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The cultural shift from the open-centre synagogues of first-century ce in Israel to later forms like the Galilean basilica synagogue was motivated in part by the need to improve synagogue acoustics, especially for rituals like Scripture reading. This chapter looks at the early stages of the Nabratein synagogue hall revealed by archaeological excavation to show how changes in the synagogue’s interior architecture took advantage of the acoustic dynamics of the human voice and the way the human ear interprets sound information. This proof-of-concept study shows that acoustic analysis can reveal significant information about the architectural character of ancient synagogue halls and about the worship that was carried out in them. It brings together historical information about religious worship, the results of archaeological excavations, the physics of sound in interior spaces, and scientific understanding of the subjective human experience of hearing.

Based on first-hand materials gathered through decades of field research and fleshed out with the author's insightful religious, cultural, and historical observations extending back to Qing Dynasty times, ancient archaeological discoveries and the legacy of Siberian peoples, this two-volume ethnological study investigates shamanic rituals, myths and lore in northern China and explores the common ideology underlying the origins of the region's cultures. The book discusses the spiritual world of northern Shamanism and investigates the various shamanic rituals, divination, spirit idols and myths, illuminating how worship and ideas are imbedded in and interweave with the indigenous environment, culture and history of people in northern China. This mythic heritage embodies the peoples' understanding of the natural world, the creation of humankind, social life and history as well as their interaction with their surroundings. It is shown that shamanic spirituality in northern China is characterised by functionality and practicality in daily-life situations, in contrast to the received wisdom that defines shamanic praxis as a pure supernatural spirit journey.The book will be of great value for scholars of religion and anthropologists as well as ethnologists in the fields of Shamanism studies, Northeast Asian folklore and Manchu studies.

The iconic “Hillsong sound” draws Christians from across the globe to its Australian church campuses. Associated with a uniquely Christian Contemporary Worship aesthetic, for many, Hillsong walks a tightrope between a distinctly Antipodean-Western totalizing hegemony and sincere evangelization, as it continues to grow in non-Western and non-English-speaking territories. This chapter lays some foundations for understanding how gospel music and black identity are experienced and articulated within the Hillsong Australia community/ies, interrogating claims made by Hillsong regarding its ecclesial/liturgical inclusivity. It examines the experiences of attendees actively involved in musicking within the church who negotiate musical and cultural diversity in both Hillsong and broader Australian society. In particular, inspired by Timothy Rommen's ethics of style, it investigates the role of gospel music within college and church via interviews with African Americans who traveled to Australia to study at Hillsong College, other minority ethnic communities, and some white advocates. Volunteers negotiate racism while battling for visibility and audibility within the Australian socio-political and socio-cultural context/s. In light of increasing reflexivity about how Christian communities do and do not engage with otherness, this discussion represents a crucial discursive moment in thinking about what it might mean to be both “Hillsong” and “black.”

The history of Christianity, in general, and Western Christianity, in particular, is burdened with tensions surrounding the body in religious musicking. From the Patristic period through the Enlightenment and into its modern iterations, Christian traditions have grappled with the body in worship by regulating its expression or attempting to erase it from the liturgy. While certain aspects of this issue have been addressed by scholars, such examinations have not traced these questions past the “dividing lines” of Vatican II and the rise of contemporary worship phenomena which, in today's interconnected world, have broken down or resisted pre-established modes of negotiation, negation, and contestation of the body in Christian worship. An investigation of the body ethics of worshiping congregations must account for the ongoing convolutions and developments in the study of church music that acknowledge interdisciplinary perspectives. Located at the intersection of performances of music, ethics, and religion, this chapter will trace the mind/body gap in Christian thought and liturgical practices of religious musicking in order to examine how these “body ethics” surround and bind the worshiping body.

This chapter argues that kinship does not have the kind of reality usually attributed to it. Stipulating a cross-cultural reality to kinship is to equate discourses upon the imaginary with factuality. The unkindest cut of all is the way Western scholars treat kinship among non-Western peoples as something primordial to which they are bound, a state of affairs which 'the West' somehow transcends. The problem is that, whatever their purported basis in biology, as with gender, kinship relations are not natural facts. Anthropologists' statements about kinship are therefore, among other things, applications of classificatory principles to the actions, events and so forth from which relationships are inferred. It is not evident a priori that other peoples either use similar procedures or treat practices so idealistically as instantiations of ideas or categories. The criteria for inclusion in such worship groups may be expressed in several ways. Metaphor plays an interesting part in how relationships are portrayed.

This chapter explores the experiences of women who have been reared in nuclear families but through marriage have lived in joint families. The challenge to the approved marriage system is evident every time the couple appear in public since a non-Asian cannot ‘pass’ as an Asian. Amongst middle-class families, foreign wives rarely face direct rejection, but the husband’s family may nevertheless signal disapproval or disappointment in indirect ways. Several informants reported that their mothers-in-law would comment disparagingly on other mixed marriages where men were to be pitied, partly on account of the assumed inability of foreign wives to cook ‘proper home food’. Rituals surrounding the preparation and eating of food are important in all cultures, but they are of immense significance in India. Castes are partly defined by the type of food eaten and the offering of food is a crucial component of deity worship.

