Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology, Vol. 2, No. 1. This is the regular issue Journal. Featuring 2015 Distinguished Faculty lecture, the 2016 Readings of the Sacred Texts Lecture, and the 2016 Surjit Singh Lecture, as well as articles by Shin Young Park, Brent Lyons, Wesley Ellis, and Jessica Tinklenberg. Featuring several book reviews as well.
Volume 2, Issue 2 of the Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology is a special issue honoring the work of Judith Berling and Arthur Holder. Judith Berling, the 4th academic dean of the Graduate Theological Union is retiring from the faculty, and Arthur Holder, the 6th academic dean, is stepping down from the deanship of the GTU. This issue brings students and colleagues of both Drs. Berling and Holder to celebrate their achievements and honor their service to the GTU by engaging their work. Featuring contributions by Margaret Miles, Henry Kuo, Lisa Dahill, Ken Butigan, Sandra Schneiders, William Short, Mary Mee-Yin Yuen, Jennifer Howe Peace, and Riess Potterveld.
Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology, Vol. 3, No. 1. This is the regular issue journal. Featuring 2016 Distinguished Faculty lecture, the 2017 Surjit Singh Lecture, and articles by Pravina Rodrigues, Jennifer Fernandez, and Jaesung Ryu. Also featuring several book reviews.
'How do gender constructions transform religious experiences?' 'What is the role of bodily materiality in ethics and epistemology?' 'How does rethinking gender and sexuality force us to reconceptualise settled ontological frameworks?' This collection provides the first research resource to Indian philosophical gender issues, exploring a variety of texts and traditions from Indian philosophy where the treatment of gender is dynamic and diverse. Organised around three central themes - the gender dynamics of enlightenment in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions; the simple binary opposition of genders in Indian traditions; the ways in which symbolic representations of gender differ from social realities in Hindu and Buddhist practice – a team of respected scholars discuss feminist readings, examinations of femininity and masculinity, as well as queer and trans identities, representations, and theories. Beginning with the Vedic tradition and ending with sections on Sri Ramakrishna and Gandhi, this wide-ranging handbook encourages fresh inquiry into classic philosophical questions. Offering critical analyses relevant to literary, cultural and religious studies, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender opens up new ways of understanding gender and South Asian philosophy.
What is life for? What may give it meaning? Does it have any meaning at all? A sage in ancient Israel brooded over these questions. In ancient India, too, such questions drove a despairing warrior to seek answers from his divine friend Krishna. The thoughts of the sage became the wisdom book Ecclesiastes; those of Krishna, the Bhagavad-gītā. Their wisdom speaks to our deepest concerns. In Vanity Karma, wisdom meets wisdom as these two perennial classics come together, both offering us profound understanding. And a deep and authentic spiritual understanding, we may find, can infuse our lives with meaning and with joy. Vanity Karma brings you on a journey through the full text of Ecclesiastes, a journey illuminated by traditional biblical scholarship, insights from the Bhagavad-gītā, a dash of autobiography, and a steady spiritual focus.
Film is popularly described as a mirror of culture. It plays a pivotal role in facilitating intercultural dialogue in our global village. World cinema helps us understand and appreciate each other’s cultural identity, and promotes harmony across different cultures in our pluralistic society. It introduces us to the life of “the other” in an entertaining yet engaging fashion, creating cultural bridges that foster a sense of unity in the midst of our diversity. This book argues that “cultural anthropology” and “theology” offer two distinct, yet intrinsically connected theoretical frameworks to formulate a more “holistic” reading of religion from world cinema. It proposes an integrated methodology for religious criticism of film in which we look at religion as a subsystem of culture and observe how religious experiences depicted on the screen are mediated through the personal bias of the auteur and the context in which the film is produced. It thus creates a renewed appreciation for the religious diversity in our world by providing a new way of observing and interpreting ethnographic information from world cinema.
A profound exploration into the spiritual beliefs and practices of Seattle’s unhoused youth Soul Woundedness is an intimate, piercing book about everyday life for young adults living on the streets of Seattle. Based on over five years of research and as a participant-observer, Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai presents the personal experiences of “street kids,” highlighting how their spiritual beliefs and practices offer them comfort, a sense of community, and a feeling of belonging amidst their struggles. They also demonstrate how spirituality on the streets can alienate people from themselves and the world. The stories Blankenship-Lai tells here are about how social wounds go soul deep, and how seemingly antireligious spiritual practices, fashioned in an almost unlivable local world, help people create a life still worth living. By paying deep, sustained attention to what spirituality is like on the streets and what difference it makes, Blankenship-Lai uncovers an important, overlooked dimension in the experience and study of homelessness. They invite us to enter these stories and to question how our own spiritual and otherwise practices can help create “a more loving love.” Aimed at a diverse audience, Soul Woundedness is a book not merely to educate but to transform. It is particularly relevant for those interested in spirituality’s role in addressing social inequities and underscores the importance of spiritual practices in overcoming adversity and promoting social change, making a compelling case for a world where everyone has a place to call home.
Ninian Smart came to public prominence as the founding Professor of the first British university Department of Religious Studies in the late 1960s. His pioneering views on education in religion proved hugely influential at all levels, from primary schools to academic teaching and research. An unending string of publications, many of them accessible to the general public, sustained a reputation that became worldwide. Here, for the first time, a selection of Ninian Smart's wide-ranging writings is organised systematically under a set of categories which both comprehend and also illuminate his varied output over a career spanning half a century. The editor, John Shepherd, was Principal Lecturer in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Cumbria. He first met Smart as a postgraduate student, and recently helped establish the Ninian Smart Archive at the University of Lancaster.
The long tradition of Kierkegaard studies has made it impossible for individual scholars to have a complete overview of the vast field of Kierkegaard research. The large and ever increasing number of publications on Kierkegaard in the languages of the world can be simply bewildering even for experienced scholars. The present work constitutes a systematic bibliography which aims to help students and researchers navigate the seemingly endless mass of publications. The volume is divided into two large sections. Part I, which covers Tomes I-V, is dedicated to individual bibliographies organized according to specific language. This includes extensive bibliographies of works on Kierkegaard in some 41 different languages. Part II, which covers Tomes VI-VII, is dedicated to shorter, individual bibliographies organized according to specific figures who are in some way relevant for Kierkegaard. The goal has been to create the most exhaustive bibliography of Kierkegaard literature possible, and thus the bibliography is not limited to any specific time period but instead spans the entire history of Kierkegaard studies.
Residing at the intersection of constructive theology and critical social theory, this book provides a resource for both students and clergy to reinterpret Christian theology and re-imagine Christian faith in the twenty-first century. The author seeks “to encourage and equip Christian faith communities to move beyond the decades-long stalemate over human sexuality and gender identity” because “Queer gifts emerge in Christian communities when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people no longer feel compelled to justify their presence in those communities.” Useful in both seminary classrooms and in congregational settings, the book is a contribution to the still-emerging field of queer theology, translating the rigors of scholarly research into transforming proposals for faith communities.
