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For Evagrius and many other early Christian monks, Mt. Sinai was a symbol of a certain intimacy with God the contemplative might hope to realize on the inner journey. The evocation of the mountain and the sapphire-blue tiles remains an important reminder of the intricate relationship that exists between outer and inner landscapes, and of the way the physical landscape can spark thought, open the imagination, and deepen awareness. The mountain became a place toward which the monk could direct his gaze, a point of orientation, an emblem of the awesome and charged space of his own inner life. This chapter argues that the contemplative vision arising from the ancient Christian monastic world expresses a hunger still present and familiar to us at the dawn of the twenty-first century: the longing to live with an awareness of the whole. And it speaks to the promise inherent in all great spiritual traditions of the world, that the human mind (or heart or soul) is capable of expanding and deepening to such an extent that it becomes possible to incorporate everything and to be incorporated into everything: to exist and know oneself as existing within the whole.

This chapter focuses on the ethnographic and epistemological limitations of Epiphanius' Panarion. Organizing the heretical world forces the heresiologists, like various classical ethnographers before them, to reflect upon their ability to comprehend the totality of the Christian world around them. Epiphanius further acknowledged that heresy knew no geographical or territorial boundaries; it was a counterworld residing in his orthodox world. The chapter illustrates how Epiphanius not only admits this loss of control but also embraces it. There is no attempt to hide the fissures within his knowledge as they reflect his humanity and humility. Although Epiphanius continuously formulated rhetorical and structural schemes to combat the ever-changing contours of the heretical world, he was consciously aware of his shortcomings, fears, and failures.

This chapter examines the impact of Indian traditions such as Hindu and Buddhist Tantra and the Kama Sutra on sexual magic in the West. It explains that although Tantra was typically singled out as the most bizarre, degenerate, and extreme aspect of the exotic Orient itself, it was immediately embraced by many British and American readers, who saw in it a powerful source of sexual and social liberation. The first attempt to fuse Western sexual magic with Indian Tantra began with the highly esoteric group known as the Ordo Templi Orientis, founded by Theodor Reuss, who clearly linked sexual magic with an ideal of social transformation and liberation from an oppressive Christian world.

This chapter contains D. T. Suzuki's open letter to Rev. John R. Mott, a cofounder and the general secretary of the World Student Christian Federation who received the Nobel Prize for his peace work (via foreign Protestant missions) in 1946. Published in the English edition of the monthly journal Hansei zasshi (later The Orient) in 1898, the letter was Suzuki's reaction to Mott's triumphalist article that appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 1897 regarding the work of missionaries in Japan. Suzuki defended Japanese Buddhism against Mott's claim that it falls short in fulfilling “the need of moral and religious culture” felt by thoughtful people. According to Suzuki, Christianity is backward and not “in accord with scientific thoughts,” unlike Buddhism. He also objected to the Christian depiction of “Buddhism” and argues that “Christianity neither could, nor would, do better than Buddhism has done, and will do, for the general welfare of the nation.”

This chapter examines the expansion of the Christian world, which was bigger than the Roman Church and included the Latin Church itself. According to Peter Damian in his Letter to Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino (1069): “The Lord, the Savior, does not preside over any single chair [i.e. any cathedra, any episcopal seat] by a special right, but rather the one shepherd presides over all generally. It is clear therefore that the order of the churches is disposed according to the privilege of Peter, not according to the incomparable excellence of the Redeemer.” This chapter begins by discussing the schism between Greek and Latin churches in the eleventh century and its impact on eastern Christian communities. It then explores Latin ecclesiastical contact with the greater world by focusing on Monte Cassino, Rome, and Jerusalem. It also considers the points of contact between East and West, namely: literature, liturgy, architecture, material culture, and asceticisms and spirituality.

This chapter explores the contemporaneous growth of the Jesus People movement in locations all across the United States in 1969 and 1970. The often spontaneous rise of counterculture-friendly Jesus People–style groups in the Pacific Northwest through such groups as the Shiloh Youth Revival Network and Seattle’s Jesus People Army, new groups in Midwestern cities such as Milwaukee and Fort Wayne, and scattered communes and fellowships from Kansas to upstate New York bespoke a vital hybrid of evangelical Christianity. While the movement attracted a growing number of church youth, the core of this expansion was rooted in its appeal to those who had been involved in the counterculture and drug culture.

This chapter explores conversions to Judaism in pre-modern confessional states that were recognized as central to the experience of European Jews and became common in antiquity in the last two centuries BCE. It talks about the procedure and legal ramifications of conversion to Judaism that first emerged in the reforms that were retroactively attributed to Nehemiah and Ezra. It also explains how conversions to Judaism are considered as a social organization of difference of the situational reorganization of ethnic boundaries, which responds to the perceived threat of Hellenism and assimilation. The chapter looks at accounts of transition to Judaism from early modern western Europe, which were generally kept in secret as they ran the risk of ostracism by the surrounding Christian world. It discusses how individuals who became Jewish at the time were being driven by intellectual and theological reasoning.