Download or read book Sacred Cyberspaces written by Oren Golan and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years every major institution has had to adapt to the fast-evolving technologies of the digital age or risk being left behind. Amid a global crisis of faith and declining levels of religious participation in places around the world, the Catholic Church has likewise come face to face with the challenges and possibilities of new media. Sacred Cyberspaces reveals how long-standing conflicts over power, influence, and legitimacy within religious organizations are being waged in the digital realm. Oren Golan and Michele Martini describe the tensions that arise as religious groups seek to reach the faithful in online spaces where traditional clerical authorities have less expertise and control. Focusing on the Catholic world, they examine the rise of devotional digital entrepreneurship and the roles of lay religious webmasters: the video makers, app developers, and web designers who devote their lives to evangelization and who literally run the show. The book also explores the nature of religious experience as it pivots to online platforms: cyberculture, prayer, ceremonies, pilgrimage, proselytization, and the relation to the transcendental. From live-streaming at world-famous sites in the Holy Land to the Instagram feed of Pope Francis, Sacred Cyberspaces evaluates the contemporary media strategies of the Catholic Church and sheds light on the future of religion online.
Download or read book Religion and Cyberspace written by Morten T. Højsgaard and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and Cyberspace explores how religious individuals and groups are responding to the opportunities and challenges that cyberspace brings.
Download or read book Caught in the Current written by Sam Reimer and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-04-15 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evangelical Christianity is known for its defence of traditional Christian teachings and resistance to liberalizing trends. Many Western evangelicals themselves do not yet realize how their faith is being reshaped by the modern zeitgeist. Caught in the Current explores how and why Western evangelicals are changing. Church attendance is declining, conservative moral positions are unpopular, and young people are drifting away from the faith. Evangelism is avoided, so few are joining congregations. Yet these surface changes are only symptoms of a more profound shift that church leaders have not fully apprehended. Drawing upon 125 interviews with British and Canadian clergy and active laity, Sam Reimer argues that evangelicals have been deeply influenced by a post-Christian culture that has rejected institutional religious authority and embraced self-spirituality. As individual evangelicals struggle to navigate these waters, and to distance themselves from politicized evangelicalism in the United States, they are caught between conformity and resistance, between faithfulness to church moral teachings and accommodation of secular values. Many are responding by turning inward to define their Christian beliefs for themselves. The ironic result is that the decline of institutional religious authority is not happening just in Western culture, but within evangelical churches as well. Caught in the Current is an insightful and nuanced assessment of how British and Canadian evangelicals are navigating a post-Christian culture, often in ways that are distinct from how their counterparts in the United States approach it.
Download or read book Prophets of Love written by Matthew R. Anderson and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-09-15 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul might be imagined as brothers with wildly different characters but a strong family resemblance. Paul, the elder sibling, was awkward, abrasive, and zealous. Leonard, the successful younger brother, was a smooth-talking romantic, prone to addiction and depression. Paul died a martyr, not knowing his words would have any effect on the world. Leonard could see his canonization within his lifetime. Yet each became a prophet in his own time, and a poet for the ages. In Prophets of Love Matthew Anderson traces surprising connections between two Jewish thinkers separated by millennia. He explores Leonard's and Paul’s mysticism, their Judaism, their fascination with Jesus, their countercultural perspectives on sex, their ideas about love, and how they each embodied being men. Anderson considers their ambiguous relationships with women, on whom they depended and from whom they often profited, as well as how their legacies continue to evolve and be re-interpreted. This book emphasizes that Paul was first and foremost a Jew, and never rejected his Judaism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the biblical worldviews and language underlying and inspiring every line of Cohen’s poetry. Prophets of Love alters our views of both Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul, re-introducing us to two poetic prophets of divine and human love.
Download or read book Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives written by Mohamed Taher and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives, as is implied by its name, explores worship (i.e., Prayer, Praise, Scripture, Sacrament, Rituals, Confessions, Eucharist, Rites, Pilgrimages, Reflection, Contemplation, etc.) on the Internet. It is not an 'everything you need to know' guide about the subjects of faith and belief, religions-online, religions on the Net, or religions in cyberspace. Rather, it is a book about religious and spiritual experience under the rubric, cyber worship, which is the variety of ways religious devotion is performed and carried out on the Internet. The term 'Cyber Worship' is a catchall phrase, which includes variants such as online worship, virtual worship, electronic prayer, cyber puja, cyber synagogue, and so on. Dr. Mohamed Taher has thus assembled a quick reference for two groups: those communities that are involved in Cyber Worship and business Webs that collaborate in sustaining wired environments. As such, this book provides an interesting and current perspective on a practice that will continue to grow in the future.
