Sacred Cyberspaces
Sacred Cyberspaces

Author: Oren Golan

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0228015197

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In recent years every major institution has had to adapt to the fast-evolving technologies of the digital age or risk being left behind. Amid a global crisis of faith and declining levels of religious participation in places around the world, the Catholic Church has likewise come face to face with the challenges and possibilities of new media. Sacred Cyberspaces reveals how long-standing conflicts over power, influence, and legitimacy within religious organizations are being waged in the digital realm. Oren Golan and Michele Martini describe the tensions that arise as religious groups seek to reach the faithful in online spaces where traditional clerical authorities have less expertise and control. Focusing on the Catholic world, they examine the rise of devotional digital entrepreneurship and the roles of lay religious webmasters: the video makers, app developers, and web designers who devote their lives to evangelization and who literally run the show. The book also explores the nature of religious experience as it pivots to online platforms: cyberculture, prayer, ceremonies, pilgrimage, proselytization, and the relation to the transcendental. From live-streaming at world-famous sites in the Holy Land to the Instagram feed of Pope Francis, Sacred Cyberspaces evaluates the contemporary media strategies of the Catholic Church and sheds light on the future of religion online.

Religion and Cyberspace
Religion and Cyberspace

Author: Morten T. Højsgaard

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780415357630

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Religion and Cyberspace explores how religious individuals and groups are responding to the opportunities and challenges that cyberspace brings.

Caught in the Current
Caught in the Current

Author: Sam Reimer

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2023-04-15

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 0228017807

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Evangelical Christianity is known for its defence of traditional Christian teachings and resistance to liberalizing trends. Many Western evangelicals themselves do not yet realize how their faith is being reshaped by the modern zeitgeist. Caught in the Current explores how and why Western evangelicals are changing. Church attendance is declining, conservative moral positions are unpopular, and young people are drifting away from the faith. Evangelism is avoided, so few are joining congregations. Yet these surface changes are only symptoms of a more profound shift that church leaders have not fully apprehended. Drawing upon 125 interviews with British and Canadian clergy and active laity, Sam Reimer argues that evangelicals have been deeply influenced by a post-Christian culture that has rejected institutional religious authority and embraced self-spirituality. As individual evangelicals struggle to navigate these waters, and to distance themselves from politicized evangelicalism in the United States, they are caught between conformity and resistance, between faithfulness to church moral teachings and accommodation of secular values. Many are responding by turning inward to define their Christian beliefs for themselves. The ironic result is that the decline of institutional religious authority is not happening just in Western culture, but within evangelical churches as well. Caught in the Current is an insightful and nuanced assessment of how British and Canadian evangelicals are navigating a post-Christian culture, often in ways that are distinct from how their counterparts in the United States approach it.

Prophets of Love
Prophets of Love

Author: Matthew R. Anderson

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2023-09-15

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 0228018668

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Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul might be imagined as brothers with wildly different characters but a strong family resemblance. Paul, the elder sibling, was awkward, abrasive, and zealous. Leonard, the successful younger brother, was a smooth-talking romantic, prone to addiction and depression. Paul died a martyr, not knowing his words would have any effect on the world. Leonard could see his canonization within his lifetime. Yet each became a prophet in his own time, and a poet for the ages. In Prophets of Love Matthew Anderson traces surprising connections between two Jewish thinkers separated by millennia. He explores Leonard's and Paul’s mysticism, their Judaism, their fascination with Jesus, their countercultural perspectives on sex, their ideas about love, and how they each embodied being men. Anderson considers their ambiguous relationships with women, on whom they depended and from whom they often profited, as well as how their legacies continue to evolve and be re-interpreted. This book emphasizes that Paul was first and foremost a Jew, and never rejected his Judaism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the biblical worldviews and language underlying and inspiring every line of Cohen’s poetry. Prophets of Love alters our views of both Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul, re-introducing us to two poetic prophets of divine and human love.

Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives
Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives

Author: Mohamed Taher

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780810852570

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Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives, as is implied by its name, explores worship (i.e., Prayer, Praise, Scripture, Sacrament, Rituals, Confessions, Eucharist, Rites, Pilgrimages, Reflection, Contemplation, etc.) on the Internet. It is not an 'everything you need to know' guide about the subjects of faith and belief, religions-online, religions on the Net, or religions in cyberspace. Rather, it is a book about religious and spiritual experience under the rubric, cyber worship, which is the variety of ways religious devotion is performed and carried out on the Internet. The term 'Cyber Worship' is a catchall phrase, which includes variants such as online worship, virtual worship, electronic prayer, cyber puja, cyber synagogue, and so on. Dr. Mohamed Taher has thus assembled a quick reference for two groups: those communities that are involved in Cyber Worship and business Webs that collaborate in sustaining wired environments. As such, this book provides an interesting and current perspective on a practice that will continue to grow in the future.

