Islam, Peace and Social Justice examines the ways in which Islamic cultures have dealt with issues of social justice historically and culturally. With unwavering objectivity, the author helps readers of any faith to gain a nuanced and accurate understanding of the challenges that we face in contemporary multifaith engagements. Dr van Gorder offers a comprehensive and sympathetic Christian insight into Islam. The contentious issues of social justice that are encountered in this broad, yet intricate, studyinclude the concept of Jihad, poverty, political oppression, human rights, genocide, racism, sexual injustice, homophobia, and environmental degradation. The challenges are real and the problems are vast; partnerships and solutions must be found - peopleof faith, Muslim, Jewish and Christian, must find ways to work together to address these shared challenges. This work exposes misrepresentations and stereotypes about Islamic views of social justice that abound in Europe and North America. The author encourages a deeper appreciation of how themes of social justice resound through Islamic texts and have been expressed both in the contemporary and historical life of various and diverse Islamic communities worldwide.
This book focuses on the history of Christianity in Persia and the present-day relationship that Muslims in Iran have taken toward people of other faith traditions. The book provides a comprehensive and readable introduction to a fascinating history with important contemporary ramifications for interfaith and intercultural studies.
The author examines the logical structure of religious inquiry and discourse and the various meanings of religious utterances, and then develops principles of judgment and types of argument by which claims can be supported or challenged. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
“These essays advance the understanding of Eastern Orthodox spiritual practices from a religious studies perspective.”—Reading Religion How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? In this book, Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in the age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. “Precisely by looking at so varied a group of locations home to Orthodox practice, this book conveys the fragility―and durability―of traditional religion in a postmodern, secular age.”—Nadieszda Kizenko, author of A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People
A classic twentieth-century work in the anthropology of Catholicism Person and God in a Spanish Valley is a moving portrait of how individuals and communities in a remote, mountainous valley of northern Spain relate to the divine. In the late 1960s, anthropologist and historian William A. Christian, Jr., conducted groundbreaking fieldwork in the Nansa Valley, one of the most devout regions of Spain. With sensitivity and uncommon insight, Christian describes the complex system of shrines, devotions, and pilgrimages that existed in the region for centuries, and recounts the disruption of the valley’s traditional way of life as young priests from urban centers arrived carrying a more modern, Vatican II version of Catholicism. Person and God in a Spanish Valley places Catholic faith and practice within a broader history of agrarian politics and reform in northern Spain, and stands as a landmark work of modern anthropology.
This book is written to glorify God and to help people walk closer to the Lord and become Kingdom laborers. It gives insight about practical reasons for implementing our Christian faith in our day-to-day lives. The book is written for all levels of faith from non-believers to mature Christians. It looks at why our American culture has moved from a God-fearing nation to a secular one. It also discusses relevant topics and issues in the church, in our culture, and in individual lives. The primary focus is helping Christians to see things from Gods perspective, to walk closer to the Lord, and to have an active faith. It will also help readers understand that God has a relationship with nations as well as individuals. We must pray, read, and meditate on Gods ways in the Holy Bible to develop a more personal and intimate relationship with the Lord.
Rabbi Gordon Fuller and Dr. Christian van Gorder are committed to helping people of both faith traditions gain, as far as is possible, a participant’s appreciation of those from the other community. This means addressing misconceptions and misrepresentations as well as challenging widely held assumptions. Jews and Christians Together delves into the strained relationship between these two faith communities and exposes why these communities need to come to a better understanding and appreciation of the other. Events such as the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania demonstrate why society must address and foil anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism wherever and whenever such views appear. The efforts of Fuller and van Gorder to explore these issues with their own faith communities can provide a helpful starting-point to confront trends of increasing hate and bigotry towards Jews today. Fuller and van Gorder ask us to acknowledge the marred history of Christianity and anti-Semitism, so that we can explore healthy Jewish-Christian dialogue and gain a shared and constructive mutual respect.
