Download or read book Transgressive Devotion written by Natalie Wigg-Stevenson and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.
Download or read book Queer Gothic written by George E. Haggerty and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Haggerty examines the ways in which gothic fiction centers on loss as the foreclosure of homoerotic possibility and the relationship between transgressive sexual behaviors and a range of religious behaviors understood as 'Catholic'.
Download or read book Canvas Whispers written by Azhar ul Haque Sario and published by epubli. This book was released on 2024-10-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Canvas Whispers" takes readers on a captivating exploration through the world of modern and contemporary art, delving into ten influential art movements that have left an enduring mark on the artistic landscape. Each chapter unveils the unique stories, techniques, and philosophies behind these groundbreaking styles, inviting readers to understand the cultural and social contexts that shaped them. The book delves into the vibrant and thought-provoking world of Afrofuturism, the gritty realism of the Kitchen Sink movement, the cosmic explorations of Spatialism, and the expressive human figures of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. It also explores the organic forms of Biomorphism, the playful aesthetics of the Superflat movement, the provocative nature of Transgressive Art, and the raw simplicity of Arte Povera. Furthermore, "Canvas Whispers" takes readers on a journey through the experimental spirit of the Fluxus movement and the astonishing detail of Hyperrealism. This comprehensive exploration provides a rich and nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which artists have pushed the boundaries of creativity, challenged societal norms, and reimagined the possibilities of artistic expression.
Download or read book A Genealogy of Devotion written by Patton E. Burchett and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Patton E. Burchett offers a path-breaking genealogical study of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism that traces its understudied historical relationships with tantra, yoga, and Sufism. Beginning in India’s early medieval “Tantric Age” and reaching to the present day, Burchett focuses his analysis on the crucial shifts of the early modern period, when the rise of bhakti communities in North India transformed the religious landscape in ways that would profoundly affect the shape of modern-day Hinduism. A Genealogy of Devotion illuminates the complex historical factors at play in the growth of bhakti in Sultanate and Mughal India through its pivotal interactions with Indic and Persianate traditions of asceticism, monasticism, politics, and literature. Shedding new light on the importance of Persian culture and popular Sufism in the history of devotional Hinduism, Burchett’s work explores the cultural encounters that reshaped early modern North Indian communities. Focusing on the Rāmānandī bhakti community and the tantric Nāth yogīs, Burchett describes the emergence of a new and Sufi-inflected devotional sensibility—an ethical, emotional, and aesthetic disposition—that was often critical of tantric and yogic religiosity. Early modern North Indian devotional critiques of tantric religiosity, he shows, prefigured colonial-era Orientalist depictions of bhakti as “religion” and tantra as “magic.” Providing a broad historical view of bhakti, tantra, and yoga while simultaneously challenging dominant scholarly conceptions of them, A Genealogy of Devotion offers a bold new narrative of the history of religion in India.
Download or read book The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Theology and Qualitative Research written by Pete Ward and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique introduction to the developing field of Theology and Qualitative Research In recent years, a growing number of scholars within the field of theological research have adopted qualitative empirical methods. The use of qualitative research is shaping the nature of theology and redefining what it means to be a theologian. Hence, contemporary scholars who are undertaking empirical fieldwork across a range of theological subdisciplines require authoritative guidance and well-developed frameworks of practice and theory. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Theology and Qualitative Research outlines the challenges and possibilities for theological research that engages with qualitative methods. It reflects more than 15 years of academic research within the Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network, and features an international group of scholars committed to the empirical and theological study of the Christian church. Edited by world-renowned experts, this unprecedented volume addresses the theological debates, methodological complexities, and future directions of this emerging field. Contributions from both established and emerging scholars describe key theoretical approaches, discuss how different empirical methods are used within theology, explore the links between qualitative researchand adjacent scholarly traditions, and more. The companion: Discusses how qualitative empirical work changes the practice of theology, enabling a disciplined attention to the lived social realities of Christian religion and what theologians do Introduces theoretical and methodological debates in the field, as well as central epistemological and ontological questions Presents different approaches to Theology and Qualitative research, highlighting important issues and developments in the last decades Explores how empirical insights are shaping areas such as liturgics, homiletics, youth ministry, and Christian education Includes perspectives from scholars working in disciplines other than theology The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Theology and Qualitative Research is essential reading for graduate students, postgraduates, PhD students, researchers, and scholars in Christian Ethics, Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, Contemporary Worship, and related disciplines such as Ecclesiology, Mission Studies, World Christianity, Pastoral Theology, Political Theology, Worship Studies, and all forms of contextual theology.
