Download or read book Material Christianity written by Colleen McDannell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can the religious objects used by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans tell us about American Christianity? What is the relationship between the beliefs of the faithful and the landscapes they build? This lavishly illustrated book investigates the history and meaning of Christian material culture in America over the last 150 years. Drawing on a rich array of historical sources and on in-depth interviews with Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, Colleen McDannell examines the relationship between religion and mass consumption. She describes examples of nineteenth-century religious practice: Victorians burying their dead in cultivated cemetery parks; Protestants producing and displaying elaborate family Bibles; Catholics writing for special water from Lourdes reputed to have miraculous powers. And she looks at today's Christians: Mormons wearing sacred underclothing as a reminder of their religious promises, Catholics debating the design of tasteful churches, and Protestants manufacturing, marketing, and using a vast array of prints, clothing, figurines, jewelry, and toys that some label "Jesus junk" but that others see as a witness to their faith. McDannell claims that previous studies of American Christianity have overemphasized the written, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of religion, presenting faith as a disembodied system of beliefs. She shifts attention from the church and the theological seminary to the workplace, home, cemetery, and Sunday school, highlighting a different Christianity--one in which average Christians experience the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the meaning of community through interacting with a created world of devotional images, environments, and objects.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies written by Robert A. Orsi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informative and provocative, this book introduces readers to debates in the contemporary study of religion and suggests future research possibilities.
Download or read book The Thing about Religion written by David Morgan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common views of religion typically focus on the beliefs and meanings derived from revealed scriptures, ideas, and doctrines. David Morgan has led the way in radically broadening that framework to encompass the understanding that religions are fundamentally embodied, material forms of practice. This concise primer shows readers how to study what has come to be termed material religion—the ways religious meaning is enacted in the material world. Material religion includes the things people wear, eat, sing, touch, look at, create, and avoid. It also encompasses the places where religion and the social realities of everyday life, including gender, class, and race, intersect in physical ways. This interdisciplinary approach brings religious studies into conversation with art history, anthropology, and other fields. In the book, Morgan lays out a range of theories, terms, and concepts and shows how they work together to center materiality in the study of religion. Integrating carefully curated visual evidence, Morgan then applies these ideas and methods to case studies across a variety of religious traditions, modeling step-by-step analysis and emphasizing the importance of historical context. The Thing about Religion will be an essential tool for experts and students alike. Two free, downloadable course syllabi created by the author are available online.
Download or read book Fabric of Faith written by and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For countless generations, patchwork quilts have been a visible act of love. In the Prayers and Squares Ministry, though, the quilt has become a visible act of prayer. Begun in California in 1992, Prayers and Squares now has some 200 chapters throughout the world.
Download or read book Built with Faith written by Joseph Sciorra and published by Univ Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra’s Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City’s Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions—often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art—all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city’s religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra’s unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life. Joseph Sciorra is the director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is the editor of Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives and co-editor of Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora.
Download or read book Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity written by Sean V. Leatherbury and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-26 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity considers the Greek and Latin texts inscribed in churches and chapels in the late antique Mediterranean (c. 300–800 CE), compares them to similar texts from pagan, Jewish, and Muslim spaces of worship, and explores how they functioned both textually and visually. These texts not only recorded the names and prayers of the faithful, but were powerful verbal and visual statements of cultural values and religious beliefs, conveying meaning through their words as well as through their appearances. In fact, the two were intimately connected. All of these texts – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan – acted visually, embracing their own materiality as mosaic, paint, or carved stone. Colourful and artfully arranged, the inscriptions framed human relationships with the divine, encouraged responses from readers, and made prayers material. In the first in-depth examination of the inscriptions as words and as images, the author reimagines the range of aesthetic, cultural, and religious experiences that were possible in spaces of worship. Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity is essential reading for those interested in Roman, late antique, and Byzantine material and visual culture, inscriptions and other texts, and religious life in the ancient Mediterranean.
Download or read book Food and Faith written by Norman Wirzba and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive theological framework for assessing the significance of eating, demonstrating that eating is of profound economic, moral and theological significance.
Download or read book Agents of Faith written by Ittai Weinryb and published by Bard Graduate Center. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, held at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery from September 14, 2018 through January 6, 2019"--Colophon.
