Download or read book Secularism and Biblical Studies written by Roland Boer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is secular biblical criticism? 'Secularism and Biblical Studies' presents a selection of essays that examine the nature of secular biblical studies and its hermeneutical principles. The essays outline and analyse debates within biblical studies over the issue of secularism and explore the interplay of atheism, agnosticism and faith in the interpretation of the Bible. The book argues for a hermeneutics of suspicion and a wider engagement with cultural, literary and anthropological disciplines. Examining biblical hermeneutics from a range of perspectives - from Europe, Israel and the USA - 'Secularism and Biblical Studies' offers a provocative and challenging approach that will be of interest to all students and scholars of the Bible.
Download or read book Secularism and Biblical Studies written by Roland Boer and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Secular Steeples 2nd edition written by Conrad Ostwalt and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of secularization in America, this book provides students with an innovative way of understanding the relationship between religion and secular culture. In Secular Steeples, Conrad Ostwalt challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion and culture and about the impact of secularization. Moving away from the idea that religion will diminish as secularization continues, Ostwalt identifies areas of popular culture where secular and sacred views and objectives interact and enrich each other. The book demonstrates how religious institutions use the secular and popular media of television, movies, and music to make sacred teachings relevant. From megachurches to sports arenas, the Bible to Harry Potter, biker churches to virtual worship communities, Ostwalt demonstrates how religion persists across cultural forms, secular and sacred, with secular culture expressing religious messages and sometimes containing more authentic religious content than official religious teachings. An ideal text for anyone studying religion and popular culture, each chapter provides questions for discussion, a list of important terms and guided readings.
Download or read book Simple Faith written by Bo Lange and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Man shares his 'Faith' in book A simpler approach to the Bible January 2, 2012 By Jason Raiche ([email protected]) , Daily Press ESCANABA - Escanaba resident and Swedish native Bo Lange has recently released a book on Christian faith, now available online. The book, called "Simple Faith," touches on Biblical Christianity, in the culture of religions and secularism, as noted in the book's subtitle, and stemmed from a book Lange wrote in his native Sweden. "Simple Faith" offers a look at Christian faith "as represented solely in the Bible," according to an overview of the book on publishing company WestBow Press' website. Lange said "Simple Faith" is essentially about having confidence the Bible is God's word, as he is concerned with secularism and religion dominating our culture, which has led him to reintroduce the Bible to readers. The book breaks down arguments about Christianity "to the most basic yet powerful aspects of the Christian faith," according to the overview. "I have the preconceived idea that the Bible really is the word of God, which means you can still trust it," explained Lange, adding, if the Bible truly is God's word and "it is the revealed word of God to man," that makes it no ordinary book. He said the word "simple" helps define the concept behind faith, and also represents his own mind. "I have a simple mind," said Lange. "Some people, especially those who are more sophisticated, they have a hard time with me, because I'm so simple. So I decided to write the book about simple faith by a simple mind." By simple, Lange does not mean simple in the way of "easy believism", where if you believe, then you're a Christian, but "simple," as in the concept of faith itself. "First of all, one of the chapters has to do with 'How does a person reconcile with God', or how is a person, like they usually say, 'saved'?," said Lange. "And I say, it's only by faith. Very simple." He said "Simple Faith" is based on an earlier book he wrote in the Swedish language, about the Christian faith in the Swedish philosophical world, which was called "The Dividing Line," and discusses the dividing line between religion and Christian faith. "Simple Faith," which he finished writing this last year, essentially evolved from "The Dividing Line," he said. "Coming from a secularist society and humanistic parents, I have gone through all these issues," he explained. "You wonder how in the world did you come up with an idea like that if you grew up in a very liberal, progressive country? And I still believe it, so that's why I decided I'm going to write it and say, 'You can still believe this.'" Lange said the book is for those seeking to figure out whether they can believe the Bible, for those who have just become Christians, for those long-time Christians as a reminder they can still believe the Bible, and for "sophistic philosophers," such as priests or pastors who have gone away from this message. The process for getting the book published this time was different from what he did on his first two books in Sweden, he said. "The two first ones I wrote in Sweden, I went to the printer and said, 'This is what I want you to print,'" said Lange. "So this time I did a lot of web searching, and I found this WestBow Press, which I had heard a little bit about before. And they do all the publishing." WestBow is a Christian book company, with all books published having Christian messages, said Lange. Though he had a friend from Marquette edit the book, he said WestBow has cut out a lot of the work he had to do from the first two times he was published. "The second book in Sweden I printed 1,000 copies and I had to distribute them and it was so hard, so they (WestBow) do the distribution on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, and it's an eBook." He said the company will print the book according to needs, and keeps 50 percent of proceeds from each book, which costs $9.95. Lange will be requesting 100 copies from the company, and the book will be sold locally at Canterbury Bookstore, he said. There will also be a book signing coming up at Stones Cafe when copies of the books arrive in approximately two to three weeks. Lange comes from an Evangelical Covenant Church background and said he has been a confessing Christian since his childhood. He also has served 38 years as a pastor, serving both denomination and non-denomination congregations. Currently he resides in Escanaba with his wife, Diana, and has recorded Scandinavian music on both cassettes and CDs. He has also helped organize area Scandinavian festivals, teaches Swedish classes at the University of Wisconsin in Marinette, and also teaches Swedish online. For more information on "Simple Faith," search for the it online at westbowpress.com.
