Steve Bruce explores Scotland's transformation from the largely devout Presbyterian country of 1900, with the church as a major social force, to the diverse, more secular society of today, when less ...than 10 per cent of Scots attend church. He bases his study on a career's worth of historical, ethnographic and statistical research, to provide both a coherent description of Scotland's current religious complexion and a considered explanation of the forces that shaped it. Scottish Gods is both a fascinating summary of over a century of religious and cultural change, and a searing analysis of the state of religion in Scotland today by one of our leading social historians.
Letters from heaven Himka, John-Paul; Zayarnyuk, Andriy
Letters from heaven,
c2006, 20061201, 2006, 2014, 2006-01-01, 20060101
eBook
Letters from Heavenfeatures an international group of scholars investigating the place and function of 'popular' religion in Eastern Slavic cultures. The contributors examine popular religious ...practices in Russia and Ukraine from the middle ages to the present, considering the cultural contexts of death rituals, miracles, sin and virtue, cults of the saints, and icons. The collection not only fills a void in religious scholarship, but also responds to current theoretical challenges.
Reflecting critically on the heuristic value of popular religion and on the concept of popular culture in general,Letters from Heavenis characterized by a shift of focus from churches, institutions, and theological discourse to the religious practices themselves and their interconnections with the culture, mentality, and social structures of the societies in question. An important contribution to the fields of religion and Eastern Slavic studies, this volume challenges readers to rethink old pieties and to reconsider the function of religion.
Ghosts of Futures Pastguides readers through the uncanny world of nineteenth-century American spiritualism. More than an occult parlor game, this was a new religion, which channeled the voices of the ...dead, linked present with past, and conjured new worldly and otherworldly futures. Tracing the persistence of magic in an emergent culture of secularism, Molly McGarry brings a once marginalized practice to the center of American cultural history. Spiritualism provided an alchemical combination of science and magic that called into question the very categories of male and female, material and immaterial, self and other, living and dead. Dissolving the boundaries between them opened Spiritualist practitioners to other voices and, in turn, allowed them to imagine new social worlds and forge diverse political affinities.
“Today on Oprah,” intoned the TV announcer, and all over America viewers tuned in to learn, empathize, and celebrate. In this book, Kathryn Lofton investigates the Oprah phenomenon and finds in ...Winfrey’s empire—Harpo Productions, O Magazine, and her new television network—an uncanny reflection of religion in modern society. Lofton shows that when Oprah liked, needed, or believed something, she offered her audience nothing less than spiritual revolution, reinforced by practices that fuse consumer behavior, celebrity ambition, and religious idiom. In short, Oprah Winfrey is a media messiah for a secular age. Lofton’s unique approach also situates the Oprah enterprise culturally, illuminating how Winfrey reflects and continues historical patterns of American religions.
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of America's history. Currently, about 40 percent of the nation's annual population ...growth comes from the influx of foreign-born individuals and their children. As these new voices enter America's public conversations, they bring with them a new level of religious diversity to a society that has always been marked by religious variety.Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement takes an in-depth look at one particular urban areaùthe Chicago metropolitan regionùand examines how religion affects the civic engagement of the nation's newest residents. Based on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive interviewing at sixteen immigrant congregations, the authors argue that not only must careful attention be paid to ethnic, racial, class, and other social variations within and among groups but that religious differences within and between immigrant faiths are equally important for a more sophisticated understanding of religious diversity and its impact on civic life. Chapters focus on important religious factors, including sectarianism, moral authority, and moral projects; on several areas of social life, including economics, education, marriage, and language, where religion impacts civic engagement; and on how notions of citizenship and community are influenced by sacred assemblies.
This volume brings together some of the most exciting current scholarship on these themes. This interdisciplinary and geographically broad-ranging volume pays tribute to the ground-breaking work of ...Charles Zika.
In the nineteenth century, a fascination with the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints made Mormons and Mormonism a common
trope in French journalism, art, literature, politics, and popular
...culture. Heather Belnap, Corry Cropper, and Daryl Lee bring to
light French representations of Mormonism from the 1830s to 1914,
arguing that these portrayals often critiqued and parodied French
society. Mormonism became a pretext for reconsidering issues such
as gender, colonialism, the family, and church-state relations
while providing artists and authors with a means for working
through the possibilities of their own evolving national identity.
Surprising and innovative, Marianne Meets the Mormons
looks at how nineteenth-century French observers engaged with the
idea of Mormonism in order to reframe their own cultural
preoccupations.
A significant collection of essays by leading scholars on the vital decade of the 1670s in Britain, Ireland, and North America. This was a period of profound tension and uncertainty which saw the ...breakdown of the political, religious and cultural settlement reached in 1660 with the return of the monarch after Oliver Cromwell’s republic, and the emergence of strange new issues such as religious toleration, England’s role in a newly threatening Europe and the emergence of a real public opinion expressed in the press and politicised conversation.
After more than 450 years of European intrusions into South America's rainforest, small groups of people across Europe now gather discreetly to participate in Amazonian ceremonies their local ...governments consider a criminal act. As devotees of a new Brazil-based religion called Santo Daime, they claim that they contact God by way of ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive beverage first developed by native communities in pre-Columbian Amazonia. This bitter, brown liquid is a synergy of plants containing DMT, a mind-altering chemical classified as an illicit "hallucinogen" in most countries. By contrast, Santo Daime members ( daimistas ) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism, indigenous shamanism, Afro-Brazilian spiritualism, and Western esotericism. The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, now known as Mestre (Master) Irineu. Presenting results from more than a year of fieldwork with Santo Daime groups in Europe, Marc G. Blainey contributes new understandings of contemporary Westerners' search for existential well-being on an increasingly interconnected planet. As a thorough exploration of daimistas' beliefs about the therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca, this book takes readers on an ethnographic journey into the deepest recesses of the human psyche.
