The Spiritual Traveler-- Chicago and Illinois


Book Description

Here is a distinctively different guidebook that explores spiritual sites and peaceful places from all faith traditions in Chicago and Illinois, including buildings, cemeteries, battlefields, and landscapes, both natural and manmade.




Come and See


Book Description

Centering prayer, both a meditative technique and the experience of God’s presence in every waking moment, is a spiritual practice that all Christian continue to strive for. David Keller, close colleague of Thomas Keating and director of Keating’s Contemplative Ministry project, offers practical suggestions for personal prayer, addresses its difficulties, and reveals what is special about it in relation to other prayer traditions. Short but substantive, this book is for Christians looking for new insights about prayer and for people who are drawn to contemplation, but do not think the church has much to offer them. Above all, Keller emphasizes that it is the integration of personal prayer and our day-to-day activities that forms a life of prayer. Prayer is a life-long vocation, he reasons, not a separate compartment of life.




The Spiritual Traveler


Book Description

A guide to sacred sites and sacred spaces in New York City, written from a multi-faith and multicultural point of view. Includes many major historical, cultural and architectural sites, as well as lesser known sites of interest.




The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s–1960s


Book Description

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States experienced a rapid expansion of church and synagogue construction as part of a larger “religious boom.” The synagogues built in that era illustrate how their designs pushed the envelope in aesthetics and construction. The design of the synagogues departed from traditional concepts, embraced modernism and innovations in building technology, and evolved beyond the formal/rational style of early 1950s modern architecture to more of an expressionistic design. The latter resulted in abstraction of architectural forms and details, and the inclusion of Jewish art in the new synagogues. The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s–1960s introduces an architectural analysis of selected modern American synagogues and reveals how they express American Jewry’s resilience in continuing their physical and spiritual identity, while embracing modernism, American values, and landscape. In addition, the book contributes to the discourse on preserving the recent past (e.g., mid 20th century architecture). While most of the investigations on that topic deal with the “brick & mortar” challenges, this book introduces preservation issues as a function of changes in demographics, in faith rituals, in building codes, and in energy conservation. As an introduction or a reexamination, The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s–1960s offers a fresh perspective on an important moment in American Jewish society and culture as reflected in their houses of worship and adds to the literature on modern American sacred architecture. The book may appeal to Jewish congregations, architects, preservationists, scholars, and students in fields of studies such as architectural design, sacred architecture, American modern architecture and building technology, Post WWII religious and Jewish studies, and preservation and conservation.




The New Christian Traveler's Guide to the Holy Land


Book Description

Knowing the Land helps us understand the Book in new and vivid ways. Charles Dyer, a Bible scholar and licensed tour guide for Israel, and Greg Hatteberg, graduate of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem, created this reference guide for pilgrims who want to deepen the spiritual impact of their trip to Israel, as well as other travelers who just want to know more: Where did Jesus walk? Where is King David buried? Where is Mt. Sinai? You¿ll find detailed information about five key Bible lands: Israel, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, and Turkey. This guide includes a full color 32-page photo insert, practical tips for travelers, a 4-week prayer guide for preparing for your trip, and detailed maps and an outline of Bible history. With The New Christian Traveler¿s Guide to the Holy Land, you¿ll see the Bible through a new set of geographical lenses.




