Complexifying Religion

Much contemporary research ignores or is dismissive of the growth of global religiosity, even though 90% of the global population sees the world through a commitment to some kind of faith. Reimagining Faith and Management addresses this issue and extends the research on the impact of faith in the various aspects of management, such as negotiation, leadership, entrepreneurship, governance, innovation, ethics, finance and careers. Faith impacts how individuals and organisations envision, manage and respond to their various stakeholders, communities, the natural environment and the world around them. This book presents various facets of how faith, values and/or ideological outlook which informs, influences and adds mystery that inspires and impels individuals and organisations. The twenty-one chapters are based on academic research and offer practical managerial recommendations. The book is divided into three sections: Faithful futures impacting individuals; Faithful futures impacting organisations; and Faithful futures impacting society. Each chapter presents a theoretical base and includes practical implications. The book is therefore ideal reading for educators, researchers and students of business, management, career studies, faith-based organisations, corporate governance, and business ethics, as well as religious studies, including applied theology.

This unique encyclopedia explores the historical and contemporary controversies between science and religion. It is designed to offer multicultural and multi-religious views, and provide wide-ranging perspectives. "Science, Religion, and Society" covers all aspects of the religion and science dichotomy, from humanities to social sciences to natural sciences, and includes articles by theologians, religion scholars, physicians, scientists, historians, and psychologists, among others. The first section, General Overviews, contains essays that provide a road map for exploring the major challenges and questions in science and religion. Following this, the Historical Perspectives section grounds these major questions in the past, and demonstrates how they have developed into the six broad areas of contemporary research and discussion that follow. These sections - Creation, the Cosmos, and Origins of the Universe; Ecology, Evolution, and the Natural World; Consciousness, Mind, and the Brain; Healers and Healing; Dying and Death; and Genetics and Religion - organize the questions and research that are the foundation of the enormous interest, and controversy, in science and religion today.

What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates. The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many disciplines, including the scientific study of religion, and evaluate the relative importance of those causal theories in processes of civilizational change. Materially, the book sheds new light on major debates among historians, archaeologists, and other social theorists on the role of religion within these major transitions. The book tackles the urgent question of what sort of civilizational transformations might be possible in a world where the influence and significance of religion continues to decline wherever technology, education, freedom, and cultural pluralism are most advanced.

This book offers a clear, concise introduction to the meaning of problematic terms, and the ways in which they should legitimately be used. Each entry considers the following: – Why is this concept problematic? – What are the origins of the concept? – How is it used or misused, and by whom? – Is it still a legitimate concept in the study of religion and, if so, what are its legitimate uses? – Are there other concepts that are preferable when writing on religion? Concepts covered include: – Belief – Religion – Magic – Secularisation – Violence This is a jargon-free indispensable resource for students and scholars that encourages the critical use of terms in the study of religion.

Astrophilosopy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe applies Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and the associated process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and others to the interdisciplinary layers of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of discovery. This collection, edited by Andrew M. Davis and Roland Faber, asks questions such as “How have process thinkers imagined universal creative evolution and its implications for philosophies, theologies, and religions beyond earth?” and “How might their claims as to the primacy of organism, temporality, novelty, value, and mind enrich current discussions and debates across disciplines?” As experts in their fields, the contributors are informed by, but not limited to, process conceptualities. The chapters not only advance recent discussions in astrobiology, cosmology, and evolution but also consider a constellation of philosophical topics, from shared extraterrestrial knowledge and values to the possibilities or limitations afforded by A.I. technology, the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the increasing need to nurture the cosmic dimensions of theological and religious traditions.

This volume explores the role of religion and ritual in the origin of settled life in the Middle East, focusing on the repetitive construction of houses or cult buildings in the same place. Prominent archaeologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion working at several of the region’s most important sites—such as Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe, and Aşıklı Höyük—contend that religious factors significantly affected the timing and stability of settled economic structures. Contributors argue that the long-term social relationships characteristic of delayed-return agricultural systems must be based on historical ties to place and to ancestors. They define different forms of history-making, including nondiscursive routinized practices as well as commemorative memorialization. They consider the timing in the Neolithic of an emerging concern with history-making in place in relation to the adoption of farming and settled life in regional sequences. They explore whether such correlations indicate the causal processes in which history-making, ritual practices, agricultural intensification, population increase, and social competition all played a role. Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life takes a major step forward in understanding the adoption of farming and a settled way of life in the Middle East by foregrounding the roles of history-making and religious ritual. This work is relevant to students and scholars of Near Eastern archaeology, as well as those interested in the origins of agriculture and social complexity or the social role of religion in the past. Contributors: Kurt W. Alt, Mark R. Anspach, Marion Benz, Lee Clare, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Morris Cohen, Oliver Dietrich, Güneş Duru, Yilmaz S. Erdal, Nigel Goring-Morris, Ian Hodder, Rosemary A. Joyce, Nicola Lercari, Wendy Matthews, Jens Notroff, Vecihi Özkaya, Feridun S. Şahin, F. Leron Shults, Devrim Sönmez, Christina Tsoraki, Wesley Wildman

This exciting volume explores how religious meaning is generated and performed in our present digital media ecosystem. It uses the spatial metaphor of a third space to visualize the mobility of everyday religion and to explore the dynamic ways in which contemporary subjects imagine, produce, and navigate new religious and spiritual places. Comprised of seven original essays, this book provides a rigorous discussion of the complex intersections of the digital and religion, demonstrating how third spaces of religion stand out by virtue of their in-betweenness. They exist between private and public, between institution and individual, between authority and individual autonomy, between large media framings and individual "pro-sumption," and between local and translocal. Including probing analysis of how Muslim, Catholic, and Neo-Pagan identities are cultivated and developed online, case studies reflect on the creative outcomes of this condition of in-betweenness and the emergence of other places of religious and spiritual meaning. Blending theoretical analysis with grounded empirical research, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary religion, media and religion, sociology of religion, religion, and popular culture.