The New Black Gods

The New Black Gods PDF Author: Edward E. Curtis IV
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300408X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Taking the influential work of Arthur Huff Fauset as a starting point to break down the false dichotomy that exists between mainstream and marginal, a new generation of scholars offers fresh ideas for understanding the religious expressions of African Americans in the United States. Fauset's 1944 classic, Black Gods of the Metropolis, launched original methods and theories for thinking about African American religions as modern, cosmopolitan, and democratic. The essays in this collection show the diversity of African American religion in the wake of the Great Migration and consider the full field of African American religion from Pentecostalism to Black Judaism, Black Islam, and Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement. As a whole, they create a dynamic, humanistic, and thoroughly interdisciplinary understanding of African American religious history and life. This book is essential reading for anyone who studies the African American experience.

The New Black Gods

The New Black Gods PDF Author: Edward E. Curtis IV
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300408X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
Taking the influential work of Arthur Huff Fauset as a starting point to break down the false dichotomy that exists between mainstream and marginal, a new generation of scholars offers fresh ideas for understanding the religious expressions of African Americans in the United States. Fauset's 1944 classic, Black Gods of the Metropolis, launched original methods and theories for thinking about African American religions as modern, cosmopolitan, and democratic. The essays in this collection show the diversity of African American religion in the wake of the Great Migration and consider the full field of African American religion from Pentecostalism to Black Judaism, Black Islam, and Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement. As a whole, they create a dynamic, humanistic, and thoroughly interdisciplinary understanding of African American religious history and life. This book is essential reading for anyone who studies the African American experience.

Religion in Hip Hop

Religion in Hip Hop PDF Author: Monica R. Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472507223
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Now a global and transnational phenomenon, hip hop culture continues to affect and be affected by the institutional, cultural, religious, social, economic and political landscape of American society and beyond. Over the past two decades, numerous disciplines have taken up hip hop culture for its intellectual weight and contributions to the cultural life and self-understanding of the United States. More recently, the academic study of religion has given hip hop culture closer and more critical attention, yet this conversation is often limited to discussions of hip hop and traditional understandings of religion and a methodological hyper-focus on lyrical and textual analyses. Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the Terrain provides an important step in advancing and mapping this new field of Religion and Hip Hop Studies. The volume features 14 original contributions representative of this new terrain within three sections representing major thematic issues over the past two decades. The Preface is written by one of the most prolific and founding scholars of this area of study, Michael Eric Dyson, and the inclusion of and collaboration with Bernard 'Bun B' Freeman fosters a perspective internal to Hip Hop and encourages conversation between artists and academics.

Secrecy

Secrecy PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674678X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The powers of political secrecy and social spectacle have been taken to surreal extremes recently. Witness the twin terrors of a president who refuses to disclose dealings with foreign powers while the private data of ordinary citizens is stolen and marketed in order to manipulate consumer preferences and voting outcomes. We have become accustomed to thinking about secrecy in political terms and personal privacy terms. In this bracing, new work, Hugh Urban wants us to focus these same powers of observation on the role of secrecy in religion. With Secrecy, Urban investigates several revealing instances of the power of secrecy in religion, including nineteenth-century Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the sexual magic of a Russian-born Parisian mystic; the white supremacist BrüderSchweigen or “Silent Brotherhood” movement of the 1980s, the Five Percenters, and the Church of Scientology. An electrifying read, Secrecy is the culmination of decades of Urban’s reflections on a vexed, ever-present subject.

African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems

African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems PDF Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350271969
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. "Sacred words” are taken to mean holy texts as in divination, the Quran and the Bible. Toyin Falola evaluates how religious leaders engage with sacred words, both orals and texts, engendering practices that reveal the expression of religious beliefs, the impact of those beliefs, and the knowledge contained in them. Attention is given to the key ideas in the words chosen by religious leaders, and how they form a continuous knowledge system, impacting the politics of managing society and people.

Innovation and Competition in Zimbabwean Pentecostalism

Innovation and Competition in Zimbabwean Pentecostalism PDF Author: Ezra Chitando
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350176044
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Using the concept of a “religious market”, this volume explores how African Traditional Religions and churches within Prophetic Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe seek to attract and retain members and clients. Chapters provide extensive coverage of two of the leading churches, namely, Emmanuel Makandiwa's United Family International Church (UFIC) and Walter Magaya's Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries (PHD). Contributors also explore the strategies adopted by Pentecostalism in general, while others focus on African Traditional Religions. They show that although Prophetic Pentecostalism has gained a significant share of the market in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa in general, it is not without controversy. In particular, it has been associated with the abuse of women and exploiting members and clients for financial gain. Innovation and Competition in Zimbabwean Pentecostalism is an important contribution to understanding the marketization of religion.

