Download or read book Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany written by David M. Luebke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Protestant and Catholic Reformations thrust the nature of conversion into the center of debate and politicking over religion as authorities and subjects imbued religious confession with novel meanings during the early modern era. The volume offers insights into the historicity of the very concept of “conversion.” One widely accepted modern notion of the phenomenon simply expresses denominational change. Yet this concept had no bearing at the outset of the Reformation. Instead, a variety of processes, such as the consolidation of territories along confessional lines, attempts to ensure civic concord, and diplomatic quarrels helped to usher in new ideas about the nature of religious boundaries and, therefore, conversion. However conceptualized, religious change— conversion—had deep social and political implications for early modern German states and societies.
Download or read book The Politics of Conversion written by Christopher M. Clark and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning over two centuries of protestant missionary activity, this book examines the ways in which theological, social, and racial themes intertwined in the relationship between the Christian majority in Prussia and the Jewish minority in its midst. Making comprehensive use of the archives and publications of the various Prussian institutions and societies which set out to convert Jews to Christianity, this study sheds light on a facet of Jewish-German history which has been overshadowed by the ultimate tragedy of the Holocaust.
Download or read book Transcommunality written by John Brown Childs and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we build long-lasting communities and movements for change?
Download or read book Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India written by Sarbeswar Sahoo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India. It asks: why has India been experiencing increasing incidents of anti-Christian violence since the 1990s? Why are the Bhil Adivasis increasingly converting to Pentecostalism? And, what are the implications of conversion for religion within indigenous communities on the one hand and broader issues of secularism, religious freedom and democratic rights on the other? Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Bhils of Northern India since 2006, this book asserts that ideological incompatibility and antagonism between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists provide only a partial explanation for anti-Christian violence in India. It unravels the complex interactions between different actors/ agents in the production of anti-Christian violence and provides detailed ethnographic narratives on Pentecostal conversion, Hindu nationalist politics and anti-Christian violence in the largest state of India that has hitherto been dominated by upper caste Rajput Hindu(tva) ideology.
Download or read book Political Conversion written by Don Waisanen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of religious conversion have been told for millennia. Yet many prominent figures such as Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Rick Perry have also used stories of their change from one political worldview to another as a communication strategy aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the public. This book is about political conversion stories in public discourse, in their evolution from and interactions with religion. From a historical perspective, it charts the development of conversion narratives from religious contexts to their contemporary applications as specifically political messages. Since these narratives continue to be used in the culture wars, this book examines several related autobiographies that contributed to the use of this strategy in contemporary U.S. politics. Each case shows how shifts during the postwar period called for conversion texts under varying guises, and illustrates how and why the majority of these stories have been of conversions from the ideological left to the right. Examining political conversion as a form of public persuasion, Political Conversion ultimately provides insight into what these types of civic-religious stories mean for democratic communication and communities.
Download or read book Conversion Politics and Religion in England 1580 1625 written by Michael C. Questier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-07-13 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of conversion and its implications during the English Reformation.
Download or read book Public Confessions written by Rebecca L. Davis and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal reinvention is a core part of the human condition. Yet in the mid-twentieth century, certain private religious choices became lightning rods for public outrage and debate. Public Confessions reveals the controversial religious conversions that shaped modern America. Rebecca L. Davis explains why the new faiths of notable figures including Clare Boothe Luce, Whittaker Chambers, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Chuck Colson, and others riveted the American public. Unconventional religious choices charted new ways of declaring an "authentic" identity amid escalating Cold War fears of brainwashing and coercion. Facing pressure to celebrate a specific vision of Americanism, these converts variously attracted and repelled members of the American public. Whether the act of changing religions was viewed as selfish, reckless, or even unpatriotic, it provoked controversies that ultimately transformed American politics. Public Confessions takes intimate history to its widest relevance, and in so doing, makes you see yourself in both the private and public stories it tells.
