Religion and society - on the present-day religious situation /
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Religion is today mainly present in the consciousness of people through keywords like fundamentalism, global conflict or violence. But as what is religion understood and how does it affect the society are questions that need to be examined separately. The contributions in this volume will examine the sub-questions that pose themselves in this light: 1) What influence does religion exercise on our social life forms? 2) What are the religious societal prerequisites? And how is visible religion affected by these? 3) How do these questions present themselves both externally and internally in the contemporary perception?
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1 online resource (269 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters. :
9789401212106 :
1879-6109 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theory and Method in the Study of Religion : Twenty Five Years On.
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Theory and Method are two words that cause considerable consternation in the academic study of religion. Although everyone claims to be aware of and to engage them, the fact of the matter is that they remain poorly understood. Some see the terms as irritants that get in the way of data interpretation and translation. Others may invoke them sporadically to appear in vogue but then return quickly and myopically to their material and with little concern for the larger issues that such terms raise. To contribute to these debates, the present volume reproduces select articles from Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR) from the first 25 volumes of the journal, and allows a group of younger scholars to introduce and review them, asking if the issues raised are still relevant to the field. Read the Inaugural Editorial now, please click here .
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List of ContributorsIndex. :
1 online resource (314 pages) :
9789004257573 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies /
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This collection of original, new studies about Mainland China and Taiwan focuses on religious changes, and especially the role of the state and market in affecting religious developments in these societies. Information was gathered by participant observation and interviews primarily, and the analysis of documents secondarily. The topics covered are: the growing interest in the study of religion, the methods used by Christians to be able to coexist with a communist government, revival techniques being used by Buddhist monks, the strategies of Daoist priests and sect leaders to attract followers, the significance of mass-circulating morality books, and the ongoing debate about the significance and nature of Confucianism. The book will interest social scientists, religious specialists, journalists, and others who want to understand the changing nature of Chinese societies, and those interested in religious change in modernizing societies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408192
9789004145979
Religion as a category of governance and sovereignty /
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Religious-secular distinctions have been crucial to the way in which modern governments have rationalised their governance and marked out their sovereignty - as crucial as the territorial boundaries that they have drawn around nations. The authors of this volume provide a multi-dimensional picture of how the category of religion has served the ends of modern government. They draw on perspectives from history, anthropology, moral philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as empirical analysis of India, Japan, Mexico, the United States, Israel-Palestine, France and the United Kingdom.
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1 online resource (x, 328 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004290594 :
2214-3270 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theological and philosophical responses to syncretism : beyond the mirage of pure religion /
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Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism: Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion by Patrik Fridlund and Mika Vähäkangas (editions.) starts from the observation that there is a substantial gap between religions' self-understanding and the empirical results of religious studies concerning religious blending. Even in theology of religion, one often portrays religions as if they were entities fundamentally separate from each other. The aims of this book are to elaborate theologically the consequences of syncretism to Christian faith and of syncretism to philosophy. By creating a critical interchange between theological, philosophical and empirical approaches to religion, this book challenges the conventional views of purity of religions prevailing in theology and philosophy as well as proposes theological and philosophical ways forward. Contributors are: Jonas Adelin, Stephen Bevans, Gavin d'Costa, Patrik Fridlund, Lotta Gammelin, Elizabeth Harris, Jerker Karlsson, Paul Linjamaa, Kang-San Tan, Mika Vähäkangas.
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1 online resource (vii, 230 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004336599 :
2210-481X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious experience revisited : expressing the inexpressible? /
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Religious Experience Revisited explores a dilemma which has haunted the study of religion since William James. Is religion rooted in experiences? Is religion rooted in expressions? How are experiences and expressions related? The contributors to this international and interdisciplinary compilation explore the possibilities and the impossibilities of a hermeneutics of religion. Combining theology and philosophy with biblical, cultural, historical and literary studies, they examine how religious experiences and religious expressions have been entangled in the past and in the present. These entanglements call for interdisciplinary conversations in which those who study experiences and those who study expressions can learn from each other in order to carve out important and instructive spaces for the study of religion.
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1 online resource (xi, 281 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004328600 :
1566-208X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The concept of religion : defining and measuring contemporary beliefs and practices /
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In The Concept of Religion Hans Schilderman edits a volume on the definition and empirical study of religion within the changing landscape of modern society. Now that we can no longer assume a simple harmony between the scientific concept of religion, church doctrine and practiced belief, issues concerning the definition and measurement of religion are becoming crucial issues to academic institutions. The contributing authors present empirical studies studying issues of lifespan and socialisation at school settings; of vocation and profession at church and hospital settings; and culture and nation of society at large. The volume offers a beautiful sample of the empirical study of religion; a conceptual and illustrative overview of the academic field for students and scholars in religion.