Religion is alive among immigrants. This is visible in their ethnic religious centres (mosques, musallas, chaplaincies and temples). But they do not play a merely religious role. They are pre-eminent actors in offering reception and welfare services. Immigrants feel at home in places of worship, where they find religious leaders speaking their native language, who share (or recognize) the ethnic background and cultural traditions, and understand the difficulties emerging from mixing their old way of life and the expectations of the new society. The issue of how faith, ethnicity and acculturation relate to one another is highly relevant in the current so-called ‘migrant and refugee crisis,’ due to the increasing number of people reaching the European Union. Since the failure of the Arab Spring, wars in Syria, Libya and Iraq, repression in Eritrea, and spiralling instability across several African countries have all contributed to the displacement of refugees worldwide. In this scenario, in the last years, some European states have put up signs stating that only ‘Christian’ refugees are welcome and, similarly, some predominantly Muslim countries have reportedly only welcomed Muslim refugees. Moreover, some in the United States and Europe express the fear that ISIS militants may be infiltrating the influx of refugees. Besides, their integration is not limited to receiving them and satisfying labour requests but also cultural and religious needs. The debate on how religious pluralism is (or should be) accommodated in the different countries and both within asylum seekers’ centres and the local communities hosting them, in fact, highlights how difficult it is to manage religious diversity, especially when the real or presumed proportion of Muslims among the newcomers is predominant. What could be considered the most challenging issue in the EU invites the need to deeply scrutinize the actors involved—mainly at the local level—in managing reception and integration activities, taking into consideration not only social and economic dimensions but also cultural and religious dimensions. Among them, immigrant religious associations and faith-based networks play a key role in enabling immigrant integration especially in Southern Europe, which is an increasingly politicized, anti-immigrant environment. The core point of the chapter is to analyse the role played by ethnic-religious associations, immigrant religious associations and faith-based networks in the host societies in the relationship between religion and settlement paths of refugees and asylum seekers. It relies on extensive desk literature review and qualitative interviews carried out in various Southern European countries with asylum seekers, local administrators, associations, community and religious leaders. The chapter will outline the complex scenario on religion and the current migratory flows to Europe.

This chapter assumes that any Copleston-God who is also holy is worthy of theistic worship and so is a theistic God whether or not that being is also perfect. Craig’s scientific argument depends for its success on a rather speculative cosmological theory. In short, Craig believes that a timeless cause of a temporal effect would have to be an agent-cause, because an agent-cause is not sufficient for its effect. Craig’s moral argument is supposed to show not just that a Copleston-God exists, but also that this God is the source of moral value and all goodness. Clearly this argument is crucial if Craig’s cumulative case is to establish a theistic God rather than just a Copleston-God. Craig’s reason for believing in God is the immediate experience of God. Craig’s claims are especially vulnerable to this defeater because he is an exclusivist Christian who appeals to experiences apparently of God that are specifically Christian in nature.

The chapter uses the sea-level rise that has recently occurred on a small Polynesian island of Tonga as a point of departure for exploring the local consequences of and attitudes to environmental change. In spite of an increasing focus on climate change and related environmental changes, local attitudes to ongoing changes appear remarkably unperturbed. Although the changes affect everyday routines of engaging the environment and also obliterate and transform landmarks of local historical significance, people seem both unwilling to dwell on the changes and in particular to broadcast news about them beyond the confines of the island. The chapter argues that the surrounding marine forces that cause the transformation do not only wash across a physical landscape but also a remembered, a social, a religious and a moral topography in terms of which attitudes to environmental changes should be understood. Thus, the chapter seeks to make sense of the striking reticence by focusing on ideas about underlying moral causes of misfortune related to Tongan Christianity, the maintenance of local reputation, and the social sensitivity to shaming in Tonga. By showing how the environmental changes affect the experienced landscape, the chapter also shows how urgencies and qualities of the present transform the remembered landscape setting features and qualities of historical significance on a path towards oblivion.

The visual programme of The Adoration of the Lamb of God is composed of two parts separated by a blanket of clouds at the middle. The upper part is a consequent, but not entirely faithful, visualisation of the so-called "throne room vision" as described in Revelation 4 and 5. The Lamb is also the subject of the heavenly worship by the elders, creatures, all the angels and the 144,000, all of whom gathered at the foot of Mount Zion to adore the Lamb. Thus, the appearance of the Lamb is the culmination of the vision, the very essence and centre point of every praise, of the entire heavenly gathering and of the composition itself. The most important observation might, to a certain degree, appear unsatisfying: the reception of The Adoration of the Lamb, a beeldmotet by Winghe and Sadeler, is in its individual expressions so diverse that it is challenging to outline its universally characteristic features.

