From Gods, to ritual observance to the language of myth and the distinction between the sacred and the profane, Religious Worlds explores the structures common to all spiritual traditions.

The cross-cultural study of religion has always gone hand in hand with the worldview, sciences, or intellectual frameworks of the time. These frames, whether focused on psychology or politics, gender or colonialism, bring out perspectives for understanding religious behavior. Today one of our common civic worldviews is represented in the shift from scriptural to evolutionary history.This volume brings together in one place key essays by professor emeritus William Paden, showing a p...

As Matthew Fox notes when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets he replied I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life. The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths or no faith. Fox is uniquely qualified to comment on these profound sometimes startling often denounced insights. In 1998 this longtime member of the Dominican Order was silenced by Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Bened...

The Importance of Religion reveals the significance of religion in modern times, showing how it provides people with meaning to their lives and helps guide them in their everyday moral choicesProvides readers with a new understanding of religion, demonstrating how in its actions, texts and world views religion is enduring and vividly engages with the mystery of the worldOffers striking arguments about the relationship of religion to science, art and politic...

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced "a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally" (George Simpson, American Sociological Review ).In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focu...

"This book will last and last, because it contains the wisdom of two wonderfully knowing observers of our human destiny."—Robert ColesFor decades Erik H. Erikson's concept of the stages of human development has deeply influenced the field of contemporary psychology. Here, with new material by Joan M. Erikson, is an expanded edition of his final work. The Life Cycle Completed eloquently closes the circle of Erikson's theories, outlining the unique rewards a...

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this formula that Christians recite as though on autopilot lie the secrets for healing our world, rekindling our visionary imagination, and manifesting the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It’s an astonishing claim, but one that is supported by Cynthia Bourgeault’s exploration of Trinitarian theology—and by her bold work in further articulating the deep truth it contains. She looks to the ancient concept in light of the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff and Jaco...

Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic exp...

'Since the middle of the twentieth century,' writes Elizabeth Johnson, 'there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks t...

Why is it so many of us lack contentment, despite all the wealth and freedoms we enjoy?The past two centuries delivered individual and political freedoms that promised unprecedented opportunities for personal fulfilment. Yet citizens of affluent countries are encouraged to pursue lives of consumerism, endless choice and the pleasures of the body.Clive Hamilton argues that the paradox of modern consumer life is that we are deprived of our inner freedom by our very pursuit of...

Can the existence of God be proved by reason alone? Has scientific discovery destroyed the intellectual basis for religion? Does the presence of evil in the world mean that God does not care about us? And why does fundamentalism flourish in an age of progress? In Big Questions: God, Mark Vernon addresses these and many more perennial dilemmas, drawing on physics and philosophy, spiritual traditions and religious experience. He explores the place of religion in relation to science, in makin...

A noted philosopher proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to solve the "really hard problem": how to live in a meaningful way—how to live a life that really matters—even as a finite material being living in a material world.If consciousness is "the hard problem" in mind science—explaining how the amazing private world of consciousness emerges from neuronal activity—then "the really hard problem," writes Owen Flanagan in this provocative book, ...