Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mary In Islam, Zeki Saritoprak

Zeki Saritoprak

In the Qur’an, Mary has a unique place. As the only woman mentioned by name, the mother of Jesus, and a pious servant of God, she has inspired Muslim men and women since the beginning of Islam. In this chapter, there will first be a short overview of Mary’s place in the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet, that is, Hadith. Following this, the importance of Mary in Islamic theology and spirituality generally as well as Mary’s historical place within Islam will be outlined. The views of important Muslim mystics, theologians, and various other scholars will be examined. There …

Suspicious Minds: The Spirituality Of The Postmodern Nones, Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy

Much has been made about the “nones” and the current demographics of belief in the United States, especially those of young people. The term nones rose to prominence when a Pew Research Center poll in 2012 called “Nones on the Rise” discovered that nearly 20 percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation—a number that has been steadily climbing since 2007. Last January, National Public Radio aired a weeklong series titled “Losing Our Religion: The Growth of the nones.” In the spring of 2013, a poll conducted by Michael Hout of the University of California, Berkeley, and Mark A. Chaves of …

Shah Wali Allah's Arrangement Of The Subtle Spiritual Centers, Marcia K. Hermansen

Marcia Hermansen

This paper will present an explanation of some previously unexamined aspects of fillah Wali Allah's (d. 1762) conception of the subtJe spiritual centres (/afii'if). For Shah Wali Allah these spiritual components of a person were of great importance in explaining the theory and practice of individual spiritual progress on the Sufi path. His arrangement of these centres, together with his explanation of their interaction with one another directly reflects his more comprehensive understanding of cosmology and ontology, and therefore this aspect of his thought is less esoteric than it might initially seem.

The Adventist "Health Message" Unpacked, Lillian Kent

Lillian Kent

Since its organization as a denomination in the mid-19^th century, the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church has been advocating the counsel of the church’s primary health reformer, Ellen White, which emphasizes the role of lifestyle in promoting health, happiness and enhanced spirituality¹. In 1905, Ellen White consolidated her counsel into this graphic statement: “Pure air, sunlight, abstemiousness, rest, exercise, proper diet, use of water, trust in divine power – these are the true remedies”². Consequently, it is not surprising that research on the health of SDA since the 1950’s has shown that they appear to enjoy …

Understanding Children And Their Faith Formation, Barbara J. Fisher, Sandra Ludlow

Sandra Ludlow

No abstract provided.

Jagadish Chandra Bose And Vedantic Science, C. Mackenzie Brown

C. Mackenzie Brown

'The real is one: wise men call it variously.' Utilizing this celebrated declaration of the Rig Veda as an epigraph in his first scientific monograph, Response in the Living and Non-Living, (1902), the audacious Indian physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) intimated to the Western scientific world that his electrographic discovery of the unity of life - that the animate and the inanimate world are one - was an affirmation of the insights of the ancient Vedic seers.

Good Teaching, Spirituality And The Philosophy Of Emmanuel Levinas, Glenn J. Morrison

Glenn J Morrison

The essay aims to show that nurturing a spirituality of good teaching could provide a more committed and responsible attitude towards education. Spirituality speaks of relationships, the search for meaning and, in Levinasian terms, having a heart for another. Students demand that teachers should be many things such as passionate, engaging, intelligent, fun, challenging, fair and creative. The more we can develop meaning and a spirituality in teaching, the more we may meet these demands and also attend to the students’ enthusiasm, frustration, uncertainty, impatience, fears and dreams. Part I of the essay will explore some Levinasian-inspired ways how spirituality …

Fullness Of Life: Historical Foundations For A New Mysticism By Margaret R. Miles, Philip Novak

Philip Novak

"When in his poem 'Among School Children' W. B. Yeats spoke of that place where 'the body is not bruised to pleasure soul,' he unwittingly pointed to a task that has lately engaged the energies of a number of scholars of Christianity: how to revalorize the body in the Christian tradition and rescue it from its status as the spiritually detrimental half of human being. Margaret Miles, a professor of historical theology at Harvard Divinity School, has responded to this task with scholarship, style and insight." ~ from the article

Lord, Behold, He Whom You Love Is Sick., Davis Mcguirt

Davis McGuirt

Dynamics Of Attention In Spiritual Discipline, Philip Novak

Philip Novak

The volumes in the God: The Contemporary Discussion Series are indicative of this continuing pursuit and represent "stepping stones" designed to broaden the forum of the discussion. Many of the essays presented here also reflect the influence of the encounter on each individual contributor. A unique experience herein awaits the student of religion or philosophy, the seeker of knowledge of the Ultimate, the teacher of spiritual discipline, or anyone interested in emerging confluence of the religious traditions of the world.

