Download or read book Religion as a Conversation Starter written by Ina Merdjanova and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion as a Conversation Starter is the first comprehensive analysis of the present state of interreligious dialogue for peacebuilding in Southeast Europe. It is based on empirically grounded and policy-oriented research, carried out throughout the Balkans. The study maps recent interreligious relations in this part of the world, throwing light on both the achievements and challenges of interreligious dialogue for peacebuilding in particular, and offering a set of up-to-date policy recommendations, whilst contributing to a greater understanding of the local particularities and how they relate to broader trends transnationally. Interreligious dialogue has been a central tool in the continuous international efforts to promote peaceful living together in multicultural and multireligious societies. This fascinating monograph explores the place of interreligious dialogue as a primary method in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and will be of interest to scholars of religious and peace studies, as well as those who advocate and carry out organized interventions in religion-related spheres.

Download or read book 100 Conversation Starters written by Rory Kaye and published by Signalman Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-30 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you want to share the good news of Jesus, but not sure how to get started? Need some tips on how to break the ice and talk about your faith to family, friends and acquaintances? "100 Conversation Starters: Practical Help for Sharing Your Faith" is a wonderful "how to" that will provide you with ways to easily talk about your faith in everyday conversation that is not off-putting or threatening. Understanding and following these conversation starters is a stress-free way to help you reach a deeper level in conversing with others without the fear of offending them. You will learn to share your faith in a truly authentic way that those around you will come to appreciate. In a recent survey, a third of all believers asked had never once shared the gospel, or even their testimony, with a non-believer. Practical help is needed. That's why this book was written. Most of us have experienced the frustration of not knowing what to say or how to get started. But we can learn to start conversations by using associations from everyday life; to share our faith in a way that is easy for others to understand. Jesus himself did this. He invited fishermen to become fishers of men. To a woman drawing water from a well, He offered living water that would never run dry. With the help of the Holy Spirit, Jesus knew just what to say and how to relate to every person He met. The same Spirit that enabled Jesus to hear and perceive what His Father wanted said and done is now inside of each of His disciples! God often will bring people into your life just so you can share your faith with them. "100 Conversation Starters" will help you do that.

Download or read book Let s Talk written by Mark Wessner and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has often been said that people will talk about anything other than religion and politics. But why? Why are so many people so reluctant to talk? Perhaps, when it comes to religion and spirituality, our fear stems from our uncertainty. At a very basic level, most of us want to talk about these topics, but unfortunately many of us do not know how to talk about them.Let's Talk has been written to tackle this problem head on, and it provides thought-provoking questions and brief conversation starters about a wide range of religious and spiritual topics. Not only will you be informed about relevant topics in an accessible way, you will also be equipped to ask some initial conversational questions. No more fear and uncertainty! The list of topics includes:* Where do I begin?* Who killed religion?* The origin of the world* World religions* Views of sacred scripture* Religious fundamentalism* Sacred rituals and religious holidays* Many more ...

Download or read book Well Hello written by Shannon Jennings and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WELL HELLO includes a wide range of questions (over 300) to use for ice-breakers and conversation starters with your small groups and events. Questions range from light and fun to some that could generate deeper discussions, all appropriate for Christian communities of women, teens, and college girls. Also included are nearly 100 quick 'this or that' prompts, a purse/bag/backpack scavenger hunt list, and more geared toward warming everyone up for meaningful community time.

Download or read book Civil Society in Malerkotla Punjab written by Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-07-25 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil Society in Malerkotla, Punjab: Fostering Resilience through Religion by Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa explores the direct role that religion plays in conflict and peace that has often been difficult to isolate. This study extends previous work on peace and conflict resolution by looking at a town which has witnessed many outbreaks of violence in the past but still holds peace as the norm. The former princely state of Malerkotla, Punjab is a place where riots did not occur during Partition. In this unique Muslim majority town, there are four distinct religious groups that live in close proximity to each other. Yet, the overall pattern of peaceful plurality in the town has resulted in the transcendence of violence even when the threat looms close by. The unique case of Malerkotla, Punjab provides an opportunity to look more closely and critically at Sikhs and their relationship with Muslims in India. As a case study, this work captures the overall pattern of Sikh-Muslim interaction in a town that can transcend conflict and make peace the norm. Randhawa uncovers how religious associations, expressions and activities have helped to build social capital and stabilize peace. This book also emphasizes interreligious understanding, cross-cultural awareness, and conflict transformation, and discusses how interfaith communities can work together to bridge understanding in order to prevent violence.

