Tag: Religious

Free Download Shalom Sadik, "Maimonides: A Radical Religious Philosopher "
English | ISBN: 146324391X | 2023 | 225 pages | PDF | 3 MB
Was Maimonides a radical philosopher who subtly argued for a naturalist world and who saw the obligation to keep the Torah’s commandments as a social and moral obligation – or was he a conservative Jewish believer who only tried to formulate philosophical arguments in favour of a revealed religion? This question has been central to the interpretation of Maimonides from the 12th century until modern times. In the four chapters of this book, Shalom Sadik argues for a radical philosophical interpretation of Maimonides.

Free Download Laurence Lux-Sterritt, "Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism "
English | ISBN: 0754637166 | 2005 | 244 pages | PDF | 41 MB
This short study offers a contribution to the flourishing debate on post-Reformation female piety. In an effort to avoid excessive polarization condemning conventual life as restrictive or hailing it as a privileged path towards spiritual perfection, it analyses the reasons which led early-modern women to found new congregations with active vocations. Were these novel communities born out of their founders’ rejection of the conventual model? Through the comparative analysis of two congregations which became, in seventeenth-century France and England, the embodiment of women’s efforts to become actively involved in the Catholic Reformation, this book offers a nuanced interpretation of female religious life and particularly of the relationship between cloistered tradition and aposotolic vocations. Despite the differences in their national political and religious backgrounds, both the French Ursulines and the Institute of English Ladies shared the same aim to revitalise the links between the Catholic faith and the people, reaching out of the cloister and into the world by educating girls who would later become wives and mothers. This study suggests that these pioneering Catholic women, though in breach of Tridentine decrees, did not turn their backs on contemplative piety: although both the French Ursulines and the English Ladies undertook work which had hitherto been the preserve religious men, they were motivated by their desire to help the Church rather than by a wish to liberate women from what eighteenth-century writers later perceived as the shackles of conventual obedience. It is argued that the founders of new, uncloistered congregations were embracing vocations which they construed as personals sacrifices; they followed the arduous path ‘mixed life’ in an act of self-abnegation and chose apostolic work as their early-modern reinterpretation of medieval asceticism.

Free Download David Aldridge, "A Hermeneutics of Religious Education"
English | ISBN: 1441114424 | 2015 | 232 pages | PDF | 1263 KB
What does it mean to understand a religion?

Free Download Gabriella Erdélyi, "A Cloister on Trial: Religious Culture and Everyday Life in Late Medieval Hungary "
English | ISBN: 1409467597 | 2015 | 276 pages | PDF | 3 MB
In 1517, the usually tranquil friary in the Hungarian town of Körmend found itself at the centre of controversy when its Augustinian friars, charged with drunkenness, sexual abuses and liturgical negligence, were driven out and replaced with observant Franciscans. The agent of change in this conflict, cardinal Thomas Bakócz, claimed to be acting in the name of ‘cloister reform’ motivated by a religious agenda, while the Augustinians portrayed themselves as the victims of a political game. Based on the surviving interrogations of a papal enquiry into these events, this book illuminates the tensions and potential conflict that lurked within the religious culture of a seemingly unremarkable and remote town. The story of the friary trial of Körmend provides a fascinating window into religion and society of Europe at the dawn of the Reformation, investigating the processes by which ordinary people emerge as historical agents from the written records. By focussing on their experiences as represented in the trial documents the book reveals the spaces and borders of individual and communal action within the dynamic of lay-clerical relations negotiated in a friary reform at the beginning of the 16th century. Furthermore, the moral nature of the accusations levelled at the Augustinians – and whether these were justified or instigated for political reasons – offers further insights into the nature of late-medieval Catholicism and the claims of Protestant reformers.

