Author: Leonardo Marcato
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839461928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
»Fictional Practices of Spirituality« provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations.
Author: Robin Le Poidevin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108616828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This Element is an introduction to contemporary religious fictionalism, its motivation and challenges. Among the issues raised are: can religion be viewed as a game of make-believe? In what ways does religious fictionalism parallel positions often labelled 'fictionalist' in ethics and metaphysics? Does religious fictionalism represent an advance over its rivals? Can fictionalism provide an adequate understanding of the characteristic features of the religious life, such as worship, prayer, moral commitment? Does fictionalism face its own version of the problem of evil? Is realism about theistic (God-centred) language less religiously serious than fictionalism?
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004466002
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Tying on case studies from late antiquity to the 21st century, this is the first volume that systematically explores the inter-relationship between fictional narratives about magic and the real-world ritual art of practicing magicians.
Author: Sharon Garlough Brown
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830843051
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
Sharon Garlough Brown tells the moving story of four strangers as they reluctantly arrive at a retreat center and find themselves drawn out of their separate stories of isolation and struggle and into a collective journey of spiritual practice, mutual support and personal revelation.
Author: Professor Carole M Cusack
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409481034
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular subject matter: Jediism developed from George Lucas' Star Wars films; the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded by 26-year-old student Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools; Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius which retain strong followings and participation rates among college students. The Church of All Worlds' focus on Gaia theology and environmental issues makes it a popular focus of attention. The continued success of these groups of Invented Religions provide a unique opportunity to explore the nature of late/post-modern religious forms, including the use of fiction as part of a bricolage for spirituality, identity-formation, and personal orientation.
Author: Michael York
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814797083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
In Pagan Theology, Michael York situates Paganism—one of the fastest-growing spiritual orientations in the West—as a world religion. He provides an introduction to, and expansion of, the concept of Paganism and provides an overview of Paganism's theological perspective and practice. He demonstrates it to be a viable and distinguishable spiritual perspective found around the world today in such forms as Chinese folk religion, Shinto, tribal religions, and neo-Paganism in the West. While adherents to many of these traditions do not use the word “pagan” to describe their beliefs or practices, York contends that there is an identifiable position possessing characteristics and understandings in common for which the label “pagan” is appropriate. After outlining these characteristics, he examines many of the world's major religions to explore religious behaviors in other religions which are not themselves pagan, but which have pagan elements. In the course of examining such behavior, York provides rich and lively descriptions of religions in action, including Buddhism and Hinduism. Pagan Theology claims Paganism’s place as a world religion, situating it as a religion, a behavior, and a theology.
Author: Ann Genzale
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179360553X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 147
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Book Description
Nationhood and Improvised Belief in American Fiction highlights the ways religious belief and practice intersect with questions of national belonging in the work of major contemporary writers. Through readings of novels by Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Cristina García, and others, this book argues that the representations of syncretic, culturally hybrid, and improvised forms of religious practice operate in these novels as critiques of exclusionary constructions of national identity, providing models for alternate ways of belonging based on shared religious beliefs and practices. Rather than treating the religious history of the U.S. as one of increasing secularization, this book instead calls for greater attention to the diversity of religious experience in the U.S., as well as a deeper understanding of the ways in which these experiences can inform relationships to the national community.
Author: David Eddings
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0307417352
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482
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Book Description
Join David and Leigh Eddings on a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of the extensive background materials they compiled before beginning the masterpiece of epic fantasy unforgettably set down in The Belgariad and The Malloreon and their two companion volumes, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. Our tour stretches from the wealthy Empire of Tolnedra to the remote Isle of the Winds, from the mysterious mountains of Ulgoland to the forbidding reaches of darkest Mallorea. Along the way, you will meet old friends and enemies alike. Rare volumes will be opened to your eyes. Sacred holy books in which you may read the secrets of the Gods themselves and of their prophets. Scholarly histories of the rise and fall of empires from the Imperial Library at Tol Honeth. The profound mysteries of the Malloreon Gospels. THE RIVAN CODEX will enrich your understanding of all that has gone before . . . and whet your appetite for more spectacular adventures from this talented team.
Author: Ashley Hales
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083087397X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
More than half of Americans live in the suburbs. Yet for many Christians, the suburbs are ignored, demeaned, or seen as a selfish cop-out from a faithful Christian life. What does it look like to live a full Christian life in the suburbs? Ashley Hales invites you to look deeply into your soul as a suburbanite and discover what it means to live holy there.
Author: Christopher G. White
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984293
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
Christopher White points to ways that both spiritual practices and scientific speculation about multiverses and invisible dimensions are efforts to peer into the hidden elements and even existential meaning of the universe. Creatively appropriated, these ideas can restore a spiritual sense that the world is greater than anything our eyes can see.
