Download or read book Apocalyptic Trajectories written by John Walliss and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2004 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to examine several religious groups holding millenarian or apocalyptic ideologies that have been involved in violent incidents over the last twenty-five years: Peoples Temple, The Branch Davidians, The Order of the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The work focuses particularly on their respective 'apocalyptic trajectories' - the key recurring issues and social processes that fostered the progressive acceptance of violence within each group's ideology, and ultimately helped to precipitate the use of force against the group's own members or against outsiders.
Download or read book Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic written by John C. Reeves and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2005 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The End of the Scroll written by Herold Weiss and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preachers, teachers, and self-proclaimed prophets frequently claim that the end of the world is near, often based on their interpretation of Bible books such as Daniel and Revelation. Are these claims justified? Is there a valuable message in these books? In this masterful book, Dr. Herold Weiss applies a lifetime of study, teaching, and writing on the Bible to helping readers understand apocalyptic literature and symbolism. Avoiding the common error of simply finding something in recent history that can be tied to the text in some way, he seeks the purpose of each of the writers. Why, when expected events failed to take place as predicted, did the readers of these books still hold onto them as valuable? What is it that they communicated to those readers, and can we make use of it now. Dr. Weiss examines a number of apocalyptic sources, some of which you might not have regarded as apocalyptic. He finds, however, that these writers are thinking and writing in a world of apocalyptic imagery. From Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel in the Old Testament to the synoptic gospels, Paul’s letters, and the general epistles in the new, Weiss outlines how understanding the apocalyptic view of the universe can be critical in understanding the message presented. As with previous books by Dr. Weiss, such as Meditations on According to John and Meditations on the Letters of Paul, this book provides a practical view of biblical theology in action. He looks at both the broad overview of the message, giving a framework, and then fills in the details on a verse by verse, passage by passage basis, so the reader can see how individual statements and themes fit into a larger framework. He concludes by pointing out how by understanding the work of the apocalypticists, and following the examples of their readers, we can find spiritual value and encouragement in these books. This book is suitable as an introduction to apocalyptic literature or as a way of organizing one’s thinking after reading a number of these books. It would also be suitable for reading in an experienced small study group.
Download or read book The Re Enchantment of the West Vol 2 written by Christopher Partridge and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-04-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Re-Enchantment of the West challenges those theories that predict widespread secularization beyond traditional institutional religiosity. Spiritualities are emerging that are not only quite different from the those forms of religion that are in decline, but are often defined over against them and articulated and passed on in ways quite different from those of traditional religion. In particular, it is argued that such contemporary Western spirituality is fed by a constantly replenished reservoir of ideas, practices, and methodologies, which is here termed 'occulture'. Moreover, such occultural ideas both feed into and are resourced by popular culture. Indeed, popular occulture is a key feature of the re-enchantment of the West. Demonstrating the significance and ubiquity of these ideas, this book examines, for example, healthcare and nursing, contemporary environmentalism, psychedelia and drug use, the Internet and cyberspirituality, belief in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, demonology and the contemporary fascination with the figure of Satan, the heavy metal subculture, popular apocalypticism, and millennial violence.
Download or read book Apocalyptic Shakespeare written by Melissa Croteau and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties about an impending global wasteland, technological alienation, spiritual destruction, and the effects of globalization. Films covered include Titus, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Almereyda's Hamlet, Revengers Tragedy, Twelfth Night, The Passion of the Christ, Radford's The Merchant of Venice, The Lion King, and Godard's King Lear, among others that directly adapt or reference Shakespeare. Essays chart the apocalyptic mise-en-scenes, disorienting imagery, and topsy-turvy plots of these films, using apocalypse as a theoretical and thematic lens.
Download or read book Ultimate Things written by Greg Carey and published by Chalice Press. This book was released on 2012-11-09 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carey presents an introduction to the elements of apocalyptic discourse in the Hebrew Bible, the intertestamental texts of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts. He seeks to help modern readers perplexed by the rampant and somewhat outrageous depiction and interpretation of apocalyptic literature to see apocalyptic discourse as a flexible set of resources that early Jews and Christians could employ for a variety of persuasive tasks. Carey examines each of the literary works that exhibit apocalyptic discourse. He briefly introduces the date and language of each text and shows its basic contents. Then he examines the particular topics and purposes of the work. Carey concludes by showing a way to read the particular example of apocalyptic discourse as a whole in its own setting with its own purposes. Carey invokes discourse as a category of study in an attempt to bring together the literary, ideological, and social dimensions of apocalyptic language. He sees the genius of apocalyptic discourse in its ability to bring its audience into otherwise inaccessible mysteries concerning the future and the heavenly realms. As theology, apocalyptic discourse engages life's greatest questions-the nature of God, the desire for justice, and the frustrations of human finitude. As poetry, it expresses the theological imagination in vivid symbols and conventional literary forms.
