Can digital games help us understand real life religion? With World Youth Day: Religious Interaction at a Catholic Festival, Skjoldli suggests that they can. The change is particularly visible from Skjoldli's new theoretical framework religious interaction, which draws on digital game studies. The framework centers on three key terms—interaction, interface, and immersion. Interaction constitutes the core of the stipulative definition of religion operative in this framework: interaction with culturally postulated superhuman persons. Interface represents the means by which interaction takes place. When interaction becomes emotionally charged, immersion takes place—whether it happens in religious contexts, gaming contexts, or other human activities like watching sports, reading books, playing instruments, listening and/or dancing to music. Religious immersion, Skjoldli suggests, is helpful for understanding—and making intelligible—the emotional charge of human-superhuman relationships, the power and vulnerability of the religious interfaces that enable them, the significance of emotionally charged experiences they afford, and the vexation expressed when interactions are frustrated by distraction, distortion, or destruction. In this book, Skjoldli employs her religious interaction framework in an analysis of how the Catholic festival World Youth Day (WYD) changed the meaning of pilgrimage in Catholicism. WYD emerged from a ritual, historical, and cultural context abundant associations to pilgrimage as the term is conventionally understood by scholars. WYDs are also consistently called pilgrimages, even when the host locations are not officially sanctioned as such. A substantive investment for the Catholic Church centrally, locally, and for the local event organizers, each WYD draws hundreds of thousands to millions of young Catholics from around the world. The pope always participates by giving speeches and leading some of the ceremonies. WYD is persistently referred to as a pilgrimage, and Skjoldli analyzes what pilgrimage has meant, what it means now, and how it changed in the context of WYD.

This meticulous and comprehensive documentation of Cameroonian Youth Day Messages and leadership discourse on youth from 1949 - 2009 is a gold mine for researchers, historians and anyone interested in studying youth, politics and society in Africa. The book presents and explores themes and content of Youth Day Messages: how these messages tied in with, or veered away from, key events and issues of the time; how they served as a platform for West Cameroon governments, and the Ahidjo and Biya regimes to articulate their political vision, justify their policies, sell their respective ideologies to the youth; and what lessons could be drawn from them on competing, conflicting and complementary perspectives on youth agency in Cameroon and Africa. Churchill links the Youth Day to ongoing discussions in Africa about the role and place of youths as agents of development in Africa. Most significantly, he finally puts Cameroon's controversial Youth Day in its appropriate historical context - not as a political device created by the Francophone politicians to distort Cameroonian history and erase 'plebiscite day' from the collective memory as Anglophone nationalists claim, but as a British Cameroons colonial legacy, successfully sold to the Ahidjo regime as a day to be commemorated throughout the federation, by leaders of the federated state of West Cameroon. Churchill Ewumbue-Monono, a senior career diplomat, is Minister Counsellor in the Cameroon Embassy in Moscow. A graduate of the International Higher School of Journalism, and the International Relations Institute of Cameroon in the University of Yaounde, he was a 1991-92 Fellow in Public Diplomacy in Boston University, USA. He has served in Cameroon in various professional capacities. Ewumbue-Monono has written extensively on Cameroon's political history, and his books include Men of Courage, published in 2005.

Mission, Communion and Relationship addresses the urgent need for the churches in Africa to positively respond to the crisis confronting the continent's young men. It calls for the church to commit itself to providing alternatives to the various crises confronting male youths in Africa (dislocation, illiteracy, streetism, unemployment, emigration, crime, imitation of foreign cultures, consumerism, drug abuse, promiscuity and HIV/AIDS). Mission, Communion and Relationship argues that communion and solidarity with male youths is a missiological imperative of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, which must work in concert with other Christian denominations, as well as Muslim and African Traditional Religion leaders. This interdisciplinary book brings together insights from ecclesiology, church history, theological anthropology and the social sciences as well as African and Western philosophy with concrete ecclesial and human experiences. Mission, Communion and Relationship sets forth a framework for dealing with the cultural formation and religious development of male youths in ways that are authentically African and Christian, socially oriented and pastorally engaged.

The 'eventization' of the media is increasingly important for the marketing and appreciation of popular media texts. Media Events gives readers an understanding of the major debates in this high-profile area of media and cultural research.

