At one level this book is a compilation of political traditions of Belau in Micronesia-from the divine foundation of political systems to the present day. It offers an analysis of the structures and dynamics of Belauan history, identifying several forms of order and some of their potentials for change. Also the author develops a critique of standard approaches to history in small-scale societies. He argues for a semiotic approach that recognizes the historical consciousness of actors in the society under study.
This examination of the fate of lost ideas after the Protestant reformation explores what might be called the pathology of the Renaissance. The first part of the book treats Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost, concentrating on vacant cultural spaces and abandoned icons to trace the gap between sacred and secular life, between poetry and belief. The second part focuses on Shakespeare's Hamlet and Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam to investigate the eschatological implications of this gap, the ways that history is disentangled from memory and nostalgia severed from experience. The book challenges readings of Renaissance culture as an increasingly secular one, proposing that sacred symbols and practices still powerfully organized the English moral imagination, oriented behaviors and arranged perceptions, and specified the limits of the known world.
Over the past two decades, North Americans have become increasingly interested in understanding and reclaiming the rites that mark significant life passages. In the absence of meaningful rites of passage, we speed through the dangerous intersections of life and often come to regret missing an opportunity to contemplate a child's birth, mark the arrival of maturity, or meditate on the loss of a loved one. Providing a highly personal, thoroughly informed, and cross-cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this book illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions. The work of a major scholar who has spent years writing and teaching about ritual, Deeply into the Bone instigates a conversation in which readers can fruitfully reflect on their own experiences of passage. Covering the significant life events of birth, initiation, marriage, and death, chapters include first-person stories told by individuals who have undergone rites of passage, accounts of practices from around the world, brief histories of selected ritual traditions, and critical reflections probing popular assumptions about ritual. The book also explores innovative rites for other important events such as beginning school, same-sex commitment ceremonies, abortion, serious illness, divorce, and retirement. Taking us confidently into the abyss separating the spiritual from the social scientific, the personal from the scholarly, and the narrative from the analytical, Grimes synthesizes an impressive amount of information to help us find more insightful ways of comprehending life's great transitions. As we face our increasingly complex society, Deeply into the Bone will help us reclaim the power of rites and understand their effect on our lives.
"Why should I invest myself in something that I'm not sure does any good?" This is a question many people today are asking about the church. Data shows young people are leaving the church, especially in urban contexts. Yet as Jon Tyson will show you in this Barna Frame, the church has much to offer cities—and individuals—in the 21st century. Whether you come with an open-mind, skeptical, or already committed to your local church, join Jon Tyson, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in New York City, as he makes the case for why church matters.
Widely praised in hardcover as a fascinating and important addition to religious and cultural studies, Sacred Matters reveals the remarkable ways that religious practices permeate American cultural life.In a country where references to God are as normal as proclaiming love of country, support for the military, or security for the nation's children, religion scholar Gary Laderman casts his eye over our deeply hidden spiritual landscape, questioning whether our conventional views even begin to capture the rich and strange diversity of religious life in America. A compelling read, Sacred Matters shows that genuinely religious practices and experiences can be found in the unlikeliest of places-in science laboratories and movie theaters, at the Super Bowl and Star Trek conventions, and in Americans' obsession with prescription drugs and pornography. When devoted fans make a pilgrimage to Graceland because of their love for Elvis, Laderman argues, their behavior doesn't just seem religious, it is religious-enacting a well-known ritual pattern toward saints in the history of Christianity. In a dramatic reframing of what is holy and secular, Sacred Matters makes a powerful and illuminating case that religion is everywhere-and that we have barely begun to reckon with its hold on our cultural life.
Leap across time with bestselling author Harvey Rachlin as he collects over 50 of the most fascinating objects in the world, under one book. The Mounted Hide of Stonewall Jackson's Battle Horse, The Black Obelisk, The Rosetta Stone, George Washington's False Teeth, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson's Uniform Coat, The Elephant Man's Skeleton, and Lincoln's Death Bed are just some of the objects Rachlin explores with wit, pick and an amazing sense of spectacle. Publisher's Weekly calls Lucy's Bone's, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain "entertaining and enlightening." Library Journal declares Rachin's work "fascinating." Parade says it is "detailed and authoritative." It is also intensely moving as Rachlin weaves together seemingly disparate histories into a holistic statement that celebrates human endeavor. This book is not simply wonderful -- it is full of wonder.
Corpse Care relates the history of death care in the U.S. to craft robust, constructive, practical ethics for tending the dead. It specifically relates corpse care to economic, environmental, and pastoral concerns. Death and the treatment of the dead body loom large in our collective, cultural consciousness. The authors explore the materiality and meaning of the dead body and the living's relationship to it. All the biggest questions facing the planetary human community relate in one way or another to the corpse. Surprisingly, Christian communities are largely missing in the discussion of the dead, having abdicated the historic role in care for the dead to the funeral industry. Christianity has stopped its reflection about the body once that body no longer bears life. Corpse Care stakes a claim that the fact of embodiment, this incarnational truth, this process of our bodily becoming, is a practical, ethical, and theological necessity.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 provides a legal framework within which Native Americans can seek the repatriation of human remains and certain categories of cultural objects--including "sacred objects"--from federally funded institutions. Although the repatriation movement among Native Americans has heretofore received scholarly attention specifically focused on this act, Sacred Claims is the first book to analyze the ways in which religious discourse is used to articulate repatriation claims. Greg Johnson takes this act as one instance in a larger context wherein native peoples around the globe must engage legal arenas in order to preserve their heritage. Methodologically, Sacred Claims is based on a close reading of government documents concerning the law and participant observation in a variety of NAGPRA-related events and provides the background and legislative history of the law, the life history of the act's axial term cultural affiliation (the most delicate and least understood aspect of NAGPRA), and several case studies of highly visible and contentious Hawaiian repatriation disputes. Johnson then moves beyond the strictly legal context to analyze NAGPRA discourse in the public realm. He concludes by way of a theoretical treatment of the foregoing issues, arguing that religious language was the chief means by which native representatives ultimately persuaded non-native audiences of the applicability of widely-held human rights principles to their cultural remains. Theorizing modes of cultural vitality in the repatriation context, Johnson argues that living tradition is not found in the objects themselves but is instead located in struggles over them. With the law on the brink of receiving crucial tests, and repatriation issues making daily headlines in Native American and Hawaiian news, Sacred Claims is a timely and necessary examination of these issues.
