Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christian Theology - Anthropology

Material religion is a rapidly growing field, and this volume offers an accessible, critical entry into these new areas of research. Each "key term" uses case studies and is accompanied by a color image - an object, practice, space, or site. The entries cut across geographies, histories, and traditions, offering a versatile and engaging text for the classroom.

Key topics covered include:

- Icon, ritual, magic, gender, race
- Sacred, spirit, technology,
- Space, belief, body, brain
- Taste, touch, smell, sound, vision

Each entry demonstrates in clear and...

Virginia Burrus explores one of the strongest and most disturbing aspects of the Christian tradition, its excessive preoccupation with shame. While Christianity has frequently been implicated in the conversion of ancient Mediterranean cultures from shame- to guilt-based, and thus in the emergence of the modern West's emphasis on guilt, Burrus seeks to recuperate the importance of shame for Christian culture. Focusing on late antiquity, she explores a range of fascinating phenomena, from the flamboyant performances of martyrs to the imagined abjection of Christ, from the self-humiliating...

The church is in need of a thoroughly developed understanding of human experience in relation to the divine to deal successfully with the complex issues that are part of life in today's world. Contributors to this timely volume speak to that need as they explore the meaning of the soul and spirit in light of contemporary scientific and medical understandings about human life in a pluralistic society.

Written from a theologically conservative perspective, Richard Davidson provides a meticulously researched work that makes extensive use of other ancient Near Eastern documents on subjects ranging from homosexuality to gender relations. At the same time,...