Download or read book The Conversion of Britain written by Barbara Yorke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Britain of 600-800 AD was populated by four distinct peoples; the British, Picts, Irish and Anglo-Saxons. They spoke 3 different languages, Gaelic, Brittonic and Old English, and lived in a diverse cultural environment. In 600 the British and the Irish were already Christians. In contrast the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and Picts occurred somewhat later, at the end of the 6th and during the 7th century. Religion was one of the ways through which cultural difference was expressed, and the rulers of different areas of Britain dictated the nature of the dominant religion in areas under their control. This book uses the Conversion and the Christianisation of the different peoples of Britainas a framework through which to explore the workings of their political systems and the structures of their society. Because Christianity adapted to and affected the existing religious beliefs and social norms wherever it was introduced, it’s the perfect medium through which to study various aspects of society that are difficult to study by any other means.
Download or read book Conversion to Modernities written by Peter van der Veer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter van der Veer has gathered together a groundbreaking collection of essays that suggests that conversion to forms of Christianity in the modern period is not only a conversion to modern forms of these religions, but also to religious forms of modernity. Religious perceptions of the self, of community, and of the state are transformed when Western discourses of modernity become dominant in the modern world. This volume seeks to relate Europe and its Others by exploring conversion both in modern Europe and in the colonized world.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Religious Conversion written by Andrew Buckser and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion written by Lewis R. Rambo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 829 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.
Download or read book Paradigms Poetics and Politics of Conversion written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the terms of Durheimian sociology, conversion is a fait social. Although they are rarely treated as a cultural phenomenon, conversions can obviously be examined for the norms, values and presuppositions of the cultures in which they take place. Thus conversion can help us to shed light on a particular culture. At the same time, the term evokes a dramatic appeal that suggests a kind of suddenness, although in most cases conversion implies a more gradual process of establishing and defining a new - religious - identity. From 21-24 May 2003, the University of Groningen hosted an international conference on 'Cultures of Conversion'. The contributions have been edited in two volumes, which pay special attention to the modes of language and idiom in conversion literature, the meaning and sense of religious-ideological discourse, the variety of rhetorical tropes, and the effects of the conversion narrative with allusions to religious or political conventions and idealizations. The present volume contains theoretical contributions on the theory of conversion, with special attention to the rational choice theory, and on the history of research into conversion. It also offers stimulating case studies, ranging from the late Middle Ages to present times and taken from Germany, Great Britain and The Netherlands. The other volume, Cultures of Conversion, offers in-depth studies of conversion that are mainly taken from the history of India, Islam and Judaism, ranging from the Byzantine period to the new Muslimas of the West.
Download or read book When the State Winks written by Michal Kravel-Tovi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious conversion is often associated with ideals of religious sincerity. But in a society in which religious belonging is entangled with ethnonational citizenship and confers political privilege, a convert might well have multilayered motives. Over the last two decades, mass non-Jewish immigration to Israel, especially from the former Soviet Union, has sparked heated debates over the Jewish state’s conversion policy and intensified suspicion of converts’ sincerity. When the State Winks carefully traces the performance of state-endorsed Orthodox conversion to highlight the collaborative labor that goes into the making of the Israeli state and its Jewish citizens. In a rich ethnographic narrative based on fieldwork in conversion schools, rabbinic courts, and ritual bathhouses, Michal Kravel-Tovi follows conversion candidates—mostly secular young women from a former Soviet background—and state conversion agents, mostly religious Zionists caught between the contradictory demands of their nationalist and religious commitments. She complicates the popular perception that conversion is a “wink-wink” relationship in which both sides agree to treat the converts’ pretenses of observance as real. Instead, she demonstrates how their interdependent performances blur any clear boundary between sincere and empty conversions. Alongside detailed ethnography, When the State Winks develops new ways to think about the complex connection between religious conversion and the nation-state. Kravel-Tovi emphasizes how state power and morality is managed through “winking”—the subtle exchanges and performances that animate everyday institutional encounters between state and citizen. In a country marked by tension between official religiosity and a predominantly secular Jewish population, winking permits the state to save its Jewish face.
