Is there a controversial issue in the contemporary world that does not involve religion? Whether it's a debate over the beginning of life, or on sexuality and family life, or on the stewardship of humans over the environment, almost all of the most contentious matters that impact today's society involve people's deeply held religious beliefs. Battleground: Religion helps clarify these complex topics by examining how various religious beliefs and practices impact current political, social, and cultural debates. Each of the approximately 100 entries examines a hot-button issue—from war and peace to the culture wars—and discusses, in a balanced and objective way, the points of view on these topics from all parts of the religious spectrum. Students will come away from Battleground: Religion with a better understanding of the issues that they will be encountering for years to come. Each entry includes a bibliography or resources for further information.

The modern world is filled with debate and controversy, and science and technology—the most characteristic features of the modern world—are not immune. Science and technology are implicated in many if not all of the issues, troubles, and problems students are likely to come across in their classes and in their everyday lives. Science and technology serve as a primary pathway to understanding front page headlines on everything from war to AIDS, and from oil exploration to global warming. Battleground: Science and Technology examines the most hot-button issues involving science and technology and provides a balanced assessment of the arguments on all sides of the often strident debates. The approximately 100 issues examined in Battleground: Science and Technology include topics in the brain sciences, including the controversies over the cause of autism and the reliability of memory, as well as the debates over parapsychology; debates surrounding information technology, such as only privacy, the impact of video games on social behavior, and the advent of virtual reality; the complexity over drugs and medications, such as the testing of the efficacy of medications, the war on recreational drugs, and the costs of pharmaceutical research; and hot-button topics that are constantly in the news, such as evolution and creationism, DNA testing, stem-cell research, and genetically modified organisms. Each entry provides a list of accessible resources useful for further research.

For more than thirty years, Douglas Laycock has been studying, defending, and writing about religious liberty. In this second volume of the comprehensive collection of his writings on the subject, he has compiled articles, amicus briefs, and actual court documents relating to regulatory exemptions under the Constitution, the right to church autonomy, and the rights of non-mainstream religions. This collection — which deals with religious schools and colleges, sex abuse cases, the rights of Hare Krishnas and Scientologists, the landmark decision Employment Division v. Smith, and more — will be a valuable reference for churches, schools, and other religious organizations as they exercise their Constitutionally protected freedom of religion.

In this second volume of two tracing the history of 20th-century American religion, Martin E. Marty tells the story of how America has survived religious disturbances and culturally prospered from them.

Can entertainment challenge divisive ideologies? Can we use theater, film, games, novels, and stories disarm the ideologies of fear? Ideological Battlegrounds: Entertainment to Disarm Divisive Propaganda introduces and develops Ideologically Challenging Entertainment (ICE) to challenge “us versus them” narratives. ICE counters polarizing perspectives by embracing multiple valid viewpoints without losing sight of facts. Additionally, this book explores the first ICE production, Two Merchants, The Merchant of Venice adapted to challenge ideologies related to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A mixed-methods study of audience responses to this production showed that a significant number of audience members reconsidered their views, not only about the Arab-Israeli conflict but also about ideological divisions that were more personally relevant. Ideological Battlegrounds is unique, both in its conceptualization of entertainment as a means to address local and global conflicts and in its provision of evidence for the power of performance as a tool for confronting and influencing ideological change.This book offers a new approach to bridging dangerous ideological chasms that, without significant intervention, will only continue to worsen.

"Freedom of religion is probably the freedom that Americans hold the dearest, at least publicly. However, the limits of that freedom, and the limits of the corresponding First Amendment clause against a governmental establishment of religion, are very murky, especially when the freedom of one individual's religion begins to clash with the prohibition against the government's establishment. This encyclopedia identifies some of the boundaries of those freedoms, seeks to explain the overall development of the freedom of religion, and highlights some of the important judicial decisions that have shaped it. The encyclopedia discusses the interaction between religion and the law in America; it does not aim to give legal advice"--Introduction

By 388 C.E., Augustine had broken with the Manichaeism of his early adulthood and wholeheartedly embraced Nicene Christianity as the tradition with which he would identify and within which he would find meaning. Yet conversion rarely, if ever, represents a clean and total break from the past. As Augustine defined and became a "Catholic" self, he also intently engaged with Manichaeism as a rival religious system. This second volume of Jason David BeDuhn's detailed reconsideration of Augustine's life and letters explores the significance of the fact that these two processes unfolded together. BeDuhn identifies the Manichaean subtext to be found in nearly every work written by Augustine between 388 and 401 and demonstrates Augustine's concern with refuting his former beliefs without alienating the Manichaeans he wished to win over. To achieve these ends, Augustine modified and developed his received Nicene Christian faith, strengthening it where it was vulnerable to Manichaean critique and taking it in new directions where he found room within an orthodox frame of reference to accommodate Manichaean perspectives and concerns. Against this background, BeDuhn is able to shed new light on the complex circumstances and purposes of Augustine's most famous work, The Confessions, as well as his distinctive reading of Paul and his revolutionary concept of grace. Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2 demonstrates the close interplay between Augustine's efforts to work out his own "Catholic" persona and the theological positions associated with his name, between the sometimes dramatic twists and turns of his own personal life and his theoretical thinking.

Volume 2 of Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 continues and complements the discussion of the event undertaken in the first part of the two-volume publication (2014). This time, the focus is put on language and discourse. The contributions here volume explore the construction of “Us” and “Them” in a variety of pre- and post-9/11 texts, mainly from the perspectives of (political) discourse analysis and translation studies. The book shows how language in use reflects and retells the tragic event and how it (re-)constructs its actors, bringing us closer to understanding the roots and long-term consequences of 9/11. The volume is by no means exhaustive of the topic, but demonstrates its complexity and continuing relevance for today’s world.

A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series.

With the social and cultural upheavals of early modern Europe, rabbis had to fight to preserve Jewish tradition. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi, chief rabbi of Amsterdam, emerged as one of the leading halakhic authorities of the epoch, and the battles he waged would come to define rabbinic norms in the decades that followed.