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An indispensable resource for readers investigating how religion has influenced societies and cultures, this three-volume encyclopedia assesses and synthesizes the many ways in which religious faith has shaped societies from the ancient world to today. Each volume of the set focuses on a different era of world history, ranging through the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Every volume is filled with essays that focus on religious themes from different geographical regions. For example, volume one includes essays considering religion in ancient Rome, while volume three features essays focused on religion in modern Africa. This accessible layout makes it easy for readers to learn more about the ways that religion and society have intersected over the centuries, as well as specific religious trends, events, and milestones in a particular era and place in world history.Taken as a a whole, this ambitious and wide-ranging work gathers more than 500 essays from more than 150 scholars who share their expertise and knowledge about religious faiths, tenets, people, places, and events that have influenced the development of civilization over the course of recorded human history.

This books explores the rise of civilizational populism throughout the world, and its consequences. Civilizational populism posits that democracy ought to be based upon enacting the ‘people's will', yet it adds a new and troubling dimension to populism's thin ideology: a civilization based classification of peoples and division of society. Today, we increasingly find not conflict between civilizations, but conflict within states over their civilizational identity. From Western Europe to Turkey, and from India and Pakistan to Indonesia, populists are increasingly employing a civilization based classification of peoples in order to define the identities of ‘the people'and their perceived enemies. This book is the first to examine civilizational populism as global phenomenon rather than a uniquely Western form of politics. Through a series of case studies, the book examines the role played by religion in forming civilizational identities, but also investigates the often deleterious consequences of civilizational populism entering the political mainstream.

This book examines the meaning of religion within the scientific, evidence-based history of our known past since the big bang. While our current major religions are only centuries or millennia old, our volume discusses the origins and development of human religious practice and belief over our species'existence of 300,000 years.The volume also connects the scientific approach to natural and social history with ancient truths of our religious ancestors using new lines of inquiry, new technologies, new modes of expression, and new concepts. It brings together insights of natural scientists, social scientists, philosophers, writers, and theologians to discuss narratives of the universe. The essays discuss that to apprehend religion scientifically, or to interpret and explain science theologically, the subject must be examined through a variety of disciplinary lenses simultaneously and raise several theoretical, philosophical, and moral problems.With a singular investigation into the meaning of religion in the context of the 13.8 billion-year history of our universe, this book will be indispensable for scholars and students of religious studies, big history, sociology and social anthropology, philosophy, and science and technology studies.

Though many scholars and commentators have predicted the death of religion, the world is more religious today than ever before. And yet, despite the persistence of religion, it remains a woefully understudied phenomenon. With Objective Religion, Baylor University Press and Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion have combined forces to gather select articles from the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion that not only highlight the journal's wide-ranging and diverse scope, but also advance the field through a careful arrangement of topics with ongoing relevance, all treated with scientific objectivity and the respect warranted by matters of faith. This multivolume project seeks to advance our understanding of religion and spirituality in general as well as particular religious beliefs and practices. The volume thereby serves as a catalyst for future studies of religion from diverse disciplines and fields of inquiry including sociology, psychology, political science, demography, economics, philosophy, ethics, history, medicine, population health, epidemiology, and theology. The articles in this volume, Competition, Tension, and Perseverance, document the pervasiveness of religion and demonstrate the complex ways faith, spirituality, and religious matters are consequential for individuals as well as societies across the world. Together these essays demonstrate the resilience of religion.

In'Modernity: Religious and Ethical Perspectives,'Nicos Mouzelis examines the three unique structural features of modern societies: inclusion of the whole population into the nation-state, top-down differentiation of institutional spheres, and the expansion of individualization from the top to the base of the social pyramid. The author shows how the above features relate to present-day religious phenomena such as secularisation/desecularization, the new religious movements, and the forms of present-day spiritualities. He examines the extent to which secularisation and rationalization led to the'disenchantment of the world.'Later, however, one observes a reaction to the established, hierarchically organized churches and to the adherence, mainly of young people, to less structured religious groups, to religious syncretism, and to individual seekers who tried to find'their own God.'From this perspective, one can argue that we have a partial're-enchantment of the world.'.

About the book: The book contains 18 articles concerning the central issue of convergence. The authors are professors and researchers from European countries and Iran and have mostly dealt with various aspects of the main topic with an intercultural-interreligious approach. Most articles focus on the relationship between Islam and the contemporary world. About the Editor: Ali Asghar Mosleh is Professor of Philosophy at Allameh Tabataba`i University in Iran, the Head of Iranian Association for Intercultural Philosophy and the Research Institute Director for Contemporary Culture; Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Bonn (2004) and visiting researcher at University of Humboldt zu Berlin (2018). He is the author of several books and articles on Intercultural Philosophy, Islamic Sufism, History of Philosophy. His books include: “The Question concerning the Truth of Man”, “The Philosophy of Culture” “With the Other”, and “Truth and Power”

While there are books that describe the history and traditions of the Druze as an ethnic and religious group, this is the first and only academic book of its kind. It gives voice to the Israeli Druze, through in-depth interviews with 120 people, 60 young adults and 60 of their parents'generation. How is this traditional group, bound together through the centuries by their secret religion and strong value system, dealing with modernization? What contradictions and continuity come to light in the stories of this people during a time of transition? Can their religion, and their very identity, survive the meeting with the modern, technological world? What resources do the young and the not-so-young bring to the task of preserving their community and helping it to flourish as the world changes around them?The people in this text answer these questions through the telling of their stories, in which they express their values, opinions, beliefs and aspirations. The book draws out theoretical, practical, religious and sociological implications from this analysis, in order to shed light on the challenges faced by other traditional societies meeting modernity.

