Formations of Belief

Formations of Belief PDF Author: Philip Nord
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be. Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more. Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

Formations of Belief

Formations of Belief PDF Author: Philip Nord
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be. Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more. Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

Formations of the Secular

Formations of the Secular PDF Author: Talal Asad
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804783098
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
“A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

Formations of Belief

Formations of Belief PDF Author: Philip Nord
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691194165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be. Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more. Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

Formation for Transformation

Formation for Transformation PDF Author: Bruce Myers
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666729086
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In the past century the ecumenical movement has made extraordinary efforts in healing the wounds of division in the body of Christ—the church. However, in their formal preparation for ministry, many clergy learn little or nothing about the achievements, methods, or implications of ecumenism. This failure to adequately educate and inspire successive generations of Christian leaders about the quest for the church’s visible unity risks not only an irretrievable loss of ecumenical memory, but also a return to a time in which ignorance, fear, mistrust, suspicion, stereotypes, caricatures, recrimination, anathematization—even persecution—characterized the relations between divided churches. Drawing on decades of reflection on ecumenical reception and formation, and using the Anglican Church of Canada as a model, this book presents an approach to teaching the practical and theological aspects of ecumenism in a way that is both holistic and pragmatic and offers the potential to raise up a new generation of church leaders who are also agents of reconciliation and Christian unity.

The Western Construction of Religion

The Western Construction of Religion PDF Author: Daniel Dubuisson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801873201
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of "religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

Religion and Its Other

Religion and Its Other PDF Author: Heike Bock
Publisher: Campus Verlag Gmbh
ISBN: 9783593386638
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Modern Western thought has traditionally relegated the religious and the secular to two entirely different spheres. Religion and Its Other takes issue with this oversimplified dichotomy, tracing the borders and grey areas between religion and the secular world as conceived of in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures past and present. A unique collection of theoretically informed historical and anthropological case studies, this comprehensive volume includes discussions of medieval atheism, Egyptian modernization, Jewish mysticism, Lutheran angels, and other such topics. Religion and Its Other will enrich the library of anyone interested in the social construction of religion across the centuries.

Tradition and Belief

Tradition and Belief PDF Author: Clare A. Lees
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452903880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.

Blameworthy Belief

Blameworthy Belief PDF Author: Nikolaj Nottelmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402059612
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Believing the wrong thing can have drastic consequences. The question of when a person is not only ill-guided, but genuinely at fault for holding a particular belief goes to the root of our understanding of such notions as criminal negligence and moral responsibility. This book explores the conditions under which someone may be deemed blameworthy for holding a particular belief, drawing on contemporary epistemology, ethics and legal scholarship.

Handing Down the Faith

Handing Down the Faith PDF Author: Christian Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019009334X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A new examination of how and why American religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States. The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on 215 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting. Handing Down the Faith explores the background beliefs informing how and why religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children; examines how parenting styles interact with parent religiousness to shape effective religious transmission; shows how parents have been influenced by their experiences as children influenced by their own parents; reveals how religious parents view their congregations and what they most seek out in a local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque; explores the experiences and outlooks of immigrant parents including Latino Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Indian Hindus. Smith and Adamczyk step back to consider how American religion has transformed over the last 100 years and to explain why parents today shoulder such a huge responsibility in transmitting religious faith and practice to their children. The book is rich in empirical evidence and unique in many of the topics it explores and explains, providing a variety of sometimes counterintuitive findings that will interest scholars of religion, social scientists interested in the family, parenting, and socialization; clergy and religious educators and leaders; and religious parents themselves.

Languages of Belief and Early Sociology in Nineteenth-Century France

Languages of Belief and Early Sociology in Nineteenth-Century France PDF Author: Michiel Van Dam
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031700236
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description