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"Religion and Spirituality : American Religion"
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The Specter of the Indian
The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native
American spirit guides during the emergent years of American
Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history;
the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn
Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of
mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture.
The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian
policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social
reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws
fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as
fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the
social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of
existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national
sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever
present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor
rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance
accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the
otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of
mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to
dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential
presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
eBook
Gurus in America
A fascinating look at Hindu gurus with significant followings in the United States.
Gurus in America provides an excellent introduction to the guru phenomenon in the United States, with in-depth analyses of nine important Hindu gurus-Adi Da, Ammachi, Mayi Chidvilasananda, Gurani Anjali, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Osho, Ramana Maharshi, Sai Baba, and Swami Bhaktivedanta. All of these gurus have attracted significant followings in the U.S. and nearly all have lived here for considerable periods of time. The book's contributors discuss the characteristics of each guru's teachings, the history of each movement, and the particular construction of Hinduism each guru offers. Contributors also address the religious and cultural interaction, translation, and transplantation that occurs when gurus offer their teachings in America. This is a fascinating guide that will elucidate an important element in America's diverse and ever-changing spiritual landscape.
eBook
Thinking through Thomas Merton
With the publication of The Seven Storey Mountain in 1948,
Thomas Merton became a bestselling author, writing about spiritual
contemplation in a modern context. Although Merton (1915-1968)
lived as a Trappist monk, he advocated a spiritual life that was
not a retreat from the world, but an alternative to it,
particularly to the deadening materialism and spiritual vacuity of
the postwar West. Over the next twenty years, Merton wrote for a
wide audience, bringing the wisdom of Christianity, Buddhism, and
Sufism into dialogue with the period's contemporary thought. In
Thinking through Thomas Merton , Robert Inchausti
introduces readers to Merton and evaluates his continuing relevance
for our time. Inchausti shows how Merton broke the high modernist
trance so that we might become the change we wish to see in the
world by refiguring the lost virtues of silence, contemplation, and
community in a world enamored by the will to power, virtuoso
performance, radical skepticism, and materialist metaphysics.
Merton's defense of contemplative culture is considered in light of
the postmodern thought of recent years and emerges as a compelling
alternative.
eBook
Pilgrimage through a Burning World
For two decades the Nevada Desert Experience has organized nonviolent action at the Nevada Test Site as part of the global movement to end nuclear testing. Pilgrimage through a Burning World illuminates how the Franciscan-based group has crafted a contemporary desert spirituality that integrates religious ritual and political action to grapple with the challenges of an institutionalized and internalized nuclear world. Ken Butigan shows how the annual pilgrimage to the test site has contributed to the personal transformation of people \"on both sides of the fence\" at the test site and to the worldwide emergence of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
eBook
Love, Rōshi
Love, Roshi explores the relationship between Robert Baker Aitken (1917–2010), American Zen teacher and author, and his distant correspondents, individuals drawn to Zen teachings and practice through books. Aitken, founder of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha, promoted Zen to a wide audience in works such as Taking the Path of Zen and The Mind of Clover. Aitken's twentieth-century American Zen valued social justice and was compatible with work and family life. Helen J. Baroni makes use of Aitken's extensive correspondence preserved in an archive at the University of Hawaii to provide a window to view the beliefs and practices of the least-studied—and a difficult to study—segment of the Western Buddhist community, Buddhist sympathizers and solo practitioners. The book looks at the concerns of these correspondents, which included questions on meditation, dealing with isolation as a Buddhist, finding teachers and disillusion with teachers, and being a Buddhist in prison, among a myriad of other matters. The writers' letters reveal much about their notion of Zen and their image of a \"Zen master.\" Coverage of Aitken's responses provides insight into the accommodation of solo practitioners and into the development of a particular strain of American Buddhism.
eBook
Reclaiming Narrative for Public Theology
Argues for American national narratives in Christian theology that respect the separation of church and state and a diverse, multifaith society.
