Showing titles in Sociology

Everybody seems to take it for granted that the world is getting more secular - that faith is doomed by modernity. Scientists, secularists, and atheists applaud the change; religious believers lament it. But here's the thing: They're all wrong, and acclaimed author Rodney Stark has the numbers to prove it. The Triumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion.

As the author of many classic works on science and philosophy, Richard Dawkins has always asserted the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm it has inflicted on society. He now focuses his fierce intellect exclusively on this subject, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.

Do you want the greatest political and societal challenges of the day to be addressed with thoughtful, reality-based solutions rather than with cherry-picked quotations from scripture? Do you want to shrink religion - especially fundamentalist religion - to the point that it plays no noticeable role in public life? Do you want right-wing religious leaders to be so unpopular that politicians avoid them rather than pander to them for endorsements? This book illustrates specific, actionable steps for facilitating fundamentalist religion's decline.

Drawing on his years of reporting, Jenkins examines the reemergence of progressive faith-based activism, detailing its origins and contrasting its goals with those of the religious right. Today’s rapidly expanding interfaith coalition - which includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other faiths - has become a force within the larger “resistance” movement. Jenkins profiles Washington political insiders as well as a new generation of progressive faith leaders at the forefront today.

Thirty years ago, "mindfulness" was a Buddhist principle mostly obscure to the west. Today, it is a popular cure-all for Americans' daily problems. A massive and lucrative industry promotes mindfulness in every aspect of life, however mundane or unlikely: Americans of various faiths (or none at all) practice mindful eating, mindful sex, mindful parenting, mindfulness in the office, mindful sports, mindfulness-based stress relief and addiction recovery, and hire mindful divorce lawyers.

Through in-depth conversations with spiritually fluid people, renowned scholar Duane Bidwell explores how people come to claim and be claimed by multiple religious traditions, how spiritually fluid people engage radically opposed truth claims, and what this growing population tells us about change within our communities.

Uncensored grace is what you get from a loving God when all the religious types have gone home, and every last hope for your own effort has ended. What comes to mind first when you think Las Vegas? Maybe glitz and glam. Or dealers and dancers, high rollers and hell raisers. And why not? After all, the town they call Sin City is an American icon, an anything-goes shrine to pleasure, money, sex-and another lucky roll of the dice.

The #MeToo movement has revealed sexual abuse and assault in every sphere of society, including the church. But victims are routinely ignored by fellow Christians who deny their accounts and fail to bring accountability to the perpetrators. All too often, churches have been complicit in protecting abusers, reinforcing patriarchal power dynamics, and creating cultures of secrecy, shame, and silence.

Max Weber gilt als Mitbegründer der Disziplin der Soziologie. Sein Werk "Die protestantische Ethik" war wegweisend, da zum ersten Mal versucht wurde, die ökonomischen Triebkräfte der Religionen zu analysieren. Ein faszinierendes Stück Zeitgeschichte, noch heute!

Italian shoes, a house in the hills, a gift for stretching the truth, and a petulant assistant to pick the scallions out of his Szechuan noodles - Hollywood producer Davis Mizlansky has it all. But he's about to lose it to the IRS unless he can pull off one more deal. A stellar cast performs this hilarious send-up of modern-day Hollywood.

The Danish-Mormon migration to Utah in the 19th century was, relative to population size, one of the largest European religious out-migrations in history. Hundreds of thousands of Americans can trace their ancestry to Danish Mormons, but few know about the social and cultural ramifications of their ancestors’ conversion to Mormonism. This book tells that exciting and complex story for the first time.

Millionen Muslime leben unter uns, doch wir wissen fast nichts über sie. Wie viele Muslime gibt es eigentlich in Deutschland und wie und wo gehen sie ihrem Glauben nach? Constantin Schreiber hat sich dafür auf die Suche gemacht und liefert den ersten deutschen Moschee-Report: Wo gibt es überall Moscheen und was predigen Imame beim Freitagsgebet? Wie wird über Deutschland gesprochen, wenn keine Kamera dabei ist und man sich unbeobachtet fühlt?

From jewelry to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as “new age” or “spiritual,” they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world. In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people’s lives.

Known in the Dominican Republic and Togo as Vodu, in Benin as Vodún, and in Haiti as Vodou, West African religion has, for hundreds of years, served as a repository of sacred knowledge while simultaneously evolving in response to human experience and globalization. Spirit Service: Vodún and Vodou in the African Atlantic World explores this dynamic religion, its mobility, and its place in the modern world.

The idea of the United States as a Christian nation is a powerful, seductive, and potentially destructive theme in American life, culture, and politics. Many fundamentalist and evangelical leaders routinely promote this notion, and millions of Americans simply assume the Christian character of the United States.

Ever since evangelical Christians rose to national prominence, mainstream America has tracked their every move with a nervous eye. But in spite of this vigilance, our understanding hasn't gone beyond the caricatures. Who are evangelicals, really? What are they like in private, and what do they want? Is it possible that beneath the differences in culture and language, church and party, we might share with them some common purpose?

We live in a world of oppositional relationships and increasing in-group/out-group divisions. Christian sociologist Matthew Vos explains how the problem of the stranger lies at the root of many problems humanity faces, such as racism, sexism, and nationalism. He applies classic sociological theory on "the stranger" to matters of faith and social justice, showing that an identity in Christ frees us to love strangers as neighbors and friends. The book also includes two guest chapters, one on intersex persons and the church and one on stranger-making in the "correctional" system.

How should Christians think and act with respect to guns and gun ownership? God and Guns in America provides a thoughtful, measured, robust, and articulate biblical treatment of an issue that is too often treated with more heat than light. Ethicist Michael Austin ultimately defends the view - from a Christian but non-pacifist perspective - that (1) the right to own and use a gun is a conditional right, (2) using a gun to harm another person is only morally permissible as a last resort, and (3) more legal restrictions are needed in the United States.

Seen as godless by the religious and weak by the atheists, secularism mostly has been misunderstood. In How to Be Secular, Berlinerblau argues for a return to America’s hard-won secular tradition; the best way to protect religious diversity and freedom lies in keeping an eye on the encroachment of each into the other. Berlinerblau passionately defends the virtues of secularism, reminds us what it is and what it can protect, and urges us to mobilize around its cause, which is for all Americans to continue to enjoy freedom for - and from - religion.

People are constantly judged for their sexual choices, their frequency of sexual activity, their selection of partners, and their decisions regarding birth control, and much of this judgment stems from the element of culture perhaps most preoccupied with sex: religion. Focusing principally on Christianity, What the Bible Really Does (and Doesn't Say) about Sex examines the arguments religious moralizers and sanctimonious politicians make to condone or condemn certain sexual practices and lifestyles.