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This book is the first comprehensive scholarly study of religious images in popular music.Examining bestsellers from 1906 to 1971, the work explores the role religious images have in the secularization of American culture.Popular music lyrics that express an adherence to a sacred order are couched in inoffensive, content-less language.These lyrics of civility reflect and shape the increasing secularization of American culture in the twentieth century.The analysis focuses primarily on the way these lyrics reduce the meaning of the terms and theology of the Biblical faith.The aesthetic of civility carries over into theology, the narratives, and the accompanying instrumental arrangements of songs that adhere to the Biblical sacred order.
On the other hand, lyrics that reject the Biblical tradition use content-filled, offensive language.The result is that displaced adherents withdraw from the Biblical tradition and turn to alternative cultural religions, or idols of attraction, including popular music, that offer meaning to fill a void in the individual.The secularization of American society, therefore, is not a withdrawal from the idea of religion itself.
The analysis focuses on the two dominant themes in songs that include religious images: prayer and heaven. The author explores the songs of the two world wars, the hit parade era, the rhythm and blues and doo-wop of the 1950s, the new folk singer movement, soul music and rock music of the 1960s, and the revival rock of the early 1970s.The work demonstrates the capacity of one form of popular culture to separate adherents from a subculture through diluting the meaning of the language of the subculture's elemental thought.
(Ph.D. dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 1994; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index) ... Read more

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The Lyrics of Civility - A great way to learn about music
This is an excellent book - informative, well written and very interesting.The lyrics of civility are inoffensive words of popular songs that embrace Biblical tradition, enabling the listener the choice ofmeaning.The work is thorough and exhibits the author's vast knowledge ofmusic.The progression of music with Biblical images through this centuryis quite revealing.In the beginning of the century it was quite naturalfor popular music to be based on religious themes.Then during rock androll, which Dr. Bielen reminds us was the greatest upheaval in popularmusic history, religious images became more vague.In fact, some songstotally rejected Christian tradition and made light of people who believedin it.

Dr. Bielen reminds us that as the decade of the 60s came to aclose, young Americans began to look outside traditional religious ordersfor meaning in life.Spiritual gurus were adopted by popular musicians. In the early 70s there were songs that spoke of an individual beingsignificant to a person, instead of God.Then, by the mid 70s contemporaryChristian music began to emerge. Stevie Wonder had quite a few songs withpowerful Biblical messages. Dr. Bielen wrote a chapter following the pathof Dylan through the 80s after his born-again experience.The popularmusic of the 90s has personal religion as a common thread.

Dr. Bielengives numerous examples of particular artists in addition to Dylan, andcovers his subject completely.Dr. Bielen was at Woodstock, owns severalthousand albums and is well qualified to speak about the subject of popularmusic.He teaches the subject at Bowling Green State University.

Irecommend this book to any one interested in music.And if you are notinterested in music, this is a good place to start to learn about it. ... Read more

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Focusing on settlement patterns among Houston's Korean immigrants, this study examines in ethnographic detail the mutually beneficial relationship between the Korean business community and church groups. It explore historical background and social and demographic characteristics of the group to provide a broader context in explaining their entrepreneurial and religious behaviors. The study shows that economic and social changes during and after the oil boom in Houston had a direct effect on the emergence of the Korean business community. Churches with a highly developed structural linkage through cell group ministry also facilitate business contacts among parishioners. Embracing a majority of Korean community members as parishioners, the churches perform social functions that are indispensable to the Korean immigrants. ... Read more

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The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority Religions in Medieval and Early Modern Iran
"The Fire, the Star and the Cross" is an informative and intellectually stimulating book. As a reader, who is interested in history, I found the book very well written and quite powerful. The author in his research has shown a superb mastery in dealing with facts and reflecting them in words. ... Read more

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Varities of Religious experience
book came in a timely manner and the discription of the book was more than I expected it to be.Even though the book is old the binding and pages were in excellent condition.Thank you for the price and would recommend this site to anyone looking for used materials

A living force in spiritual literature - for believer and non-believer alike
It is both as philosopher and experimental psychologist that William James approached the study of religious phenomena.Conversion, repentence, mysticism, hopes of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter are studied with boldness, sympathy and the unbiased common sense of science.The result is a book that has stood the test of time and continues to stimulate readers more than a century after it was conceived.It represents a living force in religious/spiritual literature, for believer and non-believer alike.

Healthy-Mindedness
This book has been reissued, but this is the particular copy that this reviewer has read and reread. The chapters entitled "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness" and "The Sick Soul" are very illuminating. These phrases can be tranferred to the present time. We have popular music and healthy mindedness and popular music and the sick soul. We have comedy and healthy mindedness and comedy and the sick soul. So too with best selling books and best selling movies. The "Conclusion" and "Postscript" are somewhat disappointing because too many myteries remain. But what a beautiful and honest book by a great thinker.