The Oxford Handbook of Religious Space


Book Description

Introduction: Thinking about religious space : an introduction to approaches / Jeanne Halgren Kilde -- Conceptualizing space and place : genealogies of change in the study of religion / Juan E. Campo -- Hermeneutics of space : sacred space / Michael J. Crosbie -- Urbanism and religious space / Paul-François Tremlett -- Shared space, or mixed? / Robert M. Hayden -- Decommissioning and reuse of liturgical architectures : historical processes and temporal dimensions / Andrea Longhi -- The impermanence of religious space : three approaches to change in the American religioscape / Jeanne Halgren Kilde -- Planetary identities : globalization, climate change and meaning-making practices / Whitney A. Bauman -- Whose place is it? Layers of community and meaning in the land of Shinto and power spots / Caleb Carter -- Religious place/space in premodern China / Wei-Cheng Lin -- National treasures vs. alien species : religious spaces, raccoons, and national identity in contemporary Japan / Barbara R. Ambros -- Visualizing Himalayan Buddhist sacred sites in 3D/VR : pedagogy and partnership / Lauren Leve and Bradley Erickson -- Form and function in the ancient synagogue : evidence from the second to seventh centuries in Palestine and the diaspora / Marilyn J. Chiat -- A little bit of evil : Masjid Kufa in Early Twelver Shi'ism / Najam Haider -- Mediated spaces of collective ritual : sacred selfies at the Hajj / Nadia Caidi and Mariam Karim -- (In)visible priorities : epigraphic power and identity at a Jordanian state mosque / David Simonowitz -- Exploration of religious spaces in Western Africa : combining approaches to understand spaces / Daniel Dei -- Religious spaces as tourist sites in Ghana / Alice Matilda Nsiah -- Sacred space in 19th century Cape Town : mosque, city, landscape and a radical empiricism of the spatial / Ozayr Saloojee -- Mapping the spiritual Baptist universe : black Atlantic cosmography and the spatiality of spirit in Trinidad and Tobago / Brendan Jamal Thornton -- The spaces of Roman religion and Christianity in late antiquity / Béatrice Caseau Chevallier -- Presence and performance : Orthodox spaces of the Eastern Roman Empire / Amy Papalexandrou -- Remnants of Israel : Jewish spaces and landscapes in medieval and early modern Europe / Jessica Renee Streit and Barry L. Stiefel -- the religious landscape and its architecture in contemporary Europe / Esteban Fernández-Cobián -- Pre-Columbian and indigenous religious spaces in Mesoamerica / Brent K.S. Woodfill -- Protestant architecture in Latin America / Rodrigo Vidal Rojas -- Roman Catholic sacred space / Leonard Norman Primiano -- Protestant spaces in North America / David R. Bains -- Eastern Orthodox spaces in America / Nicholas Denysenko -- Diasporic sacred spaces : the case of boundary making at an American Sufi shrine / Merin Shobhana Xavier -- Women's mosques : spaces to rethink gender and religious authority / Irum Shiekh -- Sites of miracles and other holy places : the Santuario de Chimayó as case study / Brett Hendrickson -- Situating the dead : cemeteries as material, symbolic, and relational space / Avril Madrell and Brenda Mathijssen -- Fundament and abyss : public religion at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial / David Lê.




Redefining Pilgrimage


Book Description

Exploring what does and what does not constitute pilgrimage, Redefining Pilgrimage draws together a wide variety of disciplines including politics, anthropology, history, religion and sociology. Leading contributors offer a broad range of case studies from a wide geographical area, exploring new ways of approaching pilgrimage beyond the classical religious model. Re-thinking the global phenomenon of pilgrimages in the 21st century, this book offers new perspectives to redefine pilgrimage.




Bridgeport


Book Description

Explore Bridgeport, the most political neighborhood in the most political of cities - home to five Chicago mayors and parades of politicians honoring its power at national conventions. Once a Native American village traversed by Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, as Chicago grew the area was called Hardscrabble, then Cabbage Gardens, and finally Bridgeport. Immigrants built it: the Irish dredged a canal and mined a quarry that led to slaughterhouses, cooperages, rolling mills, and breweries that were worked by Germans, Bohemians, Swedes, and Poles. Held dear as the "Heart of Lithuania," muckrakers described parts of it as a heartbreaking jungle. More immigrants came: Italians, Croatians, Mexicans, Chinese. Against the backdrop of prairies, labor strife, gangways, and Joe Podsajdwokiem, this sometimes uneasy mix lived, worked, and voted together. Bridgeport still has streets that defy the city's orderly grid, settlement houses, language stews, and, for each nationality, churches and taverns. Today, it may welcome artists and expensive housing, but on summer nights stoop sitting and rooting for the White Sox remain social obligations.




Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production


Book Description

This volume fills a lacuna in the academic assessment of new religions by investigating their cultural products (such as music, architecture, food et cetera). Contributions explore the manifold ways in which new religions have contributed to humanity’s creative output.