Why are religious visions believed only in certain times and places? In this book William Christian investi gates the settings and responses to a series of group visions reported by Spaniards in rural Galicia, Valencia, Cantabria, and Navarre in the early part of this century the most notable one involving the crucifix at Limpias, where Jesus was first seen agonizing on the cross during a mission service in March of 1919. In light of the social strife and strong anticlerical movements of the period, the author examines how gender and religious politics influenced the experiences of seers and the interpretation of their visions by church officials, journalists, and the public. Christian approaches the story inductively, from the visionaries and the parish to the religious orders, diocesan officials, and Vatican envoys. He places the events in the context of mission dramaturgy and pilgrimages to Lourdes, and shows their ramifications in Italy, Mexico, the United States, France, and Central Europe. Using oral testimony, church archives, local newspaper accounts, and apologetic literature, Christian finds that some observers related the moving crucifixes to a logical, millenarian sequence that included earlier apparitions in France; for others they were divine reactions to national political events; while for many local people they were signs for the establishment of new shrines. His study reveals the preoccupations of ordinary people and how they found expression in religious images. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
No matter how good a spectacle, we are condemned to miss what is next to, around, and in us. It is not enough to “understand” about God. Instead, let yourself experience God through poetry. In Theology in Poetry, author A. Christian offers a collection of poetry and prose, presenting a Christian reflection on theology itself. Through the selections, the author asks the questions: What do we know of God? Or perhaps, what do we think we know of God? A. Christian seeks to explore the things we cannot quite grasp by utilizing poetry and short stories in a way that offers something to our souls, and our hearts, and our stubborn skulls.
This study addresses the relation of people to divine beings in contemporary and historical communities, as exemplified in three strands. One is a long tradition of visions of mysterious wayfarers in rural Spain who bring otherworldly news and help, including recent examples. Another treats the seeming vivification of religious images—statues, paintings, engravings, and photographs apparently exuding blood, sweat and tears in Spanish homes and churches in the early modern period and the revival of the phenomenon throughout Europe in the twentieth century. Of special interest is the third strand of the book: the transposition of medieval and early modern representations of the relations between humans and the divine into the modern art of photography. Christian presents a pictorial examination of the phenomenon with a large number of religious images, commercial postcards and family photographs from the first half of past century Europe.
Sarah is a sweet little girl who loves her family very much. All her days are filled with learning, fun, and lots of exciting activities! Sarah plays with her toys, dresses up in red shoes and a yellow dress, plays the piano, draws, and paints. Sarah is very busy! As snow begins to fall, Sarah ice skates with her brother, builds a snowman, plays with her friends, and sleds down hills. Now, Sarah is tired. She heads home with her daddy, gets ready for bed, and reads a bedtime storybut soon it will be morning, and Sarah gets to start all over again! In this childrens book, one special little girl shares a glimpse into her daily activities as she celebrates a joyful life, love of family, and friendship.
