Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology of Religion

During the 1830s the United States experienced a wave of movements for social change over temperance, the abolition of slavery, anti-vice activism, and a host of other moral reforms. Michael Young argues for the first time in "Bearing Witness against Sin" that together they represented a distinctive new style of mobilization--one that prefigured contemporary forms of social protest by underscoring the role of national religious structures and cultural schemas.

In this book," " Young identifies a new strain of protest that challenged antebellum Americans to take personal responsibility...

Praise for the first edition:
" This] ambitious and courageous book is a] benchmark of theology by which questions about the meaningful history of the Peoples Temple may be measured." --Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Re-issued in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicides at Jonestown, this revised edition of David Chidester's pathbreaking book features a new prologue that considers the meaning of the tragedy for a post-Waco, post-9/11 world. For Chidester, Jonestown recalls the American religious commitment to redemptive sacrifice, which for Jim Jones...

"Gifford knows his subject totally, has vast and wide-ranging sympathy for his subjects (though without being uncritical), and explores these themes with admirable intelligence. This book is simply the best thing out there." Philip Jenkins

"Gifford s is an uncompromising, hard-nosed study... N]o one can again look at the subject without at least a respectful nod in his direction." Lamin Sanneh

In Ghana s New Christianity, Paul Gifford considers the explosion of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa by focusing on one place: Greater Accra, Ghana. Gifford examines every dimension...

"I know of no one who has taken such an ambitious swath of time and done such a good job of showing the continuity and change across those one hundred years.... a splendid achievement, the result of decades of research and reflection." David Robinson

Controlling Knowledge examines the history of West African Muslim society in the Republic of Mali, formerly the Soudan Francais, in the 20th century. Focusing on the transformation of Muslim institutions especially modernized Muslim schools (medersas) and voluntary organizations over the past hundred years, Louis Brenner uncovers the...

There are over 1.5 million Asian Indians in the Americas, most of whom have transplanted the religious customs of their homeland. "Transplanting Religious Traditions" is a study of how individuals, families, and small groups transport and sustain their religious practices and how they eventually construct stable religious institutions suited to the American context. The book centers on the Indian community in Atlanta, Georgia from 1979 to 1988 but relates the study to America's East Indian population as a whole. Social scientists, religion scholars and students, as well as all members of...

This book provides a critical sociology of religion in Latin America. Its purpose is to discuss the notion of religion as part of social, cultural, and political processes in capitalist societies, drawing on the classics of sociological thought (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Gramsci). Thus, churches are analyzed as organized institutions of religious mediation intimately linked to the production of social, cultural, and political hegemony in Latin America. The Catholic Church, the dominant church in the region, is analyzed in terms of its different faces, changes, and transformations from...