An enduring masterpiece
It has been said that Henry James wrote his novels as philosophical treatises while his brother William wrote his philosophical works as novels. This book, originally published in 1902 may be considered one of the 20th century's most influential books on both psychology and spirituality.

James considers the feelings, actions and experiences of individuals, insofar as they understand themselves to be in a relationship with whatever they consider the divine. It is thus about the religion of everyday life and has nothing to do with churches and dogma.

He writes objectively about a wide spectrum of religious experiences and quotes from the autobiographical writings of famous mystics from many traditions and of people like Whitman, Luther, Voltaire, Emerson, Tolstoy and many others. No religions are compared, only the experiences of the individual, and his arguments are well-reasoned.

Thought and feeling are determinants of conduct; the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought. When the entire field of religion is surveyed, we discover massive variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings and the conduct are nearly always the same for Christian, Moslem and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives.

The theories which religion generates are secondary. If one desires to understand its essence, one must look to the feelings and the behaviour as being the more constant elements. This book is a treasure trove of insights and collected wisdom that simultaneously serves as a trenchant plea for religious tolerance.

And yes, it does sometimes read like a gripping novel, especially the chapters on the religion of healthy-mindedness, the sick soul, and mysticism. The reader should be patient though. Although it is not a difficult text to grasp, every sentence is loaded with so much meaning that one has to return regularly to previous paragraphs in order to fully understand and properly process the arguments and insights.

A thorough, patient study of the text will richly reward the reader. An even more rewarding experience can be had by studying Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos and Stephan A. Hoeller's The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead at the same time. These four classic works complement one another in a most marvellous way.
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Comparison of Shakespeare's works to their likely sources is one way to deepen our appreciation. Sources for The Tempest, however, have long eluded the grasp of scholars, who have unearthed only bits and pieces that resemble minor elements of the play. Few traces of the special qualities of The Tempest have turned up in any works so far considered as sources. This author is the first to identify a strong biblical basis for The Tempest. Further, she demonstrates that the play's use of biblical imagery, characters, and concepts echo the way these elements were interpreted in the English Mystery Plays. Thus Hall is able to trace the links between The Tempest and the best known religious works of Elizabethan society: the Bible, the Mystery Plays, and the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. These links reveal The Tempest as a profoundly spiritual work, allowing the modern reader to experience the play as a harmonious religious vision. ... Read more

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Follow Elijah as he bravely serves the living God and confronts Ahab's wicked kingdom. Discover how a dangerous challenge pits Ahab's entire kingdom against one fearless prophet. Who will prevail?. ... Read more

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It makes me want to read about other prophets like Elijah!
Reviewed by Regan Zaborowski (age 8) for Reader Views (3/08)

"Elijah" is the story of the real man, Elijah, who lived a long time before Jesus was born.He was a prophet; that is a friend of God who God speaks to and tells him what to say to other people.Elijah wants all the people in Israel to believe in God instead of the god Baal that most of the people there worship.The story begins when Elijah goes to see King Ahab to tell him that God wants his people to believe in Him or he will send a drought. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel want to kill Elijah, so he goes away.No rain comes for a long, long time, and that makes the food and water dry up so the people have nothing to eat.Then Elijah meets a lady named Leah and her son Hiram, and she prays to God when Elijah asked God to keep giving her flour and oil so that she could bake bread.God also brings Hiram back to life after he died.At the end of the book, Elijah goes back to see King Ahab to try to make him believe in God.They all go to a mountain and the real God wins a contest to make fire first on some bulls.All the people who prayed to Baal were killed.Then after another long time God makes it rain; and King Ahab finally believes in God.

I liked reading this book, "Elijah."The printing was big, and I could mostly read the words by myself.I read this book to my mom, and she liked it too.It was cool because I learned about Elijah and Moses and Abraham and some of the other prophets that told people about God, before in school -- but this book told the whole story of Elijah and the things he did to make people believe in God.I didn't know that he prayed so much about bringing food and water and rain, and that he brought Hiram back to life.It was cool that he could ask God for rain and fire and to make somebody alive again, and God would do it.My favorite part of the book was when everybody was on the mountain and lots of people were on Baal's side, and just a few people were on Elijah's side, and God made lightning come out of the sky and make fire on Elijah's bull. It was sad that all those people on Baal's side got killed because the law said so. This book was also interesting because it was about a real person that actually lived on earth and did those things, not a made up character.It makes me want to read about other prophets like Elijah and find out what kinds of things God helped them do.I'm not sure if there are any prophets still alive today, but I would like to read about them if they exist.

