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This chapter investigates interracial churches' participation in extra‐religious activities, paying particular attention to the ways in which they address issues of race and racial inequality. Findings suggest that interracial churches are no more or less inclined to participate in political, community, or race‐related activities than white churches. And they are less likely than black churches to participate in activities that have been shown to be racially salient, namely race or ethnicity focused activities and political activities. Furthermore, when interracial churches do participate in these kinds of activities, they are marginal to church life and avoid addressing the structural consequences of race.

Chapter Eight explores Charles Hodge’s conversion to Christianity during the revival at Princeton College in the winter of 1815. Hodge had been religious his entire life, but decided to take a step forward in his commitment to Christ during this revival. He then threw himself into various religious activities at the College as both his grades and his health suffered.

This chapter examines Iranian names and Persian influence on the religious sanctuaries in Asia Minor. It explains that religious cults with Persian associations were extraordinarily tenacious and long-lasting across the entire land mass of Asia Minor, but that Persian influence on religious activity in Asia Minor was not uniform in nature. The chapter suggests that many of the cults in Asia Minor were undoubtedly of a hybrid nature and contained Greek or native Anatolian as well as Iranian features.

This chapter argues that Russian Orthodoxy provides an interesting context for examining the relationship between churchly religiosity and religion outside the church. The church is tolerant and supportive of various forms of religious activities taking place outside its own domain. The chapter focuses on pilgrimages in order to examine how Orthodox believers relate to the church and society, distinguishing between two kinds of pilgrimage: processions and the veneration of “traveling icons.” By offering religious education and experience outside of the church, these kinds of pilgrimage demonstrate how the revival of Russian Orthodoxy continues to create kenotic communities of believers.

This article focuses on women's role in household religion. Virtually all the household religious activities of Israelite women intersected with their other maintenance activities. An important reason for this is that most religious acts involved food, and women performed most food-preparation tasks. Another reason is the responsibility of women for bearing and raising children, a process often fraught with problems and addressed by religious behaviors. The discussions on health care, reproduction, festivals and feasts, and foodways provide a way to consider Everywoman Eve's religious experiences.

This chapter shows that the flamen and flaminica Dialis served the gods together as priest and priestess of Jupiter. Until fairly recently, however, modern scholars have either denied or heavily qualified the official priestly status of the flaminica Dialis, describing her instead as the Roman equivalent of the pastor's wife. This analogy is inappropriate in light of the ancient evidence for her status and religious activities. The chapter then reconstructs the flaminica's ritual activities and establishes a new framework for understanding them. The ancient evidence, though often intractable, demonstrates that the flaminica Dialis was a religious official in her own right with her own role, both in separate rituals that she was responsible for independently and in rituals that she shared with her husband, the flamen.

Not even at the level of practice, still less of the imagination, was religion in ancient Athens restricted within the confines of Attica. This international dimension of Athenian religion has four overlapping aspects. The first is the participation of Athens at the festivals held at the four great Panhellenic sanctuaries. The second international aspect was Athens' membership of Amphictyonies, which are a survival of a religious and political organisation that predates the city in the form in which it is known. At the Panhellenic games and at amphictyonic festivals, the Athenians participated along with other states. But there were also certain religious activities that they undertook at Delphi either alone or in association only with the Delphians. This is the third international dimension of Athenian religion. The final international dimension involves individuals who made offerings, attended festivals, and sought healing at foreign sanctuaries; they were initiated too in Mysteries.

This book has discussed how much changing cultural patterns in the past and present have influenced scholarly reconstructions of ancient paganism. It also describes the extent to which a wide-ranging study enabled useful comparisons to be made between approaches to the study of religious activity in different periods. This conclusion extends the discussion and attempts to answer the two remaining questions prefaced in this book: whether it is possible to have an archaeology or a history of ancient British religions, and where the limits of relativism lie in the interpretation of data.

This section deals with the Dafo or Great Buddha Monastery of Zhangye in Gansu province which celebrated its newly reinstated status as a place of religious activity. It notes that at the center of all the attention was the site's principal icon, a thirty-five meter long statue of Śākyamuni in recline that was housed inside the main hall. It observes that the hyper-realism of the image, at once rooted in real life and in fantasy, reminded its beholders that the nirvana Buddha is one constant source of hope and pride for the community, whose power can be activated time and again through seeing as well as making.

This chapter focuses on the question of individuality in religious matters. Certain consequences must be accepted if one wants to use the idea of the individual and that of individuality in religious studies to counter the claim of uniqueness in descriptions of “modern” religiosity. These begin with the choice of the objects of research: the focus is on individual practices, on life-cycle rituals in their importance not only for the constitution of communities but also for the process of individuation. Religious activities must not be viewed as solidified or permanent, or as well-organized “cults” and “religions,” formulating and achieving far-reaching normative claims and identities. Instead, they must be analyzed with regard for their temporary and situational character, with regard for the many roles that were involved and the widely diverse strategic interests of the participants. Through the lens of individualization, religion is as much a traditional system of symbols as it is a strategic option for an individual.

Chapter 4 redescribes Paul as a freelance religious expert by demonstrating how each of the characteristics and dynamics considered in the previous chapters are attested in his epistles. These include but are not limited to the particular punishments that Paul alleges to have suffered; the frequent appeals that he makes to his ethnic status; his use of Judean writings for myth-making and literary divination; his claim to possess divine mysteries and revealed wisdom; the particular religious services he offers (initiation, purification, immortality, as well as the acquisition of skills such as prophesy, healing, and the discernment of spirits); his facility with philosophical discursive practices; and even his collection for the poor in Jerusalem. There situated Paul’s writings offer a rare, firsthand perspective on how individual experts negotiated the challenges and opportunities of this form of religious activity.

This chapter examines the role of slaves in the ceremonial life in the Northwest Coast, discussing the use of slaves in rituals and addressing their most widespread use in the burial feasts of titleholders. It describes the tie between cannibalism and slavery, and discusses the possible symbolic association of slaves, copper, and salmon, as well as the use of slaves in ceremonies and other religious activities.

Chapter 2 considers how concepts of foreignness shaped the religion of freelance experts. The evidence suggests that many participants in this phenomenon couched their specialty in exoticism and even exaggerated their foreignness for the sake of recognition among audiences with general expectations about the distinctive religious practices, skills, and texts of particular ethnic peoples or geographic regions. The chapter introduces the concept of “ethnic coding” to describe these dynamics and examines in detail evidence for experts in forms of religion that were presented as Egyptian and Judean. Whereas the latter figures have been studied as “proselytes” soliciting converts on behalf of some larger entity (Judaism, or a Jewish community), the chapter argues that they are analogous to other foreign experts attested within this class of religious activity (Chaldeans, Persians, Egyptians).

The discussion of festivals, associations, and dedications in this chapter distinguishes between the nuclear family and wider networks of kin, as well as corporate and ‘voluntary’ groups, and focuses on ‘private’ religious activity: the participation of women in ritual, theoria/pilgrimage, associations (eranos, orgeones, thiasos), the drift towards henotheism, oracles, dreams, and dedications.

For two millennia, Christians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why structure one’s life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one’s comings and goings? The project of this chapter is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the Christian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between an ethic of proximity, which enjoins us to attend to the needs of (and obligations to) those near and dear, and an ethic of outwardness, which enjoins us to both attend and open ourselves up to the needs of (and obligations to) those who belong to various out-groups. The tradition enjoins an ethic of outwardness. A close look at the liturgies of the Eastern Christian tradition reveals the ways in they express this ethic.