Download or read book Why Do Religious Forms Matter written by Pooyan Tamimi Arab and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity. Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms-in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking-Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke's political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration-understood as a neutrally applied civil right-which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter. Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls's ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse-religious and non-religious-to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself. Pooyan Tamimi Arab is Assistant Professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. He is a board member of the Amsterdam Spinoza Circle and member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Download or read book Why Do Religious Forms Matter written by Pooyan Tamimi Arab and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-04 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity. Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms—in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking—Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke’s political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration—understood as a neutrally applied civil right—which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter. Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls’s ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse—religious and non-religious—to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself.
Download or read book Why We Need Religion written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.
Download or read book Why Religions Matter written by John Bowker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Bowker demonstrates why we need to examine both negative and positive aspects of religion to understand religion in the modern world.
Download or read book The Thing about Religion written by David Morgan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common views of religion typically focus on the beliefs and meanings derived from revealed scriptures, ideas, and doctrines. David Morgan has led the way in radically broadening that framework to encompass the understanding that religions are fundamentally embodied, material forms of practice. This concise primer shows readers how to study what has come to be termed material religion—the ways religious meaning is enacted in the material world. Material religion includes the things people wear, eat, sing, touch, look at, create, and avoid. It also encompasses the places where religion and the social realities of everyday life, including gender, class, and race, intersect in physical ways. This interdisciplinary approach brings religious studies into conversation with art history, anthropology, and other fields. In the book, Morgan lays out a range of theories, terms, and concepts and shows how they work together to center materiality in the study of religion. Integrating carefully curated visual evidence, Morgan then applies these ideas and methods to case studies across a variety of religious traditions, modeling step-by-step analysis and emphasizing the importance of historical context. The Thing about Religion will be an essential tool for experts and students alike. Two free, downloadable course syllabi created by the author are available online.
Download or read book Religion written by Hent de Vries and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 1024 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we talk about when we talk about "religion"? Is it an array of empirical facts about historical human civilizations? Or is religion what is in essence unpredictable--perhaps the very emergence of the new? In what ways are the legacies of religion--its powers, words, things, and gestures--reconfiguring themselves as the elementary forms of life in the twenty-first century? Given the Latin roots of the word religion and its historical Christian uses, what sense, if any, does it make to talk about "religion" in other traditions? Where might we look for common elements that would enable us to do so? Has religion as an overarching concept lost all its currency, or does it ineluctably return--sometimes in unexpected ways--the moment we attempt to do without it? This book explores the difficulties and double binds that arise when we ask "What is religion?" Offering a marvelously rich and diverse array of perspectives, it begins the task of rethinking "religion" and "religious studies" in a contemporary world. Opening essays on the question "What is religion?" are followed by clusters exploring the relationships among religion, theology, and philosophy and the links between religion, politics, and law. Pedagogy is the focus of the following section. Religion is then examined in particular contexts, from classical times to the present Pentacostal revival, leading into an especially rich set of essays on religion, materiality, and mediatization. The final section grapples with the ever-changing forms that "religion" is taking, such as spirituality movements and responses to the ecological crisis. Featuring the work of leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines, traditions, and cultures, Religion: Beyond a Concept will help set the agenda for religious studies for years to come. It is the first of five volumes in a collection entitled The Future of the Religious Past, the fruit of a major international research initiative funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
Download or read book The Future of Religious Freedom written by Allen D. Hertzke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a symposium held in Istanbul, Turkey.
Download or read book God Grades and Graduation written by Ilana M. Horwitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--
Download or read book God Religion Science Nature Culture and Morality written by Yemant and Friends and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plain Talk about Us and Our Dealings with the Creator of Everything Most of us have never bothered to find out why we believe what we believe. Thats especially true for our thoughts and convictions about religion. Perhaps we were otherwise too engaged. Perhaps we simply adopted what our elders and peers appeared to believe. Whatever the case, isnt it time for us all to examine matters of religiosity more carefully? At least wea bunch of retired professors, no longer absorbed by professional dutiesthought the time had come to ponder why we had taken so much for granted. No, we did not see the need to dive yet deeper into ancient scriptures to find the ultimate truth. We focused, instead, on universal convictions. Why, for instance, do humans around the globe believe in creator gods? Why do they envision kind gods who turn nasty on occasion? And why do most people believe that the gods watch and judge every single one of us, discern merit, and then set our fortunes? Can we really converse with the gods and, if need be, bribe them with good deeds and sacrifices? And finally, why are the gods inclined to grant us life after death? If so, why do we have choices between various forms of self-continuance and recurrent physical existence in other organisms? Given that some religions proclaim resurrection with retained identity whereas others propose alternating reincarnation, how can such discrepant projections be equally true? But we also examine the behavioral implications of adherence to a religion. Could it be that devotion to a creed empowers in rendering hope, confidence, and contentment? And could such reactivity squelch fear, inspire happiness, and ultimately elevate health and longevity? In these terms, how would those fare who fail to enlist the help of supernatural forces? Is it conceivable that humanity would be better off with religiosity than with secularism in which each individual determines what is good or bad for him or her, what for their communities, and what for the world at large?
Download or read book Religious Affects written by Donovan O. Schaefer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Religious Affects Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief, proposing instead that it is primarily driven by affects. Drawing on affect theory, evolutionary biology, and poststructuralist theory, Schaefer builds on the recent materialist shift in religious studies to relocate religious practices in the affective realm—an insight that helps us better understand how religion is lived in conjunction with systems of power. To demonstrate religion's animality and how it works affectively, Schaefer turns to a series of case studies, including the documentary Jesus Camp and contemporary American Islamophobia. Placing affect theory in conversation with post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, Schaefer explores the extent to which nonhuman animals have the capacity to practice religion, linking human forms of religion and power through a new analysis of the chimpanzee waterfall dance as observed by Jane Goodall. In this compelling case for the use of affect theory in religious studies, Schaefer provides a new model for mapping relations between religion, politics, species, globalization, secularism, race, and ethics.