Download or read book A Human Shaped God written by Charles Halton and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. But instead of pitting the Old Testament's humanlike view of God against traditional theology and assuming that only one of these understandings is correct, A Human-Shaped God posits that theologians should embrace both of these constructions simultaneously. This is a new way of theological inquiry that embraces both the humanlike characteristics of God and the transcendence of God in traditional theology. By seeing and understanding the humanlike depictions of God in the Old Testament and by using the rich language of traditional theology together in tandem, the reader acquires a much deeper and meaningful understanding of God.
Download or read book Love and Death written by Ziauddin Sardar and published by Hurst & Company Limited. This book was released on 2013 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ziauddin Sardar sides with the philosophers of al-Andalus in their struggle with orthodox theologians, Robin Yassin-Kassab goes on a poetic journey, Nazry Bahrawi reveals how the Andalusi philosophers tamed the secular, Gema Martin Munoz is dismayed by the works of the Spanish Orientalists,Emilio Gonzalez-Ferrin argues that al-Andalus is not just a time past also a time present, Matthew Carr explores the plight of Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity. David Shasha describes the achievements of Sephardic Jews, Cherif Abderrahman Jah tunes into the musical legacy of al-Andalus, Brad Bullock seeks to empower women, Marvine Howe meets the new Muslims of Iberia, Jordi Sarra del Pino wows to resist Spain s new Reconquista, Alev Adil and Aamer Husseinreceive nine postcards from Andalusia, Boyd Tonkin is captivated by a book festival in Granada, Zara Amjad and Gulzar Haider reimagine the Cordoba Mosque as a sacred space for all religions, and Merryl Wyn Davies gets the shivers while listening to the Spanish tenor Jose Carreras belting out Granada. Also in this issue: Vinay Lal explores Gandhi s attitude to Palestine, Barnaby Rogerson reprimands the Muslim aversion to dogs, four poems by the enchanting Rowyda Amin, a short story by John Liechty, and a dozen luminaries of al-Andalus we should all admire.
Download or read book Spiritual and Religious Education written by Mal Leicester and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume V distinguishes religious and spiritual education and takes a multi-faith approach to pedagogic, curricular and resource issues. The important area of collective worship is also addressed.
Download or read book Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics written by Aana Marie Vigen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can qualitative research methods be a tool for social change? Echoing the 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline. This new edition features a dynamic selection of nuanced and provocative voices in this area of ethics and theology, showing how, in the past decade, the kinds of qualitative methodologies employed have become more varied and sophisticated. The leading and emerging scholars featured in this book have much to share how they approach this kind of work, what they are learning in the process, and what sorts of change is possible as a result. This volume also pays tribute to the life and work of a pathbreaker in qualitative methods for the sake of theological imagination and social change, the Rev. Dr. Melissa D. Browning (1977-2021).
Download or read book Online Small Groups as Sites of Teaching written by Simon Hallonsten and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-04-25 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Centered around a reflective narrative recounting the experiences of a participatory action research project into leading online small groups for adults in the Church of Sweden Diocese of Stockholm during 2021 and 2022, the dissertation argues for the need to reconceptualize and reemphasize teaching as an important aspect in Christian religious education. Employing creative non-fiction methods, the dissertation aims to broaden the scope of the initial Online Small Groups project, by inviting readers to join into a "learning journey." The narrative account is complemented with more traditional forms of analysis that connect experiences from online small groups in the Church of Sweden to similar research from Anglo-Saxon countries, noting especially how notions of community diverge due to different ecclesiological understandings. Insights are then synthesized into eight teaching strategies aimed at communicating actionable knowledge to small group leaders, before noting how the study complements research on Christian religious education and, particularly, the current debate about learning and teaching in the Church of Sweden.