Download or read book Theorising Religion written by John Walliss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is controversial and challenging. Whilst religious forces are powerful in numerous societies, they have little or no significance for wide swaths of public or private life in other places. The task of theoretical work in the sociology of religion is, therefore, to make sense of this apparently paradoxical situation in which religion is simultaneously significant and insignificant. The chapters of Part One consider the classical roots of ideas about religion that dominated sociological ways of thinking about it for most of the twentieth century. Each chapter offers sound reasons for continuing to find theoretical inspiration and challenge in the sociological classics whilst also seeking ways of enhancing and extending their relevance to religion today. Part Two contains chapters that open up fresh perspectives on aspects of modern, post-modern and ultra-modern religion without necessarily ignoring the classical legacy. The chapters of Part Three chart new directions for the sociological analysis of religion by fundamentally re-thinking its theoretical basis, by extending its disciplinary boundaries and by examining previously overlooked topics.
Download or read book The A Z of Death and Dying written by Michael John Brennan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-02-17 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging and informative resource provides readers with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical influences that shape our encounters with death, dying, and bereavement—a universal experience across humanity. Written in an engaging and accessible style by leading international scholars and practitioners from within the field of death and bereavement studies, this book will have broad appeal, providing in a single volume insights from some of the key thinkers within the interdisciplinary field of death, dying, and bereavement. Its approximately 200 entries will serve as useful starting points for those new to the topic and will be informative to those already acquainted with some of the core concepts and ideas within this burgeoning field of inquiry. This encyclopedia will serve as an essential resource for high school and undergraduate students, those engaged in independent research, and professionals whose work involves caring for the dead, dying, and bereaved. It will also be of great interest to general readers intrigued by the social, medical, and cultural dimensions to human mortality. Underscored by the inescapable biological certainties that affect us all, The A–Z of Death and Dying offers a highly relevant examination of the social and historical variation in the rituals, practices, and beliefs surrounding the end of life.
Download or read book The Resilient Apocalypse written by Julia A. Kushigian and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2024-05-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portraits of good battling evil in the geography of hell come in many forms in the Hispanic World. Apocalyptic nightmares, frightful images of chaos and death are inclusive and interrelated, yet simultaneously project an exceptional quality ("never seen or experienced before," "the mother of all battles," "I am the only one who can fix it"). This investigation explores how narrative logic may challenge unified notions of finalities when images remain unfulfilled in a proscribed End. By redeploying transglobal character and narrative potential, the Apocalypse suggests bewildering complexities as it trains its lens on New Beginnings. Here analysis explores resilient formulas for combating the End through resistance in Latin America, Spain and Latin@ communities in the US. Whether revealed through gilded illustrations, messianic chronicles, poetry, Baroque letters, racially-motivated novels, sexuality and spirituality in film or intimidating immigrant photos, apocalyptic examples explode notions of final moments. The Resilient Apocalypse ironically performs as both an internal defense (a vehicle for mourning) and a counter-discourse to power (a mechanism for resistance). This study argues for a strategy that listens to and keeps the enemy "in sight and in mind," a method for grappling with and engaging difference by decolonizing the politics of the End. It reformulates an incomplete, mythical, and uncanny narrative into a poetics of resistance with communal solutions and obligations. When the Apocalypse is unremittingly sought after to impose social justice, salvation and reason, it paradoxically introduces future hope against itself. In the works of Beato de Liebana, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Cirilo Villaverde, Cristina Garcia, Martin Kohan, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Santiago Roncagliolo, Alfonso Cuaron, etc., rival traditions internalize competing apocalyptic worldviews and arrive at sustainable plans of action for negotiating the afterward. By bracketing the finality of the End and proposing a tension between conflict archaeology and the transcendence of opposition through renovation, salvation or hope, this study reveals how plural, competing viewpoints of the End go a long way to legitimizing each other. Ultimately, The Resilient Apocalypse traces a compelling narrative theory of unfulfilled promise that forever changes the way we engage the other and value the self during intervals of fear.
Download or read book God in the Details written by Eric Mazur and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the blurred boundary between religion and pop culture, God in the Details offers a provocative look at the breadth and persistence of religious themes in the American consciousness. This new edition reflects the explosion of online activity since the first edition, including chapters on the spiritual implications of social networking sites, and the hazy line between real and virtual religious life in the online community Second Life. Also new to this edition are chapters on the migration of black male expression from churches to athletic stadiums, new configurations of the sacred and the commercial, and post 9/11 spirituality and religious redemption through an analysis of vampire drama, True Blood. Popular chapters on media, sports, and other pop culture experiences have been revised and updated, making this an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.
