Download or read book In Defense of Christian Ritual written by David R Andersen and published by New Reformation Publications. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Christian worship best conceived as a creative, Spirit-fueled experience that any formalized structure necessarily inhibits, or are there any biblical prescriptions around for worship that Christians were meant to follow? In light of recent research from various disciplines-including history, psychology, and New Testament studies - In Defense of Christian Ritual: The Case for a Biblical Pattern of Worship argues the latter. Specifically, this book will demonstrate three things. First, in contrast to the anti-ritualism so prevalent in modern churches, ritual's indispensable role in providing biblically-centered context and content is detailed.Second, contrary to modern opinion, a definite pattern of worship is shown to be present both in our earliest New Testament documents and the early church.Finally, new research will reveal that the assumptions about creativity lying at the heart of modern contemporary worship are fundamentally flawed. Readers will discover that the apostolic teaching embodied in the church's early ritual, as expressed in its liturgy, was never intended to be outdated or rendered irrelevant in light of current fads. It was never meant to be a relic of the ancient past, but a structured way of bringing the "memoirs of the apostles" -that Jesus died for sinners- to God's people in the here and now.
Download or read book Purity Community and Ritual in Early Christian Literature written by Moshe Blidstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines how early Christian writers drew on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions to develop their own ideas about purity, purification, defilement, and disgust.
Download or read book Invoking Angels written by Claire Fanger and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A collection of essays examining medieval and early modern texts aimed at performing magic or receiving illumination via the mediation of angels. Includes discussion of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Christians as the Romans Saw Them written by Robert Louis Wilken and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.
Download or read book Rituals in Early Christianity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informed by the paradigmatic shift in ritual and liturgical studies, this volume offers analyses of key ritual traditions in early Christianity. The case studies focus on the dynamic formation and transformation of rituals in the context of Greco-Roman religion, Judaism, and Islam.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible written by Samuel E. Balentine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order - numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other - gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. This Handbook provides a compendium of the information essential for constructing a comprehensive and integrated account of ritual and worship in the ancient world. Its focus on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, as opposed to religious studies, highlights that the world of ritual and worship was a topic of central concern for the people of the Ancient Near East, including the world of the Bible. Given the scarcity of the material in the Bible itself, the authors in this collection use materials from the ancient Near East to provide a larger context for the practices of the biblical world, giving due attention to historical, anthropological, and social scientific methods that inform the context of biblical worship. The specifics of ritual and worship life-the sacred spaces, times, and actors in worship-are examined in detail, with essays covering both the divine and human aspects of the sacred dimension. The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible considers several underlying concepts of ritual practice and closes with a theological outlook on worship and ritual from a variety of perspectives, demonstrating a fruitful exchange between biblical studies, ritual theory, and social science research.
Download or read book Divine Teaching and the Way of the World written by Samuel Fleischacker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Fleischacker defends what the Enlightenment called 'revealed religion': religions that regard a certain text or oral teaching as sacred, as wholly authoritative over one's life. At the same time, he maintains that revealed religions stand in danger of corruption or fanaticism unless they are combined with secular scientific practices and a secular morality. The first two parts of Divine Teaching and the Way of the World argue that the cognitive and moral practices of a society should prescind from religious commitments — they constitute a secular 'way of the world', to adapt a phrase from the Jewish tradition, allowing human beings to work together regardless of their religious differences. But the way of the world breaks down when it comes to the question of what we live for, and it is this that revealed religions can illumine. Fleischacker first suggests that secular conceptions of why life is worth living are often poorly grounded, before going on to explore what revelation is, how it can answer the question of worth better than secular worldviews do, and how the revealed and way-of-the-world elements of a religious tradition can be brought together.
Download or read book Understanding Religious Ritual written by John P. Hoffmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although numerous studies of religious rituals have been conducted by religious studies scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, it is rare to find a work that brings scholars from different disciplines together to discuss the similarities and differences in their research. This book represents contributions by leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this topic. The goals of the chapters are to consider where the field currently stands in understanding religious rituals and what novel ideas can improve our knowledge about these practices; and furnish innovative applications of theory by discussing particular examples which are drawn from the authors’ fieldwork. The chapters cover Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic rituals, thus providing a view of how ritual practices vary across the globe, but also how they share some important characteristics.
Download or read book Deconstructing Sacramental Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual written by Joseph Martos and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholic sacramental doctrine has lost much of its credibility. Baptized people leave the church, adolescents stop attending shortly after they are confirmed, supposedly indissoluble marriages regularly dissolve, few go to confession, and many do not believe in transubstantiation. Drawing upon his decades-long study of the sacraments, Martos reveals how teachings that seemed rooted in the scriptures and Catholic life have become unmoored from the contexts in which they arose, and why seemingly eternal truths are actually historically relative. After carefully constructing Catholic teaching from the church's own documents, he deconstructs it by demonstrating how biblical passages were misconstrued by patristic authors and how patristic writings were misunderstood by medieval scholastics. The long process of misinterpretation culminated in the dogmatic pronouncements of the Council of Trent, which continues to dominate Catholic thinking about the church's religious ceremonies. If the sacraments are released from their dogmatic baggage, Martos believes that the spiritual realities they symbolize can be celebrated in any human culture without being tied to their traditional rites.