The post–World War II idea of the Axial Age by Karl Jaspers, and as elaborated into the sociology of axial civilizations by S. N. Eisenstadt in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, continues to be the subject of intense scholarly debate. Examples of this can be found in recent works of Hans Joas and Jürgen Habermas. In From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond, an internationally distinguished group of scholars discuss, advance, and criticize the Jaspers-Eisenstadt thesis, and go beyond it by bringing in the critical influence of Max Weber's sociology of world religions and by exploring intercivilizational encounters in key world regions. The essays within this volume are of unusual interest for their original analysis of relatively neglected civilizational zones, especially Islam and the Islamicate civilization and the Byzantine civilization, and its continuation in Orthodox Russia.

La culture judéo-chrétienne, et plus précisément celle dont l'Ancien Testament est le fanal, reçoit depuis longtemps des coups, portés par les hommes qui en rejettent l'influence. Cet ouvrage rassemble divers exemples de ce phénomène, plus inquiétant dans les travaux de certains chercheurs que dans la culture de masse. Enquête fragmentée, soigneusement équilibrée, sur les failles de l'éthique contemporaine, avec son obsession de l'égalitarisme, favorisé par le gommage de la différence du bien et du mal.

Is religion a right given to us by the state? Is it an opium for the masses? Is it private opinion with no role in the public sphere? In It Is Right and Just, bestselling author Scott Hahn and Brandon McGinley challenge our idea of religion and its role in society. Hahn and McGinley argue that to answer questions over religious liberty, justice, and peace, we must first reject the insidious lie perpetuated by secular-liberal culture: that religion is a private matter. Contrary to what political commentators and activists say, religion is not only relevant to justice and law, but is necessary for civilization to thrive. Recover the public nature of true religion, It Is Right and Just argues, and watch as a revolution unfolds.

When talking about the relationship between religion and flourishing, the first task is to frame the question theologically and philosophically, and this entails taking seriously the potential challenges latent in the issue. These challenges include—beyond the contested definitions of both'religion'and'flourishing'—the claims of some faith traditions that true adherence to that tradition's goals and intrinsic goods can be incompatible with self-interest, and also the fact that religious definitions of health and wholeness tend to be less concrete than secular definitions. Despite the difficulties, research that considers uniquely religious aspects of human flourishing is essential, as scholars pursue even greater methodological rigor in future investigations of causal connections. Religion and Human Flourishing brings together scholars of various specializations to consider how theological and philosophical perspectives might shape such future research, and how such research might benefit religious communities. The first section of the book takes up the foundational theological and philosophical questions. The next section turns to the empirical dimension and encompasses perspectives ranging from anthropology to psychology. The third and final section of the book follows in the empirical mold by moving to more sociological and economic levels of analysis. The concluding reflection offers a survey of what the social scientific research reveals about both the positive and negative effects of religion.Scholars and laypeople alike are interested in religion, and many more still are interested in how to lead a meaningful life—how to flourish. The collaborative undertaking represented by Religion and Human Flourishing will further attest to the perennial importance of the questions of religious belief and the pursuit of the good life, and will become a standard for further exploration of such questions.

This volume brings together scholars in religion, archaeology, philology, and history to explore case studies and theoretical models of converging religions. The twenty-four essays offered in this volume, which derive from Hittite, Cilician, Lydian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman cultural settings, focus on encounters at the boundaries of cultures, landscapes, chronologies, social class and status, the imaginary, and the materially operative. Broad patterns ultimately emerge that reach across these boundaries, and suggest the state of the question on the study of convergence, and the potential fruitfulness for comparative and interdisciplinary studies as models continue to evolve.

The aim of this monograph is to understand the extent to which the landscape of Roman Berytus and the Bekaa valley is a product of colonial transformation following the foundation of Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus in 15 BCE. The book explores the changes observed in the cities of Berytus and Heliopolis, as well as the sites at Deir el-Qalaa, Niha, and Hosn Niha. The work fundamentally challenges the traditional paradigm, where Baalbek-Heliopolis is seen as a religious site dating from as early as the Bronze Age and associated with the worship of a Semitic or Phoenician deity triad and replaces it with a new perspective where religious activity is largely a product of colonial change.

