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Hans Mol's imprisonment by the Gestapo during World War II began a long intellectual journey, exploring the role of religion in society. Part One of this book includes a brief outline of Mol’s most influential theory, explicated in Identity and the Sacred (1976). Part Two is comprised of four previously-unpublished essays written by Mol during the 70s and 80s, covering topics from evolution to evangelicalism. This volume concludes with transcripts of interviews conducted with Hans Mol during 2012. This volume of Mol’s work will be of keen interest to academics and students with an interest in the sociology of religion post-World War II and the development of contemporary Christian theology.
Before Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and Martin Luther King, Jr., there was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. -- the most celebrated and controversial black politician of his generation. An astute businessman known as "Mr. Civil Rights," he represented Harlem for twenty-four years in the House of Representatives. He was a man of the cloth and a civil rights leader, but Powell's reputation for flamboyance, arrogance, and womanizing made him his own worst enemy. In this towering and definitive biography, acclaimed journalist Wil Haygood paints a vivid portrait of one of black America's most memorable dignitaries.
Significantly influencing the sociological study of religion, Hans Mol developed ideas of identity which remain thought-provoking for analyses of how religion operates within contemporary societies. Sacred Selves, Sacred Settings brings current social-religious topics into sharp focus: international scholars analyse, challenge, and apply Mol’s theoretical assertions. This book introduces the unique story of Hans Mol, who survived Nazi imprisonment and proceeded to brush shoulders with formidable intellectuals of the twentieth century, such as Robert Merton, Talcott Parsons, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Offering a fresh perspective on popular subjects such as secularization, pluralism, and the place of religion in the public sphere, this book sets case studies within an intellectual biography which describes Mol’s key influences and reveals the continuing import of Hans Mol’s work applied to recent data and within a contemporary context.
Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy seeks both to demonstrate the salience of “heresy” as a tool for analyzing instances of religious conflict far beyond the borders of traditional historical theology and to illuminate the apparent affinity for deification exhibited by some persecuted religious movements. To these ends, the book argues for a sociologically-informed redefinition of heresy as religiously-motivated opposition and applies the resulting concept to the historical cases of second-century Christians and nineteenth-century Mormons. Ultimately, Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy is a careful application of the comparative method to two new religious movements, highlighting the social processes at work in their early doctrinal developments.
Things are what you make of them Every day is a chance to create something new for yourself. Put down your phone and pick up a pencil. Give yourself some space. The Internet will still be there. Start with one page at a time, and you’ll be surprised at just how much you can create. Each of the 365 prompts in 1 Page at a Time will encourage you to draw, write, list, reflect, and share. This book is your new best friend. Let’s get started! Now available in red, blue, and yellow!
The transformations Buddhism has been undergoing in the modern age have inspired much research over the last decade. The main focus of attention has been the phenomenon known as Buddhist modernism, which is defined as a conscious attempt to adjust Buddhist teachings and practices in conformity with the modern norms of rationality, science, or gender equality. This book advances research on Buddhist modernism by attempting to clarify the highly diverse ways in which Buddhist faith, thought, and practice have developed in the modern age, both in Buddhist heartlands in Asia and in the West. It presents a collection of case studies that, taken together, demonstrate how Buddhist traditions interact with modern phenomena such as colonialism and militarism, the market economy, global interconnectedness, the institutionalization of gender equality, and recent historical events such as de-industrialization and the socio-cultural crisis in post-Soviet Buddhist areas. This volume shows how the (re)invention of traditions constitutes an important pathway in the development of Buddhist modernities and emphasizes the pluralistic diversity of these forms in different settings.
'A wonderful, wild, dazzling book. You will feel more human for having read it' Tom Whyman, Literary Review 'Foster's daringly imaginative exploration of alternative models of selfhood is an original and beneficial way of grappling with history ... precisely what we need to remind us that there are many alternatives to the "I, me, mine" mindset' Anna Katharina Schaffner, TLS What kind of creature is a human? If we don't know what we are, how can we know how to act? Charles Foster sets out to understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history. Foster begins his quest with his son in a Derbyshire wood, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, and when modern consciousness was first ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, a way of being defined by fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses, and finally to the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.
The Handbook provides an indispensable account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the end of the sixth century.
In recent years, resilience has become a near ubiquitous cultural phenomenon whose influence extends into many fields of academic enquiry. Though research suggests that religion and spirituality are significant factors in engendering resilient adaptation, comparatively little biblical and theological reflection has gone into understanding this construct. This book seeks to remedy this deficiency through a breadth of reflection upon human resilience from canonical biblical and Christian theological sources. Divided into three parts, biblical scholars and theologians provide critical accounts of these perspectives, integrating biblical and theological insight with current social scientific und...
Exploring the response of evangelicals to the collapse of ‘Greater Christian Britain’ in Australia in the long 1960s, this book provides a new religious perspective to the end of empire and a fresh national perspective to the end of Christendom. In the turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and unexpectedly collapsed. ‘Christendom’, marked by the dominance of discursive Christianity in public culture, and ‘Greater Britain’, the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with startling speed. To illuminate these contemporaneous global shifts, this book takes as a case study the re...