Hard, Hard Religion

Hard, Hard Religion PDF Author: John Hayes
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146963533X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South's poor--both white and black--to listen, borrow, and learn from each other about what it meant to live as Christians in a world of severe struggle. Beneath the well-documented religious forms of the New South, people caught in the region's poverty crafted a distinct folk Christianity that spoke from the margins of capitalist development, giving voice to modern phenomena like alienation and disenchantment. Through haunting songs of death, mystical tales of conversion, grassroots sacramental displays, and an ethic of neighborliness, impoverished folk Christians looked for the sacred in their midst and affirmed the value of this life in this world. From Tom Watson and W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago to political commentators today, many have ruminated on how, despite material commonalities, the poor of the South have been perennially divided by racism. Through his excavation of a folk Christianity of the poor, which fused strands of African and European tradition into a new synthesis, John Hayes recovers a historically contingent moment of interracial exchange generated in hardship.

Hard, Hard Religion

Hard, Hard Religion PDF Author: John Hayes
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146963533X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South's poor--both white and black--to listen, borrow, and learn from each other about what it meant to live as Christians in a world of severe struggle. Beneath the well-documented religious forms of the New South, people caught in the region's poverty crafted a distinct folk Christianity that spoke from the margins of capitalist development, giving voice to modern phenomena like alienation and disenchantment. Through haunting songs of death, mystical tales of conversion, grassroots sacramental displays, and an ethic of neighborliness, impoverished folk Christians looked for the sacred in their midst and affirmed the value of this life in this world. From Tom Watson and W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago to political commentators today, many have ruminated on how, despite material commonalities, the poor of the South have been perennially divided by racism. Through his excavation of a folk Christianity of the poor, which fused strands of African and European tradition into a new synthesis, John Hayes recovers a historically contingent moment of interracial exchange generated in hardship.

Challenging Religion

Challenging Religion PDF Author: James A. Beckford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134392044
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Leading scholars examine the growth of new religious movements or cults in the US and Europe over the last 50 years and state attempts to monitor and control them, debating the political, practical and ethical issues which arise.

Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion

Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion PDF Author: Heinrich Meier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022627585X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Meier's guiding insight here is that philosophy must prove its right and its necessity in the face of the claim to truth and demand obedience of itsmost powerful opponent, revealed religion.

Confronting Christianity

Confronting Christianity PDF Author: Rebecca McLaughlin
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433564262
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Although many people suggest that Christianity is declining, research indicates that it continues to be the world's most popular worldview. But even so, the Christian faith includes many controversial beliefs that non-Christians find hard to accept. This book explores 12 issues that might cause someone to dismiss orthodox Christianity—issues such as the existence of suffering, the Bible's teaching on gender and sexuality, the reality of heaven and hell, the authority of the Bible, and more. Showing how the best research from sociology, science, and psychology doesn't disagree with but actually aligns with claims found in the Bible, these chapters help skeptics understand why these issues are signposts, rather than roadblocks, to faith in Christ.

Surviving Religion 101

Surviving Religion 101 PDF Author: Michael J. Kruger
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433572109
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
"I can't imagine a college student—skeptic, doubter, Christian, struggler—who wouldn't benefit from this book." —Kevin DeYoung For many young adults, the college years are an exciting period of selfdiscovery full of new relationships, new independence, and new experiences. Yet college can also be a time of personal testing and intense questioning— especially for Christian students confronted with various challenges to Christianity and the Bible for the first time. Drawing on years of experience as a biblical scholar, Michael Kruger addresses common objections to the Christian faith—the exclusivity of Christianity, Christian intolerance, homosexuality, hell, the problem of evil, science, miracles, and the reliability of the Bible. If you're a student dealing with doubt or wrestling with objections to Christianity from fellow students and professors alike, this book will equip you to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence—and ultimately graduate college with your faith intact.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Challenge of Religion

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Challenge of Religion PDF Author: Johannes Morsink
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826220843
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
"A splendid volume . . . fused with political and philosophical insight into the fundamental concepts underlying the Declaration."--"American Journal of International Law"

