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- A Bull of a Man
- Hardcover June 2009
- Earthly Paradise
- Hardcover June 2009
- Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America
- Aimee Semple McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the United States between the world wars, building a successful megachurch, a mass media empire, and eventually a political career to resurrect what she believed was America's Christian heritage. Sutton's definitive study reveals the woman as a trail-blazing pioneer, her life marking the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance to the mainstream of American culture.
- Paperback May 2009
- Arguing the Just War in Islam
- Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
- Paperback May 2009
- Christiad
- Hardcover May 2009
- For Prophet and Tsar
- In stark contrast to the popular "clash of civilizations" theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. For Prophet and Tsar unearths the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
- Paperback May 2009
- To Serve God and Wal-Mart
- Hardcover May 2009
- A Biblical Tradition in the Making
- Hardcover April 2009
- Daoist Modern
- Hardcover April 2009
- Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons
- Bowler doesn't minimize the hostility of many of the faithful toward evolution, but he reveals the less well-known existence of a long tradition within the churches that sought to reconcile Christian beliefs with evolution by finding reflections of the divine in scientific explanations for the origin of life. By tracing the historical forerunners of these rival Christian responses, Bowler provides a valuable alternative to accounts that stress only the escalating confrontation.
- Paperback April 2009
- Power of Place
- Hardcover April 2009
- Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
- The scribes of ancient Israel are indeed the main figures behind the Hebrew Bible, and this book tells their story for the first time. Drawing comparisons with the scribal practices of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, van der Toorn details the methods, assumptions, and material means that gave rise to biblical texts. Traditionally seen as the copycats of antiquity, the scribes emerge here as the literate elite who held the key to the production and the transmission of texts.
- Paperback April 2009
- Two Faiths, One Banner
- Hardcover April 2009
- Bhaviveka and His Buddhist Opponents
- Hardcover March 2009
- A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith
- Hardcover March 2009
- Christianity and American Democracy
- Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other over the years, and how their relationship is changing in the present day. Responding to his challenging argument, Mary Jo Bane, Michael Kazin, and Alan Wolfe criticize, qualify, and amend it. The result is a lively debate about a momentous tension in American public life.
- Paperback March 2009
- Ecology and the Environment
- Paperback March 2009
- Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
- Hardcover March 2009
- Naming Infinity
- Hardcover March 2009
- The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi
- Hardcover March 2009
- The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir
- Hardcover March 2009
- Greetings in the Lord
- This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
- Paperback February 2009
- Charisma and Compassion
- Tzu-Chi (Compassion Relief) began as a tiny, grassroots women's charitable group; today in Taiwan it runs three state-of-the-art hospitals, a television channel, and a university. Based on extensive fieldwork in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States, this book explores the transformation of Tzu-Chi.
- Hardcover January 2009
- The Islamic Marriage Contract
- It is often said that marriage in Islamic law is a civil contract, not a sacrament. This volume collects papers from many disciplines examining the Muslim marriage contract. Articles cover doctrines as to marriage contracts (e.g., may a wife stipulate monogamy?); historical instances; comparisons with Jewish and canon law; contemporary legal and social practice; and projects of activists for women worldwide.
- Hardcover January 2009
- Stri
- This book is a study of heroic femininity as it appears in the epic Mahabharata, and focuses particularly on the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother, on how these women speak, and on the kinship groups and varying marital systems that surround them.
- Paperback January 2009
- Tradition and Composition in the Epistula Apostolorum
- In the first major study in English of the Epistle of the Apostles (Epistula Apostolorum), Julian V. Hills probes its remarkable witness to the traditions that circulated in Jesus' name in the second century. Hills tackles the document's literary framework, collecting and assessing signals to its composition. In detailed analyses of passages, Hills shows how older traditions were reshaped and interpreted according to the distinctive communal situation and theological vision of the author. This expanded edition of the out-of-print original, published in 1990, includes a new preface and bibliography.
- Paperback December 2008
- Journey to the East
- It was one of the great encounters of world history: highly educated European priests confronting Chinese culture for the first time in the modern era. This “journey to the East” is explored by Brockey as he retraces the path of the Jesuit missionaries who sailed from Portugal to China.
- Paperback December 2008
- Deliverance and Submission
- South Korea is home to some of the largest evangelical Protestant congregations in the world. This book investigates the meaning of—and the reasons behind—a particular aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul that explores the relevance of women’s experiences to Korean evangelicalism, Kelly H. Chong not only helps provide a broader picture of the evangelical movement’s success in South Korea, but addresses the global question of contemporary women's attraction to religious traditionalism.