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1 online resource (198 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004299320 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Modern Societies and the Science of Religions: : Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer /
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This book brings together studies by seventeen specialists in the science of religions in which they relate the changes in their discipline to the changes which have occurred in a select number of modern(ising) societies worldwide. It attempts to study these developments in their relation to and as conditioned and constrained by cultural change, changes in educational systems, technology, population (for example migration), economic patterns, politics, and, last but not least, religious systems. The essays focus on resp. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the USA, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, and China. Written in honour of Dr. Lammert Leertouwer, professor of History of Religions and the Comparative Study of Religions at Leiden University from 1979 until his retirement in 1997, the book is particularly important for all those who are interested in the religious, social and political contexts of the academic Study of Religions in general and in the various countries dealt with in particular.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004379183 :
0169-8834 ;
Political religion, everyday religion : sociological trends /
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As the title suggests, Political Religion, Everyday Religion: Sociological Trends reflects upon two important trends that have recently emerged in the sociology of religion. Firstly, there is an increasing interest in the interplay between religion and politics. Religion has moved from being almost ignored by sociologists to being acknowledged - some would even say overrated - as an important political factor. Secondly, ordinary people's everyday religion has likewise become an important topic for many researchers. In this book, James Beckford, Inger Furseth and other prominent scholars present critical discussions and empirical studies of both political and everyday religion, and the editor, Pål Repstad, shows how these two trends should enter into a closer dialogue. The book is essential for both students and experienced researchers in the sociology of religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004397965 :
1573-4293 ;
Religion beyond its Private Role in Modern Society.
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The volume Religion beyond its Private Role in Modern Society aims at contributing to the debate on the distinction between public and private spheres with regard to the role of religion in modern societies. This issue which is inherent to many conceptions regarding social order, modernity, freedom of conscience, and the changing role and function of religion is discussed not only from a social scientific but also from a historical and philosophical point of view. The articles dwell on several aspects of the role of religion in different societies in modern times, and the overall theme is explored from the perspective of various religious traditions and groups, both institutional and non-institutional. It turns out that the distinction made is difficult to maintain.
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Description based upon print version of record. :
1 online resource (290 pages) :
9789004257856 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Annual review of the sociology of religion.
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Over the past thirty years, religion has increasingly played a relevant role, both on a national level and in international affairs. The attempt made by politicians to reframe the policy of social cohesion in a neo-nationalist light (one land, one language, one religion = one political community), demising any kind of multiculturalism, facilitating instead a return to assimilation shaped by fear of the other (culture, religion, language, and so on), is very often associated with a restoration of the primacy of religious discourse in the public sphere. It is not just a return of religion in the public sphere, but the exploitation of religion by politics to reconstruct a social cohesion in the absence of ideological resources.
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1 online resource. :
9789004216419 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Thinking Theologically about the Divine Ideas : Reexamining the Summa of Thomas Aquinas /
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Thinking Theologically traces Aquinas's subtle grammatical and thematic engagements with the doctrine of the divine ideas throughout the Summa Theologiae. This study offers new insights into the contributions of Aquinas's doctrine to debates about eschatology, christology, providence, natural law, virtue, and creation's participation in the trinitarian life of God. It argues that Aquinas adapts the doctrine to support his pedagogical goal of guiding readers from the confession of faith to the wisdom of sacra doctrina. In turn, this demonstrates that Aquinas's reading of the divine ideas reinforces his understanding of the dynamic exchange between philosophical reasoning and theological inquiry.
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Thinking Theologically contains new insights into the place of the divine ideas in the pedagogical design of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. It subsequently challenges the false dichotomy between philosophy and theology in the interpretation of Aquinas's engagement with the doctrine. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004511514
9789004511507
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 32 : Lesser Heard Voices in Studies of Religion /
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The present volume brings together scholars from all over the world in an open section and three special sections that explore how lesser-heard and unheard voices may be studied. Special section 1, Religion in Higher Education interrogates lived experiences of religion in higher education contexts and how certain voices are marginalised and minoritised. Special section 2, Cultural Blindness in Psychology, explores how culture as a lived experience, especially in its religious dimension, is rendered invisible in psychological science. Finally, special section 3 entitled Religious Authority in Practice in Contemporary Evangelical, Charismatic, and Pentecostal Christianity outlines "evangelicalism" and introduces "authority" as a sociological concept from various theoretical perspectives.
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The present volume explores lesser-heard and unheard issues in the study of religion. Among other things, lived experiences of religion in higher education are interrogated; culture is studied as lived experience; and "evangelicalism" is outlined as an emic and etic concept. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004505315
9789004505308