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Rage and Carnage in the Name of God
Religious Violence in Nigeria
Abiodun Alao
Duke University Press, 2022
In Rage and Carnage in the Name of God, Abiodun Alao examines the emergence of a culture of religious violence in postindependence Nigeria, where Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions have all been associated with violence. He investigates the root causes and historical evolution of Nigeria’s religious violence, locating it in the forced coming together of disparate ethnic groups under colonial rule, which planted the seeds of discord that religion, elites, and domestic politics exploit. Alao discusses the histories of Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions in the territory that became Nigeria, the effects of colonization on the role of religion, the development of Islamic radicalization and its relation to Christian violence, the activities of Boko Haram, and how religious violence intermixes with politics and governance. In so doing, he uses religious violence as a way to more fully understand intergroup relations in contemporary Nigeria.
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A Reason Open to God
Pope Benedict XVI Brown
Catholic University of America Press, 2013
With clarity and wisdom, Pope Benedict XVI sets out his vision for Catholic higher education in this first and only collection of his major addresses on the topic. What is the mission and identity of a Catholic university? What are the responsibilities of administrators, teachers, and students in Catholic institutes of higher learning? Where does the central theme of "love of God and others" fit into academia?
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Resistance and Obedience to God
David Ferris
QuakerPress, 2001

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Restoring the Faith
The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture
Edith L. Blumhofer
University of Illinois Press, 1993
American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
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The Rights of God
Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics
Irene Oh
Georgetown University Press, 2007

Promoting Islam as a defender of human rights is laden with difficulties. Advocates of human rights will readily point out numerous humanitarian failures carried out in the name of Islam. In The Rights of God, Irene Oh looks at human rights and Islam as a religious issue rather than a political or legal one and draws on three revered Islamic scholars to offer a broad range of perspectives that challenge our assumptions about the role of religion in human rights.

The theoretical shift from the conception of morality based in natural duty and law to one of rights has created tensions that hinder a fruitful exchange between human rights theorists and religious thinkers. Does the static identification of human rights with lists of specific rights, such as those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, make sense given the cultural, historical, and religious diversity of the societies in which these rights are to be respected and implemented? In examining human rights issues of the contemporary Islamic world, Oh illustrates how the value of religious scholarship cannot be overestimated.

Oh analyzes the commentaries of Abul A'la Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, and Abdolkarim Soroush—all prominent and often controversial Islamic thinkers—on the topics of political participation, religious toleration, and freedom of conscience. While Maududi and Qutb represent traditional Islam, and Soroush a more reform and Western-friendly approach, all three contend that Islam is indeed capable of accommodating and advocating human rights.

Whereas disentangling politics and culture from religion is never easy, Oh shows that the attempt must be made in order to understand and overcome the historical obstacles that prevent genuine dialogue from taking place across religious and cultural boundaries.

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The Rise to Respectability
Race, Religion, and the Church of God in Christ
Calvin White
University of Arkansas Press, 2015
The Rise to Respectability documents the history of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and examines its cultural and religious impact on African Americans and on the history of the South. It explores the ways in which Charles Harrison Mason, the son of slaves and founder of COGIC, embraced a Pentecostal faith that celebrated the charismatic forms of religious expression that many blacks had come to view as outdated, unsophisticated, and embarrassing.

While examining the intersection of race, religion, and class, The Rise to Respectability details how the denomination dealt with the stringent standard of bourgeois behavior imposed on churchgoers as they moved from southern rural areas into the urban centers in both the South and North.

Rooted in the hardships of slavery and coming of age during Jim Crow, COGIC’s story is more than a religious debate. Rather, this book sees the history of the church as interwoven with the Great Migration, class tension, racial animosity, and the struggle for modernity—all representative parts of the African American experience.
 
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The Rope of God
James T. Siegel
University of Michigan Press, 2000
The Acehnese, a Muslim people of Sumatra, fought Dutch attempts to colonize them for forty years. After its "pacification," Acehnese society evolved peacefully, yet nonetheless the Acehnese participated fully in the Indonesian revolution and in a rebellion against the Indonesian central government not long after. Based on field work done in the early 1960s, James Siegel's The Rope of God, traces the evolution in Islam, in the economy, and in the structure of the family to show how it was that Aceh mobilized itself as a society from the time of the colonial war to the emergence of the republic. At a time when this Indonesian society is once again in movement, this influential study has gained a certain new relevance.
To bridge this span of time since its initial publication in 1969, Siegel has added two additional chapters to his original volume: one a description of political elements today and the other a previously published piece on Acehnese domestic politics.
Important when it first appeared, The Rope of God continues to be of enduring importance today and will be warmly welcomed back into print.
James Siegel is Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies, Cornell University and is the author of New Criminal Type in Jakarta: A Counter-Revolution Today, among other books.
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