- Hardcover December 2008
- Leaves from Paradise
- A pair of leaves recently acquired by Houghton Library presents an opportunity to examine the illuminated sequence composed in honor of John the Evangelist. The richly decorated fragments promise to transform our understanding of the special place of Christ’s “beloved disciple” in 14th-century art, liturgy, theology, and mysticism.
- Paperback November 2008
- Migration Miracle
- Migration Miracle humanizes the immigration controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrants’ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertaking—the role of religion and faith in surviving the journey.
- Hardcover November 2008
- Your Spirits Walk Beside Us
- Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent.
- Hardcover November 2008
- Beyond Essence
- This book demonstrates the intimate connection between Troeltsch's philosophical writings on the essence of Christianity and his historical investigations of Christianity's past. Pearson argues that as a result of his historical work, Troeltsch moved beyond the category of essence and sought new ways of theorizing Christian identity in the context of modernity's pluralistic yet fragmented society.
- Paperback November 2008
- The Peculiar Life of Sundays
- From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath.
- Hardcover November 2008
- An Updated Vedic Concordance
- After one hundred years, the well-known Vedic Concordance of Maurice Bloomfield has finally been updated. The first edition, published in 1906, was a complete alphabetic index of all Vedic mantras then known. Several important texts belonging to the oldest stratum of Indian literature have been published since and are included in this new edition.
- October 2008
- The Clash Within
- While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history.
- Paperback October 2008
- Everyday Jihad
- As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Rougier plunges us into the heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which became a site for militant Sunni Islamists in the early 1990s. Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, through their own interpretations of sacred texts and jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu, and explains how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment in communities marked by poverty and despair.
- Paperback October 2008
- God's War
- The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman explores the centuries of violence committed in the name of religious devotion Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by paranoia and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, and told with great authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.
- Paperback October 2008
- The Secret Revelation of John
- Karen L. King offers an illuminating reading of this ancient text, said to be Christ's revelation to his disciple John. In her analysis, the Revelation becomes a comprehensible religious vision--and a window on the religious culture of the Roman Empire. A translation of the complete Secret Revelation of John is included.
- Paperback October 2008
- Seven Deadly Sins
- With intellectual insight and deadpan humor, Kleinberg deftly guides the reader through Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman thoughts on sin. Each chapter weaves the past into the present and examines unchanging human passions and the deep cultural shifts in the way we make sense of them.
- Hardcover October 2008
- Out of the Whirlwind
- The book of Job is a complex treatment of the problem of undeserved suffering. It is also a sustained meditation on creation, on humanity's place in creation, and on God's ordering of creation. In this study, Schifferdecker offers a close literary and theological reading of the book of Job--particularly of God's speeches at the end of the book--in order to articulate its creation theology, which is particularly pertinent in our environmentally-conscious age.
- Paperback October 2008
- Practitioners of the Divine
- “What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis.
- Paperback October 2008
- On the Donation of Constantine
- Valla (1407–1457) was the leading theorist of the Renaissance humanist movement. In On the Donation of Constantine he uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy’s claims to temporal rule, in a brilliant analysis that is often seen as marking the beginning of modern textual criticism. This volume provides a new translation with introduction and notes by Bowersock.
- Paperback September 2008
- The Power of the Buddhas
- Buddhism in medieval Korea is characterized as “State Protection Buddhism,” a religion whose primary purpose was to rally support (supernatural and popular) for and legitimate the state. This study is an attempt to specify Buddhism’s place in Koryo and to ascertain to what extent and in what areas Buddhism functioned as a state religion.
- Hardcover September 2008
- Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety
- This book represents the first continuous history of Sufism in Palestine. Covering the period between the rise of Islam and the spread of Ottoman rule and drawing on vast biographical material and complementary evidence, the book describes the social trajectory that Sufism followed.
- Paperback September 2008
- What Happened at Vatican II
- During four years in session, Vatican Council II held television audiences rapt with its elegant, magnificently choreographed public ceremonies, while its debates generated front-page news on a near-weekly basis. This book captures the drama of the council, depicting the colorful characters involved and their clashes with one another.
- Hardcover September 2008
- Christianity and the Transformation of the Book
- Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.
- Paperback September 2008
- Dreaming Across Boundaries
- This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.
- Hardcover July 2008
- Dreaming Across Boundaries
- This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.
- Paperback July 2008
- Holding Bishops Accountable
- The prevalence of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and its shocking cover-up by church officials have obscured the largely untold story of the tort system’s remarkable success in bringing the scandal to light. The lessons of clergy sexual abuse litigation give us reason to reconsider the case for tort reform and to look more closely at how tort litigation can enhance the performance of public and private policymaking institutions.