Download or read book Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice written by Mary Clark Moschella and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnography is a way to tap the deep undercurrents in a community through a process of gathering, analyzing, and sharing data. Fully revised and updated for this second edition, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice has quickly become the go-to textbook for those in or training for ministry who want to discover how they can use ethnography to help them hear the stories of those to whom they minister. Setting forth the case for ethnography’s ability to galvanize aspirations and heal communal hurt, this book presents the helpful pastoral practice of ethnography in a clear, step-by-step manner and includes many compelling case studies of transformational leadership. Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice invites us to open our eyes, ears and hearts to those in our congregations.
Download or read book Experience written by Matthew Floding and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual formation has gained increasing attention with theological schools as a significant element of the theological education process. Repeated Association of Theological Schools studies have revealed a broad interpretation of what is meant by spiritual formation and how it is achieved within the theological education framework. Theological schools look to what happens in the field education courses as the most significant source of spiritual formation. Experience: Spiritual Formation in Theological Field Education provides effective resources that field educators may employ to foster spiritual formation. In the first section of the book twenty-five practices are introduced that are employed currently by field educators with strong favorable student feedback. In a second section ministerial leaders in a variety of settings share spiritual practices that they have found life-giving and foster deeper connection with God and God’s world. Experience equips field educators for the significant task of fostering the spiritual growth of their students. Students in turn will have a treasure trove of spiritual formation exercises/practices that they can adapt as ministerial leaders in congregations, chaplaincy settings and in faith-based non-profit organizations.
Download or read book Mexican American Religions written by Gastón Espinosa and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-08 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary collection of essays examining the influence of Mexican American religion on Mexican American literature, art, politics, and popular culture.
Download or read book Siva s Saints written by Gil Ben-Herut and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising more than twelve million people and renowned for their resistance to Brahminical values, the Virasaivas are a vibrant and unorthodox religious community with a provocative socio-political voice. The Virasaiva tradition has produced a vast and original body of literature, composed mostly in Kannada, a Dravidian language from south India. Siva's Saints introduces a previously unexplored and central primary work produced in the early thirteenth century, the Ragalegalu. This was the first narrative text written about the incipient devotional tradition dedicated to the god Siva in the Kannada-speaking regions; through stories of the saints, it images the life of this new religious community. The Ragalegalu inaugurated a new era in the production of devotional narratives accessible to wide audiences. Gil Ben-Herut challenges common notions about this tradition in its nascent phases. By closely reading the saints' stories in this text, Siva's Saints takes a more nuanced historical view than commonly-held notions about the egalitarian and iconoclastic nature of the early tradition, arguing instead that early bhakti (devotionalism) in the Kannada-speaking region was less-radical and more accommodating toward traditional religious, social, and political institutions than thought of today. In contrast to the narrowly sectarian and exclusionary vision that shapes later accounts, the Ragalegalu is characterized by an opposite impulse of offering an open invitation to people from all walks of life, and their stories illustrate the richness of their devotional lives. Analysis of this seminal text yields important insights into the role of literary representation of the social and political development of a religious community in a pre-modern and non-Western milieu.
Download or read book Transgressive Typologies written by Doran Doran and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The exceptionally powerful Chinese women leaders of the late seventh and early eighth centuries—including Wu Zhao, the Taiping and Anle princesses, Empress Wei, and Shangguan Wan’er—though quite prominent in the Chinese cultural tradition, remain elusive and often misunderstood or essentialized throughout history. Transgressive Typologies utilizes a new, multidisciplinary approach to understand how these figures’ historical identities are constructed in the mainstream secular literary-historical tradition and to analyze the points of view that inform these constructions. Using close readings and rereadings of primary texts written in medieval China through later imperial times, this study elucidates narrative typologies and motifs associated with these women to explore how their power is rhetorically framed, gendered, and ultimately deemed transgressive. Rebecca Doran offers a new understanding of major female figures of the Tang era within their literary-historical contexts, and delves into critical questions about the relationship between Chinese historiography, reception-history, and the process of image-making and cultural construction.
