Harvard University Press - RELIGION

The Islamic Marriage Contract

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Asifa Quraishi
Edited by Frank E. Vogel
It is often said that marriage in Islamic law is a civil contract, not a sacrament. This volume collects papers from many disciplines examining the Muslim marriage contract. Articles cover doctrines as to marriage contracts (e.g., may a wife stipulate monogamy?); historical instances; comparisons with Jewish and canon law; contemporary legal and social practice; and projects of activists for women worldwide.
Hardcover June 2008

Practitioners of the Divine

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Beate Dignas
Kai Trampedach
“What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis.
Paperback June 2008

Holding Bishops Accountable

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Timothy D. Lytton
The prevalence of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and its shocking cover-up by church officials have obscured the largely untold story of the tort system’s remarkable success in bringing the scandal to light. The lessons of clergy sexual abuse litigation give us reason to reconsider the case for tort reform and to look more closely at how tort litigation can enhance the performance of public and private policymaking institutions.
Hardcover May 2008

Out of the Whirlwind

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Kathryn Schifferdecker
The book of Job is a complex treatment of the problem of undeserved suffering. It is also a sustained meditation on creation, on humanity's place in creation, and on God's ordering of creation. In this study, Schifferdecker offers a close literary and theological reading of the book of Job--particularly of God's speeches at the end of the book--in order to articulate its creation theology, which is particularly pertinent in our environmentally-conscious age.
Paperback May 2008

Writings on Church and Reform

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Nicholas of Cusa
Translated by Thomas M. Izbicki
Nicholas of Cusa(1401–1464), a polymath who studied canon law and became a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance. He wrote principally on speculative theology, philosophy, and church politics. This volume makes most of Nicholas’s other writings on Church and reform available in English for the first time.
Hardcover May 2008

The Faithful

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

James M. O'Toole
Shaken by the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, and challenged from within by social and theological division, Catholics in America are at a crossroads. O’Toole tells the story of this ancient church from the perspective of ordinary Americans, the lay believers who have kept their faith despite persecution from without and clergy abuse from within.
Hardcover April 2008

On Zion's Mount

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Jared Farmer
On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Mt. Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning.
Hardcover April 2008

The Dalai Lama at MIT

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Anne Harrington
Edited by Arthur Zajonc
Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
Paperback April 2008

Flesh Made Word

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Aviad Kleinberg
Translated by Jane Marie Todd
In the fourth century a new narrative genre captured the imagination of the faithful—the moving accounts of the lives of Christian saints.Kleinberg argues that the saints’ stories of medieval Europe were more than edifying entertainment. By telling and retelling the story of virtue and salvation, by expanding the religious imagination of the West, they were shaping and reshaping Christianity itself.
Hardcover April 2008

Emplacing a Pilgrimage

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Barbara Ambros
The sacred mountain oyama (literally, “Big Mountain”) has loomed over the religious landscape of early modern Japan.Ambros provides a narrative history of the mountain and its place in contemporary society and popular religion by focusing on the development of the oyama cult and its religious, political, and socioeconomic contexts.
Hardcover March 2008

Islam and the Secular State

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
Hardcover March 2008

Lost Soul

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

John Makeham
Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise.
Hardcover March 2008

Partisans of Allah

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Ayesha Jalal
Today, more than ever, jihad signifies the political opposition between Islam and the West. As the line drawn between Muslims and non-Muslims becomes more rigid, Jalal seeks to retrieve the ethical meanings of this core Islamic principle in South Asian history. Drawing on historical, legal, and literary sources, Jalal traces the intellectual itinerary of jihad through several centuries and across the territory connecting the Middle East with South Asia.
Hardcover March 2008

Sugata Saurabha

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Todd T. Lewis
Edited by Subarna Man Tuladhar
Chittadhar Hrdaya
The poem was composed by the greatest modern writer in Newari language, Hrdaya (1906– 1982), while he was imprisoned by the autocratic strongly pro-Hindu Rana regime that governed Nepal from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In nineteen long cantos, the Sugata Saurabha tells of the life of the Buddha, following the traditional accounts, but situates it in the strongly local context of Newar and Nepali Buddhism.
Hardcover March 2008

Crossing and Dwelling

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Thomas A. Tweed
A deeply researched and vividly written study, this book depicts religion in place and in movement, dwelling and crossing. Drawing on insights from the natural and social sciences, Tweed's work is grounded in the gritty particulars of distinctive religious practices, even as it moves toward ideas about cross-cultural patterns. It offers a responsible way to think broadly about religion, a topic that is crucial for understanding the contemporary world.
Paperback March 2008

