Disrupting Religion

Ready to experience a deeper relationship with God? It seems everything is being shaken in the world these days. But God is in the midst of the disruption and working it for our good in His great wisdom, not only in political and social arenas, but also within the Church. As a matter of fact, we are in this disruptive place because of the present state of His Church. As a result of this severe shaking, false religious beliefs and structures are being exposed and dismantled. It is not a time for tweaking the old. God is doing a new work to reform his Church. Out of it all, a reformed Church will arise filled with confident and powerful sons and daughters of God. In Disrupting Religion, Colin Ferreira uses Scripture to expose lies Satan has used, and so many have believed, that sound good, but actually keep us from enjoying a deeper relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Religion has long played a central role in many social and political movements. Solidarity in Poland, anti-apartheid in South Africa, Operation Rescue in the United States--each of these movements is driven by the energy and sustained by the commitment of many individuals and organizations whose ideologies are shaped and powered by religious faith. In many cases, religious resources and motives serve as crucial variables explaining the emergence of entire social movements. Despite the crucial role of religion in most societies, this religious activism remains largely uninvestigated. Disruptive Religion intends to fill this void by analyzing contemporary social movements which are driven by people and organizations of faith. Upon a firm base of empirical evidence, these essays also address many theoretical issues arising in the study of social movements and disruptive politics.

The stories gathered in these pages lay bare the power of the arts to unsettle and rework deeply ingrained religious beliefs and practices. This book grounds its narrative in the accounts of 82 Evangelicals who underwent a sea-change of religious identity through the intervention of the arts. "There never would have been an undoing of my conservative Evangelical worldview" confides one young man, "without my encounter with the transcendent work of Mark Rothko on that rainy afternoon in London's Tate Modern." "The characters in The Brothers Karamazov began to feel like family to me," reports another individual, "and the doubts of Ivan Karamazov slowly saturated my soul." As their stories unfold, the subjects of the study describe the arts as sources of, by turns, "defamiliarization," "comfort in uncertainty," "a stand-in for faith" and a "surrogate transcendence." Drawing on memoirs, interviews, and field notes, Philip Salim Franics explores the complex interrelationship of religion and art in the modern West, and offers an important new resource for on-going debates about the role of the arts in education and social life.

A major new contribution to comparative and multidisciplinary scholarship on the alignment of religion and violence in the contemporary world, with a special focus on South and Southeast Asia. Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia shows how this region is the site of recent and emerging democracies, a high degree of religious pluralism, the largest Muslim populations in the world, and several well-organized terrorist groups, making understanding of the dynamics of religious conflict and violence particularly urgent. By bringing scholars from religious studies, political science, sociology, anthropology and international relations into conversation with each other, this volume brings much needed attention to the role of religion in fostering violence in the region and addresses strategies for its containment or resolution. The dearth of other literature on the intersection of religion, politics and violence in contemporary South and Southeast Asia makes the timing of this book particularly relevant. This book will of great interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Asian politics, security studies and conflict studies.

Focuses on the ways the U.S. gov¿t. can effectively fight terrorist org. beyond simply trying to deny terrorist access to financing. The U.S. gov¿t. can use financial info. as the ¿string¿ that leads to all aspects of terrorist oper. By disrupting access to financial resources and, more importantly, following its trail, the U.S. gov¿t. through coordinated intelligence, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions, and diplomacy within the Interagency, private sector, allies, and partner nations, can enhance U.S. security, disrupt terrorist operations and mitigate terrorist effects on U.S. strategic interests. The disruption of terrorist financing is an effective way to enhance U.S. security, disrupt terrorist operations, and mitigate terrorist effects on U.S. strategic interests. Illustrations.

Religion Online provides new insights about religiosity in a contemporary context, offering a comprehensive look at the intersection of digital media, faith communities, and practices of all sorts. Recent research on Apple users, video games, virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, digital music, and sports as religion supports the idea that media and religion, once considered separate entities, are in many cases the same thing. New media and religious practice can no longer be detached; this two-volume set discusses how religionists are embracing the Internet amidst cultural shifts of secularization, autonomous religious worship, millennials' affinity for new media, and the rise of fundamentalism in the global south. While other works describe case studies, this book explains how new media are interwoven into the very fabric of religious belief, behavior, and community. Chapters break down the past, present, and projected future of the use of digital media in relation to faith traditions of many varieties, extending from mainline Christianity to new religious movements. The book also examines the impacts of digital media on beliefs and practices around the world. In exploring these subjects, it calls on the study of culture, namely anthropology, to conceptualize a technological period as significant as the industrial revolution.

The word ''faith'' is common these days, but placing one's faith in God is a weighty action, uncommonly fraught with consequence and, by His design, inconvenience. Faith in God is reassuring and comforting only insofar as believers trust Him - and that depth of trust is the mark of a mature Christian who has allowed faith to intrude on his life and shift his gaze away from his own aims, needs and desires. This is nothing if not a painful and disturbing process. A Disruptive Faith is A. W. Tozer's never-before-published teaching on what he termed ''faith that perturbs'' - faith that contradicts the unbelieving man and threatens the complacency of the Christian. The renowned pastor and teacher insists in these pages that genuine faith breeds dissatisfaction with this life, by God's design; it weans us from this temporary life and prepares us for the life to come. Readers will learn to be content with this faith-inspired discontent and to experience a fresh hope for eternity with God.

Disrupting Hate in Education aims to identify and respond to the ideological forms of hate and fear that are present in schools, which echo larger nativist and populist agendas. Contributions to this volume are international in scope, providing powerful examples from US schools and communities, examining anti-extremism work in the UK, the "saffronization" of schools in India, struggles to re-orient the villainization of teachers in Brazil, and more. Written by a dynamic group of activist educators and critical researchers, chapters demonstrate how conservative mobilizations around collective identities gain momentum, and how these mobilizations can be interrupted. Out of these interruptions come new opportunities to practice a critically democratic education that hinges upon risk-taking, deep dialogue, and creating a space for common dignity.