Madhyamaka school of thought), whose critiques exemplify the same logic as modern arguments from intentionality. Elaborating these various strands of thought, Arnold shows that seemingly arcane arguments among first-millennium Indian thinkers can illuminate matters still very much at the heart of contemporary philosophy.