A Secular Age

A Secular Age

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 889

ISBN-13: 0674986911

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The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.


The Origin and Development of Religious Belief - Scholar's Choice Edition

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief - Scholar's Choice Edition

Author: Sabine Baring Gould

Publisher:

Published: 2015-02-17

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9781297119415

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.


Scholarship and Christian Faith

Scholarship and Christian Faith

Author: Douglas Jacobsen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-04-08

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780198038092

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This book enters a lively discussion about religious faith and higher education in America that has been going on for a decade or more. During this time many scholars have joined the debate about how best to understand the role of faith in the academy at large and in the special arena of church-related Christian higher education. The notion of faith-informed scholarship has, of course, figured prominently in this conversation. But, argue Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen, the idea of Christian scholarship itself has been remarkably under-discussed. Most of the literature has assumed a definition of Christian scholarship that is Reformed and evangelical in orientation: a model associated with the phrase "the integration of faith and learning." The authors offer a new definition and analysis of Christian scholarship that respects the insights of different Christian traditions (e.g., Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal) and that applies to the arts and to professional studies as much as it does to the humanities and the natural and social sciences. The book itself is organized as a conversation. Five chapters by the Jacobsens alternate with four contributed essays that sharpen, illustrate, or complicate the material in the preceding chapters. The goal is both to map the complex terrain of Christian scholarship as it actually exists and to help foster better connections between Christian scholars of differing persuasions and between Christians and the academy as a whole.


Faith as an Option

Faith as an Option

Author: Hans Joas

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-09-03

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 080479278X

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Many people these days regard religion as outdated and are unable to understand how believers can intellectually justify their faith. Nonbelievers have long assumed that progress in technology and the sciences renders religion irrelevant. Believers, in contrast, see religion as vital to society's spiritual and moral well-being. But does modernization lead to secularization? Does secularization lead to moral decay? Sociologist Hans Joas argues that these two supposed certainties have kept scholars from serious contemporary debate and that people must put these old arguments aside in order for debate to move forward. The emergence of a "secular option" does not mean that religion must decline, but that even believers must now define their faith as one option among many. In this book, Joas spells out some of the consequences of the abandonment of conventional assumptions for contemporary religion and develops an alternative to the cliché of an inevitable conflict between Christianity and modernity. Arguing that secularization comes in waves and stressing the increasing contingency of our worlds, he calls upon faith to articulate contemporary experiences. Churches and religious communities must take into account religious diversity, but the modern world is not a threat to Christianity or to faith in general. On the contrary, Joas says, modernity and faith can be mutually enriching.


The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship

Author: George M. Marsden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0197751105

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First published in 1997, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship is a landmark work that offered a bold call to re-establish Christian perspectives in academia. For this second edition, George M. Marsden has added a new preface as well as an entirely new chapter reflecting on the changing landscape of academia in the quarter century since the book first appeared.


The Slain God

The Slain God

Author: Timothy Larsen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-08-29

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0191632058

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Throughout its entire history, the discipline of anthropology has been perceived as undermining, or even discrediting, Christian faith. Many of its most prominent theorists have been agnostics who assumed that ethnographic findings and theories had exposed religious beliefs to be untenable. E. B. Tylor, the founder of the discipline in Britain, lost his faith through studying anthropology. James Frazer saw the material that he presented in his highly influential work, The Golden Bough, as demonstrating that Christian thought was based on the erroneous thought patterns of 'savages.' On the other hand, some of the most eminent anthropologists have been Christians, including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Edith Turner. Moreover, they openly presented articulate reasons for how their religious convictions cohered with their professional work. Despite being a major site of friction between faith and modern thought, the relationship between anthropology and Christianity has never before been the subject of a book-length study. In this groundbreaking work, Timothy Larsen examines the point where doubt and faith collide with anthropological theory and evidence.


Religious Convictions and Political Choice

Religious Convictions and Political Choice

Author: Kent Greenawalt

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0195067797

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How far may Americans properly rely on their religious beliefs when they make and defend political decisions? For example, are ordinary citizens or legislators doing something wrong when they consciously allow their decisions respecting abortion laws to be determined by their religious views? Despite its intense contemporary relevance, the full dimensions of this issue have until now not been thoroughly examined. Religious Convictions and Political Choice represents the first attempt to fill this gap. Beginning with an account of the basic premises of our liberal democracy, Greenawalt moves to a comparison between rational secular grounds of decision and grounds based on religious convictions. He discusses particular issues such as animal rights and abortion, showing how religious convictions can bear on an individual's decisions about them, and inquires whether reliance on such convictions is compatible with liberal democratic premises. In conclusion, he argues that citizens cannot be expected to rely exclusively on rational, secular grounds.


Religion and Belief

Religion and Belief

Author: Malcolm Heath

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781443856539

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Religion and Belief: A Moral Landscape is a collection of essays from the 4th Annual Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference at the Department of Classics, University of Leeds. The book collates a wide range of issues and initiates a discussion on the nuances and multifaceted concepts of religion and belief. The topics range from ancient Greek religion and philosophy, through the Roman world and early Judeo-Christian beliefs, to modern burial practices and 21st century â ~New-Atheismâ (TM). By presenting religion and belief in this macrocosmic landscape, simple conceptions and caricatures of religion and belief are shown to be mis-leading and ultimately redundant. This book engages with the complex and multi-faceted nature of religion and belief across time.


The Emergence and Evolution of Religion

The Emergence and Evolution of Religion

Author: Jonathan H. Turner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-08-10

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 135162069X

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Written by leading theorists and empirical researchers, this book presents new ways of addressing the old question: Why did religion first emerge and then continue to evolve in all human societies? The authors of the book—each with a different background across the social sciences and humanities—assimilate conceptual leads and empirical findings from anthropology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary sociology, neurology, primate behavioral studies, explanations of human interaction and group dynamics, and a wide range of religious scholarship to construct a deeper and more powerful explanation of the origins and subsequent evolutionary development of religions than can currently be found in what is now vast literature. While explaining religion has been a central question in many disciplines for a long time, this book draws upon a much wider array of literature to develop a robust and cross-disciplinary analysis of religion. The book remains true to its subtitle by emphasizing an array of both biological and sociocultural forms of selection dynamics that are fundamental to explaining religion as a universal institution in human societies. In addition to Darwinian selection, which can explain the biology and neurology of religion, the book outlines a set of four additional types of sociocultural natural selection that can fill out the explanation of why religion first emerged as an institutional system in human societies, and why it has continued to evolve over the last 300,000 years of societal evolution. These sociocultural forms of natural selection are labeled by the names of the early sociologists who first emphasized them, and they can be seen as a necessary supplement to the type of natural selection theorized by Charles Darwin. Explanations of religion that remain in the shadow cast by Darwin’s great insights will, it is argued, remain narrow and incomplete when explaining a robust sociocultural phenomenon like religion.


THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Author: R.A TORREY

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2015-11-29

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1618980785

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"How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?" The conception of the Holy Spirit as a Divine influence or power that we are somehow to get hold of and use, leads to self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. One who so thinks of the Holy Spirit and who at the same time imagines that he has received the Holy Spirit will almost inevitably be full of spiritual pride and strut about as if he belonged to some superior order of Christians. One frequently hears such persons say, "I am a Holy Ghost man," or "I am a Holy Ghost woman." But if we once grasp the thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory and holiness and power, who in marvelous condescension has come into our hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.