The Secular Magi
Author: William Lloyd Newell
Publisher:
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13:
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The Secular Magi
Author: William Lloyd Newell
Publisher: University Press of Amer
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 219
ISBN-13: 9780819195883
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat do three great minds, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, have to say about religion? How do their thoughts affect Christian churches and the changes within them? The Secular Magi analyzes the thoughts of these men and their importance to those who study theology. While acknowledging how the ambivalent Christian thinkers feel toward thoughts of these men, Newell addresses how the insight they provide can be accomodated within contemporary theology. Newell presents a thorough, incisive, and well-written account of these three seminal thinkers and their impact on contemporary theology. The book includes a challenging appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of their thought, and its challenge to the church. The Secular Magi was originally published in 1986 by Pilgrim Press.
Modern Enchantments
Author: Simon During
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9780674013711
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMagic, During suggests, has helped shape modern culture. Devoted to this deceptively simple proposition, During's work gets at the aesthetic questions at the very heart of the study of culture. How can the most ordinary arts—and by “magic,” During means not the supernatural, but the special effects and conjurings of magic shows—affect people?
The Re-enchantment of the World
Author: Joshua Landy
Publisher:
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Re-Enchantment of the World is an interdisciplinary volume that challenges the long-prevailing view of modernity as "disenchanted." There is of course something to the widespread idea, so memorably put into words by Max Weber, that modernity is characterized by the "progressive disenchantment of the world." Yet what is less often recognized is the fact that a powerful counter-tendency runs alongside this one, an overwhelming urge to fill the vacuum left by departed convictions, and to do so without invoking superseded belief systems. In fact, modernity produces an array of strategies for re-enchantment, each fully compatible with secular rationality. It has to, because God has many "aspects"--or to put it in more secular terms, because traditional religion offers so much in so many domains. From one thinker to the next, the question of just what, in religious enchantment, needs to be replaced in a secular world receives an entirely different answer. Now, for the first time, many of these strategies are laid out in a single volume, with contributions by specialists in literature, history, and philosophy.
Secular Magic and the Moving Image
Author: Max Sexton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2017-12-14
Total Pages: 193
ISBN-13: 1501320963
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe power of the moving image to conjure marvelous worlds has usually been to understand it in terms of 'move magic'. On film, a fascination for enchantment and wonder has transmuted older beliefs in the supernatural into secular attractions. But this study is not about the history of special effects or a history of magic. Rather, it attempts to determine the influence and status of secular magic on television within complex modes of delivery before discovering interstices with film. Historically, the overriding concern on television has been for secular magic that informs and empowers rather than a fairytale effect that deceives and mystifies. Yet, shifting notions of the real and the uncertainty associated with the contemporary world has led to television developing many different modes that have become capable of constant hybridization. The dynamic interplay between certainty and indeterminacy is the key to understanding secular magic on television and film and exploring the interstices between them. Sexton ranges from the real-time magic of street performers, such as David Blaine, Criss Angel, and Dynamo, to Penn and Teller's comedy magic, to the hypnotic acts of Derren Brown, before finally visiting the 2006 films The Illusionist and The Prestige. Each example charts how the lack of clear distinctions between reality and illusion in modes of representation and presentation disrupt older theoretical oppositions. Secular Magic and the Moving Image not only re-evaluates questions about modes and styles but raises further questions about entertainment and how the relations between the program maker and the audience resemble those between the conjuror and spectator. By re-thinking these overlapping practices and tensions and the marking of the indeterminacy of reality on media screens, it becomes possible to revise our understanding of inter-medial relations.
Secular Steeples 2nd edition
Author: Conrad Ostwalt
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2012-09-27
Total Pages: 334
ISBN-13: 1441123148
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn exploration of secularization in America, this book provides students with an innovative way of understanding the relationship between religion and secular culture. In Secular Steeples, Conrad Ostwalt challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion and culture and about the impact of secularization. Moving away from the idea that religion will diminish as secularization continues, Ostwalt identifies areas of popular culture where secular and sacred views and objectives interact and enrich each other. The book demonstrates how religious institutions use the secular and popular media of television, movies, and music to make sacred teachings relevant. From megachurches to sports arenas, the Bible to Harry Potter, biker churches to virtual worship communities, Ostwalt demonstrates how religion persists across cultural forms, secular and sacred, with secular culture expressing religious messages and sometimes containing more authentic religious content than official religious teachings. An ideal text for anyone studying religion and popular culture, each chapter provides questions for discussion, a list of important terms and guided readings.