With the aid of hundreds of photographs, an in-depth exploration of the role of religionAn innovative, thematic presentation of the role of religion in human society, from traditional cultures to the modern world, this comprehensive account will prove invaluable for students, experts or the interested general readers seeking an understanding of the nature and significance of diverse religious experience. Drawing from all major religious traditions in the world, as well as a variety of non-religious disciplines such as psychology, philosophy and sociology, Momen's informative study covers everything from art and history to theology and the World Wide Web.

Staat ohne Gott ist keine Streitschrift, wohl aber eine streitbare Analyse. Die These von Horst Dreier lautet: In der modernen Demokratie darf sich der Staat mit keiner bestimmten Religion identifizieren, und heiße sie auch Christentum. Nur in einem Staat ohne Gott können alle Bürger gemäß ihren durchaus unterschiedlichen religiösen oder sonstigen Überzeugungen in Freiheit leben. Staat ohne Gott heißt also nicht: Welt ohne Gott, auch nicht: Gesellschaft ohne Gott, und schon gar nicht: Mensch ohne Gott. Es heißt vielmehr, dass die Demokratie des Grundgesetzes mit jeder Form eines Gottesstaates, einer Theokratie, einer sakralen Ordnung oder eines christlichen Staates gänzlich unvereinbar ist. Die Entwicklung Deutschlands hin zu einer multireligiösen und multikulturellen Gesellschaft hat neue Konfliktfelder zwischen den Anhängern verschiedener Glaubensrichtungen sowie zwischen ihnen und der Staatsgewalt entstehen lassen. Gerade angesichts der intensiv geführten Debatte um den Zusammenprall der Kulturen und die Herausforderung freiheitlicher westlicher Gesellschaften durch den Islam aber ist eine Besinnung auf die Grundstrukturen und Grundfragen des säkularen Staates geboten – auf sein Programm, sein Profil, seine Problematik.

Unveils the spiritual meaning that fueled the artistic, political, and social revolutions of the 1960s • Investigates the spiritual principles that informed everything from the civil rights and anti-war movements, to the hippies'rejection of materialist culture, to the rise of feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism • Reveals how medieval troubadours, Gnosticism, Renaissance hermetic magic, and the occult doctrines of Aleister Crowley helped shape the psychedelic Sixties • Offers in-depth analysis of many of the era's most famous books, films, and music No decade in modern history has generated more controversy and divisiveness than the tumultuous 1960s. For some, the ‘60s were an era of free love, drugs, and social revolution. For others, the Sixties were an ungodly rejection of all that was good and holy. Embarking on a profound search for the spiritual meaning behind the massive social upheavals of the 1960s, Tobias Churton turns a kaleidoscopic lens on religious and esoteric history, industry, science, philosophy, art, and social revolution to identify the meaning behind all these diverse movements. Engaging with views of mainstream historians, some of whom write off this pivotal decade as heralding an overall decline in moral values and respect for tradition, Churton examines the intricate network of spiritual forces at play in the era. He reveals spiritual principles that united the free love movement, the civil rights and anti-war movements, the hippies'rejection of materialist culture, and the eventual rise of feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism. He traces influences from medieval troubadours, Gnosticism, Hindu philosophy, Renaissance hermetic magic, and the occult doctrines of Aleister Crowley. He also examines the psychedelic revolution, the genesis of popular interest in UFOs, and the psychological consequences of the Bomb and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. In addition, Churton investigates the huge shifts in consciousness reflected in the movies, music, art, and literature of the era--from Frank Sinatra to the Beatles, from I Love Lucy to Star Trek, from John Wayne to Midnight Cowboy--much of which still resonates with the youth of today. Taking the reader on a long strange trip from crew-cuts and Bermuda shorts to Hair and Woodstock, from liquor to psychedelics, from uncool to cool, and from matter to Soul, Churton shows how the spiritual values of the Sixties are now reemerging, with an astonishing influx of spiritual light, to once again awaken us.

البحث في تاريخ الوجود الاجتماعي البشري بشكل علمي يستجلي معرفة بحوادث التاريخ ، وهذه الرسالة قسمها الكاتب إلى خمسة فصول ، تناولت بالتحليل والبحث أمورا في غاية الأهمية وتظل تثير الجدل حتى يومنا هذا ، ومنها : حاجة البشر إلى الاجتماع وأن دعامته الدين، كذلك ترقي الشرائع بترقي الإنسان، أيضا القوة في الشرائع، وتناول أيضا.. مشروعية الجهاد في الشرائع الإلهية.. كما تعرض لكيفية قيام الشرائع وانتشارها بين البشر.

Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen die Herausforderungen des interkulturellen Zusammenlebens, die in Interviews, welche der Autor mit Ordensbrüdern geführt hat, deutlich wurden. Er geht der Frage nach, wie mit Differenzen umgegangen wird, und formuliert als Ziel, einen sensiblen Ansatz zu entwickeln, in dem die Diversität von Kulturen ernst genommen und beachtet wird, um gegebene Differenzen in Kraftquellen für eine interkulturelle Gemeinschaft zu verwandeln.

