Church and state issues are in the news now more than ever before. Political and religious leaders alike are negotiating shaky ground as they balance their religious/moral and political perspectives with their roles as leaders. New technologies push the boundaries of moral consensus by creating new controversies such as those involving stem-cell research and medical measures to sustain or end the lives of the terminally ill. The Supreme Court continues to work to clarify the fuzzy line between religion and politics as it addresses cases regarding abortion, school prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance, among other issues. Further controversies only lead to further divisions among Americans. Church and state issues are in the news now more than ever before. Political and religious leaders alike are negotiating on shaky ground as they balance their religious/moral and political perspectives with their roles as leaders. New technologies push the boundaries of moral consensus by creating new controversies such as those involving stem-cell research and medical measures to sustain or end the lives of the terminally ill. The Supreme Court continues to work to clarify the fuzzy line between religion and politics as it addresses cases regarding abortion, school prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance, among other issues. Further controversies only lead to further divisions among Americans. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are as many interpretations of this separation as there are interpretations of particular issues such as abortion or school vouchers. This three-volume collection summarizes the history and current status of issues involving the separation of church and state through chapters examining the backgrounds, relevant constitutional concerns, and variety of perspectives on specific controversies. Framed by a general discussion of the history of the separation between church and state and through careful attention to subjects such as capital punishment, gay marriage, and clergy support of political leaders, there emerges an incredibly complex, enlightening, and provocative picture for anyone with an interest in the unique nature of religion in the United States of America.

New Religious Movements (NRMs) can involve vast numbers of followers and in many cases are radically changing the way people understand and practice religion and spirituality. Moreover, many are having a profound impact on the form and content of mainstream religion. The Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements provides uniquely global coverage of the phenomenon, with entries on over three hundred movements from almost every country in the world. Coverage includes movements that derive from the major religions of the world and to neo-traditional movements, movements often overlooked in the study of NRMs. In addition to the coverage of particular movements there are also entries on topics, themes, key thinkers and key ideas, for example the New Age Movement, Neo-Paganism, New Religion and gender, NRMs and cyberspace, NRMs and the law, the Anti-Cult Movement, Swedenborg, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Lovelock, Gurdjieff, al-Banna, Qutb. The marked global approach and comprehensiveness of the encyclopedia enable an appreciation of the innovative energy of NRMs, of their extraordinary diversity, and the often surprising ways in which they can propagate geographically. The most ambitions publication of its sort, the Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements is a major addition to the reference literature for students and researchers of the field in religious studies and the social sciences. Entries are cross-referenced with short bibliographies for further reading. There is a full index

Anna Coreth's work appeared originally in 1959. Her interpretation focuses on the relationship of Catholic religious practices and symbols to the House of Habsburg from the Counter or Catholic Reformation until the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coreth demonstrates how elements of religiosity and spirituality, particularly those surrounding the Catholic Eucharistic and Marian celebrations, became part of the Habsburg ruling style. She discusses the imperial house's dedication to these rituals and what the religious practices came to mean to individual members of the Habsburg monarchy, such as Rudolf I, Ferdinand I, II, and III, Maria Theresa, and Joseph II. Coreth demonstrates the Habsburg monarchy's devotion to specific Catholic rituals and how these rituals in turn acquired political significance. Moreover, Coreth also examines the links between this Habsburg religious style, on the one hand, and the institutional Catholic Church, popular piety, religious orders, and mainstream political developments. The book is an extremely rich source for early modern and modern Austrian history.

This book seeks to answer a very straightforward question: How did religion come to be? A common way of addressing such a question is to go back to a time prior to the existence of the phenomenon you wish to explain and show how various factors operated to bring the phenomenon into existence. To understand how the Roman Empire came to be, for example, one might show how the pre-empire conditions of the ancient Mediterranean world made Rome’s emergence possible or even inevitable. This book treats religion the same way. But this immediately raises a question: Can we truly envision a world prior to religion? As far back as we can trace human history, there has always been religion. Indeed, some believers regard religion as a divine gift transcending human history. Treating it as a consequence of the same haphazard stew of historical forces that drive human affairs seems to border on sacrilege.

In 1730 a delegation of Illinois Indians arrived in the French colonial capital of New Orleans. An Illinois leader presented two ceremonial pipes, or calumets, to the governor. One calumet represented the diplomatic alliance between the two men and the other symbolized their shared attachment to Catholicism. The priest who documented this exchange also reported with excitement how the Illinois recited prayers and sang hymns in their Native language, a display that astonished the residents of New Orleans. The "Catholic" calumet and the Native-language prayers and hymns were the product of long encounters between the Illinois and Jesuit missionaries, men who were themselves transformed by these sometimes intense spiritual experiences. The conversions of people, communities, and cultural practices that led to this dramatic episode all occurred in a rapidly evolving and always contested colonial context. In The Catholic Calumet, historian Tracy Neal Leavelle examines interactions between Jesuits and Algonquian-speaking peoples of the upper Great Lakes and Illinois country, including the Illinois and Ottawas, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Leavelle abandons singular definitions of conversion that depend on the idealized elevation of colonial subjects from "savages" to "Christians" for more dynamic concepts that explain the changes that all participants experienced. A series of thematic chapters on topics such as myth and historical memory, understandings of human nature, the creation of colonial landscapes, translation of religious texts into Native languages, and the influence of gender and generational differences demonstrates that these encounters resulted in the emergence of complicated and unstable cross-cultural religious practices that opened new spaces for cultural creativity and mutual adaptation.

In writing this book I was heavily dependent on the help of others. I am particularly grateful to Mark Smith for his advice and his patience in answering my questions about Coptic and Egyptology, and to Wadi Abullif for his generous assistance in Cairo. I would like to thank Sydney Aufre`re, Anne Boud’hors, Nathalie Bosson, Charles Libois, and the late Maurice Martin for allowing me to profit from their discoveries and expertise, Colin Wakefield for his help at the Bodleian Library and his advice about Arabic transcriptions, Nigel Hope for his proof correcting and Bonnie Blackburn for her copy-editing. My thanks also go to Anne Ashby, Alice Bailey, Maurits van den Boogert, Anthony Grafton, Nelly Hanna, Johannes den Heijer, Jan Helderman, Karim Ibrahim, Robert Jones, Gautier Juynboll, Ivo Klaver, Jill Kraye, William Lyster, Dorothea McEwan, Ian MacLean, Georges Masson, Peter Miller, Andrew Pettegree, Paul Botley, Jenny Boyle, Francis Richard, Jonathan Rolls, Lydia Salviucci Insolera, Rijk Smitskamp, Gerald Toomer, Hans van der Velde, Michael Walsh, Nicholas Warner, Joanna Weinberg, and Jan Just Witkam. I gratefully acknowledge an S. T. Lee Fellowship at the School of Advanced Study, London University, the subsidies given to me for travel in Egypt by the Leidse Universitaire Fonds, the library and hospitality of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, and above all of the Warburg Institute in London, and, finally, the support of the Dr C. LouiseThijssen-Schoute Stichting, to whose former chairman,A. G. H . Bachrach, this book is affectionately dedicated.

This study explores the role of women in New Testament times. Beginning with the woman's place in Judaism, in the Hellenistic world, and in the Roman Empire, Witherington demonstrates how Jesus broke significantly with convention in how he viewed women, offering as he did a wholly new conception of the legitimate rights of women in society.

Т. 2 : XI-XIII вік. - 1992. - 640 с.