Download or read book Body Politics written by John Howard Yoder and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Binding and loosing, baptism, eucharist, multiplicity of gifts, and open meeting; these five New Testament practices were central in the life of the early Christian community. Some of them are still echoed in the practice of the church today. But the full social, ethical, and communal meaning of the original practices has often been covered by centuries of ritual and interpretation. John Howard Yoder, in his inimitably direct and discerning style, uncovers the original meaning of the five practices and shows why the recovery of these practices is so important for the social, economic, and political witness of the church today.
Download or read book The Significance of Religious Experience written by Howard Wettstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume of essays, Howard Wettstein explores the foundations of religious commitment. His orientation is broadly naturalistic, but not in the mode of reductionism or eliminativism. This collection explores questions of broad religious interest, but does so through a focus on the author's religious tradition, Judaism. Among the issues explored are the nature and role of awe, ritual, doctrine, religious experience; the distinction between belief and faith; problems of evil and suffering with special attention to the Book of Job and to the Akedah, the biblical story of the binding of Isaac; the virtue of forgiveness. One of the book's highlights is its literary (as opposed to philosophical) approach to theology that at the same time makes room for philosophical exploration of religion. Another is Wettstein's rejection of the usual picture that sees religious life as sitting atop a distinctive metaphysical foundation, one that stands in need of epistemological justification.
Download or read book Original Sin written by David C. A. Hillman and published by Ronin Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ORIGINAL SIN is an investigation of sacred Christian mysteries of antiquity to show the historic link between the use of drugs and ritualized sex embedded in Western religion. ORIGINAL SIN is an investigation of the first acts of pedophilia within the Christian church. It is a book about the promotion and defense of child rape as a sacred Christian mystery. The West’s most venerated social, religious and political ideals stem from a cultural war waged against the human body. ORIGINAL SIN reveals the origin of this war. Using the influence of the first Christian Emperors, and the “moral authority” of their political organization, powerful bishops of the early Church promoted the performance of sacred “mysteries” in which young children were starved, drugged, and sodomized. In ceremonies meant to test their “purity", exorcist priests victimized young children from the ranks of the orphans and homeless who populated the large cities of the ancient world. ORIGINAL SIN focuses on the writings of Christian priests themselves and the pagans who condemned their immoral activities. It shows that Church actively promoted and defended the rape of children, and that such crimes were present from the very earliest days of Christianity. ORIGINAL SIN draws from ancient internal documents, written by venerated church leaders - written in Latin - who actively promoted the rape and molestation of children. Bishops, monks and priests of the early Church successfully defended themselves from legal prosecution for centuries. As the Roman public railed on priests for sexually exploiting children, the church leadership used its growing political influence to prevent any of the child rapists within the clergy from coming to justice. ORIGINAL SIN also traces the divine feminine voice through Western history. The potent combination of natural drugs and the feminine voice is the basis for western civilization. ORIGINAL SIN explores the foundation of western society as the product of a peculiar interaction chemical and biological forces The pagan world was aware of the sexual crimes committed against these orphans, and waged a lengthy campaign against the priests who perpetrated these rapes. Christian priests claimed that by sodomizing children, they were saving them from possession by the demons of the pagan religions. Christian theologians justified these acts of rape by pointing to some of the earliest writings of the apostles and even the acts of Jesus himself. Exorcist priests specifically victimized young children from the ranks of the orphans and homeless who populated the large cities of the ancient world. The pagan world was aware of the sexual crimes committed against these orphans, and waged a lengthy campaign against the priests who perpetrated these rapes. The Christian hierarchy claimed these children were being “sexually tested” in order to prevent them from being used in pagan rituals that required the same children to remain sexually inexperienced. Christian priests claimed that by sodomizing children, they were saving them from possession by the demons of the pagan religions. Christian theologians justified these acts of rape by pointing to some of the earliest writings of the apostles and even the acts of Jesus himself. In the early church, groups of Christians in Asia Minor even formed their own associations that claimed the performance of such acts was a means of assuring the salvation of both the victims and the perpetrators. The potent combination of natural drugs and the feminine voice is the basis for western civilization. ORIGINAL SIN explores the foundation of western society as the product of a peculiar interaction chemical and biological forces. Some early church fathers believed Jesus had several relationships with young boys. Prominent church leaders argued that the apostle Mark was aware of this when he wrote in his gospel that Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane in the presence of a naked teenage boy. -------- Note: The material in Hillman's first book, CHEMICAL MUSE, and here in ORIGINAL SIN was part of His dissertation research. While they could find no flaws in the work, his dissertation committee was so outraged by the material that Hillman found in the ancient texts - written in Latin, which he reads fluently - that they refused to pass the dissertation or award the doctorate unless he deleted the material. He did so and published the material about the used of psilocybin mushrooms and the emergence of Western Civilization. ORIGINAL SIN reveals more of the forbidden information that Dr. Hillman was uncovered. Because of this work, Dr. Hillman has been "black balled" from academic classics - even though CHEMICAL MUSE has been widely acclaimed. He now teaches Latin in a private girls' school to inch out a living to support his wife and two children. What one author said about Hillman's discoveries and his expulsion from Classics. “The role of psychoactive drugs has been airbrushed out of the conventional picture of Western civilization. The academics who have created this drug-free Greco-Roman world have found their nemesis in Dr. Hillman’s The Chemical Muse. With clarity and directness the author gives us back a lost chapter of our Classical heritage and by doing so restores our understanding of this past.”—Richard Rudgley, author of Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age