Download or read book The Study of Religion written by George D. Chryssides and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated textbook unravels the complex issues related to methodology and theory in the study of religion. It equips students with the knowledge needed for the academic study of religion, explaining the history of the methodology, including ideas of key theorists, and discusses key issues in the field, such as gender, phenomenology, and the insider/outsider discourse. Updated throughout, additional material includes: -New chapter on colonialism and post-colonialism -New chapter on insider/outsider discourse -Coverage of 'cyber-religion' and the internet as a research tool in religious studies Study and classroom features in each chapter include: -Chapter outlines -Case studies -Boxed key concepts -Discussion questions -Chapter bibliographies The text is illustrated throughout with 35 images, and extra resources can be found online, including additional coverage of 'levels of religion'.
Download or read book Cyber China written by F. Mengin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-11-26 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore the new power struggles created in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through information technology. The contributors analyze the interaction between the development of information technologies and social logic on the one hand and processes of unification and fragmentation on the other. They seek to highlight the strategies of public and private actors aimed at monopolizing the benefits created by the information society - whether for monetary gain or bureaucratic consolidation - as well as the new loci of power now emerging. The book is organized around two main themes: One exploring societal change and power relations, the second examining the restructuring of Greater China's space. In so doing, the book seeks to shed light on both the state formation process as well as international relations theory.
Download or read book Cyber War versus Cyber Realities written by Brandon Valeriano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, the United States government declared a cyber attack as equal to an act of war, punishable with conventional military means. Cyber operations, cyber crime, and other forms of cyber activities directed by one state against another are now considered part of the normal relations range of combat and conflict, and the rising fear of cyber conflict has brought about a reorientation of military affairs. What is the reality of this threat? Is it actual or inflated, fear or fact-based? Taking a bold stand against the mainstream wisdom, Valeriano and Maness argue that there is very little evidence that cyber war is, or is likely to become, a serious threat. Their claim is empirically grounded, involving a careful analysis of cyber incidents and disputes experienced by international states since 2001, and an examination of the processes leading to cyber conflict. As the authors convincingly show, cyber incidents are a little-used tactic, with low-level intensity and few to no long-term effects. As well, cyber incidents are motivated by the same dynamics that prompt regional conflicts. Based on this evidence, Valeriano and Maness lay out a set of policy recommendations for proper defense against cyber threats that is built on restraint and regionalism.
Download or read book Religion and American Cultures 4 volumes written by Gary Laderman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 1712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four-volume work provides a detailed, multicultural survey of established as well as "new" American religions and investigates the fascinating interactions between religion and ethnicity, gender, politics, regionalism, ethics, and popular culture. This revised and expanded edition of Religion and American Cultures: Tradition, Diversity, and Popular Expression presents more than 140 essays that address contemporary spiritual practice and culture with a historical perspective. The entries cover virtually every religion in modern-day America as well as the role of religion in various aspects of U.S. culture. Readers will discover that Americans aren't largely Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish anymore, and that the number of popular religious identities is far greater than many would imagine. And although most Americans believe in a higher power, the fastest growing identity in the United States is the "nones"—those Americans who elect "none" when asked about their religious identity—thereby demonstrating how many individuals see their spirituality as something not easily defined or categorized. The first volume explores America's multicultural communities and their religious practices, covering the range of different religions among Anglo-Americans and Euro-Americans as well as spirituality among Latino, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities. The second volume focuses on cultural aspects of religions, addressing topics such as film, Generation X, public sacred spaces, sexuality, and new religious expressions. The new third volume expands the range of topics covered with in-depth essays on additional topics such as interfaith families, religion in prisons, belief in the paranormal, and religion after September 11, 2001. The fourth volume is devoted to complementary primary source documents.
Download or read book Cyber Sufis written by Robert Rozehnal and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In America today, online spaces serve as critical alternatives for tech-savvy Muslims seeking a place to root their faith, forge religious identity, and build communities. With a particular focus on the Inayati Order, a branch of the oldest Sufi community in the West, Robert Rozehnal explores the online revolution in internal communication, spiritual pedagogy, and public outreach – and looks ahead to the future of digital Islam in the age of Web 3.0.
Download or read book The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace written by Margaret Wertheim and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyberspace may seem an unlikely gateway for the soul, but as science commentator Wertheim argues in this "wonderfully provocative" ("Kirkus Reviews") book, cyberspace has in recent years become a repository for immense spiritual yearning. 37 illustrations.