Christ's Law, not man's will guide you in studying God's Word and gaining understanding of the Scripture that lies within the verses. You will have a better understanding of forming a relationship with your Almighty Creator, maintaining that relationship and building it stronger through continued Christian growth. You will know what it is to walk a Christian journey and why it is an important part of your faith. This title also informs you of three different translation methods that are used in today's bibles and which methods are used in some of the more popular bible translations. You will learn also of a good number of worldly traditions which are believed to be of God's Law for salvation, which are very widely taught in many of today's denominations. You will also know the truth about what God's Word says about these traditional beliefs. Christ's Law, not man's takes you through a step by step walk in confessing Christ to be your Lord and Savior and also gives you important knowledge to help you not be misled by the law of man which doesn't coincide with the Law of Christ
Many may think that 1917 and 2017 do not have much in common. Though times have changed, what is essential often stays the same. These memoirs are a thrilling narrative of Alphonso A. Christian I, a barefoot boy in the most remote and undeveloped district of the United States Virgin Islands. He never had the opportunity to attend a university. He defied the odds to rise to be a judge, a commissioner, and an executive secretary of the Virgin Islands Legislature, one of the most influential United States Virgin Islands legislature positions. Alphonso A. Christian I is one of the very few who served in all three branches of government. A Renaissance man, an autodidact polymath, he taught himself three languages, never forgetting to stand grounded in family by caring for his wife and six children. Chapter after chapter allows Alphonso, through his life experiences, to tell a local story affected to its core by national and at times, international life-changing events. He catches your attention. Judge Alphonso A. Christian I's vignettes of his early childhood in Frederiksted, Saint Croix; his relocation to Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas; his job experiences, his family life, and his public life for seventy-five (75) of his almost ninety (90) years of existence on this earth is actual proof that every obstacle has an opportunity built in. Some walls do not need to be torn down. They need to be demolished to see the opening on the other side. Without the obstacles and the walls he encountered, he would not have realized the inner strength he so vividly describes and the determination to be true to himself. Regardless of age, race, nationality, socioeconomic status, or geographic location, every reader will be enlightened by Judge Christian's memoirs. It is a story--a testament--that you should never give up on yourself no matter what confronts you. End.
In 1917, the year the United States entered the Great War, Colonel Moorhead C. Kennedy, one of the most powerful men in the state of Pennsylvania and now the Deputy Director General of Transportation for the American Expeditionary Force, asked his African American valet if he would like to accompany him on an overseas mission. The valet's reaction was "Yes, sir." And he, as he recounted years later, "at once had visions of France." So began Royal Christian's odyssey in Europe. After a tumultuous crossing of the Atlantic as a third class steward on board a British steamship, he survived London's aerial bombing and then celebrated the end of the war in that city's streets. At last, he reached the long anticipated Paris, where he could admire the Eiffel Tower and the astonishing windows of Notre Dame. Royal Christian chronicled his extraordinary experiences in a memoir, Roy's Trip to the Battlefields of Europe, that was privately published in 1919. Rich in historical details, cultural observations, and political reflections, this book is a vital testimony to the history of African American men participating in World War I. After almost a century, Pellom McDaniels III has unearthed this gem, providing an elegantly annotated edition of Christian's memoir. Porter, Steward, Citizen nods both directly and indirectly to the challenges that African Americans encountered in their efforts to serve the cause of freedom and democracy, even as they were denied access to those rights by Jim Crow laws at home. Christian's unique story vividly illustrates how the war helped African American men claim a sense of manhood tied to their military service, and their efforts to transform themselves and their families into full-fledged American citizens. While race often served as a barrier in the army, this book suggests that some black men managed to take advantage of their outsider-within status and thrive: elevating not only themselves but also their community within a society that maintained a deep and abiding attachment to the myth of white supremacy.
Buddhism and Christianity are ancient, rich, and multivalent wisdom spirituality traditions that often have insightful similarities as well as distinct perspectives from entirely different starting points. Fragrant Rivers of Wisdom explores some of these paths and encourages readers to gain, as far as is possible, a participant’s appreciation of another faith. This book aims to help readers celebrate and enjoy the rich wisdom legacies of a teacher revealing a pure lotus blossoming from mud and the legacies of a peasant Jewish carpenter from Galilee revealing love on a cross. Both teachers share the power of love, the joys of healing encouragement, and the creative resources of spirit-filled living. Their ancient words and their modern communities still following these paths are dynamically relevant for our modern context of confusion and challenge.
It's the happiest time of the year in a small town in the USA--Ripon, California. Its annual Almond Blossom Festival offers a carnival, a parade, bake sales, farm shows, spaghetti feeds, and fashion shows among many other festivities. However, tragedy is around the corner. Life in Ripon will be impacted forever, and the lives of several citizens teeter between life and death. Forced to face the hypocrisy that is evident in their very lives, will they be able to recognize the error of their ways and resolve to reach out to the only one who can save them? As the FBI, the police, and the town search for answers and the one responsible, only wise old Christeson seems to have the answers. .
