26 Religious Studies
African Traditional Religions: Ifa
Will Coleman
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC
For use by seminary graduate students in an introductory course on the sacred West African spiritual tradition Ifa. This guide is comprised of open scholarly content and images and resides in LibGuide form, which will benefit others globally who seek open course content on African spiritual and religious traditions.
Formats: Online
Suggested for: RELS 204
The Bible and Music
James F. McGrath
2023
Licence: CC BY
The Bible and Music by Dr. James F. McGrath provides an introduction and overview of the various ways that music and the Bible have been and continue to be connected. Part 1 focuses on history: how music in the Ancient Near East sounded, how markings in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible have been interpreted as musical symbols, how chanting of biblical texts has featured liturgically in synagogues and churches, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, and musical developments in North America as enslaved Africans encountered biblical texts and stories. Part 2 focuses on specific texts in Jewish and Christian scripture and looks at how they have been interpreted through the process of setting them to music, including the soundtracks of cinematic depictions of biblical narrative and allusions to the Bible in popular music. Part 3 focuses on composers from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Formats: Online, PDF, eBook
Christianity, Islam, and Orisa Religion: Three Traditions in Comparison and Interaction
J.D.Y. Peel
2015
Licence: CC BY
The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are exceptional for the copresence among them of three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and the indigenous oriṣa religion. In this comparative study, at once historical and anthropological, Peel explores the intertwined character of the three religions and the dense imbrication of religion in all aspects of Yoruba history up to the present.
Formats: Online, PDF
Suggested for: RELS 204
The Emergence of Modern Hinduism: Religion on the Margins of Colonialism
Richard S. Weiss
2019
Licence: CC BY-NC
The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 204
Essays in Anarchism and Religion
Alexandre Christoyannopoulos and Matthew S. Adams
2017
Licence: CC BY
Anarchism and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship. Yet, ever since the emergence of anarchism as an intellectual and political movement, a considerable number of religious anarchists have insisted that their religious tradition necessarily implies an anarchist political stance. Their stories are finally gaining increasing public and scholarly attention. Reflecting both a rise of interest in anarchist ideas and activism on the one hand, and the revival of religious ideas and movements in the political sphere on the other, this book examines a range of examples of overlaps and contestations between the two from a diverse range of academic perspectives. The first pioneering volume of Essays in Anarchism & Religion comprises eight essays from leading international scholars on topics ranging from the anarchism of the historical Jesus to Zen Buddhism and the philosophies of Max Stirner and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. In a world where political ideas increasingly matter once more, and religion is an increasingly visible aspect of global political life, these essays offer scholarly analysis of overlooked activists, ideas and movements, and as such reveal the possibility of a powerful critique of contemporary global society.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 218
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion
Beau Branson, Marcus William Hunt, Timothy D. Knepper, Robert Sloan Lee, Steven Steyl, Hans Van Eyghen, Beau Branson (Book Editor), and Christina Hendricks (Series Editor).
2020
Licence: CC BY
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB
Suggested for: RELS 218
Jewish Religion After Theology
Avi Sagi
2009
Licence: CC BY-NC
Jewish Religion After Theology ponders one of the most intriguing shifts in modern Jewish thought: from a metaphysical and theological standpoint toward a new manner of philosophizing based primarily on practice. Different chapters study this great shift and its various manifestations. The central figure of this new examination is Isaiah Leibowitz, whose thoughts encapsulate more than any other Jewish thinker this stance of religion without metaphysics. Sagi explores corresponding issues such as observance, the possibility of pluralism, the meaning of penance without messianic suppositions, and pragmatic coping with theodicy after the Holocaust, presenting the different possibilities within this great alteration in Jewish thought.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 204
Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture
Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
2015
Licence: CC BY-NC
Current preoccupations with the body have led to a growing interest in the intersections between religion, literature and the history of medicine, and, more specifically, how they converge within a given culture. This collection of essays explores the ways in which aspects of medieval culture were predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious discourses, particularly those inflected by contemporary gendered ideologies. The essays interrogate this convergence broadly in a number of different ways: textually, conceptually, historically, socially and culturally. They argue for an inextricable relationship between the physical and spiritual in accounts of health, illness and disability, and demonstrate how medical, religious and gender discourses were integrated in medieval culture.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 218
Philosophy of Western Religions
Noah Levin
Licence: CC BY
Appropriate for an introductory philosophy of religion class.
Formats: Online
Suggested for: RELS 204
Reading the Bible as Literature: A Journey
Jody Ondich
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
The Bible is one of the most published books in human history. It is also one of the most misquoted, misunderstood and misused books in human history. This happens because people are not always aware that the Bible is not a book, it is a collection of diverse writings. The Bible might even be called an anthology, and it will include everything from poetry to genealogy, pithy sayings to architectural mandates, mythology to letters. Knowing what one is reading helps one understand the ideas in the writings. We read letters in the context of who wrote them and who received them. We read sermons understanding the speaker’s perspective may differ from the listener’s perspective. So this text is an attempt to give historic, literary, geographical and cultural context to a complex and often poorly understood set of materials.
Formats: Online, eBook, PDF
Roman Gods
Michael Lipka
2009
Licence: CC BY-NC
Drawing exclusively on the evidence from urban Rome up to the age of Constantine, the book analyzes the pagan, Jewish, and Christian concepts of “god” along the lines of space, time, personnel, function, iconography and ritual.
Formats: PDF
Six Ways of Being Religious: A Framework for Comparative Studies of Religion
Dale Cannon (Western Oregon University)
1996
Licence: CC BY-NC
The book proposes the hypothesis that six generic ways of being religious may be found in any large-scale religious tradition such as Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism: sacred rite, right action, devotion, shamanic mediation, mystical quest, and reasoned inquiry. These are recurrent ways in which, socially and individually, devout members of these traditions take up and appropriate their stories and symbols in order to draw near to, and come into right relationship with, what the traditions attest to be the ultimate reality.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 204
Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings
Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University), Anna Goins (Kansas State University), Naomi J. Wood (Kansas State University)
2019
Licence: CC BY-NC
Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings is a university-level, textbook introduction to the study of the Bible, its literary forms, and historical and cultural contexts. This textbook examines the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Tanakh) and the early Christian writings of the New Testament. It is an introduction to the analysis of biblical texts, their histories, and their interpretations. The emphasis throughout this textbook is on the literary qualities of these biblical texts as well as their cultural and historical contexts.
Formats: PDF
Suggested for: RELS 313
Theological Questions
Todd Hanneken (St. Mary’s University)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC
From St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, this textbooks is designed to give a broad historical overview of theological questions from the perspective of the Catholic tradition. It seeks to represent fairly a variety of questions and answers within and beyond the Catholic tradition.
Formats: PDF, EPUB, HTML
World Mythology: Gods and Creation
Jared Aragona
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Covers Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Egypt, West Africa, Greece, China, Japan, Northern Europe, British Isles, South America, Mesoamerica, and North America.
Formats: Online
World Religions: the Spirit Searching
Jody Ondich
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This text, while full of various ways that people have searched and discovered and created, covers a few of the bigger traditions in our world. Each chapter introduces the reader to some ideas from that specific tradition that enlighten them as to how a specific group of people think, believe, and live.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB