Scholars often equate a Swahili presence with the moment history began on the Tanzanian central coast. In this book, Rhonda M. Gonzales proposes an altogether different and more comprehensive narrative. Societies, Religion, and History is the first study to apply historical linguistic methods to the Bantu-speaking peoples of the coastal and interior regions of central east Tanzania, individuals and communities who later became part of the Swahili world. The Seuta and Ruvu Bantu societies were entrenched along the coast and interior of Tanzania for centuries before Swahili-speaking populations expanded their towns and settlements southward along the East African coastline. Making use of historical linguistics, the findings of cutting-edge archaeologists, ethnographic sources, and her own extensive field research, Gonzales unfolds a historical panorama of thriving societies engaged in vibrant cross-cultural exchange and prosperous regional and transoceanic networks. According to Gonzales, scholars need to integrate these communities into their stories if they are to compose a full and satisfying history of central eastern Tanzania. Recovering this history requires close attention to the happenings of the interior, often misleadingly referred to--and treated--as hinterland. Toward that end, Gonzales combines a challenging range of historical resources to build a long-term history of the social, cultural, and religious beliefs and practices of the region as they have developed over the past 2,000 years.

This unique encyclopedia explores the historical and contemporary controversies between science and religion. It is designed to offer multicultural and multi-religious views, and provide wide-ranging perspectives. Science, Religion, and Society covers all aspects of the religion and science dichotomy, from humanities to social sciences to natural sciences, and includes articles by theologians, religion scholars, physicians, scientists, historians, and psychologists, among others.

Class has always played a role in American religion. Class differences in religious life are inevitably felt by both those in the pews and those on the outside looking in. This volume starts a long overdue discussion about how class continues to matter - and perhaps even ways in which it does not - in American religion. Class is indeed important, whether one examines it through analysis of events and documents, surveys and interviews, or participant observation of religious groups. The chapters herein examine class as a reality that is both material and symbolic, individual and corporate. "Religion and Class in America" examines the myriad ways in which class continues to interact with the theologies, practices, beliefs, and group affiliations of American religion.

During the twentieth century, Britain turned from one of the most deeply religious nations of the world into one of the most secularised nations. This book provides a comprehensive account of religion in British society and culture between 1900 and 2000. It traces how Christian Puritanism and respectability framed the people amidst world wars, economic depressions, and social protest, and how until the 1950s religious revivals fostered mass enthusiasm. It then examines the sudden and dramatic changes seen in the 1960’s and the appearance of religious militancy in the 1980s and 1990s. With a focus on the themes of faith cultures, secularisation, religious militancy and the spiritual revolution of the New Age, this book uses people’s own experiences and the stories of the churches to display the diversity and richness of British religion. Suitable for undergraduate students studying modern British history, church history and sociology of religion.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.

This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

This volume of essays by Heinz Schilling represents his three main fields of interest in early modern European history. The first section of the book, entitled 'Urban Society and Reformation', deals with urban society in northern Germany and the Netherlands from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The author discusses social structure and changes, the problems of religion and mentality as well as political culture and thinking. The second section, 'confessionalization and Second Reformation', treats the paradigm 'Confessionalization', which denotes a fundamental process of social change within Old European society during the second half of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The third section, 'The Netherlands — the Pioneer Society of Early Modern Europe', deals with the Northern Netherlands as a model for early modern modernization and as a successful republican and 'bourgeois' alternative to the aristocratic Old European society. The essays collected in this book were originally written in German and published over the last fifteen years. The articles have been revised and the notes have been updated. This volume gives a broader English-speaking audience the possibility to read Heinz Schilling's research. It also provides a concise collection of the author's writings for those readers who are already familiar with his studies.