Spinoza's Religion

Spinoza's Religion PDF Author: Clare Carlisle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122420X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A bold reevaluation of Spinoza that reveals his powerful, inclusive vision of religion for the modern age Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In Spinoza’s Religion, she sets out a bold interpretation of Spinoza through a lucid new reading of his masterpiece, the Ethics. Putting the question of religion centre-stage but refusing to convert Spinozism to Christianity, Carlisle reveals that “being in God” unites Spinoza’s metaphysics and ethics. Spinoza’s Religion unfolds a powerful, inclusive philosophical vision for the modern age—one that is grounded in a profound questioning of how to live a joyful, fully human life. Like Spinoza himself, the Ethics doesn’t fit into any ready-made religious category. But Carlisle shows how it wrestles with the question of religion in strikingly original ways, responding both critically and constructively to the diverse, broadly Christian context in which Spinoza lived and worked. Philosophy itself, as Spinoza practiced it, became a spiritual endeavor that expressed his devotion to a truthful, virtuous way of life. Offering startling new insights into Spinoza’s famously enigmatic ideas about eternal life and the intellectual love of God, Carlisle uncovers a Spinozist religion that integrates self-knowledge, desire, practice, and embodied ethical life to reach toward our “highest happiness”—to rest in God. Seen through Carlisle’s eyes, the Ethics prompts us to rethink not only Spinoza but also religion itself.

Women and Religion in the West

Women and Religion in the West PDF Author: Sonya Sharma
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113477317X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
What is the relationship between women and secularization? In the West, women are abandoning traditional religion. Yet they continue to make up the majority of religious adherents. Accounting for this seeming paradox is the focus of this volume. If women undergird the foundations of religion but are leaving in large numbers, why are they leaving? Where are they going? What are they doing? And what's happening to those who remain? Women and Religion in the West addresses a neglected yet crucial issue within the debate on religious belonging and departure: the role of women in and out of religion and spirituality. Beginning with an analysis of the relationship between gender and secularization, the book moves its focus to in-depth examination of women's experiences based on data from key recent qualitative work on women and religion. This volume addresses not only women's place in and out of Christianity (the normal focus of secularization theories) but also alternative spiritualities and Islam, asking how questions of secularization differ between faith systems. This book offers students and scholars of religion, sociology, and women's studies, as well as interested general readers, an accessible work on the religiosity of western women and contributes fresh analyses of the rapidly shifting terrain of contemporary religion and spirituality.

Why We Need Religion

Why We Need Religion PDF Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469692
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
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.

John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman PDF Author: Frank M. Turner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300127995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description
How is Kenneth Starr's extraordinary term as independent counsel to be understood? Was he a partisan warrior out to get the Clintons, or a saviour of the Republic? An unstoppable menace, an unethical lawyer, or a sex-obsessed Puritan striving to enforce a right-wing social morality? This volume is designed to offer an evaluation and critique of Starr's tenure as independent counsel. Relying on lengthy, revealing interviews with Starr and many other players in Clinton-era Washington, Washington Post journalist Benjamin Wittes arrives at an understanding of Starr and the part he played in one of American history's most enthralling public sagas. Wittes offers a portrait of a decent man who fundamentally misconstrued his function under the independent counsel law. Starr took his task to be ferreting out and reporting the truth about official misconduct, a well-intentioned but nevertheless misguided distortion of the law, Wittes argues. At key moments throughout Starr's probe - from the decision to reinvestigate the death of Vincent Foster, to the repeated prosecutions of Susan McDougal and Webster Hubbell to the failure to secure Monica Lewinsky's testimony quickly - the prosecutor avoided the most sensible prosecutorial course, fearing that it would compromise the larger search for truth. This approach not only delayed investigations enormously, but it gave Starr the appearance of partisan zealotry and an almost maniacal determination to prosecute the president. Wittes provides in this account of Starr's term a reinterpretation of the man, his performance, and the controversial events that surrounded the impeachment of President Clinton.