The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion PDF Download

Author: Lewis R. Rambo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199713545
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 828

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.

Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190611529
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
The study of New Religious Movements (NRMs) is one of the fastest-growing areas of religious studies, and since the release of the first edition of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements in 2003, the field has continued to expand and break new ground. In this all-new volume, James R. Lewis and Inga B. Tøllefsen bring together established and rising scholars to address an expanded range of topics, covering traditional religious studies topics such as "scripture," "charisma," and "ritual," while also applying new theoretical approaches to NRM topics. Other chapters cover understudied topics in the field, such as the developmental patterns of NRMs and subcultural considerations in the study of NRMs. The first part of this book examines NRMs from a social-scientific perspective, particularly that of sociology. In the second section, the primary factors that have put the study of NRMs on the map, controversy and conflict, are considered. The third section investigates common themes within the field of NRMs, while the fourth examines the approaches that religious studies researchers have taken to NRMs. As NRM Studies has grown, subfields such as Esotericism, New Age Studies, and neo-Pagan Studies have grown as distinct and individual areas of study, and the final section of the book investigates these emergent fields.

Author: Roger S. Gottlieb
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195178726
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
Ecologically oriented visions of God, the Sacred, the Earth, and human beings. The proposed handbook will serve as the definitive overview of these exciting new developments. Divided into three main sections, the books essays will reflect the three dominant dimensions of the field. Part I will explore

Author: Felix Wilfred
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199329060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
"This Handbook explores the world of Asian Christianity and its manifold expressions such as worship, theology, spirituality, inter-religious relations, interventions in society, and mission"--

Author: Gerald McDermott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199708851
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Evangelical theology is a burgeoning field. Evangelicals have been growing in numbers and prominence worldwide, and the rise to academic prominence of evangelical historians, scripture scholars, ethicists, and theologians--many of whom have changed the face of their disciplines--has demonstrated the growing maturity of this movement's intellectual leaders. This volume surveys the state of the discipline on topics of greatest importance to evangelical theology. Each chapter has been written by a theologian or scholar who is widely recognized for his or her published work and is considered a leading thinker on that particular topic. The authors critically assess the state of the question, from both classical and evangelical traditions, and propose a future direction for evangelical thinking on the subject.

Author: Mark Juergensmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199759995
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description
Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. This book surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world.

Author: Philip Clayton
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks Online
ISBN: 0199279276
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1041

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Book Description
The field of `science and religion' is exploding in popularity among both academics and the reading public. This is a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to the debate, written by the leading experts yet accessible to the general reader.

Author: John Arnold
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199582130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
This volume brings together the latest scholarship on the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Christian Church between 400 and 1500 AD. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity is about the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Roman Church between 400 and 1500AD, and brings together in one volume a host of cutting-edge analysis. The book does not primarily provide a chronological narrative, but rather seeks to demonstrate the variety, change, and complexity of religion across this long period, and the numerous different ways in which modern scholarship can approach it. It presents the work of thirty academic authors, from the US, the UK, and Europe, addressing topics that range from early medieval monasticism to late medieval mysticism, from the material wealth of the Church to the spiritual exercises through which certain believers might attempt to improve their souls. Each chapter tells a story, but seeks also to ask how and why "Christianity" took on a particular shape at a particular moment, paying attention to both the spiritual and otherwordly aspects of religion, and the very material and political contexts in which they were often embedded. The book aims to be an indispensable guide to future discussion in the field--Publisher description.

Author: David Thomas Orique
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190058854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
By 2025, Latin America's population of observant Christians will be the largest in the world. Nonetheless, studies examining the exponential growth of global Christianity tend to overlook this region, focusing instead on Africa and Asia. Research on Christianity in Latin America provides a core point of departure for understanding the growth and development of Christianity in the "Global South." In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity an interdisciplinary contingent of scholars examines Latin American Christianity in all of its manifestations from the colonial to the contemporary period. The essays here provide an accessible background to understanding Christianity in Latin America. Spanning the era from indigenous and African-descendant people's conversion to and transformation of Catholicism during the colonial period through the advent of Liberation Theology in the 1960s and conversion to Pentecostalism and Charismatic Catholicism, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity is the most complete introduction to the history and trajectory of this important area of modern Christianity.

Author: Heinz Streib
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN: 3647604399
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from religious orientations because these have much in common with conversion. Termination of membership may eventually be the final step of deconversion, but it involves biographical and psychological dynamics which can and need to be reconstructed by qualitative approaches and analyzed by quantitative instruments.In the Bielefeld-based Cross-Cultural Study on Deconversion disengagement processes from a variety of religious backgrounds in the USA and in Germany were examined, ranging from well-established religious organizations to new religious and fundamentalist groups. Nearly 1,200 persons participated in thestudy and were interviewed from 2002 to 2005. In the focus of the study are 100 deconverts from the USA and from Germany who were examined with narrative interviews, faith development interviews and an extensive questionnaire. For case study elaboration, the study followed a research design with an innovative triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data. Four chapters, corresponding to four types of deconversion, present 21 case studies. The highlights of the research project are new data on spirituality – the deconverts in particular appear to prefer a »more spiritual than religious« self-identification – and in-depth analyses of a variety of deconversion narratives with special focus on personality factors, motivation, attitudes, religious development, psychological well-being and growth, religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. The results of this project which was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft are of special relevance for counselling and pastoral care, for religious education and for people concerned with administration and management of religious groups and churches, but also for a wider audience interested in contemporary changes in the religious fields in the USA and Germany.