Download or read book Masculinity Anti Semitism and Early Modern English Literature written by Matthew Biberman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a profound re-assessment of the conceptual, rhetorical, and cultural intersections among sexuality, race and religion in English Renaissance texts, this study argues that antisemitism is a by-product of tensions between received Classical conceptions of masculinity and Christianity's strident critique of that ideal. Utilizing works by Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe and others, Biberman illustrates how modern antisemitism develops as a way to stigmatize hypermasculine behavior, thus facilitating the transformation of the culture's gender ideal from knight to businessman. Subsequently, the function of antisemitism changes, becoming instead the mark of effeminate behavior. Consequently, the central antisemitic image changes from Jew-Devil to Jew-Sissy. Biberman traces this shift's repercussions, both in renaissance culture and what followed it. He also contends that as a result of this linkage between Jewishness and the limits of masculine behavior, the image of the Jewish woman remains especially unstable. In concluding, Biberman argues that the Gothic resurrects the Jew-Devil (bequeathing it to the Nazis), and that the horror genre is often a rewriting of Renaissance discourse about Jews. In the course of making this larger argument, Biberman introduces a series of more limited claims that challenge the conventional wisdom within the field of literary studies. First, Biberman overturns the assumption that Jewishness and femininity are always associated in the cultural imagination of Western Europe. Second, Biberman provides the historical context needed to understand the emergence of the stereotype of the pathological Jewish woman. Third, Biberman revises the incorrect notion that divorce was not practiced in Renaissance England. Fourth, Biberman argues for the novel claim that serial monogamy in Western culture is a practice understood to possess a Jewish "taint." Fifth, Biberman contributes a major advance in scholarship devoted to T. S. Eliot, illustrating how Eliot's famous critical argument against Milton is an expression of his antisemitism, and a coherent compliment to the antisemitic touches in his poetry. Sixth, in his discussion of Gothic literature, Biberman introduces novel readings of Frankenstein and Dracula, persuasively arguing that Mary Shelley's monster bears the mark of the Jew according to modern antisemitic discourse; and that, in Stoker, both the vampire and the vampire-killer represent Jews executing a scenario of self-policing that was realized in the ghettos and the concentration camps. Biberman's final contribution in this study is to provide a definition for postmodern antisemitism and to apply it to various contemporary incidents, including September 11th and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Download or read book Soul Woundedness written by Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A profound exploration into the spiritual beliefs and practices of Seattle’s unhoused youth Soul Woundedness is an intimate, piercing book about everyday life for young adults living on the streets of Seattle. Based on over five years of research and as a participant-observer, Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai presents the personal experiences of “street kids,” highlighting how their spiritual beliefs and practices offer them comfort, a sense of community, and a feeling of belonging amidst their struggles. They also demonstrate how spirituality on the streets can alienate people from themselves and the world. The stories Blankenship-Lai tells here are about how social wounds go soul deep, and how seemingly antireligious spiritual practices, fashioned in an almost unlivable local world, help people create a life still worth living. By paying deep, sustained attention to what spirituality is like on the streets and what difference it makes, Blankenship-Lai uncovers an important, overlooked dimension in the experience and study of homelessness. They invite us to enter these stories and to question how our own spiritual and otherwise practices can help create “a more loving love.” Aimed at a diverse audience, Soul Woundedness is a book not merely to educate but to transform. It is particularly relevant for those interested in spirituality’s role in addressing social inequities and underscores the importance of spiritual practices in overcoming adversity and promoting social change, making a compelling case for a world where everyone has a place to call home.
