Secular Music, Sacred Space

Secular Music, Sacred Space PDF Author: April Stace
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498542182
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Easter Sunday, 2009, was the Sunday heard ‘round the evangelical internet: NewSpring Church, the second-largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention and among the top one hundred largest churches in the US, had begun their service with the song “Highway to Hell” by hard rock band AC/DC. They had brazenly crossed the sacred/secular musical divide on the most important Sunday of the year, and commentary abounded on the value of such a step. Many were offended at the “desecration” of such a holy day, deriding Newspring as the “theater of the absurd.” Others cheered NewSpring’s engagement with “the culture” and suggested that music could be used to convert non-Christians. No mere debate over stylistic preferences, many expressed that foundational aspects of evangelical identity were at stake. While many books have been written about religious music that utilizes popular music styles (a.k.a. “contemporary Christian music”), there has yet to be a scholarly treatment of how and why popular, secular music is utilized by churches. This book addresses that lacuna by examining this emerging trend in evangelical and “emerging” churches in America. What is the motivation behind using music that seemingly has no connection to Christian theology, values, or themes—such as music by Katy Perry, AC/DC, or Van Halen—and what can we learn about post-denominational evangelical churches in America by uncovering these motives? In this book, April Stace uncovers several themes from an ethnographic study of these churches: the increasingly-porous boundary between the sacred and the secular, the importance placed on “authenticity” in contemporary American culture, how evangelicals are responding to what they perceive is an increasingly-secular society, the “turn to the subject” of contemporary culture, the desire to leave a space for expression of doubt in the worship service without fully authorizing that doubt, and the individualization of the construction of religious identity in the modern era.

Secular Music, Sacred Space

Secular Music, Sacred Space PDF Author: April Stace
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498542182
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Easter Sunday, 2009, was the Sunday heard ‘round the evangelical internet: NewSpring Church, the second-largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention and among the top one hundred largest churches in the US, had begun their service with the song “Highway to Hell” by hard rock band AC/DC. They had brazenly crossed the sacred/secular musical divide on the most important Sunday of the year, and commentary abounded on the value of such a step. Many were offended at the “desecration” of such a holy day, deriding Newspring as the “theater of the absurd.” Others cheered NewSpring’s engagement with “the culture” and suggested that music could be used to convert non-Christians. No mere debate over stylistic preferences, many expressed that foundational aspects of evangelical identity were at stake. While many books have been written about religious music that utilizes popular music styles (a.k.a. “contemporary Christian music”), there has yet to be a scholarly treatment of how and why popular, secular music is utilized by churches. This book addresses that lacuna by examining this emerging trend in evangelical and “emerging” churches in America. What is the motivation behind using music that seemingly has no connection to Christian theology, values, or themes—such as music by Katy Perry, AC/DC, or Van Halen—and what can we learn about post-denominational evangelical churches in America by uncovering these motives? In this book, April Stace uncovers several themes from an ethnographic study of these churches: the increasingly-porous boundary between the sacred and the secular, the importance placed on “authenticity” in contemporary American culture, how evangelicals are responding to what they perceive is an increasingly-secular society, the “turn to the subject” of contemporary culture, the desire to leave a space for expression of doubt in the worship service without fully authorizing that doubt, and the individualization of the construction of religious identity in the modern era.

Medieval Crossover

Medieval Crossover PDF Author: Barbara Newman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780268206574
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Newman highlights the ways in which the premodern reader understood sacred and secular not as opposing points but as a state of double judgment.

When the Secular becomes Sacred

When the Secular becomes Sacred PDF Author: Ernest J. Zarra
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 147585854X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
When the Secular Becomes Sacred: Religious Secular Humanism and its Effects Upon America’s Public Learning Institutionsis an analysis of American K-16 public learning institutions from a unique perspective. Secular teachings, such as social-emotional learning, and sexual and identity philosophies, are behind movements to capture the minds and hearts of America’s students. Contemporary learning institutions resemble places of worship in several ways. This book will explain how this is the case. From educational philosophy to classroom practices, this book exposes tactical intersections between secular humanism and religion. In today’s secular culture there is strong evidence to support the notion that worship of the self, the individual, has usurped the historically sacred place reserved for a transcendent deity. The fact is that this worship of the individual is certainly more fashionable and attractive than traditional orthodoxy or evangelical theology, in a today’s society. Bolstering this self-worship are mandated programs, such as those found in states’ controversial History-Social Science Frameworks, English-Language Arts Frameworks, and new sex education programs. The intention of this book is to provide the reader a realistic look into the effects of religious humanism upon America’s schools and students. Readers will be challenged with the notion that separation of church and state is being ignored for the political advantage of some. Furthermore, the reader will be presented with the argument that self-worship has become more attractive than traditional Judeo-Christian religious teachings, leading to the individual becoming both the worshipper and the object of such self-worship.

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book PDF Author: Scott Hahn
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
ISBN: 164585101X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
What is wrong with Scripture scholarship today? Why is it that the last place one should go to study the Bible is a biblical studies program at virtually any university? Why are so many faithful priests and pastors, and the people in their pews, unaware of the centuries-long effort to turn the sacred Word of God into just another secular text? In The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book, authors Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker trace the various malformations of Scripture scholarship that have led to a devastating loss of trust in the inspired Word of God. From the Reformation to the Enlightenment and beyond, Hahn and Wiker sketch the revolutions and radical figures that led to the emergence of the historical-critical method and the pervasive ill effects that are still being felt today.

