Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest


Book Description

This work traces the origins of apocalyptic prophecy in Christianity and Islam through in-depth examinations of several texts found within the Bible, the Quran, and the Hadith. The author contends that Christianity and Islam, often seen as two of the primary fundamentalist and proselytizing world faiths, remain pitted against each other in an ongoing struggle to impose their religious ideology on the rest of the world through either force or persuasion. The religious prophecies discussed in this book are largely focused on end-time or apocalyptic scenarios (such as the Book of Revelation from the Bible's New Testament, the prophesized hour of judgment in the Quran, and the Book of Tribulations in the Hadith). The final two chapters provide an analysis of current world politics, including the Iraq War, within the context of Christian and Islamic prophecy.




Slaves to Faith


Book Description

As Dr. Mercer posits, the fundamentalist is fundamentally driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both logically inconsistent and highly suspect in light of modern science. As a result, the fundamentalist completely rejects modernity while battling mightily in the arena of national politics and culture to bring about a world that aligns more closely with the fundamentalist worldview. Focusing on Christian fundamentalists, the author puts Christian fundamentalism in its historical and theological contexts. At the same time, Mercer calls upon cognitive theory to explain that the fundamentalist's life story is not particular to Christianity or any other religious belief system but that fundamentalist Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and those of all other faiths share a common psychological profile. Indeed, Mercer insists that if the Christian terminology were eliminated from contemporary fundamentalist Christian rhetoric, what would remain would be a framework that fundamentalists from other religions would find quite familiar and even comforting. In other words, the structure of the fundamentalist worldview, and the psychology beneath it, is pretty much the same across religions. It is a controversial thing to say about Christian fundamentalism, a thesis that has already proved contentious in the author's public appearances, and one that is sure to generate considerable attention and passionate debate as the U.S. populace continues to divide into opposing camps.




Constructing Identities


Book Description

The basic concern of border studies is to examine and analyze interactions that occur when two groups come into contact with one another. Acculturation and globalization are at the heart of border studies, and cultural studies scholars try to describe the possible interactions in terms of conflicts and resolutions that become the result of those possible encounters. The present book is a peer-reviewed selection of papers presented during the IV Crossing Over Symposium at Cleveland State University held in October, 2011, and it is a follow-up to our discussion on border studies. The main focus of this volume is historical, [inter]national, gender and racial borders, and the implications that all of them have in the construction of an identity.




Quest - God's Perfect Plan


Book Description




Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism


Book Description

Lucid, authoritative overview of a major movement in American history The history of American evangelicalism is perhaps best understood by examining its turning points—those moments when it took on a new scope, challenge, or influence. The Great Awakening, the rise of fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, the emergence of Billy Graham—all these developments and many more have given shape to one of the most dynamic movements in American religious history. Taken together, these turning points serve as a clear and helpful roadmap for understanding how evangelicalism has become what it is today. Each chapter in this book has been written by one of the world's top experts in American religious history, and together they form a single narrative of evangelicalism's remarkable development. Here is an engaging, balanced, coherent history of American evangelicalism from its origins as a small movement to its status as a central player in the American religious story. Contributors & Topics Harry S. Stout on the Great Awakening Catherine A. Brekus on the evangelical encounter with the Enlightenment Jon Butler on disestablishment Richard Carwardine on antebellum reform Marguerite Van Die on the rise of the domestic ideal Luke E. Harlow on the Civil War and conservative American evangelicalism George M. Marsden on the rise of fundamentalism Edith Blumhofer on urban Pentecostalism Dennis C. Dickerson on the Great Migration Mark Hutchinson on the global turn in American evangelicalism Grant Wacker on Billy Graham's 1949 Los Angeles revival Darren Dochuk on American evangelicalism's Latin turn




Christ in Egypt


Book Description

This comparative religion book contains a startling perspective of the extraordinary history of the Egyptian religion and its profound influence upon the later Christian faith. The text demonstrates that the popular god Horus and Jesus possessed many characteristics and attributes in common.




The American Quest for the Primitive Church


Book Description

The dream of restoring primitive Christianity lies close to the core of the identity of some American denominations---Churches of Christ, Latter-day Saints, some Mennonites, and a variety of Holiness and Pentecostal denominations. But how can a return to ancient Christianity be sustained in a world increasingly driven by modernization? What meaning might such a vision have in the modern world? Twelve distinguished scholars explore these and related questions in this provocative book.




Apocalyptic Chic


Book Description

This book deals with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times and from peoples and cultures around the world. It reflects an increasingly popular leitmotif in literature and visual arts of the 21st century: humanity’s fear of extinction and its quest for survival -- in revenant, supernatural, or living human form. It is the logical continuation of a series of collected essays examining the origins and evolution of myths and legends of the supernatural in Western and non-Western tradition and popular culture. The first two volumes of the series, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic. (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) focused on the vampire legend. The third, The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016), focused on a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture.




Bombers, Hijackers, Body Scanners, and Jihadists


Book Description

In the timeline relevant to Billie H. Vincent’s watch, terrorist attacks against world aviation are on the rise. Vincent weaves his plot with the motives of these radicals, their causes, and the religious biases for extremist Islamic Jihadist attacks on a global scale to his protagonist’s story. Billie has his hands full dealing with these threats and helping out other nations in their aviation security efforts. The threats and attacks, in actual terms, have left a permanent impact on Western society and aviation in particular. Vincent knows all the ins and outs of the business. His book is replete with all the hardcore technology that are an aficionado’s dream, the LED monitors light up the twilight world of the first line of defense for all airline passengers against all who might threaten the security of airports and airlines. Billie and an international company of aviation security experts come up against the attempted bombing of an international Pan-American Airlines flight to Rio de Janerio. Over the previous two weeks they had been investigating a bomb that exploded on a flight out of Tokyo’s Narita airport that killed a Japanese youth going to a vacation in Hawaii. Vincent faces a new generation of terrorists of the era – bombs sneaked in a variety of ingenious ways into the planes and terminals abound in this dangerous world. Will he and his elite profession of dedicated men and women be able to stand up against all aviation security threats? The answer is, they will have to because the lives of innocents are at stake. Billie shows readers exactly how in this gripping Bombers, Hijackers, Body Scanners, And Jihadists.




Alternative Performativity of Muslimness


Book Description

The book highlights issues related to the construction of gender in Africa and African identity politics. It explores the limitations of the constructed category of “African Muslim woman” in West Yorkshire. Amina Alrasheed Nayel uses Black feminist epistemology along with postcolonial, feminist, and critical race theory to examine the multiple identities that Sudanese women negotiate in the UK. The diverse settings of Islam and Islamic culture, circumscribed around issues of performativity of Islam and identity construction in the diasporic space are unpacked in this volume. In addition, this work analyzes specific practices and performances, starting with the multifaceted nature of Islam and the problematic concepts of “Sunni/Sufi,” “Muslim woman,” “race,” and “blackness.” The book reveals that exile, nostalgia, and racial/ethnic differences within Islam and the wider UK community underpin the performativity of Muslimness of the Sudanese women living in West Yorkshire, and reiterates the importance of moving beyond the homogeneity of the idea of “Muslim woman” towards investigating the complexities of this group.