Category: Religious Studies

Of the nearly fifty percentage of usa citizens who think in UFOs, a fragment are devotees of 1 of the varied UFO-based new spiritual routine. The Unarius Academy of technology is likely one of the oldest of those teams. based in 1954 via "Cosmic Visionaries" Ruth and Ernest Norman (also recognized, respectively, as Archangels Uriel and Raphiel), Unarius is dedicated to instructing the all-encompassing Uranian technology. Combining components of dad psychology, new age concept, and technology fiction, the technology asks its scholars to channel messages from the infinitely clever house Brothers and to heal themselves during the perform of past-life treatment. Unarians watch for the arriving of spaceships, manned through the gap Brothers, that would carry to earth complicated intergalactic expertise that might gain all humankind. Tumminia has been undertaking study on Unarius for over a decade - attending conferences, inteviewing individuals, and learning reliable Unarian literature and movies. right here she deals an inside of examine this interesting circulate. She will pay specific recognition to the methods Unarians adapt while their prophecies - and especially their prediction that the distance Brothers may land in 2001 - do not materialize. this can be the 1st in-depth examine of any flying saucers religion.

This quantity brings jointly best students to check how the Church has introduced its values into the political sphere and, within the approach, alienated a few of the more youthful new release. because the disintegration of the communist one-party kingdom on the finish of the Eighties, the Catholic Church has driven its time table to prohibit abortion, introduce non secular guideline within the kingdom colleges, and shield Poland from secular impacts emanating from the eu Union. As one of many outcomes, Polish society has develop into polarized alongside non secular strains, with conservative forces similar to Fr. Rydzyk’s Radio Maryja looking to counter the impact of the eu Union and liberals at the left attempting to shield secular values. This quantity casts a large internet in subject matters, with chapters on Pope John Paul II, Radio Maryja, spiritual schooling, the Church’s crusade opposed to what it calls “genderism,” and the privatization of non secular trust, between different issues.  

In this evaluate of well known faith in Southeast Asia, Robert L. Winzeler bargains an interpretative examine the character of today’s indigenous non secular traditions in addition to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity and conversion. He focuses now not on faith because it exists in books, doctrine, theology, and between elites and dominant associations yet relatively within the lives, ideals, and practices of standard people.

Popular faith in Southeast Asia employs a vast view of faith as concerning not only the standard Western notions of religion but additionally supernatural trust regularly, magic, sorcery, and functional matters corresponding to therapeutic, own safeguard, and good fortune in enterprise. Case stories and urban examples flesh out the dialogue, demonstrating how renowned faith pertains to old and modern social, cultural, political, and fiscal advancements within the region.

the writer nationally famous for the standard and intensity of his instructing in non secular reports has written the 1st full-scale creation to the background and strategies of the research of religion.

This booklet examines how repertoires of speech and motion which are usually thought of to be collectively exclusive--those of church and state--clash or unite in the course of the postdisaster interval as neighborhood groups and towns fight to set up a good collective identification. in keeping with an research of 40 in-depth interviews with disaster-response individuals and over 325 print-media assets, this learn explores, first, the level to which ministers and voters problem statist narratives with the intention to publicly relay theological perspectives; moment, the cultural procedures wherein neighborhood areas are nationalized and theologized; and 3rd, the ecclesiological convictions essential to peaceably improve the paintings of Christ's physique after disasters.

"Santos brilliantly exhibits how just a politics of the move presents us with a real theoretical perception into the expanding example of catastrophe and a real useful degree of restorative response."
—John Milbank, writer of Theology and Social conception and the way forward for Love: Essays in Political Theology (Cascade Books, 2008)

"I comprehend of no different ebook like this one. Santos has taken his education as a sociologist and mixed it with astute theological research. The publication is interesting simply because macro-observations in regards to the higher contest and cooperation among the church and the geographical region are rooted in microanalyses of empirical information and interviews of normal humans responding to failures. This e-book will upload to social theories concerning the 'states of emergency' less than which we are living. it's going to additionally upload to theological reckonings with the concept the entire of the Christian existence is a reaction to disaster."

—William T. Cavanaugh, writer of Being ate up: Economics and Christian Desire

"This ebook bargains an unique study-disasters and the church-state interactions that stick to them-which sheds gentle at the gigantic questions of civil faith and using theological language for political ends. Crises of varied types became catalysts in redrawing-or erasing-the strains among church and country, civic and sacred, citizen and believer. not just does he provide a masterful account of ways and why this occurs, Gabriel Santos additionally offers a nuanced theological evaluation on why this can be destructive to the church and its challenge. this can be a well-written instance of interdisciplinary scholarship performed good. This well timed and provocative booklet merits huge reception and discussion."
—Michael L. Budde, writer of The (Magic) state of God: Christianity and international tradition Industries

Gabriel A. Santos is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lynchburg College.

This ebook proposes that the force for religiosity and studies of the sacred are faraway from misplaced in modern western societies. The individuals' target is to discover the myriad of how past due sleek shamanism is changing into extra important and in my opinion major to humans, groups, and economies in Nordic countries.

This attention-grabbing source examines the day by day lives of early Christians—as depicted via documented debts of the period—from the start of Christianity via 325 CE.

• visible aids, together with wall work from the Christian catacombs and photographs of Roman architecture

• a close chronology of early Christianity from the faith's starting via 325 CE

Entrepreneurship within the Catholic culture is a theological and ancient exploration of the therapy of entrepreneurship, enterprise, and trade within the instructing of the Roman Catholic Church. relocating from Scriptural exegesis to trendy papal social encyclicals, Anthony G. Percy exhibits how Catholic educating had built profound insights into the last word which means of entrepreneurship and trade and invested it with theological, philosophical, and financial which means that surpasses many traditional spiritual and secular interpretations. Entrepreneurship is illustrated as being as a lot a possible contributor to all-round necessary human flourishing because it is to financial development and improvement. during this experience, Entrepreneurship within the Catholic culture demanding situations the stereotype of the Catholic Church having a destructive view of monetary liberty and the associations that increase its productiveness. as an alternative we find a convention during which first millennium theologians, medieval scholastics, and smooth Catholic thinkers have concept heavily and at size concerning the personality of unfastened firm and its ethical and advertisement significance.

so much folks think every thing occurs for a cause. if it is "God's will","karma", or "fate," we wish to think that not anything on this planet, specifically failures and tragedies, is a random, meaningless occasion. yet now, as by no means prior to, convinced clinical assertions that the area embodies a profound contingency are tough theological claims that God acts providentially on the earth. The random and meandering direction of evolution is generic as a controversy that God didn't create life.

Abraham's Dice explores the interaction among likelihood and windfall within the monotheistic spiritual traditions, how their interplay has been conceptualized as our realizing of the workings of nature has replaced. This full of life ancient dialog has generated extreme ongoing theological debates, and provocative responses from technology: what are we to make of the heritage of our universe, the place likelihood and legislation have performed out in advanced methods? Or the evolution of lifestyles, the place random mutations have challenged makes an attempt to discover goal inside evolution and confident many who people are yet a "glorious accident"?

The enduring trust that every little thing occurs for a cause is tested via a talk with significant students, between them holders of prestigious chairs at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the collage of Basel, in addition to a number of Gifford teachers, and Templeton prize winners. geared up traditionally, Abraham's cube presents a wide-ranging clinical, theological, and biblical beginning to deal with the query of windfall and divine motion in a global shot via with contingency.