Religion Commons^™

Origen’S Veils: The Askesis Of Interpretation, Susanna Drake

Susanna Laing Drake

No abstract provided.

Religious Violence As Modern Myth, William Cavanaugh

William T. Cavanaugh

No abstract provided.

Smart Growth: Affordable Housing, Public Transportation, And Open Space, Laura A. Stivers

Laura Stivers

Co-Leader, Seminar In Catholic Social Thought, Thomas Kohler

Thomas C. Kohler

Co-led Seminar in Catholic Social Thought at the invitation of Professor Mary Ann Glendon of the Harvard Law School. The seminar met September-November 2014.

Mikveh: The Relationship Of Jewish Ritual Immersion And Christian Baptism, Barry Fike

Barry D. Fike

Most Christians understand baptism as an undeniable doctrine of early Christianity. What most don’t grasp is that this practice goes far beyond the confines of Jesus and John the Baptist to some of the earliest recorded stages of the people of God, meaning that it has always been a part of the plan of God for the redemption of mankind. In this book, Barry Fike goes back into the Hebrew background of the concept of Christian baptism into the Jewish understanding of this ritual of cleanliness to show that our present understanding needs to have some backdrop to correctly identify …

Structuring Subsidiarity, Grounding Solidarity, Thomas Kohler

Thomas C. Kohler

No abstract provided.

Vatican Ii And The Challenges Of Inter-Faith Dialogue In African Christianity, Stan Chu Ilo

Stan Chu Ilo

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Revelation 20:1-6: A Premillennial Approach, Wes Green

Wes Green

No abstract provided.

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 …

Book Review: Mencius And Early Chinese Thought, Kwong-Loi Shun, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This is the first of a projected three-volume series on "the nature of Confucian-Mencian ethical thought." This volume, as well as a projected second volume, highlights important passages and concepts from the Mencius for close exegetical analysis, and compares them insightfully with such works as the Analects, the Guanzi, and the Mozi. Comparative philosophical interpretation of these concepts is planned for a projected volume three. By separating textual analysis from modem philosophical interpretation, Shun attempts to consider early Chinese concepts on their own terms, as far as that is possible, without viewing them through the lens of contemporary Western categories. …

Book Review: Transformations Of The Confucian Way, John Berthrong, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This book is part of Westview's series Explorations: Contemporary Perspectives on Religion. However, Transformations of the Confucian Way focuses not on the religious aspects of the literati tradition, but on "the intellectual development of the Confucian Way in East Asia." Transformations is a concise survey, based primarily on English language sources, of the main figures of literati intellectual history from Confucius to Okada Takehiko.

Berthrong first begins by trying to define what being "a Confucian" is, and places such attempts at definition within a comparative context. He states that being a Confucian means "being dedicated to the canon and …

Conceptualizations Of Earth And Land In Classical Chinese Texts, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

Many studies have explored conceptualizations of heaven (tian 天) in early Chinese thought, but few if any have explored understandings of heaven's later cosmological counterpart, earth (di 地). This article examines Chinese understandings of earth and land (tu 土) in pre-Qin 先秦sources. In ancient texts such as the Book of Odes (Shi jing詩經) and Book of Documents (Shang shu尚書), the earth is not yet the paired counterpart to heaven that it will become in later Warring States (fifth-third centuries BCE) texts. Older works often depict earth and land as passive recipients of heaven's …

A Letter From A Jesuit Painter In Qianlong's Court At Chengde, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

New Qing Imperial History uses the Manchu summer capital of Chengde and associated architecture, art and ritual activity as the focus for an exploration of the importance of Inner Asia and Tibet to the Qing Empire (1636-1911). Well-known contributors argue that the Qing was not simply another Chinese dynasty, but was deeply engaged in Inner Asia not only militarily, but culturally, politically and ideologically.

Emphasizing the diverse range of peoples in the Qing empire, it analyzes the importance to Chinese history of Manchu relations with Tibetan prelates, Mongolian chieftains, and the Turkic elites of Xinjiang. In offering a new appreciation …

邱濬與明代儒家廢存之議 (Qiu Jun And Iconoclasm In The Ming Dynasty), Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This article examines key figures in iconoclastic controversies that developed in the early Ming (1368-1644) era in China. The scholar-official Qiu Jun (1421-1495), the compiler of the massive guide to statecraft and governance titled Supplement to the Extended Meaning of the Great Learning (Daxue yanyi bu 大學衍義補), believed that anthropomorphic images of Confucius in official temples should be destroyed and replaced with spirit tablets inscribed with the name of the deceased. This essay explores the philosophical and religious arguments of Qiu Jun and other early Ming thinkers regarding the use of images in ritual contexts.

