This survey considers the global religious situation at the approach of the new millennium. It provides an introduction to a variety of new religious movements, and examines the role of the Interfaith Movement as well as the use of modern technology.

This book examines the relationship between sport and religion with regard to twenty-first century topics such as race, fandom, education, and culture. The contributors provide new insights into the people, movements, and events that define the complex relationship between sport and religion around the world. A wonderful addition to any academic course on religion, sports, ethics, or culture as a whole.

Description: In this volume some of the outstanding Christian scholars of our day reflect on how their minds have changed, how their academic fields have changed over the course of their careers, and the pressing issues that Christian scholars will need to address in the twenty-first century. This volume offers an accessible portrait of key trends in the world of Christian scholarship today. Christian Thought in the Twenty-First Century features scholars from Great Britain, Canada, the United States, and Switzerland. The contributors represent a wide variety of academic backgrounds--from biblical studies to theology, to religious studies, to history, English literature, philosophy, law, and ethics. This book offers a personal glimpse of Christian scholars in a self-reflective mode, capturing their honest reflections on the changing state of the academy and on changes in their own minds and outlooks. The breadth and depth of insight afforded by these contributions provide rich soil for a reader's own reflections, and an agenda that will occupy Christian thinkers well into the twenty-first century. Endorsements: "I heard many of the lecturers whose essays appear in this book when they were guests of the Chair of Christian Thought at the University of Calgary. Now they reappear to reflect personally on how their minds and academic fields have changed over the course of their careers. They tackle key issues in their disciplines needing future attention and present their views as authentic humans, not only as respected academics." --Wayne Holst University of Calgary and St. David's United Church, Calgary About the Contributor(s): Douglas H. Shantz is Professor of Christian Thought at the University of Calgary. His recent books are Between Sardis and Philadelphia (2008), and A New Introduction to German Pietism (2012). Tinu Ruparell is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. He is coeditor, with Ian S. Markham, of Encountering Religion (2000). His current work centers on idealism in Ramanuja and Leibniz as well as on science and religion.

"Almost everyone today affirms the importance and merit of religious liberty. But religious liberty is being challenged by new questions (for example, use of the niqab or church adoption services for same-sex couples) and new forces (such as globalization and Islamism). Combined, these make the meaning of religious liberty in the twenty-first century uncertain. This collection of essays by ten of the world's leading scholars on religious liberty takes aim at these issues. The book is arranged around five specific challenges to religious liberty today: the state's responsibility to prevent coercion and intimidation of believers by others within the same faith community; the U.S.'s basic moral responsibilities to promote religious liberty abroad; how to understand and apply the traditional right of conscientious objection in today's circumstances; the distinctive problems presented by globalization; and the viability today of an 'originalist' interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses"--Provided by publisher

'Nations under God: The Geopolitics of Faith in the Twenty-First Century' is a timely contribution to the on-going discussion on religion and politics. The volume brings together over thirty leading scholars from a variety of disciplines such as political science, international relations theory, sociology, theology, anthropology, and geography. Utilising case studies, empirical investigations, and theoretical examinations, this book focuses on the complex roles that religions play in world affairs. It seeks to move beyond the simplistic narratives and overly impassioned polemics which swamp the discourse on the subject in the media, on the internet, and in popular nonfiction, by acting as a vessel for scholarly research on religion. The book presents a balanced analysis of the multifaceted roles taken on by religions, and religious actors, in global politics. Contributors: Stephen Dawson, Jodok Troy, Gertjan Dijkink, John A. Rees, Mark S. Cladis, Fabio Petito, Linda Woodhead, Jonathan Fox, Brendan Sweetman, Don Handelman, Scott W. Hibbard, Ruy Llera Blanes, Fang-long Shih, Kaarina Aitamurto, Mona Kanwal Sheikh, Lee Marsden, Shireen T. Hunter, Nilay Saiya, Dan G. Cox, Pauline Kollontai, Franc ois Foret, James L. Guth, Brent F. Nelsen, Paul S. Rowe, J. Paul Martin, Allen D. Hertzke, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jonathan Benthall, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Timothy Fitzgerald."

Expanding the scope of religious rhetoric Over the past twenty-five years, the intersection of rhetoric and religion has become one of the most dynamic areas of inquiry in rhetoric and writing studies. One of few volumes to include multiple traditions in one conversation, Rhetoric and Religion in the Twenty-First Century engages with religious discourses and issues that continue to shape public life in the United States. This collection of essays centralizes the study of religious persuasion and pluralism, considers religion’s place in U.S. society, and expands the study of rhetoric and religion in generative ways. The volume showcases a wide range of religious traditions and challenges the very concepts of rhetoric and religion. The book’s eight essays explore African American, Buddhist, Christian, Indigenous, Islamic, and Jewish rhetoric and discuss the intersection of religion with feminism, race, and queer rhetoric—along with offering reflections on how to approach religious traditions through research and teaching. In addition, the volume includes seven short interludes in which some of the field’s most accomplished scholars recount their experiences exploring religious rhetorics and invite readers to engage these exigent lines of inquiry. By featuring these diverse religious perspectives, Rhetoric and Religion in the Twenty-First Century complicates the field’s emphasis on Western, Hellenistic, and Christian ideologies. The collection also offers teachers of writing and rhetoric a range of valuable approaches for preparing today’s students for public citizenship in our religiously diverse global context.

'Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century: Essays on the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement in Honor of Don Haymes' is a snap-shot of a major American religious movement just after the turn of the millennium. When the ÒDisciplesÓ of Alexander Campbell and the ÒChristiansÓ of Barton Warren Stone joined forces early in the 19th century, the first indigenous ecumenical movement in the United States came into being. Two hundred years later, this American experiment in biblical primitivism has resulted in three, possibly four, large segments. Best known is the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), active wherever ecumenical Christians gather. The denomination is typically theologically open, having been reshaped by theological Liberalism and the Social Gospel in the twentieth century, and has been re-organized on the model of other Protestant bodies. The largest group, the Churches of Christ, easily distinguished by their insistence on 'a cappella' music (singing only), is theologically conservative, now tending towards the evangelical, and congregationally autonomous, though with a denominational sense of brotherhood. The Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (Independent) are a 'via media' between the two other bodies: theologically conservative and evangelical, congregationally autonomous, pastorally oriented, and comfortable with instrumental music. The fourth numerically significant group, the churches of Christ (Anti-Institutional), is a conservative reaction to the 'a cappella' churches, much in the way that the Southern ''a capella' churches reacted against the emerging intellectual culture and social location, instrumental music and institutional centrism of the Northern Disciples following the Civil War. Besides these four, numerous smaller fragments, typically one-article splinter groups, decorate the history of the Restoration Movement: One-Cup brethren, Premillennialists, No-Sunday-School congregations, No-Located-Preacher churches, and others. This movement to unite Christians on the basis of faith and immersion in Jesus Christ, and to restore New-Testament Christianity, is too little recognized on the American religious landscape, and it has been too little studied by the academic community. This volume is focused primarily on the 'a cappella' churches and their interests, but implications for the entire Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement abound. The voices that speak freely within were unimpeded in authoring these essays by standards of orthodoxy imposed from without. All of the contributors are acquainted with Don Haymes, the honoree of the volume, and have been inspired by this friend and colleague, a man with a rigorous and earthy intellect and a heavenly spirit. David Bundy, series editor Studies in the History and Culture of World Christianities