Download or read book Terrible Revolution written by Christopher James Blythe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between early Mormons and the United States was marked by anxiety and hostility, heightened over the course of the nineteenth century by the assassination of Mormon leaders, the Saints' exile from Missouri and Illinois, the military occupation of the Utah territory, and the national crusade against those who practiced plural marriage. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe, particularly the tyrannical government of the United States. The infamous "White Horse Prophecy" referred to this coming American apocalypse as "a terrible revolutionEL in the land of America, such as has never been seen before; for the land will be literally left without a supreme government." Mormons envisioned divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American cities and American people. For the Saints, these violent images promised a national rebirth that would vouchsafe the protections of the United States Constitution and end their oppression. In Terrible Revolution, Christopher James Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly as it took shape in the writings and visions of the laity. The responses of the church hierarchy to apocalyptic lay prophecies promoted their own form of separatist nationalism during the nineteenth century. Yet, after Utah obtained statehood, as the church sought to assimilate to national religious norms, these same leaders sought to lessen the tensions between themselves and American political and cultural powers. As a result, visions of a violent end to the nation became a liability to disavow and regulate. Ultimately, Blythe argues that the visionary world of early Mormonism, with its apocalyptic emphases, continued in the church's mainstream culture in modified forms but continued to maintain separatist radical forms at the level of folk-belief.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements written by George D. Chryssides and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements covers key themes such as charismatic leadership, conversion and brainwashing, prophecy and millennialism, violence and suicide, gender and sexuality, legal issues, and the portrayal of New Religious Movements by the media and anti-cult organisations. Several categories of new religions receive special attention, including African new religions, Japanese new religions, Mormons, and UFO religions. This guide to New Religious Movements and their critical study brings together 29 world-class international scholars, and serves as a resource to students and researchers. The volume highlights the current state of academic study in the field, and explores areas in which future research might develop. Clearly and accessibly organised to help users quickly locate key information and analysis, the book includes an A to Z of key terms, extensive guides to further resources, a comprehensive bibliography, and a timeline of major developments in the field such as the emergence of new groups, publications, legal decisions, and historical events.
Download or read book The Other in Second Temple Judaism written by Daniel C. Harlow and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a conference held Apr. 4-5, 2008 at Amherst College.
Download or read book The God of Peace written by John Dear and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2005-03-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The God of peace is never glorified by human violence. Thomas Merton 'The God of Peace', John Dear's classic theology of nonviolence, broke new ground when it was first published as a breakthrough toward a new understanding of scripture, theology, social concerns and churches issues--from the perspective of Gospel nonviolence, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. This ground-breaking study begins not just with the culture of violence, but the nonviolence of God, and the revolutionary nonviolence of Jesus. From the start, John Dear explores traditional areas of theology, such as Christology, Trinitarian Theology, anthropology, sin, redemption, theodicy, salvation, ecclesiology, eschatology, spirituality, liturgy, Catholic social teaching, the just war theory,, feminism, liberation theology and the consistent ethic of life. This text will help university and theology students pursuing the theology and spirituality of nonviolence, as well as ordinary Christians and activists interested in the crucial connection between war and violence, and God and nonviolence.
Download or read book Sexual Disorientations written by Kent L. Brintnall and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexual Disorientations brings some of the most recent and significant works of queer theory into conversation with the overlapping fields of biblical, theological and religious studies to explore the deep theological resonances of questions about the social and cultural construction of time, memory, and futurity. Apocalyptic, eschatological and apophatic languages, frameworks, and orientations pervade both queer theorizing and theologizing about time, affect, history and desire. The volume fosters a more explicit engagement between theories of queer temporality and affectivity and religious texts and discourses.
Download or read book Controversial New Religions written by James R. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In terms of public opinion, new religious movements are considered controversial for a variety of reasons. Their social organization often runs counter to popular expectations by experimenting with communal living, alternative leadership roles, unusual economic dispositions, and new political and ethical values. As a result the general public views new religions with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and anxiety, sustained by lavish media emphasis on oddness and tragedy rather than familiarity and lived experience. This updated and revised second edition of Controversial New Religions offers a scholarly, dispassionate look at those groups that have generated the most attention, including some very well-known classical groups like The Family, Unification Church, Scientology, and Jim Jones's People's Temple; some relative newcomers such as the Kabbalah Centre, the Order of the Solar Temple, Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, and the Falun Gong; and some interesting cases like contemporary Satanism, the Raelians, Black nationalism, and various Pagan groups. Each essay combines an overview of the history and beliefs of each organization or movement with original and insightful analysis. By presenting decades of scholarly work on new religious movements written in an accessible form by established scholars as well as younger experts in the field, this book will be an invaluable resource for all those who seek a view of new religions that is deeper than what can be found in sensationalistic media stories.
Download or read book Sacred Suicide written by Carole M. Cusack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The label 'Suicide Cults' has been applied to a wide variety of different alternative religions, from Jonestown to the Solar Temple to Heaven's Gate. Additionally, observers have asked if such group suicides are in any way comparable to Islamist suicide terrorism, or to historical incidents of mass suicide, such as the mass suicide of the ancient community of Masada. Organizationally and ideologically diverse, it turns out that the primary shared trait of these various groups is a common stereotype of religion as an irrational force that pushes fanatics to undertake acts of suicidal violence. Offering a valuable perspective on New Religious Movements and on religion and violence, Sacred Suicide brings together contributions from a diverse range of international scholars of sociology, religious studies and criminology.