Secular Sacred

Secular Sacred PDF Author: Boston Public Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at the McMullen Museum of Art from February 19 to June 4, 2006, this volume explores multiple ways in which medieval and early modern objects communicated both sacred and secular messages to their audiences. Focusing on paintings, illuminated texts, tapestries, silks, sculptures, ceramics and metalwork, many previously unpublished, from the collections of two distinguished Boston institutions, the authors of the volume's thirteen essays take an inventive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the subjects, functions, and receptions of works of art from the eleventh through the sixteenth century. By re-thinking scholars' traditional division of objects into secular and sacred categories and by examining the history of these classifications, the authors decode images from various perspectives, revealing how lines between the two categories blur for individual works."--BOOK JACKET.

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

Whole-Life Mission for the Whole Church

Whole-Life Mission for the Whole Church PDF Author: Mark Greene
Publisher: Langham Global Library
ISBN: 1839731109
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
The sacred-secular divide permeates our churches, our seminaries, and our lives. By perpetuating the false belief that there are some areas of life that are not important to God, some callings that are second-class, and some spheres of society that are not worth engaging, the sacred-secular divide diminishes our understanding of God, discipleship, missiology, and the gospel itself. Seeking to liberate the global church from the power of this dichotomy, Whole-Life Mission for the Whole Church provides theological educators with the tools they need to combat the sacred-secular divide in the very realm where it is so often generated: the classroom. Filled with contributions from practitioners around the world, this book contains a wealth of insight into both the nature of the problem and the possibilities for its solution. The approaches suggested here are biblically rooted, contextually appropriate, and experientially tested, offering an excellent resource for educators desiring to transform their institutional cultures, curriculums, and classrooms into environments that envision, empower, and liberate the whole church for its role in the mission of God.

Law and the Sacred

Law and the Sacred PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804755757
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"The essays in this book were originally prepared for ... during the 2001-2002 academic year."--Acknowledgments.

Masters of the Sacred Page

Masters of the Sacred Page PDF Author: Lesley Janette Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Starting with the premise that the history of a medieval subject cannot be properly written "without recourse to the materials it produced," Lesley Smith's Masters of the Sacred Page provides an illuminating study of theology in the Middle Ages. She focuses on the dramatic transformations of the discipline in the twelfth century and uses a collection of contemporary manuscripts as a guide to its changes and developments. Smith points out that the medieval masters of theology had a much wider view of their subject than the modern academic tendency for neatness and division can easily admit, and she places their discipline squarely within the rapidly evolving intellectual and educational context of the twelfth-century university. Her approach avoids two of the most common weaknesses of modern historical studies of medieval theology. In the first place, those histories have a tendency to be distorted by a reliance on easily available printed editions of medieval texts, the bulk of which are summae and other logical, systematic treatments. This preponderance, however, often reflects the concerns and interests of nineteenth- and twentieth-century editors more than it does the medieval masters. Biblical commentaries, sermons, and manuals for pastoral use have only recently begun to be edited and printed in numbers reflecting their importance and widespread use in the Middle Ages; Smith includes such material in her study. In the second place, traditional histories have a tendency to remove the study of theology from the actual environment of the medieval university and therefore fail to account for the complex relations between theology, the arts, and the burgeoning disciplines of medicine and law. By refusing to follow this trend, Smith has greatly improved our awareness of the situation of medieval theology. Using the manuscript books themselves as witnesses, Smith shows how theology competed with other disciplines for students (as well as teachers), how it attempted to define itself, and how it cooperated with other disciplines to foster new development in book technology--and new traditions in the social and intellectual culture of the medieval university.

Sociology of the Sacred

Sociology of the Sacred PDF Author: Philip A Mellor
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1473907373
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"About time! Two key experts in the field remind us of the significance and power of religion as bio-political and bio-economic." - Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London "A welcome addition to a continuing body of work by two distinguished theorists of religion." - Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Mellor and Shilling cement their place at the pinnacle of the contemporary sociological theorisation of religion and the sacred. If sociological work is going to have any future it is to be found in the inspiration and excitement of this sophisticated and intelligent book." - Keith Tester, University of Hull "This book is ambitious, refreshing and rewarding. It offers the best available analysis of the complex interlacing of the sacred, religion, secularization and embodied experience." - James A. Beckford, University of Warwick Drawing on classical and contemporary social theory, Sociology of the Sacred presents a bold and original account of how interactions between religious and secular forms of the sacred underpin major conflicts in the world today, and illuminate broader patterns of social and cultural change inherent to global modernity. It demonstrates: How the bodily capacities help religions adapt to social change but also facilitate their internal transformation That the ‘sacred’ includes a diverse range of phenomena, with variable implications for questions of social order and change How proponents of a ‘post-secular’ age have failed to grasp the ways in which sacralization can advance secularization Why the sociology of the sacred needs to be a key part of attempts to make sense of the nature and directionality of social change in global modernity today. This book is key reading for the sociology of religion, the body and modern culture.