The Study of Religion
The Study of Religion

Author: George D. Chryssides

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1472567323

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This updated textbook unravels the complex issues related to methodology and theory in the study of religion. It equips students with the knowledge needed for the academic study of religion, explaining the history of the methodology, including ideas of key theorists, and discusses key issues in the field, such as gender, phenomenology, and the insider/outsider discourse. Updated throughout, additional material includes: -New chapter on colonialism and post-colonialism -New chapter on insider/outsider discourse -Coverage of 'cyber-religion' and the internet as a research tool in religious studies Study and classroom features in each chapter include: -Chapter outlines -Case studies -Boxed key concepts -Discussion questions -Chapter bibliographies The text is illustrated throughout with 35 images, and extra resources can be found online, including additional coverage of 'levels of religion'.

Cyber China
Cyber China

Author: F. Mengin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-11-26

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1403979553

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The essays in this volume explore the new power struggles created in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through information technology. The contributors analyze the interaction between the development of information technologies and social logic on the one hand and processes of unification and fragmentation on the other. They seek to highlight the strategies of public and private actors aimed at monopolizing the benefits created by the information society - whether for monetary gain or bureaucratic consolidation - as well as the new loci of power now emerging. The book is organized around two main themes: One exploring societal change and power relations, the second examining the restructuring of Greater China's space. In so doing, the book seeks to shed light on both the state formation process as well as international relations theory.

Cyber War versus Cyber Realities
Cyber War versus Cyber Realities

Author: Brandon Valeriano

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-04-27

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190204818

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In 2011, the United States government declared a cyber attack as equal to an act of war, punishable with conventional military means. Cyber operations, cyber crime, and other forms of cyber activities directed by one state against another are now considered part of the normal relations range of combat and conflict, and the rising fear of cyber conflict has brought about a reorientation of military affairs. What is the reality of this threat? Is it actual or inflated, fear or fact-based? Taking a bold stand against the mainstream wisdom, Valeriano and Maness argue that there is very little evidence that cyber war is, or is likely to become, a serious threat. Their claim is empirically grounded, involving a careful analysis of cyber incidents and disputes experienced by international states since 2001, and an examination of the processes leading to cyber conflict. As the authors convincingly show, cyber incidents are a little-used tactic, with low-level intensity and few to no long-term effects. As well, cyber incidents are motivated by the same dynamics that prompt regional conflicts. Based on this evidence, Valeriano and Maness lay out a set of policy recommendations for proper defense against cyber threats that is built on restraint and regionalism.

Religion and American Cultures [4 volumes]
Religion and American Cultures [4 volumes]

Author: Gary Laderman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-12-17

Total Pages: 1712

ISBN-13:

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This four-volume work provides a detailed, multicultural survey of established as well as "new" American religions and investigates the fascinating interactions between religion and ethnicity, gender, politics, regionalism, ethics, and popular culture. This revised and expanded edition of Religion and American Cultures: Tradition, Diversity, and Popular Expression presents more than 140 essays that address contemporary spiritual practice and culture with a historical perspective. The entries cover virtually every religion in modern-day America as well as the role of religion in various aspects of U.S. culture. Readers will discover that Americans aren't largely Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish anymore, and that the number of popular religious identities is far greater than many would imagine. And although most Americans believe in a higher power, the fastest growing identity in the United States is the "nones"—those Americans who elect "none" when asked about their religious identity—thereby demonstrating how many individuals see their spirituality as something not easily defined or categorized. The first volume explores America's multicultural communities and their religious practices, covering the range of different religions among Anglo-Americans and Euro-Americans as well as spirituality among Latino, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities. The second volume focuses on cultural aspects of religions, addressing topics such as film, Generation X, public sacred spaces, sexuality, and new religious expressions. The new third volume expands the range of topics covered with in-depth essays on additional topics such as interfaith families, religion in prisons, belief in the paranormal, and religion after September 11, 2001. The fourth volume is devoted to complementary primary source documents.

Cyber Sufis
Cyber Sufis

Author: Robert Rozehnal

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1786075350

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In America today, online spaces serve as critical alternatives for tech-savvy Muslims seeking a place to root their faith, forge religious identity, and build communities. With a particular focus on the Inayati Order, a branch of the oldest Sufi community in the West, Robert Rozehnal explores the online revolution in internal communication, spiritual pedagogy, and public outreach – and looks ahead to the future of digital Islam in the age of Web 3.0.