Jesus promised, "I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world." Should it surprise us that Jesus would make it to the Three Rivers City and live among us, in word, spirit and truth? And, the gospels tell us, 'He went about everywhere doing good.' - that means in your home town, too. A.Christian van Gorder takes the "cookies" of faith and puts them on a shelf where anyone can reach them and delight in their sweetness.
This is the story of one woman’s walk through life and how she found Jesus as her savior and the things that He has taught her. It is very relevant to the times we live in and what is going on in the world today.
Take a journey, if you will, a look into the life of a young man who woke up one morning with a state of discontent he could not avoid. Once upon a time, he felt secure in a world of career longevity, abundant income, being loved by family and friends surrounding him; then unexpectedly, something invaded his territory. He realized that he was not happy and truly did not know himself. Behind the façade that all was well, there existed only a shell of a man. On the surface, he appeared at peace and to have everything he wanted; however, inside he reached an absence of fulfillment. That particular morning, he awakened to the self-examining question: “How did I get here?” Others have become familiar with the same question, especially after accelerating before the traffic light turns green. Is this a point at which you’ve arrived in your life? Take a journey then, if you will, into this life of a man who would not settle for emptiness. He did not like where he was, and in that moment of being still, he finally sensed an incomparable tap on his shoulder. He discovered that the source of life was trying to get his attention. As you open and accept this invitation into an account of one’s life transformation, it is my hope that you too will discover something positively life changing. Let what has been written and left for you serve as a road map—from first page to last page—of finding answers to this life’s big questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What now? I offer you these poetic entries of one man’s journey in hope that they encourage many to stand up and live. Breathe God in, breathe God out.
This book is an expanded, larger-format, and more highly illustrated version of a smaller book released by CEU Press in 2011. It presents and comments on an extensive set of religious and personal photographs and illustrations that depict people along with divine beings or absent loved ones. First, Christian examines the periodic appearances of Christ-like strangers in the Spanish countryside through the vision of a woman in La Mancha in 1931. Then he considers the long history of images with liquids on them not only for early modern Spain, but also in the United States, Italy and France in the 1940s and 1950s. The third and most extensive chapter addresses the iconography of illustrated depictions of divine and spirit beings in conjunction with humans and how its conventions were incorporated into commercial postcards and personal photographs, culminating in photo montages of families and their absent soldiers in World War I. The fourth theme is new to this edition. It compares the electric moments in Spanish communities when people ritually come into physical contact with saints and with animals, or transform themselves into saints or animals for ritual purposes. Over 50 of the color photographs by Spain's preeminent documentary photographer, Cristina García Rodero, are included.
This book explores issues of cultural tension that affect Muslim and Christian interaction within the Central Asian context. It looks at the ways that Christians have interacted with Central Asian Muslims in the past, and discusses what might need to be done to improve Muslim-Christian relations in the region in the present and future. Since the time that Nestorian Christian missionaries traveled eastward from Asia Minor along the Silk Road, and Islamic cultures came to the region in the 7thcentury, Christians and Muslims have shared a unique relationship in a fascinating cultural milieu. Under the reigns of various conquerors, Czars, Soviets and modern nationalist strong-men, the ever changing political and economic situation of these former Soviet Republics has dramatically affected the ways that Muslims and Christians have practiced their faith. Today, as Muslims and Christians work to stabilize their interactions, they face new challenges because of the activities of Protestant Christian and Islamist missionaries who are flooding into Central Asia as never before. The book corrects common misunderstandings of Central Asia as a cultural backwater, and is a valuable introduction to Muslim and Christian interactions in one of the most quickly changing regions of the globe. It will appeal to readers interested in Muslim-Christian interaction, and for researchers in the field of World Religions, Central Asian Studies and Intercultural Studies.
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