Download or read book A Brief History of Cyberspace written by Huansheng Ning and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the widespread growth of the Internet, a new space – cyberspace – has appeared and has rapidly been integrated into every facet of life and work. It has effectively become the fourth basic living space for human beings. Although cyberspace has become a topic of increasing widespread concern, it is still difficult to understand cyberspace well because of its many definitions, vast and varied content, and differences with other similar spaces. A Brief History of Cyberspace attempts to establish a complete knowledge system about the evolution and history of cyberspace and cyber-enabled spaces (i.e., cyber-enabled physical space, cyber-enabled social space, and cyber-enabled thinking space). By providing a comprehensive overview, this book aims to help readers understand the history of cyberspace and lays a solid foundation for researchers and learners who are interested in cyberspace. The book has three main objectives: To provide a comprehensive understanding of the development of cyberspace, ranging from its origin, evolutions, and research status to open issues and future challenges, as well as related hot topics in industry and academia. To examine cyber life, cyber syndrome, and health in addition to cyber-enabled spaces designed for better living. To describe cyberspace governance from the perspective of the individual, society, and national and international levels in order to promote a more profound and reasonable direction to the development of cyberspace. Consisting of 16 chapters, the book is divided into three parts. Chapter 1 introduces the origins and basic concept of cyberspace, cyber philosophy, and cyber logic to help readers have a general understanding of cyberspace. Chapters 2 through 7 discuss a wide variety of topics related to human behavior, psychology, and health to help people better adapt to cyberspace. Chapters 8 through 16 present the history of cyberspace governance and various social and culture aspects of cyberspace. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of future development.
Download or read book Cyber Muslims written by Robert Rozehnal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an array of detailed case studies, this book explores the vibrant digital expressions of diverse groups of Muslim cybernauts: religious clerics and Sufis, feminists and fashionistas, artists and activists, hajj pilgrims and social media influencers. These stories span a vast cultural and geographic landscape-from Indonesia, Iran, and the Arab Middle East to North America. These granular case studies contextualize cyber Islam within broader social trends: racism and Islamophobia, gender dynamics, celebrity culture, identity politics, and the shifting terrain of contemporary religious piety and practice. The book's authors examine an expansive range of digital multimedia technologies as primary “texts.” These include websites, podcasts, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channels, online magazines and discussion forums, and religious apps. The contributors also draw on a range of methodological and theoretical models from multiple academic disciplines, including communication and media studies, anthropology, history, global studies, religious studies, and Islamic studies.
Download or read book Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism written by Raymond Brady Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism, third edition, offers a comprehensive study of a contemporary form of Hinduism. Begun as a revival and reform movement in India 200 years ago, it has now become one of the fastest growing and most prominent forms of Hinduism. The Swaminarayan Hindu transnational network of temples and institutions is expanding in India, East Africa, the UK, USA, Australasia, and in other African and Asian cities. The devotion, rituals, and discipline taught by its founder, Sahajanand Swami (1781-1830) and elaborated by current leaders in major festivals, diverse media, and over the Internet, help preserve ethnic and religious identity in many modern cultural and political contexts. Swaminarayan Hinduism, here described through its history, divisions, leaders, theology and practices, provides valuable case studies of contemporary Hinduism, religion, migrants, and transnationalism. This new edition includes up-to-date information about growth, geographic expansion, leadership transitions, and impact of Swaminarayan institutions in India and abroad.
Download or read book Religion and Media in China written by Stefania Travagnin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the intersection of religion and media in China, bringing interdisciplinary approaches to bear on the role of religion in the lives of individuals and greater shifts within Chinese society in an increasingly media-saturated environment. With case studies focusing on Mainland China (including Tibet), Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as diasporic Chinese communities outside Asia, contributors consider topics including the historical and ideological roots of media representations of religion, expressions of religious faith online and in social media, state intervention (through both censorship and propaganda), religious institutions’ and communities’ use of various forms of media, and the role of the media in relations between online/offline and local/diaspora communities. Chapters engage with the major religious traditions practiced in contemporary China, namely Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, and new religious movements. Religion and the Media in China serves as a critical survey of case studies and suggests theoretical and methodological tools for a thorough and systematic study of religion in modern China. Contributors to the volume include historians of religion, sinologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and media and communication scholars. The critical theories that contributors develop around key concepts in religion—such as authority, community, church, ethics, pilgrimage, ritual, text, and practice—contribute to advancing the emerging field of religion and media studies.
Download or read book Religion Online written by Lorne L. Dawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion Online provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this burgeoning new religious reality, from cyberpilgrimages to neo-pagan chatroom communities. A substantial introduction by the editors presenting the main themes and issues is followed by sixteen chapters addressing core issues of concern such as youth, religion and the internet, new religious movements and recruitment, propaganda and the countercult, and religious tradition and innovation.
Download or read book Tilling Sacred Grounds written by Phillis Isabella Sheppard and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tilling Sacred Grounds examines Black women’s interiority and negotiation of race, gender, and sexuality in religious spaces and religious practices. Phillis Isabella Sheppard argues for the importance of the exchange between interiority and public spaces, and examines religion in cyberspace, art, ritual, and street ministry. She refigures the location of religious experience by retrieving Black women’s interiority as religious space. Often excluded from Black religious studies, interiority is necessary for understanding Black women’s complex and even unconscious relationship with religion. The book weaves a thread by stressing that interiority has subjective, intersubjective, conscious, unconscious, and relational dimensions formed in historical, and social contexts.