Welche Ethik braucht das 21. Jahrhundert? Und welche Antworten geben die Weltreligionen? Die globalen Herausforderungen der Gegenwart verlangen nach einer Ethik und Kultur der Nachhaltigkeit, die nicht nur die Lebensrechte künftiger Generationen, sondern auch diejenigen der Tiere und den Eigenwert der Natur achtet. Zugleich muss eine zukunftsfähige Ethik dem Pluralismus der Kulturen und Religionen Rechnung tragen. Der vorliegende Band enthält drei nachgelassene Schriften Albert Schweitzers über Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen von überraschender Aktualität. ”Kultur und Ethik”, entstanden 1919-1921, skizziert den Beitrag der Weltreligionen zu einer universalen Ethik. Gleichzeitig bietet dieses überaus präzise, meisterhaft geschriebene und in sich geschlossene Werk nicht nur eine dichte Darstellung der Ethik Jesu, sondern auch der theologischen und ethischen Grundansichten Schweitzers. ”Mensch und Kreatur in den Weltreligionen”, geschrieben 1933, bündelt Schweitzers Gedanken zur Tierethik und vermittelt zentrale Grundeinsichten der Ethik der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben. Die 1934 gehaltenen ”Hibbert-Lectures”, bislang nur aus Presseauszügen bekannt, beleuchten in einer pointierten Gegenüberstellung das Verhältnis des Christentums zu den Weltreligionen. Die drei Schriften des vorliegenden Bandes gehören in den Umkreis von Schweitzers Kulturphilosophie und bieten eine wichtige Ergänzung zu seiner ”Kulturphilosophie III”.

Arab debates about the critical relationship between religion and modernity began in the early nineteenth century. Such debates are now integral to the struggle for power between a variety of political groups and their opponents, and are vital to understanding the modern Middle East. This unique volume introduces the writings of the Muslim and Arab Christian revisionist'free-thinkers'who have tried to redefine the relationship. It challenges the deeply entrenched idea that the contemporary Islamic world has been impermeable to a critique of religious ideas and practices. Authors from the nineteenth century to the present are included. Some are avowed believers, even if they adopt positions many might regard as heretical; others are openly agnostic and atheistic. Despite their differences, all have been united in disputing the fundamentalist idea that life should conform to a system of values and law based on the Quran. They have also rejected the religious'liberalism'that has been the chief opposition to traditionalism. The book's originality lies in its evaluation of the social and cultural impact of these radical thinkers.

The book reveals the nexus between religion and politics today and shows that we live in an interdependent world where one global civilization is emerging and where the world's peoples are continuing to coalesce around a series of values that contain potent Western overtones. Both Putin's Orthodox Russia and regions under the control of such Islamist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda resent and attempt, in a largely languishing effort, to frustrate this series of values. The book explains the current tension between the West and Russia and parts of the Muslim world and sheds light on the causes of such crises as the Syrian Civil War, Russia's aggression against Ukraine, and acts of terrorism such as 9/11 and the ISIS-inspired massacres in Paris. It shows that religion continues to affect global order and that knowledge of its effect on political identity and global governance should guide both government policy and scholarly analysis of contemporary history.

Kultur und Religion stehen seit jeher in einem engen Wechselverhältnis: Religion ist vielen Kulturen als wichtiges Symbol- und Wertesystem inhärent und fungiert als bedeutsamer Bestandteil kultureller Identitäten. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse, die für Religion blind ist, würde also etwas Wichtiges am eigenen Gegenstand übersehen. Doch welche kulturwissenschaftlichen Methoden können Religion verständlich machen? In diesem Band treten verschiedene theologische und kulturwissenschaftliche Disziplinen in einen fruchtbaren Dialog, um die Wechselwirkung zwischen Religion und Kultur, etwa zu Fragen der literarischen Religionskritik, zur Konstruktion muslimischer Identitäten oder zum Zusammenhang von Religion, Kultur und Moral, zu beleuchten.

Since the events of 9/11 the representation of Islam has increasingly come adrift from its actuality. Scholars and pundits have effectively demonised a whole faith by wilfully apportioning blame and by ignoring the differences within the Islamic movement.'Religion and the Domestication of Dissent'examines how the classifications we use to name and negotiate our social worlds - notably'religion'- are implicitly political. The study ranges widely from contemporary film and art to the War on Terror and will be invaluable to readers interested in the politics behind the portrayal of dissenting religious groups.

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.

