Presented in a time line format, the book offers a survey of world religions. It examines global perspectives on the history of faith in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania, Africa and the Middle East.
The Cambridge Illustrated History of Religions is a comprehensive survey of world religions from pre-history to the present day. Each religion is treated in depth, with text written by a recognized academic expert, and supported by extensive illustrations. The religions covered include Jainism, Chinese and Japanese religions, Hindu religions, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, along with smaller sections on Zoroaster and Parsis, Greek and Rome, Egypt and Mesopotamia, aboriginal religions, Shamanism, and modern religions such as Bahai. The book includes a substantial bibliography, a full chronology for each section, a general chronology giving the most significant dates from all religions, and information on religious phenomena such as festivals and calendars. This is an authoritative reference book which will appeal equally to students of religion, teachers, and general interested readers. John Bowker is the author of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford, 2000), The Complete Bible Handbook: An Illustrated Companion (DK Publishing, 1998) and and The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford, 1997). He is Greshan Professor, Greshan College, London and Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and North Carolina State University.
A History of the World's Religions bridges the interval between the founding of religions and their present state, and gives students an accurate look at the religions of the world by including descriptive and interpretive details from the original source materials. Refined by over forty years of dialogue and correspondence with religious experts and practitioners around the world, A History of the World's Religions is widely regarded as the hallmark of scholarship, fairness, and accuracy in its field. It is also the most thorough yet manageable history of world religion available in a single volume, treating many subjects largely neglected in other texts.
Religion and its History offers a reflection of our operative concept of religion and religions, developing a set of approaches that bridge the widely assumed gulf between analysing present religion and doing history of religion. Religious Studies have adapted a wide range of methodologies from sociological tool kits to insights and concepts from disciplines of social and cultural studies. Their massive historical claims, which typically idealize and reify communities and traditions, and build normative claims thereupon, lack a critical engagement on the part of the researchers. This book radically rethinks and critically engages with these biases. It does so by offering neither an abridged global history of religion nor a small handbook of methodology. Instead, this book presents concepts and methods that allow the analysis of contemporary and past religious practices, ideas, and institutions within a shared framework.
Historians bound by their singular stories and archaeologists bound by their material evidence donOt typically seek out broad comparative theories of religion. But recently Harvey WhitehouseOs Omodes of religiosityO theory has been attracting many scholars of past religions. Based upon universal features of human cognition, WhitehouseOs theory can provide useful comparisons across cultures and historical periods even when limited cultural data is present. In this groundbreaking volume scholars of cultures from prehistorical hunter-gatherers to 19th century Scandinavian Lutherans evaluate WhitehouseOs hypothesis that all religions tend toward either an imagistic or a doctrinal mode depending on how they are remembered and transmitted. Theorizing Religions Past provides valuable insights for all historians of religion and especially for those interested in a new cognitive method for studying the past.
New religious movements--commonly known as cults--are defined as organizations that have arisen within the last 200 years. Most treatments of these movements have typically resorted to sensationalism rather than objectivity, and New religious movements tend to receive negative media publicity. Despite their unfavorable portrayal in popular culture, however, new religious movements are a global phenomenon and much remains to be studied about these movements. In this newly updated second edition of the Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, George D. Chryssides traces the rise and development of new religious movements throughout the world. An updated introduction summarizes the phenomenon of new religious movements and lays out the changes to the dictionary since the 2001 edition, while the main body of the dictionary consists of close to 600 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements. An index organizes the information in the dictionary, and a comprehensive bibliography leads the researcher to further sources. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about new religious movements.
Chinese Buddhists have never remained stationary. They have always been on the move. In Monks in Motion, Jack Meng-Tat Chia explores why Buddhist monks migrated from China to Southeast Asia, and how they participated in transregional Buddhist networks across the South China Sea. This book tells the story of three prominent monks Chuk Mor (1913-2002), Yen Pei (1917-1996), and Ashin Jinarakkhita (1923-2002) and examines the connected history of Buddhist communities in China and maritime Southeast Asia in the twentieth century. Monks in Motion is the first book to offer a history of what Chia terms "South China Sea Buddhism," referring to a Buddhism that emerged from a swirl of correspondence networks, forced exiles, voluntary visits, evangelizing missions, institution-building campaigns, and the organizational efforts of countless Chinese and Chinese diasporic Buddhist monks. Drawing on multilingual research conducted in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Chia challenges the conventional categories of "Chinese Buddhism" and "Southeast Asian Buddhism" by focusing on the lesser-known--yet no less significant--Chinese Buddhist communities of maritime Southeast Asia. By crossing the artificial spatial frontier between China and Southeast Asia, Monks in Motion breaks new ground, bringing Southeast Asia into the study of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism into the study of Southeast Asia.
The Lived Ancient Religion project has radically changed perspectives on ancient religions and their supposedly personal or public character. This volume applies and further develops these methodological tools, new perspectives and new questions. The religious transformations of the Roman Imperial period appear in new light and more nuances by comparative confrontation and the integration of many disciplines. The contributions are written by specialists from a variety of disciplinary contexts (Jewish Studies, Theology, Classics, Early Christian Studies) dealing with the history of religion of the Mediterranean, West-Asian, and European area from the (late) Hellenistic period to the (early) Middle Ages and shaped by their intensive exchange. From the point of view of their respective fields of research, the contributors engage with discourses on agency, embodiment, appropriation and experience. They present innovative research in four fields also of theoretical debate, which are “Experiencing the Religious”, “Switching the Code”, „A Thing Called Body“ and “Commemorating the Moment”.