200 books match the query 'Sociology of Religion' and 5 start with e

cover of E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces

E.T. Culture

Anthropology in Outerspaces

Debbora Battaglia, ed.

Duke University Press, 2005

Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or “alien” societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture. Opening up a new frontier for anthropological study, the contributors to E.T. Culture take these communities seriously. They demonstrate that an E.T. orientation toward various forms of visitation—including alien beings, alien technologies, and uncanny visions—engages primary concepts underpinning anthropological research: host and visitor, home and away, subjectivity and objectivity. Taking the point of view of those who commit to sci-fi as sci-fact, contributors to this volume show how discussions and representations of otherworldly beings express concerns about racial and ethnic differences, the anxieties and fascination associated with modern technologies, and alienation from the inner workings of government.

Drawing on social science, science studies, linguistics, popular and expressive culture, and social and intellectual history, the writers of E.T. Culture unsettle the boundaries of science, magic, and religion as well as those of technological and human agency. They consider the ways that sufferers of “unmarked” diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome come to feel alien to both the “healthy” world and the medical community incapable of treating them; the development of alien languages like Klingon; attempts to formulate a communications technology—such as that created for the spaceship Voyager—that will reach alien beings; the pilgrimage spirit of UFO seekers; the out-of-time experiences of Nobel scientists; the embrace of the alien within Japanese animation and fan culture; and the physical spirituality of the Raëlian religious network.

Contributors. Debbora Battaglia, Richard Doyle, Joseph Dumit, Mizuko Ito, Susan Lepselter, Christopher Roth, David Samuels

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cover of Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage, The

Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage, The

Kathleen Flake

Utah State University Press, 2010

Kathleen Flake, associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University examines the logic of those women who thrived, rather than suffered, in early Mormon polygamy, and finds that the marriage covenant granted them priestly rights and independence through the powers of heaven.

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cover of Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation

Evangelicalism

The Coming Generation

James Davison Hunter

University of Chicago Press, 1987

"Looking at what he calls 'The Coming Generation' of Evangelical opinion leaders and elites . . . Hunter draws a nuanced and finely detailed portrait of young Evangelicals who, while certainly more conservative than the mainstream of American Protestants, are at least ambivalent about some important aspects of fundamentalism and at most ready to repudiate elements of fundamentalist faith, politics, and practice. . . . With this book, James Hunter confirms his position as one of the most informed and informing writers on American Evangelicalism."—Samuel C. Heilman, This World
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cover of Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism

Exceptionally Queer

Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism

K. Mohrman

University of Minnesota Press, 2022

How perceptions of Mormonism from 1830 to the present reveal the exclusionary, racialized practices of the U.S. nation-state
 

Are Mormons really so weird? Are they potentially queer? These questions occupy the heart of this powerful rethinking of Mormonism and its place in U.S. history, culture, and politics. K. Mohrman argues that Mormon peculiarity is not inherent to the Latter-day Saint faith tradition, as is often assumed, but rather a potent expression of U.S. exceptionalism. 

Exceptionally Queer scrutinizes the history of Mormonism starting with its inception in the early 1830s and continuing to the present. Drawing on a wide range of historical texts and moments—from nineteenth-century battles over Mormon plural marriage; to the LDS Church’s emphases on “individual responsibility” and “family values”; to mainstream media’s coverage of the LDS Church’s racist exclusion of Black priesthood holders, its Native assimilation programs, and vehement opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment; and to much more recent legal and cultural battles over same-sex marriage and on-screen Mormon polygamy—Exceptionally Queer evaluates how Mormonism has been used to motivate and rationalize the biased, exclusionary, and colonialist policies and practices of the U.S. nation-state.

Mohrman explains that debates over Mormonism both drew on and shaped racial discourses and, in so doing, delineated the boundaries of whiteness and national belonging, largely through the consolidation of (hetero)normative ideas of sex, marriage, family, and economy. Ultimately, the author shows how discussions of Mormonism in this country have been and continue to be central to ideas of what it means to be American. 

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cover of Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science

Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism

Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science

Petri Luomanen

SBL Press, 2016

Now in paperback!

Cognitive science of religion is a radically new paradigm in the study of religion. Historians of religion have shown increasing interest in this approach. The book is in four parts: an introduction to cognitive and social-scientific approaches, applications of cognitive science, applications of conceptual blending theory, and applications of socio-cognitive analyses.

Features:

  • Paperback format of an essential Brill resource
  • Essays that combine cognitive analysis with historical and social-scientific approaches to biblical materials, Christian origins, and early Judaism
  • Research for historians of religion, biblical scholars, and those working in the cognitive science of religion.
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