Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology of Religion

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...

Twenty-eight scholars, many of them well known in the sociology of religion, examine a variety of faith traditions and sociological topics that illustrate the connection between religion and society in many different countries at the dawn of the 21st century. The faith traditions include Judaism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical and mainstream Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Yuruba religion, Chinese religion, and several new religious movements, including a UFO cult in Quebec.

The book will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of religion, but a special feature is its...

While much work has been done to apply anthropological insights to the study of missions, the sociological perspective has been generally neglected by missiologists. This volume defines the sociology of missions as a discrete subdiscipline within the sociology of religion and provides a working set of conceptual resources for those involved in mission work to use in furthering their understanding of their task. The author reviews the major areas of sociology that are most relevant to missions and presents his findings as a basis for discussion and a stimulus to further exploration of...

The common "blood" of a people--that imperceptible flow that binds neighbor to neighbor and generation to generation--derives much of its strength from cultural memory. Cultural memories are those transformative historical experiences that define a culture, even as time passes and it adapts to new influences. For oppressed peoples, cultural memory engenders the spirit of resistance; not surprisingly, some of its most powerful incarnations are rooted in religion. In this interdisciplinary examination, Jeanette Rodriguez and Ted Fortier explore how four such forms of cultural memory have...

From the new afterword by the author:

Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a "loving" God is a...

According to the author, Christianity offers a powerful system of rewards and incentives to create cultural uniformity. Those who do not join in this cultural uniformity become anathematized, oppressed, marginalized, and ultimately removed from the Christian circle of moral obligation. Using culture studies as a framework for analysis, Steele investigates the ways in which Christianity created cultural conditions based on a theology of violence and the use of sacred violence to foster behaviors that would lead to the involvement of millions of perpetrators and bystanders during the many...