Wrestling With Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry, Paul T. Corrigan

Paul T. Corrigan

In the current “secular age,” more and more people find beliefs and behaviors associated with traditional religion intellectually and ethically untenable. At the same time, many “postsecular” writers, both believers and nonbelievers, continue to write with religious or religiously-inflected forms, themes, and purposes. In the United States, postsecular poets “wrestle with angels” by engaging constructively and deconstructively with matters traditionally considered the domain of religion and spirituality. While the recent work of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, John McClure and others puts the concept of the postsecular at the cutting edge of various fields of study, including religion, sociology, and literature, …

Ramadan Fasting: Four Levels Of Spirituality, Muqtedar Khan

Muqtedar Khan

The article identifies four levels of spirituality that can be attained through fasting.

Listening As Religious Practice (Part Two) - Exploring Qualitative Data From An Empirical Study Of Music Fans, Vaughan S. Roberts, Clive Marsh

Vaughan S Roberts

Book Review: The Religious Thought Of Chu Hsi, Julia Ching, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

Julia Ching's Religious Thought of Chu Hsi is one of several Western-language works in recent years to address issues of religiosity and spirituality in the Confucian tradition. Somewhat earlier are several full-length books devoted to the thought of one particular thinker, much of which could be considered "religious," although the authors do not necessarily focus on that theme. Zhu Xi's religious beliefs and practices have been the subject of several chapter-length studies in Western languages. And Zhu's studies of ritual have been translated in Patricia Buckley Ebrey's Chu Hsi's Family Rituals. Neither of those works, however, approaches their subject from …

Are They Like Us, Yet? Some Thoughts On Why Religious Freedom Remains Elusive For Aboriginals In North America, Marc V. Fonda

Marc V. Fonda Ph.D.

It is well-documented that European culture differs from that of Aboriginal culture. Perhaps one of the most striking differences is in the relationships and attitudes each group has towards land. For Europeans the land is a commemorative gift of the creator there to be exploited for economic benefit; for Aboriginal peoples, the land is also a gift but one that a continuing extension of the creator’s immanence in which all things are related to one another. The one is an economic relation, the other a spiritual relation that denotes family. When two very different cultural systems encounter one another, there …

Frequency Of Private Spiritual Activity And Cardiovascular Risk In Post-Menopausal Women: The Women's Health Initiative, Elena Salmoirago Blotcher, George Fitchett, Kathleen M. Hovey, Eliezer Schnall, Cynthia Thomson, Christopher A. Andrews, Sybil Crawford, Mary Jo O'Sullivan, Stephen Post, Rowan T. Chlebowski, Judith K. Ockene

Sybil L. Crawford

Purpose: Spirituality has been associated with better cardiac autonomic balance, but its association with cardiovascular risk is not well studied. We examined whether more frequent private spiritual activity was associated with reduced cardiovascular risk in postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. Methods: Frequency of private spiritual activity (prayer, Bible reading, and meditation) was selfreported at year 5 of follow-up. Cardiovascular outcomes were centrally adjudicated, and cardiovascular risk was estimated from proportional hazards models. Results: Final models included 43,708 women (mean age: 68.9±7.3; median follow-up: 7.0 years) free of cardiac disease through year 5 of follow-up. In …

Artisans, Athletes, Entrepreneurs, And Other Skilled Exemplars Of The Way, Alex Stewart, Felissa Lee, Gregory N.P. Konz, S.J.