Download or read book Secular Faith written by Vincent William Lloyd and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is faith a necessary virtue in the contemporary world? May it be, or must it be, detached from religious commitment? What do genealogies of the secular tell us about faith? Does religion need secular faith? Secular Faith brings together leading and emerging scholars to reflect on the apparent paradox of "secular faith." Ranging over anthropology, religious studies, political science, history, and literature, from Muslims in China to Pentecostals in South Africa to a prison chapel in Texas, this collection of essays is as engaging and accessible as it is penetrating and rigorous. Communism was once labeled "the god that failed." Like Christianity, Communism involves faith in a superhuman endeavor, conversion, myth, discipline, and salvation--and, from the perspective of secular liberalism, both are unjustified and false. In recent years, scholars have begun to investigate whether secularism is itself based on faith in a god that failed, or is failing. Nevertheless, many still embrace such a faith, finding in the spirit of democracy an ethos of eternal renewal. Secular Faith enters and broadens this conversation, interrogating secular faith in a global context, tapping new theoretical resources, and grappling provocatively with the tragedies and opportunities of today's profane pantheon of beliefs.
Download or read book Archaeological Study Bible written by Zondervan Publishing and published by . This book was released on 2010-08-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in the timeless King James Version, the Archaeological Study Bible features a full-color interior, over 500 full-color photographs, in-text maps, detailed charts, study notes, and cultural facts that bring the ancient biblical world to life.
Download or read book The Secular Bible written by Jacques Berlinerblau and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's secularists too often have very little accurate knowledge about religion, and even less desire to learn. This is problematic insofar as their sense of self is constructed in opposition to religion. Above all, the secularist is not a Jew, is not a Christian, not a Muslim, and so on. But is it intellectually responsible to define one's identity against something that one does not understand? And what happens when these secularists weigh in on contentious political issues, blind to the religious back-story or concerns that inevitably inform these debates? In The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously Jacques Berlinerblau suggests that atheists and agnostics must take stock of that which they so adamantly oppose. Defiantly maintaining a shallow understanding of religion, he argues, is not a politically prudent strategy in this day and age. But this book is no less critical of many believers, who--Berlinerblau contends--need to emancipate themselves from ways of thinking about their faith that are dangerously simplistic, irrational and outdated. Exploring the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, from the perspective of a specialist, nonbeliever, and critic of the academic religious studies establishment, Berlinerblau begins by offering a provocative answer to the question of "who wrote the Bible?" The very peculiar way in which this text was composed provides a key to understanding its unique power (and vulnerability) in the modern public sphere. In separate chapters, he looks at how the sparse and contradictory words of Scripture are invoked in contemporary disputes about Jewish intermarriage and homosexuality in the Christian world. Finally, he examines ways in which the Qur'an might be subject to the types of secular interpretation advocated throughout this book. Cumulatively, this book is a first attempt to reinvigorate an estimable secular, intellectual tradition, albeit one that is currently experiencing a moment of crisis.