Download or read book Modern Physics and Ancient Faith written by Stephen M. Barr and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2003-02-28 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the “war between science and religion.” In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism. Scientific materialism grew out of scientific discoveries made from the time of Copernicus up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These discoveries led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel’s Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist’s view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe. Written in clear language, Barr’s rigorous and fair text explains modern physics to general readers without oversimplification. Using the insights of modern physics, he reveals that modern scientific discoveries and religious faith are deeply consonant. Anyone with an interest in science and religion will find Modern Physics and Ancient Faith invaluable.
Download or read book Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians written by Chris R. Armstrong and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and the faith was only later recovered by the sixteenth-century Reformers or even the eighteenth-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants. Church historian Chris Armstrong helps readers see beyond modern caricatures of the medieval church to the animating Christian spirit of that age. He believes today's church could learn a number of lessons from medieval faith, such as how the gospel speaks to ordinary, embodied human life in this world. Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians explores key ideas, figures, and movements from the Middle Ages in conversation with C. S. Lewis and other thinkers, helping contemporary Christians discover authentic faith and renewal in a forgotten age.
Download or read book Things written by Dick Houtman and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relation between religion and things has long been conceived in antagonistic terms, privileging spirit above matter, belief above ritual and objects, meaning above form and 'inward' contemplation above 'outward' action. This book addresses these issues.
Download or read book Faith stories written by Anna Hickey-Moody and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith stories is an investigation of faith and belief systems in Australia and England. Drawing on ethnography, interviews, focus groups for adults and arts-based workshops for their children, Hickey-Moody takes a community-based approach to examining belonging, attachment, faith, belief and ‘what really matters’ in diverse areas. Each of the book’s research sites is geographically and culturally specific in ways that shape residents’ experiences of community and belonging, but they are united by enduring threads relating to colonisation, diaspora and negotiating belonging in culturally diverse contexts. Examining faith reveals that there are striking similarities between seemingly different cultures. Understanding these connections can reduce conflict and promote cohesion in communities that are often struggling to adapt to huge changes. This book provides rich resources for those who wish to explore faith and belief in complex social circumstances, either as research or as community engagement. In such increasingly divided times, work like this is needed now more than ever.
Download or read book Liberating Faith written by Roger S. Gottlieb and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Religion and Material Culture written by David Morgan and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Elements of Faith Revised and Expanded written by Richard Duncan and published by Master Books. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's easy to see the wonder of God's creation all around us, but to truly appreciate the incredible design, organization, and creativeness of the Creator, you have to delve into the elements that make up our world. Here is a one-year, junior high curriculum that does that and more, including uplifting biblical applications, weekly readings, activities, and quizzes.Those reading through this chemistry course will discoverThe connection between helium and the sunThe biblical gems that represent wisdom, the kingdom, and God's presenceWhy silver can be called the "element of redemption"The element with two names - one name from a Greek myth and the other from a famous explorer - discovered in ore from ConnecticutSpiritual applications for all of the major elements in the Periodic TableThe study of the Periodic Table of Elements reveals that these atomic microscopic building blocks are more than just scientific odds and ends. Each and every one is an opportunity to celebrate the power, wisdom, order, and ingenuity of our Creator!
Download or read book The Christian Science Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 828 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christianity and the Limits of Materiality written by Minna Opas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-29 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the fact that Christianity is understood to be thoroughly intertwined with matter, objects, and things, Christians struggle to cope with this materiality in their daily lives. This volume argues that the ambivalent relationships many Christians have with materiality is a driving force that contributes to the way people in different Christian traditions and in different parts of the world understand and live out their religion. By placing the questions of limits and boundary-work to the fore, the volume addresses the question of exactly how Christianity takes place materially, addressing a gap in studies to date. Christianity and the Limits of Materiality presents ground-breaking research on the frameworks and contexts in relation to and within which Christian logics of materiality operate. The volume places the negotiations at the limits of materiality within the larger framework of Christian identities and politics of belonging. The chapters discuss case studies from North and South America, Europe, and Africa, and demonstrate that the limits preoccupying Christians delimit their lives but also enable many things. Ultimately, Christianity and the Limits of Materiality demonstrates that it is at the interfaces of materiality and the transcendent that Christians create and legitimise their religion.