Download or read book Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age written by Elisabeth Arweck and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, there has been growing awareness across a range of academic disciplines of the value of exploring issues of religion and the sacred in relation to cultures of everyday life. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age offers inter-disciplinary perspectives drawing from theology, religious studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, sociology and anthropology. Combining theoretical frameworks for the analysis of religion, media and popular culture, with focused international case studies of particular texts, practices, communities and audiences, the authors examine topics such as media rituals, marketing strategies, empirical investigations of audience testimony, and the influence of religion on music, reality television and the internet. Both academically rigorous and of interest to a wider readership, this book offers a wide range of fascinating explorations at the cutting edge of many contemporary debates in sociology, religion and media, including chapters on the way evangelical groups in America have made use of The Da Vinci Code and on the influences of religion on British club culture and electronic dance music.

Download or read book Narratives of War written by Nanci Adler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narratives of War considers the way war and battle are remembered and narrated across space and time in Europe in the twentieth century. The book reflects on how narratives are generated and deployed, and on their function as coping mechanisms, means of survival, commemorative gestures, historical records and evidence. The contributions address such issues as the tension and discrepancy between memory and the official chronicling of war, the relationship between various individuals’ versions of war narratives and the ways in which events are brought together to serve varied functions for the narrators and their audiences. Drawing upon the two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the ex-Yugoslav wars, and considering narrative genres that include film, schoolbooks, novels, oral history, archives, official documents, personal testimony and memoirs, readers are introduced to a range of narrative forms and examples that highlight the complexity of narrative in relation to war. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, and taken together, analysis of these narratives contributes to our understanding of the causes, experience, dynamics and consequences of war, making it the ideal book for those interested in twentieth-century war history and the history of memory and narrative.

Download or read book The Complete Book of Questions written by Garry D. Poole and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1001 Conversation Starters for Any OccasionMost of us realize that raising questions is a powerful way to get interesting dialogue. But asking good ones can be another matter—they’re not always that easy to think up! That’s where The Complete Book of Questions comes in. This book is one big compilation of questions—1001 of them you can use to launch great conversations in almost any context. And many of these questions are likely to trigger other questions you may also wish to discuss. Think of this book as a tool to spark interaction—and to know and understand others, and yourself, better. The questions in The Complete Book of Questions have been divided into ten categories for easy reference as shown in the chart below. There are probably as many ways to put this book to use, as there are questions within it! So be creative. Experiment with these 1001 questions in different contexts—and be sure to make the most of the conversations that ensue!

Download or read book Hey God Can We Talk written by Sarah Bowling and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Hands-on Guide for Meaningful Conversations with GodHey God, Can We Talk? is a practical book designed to transform your conversations with God from distant and religious into meaningful and authentic dialogues. Deeply rooted in Scripture, this book gives hands-on tools for interacting with God through the everyday stuff of life. Each chapter...

Download or read book Insight Turkey 2015 Spring 2015 Vol 17 No 2 written by and published by SET Vakfı İktisadi İşletmesi. This book was released on with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy security, at the heart of energy policy, has become central to the dynamics of international relations. Political turmoil has overwhelmed many oil and gas producing countries, forcing them to adapt their national energy policies according to this continuous change. Specifically, because of the wars and instability in the Middle East and the Ukrainian crisis, global energy security is no longer guaranteed. One of the foremost experts on the energy industry, Daniel Yergin, identifies energy security as “the availability of sufficient supplies at affordable prices.” He also comments that every country interprets the definition of energy security with its own dynamics. In practice, the definition of energy security is polysemic and the topic of energy security is being explored daily, under the lens of numerous new studies, by scholars, energy experts, government officials, activists, and journalists.

Download or read book Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society written by Jayeel Cornelio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like any other subject, the study of religion is a child of its time. Shaped and forged over the course of the twentieth century, it has reflected the interests and political situation of the world at the time. As the twenty-first century unfolds, it is undergoing a major transition along with religion itself. This volume showcases new work and new approaches to religion which work across boundaries of religious tradition, academic discipline and region. The influence of globalizing processes has been evident in social and cultural networking by way of new media like the internet, in the extensive power of global capitalism and in the increasing influence of international bodies and legal instruments. Religion has been changing and adapting too. This handbook offers fresh insights on the dynamic reality of religion in global societies today by underscoring transformations in eight key areas: Market and Branding; Contemporary Ethics and Virtues; Intimate Identities; Transnational Movements; Diasporic Communities; Responses to Diversity; National Tensions; and Reflections on ‘Religion’. These themes demonstrate the handbook’s new topics and approaches that move beyond existing agendas. Bringing together scholars of all ages and stages of career from around the world, the handbook showcases the dynamism of religion in global societies. It is an accessible introduction to new ways of approaching the study of religion practically, theoretically and geographically.