A Historical Introduction to the Study of New Religious Movements

A Historical Introduction to the Study of New Religious Movements PDF Author: W. Michael Ashcraft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351670832
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The American public’s perception of New Religious Movements (NRMs) as fundamentally harmful cults stems from the "anticult" movement of the 1970s, which gave a sometimes hysterical and often distorted image of NRMs to the media. At the same time, academics pioneered a new field, studying these same NRMs from sociological and historical perspectives. They offered an interpretation that ran counter to that of the anticult movement. For these scholars in the new field of NRM studies, NRMs were legitimate religions deserving of those freedoms granted to established religions. Those scholars in NRM studies continued to evolve methods and theories to study NRMs. This book tells their story. Each chapter begins with a biography of a key person involved in studying NRMs. The narrative unfolds chronologically, beginning with late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century perceptions of religions alternative to the mainstream. Then the focus shifts to those early efforts, in the 1960s and 1970s, to comprehend the growing phenomena of cults or NRMs using the tools of academic disciplines. The book’s midpoint is a chapter that looks closely at the scholarship of the anticult movement, and from there moves forward in time to the present, highlighting themes in the study of NRMs like violence, gender, and reflexive ethnography. No other book has used the scholars of NRMs as the focus for a study in this way. The material in this volume is, therefore, a fascinating viewpoint from which to explore the origins of this vibrant academic community, as well as analyse the practice of Religious Studies more generally.

A History of Religion in America

A History of Religion in America PDF Author: Bryan Le Beau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351670123
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A History of Religion in America: From the End of the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century provides comprehensive coverage of the history of religion in America from the end of the American Civil War to religion in post 9/11 America. The volume explores major religious groups in the United States and examines the following topics: The aftermath of the American Civil War Immigration’s impact on American religion The rise of the social gospel The fundamentalist response Religion in Cold War America The 60’s counterculture and the backlash Religion in Post-9/11 America Chronologically arranged and integrating various religious developments into a coherent historical narrative, this book also contains useful chapter summaries and review questions. Designed for undergraduate religious studies and history students A History of Religion in America provides a substantive and comprehensive introduction to the complexity of religion in American history.

The End(s) of Religion

The End(s) of Religion PDF Author: Eric Bain-Selbo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350045276
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Eric Bain-Selbo argues that the study of religion-from philosophers to psychologists, and historians of religion to sociologists-has separated out the “ends” or goals of religion and thus created the conditions by which institutional religion is increasingly irrelevant in contemporary Western culture. There is ample evidence that institutional religion is in trouble, and little evidence that it will strengthen in the future, giving some reason to believe that we are in the process of seeing the end of religion. At the same time, various cultural practices have met in the past and continue to meet today certain fundamental human needs-needs that we might identify as religious that now are being fulfilled through what Bain-Selbo calls the “religion of culture.” The End(s) of Religion traces the way that the very study of religion has led to institutional religion being viewed as just one human institution that can address our particular “religious” needs rather than the sole institution to do so. In turn, ultimately we can begin to see how other institutions or forms of culture can function to serve these same needs or “ends.”

Method as Identity

Method as Identity PDF Author: Christopher M. Driscoll
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498565638
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion emphasizes the inexorable influence that social identities exert in shaping methodological choices within the academic study of religion, as witnessed in sui generis appeals to particularity and reliance on (or rejection of) identity-based standpoints. Can data speak back, and if so, would scholars have ears to listen? With a refreshing hip hop sensibility, Miller and Driscoll argue that what cultural theorist Jean-François Bayart refers to as a “battle for identity” forces a necessary confrontation with the (impact of) social identities (and, their histories) haunting our fields of study. These complex categorical specters make it nearly impossible to untether the categories of identity that we come to study from the identity of categories shaping our methodological lenses. Treating method as an identity-revealing technique of distance-making between the “proper” scholar and the less-than-scholarly advocate for religion, Miller and Driscoll examine a variety of discursive milieus of vagueness (consider for instance “essentialism,” “origins,” “authenticity”) at work in the contemporary discussion of “critical” methods that lack the necessary specificity for doing the heavy-lifting of analytically handling the asymmetrical dimensions of power part and parcel to social identification. Through interdisciplinary discussions that draw on thinkers including Charles H Long, Bruce Lincoln, Russell T. McCutcheon, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Laurel C. Schneider, William D. Hart, Tomoko Masuzawa, Anthony B. Pinn, bell hooks, Roderick Ferguson, John L. Jackson, Jasbir Puar, and Jean-François Bayart, among others, Method as Identity intentionally blurs the lines classifying “proper” scholarly approach and proper “objects” of study. With an intentional effort to challenge the de facto disciplinary segregation marking the field and study of religion today, Method as Identity will be of interest to scholars involved in discussions about theory and method for the study of religion, and especially researchers working at the intersections of identity, difference, and classification—and the politics thereof.

Magic In Islam

Magic In Islam PDF Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101983493
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The progenitor of "Muslim punk rock" and one of today's freshest spiritual voices pushes back against the common assumption that the historic faiths have no occult or magical tradition in this richly learned historical and personal journey through the practice of magic in Islam. Magic in Islam offers a look at magical and occult technologies throughout Muslim history, starting with Islam's earliest and most canonical sources. In addition to providing a highly accessible introduction to magic as it is defined, practiced, condemned, and defended within Muslim traditions, Magic in Islam challenges common assumptions about organized religion. Michael Muhammad Knight's deeply original book fills a gap within existing literature on the place of magic in Islamic traditions and opens a new window on Islam for general readers and students of religion alike. In doing so, the book counters and complicates widespread perceptions of Islam, as well as of magic as it is practiced outside of European contexts. Magic in Islam also challenges our view of "organized religions" as clearly defined systems that can be reduced to checklists of key doctrines, texts, and rules. As a result, Magic in Islam throws a monkey wrench into the conventions of the "intro to Islam" genre, threatening to flip popular notions of a religion's "center" and "margins."