Recent Western Studies Of Zhu Xi (近代朱子研究在西方), Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This article is a bibliographic survey of research scholarship on the thinker Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130-1200) published in North America from the mid-1990s until 2008. This essay was originally presented at the international invited conference "Song Dynasty Neo-Confucianism: A Focus on Zhu Xi" (宋代新儒學的精神世界：以朱熹為中心) at Fudan University, Shanghai 上海复旦大学, Oct. 25-26, 2008.

Warrants For Women's Religious Authority In Chinese Religious Traditions, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

No abstract provided.

Chinese Religions In World Religions Textbooks, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

Religions of China are routinely given short shrift in world religions textbooks. It would be foolish to expect equity in these matters, but when traditions important to a large percentage of the world's populations are accorded only a fraction of the pages devoted to that upstart Mediterranean cult—I am speaking, of course, of Christianity—one naturally begins to ask questions. Such books are thicker in their treatment of “the center of the world,” that fertile spiritual navel from which emerged the so-called Abrahamic traditions, and become thinner and thinner as they move toward the “barren” Pacific Rim, where civilization gradually fades …

文革中的批孔運動和孔子形像的演變 (Images For Iconoclasts: Depictions Of Confucius In The Cultural Revolution), Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

No abstract provided.

Destroying Confucius: Iconoclasm In The Confucian Temple, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

No abstract provided.

Taoism And The Arts, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This essay is Chapter 28 of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts edited by Frank Burch Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pages 379-387). Religion and the Arts is one of the newest additions to the Oxford Handbook series, a project that explores reviews of recent academic research across disciplines. This edited volume of essays examines intersections of the visual and spiritual realms as they are expressed in religious traditions around the globe. Sommer's article, which was commissioned for Part III of this volume, "Religious Ways of Being Artistic," is a state-of-the-field review of recent Western-language scholarship …

Confucianism And The Arts, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

This essay is Chapter 29 of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts edited by Frank Burch Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pages 388-395). Religion and the Arts is one of the newest additions to the Oxford Handbook series, a project that explores reviews of recent academic research across disciplines. This edited volume of essays examines intersections between the visual and spiritual realms as they are expressed in religious traditions around the globe. Sommer's article was commissioned for Part III of this volume, "Religious Ways of Being Artistic," and it is a state-of-the-field review of recent Western-language …

Book Review: The Rivers Of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, And Muhammad As Religious Founders, David Freedman, Michael Mcclymond, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

In his introduction to Rivers of Paradise, David Noel Freedman explains how the book finds a guiding metaphor in a passage from Genesis (2:10–14) that relates how a river emerges from Eden and splits into four different rivers that flow to different parts of the world. He associates these five rivers with five “great personality religions of the world,” which are traditions “originating in and centering around the person, the life and experience, of a single individual—as it happens all of them men” (p. 2). These “founding fathers” are Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad, in that order; …

Ming Taizu's Legacy As Iconoclast, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

No abstract provided.

“Africae Munus And The Challenges Of Social Transformation And Theological Praxis In Africa’S Social Context”, Stan Chu Ilo

Stan Chu Ilo

No abstract provided.

Moderator, Panel On Economics And The Family, Thomas Kohler

Thomas C. Kohler

No abstract provided.

Chair And Organizer, Pacem In Terris After Fifty Years: Lessons For The Middle East?, Thomas Kohler

Thomas C. Kohler

No abstract provided.

Breaking Bad As Theological Text: A Process-Theological Reflection On Theodicy And Anthropodicy, Brent Hege

Brent A. R. Hege

The recently-wrapped AMC megabit Breaking Bad (set and filmed in Albuquerque) has challenged viewers to reevaluate their assumptions about good and evil, freedom and determinism, and the possibility of redemption. Walter White, the protagonist and postmodern anti-hero, is a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher and family man who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. To provide for his family after his death, he enters the crystal meth underworld, eventually securing for himself a vast underground empire and a new persona as "Heisenberg." Over the course of five seasons White makes a series of choices that implicate him in deception, betrayal, and …

Ecological Issues: A Daoist Confucian Perspective, Pamela Herron

Pamela Herron

Abstract: The Dao De Jing is the foundation of Daoism while the Lun Yu, or the Analects of Confucius, is the central text for Confucianism. The Dao De Jing in particular has long been a popular text within the new age spiritual movement in Western culture. Both classic Chinese texts emphasize working toward a harmony with nature without the assumption of man set above plants, animals, mountains, water and other aspects of nature; rather man is a part of this greater whole. This paper explores specific references in both classic texts that reinforce this idea of man being simply part …

Censorship In Brown And White, James Laine

James Laine

No abstract provided.

“Real Presence And False Gods: The Eucharist As Discernment And Formation,”, Michael Budde

Michael Budde

No abstract provided.