This book furthers the development of American public theology by arguing for the importance of narrative to a theological interpretation of the nation's social and political life. In contrast to both sectarian theologies that oppose a diverse public life and liberal theologies that have lost their distinctiveness, narrative public theology seeks an engaged yet critical role consistent with the separation of church and state and respectful of the multireligious character of the United States. Mary Doak argues for a public theology that focuses on the narrative imagination through which we envision our current circumstances and our hopes for the future. This theology sees both our national stories and our religious ones as resources that can contribute to a public and pluralistic conversation about the direction of society. Doak highlights arguments from Paul Ricoeur, Johann Baptist Metz, William Dean, Stanley Hauerwas, Franklin Gamwell, and Ronald Thiemann that can both contribute to and challenge a narrative public theology. She also proposes a model of public theology using narratives from Abraham Lincoln, Virgil Elizondo, and Delores Williams.
eBook
Scattering Point
Creative non-fiction by a Mennonite poet that blends the history of the Amish and Mennonites, family history, and his own life story to look at how he might live in harmony with the Mennonite ideal to 'live in the world but not of it.'
Part memoir, part family history, part meditation on history and the present, this work of creative nonfiction allows Jeff Gundy to ask what it should mean to \"live in the world but not of it, \" as the traditional Mennonite saying recommends. As Scattering Point moves through time and space, it repeatedly questions how a modern, assimilated Mennonite poet and professor might live with some kind of fidelity to his tradition and to the promises and griefs of contemporary life.
Scattering Point takes its title from Scattering Point Creek, which has its source on the author's family farm in Illinois. This book explores that place while also ranging widely from it and the Amish and Mennonites who have been associated with the area for nearly the last century. It traverses the Illinois prairie to churches and caves in Europe and incorporates family stories, soil geology, the architecture of cathedrals and churches, reflections on depression, and Mennonite martyrdoms and schisms. Scattering Point speaks of the great questions of history and religion, the quiet lives of Amish and Mennonite men and women whose histories are almost forgotten, and of our lives today.
Readers of all backgrounds will see something of themselves in Jeff Gundy who writes, \"I must admit it: I do love this world and, many, though not all, of the things in it, \" and whose quest is always for understanding that will allow us to \"go back into the world more able to undertake the difficult work of loving it as we should.\"
eBook
Jewish Choices
Illustrates how and why Jewish denominational preferences are more a matter of individual choice than family heritage.
Having a religious preference and expressing it via a denominational choice is a fundamental way Americans relate to their society. Similarly, American Jews have divided their religion into four parts-Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and no preference Jews. This book focuses on how Jewish lifestyles are expressed through denominational affiliation.
The development of American Jewish denominations is viewed as more a matter of individual choice than family heritage. The characteristics of individual adherents of the three major denominations vary systematically as does one's involvement both in local Jewish communities and in the community-at-large. The authors show that as one goes from Orthodox to no preference Jews, the extent of religious expression, ethnic attachments, and Jewish community involvement declines. They project the distribution of denominational preference in 2010 and conclude with recommendations for those who wish to see Jewish identity survive and thrive in America.
eBook
Calling Down Fire
Calling Down Fire examines the social and cultural influence of Jefferson County, New York, an isolated, agrarian setting, on the formation of Charles Grandison Finney's theology and revival methods. Finney, who later became president of Oberlin College, was arguably the most innovative and influential revivalist of the Second Great Awakening. He pioneered methods which were widely adopted and promoted a theology that emphasized the ability of evangelists to save souls and the importance of free will in the salvation process. Marianne Perciaccante follows the course of religious enthusiasm and the evolution of the reform impulse in Jefferson County following Finney's departure for more influential pulpits. When Finney began to preach in Jefferson County, he brought Baptist and Methodist piety to the Presbyterians of the northern section of the county. This pious fervor eventually was adopted widely by middle-class Presbyterians and Congregationalists and constituted an acceptance by elites of tempered, non-elite piety.
eBook