Wie kann man nach dem Ende der Plausibilität traditioneller theistischer Konzepte von ‘Gott', ‘Welt'und ‘Mensch'dennoch ‘sag- und tragfähig'von ‘Gott'oder dem Göttlichen reden, und die Grunderfahrungen von ‘Glaube, Liebe und Hoffnung', wie sie im menschlichen Gottesglauben ‘beherbergt'sind, trotz alledem bekräftigen? Im Zusammenhang dieser Fragen suchte der Autor nach Möglichkeiten alternativer Deutungen von ‘Gott'und ‘Religion', die auch angesichts unseres heutigen evolutionären Weltbildes plausibilisierbar, interreligiös vernetzt, kritisch vertieft, und zugleich für ihn persönlich existentiell belastbar sind. Seine theologische Abenteuerreise, die ihn zu einem nicht-theistischen oder nach-theistischen Gottesbild und zu einer kritisch gebrochenen und tastenden ‘Theologie des Werdens'führte, hat er in diesem Buch dokumentiert und beschrieben. Dabei bezieht er sich neben einigen führenden liberalen deutschen religiösen Autoren u.a. auf die zeitgenössische internationale, angelsächsische und nordamerikanische theologisch-philosophische Grundlagenliteratur, deren für ihn wegweisende Impulse er vorstellt, kritisch durchdenkt, und versucht, zu einem eigenen religiösen Denkgebäude zu verweben.

Dogma's Primrose Path addresses how the perpetual presence of ignorance, poverty, and war throughout the world is accepted by most people as an inevitable consequence of human life given man's incurably evil, greedy, and violent nature. John L. Martinez argues that this almost universal acceptance is itself a dogmatically learned and programmed condition. This book suggests that human beings need to discard their dogmatic straightjackets and begin to thrive upon reason, logic, perception, and experience in order to live together fruitfully and peaceably.

Outsiders in a Promised Land explores the role that religious activists have played in shaping the culture of the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Washington and Oregon, from the middle of the 19th century onward. The region's earliest settlers came to work in the mines and forests, and a culture of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels grew up to serve them. When migration to the region intensified, newcomers with families and religious traditions often saw themselves as outsiders in opposition to the prevailing frontier culture. As communities grew in population, early activists found common ground in a desire to protect women and children, and make their towns more hospitable to religious values. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews worked together to transform communities. Together they introduced public and private schools, health care institutions, libraries and orphanages, and lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol. Beginning in the 1930s, religious activism played a crucial role in the emerging culture wars between liberals and conservatives. Liberals rallied around the protection of civil rights and the building of social safety nets, while conservatives decried the rise of secularism, liberalism, and communism. Today, religious activists of many faiths are deeply engaged in matters related to women's and gay rights, foreign policy, and environmental protection. Outsiders in a Promised Land is a meticulously researched, comprehensive treatment of religion in Pacific Northwest public life from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. The first book of its kind, it is destined to be an essential reference for scholars, activists, and religious leaders of all faiths.

At present the battle over who defines our future is being waged most publicly by secular and religious fundamentalists.'Hope and the Longing for Utopia'offers an alternative position, disclosing a conceptual path toward potential worlds that resist a limited view of human potential and the gift of religion. In addition to outlining the value of embracing unknown potentialities, these twelve interdisciplinary essays explore why it has become crucial that we commit to hoping for values that resist traditional ideological commitments. Contextualized by contemporary writing on utopia, and drawing from a wealth of times and cultures ranging from Calvin's Geneva to early twentieth-century Japanese children's stories to Hollywood cinema, theseessays cumulatively disclose the fundamental importance of resisting tantalizing certainties while considering the importance of the unknown and unknowable. Beginning with a set of four essays outlining the importance of hope and utopia as diagnostic concepts, and following with four concrete examples, the collection ends with a set of essays that provide theological speculations on the need to embrace finitude and limitations in a world increasingly enframed by secularizing impulses. Overall, this book discloses how hope and utopia illuminate ways to think past simplified wishes for the future.

Wie lässt sich unter Bedingungen der globalen Modernität die spezifische Dynamik einer historisch tief verankerten Gesellschaft beschreiben? Bei seinen Betrachtungen über die ägyptische Gesellschaft stellt sich Georg Stauth dieser Frage. Es geht um die kulturelle Bedeutung des Landes am Nil nach Maßstab der globalisierten Moderne: Massenarmut und Konsumkultur, Individualismus und kollektive Spiritualität, Körpermoral und ästhetische Utopie. Der »Pharao«, das »politisch-theologische« Vermächtnis Ägyptens, bleibt präsent - ebenso die Lebensbegriffe der pharaonischen Kultur im mentalen Alltag der Menschen. Im Spannungsfeld dieser Momente einer überkommenen »Zivilisation« entfalten sich heute die Begriffe von Islam und Demokratie, während auch die uralte Symbolsprache der Ägypter im modernen ästhetischen Selbstverständnis weiterlebt. Mit der Analyse dieser Widersprüche und Prozesse stellt der Autor seine Studien zu den »Ägyptischen heiligen Orten« in den breiteren Kontext der Bedeutung von Religion und Authentizität in der sich globalisierenden Moderne.