Alex Stewart

We introduce management and spirituality scholars to the “knack” passages from the c. 4th century B.C.E. text, the Zhuangzi. The knack passages are parables about low status figures, such as wheelwrights, furniture makers and cooks, whose actions offer insights into the spirituality of ordinary work and, we argue, of entrepreneurship. Such non-corporate settings are lesser-studied domains for spirituality. Ancient Chinese writings have been noticed by spirituality and management writers but we call for deeper scholarly textual attention. We seek also to model more attention to the renaissance in scholarship on classical China. More ambitiously, we hope to show that these …

Book Review. Praying With Confidence: Aquinas On The Lord's Prayer, By Paul Murray. Theology, Barnaby Hughes

Barnaby Hughes

No abstract provided.

Review Of Theater In A Crowded Fire By Lee Gilmore, Vaughan S. Roberts

Vaughan S Roberts

The Spirituality Of War, Paul Valliere

Paul Valliere

Starting from the assumption that war, whatever else it is, is a matrix of values rooted in some type of spirituality, the article presents a brief typology of spiritualities of war: holy war, heroic war, and political (or "just") war. The article concludes by discussing implications of the typology for current reflection on problems of war and peace in the nuclear age. (A fuller treatment of the typology and its applications may be found in Paul Valliere, Holy War and Pentecostal Peace [New York: The Seabury Press, 1983]).

The Specter Of ‘Spirituality’—On The (In)Utility Of An Analytical Category, Chad M. Bauman

Chad M. Bauman

I would like to make it clear that nothing in this article should be taken as a comment, one way or another, on the question of whether "spirituality" deserves a place in higher education. I consider that issue a distinct one, though no doubt in some ways related to the one I am addressing here, particularly since many of those authors who write about spirituality do so in order to argue for greater institutional and classroom attention to the spiritual lives of college students.

Fuzzy But Not Warm: On The (Continuing) Descriptive And Analytical Inutility Of ‘Spirituality', Chad M. Bauman, Gene Gallagher, Davina Lopez

Chad M. Bauman

In her response, Nadine Pence helpfully turns the conversation towards actual practices in teaching and the array of practical decisions that have to be made in the classroom and on campuses when it comes to addressing "Big Questions" and students' aspirations and interior lives. Several dimensions of her argument are worth amplification.

Shall Thou Reincarnate Or Not? A Quest For Spirituality Among Czech "Irreligious" People, Petr A. Činčala

Petr Činčala

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Monk Habits For Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality For Protestants, By Dennis Okholm. New Blackfriars, Barnaby Hughes

Barnaby Hughes

No abstract provided.

Moving Towards Faith: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Spirituality In Adult Education , Frederick Milacci

Fred Milacci

This study examined how eight adult education practitioners understand spirituality. The investigation defined and grounded the notion of spirituality within a specific religious/theological tradition, Christianity broadly defined. Data were collected via informal, conversational, taped interviews, and several themes emerged. The study used these results to interrogate the discourse of spirituality and found several serious problems including: the nondefinition and misuse by the discourse of the term spirituality, the hazards of individualized spirituality caused by imprecise definitions of the term, a failure to address the issues of faith substantively, and the separation in the discourse of religion from spirituality. The study …

Spiritual Quest In Hojoki And Hosshinshu And The Duality Of Art And Religion, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The individual’s quest for enlightenment in Japan is a serious one. One such individual from the medieval Japanese period will be the subject of this paper. Kamo no Chomei, a recluse, poet, and priest who lived from 1155-1216 strove to attain a religious awakening of the mind during the latter half of his life. The question of whether he succeeded or not is a difficult one to answer, however, by examining two of his major works—Hojoki and Hosshinshu—the nature of Chomei’s quest should become clearer. Although I do not believe Chomei found the enlightenment he sought; the quest itself and …

Temple And Community: Foundation For Johannine Spirituality, Lawrence E. Frizzell D.Phil.

Reverend Lawrence E. Frizzell, S.T.L., S.S.L., D.Phil.

This study examines the Jewish use of the ancient biblical traditions in the Gospel of John.
The copyright is held by Peter Lang. Learn more about Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies at http://bit.ly/ZgII2c

An Analytical Review Of Christian Spirituality With Special Reference To The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Gorden R. Doss

Gorden Doss

No abstract provided.