Free Download Maria Craciun, "Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450-1800 "
English | ISBN: 0754663124 | 2011 | 302 pages | PDF | 4 MB
Between the later middle ages and the eighteenth century, religious orders were in the vanguard of reform movements within the Christian church. Recent scholarship on medieval Europe has emphasised how mendicants exercised a significant influence on the religiosity of the laity by actually shaping their spirituality and piety. In a similar way for the early modern period, religious orders have been credited with disseminating Tridentine reform, training new clergy, gaining new converts and bringing those who had strayed back into the fold. Much about this process, however, still remains unknown, particularly with regards to east central Europe. Exploring the complex relationship between western monasticism and lay society in east central Europe across a broad chronological timeframe, this collection provides a re-examination of the level and nature of interaction between members of religious orders and the communities around them. That the studies in this collection are all located in east central Europe – Transylvania, Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia- fulfils a second key aim of the volume: the examination of clerical and lay piety in a region of Europe almost entirely ignored by western scholarship. As such the volume provides an important addition to current scholarship, showcasing fresh research on a subject and region on which little has been published in English. The volume further contributes to the reintegration of eastern and western European history, expanding the existing parameters of scholarly discourse into late medieval and early modern religious practice and piety.

Free Download Bindu Puri, Abhishek Kumar, "Re-thinking Religious Pluralism: Moving Beyond Liberal Tolerance"
English | 2021 | pages: 186 | ISBN: 9811595429, 9811595399 | PDF | 1,7 mb
This book combines the mainstream liberal arguments for religious tolerance with arguments from religious traditions in India to offer insights into appropriate attitudes toward religious ‘others’ from the perspective of the devout. The respective chapters address the relationship between religions from a comparative perspective, helping readers understand the meaning of religion and the opportunities for interreligious dialogue in the works of contemporary Indian philosophers such as Gandhi and Ramakrishna Paramhansa. It also examines various religious traditions from a philosophical viewpoint in order to reassess religious discussions on how to respond to differing and different religious others. Given its comprehensive coverage, the book is of interest to scholars working in the areas of anthropology, philosophy, cultural and religious diversity, and history of religion.

Free Download C. Mackenzie Brown, "Asian Religious Responses to Darwinism: Evolutionary Theories in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian Cultural Contexts"
English | 2020 | pages: 384 | ISBN: 3030373428, 3030373398 | PDF | 5,5 mb
This volume brings together diverse Asian religious perspectives to address critical issues in the encounter between tradition and modern western evolutionary thought. Such thought encompasses the biological theories of Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Earnest Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, and later "neo-Darwinians," as well as the more sociological evolutionary theories of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Henri Bergson. The essays in this volume cover responses from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist (Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Tibetan), Confucian, Daoist, and Muslim traditions. These responses come from the decades immediately after publication ofThe Origin of Speciesup to the present, with attention being paid to earlier perspectives and teachings within a tradition that have affected responses to Darwinism and western evolutionary thought in general.

Free Download Samia Bano, "The Sharia Inquiry, Religious Practice and Muslim Family Law in Britain "
English | ISBN: 0367547317 | 2023 | 142 pages | PDF | 2 MB
In February 2018, the ‘Independent Review on Sharia Law in England and Wales’ was published, headed by Professor Mona Siddiqui. The review focused on whether sharia law is being misused or applied in a way that is incompatible with the domestic law in England and Wales, and, in particular, whether there were discriminatory practices against women who use sharia councils. It came about after years of concerns raised by academics, lawyers and women’s activists.

Free Download Antón M. Pazos, "Religious Pilgrimages in the Mediterranean World"
English | ISBN: 1032309288 | 2023 | 188 pages | PDF | 8 MB
Religious Pilgrimages in the Mediterranean World examines the evolution of recent theoretical and methodological trends in pilgrimage studies. It outlines key themes of research, including historical, anthropological, sociological and cultural approaches, to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the subject.

Free Download Azyumardi Azra, Van Kees Dijk, J. G. Nico Kaptein, "Varieties of Religious Authority: Changes and Challenges in 20th Century Indonesian Islam"
English | 2010 | pages: 230 | ISBN: 9812309403 | PDF | 7,8 mb
The twentieth century was a fascinating period of profound political, social and economic changes in Indonesia. These changes contributed to the diversification of the religious landscape and as a result, religious authority was redistributed over an increasing number of actors. Although many Muslims in Indonesia continued to regard the ulama, the traditional religious scholars, as the principle source of religious guidance, religious authority has become more diffused and differentiated over time. The present book consists of contributions which all deal with the multi-facetted and multidimensional topic of religious authority and aim to complement each other. Most papers deal with Indonesia, but two dealing with other countries have been included in order to add a comparative dimension. Amongst the topics dealt with are the different and changing roles of the ulama, the rise and role of Muslim organizations, developments within Islamic education, like the madrasa, and the spread of Salafi ideas in contemporary Indonesia.