Faith on the Margins

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST

Charles H. Parker
In the wake of the 1572 revolt against Spain, the new Dutch Republic outlawed Catholic worship and secularized all church property. Calvinism prevailed as the public faith, yet Catholicism experienced a resurgence in the first half of the seventeenth century, with membership rivaling that of the Calvinist church. In a wide-ranging analysis of a marginalized yet vibrant religious minority, Parker examines this remarkable revival.
Hardcover February 2008

The Fire Spreads

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST

Randall J. Stephens
Pentecostalism came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. With the growth of southern Pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement slipped cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different: while many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end, a growing number did so as active political conservatives.
Hardcover January 2008

On Religious Liberty

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST

James Calvin Davis
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refusal to conform to Puritan religious and social standards, Roger Williams established a haven in Rhode Island for those persecuted in the name of the religious establishment. Davis gathers together important selections from Williams's public and private writings on religious liberty, illustrating how this renegade Puritan radically reinterpreted Christian moral theology and the events of his day in a powerful argument for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.
Hardcover / Paperback January 2008

Arguing the Just War in Islam

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

John Kelsay
Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
Hardcover November 2007

Commentaries, Volume 2, Books III-IV

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

Pius II
Edited by Margaret Meserve
Edited by Marcello Simonetta
The Renaissance popes were among the most enlightened and generous patrons of arts and letters in the Europe of their day. The diaries of Pius II give us an intimate glimpse of the life and thought of one of the greatest of the Renaissance popes. Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated translation.
Hardcover November 2007

Burning to Read

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

James Simpson
Amid present-day conflagrations, this illuminating book reminds us of the sources, and profound consequences, of Christian fundamentalism in the sixteenth century. Simpson focuses on the cultural transformation in early modern England that allowed common people to read the Bible for the first time. The last wave of fundamentalist reading in the West provoked 150 years of violent upheaval; as we approach a second wave, this powerful book alerts us to our peril.
Hardcover November 2007

The Betrayal of Faith

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Emma Anderson
Anderson uses one man's compelling story to explore the collision of Christianity with traditional Native religion in colonial North America. Pastedechouan's story illuminates key struggles to retain and impose religious identity on both sides of the seventeenth-century Atlantic, even as it has a startling relevance to the contemporary encounter between native and nonnative peoples.
Hardcover October 2007

Divided by Faith

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Benjamin J. Kaplan
Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.
Hardcover October 2007

Ancient Religions

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Sarah Iles Johnston, General Editor
Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic practitioners peddled their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; and vessels decorated with illustrations of myths traveled with them. This collection of essays, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religion in the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.
Paperback September 2007

Creativity and Tradition

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Israel Ta-Shma
This volume brings together sixteen of Ta-Shma's outstanding studies originally written in English, four of which are published here for the first time. Set in Germany, northern France, Italy, Poland, and Spain, these essays focus on leading rabbinic scholars and their writings, as well as important issues of Jewish intellectual history, such as the nature of halakhah and aggadah, kabbalah and spirituality, childhood, and popular religion.
Hardcover September 2007

Doubting Thomas

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Glenn W. Most
From the New Testament, Glenn W. Most traces Thomas's permutations through the centuries: as Gnostic saint, missionary to India, paragon of Christian orthodoxy, hero of skepticism, and negative example of doubt, blasphemy, and violence. This work shows how Thomas's story, in its many guises, touches upon central questions of religion, philosophy, hermeneutics, and, not least, life.
Paperback September 2007

Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Peter J. Bowler
Bowler doesn't minimize the hostility of many of the faithful toward evolution, but he reveals the less well-known existence of a long tradition within the churches that sought to reconcile Christian beliefs with evolution by finding reflections of the divine in scientific explanations for the origin of life. By tracing the historical forerunners of these rival Christian responses, Bowler provides a valuable alternative to accounts that stress only the escalating confrontation.
Hardcover September 2007

Rebuilding Buddhism

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Sarah LeVine
David N. Gellner
Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years.
Paperback September 2007

A Secular Age

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Charles Taylor
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
Hardcover September 2007

Christianity and American Democracy

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Hugh Heclo
Mary Jo Bane
Michael Kazin
Alan Wolfe
Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other over the years, and how their relationship is changing in the present day. Responding to his challenging argument, Mary Jo Bane, Michael Kazin, and Alan Wolfe criticize, qualify, and amend it. The result is a lively debate about a momentous tension in American public life.
Hardcover June 2007