Anthropology Religion

We have somehow internalized the unbiblical idea that the immaterial aspect of our being (our soul or spirit) is inherently good while the material aspect (our body) is at worst inherently evil and at best neutral - just a vehicle for our souls to get around. So we end up neglecting or disparaging our bodies. But we don't have bodies; we are our bodies. And God created us that way for a reason. Theologian Gregg Allison presents a holistic theology of the human body from conception through eternity to equip us to address pressing contemporary issues related to our bodies.

Find transformation not in more religious activity but by deeper spiritual awakening through daily immersion in Scripture While much of the New Testament concerns itself with the general spread of the gospel, James offers us something of an advanced course in discipleship. You will move beyond...

Alone among the creatures of the world, man suffers a pang both bitter and sweet. It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia. Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart.

Anthropologists have invariably engaged in their discipline as a form of redemption, whether to escape from social restriction, nourish their souls, reform their home polities, or vindicate "the natives". Redeeming Anthropology explores how in pursuit of a secular science sired by the Enlightenment, adherents to a "faith in mankind" have vacillated between rejecting and embracing theology, albeit in concealed and contradictory ways.

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh - these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom.

Based on two years of fieldwork and interviews with 71 Midwestern Americans, the Waskuls' book is a reflexive ethnography that examines how people experience ghosts and hauntings in everyday life. The authors explore how uncanny happenings become ghosts and the reasons people struggle with or against a will to believe. They present the variety and character of hauntings and ghostly encounters, outcomes of people telling haunted legends, and the nested consequences of ghostly experiences.

Social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard wrote Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande after 20 months' fieldwork with the Azande people of the South Sudan. It became the founding text in the anthropology of witchcraft, and has been hailed as a classic. Although Witchcraft had little impact when it first appeared in 1937, its popularity grew after World War II. Alongside his subsequent work on the Nuer people, Witchcraft established Evans-Pritchard's reputation as an important anthropologist.

In this timely, carefully reasoned social history of the United States, the New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and God Is Not One places today’s heated culture wars within the context of a centuries-long struggle of right versus left and religious versus secular to reveal...

Nothing that God created is the source of our human temptation. To the contrary! The human body is the crown of God's creation—consummated by his declaration that it was good. That God's people are unable to view the body without sinning is not an indictment of the body itself, but of the immaturity of the post-modern evangelical mind.

This book is an anthropology of Mormonism paper I wrote back in 2004. It subsequently became a part of the book, Mormon Philosophy, already published. It is published here separately.

Poythress uses multiple biblical perspectives to address the origin of humanity, the image of God, body and soul, the creational covenant, free agency, human sexuality, and other truths about humanity.

The Cross of Christ has left a crater at the center of history, an inflection of sacrificial love toward which everything before and after this event is ordered and properly understood. That Christ is the Alpha and Omega—the logic, the meaning of creation itself, from whom the drama of salvation emanates and toward whom it moves—is a central but often neglected doctrine of Catholic Christianity.

How can Christian men and women live faithfully in a world confused over sexuality and gender? Surely we must be reminded of what Scripture teaches. Yet as God’s design for sexuality is being suppressed and denied in the modern world, we need to hear it articulated in a fresh and accessible way. God’s Good Design presents the historic, biblical view of sexuality in a manner that is appealing even to those who have been conditioned to believe it is scary or oppressive.

This 1754 work by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is subtitled An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will Which Is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. Edwards was a Christian reformer, theologian, and author in the Calvinist tradition, and in this work he explores the necessity of divine grace for the redeeming of the damaged will of humanity. He contends that free will is an extension of, and connected to, the grace of God.

But, really, who are you? Are you ready to let that question shake you to your core - as you peel away layers of false identity built on shifting and ephemeral factors and learn to embrace your true self found in Jesus Christ alone? No job, no family relationship, no personality type, nationality, or accomplishment can offer you what Christ does: an abiding identity of righteousness in him.

Does your body really matter? You are flesh and blood. It’s easy to forget this, living as if your mind and soul were all that mattered. But ignoring your body leads to an incomplete, ineffective life. God created us from the dust, and being physical beings in a physical world affects everything from our use of technology to our sexuality and our worship. In this provocative audio book, Matthew Lee Anderson explores how our bodies interact with our faith.

The headlines are clear: Religion is on the decline in America as many people leave behind traditional religious practices. In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed book Christianity After Religion, Diana Butler Bass argues that what appears to be a decline actually signals a major transformation in how people understand God. The distant God of conventional religion has given way to a more intimate sense of the sacred with us in the world.

God is often described as all knowing, all loving, and all powerful. But are there other traits that we overlook? What is God really like? Can we truly put his eternal attributes into words? And how does the way we describe God affect our relationship with him? Best-selling author and speaker Chip Ingram helps readers answer these questions and more in this fascinating study of seven attributes of God. With engaging insight, Ingram guides readers through a challenging but accessible study of God's goodness, sovereignty, holiness, wisdom, justice, love, and faithfulness.

We live in an age of abundance. We have a wealth of food, distractions, entertainment, possessions, and an overabundance of information. We have all we could need, but we still want more. With all we have, you would think we would also have an abundance of contentment. Instead, we have a wealth of discontentment. It does not matter if you have a lot or have just enough to survive; we all struggle with the same significant issues. So, what is the answer to this plague of despair?

Mercy might seem insignificant - until the moment you’re the one in need of it. Although it’s a small word, it yields big impact. Yet, too often, it is misunderstood. Author Linda Oberbrunner learned the power of mercy firsthand. Born in the Midwest back in the 1950s, she found herself caught up in economic, racial, social, and political tension.