Author: Kirsti L. Nevalainen
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781439261538
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, has declared himself as the Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. He claims he has come as the Messiah at the end of the world as the Bible prophesied. He saves fallen satanic people by removing the original sin from them through The Blessing of Marriage ceremony. The Blessing of Marriage ceremony of the Unification Church is directly derivative from the pigarum or yongch'e ceremony of Korean messianic groups from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. A pigarum ceremony means 'change of blood lineage' and a yongch'e ceremony means 'receiving a new spiritual body'. A male spiritual leader united sexually with his female disciples and a female spiritual leader had ritual sex with her male followers. The Unification Church practiced the pigarum or yongch'e ceremony from the 1940s until 1962 when The Holy Wine Ceremony and The Three Day Ceremony replaced this original sexual ritual. Both of these ceremonies are integral parts of The Blessing of Marriage.
Author: Eugene V. Gallagher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317156676
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
'Cult Wars' in Historical Perspective provides a broad characterization of the shifting religious contours over the past several decades. Offering an assessment of several important topics in the study of new religions, this book explores developments in well-known groups such as the Unification movement, The Family International (Children of God), the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and the Church of Scientology. Bringing together both insiders and outsiders from various academic disciplines and personal perspectives, this book takes account of the ways in which the cult question is defined and addressed in different countries. It offers a vivid depiction of how the cult wars or cult controversies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries first took shape; the transformation of deeply entrenched positions on cults and sects as at least some members of new groups, cult watchers, and academics entered into serious and sustained conversations about topics of mutual concern; the shifting foci and concerns of the general public, law enforcement and the courts, and academics in various countries; and the complex histories of individual groups in which many dramatic transformations have occurred despite their comparatively short life spans.
Author: Bodie Hodge
Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN: 1614584605
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Religions in today’s culture seem to be multiplying. Have you ever wondered why certain religions believe and practice what they do? Or how they view the Bible? This volume delves into these and other engaging questions, such as: How can a Christian witness to people in these religions? Do these other religions believe in creation and a Creator? How do we deal with these religions from a biblical authority perspective? Many religions and cults discussed in this first volume openly affirm that the Bible is true, but then something gets in their way. And there is a common factor every time—man’s fallible opinions. In one way or another the Bible gets demoted, reinterpreted, or completely ignored. Man’s ideas are used to throw the Bible’s clear teaching out the window while false teachings are promoted. This book is a must for laymen, church leaders, teachers, and students to understand the trends in our culture and around the world where certain religions dominate, helping you discern truth and guard your faith. When you understand a religion’s origins and teachings, you are in a better position to know how to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as you take the good news to those in false religions.
Author: Nansook Hong
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
ISBN: 9780316348164
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
A Korean-American recounts her fourteen years of abuse at the hands of her husband, the drug-addicted eldest son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and reveals the corruption behind the religious fac+a2ade of Moon's organization. 50,000 first printing. Tour.
Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351474901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."
Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262620017
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981
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Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
Author: Catherine Bell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199739471
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.
Author: Elaine Pagels
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 140007908X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
In Beyond Belief, renowned religion scholar Elaine Pagels continues her groundbreaking examination of the earliest Christian texts, arguing for an ongoing assessment of faith and a questioning of religious orthodoxy. Spurred on by personal tragedy and new scholarship from an international group of researchers, Pagels returns to her investigation of the “secret” Gospel of Thomas, and breathes new life into writings once thought heretical. As she arrives at an ever-deeper conviction in her own faith, Pagels reveals how faith allows for a diversity of interpretations, and that the “rogue” voices of Christianity encourage and sustain “the recognition of the light within us all.”
Author: Dawn Hutchinson
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443823082
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Although religious innovation in America has historically been the norm rather than the exception, mainstream Americans have often viewed new religious movements with suspicion and occasionally with outright alarm. The question motivating many studies of new religious movements has been “why would someone join these religions?” In Antiquity and Social Reform, Dawn Hutchinson offers at least one answer to this often repeated query. She argues that followers of new religious movements in the 1960s–1980s, specifically the Unification Church, Feminist Wicca and the Nation of Yahweh, considered these religions to be legitimate because they offered members a personal religious experience, a connection to an ancient tradition, and agency in improving their world. Utilizing an historical approach, Antiquity and Social Reform considers the conversion narratives of adherents and primary literature of the formative years of these movements, which demonstrates that the religious experiences of the adherents, and a resonance with the goals of these religions, propelled members into social action.
