Showing results by publisher "Highbridge Audio" in Religious Studies

The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.

Despite considerable press coverage and a lengthy trial, the full story of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has remained largely untold. Only one man can reveal the whole, astounding truth: Sam Brower, the private investigator who devoted years of his life to breaking open the secret practices of the FLDS and bringing Warren Jeffs and his inner circle to justice.

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.

We know a great deal about Muhammad—or so it seems. Islamic tradition contains an astonishing wealth of information about the founding figure of the Islamic faith, and most historians take for granted that this material is generally reliable. In his latest book, historian and Islamic scholar Robert Spencer shows that there is no agreement in the earliest Islamic sources about the most fundamental details of this towering figure's life. Muhammad takes a detailed look at the Islamic traditions regarding Muhammad and lays bare their contradictions, inconsistencies, and incoherence.

Most people encounter disability at some point in their lives, either in their own bodies or through a friend or loved one. Faith leaders, sacred texts, and members of religious communities frequently offer religious teachings and metaphors as explanation for the presence of disability, but rarely do we hear the voices of people living with disabilities reflecting on their experiences of God, faith, or religious life.

As a trained body worker, Emily Francis offers a refreshing perspective into healing trauma. She reveals unique knowledge of the body as a holder for memory. Emily will lead you on a path deep within yourself to rearrange the ways that pain and trauma have been holding you back from whole body, mind, spirit, and energy healing. You will rearrange the dialogue within your body memory systems as well as learn a practice to rebirth by healing your inner child and adolescent selves, coming into the present to create the best adult self possible.

Embracing Exile analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studies of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions. It offers revised readings of the Bible's book of Esther, a survey of Talmudic treatments of exile, an in-depth analysis of the thought of the Maharal of Prague, as well as the work of Philip Roth, among other modern authors. David Kraemer shows that Diaspora Jews through the ages insisted that God joined them in their exiles and that, as citizens of the world, Jews could only live throughout the world.

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the role that White Christian Nationalism plays in American society. As White Christian Nationalism has become a major force, and as racial and religious attitudes become increasingly aligned among whites-for example, the more likely you are to say that the decline of white people as a share of the population is "bad for society," the more likely you are to believe the government should support religious values-it has become reasonable to wonder which of the adjectives in the phrase "White Christian Nationalism" takes precedence.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

In his reflections on God, Jesus, suffering, and liberation, James H. Cone relates the gospel message to the experience of the Black community. But a wider theme of the book is the role that social and historical context plays in framing the questions we address to God as well as the mode of the answers provided.

Daniel M. Jones founded the Church of Jediism in 2007 following the Jedi Census phenomenon of 2001; it now has over 500,000 members around the world. This is the book his fans have been waiting for. In it, Daniel outlines the Jedi perspective and provides practical tools for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how to use the Force in everyday life.

Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. The pig has become a symbol for people to signal their Jewishness, non-Jewishness, or rebellion from Judaism. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, to Shakespeare's writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism.

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.

The modern world faces religious, spiritual, and existential quandaries, as new technologies redefine the beginnings and ends of life. Excruciating choices arise about when to turn off the machines—whether and when we should "play God." The COVID-19 pandemic made these dilemmas ever more acute. Increasingly, however, public discourse on religion and spirituality is polarized, with evangelicals on one side and vehement atheists on the other.

The history of the Episcopal Church is intimately bound up with the history of empire. The two grew in tandem in the modern era, and as they grew they developed particular ideologies and practices around race. As slavery was carried over into the new political formations of the United States, so too were racially based exclusions carried over in the Episcopal Church. Mission, Race, and Empire presents a new history of the Episcopal Church from its origins in the early British Empire up to the present, told through the lenses of empire and race.

During the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chicanery, and Catholicism as repugnant superstition. By the mid-eighteenth century, they would describe amicable debates between evangelical missionaries and Algonquian religious leaders about the moral appeal of Christianity, recount learned conversations between English merchants and Muslim scholars, and tell of encounters with hospitable and sincere priests in Catholic Canada and Europe. What explains this poignant shift?

The Protestant conviction that believers would rise again, in bodily form, after death, shaped their attitudes towards personal and religious identity, community, empire, progress, race, and the environment. In To Walk the Earth Again, Christopher Trigg explores the political dimension of Anglo-American Protestant writing about the future resurrection of the dead, examining texts written between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.

Through Caubriere's experience, At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Chinese people at social and cultural margins during this period. A wealth of primary sources and family letters illuminate vital issues in modern Chinese history, such as the transformation of local society, mass migration and religion, tensions between church and state, and the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in everyday life in Chinese Catholic communities.

The Baby Boomers studied here, living in the UK and Canada, were the last generation to have been routinely baptized and taken regularly to mainstream, Anglican churches. So, what went wrong—or, perhaps, right? This study, based on in-depth interviews, is the first to offer a sociological account of the sudden transition from religious parents to non-religious children and grandchildren, focusing exclusively on this generation of ex-Anglican Boomers.