This groundbreaking volume examines the relationship between new religions, alternative spiritualities, and popular music.Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book draws on scholarship within the study of new religions, the sociology of religion, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and critical musicology. It examines the ways in which devotion to a band can lead to the establishment of a new religion and alsohow new religions use pop...

Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, literature, and cultural anthropology, present interdisciplinary perspectives on a variety of congregational musical styles - from African American gospel music, to evangelical praise and worship mus...

Congregational music can be an act of praise, a vehicle for theology, an action of embodied community, as well as a means to a divine encounter. This multidisciplinary anthology approaches congregational music as media in the widest sense - as a multivalent communication action with technological, commercial, political, ideological and theological implications, where processes of mediated communication produce shared worlds and beliefs. Bringing together a range of voices, promoting dialog...

During my many years of traveling all around This Great America, I would rent a car to visit potential building sites, meeting with all the relevant necessary parties needed for a potential business location and doing so see interesting signage. My job often allowed me a travelling companion either from the company or a local form the area to show me around the town. We would laugh as I read signs all using "Spoonerisms". This became a hobby that made the drives more enjoyably spent laughi...

This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading writers and thinkers to provide a critique of a broad range of topics related to Hillsong Church. Hillsong is one of the most influential, visible, and (in some circles) controversial religious organizations/movements of the past thirty years. Although it has received significant attention from both the academy and the popular press, the vast majority of the scholarship lacks the scope and nuance necessary to understand the complexity o...

Starting as a single congregation in Australia, Hillsong Church now has campuses worldwide, releases worship music that sells millions of albums and its ministers regularly appear in mainstream media. So, how has a single church gained such international prominence? This book offers an ethnographic exploration of the ways in which music and marketing have been utilised in the pursuit and production of spiritual experience for members of Hillsong Church. An experience that has proven to be ...

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives?In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cann...

The Gold Medallion Award-winning book that presents a persuasive case for Christ as the only way to God in light of contemporary religious pluralism.A great majority of social commentators attempting to define modern Western culture land on a common characteristic: pluralism. This isn't unique to secular culture. Many modern approaches to Christian hermeneutics, or biblical interpretation, have given credence to contemporary pluralism. What began as a refr...

This Very Short Introduction provides both the believer and non-believer with a balanced survey of the central questions of theology. David Ford's approach draws us in to considering the principles underlying religious belief, including the centrality of salvation to most major religions, the concept of God in ancient, modern, and postmodern contexts, the challenge posed to theology by prayer and worship, and the issue of sin and evil. He also probes the nature of experience, know...

"A pre-modern baseball umpire would have said something like this: 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as they are.' The modernist would have said, 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as I see 'em.' And the postmodernist umpire would say, 'They ain't nothing until I call 'em.'" With that humorous quote, Ravi Zacharias illustrates the challenge postmodernism poses to Christians passionate about evangelism. How do you communicate truth to a world that isn't su...

What does logic have to do with Christianity?We know that faith means "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1, NIV). So what part does reason play when we share our beliefs with others? And how can using our God-given intellect help in our own spiritual development?Love Your God with All Your Mind explains the importance of using your mind not only to win others to Christ but also to experience personal spir...

What shapes the message of the church? The Bible and Spirit? Or society and culture? Os Guinness points out perils of compromise in the church growth movement.