- Hardcover May 2008
- Writings on Church and Reform
- Nicholas of Cusa(1401–1464), a polymath who studied canon law and became a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance. He wrote principally on speculative theology, philosophy, and church politics. This volume makes most of Nicholas’s other writings on Church and reform available in English for the first time.
- Hardcover May 2008
- The Dalai Lama at MIT
- Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
- Paperback April 2008
- The Faithful
- Shaken by the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, and challenged from within by social and theological division, Catholics in America are at a crossroads. O’Toole tells the story of this ancient church from the perspective of ordinary Americans, the lay believers who have kept their faith despite persecution from without and clergy abuse from within.
- Hardcover April 2008
- Flesh Made Word
- In the fourth century a new narrative genre captured the imagination of the faithful—the moving accounts of the lives of Christian saints.Kleinberg argues that the saints’ stories of medieval Europe were more than edifying entertainment. By telling and retelling the story of virtue and salvation, by expanding the religious imagination of the West, they were shaping and reshaping Christianity itself.
- Hardcover April 2008
- On Zion's Mount
- On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Mt. Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning.
- Hardcover April 2008
- Emplacing a Pilgrimage
- The sacred mountain oyama (literally, “Big Mountain”) has loomed over the religious landscape of early modern Japan.Ambros provides a narrative history of the mountain and its place in contemporary society and popular religion by focusing on the development of the oyama cult and its religious, political, and socioeconomic contexts.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Islam and the Secular State
- What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Lost Soul
- Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Partisans of Allah
- Today, more than ever, jihad signifies the political opposition between Islam and the West. As the line drawn between Muslims and non-Muslims becomes more rigid, Jalal seeks to retrieve the ethical meanings of this core Islamic principle in South Asian history. Drawing on historical, legal, and literary sources, Jalal traces the intellectual itinerary of jihad through several centuries and across the territory connecting the Middle East with South Asia.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Sugata Saurabha
- The poem was composed by the greatest modern writer in Newari language, Hrdaya (1906– 1982), while he was imprisoned by the autocratic strongly pro-Hindu Rana regime that governed Nepal from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In nineteen long cantos, the Sugata Saurabha tells of the life of the Buddha, following the traditional accounts, but situates it in the strongly local context of Newar and Nepali Buddhism.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Crossing and Dwelling
- A deeply researched and vividly written study, this book depicts religion in place and in movement, dwelling and crossing. Drawing on insights from the natural and social sciences, Tweed's work is grounded in the gritty particulars of distinctive religious practices, even as it moves toward ideas about cross-cultural patterns. It offers a responsible way to think broadly about religion, a topic that is crucial for understanding the contemporary world.
- Paperback March 2008
- Faith on the Margins
- In the wake of the 1572 revolt against Spain, the new Dutch Republic outlawed Catholic worship and secularized all church property. Calvinism prevailed as the public faith, yet Catholicism experienced a resurgence in the first half of the seventeenth century, with membership rivaling that of the Calvinist church. In a wide-ranging analysis of a marginalized yet vibrant religious minority, Parker examines this remarkable revival.
- Hardcover February 2008
- The Fire Spreads
- Pentecostalism came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. With the growth of southern Pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement slipped cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different: while many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end, a growing number did so as active political conservatives.
- Hardcover January 2008
- On Religious Liberty
- Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refusal to conform to Puritan religious and social standards, Roger Williams established a haven in Rhode Island for those persecuted in the name of the religious establishment. Davis gathers together important selections from Williams's public and private writings on religious liberty, illustrating how this renegade Puritan radically reinterpreted Christian moral theology and the events of his day in a powerful argument for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.
- Hardcover January 2008 / Paperback January 2008
- An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature
- This volume is a study and edition of Bcom Idan ral gri's (1227-1305) Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od. Likely composed in the last decades of the thirteenth century, this systematic list of Buddhist Sutras, Tantras, Shastras, and related genres translated primarily from Sanskrit and other Indic languages holds an important place in the history of Buddhist literature in Tibet.
- Hardcover January 2008
- Arguing the Just War in Islam
- Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
- Hardcover November 2007
- Commentaries, Volume 2, Books III-IV
- The Renaissance popes were among the most enlightened and generous patrons of arts and letters in the Europe of their day. The diaries of Pius II give us an intimate glimpse of the life and thought of one of the greatest of the Renaissance popes. Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated translation.
- Hardcover November 2007
- Burning to Read
- Amid present-day conflagrations, this illuminating book reminds us of the sources, and profound consequences, of Christian fundamentalism in the sixteenth century. Simpson focuses on the cultural transformation in early modern England that allowed common people to read the Bible for the first time. The last wave of fundamentalist reading in the West provoked 150 years of violent upheaval; as we approach a second wave, this powerful book alerts us to our peril.
- Hardcover November 2007
See also: All Books in RELIGION.