The ‘supreme fiction’ of the absent beholder becomes – in colonial India – a mark of Western ‘distinction’ and a marker of distance from Hindu idols. The convention of single-point perspective was seen as the key which would unravel an Indian resistance to the ‘powers of observation’. The European art whose shadow was cast over India had passed through engagements with vanishing points that incarnated corporeal viewers to a practice that in Norman Bryson’s words implied a ‘transcendent point of vision that has discarded the body’. In India, the reawakening of the human sensorium went hand in hand with the insertion of mass-produced images into spaces of Hindu worship. A recurrent refrain in the analysis of popular art traditions concerns the ways in which consumers of images are either unable or unwilling to speak about their form. The glass mirrored image depicts Samvaliyaji, Avari Mata and Bhadva Mata who are the subject of a recently flourishing cult in Mandsaur District.

Although the arrival of the crusaders in Jerusalem in 1099 displaced the clergy, monks and faithful of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem from the holy sites that had been in their care for almost 800 years, they continued to pray and worship in the territory of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. This article examines two Greek liturgical manuscripts copied in Palestine during the twelfth century and seeks to contextualise their liturgical practices. The first manuscript, Hagios Stavros Gr. 43 (A.D. 1122), referred to as the ‘Anastasis Typikon’, is a hymnal for Holy Week and Easter at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The second manuscript, Sinai Gr. 1096 (twelfth century), is a liturgical Typikon regulating services at the multi-lingual and multi-ethnic Lavra of Mar Sabas south-east of Jerusalem. While both manuscripts are significant witnesses to the development of the Byzantine rite, they also provide glimpses of the religious life of Greek-praying Christians under crusader rule.

The Deuteronomists sought, and found, in Jezebel, the foreign woman, and her devotion to her foreign gods, the reason why their nations had been overrun by the heathen armies. King Ahab, the husband, committed all his evil acts at the instigation of Jezebel. The Jezebel narrative is part of the Deuteronomistic answer to the challenge posed by the exile. According to the Deuteronomists, the crime that led to the catastrophe was apostasy. They found the culprit in Jezebel, the Baal-worshipping foreign woman who introduced the worship of false gods in the kingdom of Israel. Jezebel had the disadvantage of being a (powerful) woman, a foreigner, an adherent of a foreign religion and of being “close at hand.” She is clearly the “Other” in these critical respects. These made her a prime target of scapegoating. Jezebel is ethnically and religiously the “Other,” a powerful queen who transgresses proper gender roles.

This chapter offers a concise account of the main issues surrounding the emergence of aesthetic formations in Pentecostal theology, highlighting the embodied approach Pentecostals have adopted and identifying their contributions to arts and aesthetics. The essay offers a brief typology of the relationships that Pentecostalism have had with the arts in both public and religious settings, focusing on the Pentecostal use and engagement of music, visual arts, and the embodied arts. The author then explores how Pentecostals have developed a distinctive theological aesthetics by emphasizing the practical and theological commitments found within Pentecostal spirituality. Adopting a pneumatological approach to aesthetics has allowed Pentecostals to make sense of their embodied and Spirit-oriented worship practices by drawing on the pneumatological connections within Pentecostal theology.

The translation of the bones of the Three Holy Kings from Milan to Cologne in 1164 by Archbishop Rainald of Dassel made Cologne Cathedral one of the most important pilgrim sites in Europe. Sometime between 1190 and 1220–30, a golden châsse was made to house the relics, with its iconographic programme referring to the relics’ legitimizing role for the German Kingdom. The location of the shrine in the old Carolingian Cathedral is not well known. In the existing Gothic construction, begun in 1248, the crossing was intended to be the location in which the shrine would later be displayed. Due to the long construction time, this was never realized, and the relics remained in the axial chapel for centuries. Medieval pilgrims’ badges found in various parts of Europe bear witness to the importance of the pilgrimage to Cologne. Later, the “Three-Magi-letters” – prayer-leaflets of paper or silk, brought in touch with the skulls – became popular. The bones were examined in 1864. Recent investigations revealed the wrapping fabrics as late ancient silk, woven as block damask with a purple border and gold threads. Fabrics like this were exclusively produced in the Syrian region during the second and third century, testament to the relics’ long history of veneration.

A yaksutŏ is a sacred mineral spring in Korea. These sacred sites are normally located on wooded mountain slopes or in the foothills. Their waters often spring out of cracks in a rock and trickle down to a small pool. Many people believe that the sacred spring water can treat particular sicknesses or grant their special wishes. Devotees worship their guardian deities which are most commonly the Mountain Spirit (who presides over highlands where a sacred spring is located) and the Dragon King (the genius loci of the sacred mineral spring itself). Many traditional yaksutŏ are still venerated by Koreans. However, those yaksutŏ in urbanized areas are experiencing increasing pollution and their sacrality is not as often recognized; in fact, some are overtly secularized.