The Dialectics of the Religious and the Secular: Studies on the Future of Religion contains the work of fifteen international scholars who have wrestled with the question of the relevancy, meaning, and future of religion within the context of the increasing antagonisms between the religious and secular realms of modern civil society and its globalization. Through their chosen topics in analyzing these issues in the 20th and 21st centuries, each author also indicates the possibility of mitigating if not preventing the continuation of this antagonism by historically moving toward a more reconciled and humane future global society.Contributors are: Branko Ančić, Aleksandra Baranova, Roland T. Boer, Francis Brassard, Dustin Byrd, Donald Devon III, Neven Duvnjak, Jan W. R. Fennema, Denis R. Janz, Dinka Marinović Jerolimov, Gottfried Küenzlen, Mislav Kukoč, Michael R. Ott, Rudolf J. Siebert, and Ivica Sokol.

In today's society, a positive relation between ‘God'and ‘civilization'is by no means self-evident. Religious believers who want to live their lives in accordance with ‘the law of God'are often considered a threat to civilization. To many, monotheistic religion is inherently repressive and violent.The central aim of this volume is to think of both God and civilization in a more open, space-giving way. God is seen as the One who prevents man from making an absolute claim for a relative reality, including one's religion and culture. The multifaceted relations between God and civilization are explored from systematic-theological, missiological, philosophical and ethical perspectives.

This volume focuses on religion from a trans-cultural and international perspective. Its aim is to open up new perspectives on how religions might coexist peacefully within 21st century societies and simultaneously contribute to global pacification. Can a religion cope peacefully with the existence of other religions, without having to abandon its own claim to truth, and if so, what already inherent, specific characteristics would have to be emphasized? Or is secular culture the path to convince different religions of a shared ideal of peaceful co-existence? These questions are approached considering the socio-political implications of religions in Asian, African, Latin-American and European contexts.This collection of essays reflects on the entire spectrum of the highly topical and complex academic discussions pertaining to the interrelation of society, state and religion. One example in this collection features the analysis of a secular state engaging in dialog with Muslim communities through a state-moderated communication platform; another article concentrates on the political impact of Christian churches on Nigerian society by means of political advertisement. Moreover, the different concepts of religion in Western societies are considered: one essay argues that in democratic societies it is the state that must guarantee the freedom of religion and thereby provide the basis for a peaceful co-existence between all religions.

Religion and Culture was first presented by historian Christopher Dawson as part of the prestigious Gifford Lecture series in 1947. It sets out the thesis for which he became famous: religion is the key of history

The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers'construct of the'axial age'envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the'dark green golden age,'as narrated by David Suzuki and others, asserts that the axial age and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths.

This unique collection highlights the importance of landscape, politics and piety to our understandings of religion and place. The geographies of religion have developed rapidly in the last couple of decades and this book provides both a conceptual framing of the key issues and debates involved, and rich illustrations through empirical case studies. The chapters span the discipline of human geography and cover contexts as diverse as veiling in Turkey, religious landscapes in rural Peru, and refugees and faith in South Africa. A number of prominent scholars and emerging researchers examine topical themes in each engaging chapter with significant foci being: religious transnationalism and religious landscapes; gendering of religious identities and contexts; fashion, faith and the body; identity, resistance and belief; immigrant identities, citizenship and spaces of belief; alternative spiritualities and places of retreat and enchantment. Together they make a series of important contributions that illuminate the central role of geography to the meaning and implications of lived religion, public piety and religious embodiment. As such, this collection will be of much interest to researchers and students working on topics relating to religion and place, including human geographers, sociologists, religious studies and religious education scholars.

There is a definite and growing interest and awareness amongst the general public of the competing arguments around faith, God and society. The book is divided into two sections. Section One tackles issues of ultimate concern and the place of God in the modern world, whilst Section Two considers the role of faith in public life. The contributors bring a range of different voices – both religious and secular – to the conversation.

This book investigates the state of civilization in the 21st century, which is characterized by the transformation of Western Civilization into Global Civilization and the resulting Great Recession, triggered by the financial crisis in the United States in 2008. Since the state of former Western Civilization is steadily worsening, the question is rising whether civilization is sustainable at all. To answer this question, 20 authors, members of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (from several countries and continents) investigate the aspect of human spirituality, and whether its actual level of development is able to steer the sustainable development of civilization? The authors investigate the complexity of the current state of world civilization and the Planet, concluding that western societies entered the Second Great Crisis of Civilization, and reminding that the First Great Crisis took place after the fall of Rome I in 476 CE, and lasted till the Italian Renaissance, which means almost 1000 years. The current Second Great Crisis is characterized by 16 analyzed crises, such as; population, ecological, strategic resources, education, administration, technique, science, religion, and similar crises. Therefore further questions are investigated. Are we overcivilized? Do we have human and societal potential for transcending this crisis of civilization? How should human behavior be re-engineered? Hence, the traditional main religions are analyzed, including whether their spirituality can successfully direct humans toward the sustainable life. Also, secular thinking is analyzed on whether it is able to do same task. Particularly the “religion” of Global Civilization is analyzed and eventually the conclusion is rather pessimistic, since this religion is de facto “business” with its limited ethics and social responsibility. This book offers spirituality 2.0 as a possible “tool” for people to behave wisely in order to sustain our civilization. This new spirituality 2.0 contains a set of complementary best values of current eight civilizations, which should lead to tolerant (less-conflict driven) human behavior and wise decision-making. The book finally defines Wise Civilization and paths of its implementation, under the condition that people will be not only knowledgeable, but wise and inspired mainly by right spirituality.