Download or read book Nonbelievers Apostates and Atheists in the Muslim World written by Jack David Eller and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at nonbelief and nonreligion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on nonbelievers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of nonreligion for Muslims. It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity. This book is an outstanding resource for scholars and students of nonbelief, atheism, secularism, religion, and contemporary Islam.
Download or read book Life s Meaning written by Edmund Michaels and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During times of struggle individuals often ask, why? Expecting a response, people turn to God for answers, as they have for eons. Then as the situation unfolds God's presence or lack of it is felt. What is the connection? What is God's role in Man's interactions? Both religious zealots and skeptics use faith to explain social discourse but Man's interactions are based upon a science that was started 13-14 billion years ago. The science has evolved as Man has evolved and explains Man's place in the cosmos. The secret to the meaning of life is found in the most complex instrument ever constructed, the brain. This book attempts to bring science and religion closer, giving credence to the believer and cynic. God created the universe and all things in it, including Man. Man continues to evolve trying to rejoin with God. However, this goal of unification creates strife within the primitive and cognitive being, producing emotions. Man must learn to use his brain to overcome all obstacles, including unification with God. Harmony is synchronization, the act of working together, between men and within the man. Humans will change the world by being good, which is learning to perform constructive interference. We must then teach this simple yet difficult concept to our children while simultaneously inspiring other adults to do the same. Goodness can instantly triumph over evil. Demonstrating to evil it's own sins and the goodness in the one it wants to hurt may be necessary in the interaction however, the foremost and most difficult duty is to reveal the deep family connection between the two. Harmony explains what exploded in the Big Bang, what gave rise to gravity, the development of evolution and the birth of Man. It explains when the fetus acquires the soul and thus when life starts. The brain and mind constantly wrestle for harmonious existence the result of which is crime, terrorism and power. These can be explained and the result is not just knowledge but unification. Mans life is complex; it is not only based upon beliefs but upon facts. Not only does this book make an effort to justify the above it also attempts to give light to time-travel, give reasons for cancer and clarity to thought. This treatise lays a foundation for education and social harmony through the relationship that is the unique human nervous system. LIFE'S MEANING: THE UNIFICATION OF GOD, MATTER, MAN, MIND, AND SOCIETY A Treatise on the Science of Religion
Download or read book Contemplating Religious Forms of Life Wittgenstein and D Z Phillips written by Mikel Burley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) made profound contributions to many areas of philosophy and cultural understanding, and his thought and methods have inspired numerous inquirers into the forms of our religious life. D. Z. Phillips (1934-2006) pioneered the application of Wittgenstein-influenced approaches to the philosophy of religion, and emphasized the contemplative, non-dogmatic nature of the philosophical task. In Contemplating Religious Forms of Life, Mikel Burley elucidates and critically examines the work of these two philosophers in relation to various aspects of religion, including ritual, mystical experience, faith and reason, realism and non-realism, conceptions of eternal life, and the use of literature as a resource for the contemplation of religious and non-religious beliefs. The book will be of significant value to academics, students and general readers interested in philosophy, religious studies, theology, and the interrelations between these disciplines.
Download or read book Does Religious Education Matter written by Mary Shanahan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current climate, and in an age of increasing hostility towards religion and the study of religion, religious education is a much-debated area. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of contributors from the USA, Britain and Ireland, and Australia, representing a variety of religious perspectives, Does Religious Education Matter? provocatively demonstrates that it is vital that religious education is presented as it ’really’ is: a valuable and rich resource that, when taught and engaged with appropriately, stimulates essential qualities for global and responsible citizenship: critical thinking, tolerance, respect, and mutual understanding.
Download or read book Strengths in Diverse Families of Faith written by Taylor & Francis Group and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how religious families draw on their spiritual beliefs, religious practices, and faith communities to help them strengthen their marital relationships and their parenting. Using in-depth interviews from eight religious groups - Asian American Christian; Black Christian; Catholic and Orthodox Christian; Evangelical Christian; Jewish; Latter-day Saint; Mainline Protestant; and Muslim - the book uses the interviewees' own words to show how their religion impacts their lives and influences their relationships. The book also includes an introductory chapter which describes the study and the sample; a conceptual chapter which places the empirical chapters in theoretical context in sociological study of religious families; and a concluding chapter which describes how the editors and authors developed respect and admiration for religious cultures other than their own. Drawing on such a diverse group of religions in America, this book will be of interest to those studying individual religious groups, as well as wider ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Marriage and Family Review.
Download or read book White Utopias written by Amanda J. Lucia and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. In this groundbreaking book, Amanda J. Lucia shows how these festivals operate as religious institutions for “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) communities. Whereas previous research into SBNR practices and New Age religion has not addressed the predominantly white makeup of these communities, White Utopias examines the complicated, often contradictory relationships with race at these events, presenting an engrossing ethnography of SBNR practices. Lucia contends that participants create temporary utopias through their shared commitments to spiritual growth and human connection. But they also participate in religious exoticism by adopting Indigenous and Indic spiritualities, a practice that ultimately renders them exclusive, white utopias. Focusing on yoga’s role in disseminating SBNR values, Lucia offers new ways of comprehending transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.
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.
