Over the past fifty years Brazil’s evangelical community has increased from five to twenty-five percent of the population. This volume’s authors use statistical overview, historical narrative, personal anecdote, social-scientific analysis, and theological inquiry to map out this emerging landscape. The book’s thematic center pivots on the question of how Brazilian evangelicals are exerting their presence and effecting change in the public life of the nation. Rather than fixing its focus on the interior life of Brazilian evangelicals and their congregations, the book’s attention is directed toward social expression: the ways in which Brazilian evangelicals are present and active in the common life of the nation.

Spanning the gamut from "Aaron" to "Zwingli," this dictionary includes nearly 3,000 entries written by about sixty authors, all of whom are specialists in their various theological and religious disciplines. The editors have designed the dictionary especially to aid the introductory-level student with instant access to definitions of terms likely to be encountered in, but not to substitute for, classroom presentations or reading assignments. - Publisher.

"Whether the issue is the rise of religiously inspired terrorism, the importance of faith based NGOs in global relief and development, or campaigning for evangelical voters in the U.S., religion proliferates in our newspapers and magazines, on our radios and televisions, on our computer screens and, increasingly, our mobile devices. Americans who assumed society was becoming more and more secular have been surprised by religions' rising visibility and central role in current events. Yet this is hardly new: the history of American journalism has deep religious roots, and religion has long been part of the news mix. Providing a wide-ranging examination of how religion interacts with the news by applying the insights of history, sociology, and cultural studies to an analysis of media, faith, and the points at which they meet, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American News Media is the go-to volume for both secular and religious journalists and journalism educators, scholars in media studies, journalism studies, religious studies, and American studies. Divided into five sections, this handbook explores the historical relationship between religion and journalism in the USA, how religion is covered in different media, how different religions are reported on, the main narratives of religion coverage, and the religious press."--Publisher's website.

A Critical Introduction to Religion in the Americas argues that we cannot understand religion in the Americas without understanding its marginalized communities. Despite frequently voiced doubts among religious studies scholars, it makes the case that theology, and particularly liberation theology, is still useful, but it must be reframed to attend to the ways in which religion is actually experienced on the ground. That is, a liberation theology that assumes a need to work on behalf of the poor can seem out of touch with a population experiencing huge Pentecostal and Charismatic growth, where the focus is not on inequality or social action but on individual relationships with the divine. By drawing on a combination of historical and ethnographic sources, this volume provides a basic introduction to the study of religion and theology in the Latino/a, Black, and Latin American contexts, and then shows how theology can be reframed to better speak to the concerns of both religious studies and the real people the theologians' work is meant to represent. Informed by the dialogue partners explored throughout the text, this volume presents a hemispheric approach to discussing lived religious movements. While not dismissive of liberation theologies, this approach is critical of their past and offers challenges to their future as well as suggestions for preventing their untimely demise. It is clear that the liberation theologies of tomorrow cannot look like the liberation theologies of today.

This unique volume offers a comprehensive survey of the prospects and critical isssues for the Christian world mission. The essays--written by various mission experts--cover such topics as the biblical and theological basis of the mission, women in mission, urban mission, dialogues with other faiths, the anthropology of "popular" religions, and more.

Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 21st Century is an authoritative compilation of the presentations from thirty leaders in the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement given at the Empowered 21 Conference in Tulsa, OK, in April 2010. These chapters share emerging insights on how the next generation will handle the profound issues facing Christians within the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement in the 21st century.

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms brings together a team of expert contributors in this critical and innovative volume. Highlighting key trends within the discipline, as well as cutting-edge viewpoints that revise and redefine traditional debates and approaches, readers will come away with an understanding of the complexity of twenty-first-century Latin American cultural production and with a renovated and eminently contemporary understanding of twentieth-century literature and culture. This invaluable resource will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the fields of Latin American literature, cultural studies, and comparative literature.

Fourteen essays examine the impact of religion on the cultures and peoples of Latin America, from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to the twenty-first century, covering Catholicism, Protestantism, indigenous religious traditions, African-based religions, and Pentecostalism.