Religion is commonly viewed through the lens of the world's religious traditions, stressing the differences, and often the conflicts, among them. The author of this book instead presents religion as a common and universal human phenomenon, based deeply in a human nature shared by all. In this view, the underlining and unifying principle of religion is a particular affirmative attitude toward life, which he presents as the Ultimate Value, and as such the key cultural constituent and defining factor of all religion. This Ultimate Value finds its expressions in various civilizations, and results in a variety of forms; these are what we know as the world's religious traditions. By analyzing the roles of both culture and civilization in their attitudes toward life, the author places religion beyond religious traditions, and shows how the latter, regardless of whether they are theistic or atheistic, draw their principles from the former, mainly by promoting the Golden Rule in its applications.

'Asbridge can't help but tell a ripping yarn, often breezily dramatic, whipping the narrative along'The TimesA superb and definitive one-volume account of the Crusades, the impact of which still resonates to this day. In the eleventh century, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by both faiths. Over the two hundred years that followed this First Crusade, Islam and the West fought for dominion of the Holy Land, clashing in a succession of chillingly brutal wars, both firm in the belief that they were at God's work.The Crusades tells the story of this epic struggle from the perspective of both Christians and Muslims, reconstructing the experiences and attitudes of those on either side of the conflict. Mixing pulsing narrative and piercing insight, it exposes the full horror, passion and barbaric grandeur of the crusading era.‘A dramatic and powerful look at both sides of the story'Sunday Times'A compelling narrative... A masterful conclusion'Observer

The question of who'we'are and what vision of humanity'we'assume in Western culture lies at the heart of hotly debated questions on the role of religion in education, politics, and culture in general. The need for recovering a greater purpose for social practices is indicated, for example, by the rapidly increasing number of publications on the demise of higher education, lamenting the fragmentation of knowledge and university culture's surrender to market-driven pragmatism. The West's cultural rootlessness and lack of cultural identity are also revealed by the failure of multiculturalism to integrate religiously vibrant immigrant cultures. A main cause of the West's cultural malaise is the long-standing separation of reason and faith. Jens Zimmermann suggests that the West can rearticulate its identity and renew its cultural purpose by recovering the humanistic ethos that originally shaped Western culture. In tracing the religious roots of humanism from patristic theology, through the Renaissance into modern philosophy, we find that humanism was originally based on the correlation of reason and faith. In this book, the author combines humanism, religion, and hermeneutic philosophy to re-imagine humanism for our current cultural and intellectual climate. The hope of this recovery is for humanism to become what Charles Taylor has called a'social imaginary', an internalized vision of what it means to be human. This vision will encourage, once again, the correlation of reason and faith in order to overcome current cultural impasses, such as those posed, for example, by religious and secularist fundamentalisms.

Thanks to collapsing birthrates, much of Europe is on a path of willed self-extinction. The untold story is that birthrates in Muslim nations are declining faster than anywhere elseâ??at a rate never before documented. Europe, even in its decline, may have the resources to support an aging population, if at a terrible economic and cultural cost. But in the impoverished Islamic world, an aging population means a civilization on the brink of total collapseâ?? something Islamic terrorists know and fear. Muslim decline poses new threats to America, challenges we cannot even understand, much less face effectively, without a wholly new kind of political analysis that explains how desperate peoples and nations behave. In How Civilizations Die, David P. Goldman, author of the celebrated Spengler column read by intelligence organizations world wide,??reveals how, almost unnoticed, massive shifts in global power are remaking our future.

Barack Obama has called him “one of my favorite philosophers.” John McCain wrote that he is “a paragon of clarity about the costs of a good war.” Andrew Sullivan has said, “We need Niebuhr now more than ever.” For a theologian who died in 1971, Reinhold Niebuhr is maintaining a remarkably high profile in the twenty-first century. In Why Niebuhr Now? acclaimed historian John Patrick Diggins tackles the complicated question of why, at a time of great uncertainty about America's proper role in the world, leading politicians and thinkers are turning to Niebuhr for answers. Diggins begins by clearly and carefully working through Niebuhr's theology, which focuses less on God's presence than his absence—and the ways that absence abets the all-too-human sin of pride. He then shows how that theology informed Niebuhr's worldview, leading him to be at the same time a strong opponent of fascism and communism and a leading advocate for humility and caution in foreign policy. Turning to the present, Diggins highlights what he argues is a misuse of Niebuhr's legacy on both the right and the left: while neoconservatives distort Niebuhr's arguments to support their call for an endless war on terror in the name of stopping evil, many liberal interventionists conveniently ignore Niebuhr's fundamental doubts about power. Ultimately, Niebuhr's greatest lesson is that, while it is our duty to struggle for good, we must at the same time be wary of hubris, remembering the limits of our understanding. The final work from a distinguished writer who spent his entire career reflecting on America's history and promise, Why Niebuhr Now? is a compact and perceptive book that will be the starting point for all future discussions of Niebuhr.

