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This book explores how members of one religious group with a strong apocalyptic tradition — Kensington Temple, a large Pentecostal church in London — reconciled doctrines of the end of the world with the demands of their everyday lives. It is shown that they subjected these doctrines to a process of scrutiny, moderating and marginalizing them in response to a so-called the “Problem of the End”, the tendency of apocalyptic discourse to predict things that do not happen. In doing so, they employed the same subjective rationality that they applied to all manner of risky religious claims, such as those relating to miraculous healing. In effect, they were testing hypotheses not in a scientific fashion, but according to the dictates of common sense. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the notion that there is a single psychological or material cause of millenarianism.

This book assesses the role of local worship communities — churches, mosques, temples, and others — in promoting civic engagement among recent immigrants to the United States. The product of a three-year study of immigrant worship communities in the Washington, D.C. area, the study looked at churches, mosques, temples, and other communities of immigrants from Korea, China, India, West Africa, the Muslim world, and El Salvador. The researchers surveyed 200 of these communities and studied twenty in depth. Communities vary widely in how much they build social capital, provide social services to immigrants, develop the civic skills of members, and shape immigrants' identities. Local leadership and group characteristics much more than ethnic origin or religious tradition shape the level and kind of civic engagement that the communities foster. Particularly, where leaders are civically engaged, they provide personal and organizational links to the wider American society and promote civic engagement by members. Homeland causes and a strong sense of religious and ethnic identity, far from alienating immigrants from American society, promote higher levels of civic engagement in immigrant communities.

This book is a study of the relationship of oral tradition to written sources among different Jewish groups that thrived in Palestine from the later Second Temple period into Late Antiquity. Its main concern is to track the emerging awareness, within diverse Palestinian scribal groups, of the distinction between written books and the oral traditions upon which they were based or in light of which they were interpreted. The thesis holds that during the Second Temple period in particular, diverse Jewish scribal communities –such as the composers of Jewish pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea community, and the Pharisees – certainly employed oral traditions in their literary and interpretive work. But they did not appeal to oral tradition as an authoritative source of knowledge. This was reserved for written books regarded as prophetic transmissions from antiquity. The emergence of a coherent ideology of oral tradition as a kind of revelation comparable to that of Scripture is associated with the consolidation of third century rabbinic Judaism. The book argues that the rabbinic ideology of Oral Torah – “Torah in the Mouth” – is, in great measure, a legitimation of the institution of rabbinic discipleship, which depended upon the primacy of face‐to‐face relationships, unmediated by the written word.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, France has upheld clear constitutional guidelines that protect human rights and religious freedom. Today, however, intolerant attitudes and discriminatory practices towards unconventional faiths have become acceptable and even institutionalized in public life. This book offers an examination of France's most stigmatized new religions, or sects, and the public management of religious and philosophical minorities by the state. The book tracks the mounting government-sponsored anticult movement in the wake of the shocking mass suicides of the Solar Temple in 1994, and the negative impact of this movement on France's most visible religious minorities, whose names appeared on a “blacklist” of 172 sects commissioned by the National Assembly. Drawing on extensive interviews and field research, the book describes the controversial histories of well-known international NRMs (the Church of Scientology, Raelian Movement, and Unificationism) in France, as well as esoteric local groups. The book also reveals the partisanship of Catholic priests, journalists, village mayors, and the passive public who support La Republique's efforts to control minority faiths—all in the name of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”.

Many observers have commented on what appears to be a fundamental contradiction concerning the ways that traditional religions function in Japan. On the one hand, the presence of temples and shrines is pervasive throughout most countryside and urban areas, which means that there are countless examples of festivals and rituals on display creating a sense of vibrancy and involvement. At the same time, observers often get the impression that neither Buddhism nor Shinto is as spiritually dynamic an institution as might be expected. In reality, however, religion functions as an integral part of daily life from cradle to grave, so much so that it is probably taken for granted by Japanese themselves. Any level of apparent disinterest masks a fundamental commitment to participating regularly in diverse though diffused religious practices. “Sacred High City, Sacred Low City” uses case studies of religious sites at two representative but contrasting Tokyo neighborhoods as a basis for reflecting on this apparently contradictory quality in order to examine a variety of issues regarding how contemporary Japanese society regards the role of traditional religion. In what ways does Japan continue to carry on and adapt tradition, and to what extent has modern secular society lost touch with the traditional elements of religion? Or, does Japanese religiosity reflect another, possibly postmodern alternative beyond the dichotomy of sacred and secular, in which religious differences as well as a seeming indifference to religion are encompassed as part of the contemporary lifestyle? The aim of the book is to use the micro-level of analyzing sacred sites in particular Tokyo neighborhoods as representative case studies that constitute a vehicle for probing and reevaluating the macro-level regarding the overall meaning and significance of religiosity in contemporary Japan. Considering the two conundrums of religious structure and motivation in tandem helps answer the overriding question about sacred space: What makes religiosity “tick” in an increasingly secular environment that would seem to detract from and cause it to deteriorate?

From Chennai (Madras), India to London and Washington D.C., contemporary urban middle-class Hindus invest earnings, often derived from the global economy, into the construction or renovation of temples. South Indians often lead such efforts to re-establish authentic temples that nonetheless become sites for innovative communities, new visions of the Gods, and distinctive middle-class religious sensibilities. Although a part of the much-discussed resurgence of Hinduism, Gods and their ritual worship — not nationalistic ideology — center these enterprises. This book aims to go beyond the more common analytical starting points of identity, multiculturalism, transnationalism, or globalism to understand contemporary Hinduism. In both conversation and contention with current theory, the book highlights the Gods, their shrines, and the middle-class people who re-establish them. Using surveys of modern temples in Chennai, London, and Washington D.C. patronized by South Indians, it focuses on the ubiquity of certain Gods and Goddesses — but not all — their portrayal, the architecture of their new “homes”, and their place in the modern urban commercial and social landscapes. Arguing that this migration of Gods in tandem with people is not new, the book traces current temple architecture to Indian merchants who constructed new temples within a decade of the founding of Madras by the East India Trading Company in the initial era of the current world economic system. In the process, it questions the interrelationships between ritual worship/religious edifices, the rise of the modern world economy, and the ascendancy of the great middle class in this new era of globalization.

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn't? This book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion. The book begins at Oxford, in the late nineteenth century, when Friedrich Max Müller and James Legge classified Confucianism as a world religion in the new discourse of “world religions” and the emerging discipline of comparative religion. The book shows how that decisive moment continues to influence the understanding of Confucianism in the contemporary world, not only in the West but also in China, where the politics of Confucianism has become important to the present regime in a time of transition. Contested histories of Confucianism are vital signs of social and political change. The book also examines the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China and the social significance of the ritual practice of Confucian temples. While the Chinese government turns to Confucianism to justify its political agenda, Confucian activists have started a movement to turn Confucianism into a religion. Confucianism as a world religion might have begun as a scholarly construction, but are we witnessing its transformation into a social and political reality? With historical analysis, extensive research, and thoughtful reflection, this book will engage all those interested in religion and global politics at the beginning of the Chinese century.