In Treading on Sacred Grounds: Places of Worship, Local Planning and Religious Freedom in Australia, Noel Villaroman analyses the engagement of religious groups with local councils in Australia in their applications to build places of worship. Such applications often encounter opposition from local residents who are reluctant to share their neighbourhood or street with the newly arrived and less known ‘other.’ The local councils, being the planning authority that grants or refuses such applications, are caught in the middle of these disputes. Using the lens of international human rights law, the book probes the local councils’ actions and their repercussions to religious freedom. The book has concrete legal and social implications that it is bound to impact not only legal scholarship but also, crucially, policy makers.

Sacred sites offer believers the possibility of communing with the divine and achieving deeper insight into their faith. Yet their spiritual and cultural importance can lead to competition as religious groups seek to exclude rivals from practicing potentially sacrilegious rituals in the hallowed space and wish to assert their own claims. Holy places thus create the potential for military, theological, or political clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. In War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of conflicts over sites that are both venerated and contested; he also proposes potential means for managing these disputes. Hassner illustrates a complex and poorly understood political dilemma with accounts of the failures to reach settlement at Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, leading to the clashes of 2000, and the competing claims of Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya, which resulted in the destruction of the mosque there in 1992. He also addresses more successful compromises in Jerusalem in 1967 and Mecca in 1979. Sacred sites, he contends, are particularly prone to conflict because they provide valuable resources for both religious and political actors yet cannot be divided. The management of conflicts over sacred sites requires cooperation, Hassner suggests, between political leaders interested in promoting conflict resolution and religious leaders who can shape the meaning and value that sacred places hold for believers. Because a reconfiguration of sacred space requires a confluence of political will, religious authority, and a window of opportunity, it is relatively rare. Drawing on the study of religion and the study of politics in equal measure, Hassner's account offers insight into the often-violent dynamics that come into play at the places where religion and politics collide.

On Sacred Ground explores the literature of the Northwest, the area that extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the Siskiyou Mountains. The Northwest exhibits astonishing geographical diversity and yet the entire bioregion shares a similarity of climate, flora, and fauna. For Nicholas O’Connell, the effects of nature on everyday Northwest life carry over to the region's literature. Although Northwest writers address a number of subjects, the relationship between people and place proves the dominant one, and that has been true since the first tribes settled the region and began telling stories about it, thousands of years ago. Indeed, it is the common thread linking Chief Seattle to Theodore Roethke, Narscissa Whitman to Ursula K. Le Guin, Joaquin Miller to Ivan Doig, Marilynne Robinson to Jack London, Betty MacDonald to Gary Snyder. Tracing the history of Pacific Northwest literary works--from Native American myths to the accounts of explorers and settlers, the effusions of the romantics, the sharply etched stories of the realists, the mystic visions of Northwest poets, and the contemporary explosion of Northwest poetry and prose--O’Connell shows how the most important contribution of Northwest writers to American literature is their articulation of a more spiritual human relationship with landscape. Pacific Northwest writers and storytellers see the Northwest not just as a source of material wealth but as a spiritual homeland, a place to lead a rich and fulfilling life within the whole context of creation. And just as the relationship between people and place serves as the unifying feature of Northwest literature, so also does literature itself possess a perhaps unique ability to transform a landscape into a sacred place.

For as long as the written word has existed, the Five Books of Moses has had the power to summon our unique and diverse voices. Its words have the power to stir our minds, our hearts, and our souls. Thousands of years after it was first recorded, we still find our lives reflected in its words and can be inspired by those words. In this poignant collection of brief essays, over one hundred clergy from diverse religious traditions share the passages that have brought meaning to their lives. On Sacred Ground compels the reader to ask: What is my relationship to these sacred words?

In the deep woods of Pikes Landing, New York, on a Seneca reservation a girl is found murdered with an arrow through her heart. When they hear about the shocking death, Vivi and her father, Rabbi Hartman, find themselves in the middle of a mystery. There they find a violent standoff between the local townsfolk and the Seneca. The death of the girl may not be what it seems, and strange events keep happening. Unsure of who to trust, Vivi searches for the solution to the disturbing death, but finds danger instead!

On Sacred Ground a Demon Walksis the true life story one familys encounter with the demonicin fact, the second highest ranking demon under Lucifer. It all began when Jennifer Arnold and her husband, Victor, bought an acre of land eleven years ago that overlooked the largest lake in their area. They happily built what they believed to be their dream home on their new property. The land they purchased, however, was marked in the county records as Native American land owned by the Seminolesand so the story begins .She collected over 500 class A electronic voice phenomena (EVPs) as she investigated the strange voices and unexplained happenings that were taking place in and around her home. As things progressed, family and friends also found themselves under attack from the demonic forces. Finally, they were forced out of their dream home by the demon. But how could this happen, and why did these forces target this family? On Sacred Ground a Demon Walks is the story of a family disrupted by negative forces greater than them-selves and their struggle to find a positive balance in their lives.

"If, like me, you've stepped on a Lego while barefoot, it can be difficult to wrap your mind around the divine qualities of the path beneath your feet." Jami Amerine Come find the miracle in the mayhem. As moms, we know we've messed up in so many ways. Royally. Maybe you think you've failed your children, your spouse, and your God. But did you know that in the midst of your failures and fears, you are still loved—royally? As a child of noble birth? Do you believe your children are in better hands than your own and that you don't need to hold on so desperately? Jami Amerine, author of Stolen Jesus, delivers a totally relatable account of her hilarious and honest experiences and misadventures in motherhood. She's eager to help you see how to let your Heavenly Father parent you, so you can embrace peace as you parent your children. Come meet with the One whose presence turns sticky floors into sacred ground.

Returning to the ideas of John Locke and the Founders themselves, Barbara A. McGraw examines the debate about the role of religion in American public life and unravels the confounded rhetoric on all sides. She reveals that no group has been standing on proper ground and that all sides have misused terminology (religion/secular), dichotomies (public/private), and concepts (separation of church and state) in ways that have little relevance to the original intentions of the Founders. She rediscovers a theology underlying the founding documents of the nation that is neither anyone's particular religion nor one requiring religion. Instead, it justifies freedom of conscience for all and provides a two-tiered public forum—a civic public forum and a conscientious public forum—for the debate itself and the actions that debate inspires. America's Sacred Ground—this theology and its public forum—determines the meaning of freedom and the ways in which Americans can pursue "the good": good government, good communities, good families, good relations between individuals, and good individuals from a plurality of perspectives. By exploring our past, McGraw answers the critical question, Who are we as a people and what do we stand for?

In this fascinating collection, Sacred Ground moves outward from the intimate to the broad, both in defining the connections that root us and in describing the losses that have come with our increasing mobility and disconnection. The stories and essays here reveal both the pleasures and the difficulties that come with our freedom. But Bonner's anthology also demonstrates that choices remain for us to maintain our focus on those connections of the heart that make and sustain a home in all its manifestations.