Download or read book The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture How the Bible Became a Secular Book written by Scott Hahn and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is wrong with Scripture scholarship today? Why is it that the last place one should go to study the Bible is a biblical studies program at virtually any university? Why are so many faithful priests and pastors, and the people in their pews, unaware of the centuries-long effort to turn the sacred Word of God into just another secular text? In The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book, authors Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker trace the various malformations of Scripture scholarship that have led to a devastating loss of trust in the inspired Word of God. From the Reformation to the Enlightenment and beyond, Hahn and Wiker sketch the revolutions and radical figures that led to the emergence of the historical-critical method and the pervasive ill effects that are still being felt today.
Download or read book Secularism and Religion Making written by Markus Dressler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions. It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas, social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between history, politics, and religion. The individual contributions, written by a new generation of scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the processes of translation and globalization of historically specific concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion and secularism as modern concepts.
Download or read book Secularism and Hermeneutics written by Yael Almog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late Enlightenment, a new imperative began to inform theories of interpretation: all literary texts should be read in the same way that we read the Bible. However, this assumption concealed a problem—there was no coherent "we" who read the Bible in the same way. In Secularism and Hermeneutics, Yael Almog shows that several prominent thinkers of the era, including Johann Gottfried Herder, Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, constituted readers as an imaginary "we" around which they could form their theories and practices of interpretation. This conception of interpreters as a universal community, Almog argues, established biblical readers as a coherent collective. In the first part of the book, Almog focuses on the 1760s through the 1780s and examines these writers' works on biblical Hebrew and their reliance on the conception of the Old Testament as a cultural, rather than religious, asset. She reveals how the detachment of textual hermeneutics from confessional affiliation was stimulated by debates on the integration of Jews in Enlightenment Germany. In order for the political community to cohere, she contends, certain religious practices were restricted to the private sphere while textual interpretation, which previously belonged to religious contexts, became the foundation of the public sphere. As interpretive practices were secularized and taken to be universal, they were meant to overcome religious difference. Turning to literature and the early nineteenth century in the second part of the book, Almog demonstrates the ways in which the new literary genres of realism and lyric poetry disrupted these interpretive reading practices. Literary techniques such as irony and intertextuality disturbed the notion of a stable, universal reader's position and highlighted interpretation as grounded in religious belonging. Secularism and Hermeneutics reveals the tension between textual exegesis and confessional belonging and challenges the modern presumption that interpretation is indifferent to religious concerns.
Download or read book Secularism and Hermeneutics written by Yael Almog and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-05-13 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late Enlightenment, a new imperative began to inform theories of interpretation: all literary texts should be read in the same way that we read the Bible. However, this assumption concealed a problem—there was no coherent "we" who read the Bible in the same way. In Secularism and Hermeneutics, Yael Almog shows that several prominent thinkers of the era, including Johann Gottfried Herder, Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, constituted readers as an imaginary "we" around which they could form their theories and practices of interpretation. This conception of interpreters as a universal community, Almog argues, established biblical readers as a coherent collective. In the first part of the book, Almog focuses on the 1760s through the 1780s and examines these writers' works on biblical Hebrew and their reliance on the conception of the Old Testament as a cultural, rather than religious, asset. She reveals how the detachment of textual hermeneutics from confessional affiliation was stimulated by debates on the integration of Jews in Enlightenment Germany. In order for the political community to cohere, she contends, certain religious practices were restricted to the private sphere while textual interpretation, which previously belonged to religious contexts, became the foundation of the public sphere. As interpretive practices were secularized and taken to be universal, they were meant to overcome religious difference. Turning to literature and the early nineteenth century in the second part of the book, Almog demonstrates the ways in which the new literary genres of realism and lyric poetry disrupted these interpretive reading practices. Literary techniques such as irony and intertextuality disturbed the notion of a stable, universal reader's position and highlighted interpretation as grounded in religious belonging. Secularism and Hermeneutics reveals the tension between textual exegesis and confessional belonging and challenges the modern presumption that interpretation is indifferent to religious concerns.
Download or read book Race and Secularism in America written by Jonathon S. Kahn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.