Download or read book Ritual Dynamics in Jewish and Christian Contexts written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual Dynamics in Jewish and Christian Contexts investigates questions that arise in modern ritual studies concerning Jewish and Christian religious communities: How did their religious rituals develop? Where did different ritual communities and their ritual texts interact? How did religious communities and their authoritative texts respond to change, and how did change influence religious rituals? The volume is a product of the interdisciplinary and international research efforts taken by the Research Centre “Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present” at the Universität Erfurt (Germany) and unites the voices of important senior and emerging scholars in the field. It focuses on antiquity and the medieval period but also considers examples from the early modern and modern period in Europe
Download or read book How God Works written by David DeSteno and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, pioneering research psychologist David DeSteno shows why religious practices and rituals are so beneficial to those who follow them—and to anyone, regardless of their faith (or lack thereof). Scientists are beginning to discover what believers have known for a long time: the rewards that a religious life can provide. For millennia, people have turned to priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, and others to help them deal with issues of grief and loss, birth and death, morality and meaning. In this absorbing work, DeSteno reveals how numerous religious practices from around the world improve emotional and physical well-being. With empathy and rigor, DeSteno chronicles religious rites and traditions from cradle to grave. He explains how the Japanese rituals surrounding childbirth help strengthen parental bonds with children. He describes how the Apache Sunrise Ceremony makes teenage girls better able to face the rigors of womanhood. He shows how Buddhist meditation reduces hostility and increases compassion. He demonstrates how the Jewish practice of sitting shiva comforts the bereaved. And much more. DeSteno details how belief itself enhances physical and mental health. But you don’t need to be religious to benefit from the trove of wisdom that religion has to offer. Many items in religion’s “toolbox” can help the body and mind whether or not one believes. How God Works offers advice on how to incorporate many of these practices to help all of us live more meaningful, successful, and satisfying lives.
Download or read book Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe written by Nathan J. Ristuccia and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe re-examines the alterations in Western European life that followed widespread conversion to Christianity-the phenomena traditionally termed "Christianization". It refocuses scholarly paradigms for Christianization around the development of mandatory rituals. One prominent ritual, Rogationtide supplies an ideal case study demonstrating a new paradigm of "Christianization without religion." Christianization in the Middle Ages was not a slow process through which a Christian system of religious beliefs and practices replaced an earlier pagan system. In the Middle Ages, religion did not exist in the sense of a fixed system of belief bounded off from other spheres of life. Rather, Christianization was primarily ritual performance. Being a Christian meant joining a local church community. After the fall of Rome, mandatory rituals such as Rogationtide arose to separate a Christian commonwealth from the pagans, heretics, and Jews outside it. A Latin West between the polis and the parish had its own institution-the Rogation procession-for organizing local communities. For medieval people, sectarian borders were often flexible and rituals served to demarcate these borders. Rogationtide is an ideal case study of this demarcation, because it was an emotionally powerful feast, which combined pageantry with doctrinal instruction, community formation, social ranking, devotional exercises, and bodily mortification. As a result, rival groups quarrelled over the holiday's meaning and procedure, sometimes violently, in order to reshape the local order and ban people and practices as non-Christian.
Download or read book Clarence H White and His World written by Anne McCauley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Restoring a gifted art photographer to his place in the American canon and, in the process, reshaping and expanding our understanding of early 20th-century American photography Clarence H. White (1871–1925) was one of the most influential art photographers and teachers of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Photo-Secession. This beautiful publication offers a new appraisal of White’s contributions, including his groundbreaking aesthetic experiments, his commitment to the ideals of American socialism, and his embrace of the expanding fields of photographic book and fashion illustration, celebrity portraiture, and advertising. Based on extensive archival research, the book challenges the idea of an abrupt rupture between prewar, soft-focus idealizing photography and postwar “modernism” to paint a more nuanced picture of American culture in the Progressive era. Clarence H. White and His World begins with the artist’s early work in Ohio, which shares with the nascent Arts and Crafts movement the advocacy of hand production, closeness to nature, and the simple life. White’s involvement with the Photo-Secession and his move to New York in 1906 mark a shift in his production, as it grew to encompass commercial portraiture and an increasing commitment to teaching, which ultimately led him to establish the first institutions in America to combine instruction in both technical and aesthetic aspects of photography. The book also incorporates new formal and scientific analysis of White’s work and techniques, a complete exhibition record, and many unpublished illustrations of the moody outdoor scenes and quiet images of domestic life for which he was revered.
Download or read book Thinking Through Rituals written by Kevin Schilbrack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking Through Rituals explores religious ritual acts and their connection to meaning and truth, building upon their special status as virtually pure forms of belief in action.