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This detailed guide is strategic to the study of popular evangelical movements. It describes the holdings of a major evangelical resource center in the United States. The Billy Graham Center, with its focus on missions and indigenous movements, has an unmatched array of sources. The special strengths of its Library, Museum, and Archives are documented here. Two appendices, comprising 20 percent of this volume, provide extensive descriptions of other archival and library collections throughout the country. A comprehensive index gives scholar, journalist, pastor, missionary, or interested layperson a general overview or direct information on specific topics. ... Read more

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excellent writing
This is excellent academic book on the Russian imperial colonial policy in South Eastern Caucasus. Must read for academicians and experts of the region. ... Read more

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The revised, second edition of this authoritative text provides a survey of Islamic history and thought with new chapters on intellectual thought and medieval developments.Rippin examines the elements which come together to form Islam, in particular the Qur'an and the traditions from Muhammad. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1917.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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In the early Church, several views on martyrdom co-existed. The 'orthodox' position, generally accepted by scholars, was that a Christian should choose martyrdom rather than deny the Faith, but should not, on any account, court death. Although it has been recognized that some in the early Church did in fact seek out death, by giving themselves over to arrest, most scholars have dismissed these martyrs as 'deviant,' 'heretical,' and not displaying 'the normal Christian attitude to martyrdom.' Therefore, instances of volitional, or radical martyrdom, have been largely ignored in scholarly investigation into the theology and origins of Christian martyrdom. However, this project argues that, far from being a deviant strand of early Christianity, radical martyrdom was a significant, and widely held idealized form of Christ-devotion in the late first to early third centuries. Since scholars have largely carried out historical and theological investigations without reference to radical martyrdom, their conclusions are incomplete.This project aims to make up for this omission, re-examining the presentation, theology, and origins of Christian martyrdom up to the beginning of the Decian persecutions. Christian martyrdom is placed within the heritage of Jewish War tradition, with each martyr making an important contribution to the cosmic conflict between Satan and God. ... Read more

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from T and T Publishing
Several view of martyrdom co-existed in the early church. The "orthodox" position, generally accepted by scholars, was that a Christian should choose martyrdom rather than deny the faith, but should not, on any account, court death. Although it has been recognized that some in the early church did seek a glorified death, by giving themselves over to arrest, most scholars have dismissed such acts as differing from "the accepted attitude to martyrdom" in the early church. Therefore, instances of volitional, or radical martyrdom, have been largely overlooked or sidelined in scholarly investigations into the theology and origins of Christian martyrdom. The author argues that, far from being a deviant strand of early Christianity, "radical martyrdom" was a significant, and widely held idealized form of devotion in the late first to early third centuries. Christian martyrdom is placed within the heritage of Jewish War tradition, with each martyr making an important contribution to the cosmic conflict between Satan and God. This book re-examines the presentation, theology, and origins of Christian martyrdom up to the beginning of the Decian persecutions in the light of new perspectives on the subject. ... Read more

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Dodson interprets the dreams in the "Gospel of Matthew" in the context of the social and literary character of dreams in the Greco-Roman world. Dodson reads the dreams in the "Gospel of Matthew" (1:18b-25; 2:12, 13-15, 19-21, 22; 27:19) as the authorial audience. This approach requires an understanding of the social and literary character of dreams in the Greco-Roman world. Dodson describes the social function of dreams, noting that dreams constituted one form of divination in the ancient world, and looks at the theories and classification of dreams that developed in the ancient world. He then moves on to demonstrate the literary dimensions of dreams in Greco-Roman literature. This exploration of the literary representation of dreams is nuanced by considering the literary form of dreams, dreams in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition, the inventiveness of literary dreams, and the literary function of dreams. The dreams in the "Gospel of Matthew" are then analyzed in this social and literary context. It is demonstrated that Matthew's use of dreams as a literary convention corresponds to the script of dreams in other Greco-Roman narratives.This correspondence includes the form of the Matthean dreams, dreams as a motif of the birth topos (1:18b-25), the association of dreams and prophecy (1:22-23; 2:15, 23), the use of the double-dream report (2:12 and 2:13-15), and dreams as an ominous sign in relation to an individual's death (27:19). An appendix considers the Matthean transfiguration as a dream-vision report. Formerly the "Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement", a book series that explores the many aspects of New Testament study including historical perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and theological, cultural and contextual approaches. "The Early Christianity in Context" series, a part of "JSNTS", examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the third century CE. The series places Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context. European Seminar on Christian Origins and "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Supplement" are also part of "JSNTS". ... Read more