Download or read book Individualized Religion written by Claire Wanless and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores individualized religion in and around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Claire Wanless demonstrates that counter to the claims of secularization theorists, the combination of informal structures and practices can provide a viable basis for socially significant religious activity that can sustain itself. The subjects of this research claim a variety of religious identities and practices, and are suspicious of religious institutions, hierarchies, rules and dogmas. Yet they participate actively in an overlapping and cross-linking informal network of practice communities and other associations. Their engagements propagate and sustain a core ideology that prioritizes subjectivity, locates authority at the level of the individual, and also predicates itself on ideals of sharing, mutuality and community. Providing a new theory of religious association, this book is a nuanced counterpoint to the secularization thesis in the UK and points the way to new research on individual religion.

Download or read book Talking Dialogue written by Karsten Lehmann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the last two decades, the modern dialogue movement has gained worldwide significance. The knowledge about its origins is, however, still very limited. This book presents a wide range of insights from eleven case studies into the early history of several important international interreligious/interfaith dialogue organizations that have shaped the modern development of interreligious dialogue from the late nineteenth century up to the present. Based on new archival research, they describe, on the one hand, how these actors put their ideals into practice and, on the other, how they faced many challenges as pioneers in the establishment of new interreligious/interfaith organizational structures. This book concludes with a comparison of those case studies, bringing to light new and broader historico-sociological understanding of the beginnings of international and multi-religious interreligious/interfaith dialogue organizations over more than one century. The World’s Parliament of Religions / 1893 The Religiöser Menschheitsbund / 1921 The World Congress of Faiths / 1933-1950 The Committee on the Church and the Jewish People of the World Council of Churches / 1961 The Temple of Understanding / 1968 The International Association for Religious Freedom / 1969 The World Conference on Religion and Peace / 1970 The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions / 1989-1991 The Oxford International Interfaith Centre / 1993 The United Religions Initiative / 2000 The Universal Peace Federation / 2005 Based on these analyses, the authors identify three distinct groups with sometimes-conflicting interests that are shaping the movement: individual religious virtuosi, countercultural activists, and representatives of religious institutions. Published in cooperation with the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious & Intercultural Dialogue, Vienna.

Download or read book Orthodox Christianity New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion written by Eugenia Roussou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the 'evil eye' produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture. The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.

Download or read book The Critical Study of Non Religion written by Christopher R. Cotter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book acts as a bridge between the critical study of 'religion' and empirical studies of 'religion in the real world'. Chris Cotter presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh's Southside which blurs the boundary between 'religion' and 'non-religion'. In doing so, Cotter demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake. This book details an approach that avoids constructing 'religion' as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating 'non-religious' subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be essential reading for those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-/religious landscape.

Download or read book Acute Religious Experiences written by Richard Saville-Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages the problem of how, in the 21st century, we are to speak about experiences of the extraordinary/anomalous/extreme which occur on a transhistorical and transcultural basis. Critical re-readings of seminal texts show how 20th-century theoreticians in the humanities sought to erase madness from their irrational subjects. This propensity to sanitize madness in the study of religions was mirrored by the instinct of psychiatrists to degrade religious experiences by reducing mad consciousness to psychosis or dissociation. Richard Saville-Smith introduces explanatory pluralism as a way of recognizing these disciplinary biases and mad studies as a way of negotiating this understanding. The disproportionate significance of madness in shaping the fabric of the human story can then be recovered from both erasure and dismissal to be given the recognition previously denied - as acute religious experiences. Acute Religious Experiences divides into three sections, beginning with re-readings of William James's pathological programme, Rudolf Otto's numinous, T. K. Oesterreich's possession, Mircea Eliade's shamanism, Walter Stace's mysticism, Walter Pahnke's psychedelic experience, and Abraham Maslow's peak experiences. These ideas are shown to constitute the beginnings of a fractured discourse on the irrational. In part two, contemporary psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and Foucault's History of Madness are re-read to reposition madness as not necessarily pathological. This opens the way for the identification of acute religious experiences as a new holistic and post-colonial approach through which religious data can be organized and addressed on a comparative basis. In part three, The Gospel of Mark is re-read as a case study to demonstrate the novel insights which flow from the identification of acute religious experiences. Richard Saville-Smith draws on his own experiences of madness and his PhD from the School of Divinity at The University of Edinburgh to elucidate his research.

Download or read book 101 Great First Dates What To Say 101 Conversation Topics written by FranK Kermit, MA and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-11-08 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this latest work, Frank Kermit presents 101+ various conversation topics to keep the conversations going on a first date. He also covers the mindset behind those conversation topics. How important is having fun on a first date? How do you set your boundaries and communicate your deal-breakers without ruining the vibe? What "Red Flags" should you be screening for? What are you looking to establish through conversation on a first date? The answer to these questions and more in this final section of a program that will help you build the best first dates possible. This book is for Men and Women (based on an original CD recording) Frank Kermit MA is a Dating and Relationship Coach. Frank is the author, a certified trauma counselor and certified hypnotherapist and also a media correspondent and offers coaching to singles and couples in private practice. please visit: www.FrankTalks.com for review of this program.