Download or read book Spain Unmoored written by Mikaela H. Rogozen-Soltar and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long viewed as Spain's "most Moorish city," Granada is now home to a growing Muslim population of Moroccan migrants and European converts to Islam. Mikaela H. Rogozen-Soltar examines how various residents of Granada mobilize historical narratives about the city's Muslim past in order to navigate tensions surrounding contemporary ethnic and religious pluralism. Focusing particular attention on the gendered, racial, and political dimensions of this new multiculturalism, Rogozen-Soltar explores how Muslim-themed tourism and Islamic cultural institutions coexist with anti-Muslim sentiments.
Download or read book Between Heaven and Russia written by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is religious conversion transforming American democracy? In one corner of Appalachia, a group of American citizens has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church and through it Putin’s New Russia. Historically a minority immigrant faith in the United States, Russian Orthodoxy is attracting Americans who look to Russian religion and politics for answers to western secularism and the loss of traditional family values in the face of accelerating progressivism. This ethnography highlights an intentional community of converts who are exemplary of much broader networks of Russian Orthodox converts in the US. These converts sought and found a conservatism more authentic than Christian American Republicanism and a nationalism unburdened by the broken promises of American exceptionalism. Ultimately, both converts and the Church that welcomes them deploy the subversive act of adopting the ideals and faith of a foreign power for larger, transnational political ends. Offering insights into this rarely considered religious world, including its far-right political roots that nourish the embrace of Putin’s Russia, this ethnography shows how religious conversion is tied to larger issues of social politics, allegiance, (anti)democracy, and citizenship. These conversions offer us a window onto both global politics and foreign affairs, while also allowing us to see how particular communities in the U.S. are grappling with social transformations in the twenty-first century. With broad implications for our understanding of both conservative Christianity and right-wing politics, as well as contemporary Russian-American relations, this book provides insight in the growing constellations of far-right conservatism. While Russian Orthodox converts are more likely to form the moral minority rather than the moral majority, they are an important gauge for understanding the powerful philosophical shifts occurring in the current political climate in the United States and what they might mean for the future of American values, ideals, and democracy.
Download or read book Persuasion and Conversion written by Torrance Kirby and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early modern ‘public sphere’ emerges out of a popular ‘culture of persuasion’ fostered by the Protestant Reformation. By 1600, religious identity could no longer be assumed as ‘given’ within the hierarchical institutions and elaborate apparatus of late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’. Reformers insisted on a sharp demarcation between the inner, subjective space of the individual and the external, public space of institutional life. Gradual displacement of sacramental culture was achieved by means of argument, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice exercised through both pulpit and press. This alternative culture of persuasion presupposes a radically distinct notion of mediation. The common focus of the essays collected here is the dynamic interaction of religion and politics which provided a crucible for the emerging modern ‘public sphere’.
Download or read book The Politics of Religious Conversion written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious conversion is, according to this thesis, an inherently political act, if not by intentions, by its implications. Through the introduction of three new concepts in particular, namely the theoretical concept of 'Muslimisation' and the descriptive concepts of 'entity-concepts' and 'metareligious conversion', I reveal how the transformations effected by religious conversion alter the political dynamics to the position of the convert. Considering interpersonal relationships, I demonstrate how there are political implications to the changes brought about by conversion. I then show how issues about the authenticity of conversion also place the convert within a field of discourse where this authenticity can be politically affirmed or challenged. Subsequently, examining the relationship between the convert and what I call entity-concepts, I clarify how the dynamics of the relationship between the individual and these ideological notions also experience a change as a consequence of conversion. Finally, I consider how the approaches scholars take to examining religious conversion provide a political challenge as well, in terms of how scholars' explanations place conversion within other fields of discourse, which test and critique what is understood by religious conversion, which may either compliment or contradict the convert's own point of view. The intention of this thesis is that it provides tools for the examination of religious conversion from a political point of view that are open for application and appraisal by other scholars of religious conversion.
