Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> General

In this study, the scientific principles of learning and brain functions are applied to the God Experience. The author skillfully blends modern neurophysiology with critical behavioral psychology to offer an objective explanation for why people believe in God. This provocative and scholarly work will interest psychologists, neuroscientists, clergy, and anyone studying mystical experience.

American society is culturally diverse with a variety of religious denominations, sects, cults, and self-help groups vying for members. This volume analyzes nine of these groups, chosen both for their intrinsic interest and because they illustrate a variety of sociological concepts. The groups included in this study are: Heaven's Gate, Jesus People USA, the Love Family, The Farm, Amish Women, Scientology, El Nino Fidencio, Santeria, and Freedom Park. The contributors are social scientists with first-hand knowledge of the groups they examine.

A tremendous amount of media attention has been devoted to revealing sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic priests. These essays outline a clinical and research agenda for professionals dealing with clergy sexual abuse. They should enable research clinical professionals, and clergy to identify the relevant issues in the identification, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of child and adolescent sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests. Leading experts in the field from the United States and Canada have offered their different perspectives on this compelling problem including...

As the population of Africa increasingly converts to Christianity, the church has stepped up its involvement in secular affairs revolving around the transition to democracy in nations such as Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Comparative in approach, the author analyzes patterns of church-state relations in various sub-Saharan countries, and contends that churches become more active and politically prominent when elements and organizations of civil society are repressed by political factors or governing bodies, providing services to maintain the well-being of civil society in the absence...

Gotz proposes that there is no opposition between faith and humor, belief and laughter. To argue this point, he shows how both the structure of faith and that of humor are the same, and this structure is paradox. Paradox, which is well known in the secular realms of mathematics and philosophy, is explored, first, in detail, and then he shows how faith and humor, both, are paradoxical in nature. The result is that there is no real opposition between faith and humor. The tragic and the comic are sisters, as Aristotle saw in antiquity.

On the other side, Gotz shows what happens when faith...

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the market for fiction on religious topics and themes, most notably Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." The variety of contemporary religious fiction and the publishing phenomenon surrounding it indicate that this literature transcends any overt religious meaning and is significant in its political and social implications; it is emblematic of the contemporary American Zeitgeist. Traditionally, literature is both mirror and lamp, reflecting the society that produces it and illuminating the values and interests of that society. Recognizing both of...

The Myth of Evil explores a contradiction at the heart of modern thought about what it is to be human: the belief that a human being cannot commit a radically evil act purely for its own sake and the evidence that radically evil acts are committed not by inhuman monsters, but by human beings. This contradiction can be seen most clearly when we consider the most extreme forms of evil: war crimes, serial murders, sex offences, murders committed by children. Taking the traditional position that evil is an active force creating monsters in human shape, this book shows that this idea is...

On January 29, 2001, President Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Its stated mission is to fight society's ills by rallying the armies of compassion inside America's churches. In "Faith-Based Inefficiency" Bob Wineburg argues that beneath the compassionate camouflage lies a five-star war plan to demolish government programs, mobilize and increase the size of the evangelical Christian voting block, shift government money to churches and other faith-based organizations in the conservative-led culture war, and develop a smoke screen of convincing...

The author takes into account the various views of religion which Tylor, Frazer, Marett, and Durkheim have given and goes on from there to provide his own conception that religion and magic are ways men have to make the world acceptable.

This interdisciplinary collection is a new landmark in the study of the world's pilgrimage traditions. Experts from many disciplines approach the subject from a variety of perspectives that are designed to lead to the understanding of pilgrimage in general. Specific case studies represent most of the major religious traditions of the world. Anthropologists, historians, sociologists, social psychologists, and students of religion will find that these theoretical and case studies suggest new areas for further research.

Alan Morinis presents a many faceted examination of sacred journeys in...

Suicide among African Americans occurs at about half the rate with which it occurs among white Americans. Why is the black rate of suicide so much lower, particularly when one considers the effects of racism and other socio-economic factors on African Americans? One answer that has been offered is that churches within the African-American community have a greater influence than among white Americans and that they provide amelioration of social forces that would otherwise lead to suicide.

To date no other book has provided an in-depth ethnographic study of the buffering effect of the...

Brings together in one volume a number of key theoretical and methodological advances in the anthropological study of religion. Chapters cover important topics not ordinarily included in books dealing with the anthropology of religion (e.g., bipedalism, the study of alcohol, film and video images, notions of religious agency). In addition, this collection is intended to build bridges between anthropologists of religion and religious studies scholars.

Over the last four decades, anthropologists have grappled with the dialectical relationship between the examination of cultures...