Download or read book On Diaspora written by Daniel Colucciello Barber and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great deal of attention has been given over the past several years to the question: What is secularism? In On Diaspora, Daniel Barber provides an intervention into this debate by arguing that a theory of secularism cannot be divorced from theories of religion, Christianity, and even being. Accordingly, Barber's argument ranges across matters proper to philosophy, religious studies, cultural studies, theology, and anthropology. It is able to do so in a coherent manner as a result of its overarching concern with the concept of diaspora. It is the concept of diaspora, Barber argues, that allows us to think in genuinely novel ways about the relationship between particularity and universality, and as a consequence about Christianity, religion, and secularism.
Download or read book Sovereignty and the Sacred written by Robert A. Yelle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sovereignty and the Sacred challenges contemporary models of polity and economy through a two-step engagement with the history of religions. Beginning with the recognition of the convergence in the history of European political theology between the sacred and the sovereign as creating “states of exception”—that is, moments of rupture in the normative order that, by transcending this order, are capable of re-founding or remaking it—Robert A. Yelle identifies our secular, capitalist system as an attempt to exclude such moments by subordinating them to the calculability of laws and markets. The second step marshals evidence from history and anthropology that helps us to recognize the contribution of such states of exception to ethical life, as a means of release from the legal or economic order. Yelle draws on evidence from the Hebrew Bible to English deism, and from the Aztecs to ancient India, to develop a theory of polity that finds a place and a purpose for those aspects of religion that are often marginalized and dismissed as irrational by Enlightenment liberalism and utilitarianism. Developing this close analogy between two elemental domains of society, Sovereignty and the Sacred offers a new theory of religion while suggesting alternative ways of organizing our political and economic life. By rethinking the transcendent foundations and liberating potential of both religion and politics, Yelle points to more hopeful and ethical modes of collective life based on egalitarianism and popular sovereignty. Deliberately countering the narrowness of currently dominant economic, political, and legal theories, he demonstrates the potential of a revived history of religions to contribute to a rethinking of the foundations of our political and social order.
Download or read book Secular Steeples Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination written by Conrad Eugene Ostwalt and published by Trinity Press International. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative volume, Conrad Ostwalt contends that secularization has not and will not destroy religion, but rather that it shifts the authority to express religious ideals from the traditional, institutional church to other cultural entities, such as government and media. Religious institutions already use popular secular media like television, movies, and mass-market music to make teachings relevant. When religious institutions no longer dominate culture, they lose their grip on striving for the Sacred, the author says, and their messages find other outlets. As a result, today's secular culture may in fact contain more authentic religious content than official church teachings.
Download or read book Prophecy in a Secular Age written by David True and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place of religion within a secular society has been much discussed in recent years, fueled in part by Charles Taylor's Secular Age (2007). The conversation surrounding Taylor's work suggests a widespread interest in religion in secular or post-secular contexts. Even as scholars have become increasingly interested in emerging and novel forms of religion, prophecy has continued to be depicted in traditional forms employed to further partisan agendas. In place of secularity as religious declension and culture clash, this volume explores prophetic works in a variety of forms, including satire, tragedy, the novel, Native American tradition, science fiction, the Bible, and higher education itself. Together the contributors demonstrate that there is much to learn from both religious and secular prophecy. The book is inspired by the idea that prophetic works are a promising subject area for a diverse audience in both higher education and the church. The volume's contributors demonstrate as much in that they work in a wide range of disciplines, including religious studies, biblical studies, theology, American studies, literature, philosophy, and political theory.
Download or read book Secular Steeples 2nd Edition written by Conrad Ostwalt and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-11-29 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Scandinavian [Nordic] countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland experienced the effects of the German invasion in April 1940 in very different ways. Collaboration, resistance, and co-belligerency were only some of the short-term consequences. Each country's historiography has undergone enormous changes in the seventy years since the invasion, and this collection by leading historians examines the immediate effects of Hitler's aggression as well as the long-term legacies for each country's self-image and national identity. The Scandinavian countries' war experience fundamentally changed how each nation functioned in the post-war world by altering political structures, the dynamics of their societies, the inter-relationships between the countries and the popular view of the wartime political and social responses to totalitarian threats. Hitler was no respecter of the rights of the Scandinavian nations but he and his associates dealt surprisingly differently with each of them. In the post-war period, this has caused problems of interpretation for political and cultural historians alike. Drawing on the latest research, this volume will be a welcome addition to the comparative histories of Scandinavia and the Second World War.