Religion
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Item Woman's identity and the Qur'an: a new readingBarazangi, Nimat Hafez (University Press of Florida, 2004)Muslim women have been generally excluded from equal agency, from full participation in Islamic society, and thus from full and equal Islamic identity, primarily because of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and the entire range of early Qur'anic literature. Based on her pedagogical study of the sacred text, the author argues that higher learning in Islam is a basic human right, that women have equal authority to participate in the interpretation of Islamic primary sources, and that women will realize their just role in society and their potential as human beings only when they are involved in interpreting the Qur'an. Consequently, a Muslim woman's relationship with God must not be dependent on her husband's or father's moral agency.Item The burned-over district: the social and intellectual history of enthusiastic religion in western New York, 1800-1850Cross, Whitney R. (Cornell University Press, 1982)During the first half of the nineteenth century the wooded hills and the valleys of western New York State were swept by fires of the spirit. The fervent religiosity of the region caused historians to call it the "burned-over district." This book is a study of the social, cultural, economic, political, and ideological causations of the great religious upheavals of the time and their far-reaching effects upon American culture.Item The battle for GodArmstrong, Karen (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)"In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish." "We see the West in the sixteenth century beginning to create an entirely new kind of civilization, which brought in its wake change in every aspect of life - often painful and violent, even if liberating. Armstrong argues that one of the things that changed most was religion. People could no longer think about or experience the divine in the same why; they had to develop new forms of faith to fit their new circumstances." "Armstrong characterizes fundamentalism as one of these new ways of being religious that have emerged in every major faith tradition. She examines the ways in which these movements, while not monolithic, have each sprung from a dread of modernityoften in response to assault (sometimes unwitting, sometimes intentional) by the mainstream society." "Armstrong sees fundamentalist groups as complex, innovative, and modern - rather than as throwbacks to the past - but contends that they have failed in religious terms. Maintaining that fundamentalism often exists in symbiotic relationship with an aggressive modernity, each impelling the other on to greater excess, she suggests compassion as a way to defuse what is now an intensifying conflict."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Item Skepticism, belief, and the modern: Maimonides to NietzscheBotwinick, Aryeh (Cornell University Press, 1997)The traditional Western intellectual story posits a dramatic reversal in which secular self-understandings and modes of being in the world supplant a religious sensibility and outlook. Aryeh Botwinick proposes a radically revised understanding of the formation of the modern world view: the movement of Western thought is from inchoate and less self-conscious forms of skepticism to more fully explicit and articulated versions of skepticism. He shows that what is called modernity has been around at least from the time of Plato and is integral to the reception of Greek ideas in both the medieval and the postmedieval periods. Modernity is identified with the emergence of skepticism into full prominence, and Botwinick associates postmodernity, when the limitations of skepticism became apparent, with the development of an augmented self-consciousness.Item Goddesses & wise women: the literature of feminist spirituality, 1980-1992, an annotated bibliographyCarson, Anne (Crossing Press, 1992)Item Revivalism, social conscience, and community in the Burned-over District: the trial of Rhoda BementAltschuler, Glenn C.; Saltzgaber, Jan M. (Cornell University Press, 1983)Item Feminist spirituality and the feminine divine: an annotated bibliographyCarson, Anne (Crossing Press, 1986)Item A history of God: the 4000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity, and IslamArmstrong, Karen (Ballantine Books, 1993)"As soon as they became recognizably human, men and women--in their hunger to understand their own presence on earth and the mysteries within and around them--began to worship gods. Karen Armstrong's masterly and illuminating book explores the ways in which the idea and experience of God evolved among the monotheists--Jews, Christians and Muslims. Weaving a multicolored fabric of historical, philosophical, intellectual and social developments and insights, Armstrong shows how, at various times through the centuries, each of the monotheistic religions has held a subtly different concept of God. At the same time she draws our attention to the basic and profound similarities among them, making it clear that in all of them God has been and is experienced intensely, passionately and often--especially in the West--traumatically. Some monotheists have seen darkness, desolation and terror, where others have seen light and transfiguration; the reasons for these inherent differences are examined, and the people behind them are brought to life. We look first at the gradual move away from the pagan gods to the full-fledged monotheism of the Jews during the exile in Babylon. Next considered is the development of parallel, yet different, perceptions and beliefs among Christians and Muslims. The book then moves "generationally" through time to examine the God of the philosophers and mystics in all three traditions, the God of the Reformation, the God of the Enlightenment and finally the nineteenth- and twentieth-century challenges of skeptics and atheists, as well as the fiercely reductive faith of the fundamentalists of our own day. Armstrong suggests that any particular idea of God must--if it is to survive--work for the people who develop it, and that ideas of God change when they cease to be effective. She argues that the concept of a personal God who behaves like a larger version of ourselves was suited to mankind at a certain stage but no longer works for an increasing number of people." "Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time, she says, is a way to begin the search for a new concept for the twenty-first century. Her book shows that such a development is virtually inevitable, in spite of the despair of our increasingly "Godless" world, because it is a natural aspect of our humanity to seek a symbol for the ineffable reality that is universally perceived."--Publisher's description.