Focusing on the nineteenth-century colonial frontiers, the book explores how European and indigenous perspectives shaped the concepts of "religion" and "religions." Through the interactions of travelers, missionaries, settlers, and government agents, it analyzes the comparative discourse on alternative religious practices and the notion of "otherness." David Chidester argues that the frameworks established during these intercultural encounters continue to influence contemporary understandings of religion.
Presents the history of Christianity from its beginnings as a persecuted cult.
This book features a new and ambitious concept in presenting Christian
history. schovat popis
Explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in places such
as: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric
of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market.
Tracing Christianity's evolution from Jesus to the third millennium, this work reveals the religion's rich diversity through the lives of heretics, saints, witches, and healers. The author delves into the major streams of Christian thought and practice, highlighting the Church's cultural history and its global impact. The narrative is enhanced by engaging character sketches and historical vignettes, offering a compelling and accessible exploration of Christianity's complex legacy.
The book offers a comprehensive examination of South Africa's religious diversity, presenting a cohesive narrative that includes African traditional religions, the impact of Christian missions, and African innovations in the nineteenth century. This reissue serves as a valuable resource for students across various disciplines, including religious studies, South African history, anthropology, sociology, and political studies, making it an essential introduction to the subject.
Material Dynamics is a lively resource for thinking about religious materiality and the material study of religion. Deconstructing and reconstructing religion as material categories, social formations, and mobile circulations, the book explores the making, ordering, and circulating of religious things. The book is divided into three Part One revitalizes basic categories—animism and sacred, space and time—by situating them in their material production and testing their analytical viability. Part Two examines religious formations as configurations of power that operate in material cultures and cultural economies and are most clearly shown in the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. Part Three explores the material dynamics of circulation through case studies of religious mobility, change, and diffusion as intimate as the body and as vast as the oceans. Each chapter offers insightful orientations and surprising possibilities for studying material religion. Exploring the material dynamics of religion from poetics to politics, David Chidester provides an entry into the study of material religion that will be welcomed by students and specialists in religious studies, anthropology, and history.
What is the role of religion in society? In the wake of September 11, public intellectuals provided easy answers. According to some, religion was the problem, others commentated, religion was the solution. Generally, public debate about the force of religion in society has been organized by either/or propositions. Religion is a force for either freedom or bondage, for either peace or war, for either mutual recognition or antagonistic polarization. Analysis of religion and social change has also tended to be framed in terms of oppositions that inform research agendas and public policy. In this book, authors from South Africa, the United States of America, the Netherlands, and Germany text these oppositions.
Provides the first comparative study of the many and varied religions of South Africa, locating religion in the context of the political, social and economic history of the region, and exploring the religious creativity of its people.