Religions of Modernity'challenges the social-scientific orthodoxy that, once unleashed, the modern forces of individualism, science and technology inevitably erode the sacred and evoke the profane. The book's chapters, some by established scholars, others by junior researchers, document instead in rich empirical detail how modernity relocates the sacred to the deeper layers of the self and the domain of digital technology. Rather than destroying the sacred tout court, then, the cultural logic of modernization spawns its own religious meanings, unacknowledged spiritualities and magical enchantments. The classical theoretical accounts of modernity by Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and others, it is argued in the introductory chapter, already hinted that there's a future for such religions of modernity. Contributors: Stef Aupers, Kelly Besecke, Kirsten Marie Bovbjerg, Siobhan Chandler, Olav Hammer, Dick Houtman, Murray Lee, Carly Machado, Karen Pärna, Adam Possamai, Linda Woodhead, and Dorien Zandbergen.

The Death of Secular Messianism argues that, the claims of secularists notwithstanding, modernity did not so much abandon humanity's historic search for the divine, but rather transposed it into a new, innerworldly key. This'secret religion of high modernity'came in both positivistic and humanistic variants. The first sought to overcome finitude by means of scientific and technological progress. The second sought to overcome contingency by creating a collective Subject--the Modern Democratic State or the Communist Party--in and through which human beings would become the masters of their own destiny. In making his case for this thesis, the author outlines a new political-theological and social-theoretical perspective which saves what is best in modernity--its focus on human creative activity and its commitment to rational autonomy and democratic citizenship--while re-engaging humanity's great spiritual traditions.

A bestselling historian recounts the epic clash that ended the Renaissance and pushed Islam to the gates of Vienna In Warriors of God and Dogs of God, James Reston, Jr., brought two epochal events in the struggle between Islam and Christendom to readers eager to understand the roots of the present-day conflict. With his unwavering eye for detail, Reston now weaves a captivating narrative that examines a pivotal period in that centuries- long war, which found Europe at its most vulnerable and Islam on the attack. This saga of colliding worlds is propelled by two astonishing young sovereigns-the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Turkish sultan Suleyman the Magnificent-and is supported by a wide range of larger-than-life characters, who lend this meticulously researched history a novel's worth of suspense and brio.

Modern Turkey is the site of a powerful Islamic revival, with a strong intellectual elite dedicated to the overthrow of secular modernism. Why have modern Muslim intellectuals turned against the ideals of Kemalism on which the modern Turkish nation-state is founded? What does this reveal about the future of Turkey? And how are Islamic intellectuals in Turkey affected by developments in the Middle East?Muslims in Modern Turkey is the first book to analyse this phenomenon, tracing the evolution of Muslim intellectual thought from the 1980s to the present day. It focuses on six leading Muslim thinkers - Ali Bulaç, Rasim Özdenören,?smet Özel,?lhan Kutluer, Ersin Nazif Gürdo?an and Abdurrahman Dilipak - who belong to a single school and share a novel understanding of Islam. They act as public intellectuals, who aim to reform and enlighten society by educating them and raising their awareness of Islamic values, arguing not for the compatibility of Islam and European values but the fundamental superiority of Islam over secular democracy.Sena Karasipahi places the Turkish experience in its broader international context and shows how Turkish Islamic intellectuals are affected by the earlier Muslim intellectuals and revivalists in the Arab world and in Turkey. This important study makes connections with the Islamic revival process throughout the contemporary Middle East as well as with comparable movements in Turkey's own past, making this a crucial contribution to an understanding of contemporary Islamic political thinking.

In God's Battalions, distinguished scholar Rodney Stark puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. Stark, the author of The Rise of Christianity, reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291 in this fascinating work of religious revisionist history.

How can one explain the resurgence of religion, even in a western context of rationality, postmodernity and scientific endeavour? The persistence of religious expression has compelled even diehard secularists, or proponents of the'secularization thesis', to rethink their positions. Jonathan Benthall explains precisely why societies are not bound to embrace western liberal rationality as an evolutionary inevitability. He shows that the opposite is true: that where a secular society represses the religious imagination, the human predisposition to religion will in the end break out in surprising, apparently secular, modes and outlets.Concentrating on what he calls'para-religion', a kind of secular spirituality that manifests itself within movements and organisations who consider themselves motivated by wholly rational considerations, Benthall uncovers a paradox: despite themselves, they are haunted by the shadow of irrationality. Arguing that humanitarianism, environmentalism, the animal rights movement, popular archaeology and anthropology all have'religiod'aspects, his startling conclusion is that religion, rather than coming'back', in fact never went away.A human universal, the'religious inclination'underlies the fabric of who we are, and is essential for the healthy functioning of any society.