The Sacred Secular examines cultural spaces where people are experiencing something sacred. These places are not in the church. They’re in yoga studios, neighborhood potlucks, and TED Talks. Dottie Escobedo-Frank and Rob Rynders see lessons for the church in these spaces. They see new ways we can convey to people that the church is uniquely sacred and significant and that Jesus is for them. These glimpses into the sacred-secular will inspire creative church leaders to set aside their assumptions about what church looks like. The Sacred Secular nurtures empowerment, creativity, spiritual movement, and the courage to embody the sacredness and substance of our faith. “Many of us in the church (including clergy) feel we have more in common with the ‘spiritual but not religious’ than we have with lots of church folks these days. We are just as spiritually hungry and thirsty as ever, but we’re open to finding God in surprising places and spaces . . . including ‘secular’ ones. This beautifully written book is all about that phenomenon. I think you’re going to love it.” —Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker, brianmclaren.net “Be prepared to hear contemporary stories akin to the Apostle Peter discovering God in an ‘outsider’—Cornelius—in twenty-first–century urban America. This book is a jewel from two missional church practitioners in The United Methodist Church. It offers wisdom, vision, creativity, and humility that will mark the gospel-bearing church of the future. I highly recommend The Sacred Secular to pastors, church planters, and laity who want their congregations to know how to develop culturally connected faith communities in our rapidly changing world.” —Elaine A. Heath, Dean, Duke Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC

How do religious emotions and national sentiment become entangled across the world? In exploring this theme, The Secular Sacred focuses on diverse topics such as the dynamic roles of Carnival in Brazil, the public contestation of ritual in Northern Nigeria, and the culturalization of secular tolerance in the Netherlands. The contributions focus on the ways in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform, enforce, and spill over into each other. The case studies offer a bottom-up, practice-oriented approach in which the authors are wary to use categories of religion and secular as neutral descriptive terms. The Secular Sacred will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists, and social psychologists, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies and semiotics. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Boyle examines influential readings on the Bible as literature--notably Herder, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Levinas--and then applies them to literary writings.

“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.”—John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed A deeply felt exploration of the ways our favorite books can shape and heal us, from the host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Our favorite reads keep us company, give us hope, and help us find meaning in a chaotic world. In this fresh and relatable work, atheist chaplain Vanessa Zoltan blends memoir and personal growth as she grapples with the notions of family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. Informed by her training at the Harvard Divinity School and filtered through the pages of Jane Eyre as well as Little Women, Harry Potter, and The Great Gatsby, Zoltan explores topics ranging from the trauma she has inherited as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors to finding hope, meaning, and even magic in our deeply fractured times. Brimming with a love of classic literature and the tenderness of self-reflection, the book also reveals simple techniques for reading any work as a sacred text--from Virginia Woolf to Anne of Green Gables to baseball scorecards. Whether you're an avowed "Eyrehead" or a voracious reader and pop culture fan, this deeply felt and inspiring book will light the way to a more intimate appreciation for whatever books you love to read.

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

The ultra-orthodox Jewish world divides the world into two distinct realities; the sphere within and the sphere without. The internal sphere, which I refer to as the Sphere of Holiness is maintained in a sacrosanct manner so that the Sphere of Secularity does not intrude and contaminate the other sphere. The range of figurative walls maintaining these two spheres affects the consciousness and reality of every ultra-orthodox Jew so that this construct is continually brought to conscious awareness. Every member of those who maintain this lifestyle is urged to continually be reminded and reinvigorated in this awareness. Examples of such awareness begin with ultra-orthodox schooling. A child begins religious studies that are exclusive with secular studies either ignored or completed in a way that denies credence or importance. In New York State, the education law contains vague language regarding how a child is to be educated. This vagueness allows those in charge of that school to largely circumvent traditional pedagogy. As the child advances in religious studies, the lack of external exposure coupled with the intensity of study requirements ensures the young man does not stray into forbidden areas that might endanger his sacred standing in the community and be enticed by the larger world. Such study intensifies with each passing grade and year until he is fully conversant with ancient Jewish law and traditions after nearly twenty years of such study. At the same time, however, he will a functional illiterate in the lingua franca of his home country. His female counterpart will not be exposed to such traditional studies because her role is to be the mother and home caretaker, not the scholar. The Jewish tradition not to teach girls and women similar to men derives from the Talmud and the legal determination of Maimonides. This mindset has continued for hundreds of years and is unlikely to change. Despite this limitation on women's education, through Jewish history, exceptional women achieved a high scholarship to the acclaim of their entire community, including men. In fact, one woman, a singular exception, became a Chassidic Rebbe amidst fierce opposition. A modern exception to such a study curriculum is Chabad. Because it has a messianic outreach program, the Chabad couple who establish a Chabad House in diverse cities and countries and are often the only ones running the program, the woman must have the training to lead and know the deeper aspects of Judaism. This book is not only about women's education, but it represents the larger dynamics in how the ultra-orthodox Jewish world bifurcates the reality of its members so that any intrusion from that external world remains in place. An example of such limitation is the ultra-orthodox public denunciations against the use of the internet, use of computers, as against the smartphone unless these devices are programmed so that 'surfing' is not possible. The future of these communities, on a trajectory of high fertility, ensures their future growth. As they populate the United States and other countries, replenishing the numbers lost in the Holocaust, their exposure to and awareness of the world at large will remain extremely limited.

Focusing on the important relationship between the 'sacred' and the 'secular', this book demonstrates that it is not paradoxical to think in terms of both secular and sacred or neither, in different times and places. International experts from a range of disciplinary perspectives draw on local, national, and international contexts to provide a fresh analytical approach to understanding these two contested poles. Exploring such phenomena at an individual, institutional, or theoretical level, each chapter contributes to the central message of the book - that the ‘in between’ is real, embodied and experienced every day and informs, and is informed by, intersecting social identities. Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular provides an essential resource for continued research into these concepts, challenging us to re-think where the boundaries of sacred and secular lie and what may lie between.