Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare


Book Description

Spirituality and healthcare is an emerging field of research, practice and policy. Healthcare organisations and practitioners are therefore challenged to understand and address spirituality, to develop their knowledge and implement effective policy. This is the first reference text on the subject providing a comprehensive overview of key topics.




On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art


Book Description

Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief? On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the curious disconnection between spirituality and current art. This book will enable you to walk into a museum and talk about the spirituality that is or is not visible in the art you see.




Dispirited


Book Description

Dave Webster’s book is a counter-blast against the culturally accepted norm that spirituality is a vital and important factor in human life. Rejecting the idea of human wellbeing as predicated on the spiritual, the book seeks to identify the toxic impact of spiritual discourses on our lives. Spirituality makes us confused, apolitical and miserable - whether that spirituality is from conventional religious roots, from a new-age buffet of beliefs, or from some re-imagined ancient system of belief. Looking beyond this dismissal, the book looks towards atheistic existentialism, Theravada Buddhism and political engagement as a means to imagine what a post-spiritual world view could look like. ,




Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices


Book Description

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in “body” and “soul” losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in “Western culture,” the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when “body” and “soul” are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from “natural dualism”? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.




Contemporary Music and Spirituality


Book Description

The flourishing of religious or spiritually-inspired music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries remains largely unexplored. The engagement and tensions between modernism and tradition, and institutionalized religion and spirituality are inherent issues for many composers who have sought to invoke spirituality and Otherness through contemporary music. Contemporary Music and Spirituality provides a detailed exploration of the recent and current state of contemporary spiritual music in its religious, musical, cultural and conceptual-philosophical aspects. At the heart of the book are issues that consider the role of secularization, the claims of modernity concerning the status of art, and subjective responses such as faith and experience. The contributors provide a new critical lens through which it is possible to see the music and thought of Cage, Ligeti, Messiaen, Stockhausen as spiritual music. The book surrounds these composers with studies of and by other composers directly associated with the idea of spiritual music (Harvey, Gubaidulina, MacMillan, Pärt, Pott, and Tavener), and others (Adams, Birtwistle, Ton de Leeuw, Ferneyhough, Ustvolskaya, and Vivier) who have created original engagements with the idea of spirituality. Contemporary Music and Spirituality is essential reading for humanities scholars and students working in the areas of musicology, music theory, theology, religious studies, philosophy of culture, and the history of twentieth-century culture.




Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality


Book Description

Contemporary distinctions between religion and spirituality can often be traced to rebellion against hierarchical institutions with biases towards women and minorities that constrain individual freedom. This opposition is carefully addressed in this volume, with greater attention paid to gender and power in the context of contemporary spirituality and how these relate to the distinction between religion and spirituality.




Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe


Book Description

Pagan and Native Faith movements have sprung up across Europe in recent decades, yet little has been published about them compared with their British and American counterparts. Though all such movements valorize human relationships with nature and embrace polytheistic cosmologies, practitioners’ beliefs, practices, goals, and agendas are diverse. Often side by side are groups trying to reconstruct ancient religions motivated by ethnonationalism—especially in post-Soviet societies—and others attracted by imported traditions, such as Wicca, Druidry, Goddess Spirituality, and Core Shamanism. Drawing on ethnographic cases, contributors explore the interplay of neo-nationalistic and neo-colonialist impulses in contemporary Paganism, showing how these impulses play out, intersect, collide, and transform.




Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities


Book Description

This anthology negotiates the influential, yet silent educational presence of spiritualties within the field of somatic movement dance education internationally. The expressive and integral nature of spiritual experience remains academically undefined and peripheral to our understanding of creative practice. Lack of theoretical rigor, as well as a lack of a substantive definitional and methodological competency, has resulted in spirituality being marginalized. To date, important questions about how diverse spiritualities shape professional practice in the somatic movement and dance arts remain unanswered. This cutting-edge collection fills that void, providing greater creative and discursive clarity.




Leisure and Spirituality (Engaging Culture)


Book Description

This addition to the award-winning Engaging Culture series explores the link between leisure and spirituality, offering a Christian perspective on leisure concepts and issues in contemporary society. Paul Heintzman, a respected scholar and experienced recreation practitioner, interacts with biblical, historical, and contemporary leisure studies sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of leisure. He also explains the importance of leisure for spiritual growth and development. This work will appeal to professors and students as well as practitioners in the recreation and leisure services field, youth and college pastors, and camp ministries.




The Spirituality Revolution


Book Description

The Spirituality Revolution addresses the major social issue of spirituality which requires immediate attention if we are to creatively respond to spiralling outbreaks of depression, suicide, addiction and psychological suffering.