Secular Steeples
Author: Conrad Ostwalt
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2003-03-24
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 1563383616
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConrad Ostwalt explores the confluence of religion and popular cultural forms in the secular world, demonstrating that a secular religiosity has co-opted some of the functions previously reserved for religions institutions.
Field Manual for the Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Magic
Author: C. Riley Augé
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2022-07-08
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 1805399063
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understanding of how those behaviors may also be seen through less obvious evidential lines. Instruction and templates for recording, typologizing, classifying, and analyzing ritual or magico-religious material culture are also provided to guide researchers in the survey, collection, and cataloging processes. The bulleted formatting and topical range make this a highly accessible work, while providing an incredible wealth of information in a single volume.
Across the Secular Abyss
Author: William Sims Bainbridge
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 324
ISBN-13: 9780739116784
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAcross the Secular Abyss explains the cultural chasm we currently face, with a traditional religion-based society behind us, and an as-yet unknown secular society ahead. For over a century, scholars, social scientists, and policy makers have debated the apparent erosion of religious faith and wondered whether Western Civilization was turning its back on religion. Today, the issue has reached a crisis point. In the U.S., a new battle between faith and science has erupted within educational institutions, as political polarization progressively divides the country along religious lines. After a century-long truce in which religion and science implicitly agreed to leave each other alone, science is again invading the territory of religion, most obviously in cognitive science that is debunking religious notions of the human soul, and in the broad convergence of many branches of science into one that leaves few gaps where supernatural beliefs could survive. Religion, for its part, is resisting a range of emerging technologies that could transform human nature, namely human reproductive cloning and the kinds of transformative technologies advocated by the Transhumanist movement. Although pure Atheism has little to offer people, and Atheists tend to be people lacking in social obligations, entirely new possibilities are offered by emerging technologies such as computer emulation of human personalities.
Mystery of the Magi
Author: Dwight Longenecker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2017-11-06
Total Pages: 225
ISBN-13: 1621576566
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"The perfect Christmas gift for anyone interested in the historical background behind the birth of Jesus of Nazareth." — Robert J. Hutchinson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible, The Dawn of Christianity, and Searching for Jesus. "Utterly refreshing and encouraging." — Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Martin Luther "The best book I know about the Magi." — Sir Colin John Humphreys, Ph.D., author of The Mystery of the Last Supper Modern biblical scholars tend to dismiss the Christmas story of the “wise men from the East” as pious legend. Matthew’s gospel offers few details, but imaginative Christians filled out the story early on, giving us the three kings guided by a magical star who join the adoring shepherds in every Christmas crèche. For many scholars, then, there is no reason to take the gospel story seriously. But are they right? Are the wise men no more than a poetic fancy? In an astonishing feat of detective work, Dwight Longenecker makes a powerful case that the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem really happened. Piecing together the evidence from biblical studies, history, archeology, and astronomy, he goes further, uncovering where they came from, why they came, and what might have happened to them after eluding the murderous King Herod. In the process, he provides a new and fascinating view of the time and place in which Jesus Christ chose to enter the world. The evidence is clear and compelling. The mysterious Magi from the East were in all likelihood astrologers and counselors from the court of the Nabatean king at Petra, where the Hebrew messianic prophecies were well known. The “star” that inspired their journey was a particular planetary alignment—confirmed by computer models—that in the astrological lore of the time portended the birth of a Jewish king. The visitors whose arrival troubled Herod “and all Jerusalem with him” may not have been the turbaned oriental kings of the Christmas carol, but they were real, and by demonstrating that the wise men were no fairy tale, Mystery of the Magi demands a new level of respect for the historical claims of the gospel.
