Explores the dangers of ultrafundamentalist cults by presenting selected case histories, by explaining the significance of the central tendencies of ultrafundamentalism, and by suggesting why such groups are flourishing in this particular society.
Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today's India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and ......
Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today's India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and ......
Combines the findings of split-brain research and the mind's symbolic processes to examine the implications for understanding subjective experience of the religious and the sacred.
In an age of "political correctness", Christmas has become a controversial holiday. Each year brings court battles over heated school board meetings in the public schools. This book traces this dispute as far back as the fourth century, when Catholic orthodoxy turned Christmas into a major propaganda tool and a religious observance.
The United States is witnessing a rise in the religiously unaffiliated. Participation in traditional religious settings is in decline. But everyone inhabits a location relative to religion, whether or not they practice or identify with a religious tradition. People engage in religious encounters and relationships in myriad ways, and their ......
The structure of society--whether political, social, economic, religious, or familial--can be described as built upon structures of acceptable blame. But what happens when we can no longer persuade each other about where blame for particular actions should land? What happens when the expected scapegoats refuse that role and bystanders question ......
Moral Reasoning, Religious Hope, and National Security
Revolutions and aborted revolutions and bitter civil and 'local' wars in the 1980s and since have raised new questions about national security, its definition, and its implementation. This title asks the fundamental and perduring questions of pacifism, war, intervention, and political negotiation.