Find out how two extraordinary leaders changed religion and the world In April 2014, Pope Francis will jointly canonize two predecessors, John Paul II and John XXIII, in a move that recognizes the extraordinary accomplishments of these leaders of the Catholic faith. An estimated 1 million people filled St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for John Paul II's beatification, and the joint canonization will attract even more. With John Paul II For Dummies, Special Edition you can learn more about these admired religious leaders and join millions of devotees in celebrating their lives and legacies. You'll get an in-depth look at John Paul II's remarkable life and achievements and learn more about the beloved John XXIII in a bonus chapter. With this special edition e-book written in friendly, plain English, you'll discover how John Paul II's deep religious convictions affected world politics, history, and the Catholic faith. You'll be introduced to his influences, his personal struggles, the way he impacted the Church, and his methods for spreading his powerful message. Catholics and non-Catholics alike will find the stories of these holy men fascinating and inspiring. Introduces you to the lives and legacies of both John Paul II and John XXIII Presents you with the struggles, influences, and approaches to world politics of John Paul II, whose actions had a great impact on history Includes a bonus chapter that details the life of John XXIII, who will be canonized along with John Paul II in April 2014 Written in an engaging, accessible style and a great read for Catholics and non-Catholics alike John Paul II For Dummies, Special Edition is your guide to discovering the exemplary lives of two rare and extraordinary men who have influenced generations of people all over the world.

The first Polish Pope, John Paul II, was a thinker and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach toward world politics—and changed the course of history. When he died on April 2, 2005, millions around the world mourned his passing. No other person in recent history has had such a tremendous display of respect and honor. The fact that so many non-Catholics honored this man attests to his effect on the world—and not just within his own religion. Now, you can get to know the man behind the papacy and appreciate his remarkable achievements. John Paul II For Dummies is a friendly, plain-English guide to the life and legacy of one of the world's most beloved religious leaders. You'll discover: The Pope's influences His personal struggles How he impacted the Church His approach to world politics The ways he spread his message

The conceptual territory of religious tourism is fluid. While recreation and leisure-based motivation and behaviors are evident in religious tourism, this volume reiterates its rootedness in tenets from religious traditions and pilgrimages. Using fresh perspectives on place-stories, rituals, performances, that are central to pilgrimage and sacred sites, essays in this volume explain contemporary expressions of religious tourism and illustrate the dynamic nature of religious tourism as an ecosystem embedded in religious practices, rituals and performances. The explanations will benefit researchers and practioners alike and they can find numerous examples that show the significance of religious tourism for sustainable development of destinations.

Introduces teens to Catholic beliefs, art, culture, and history as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discussing Church teachings on social issues of today and providing ideas for putting faith into action.

This beautiful book contains many priceles gems of spiritual wisdom from one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time, Pope John Paul II. Each of the Pope's daily reflections center on a Christian virtue and is meant to be prayerfully pondered, read and re-read, until it takes root in the reader's heart.

“As March gave way to April in the spring of 2005 and the world kept vigil outside the apostolic palace in Rome, the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, then drawing to a poignant end, was already being described as one of the most consequential in two millennia of Christian history.” With these words, world-renowned author and NBC Vatican analyst George Weigel begins his long-awaited sequel to the international bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. More than ten years in the making, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy tells the dramatic story of the Pope’s battle with communism in light of new and recently disclosed information and brings to a close Weigel’s landmark portrait of a man who not only left an indelible mark on the Catholic Church, but also changed the course of world history. When he was elected pope in the fall of 1978, few people had ever heard of the charismatic Karol Wojty³a. But in a very short time he would ignite a revolution of conscience in his native Poland that would ultimately lead to the collapse of European communism and death of the Soviet Union. What even fewer people knew was that the KGB, the Polish Secret Police, and the East German Stasi had been waging a dangerous, decades-long war against Wojty³a and the Vatican itself. Weigel, with unprecedented access to many Soviet-era documents, chronicles John Paul’s struggle against the dark forces of communism. Moreover, Weigel recounts the tumultuous last years of John Paul’s life as he dealt with a crippling illness as well as the “new world disorder” and revelations about corruption within the Catholic Church. Weigel’s thought-provoking biography of John Paul II concludes with a probing and passionate assessment of a man who lived his life as a witness to hope in service to the Christian ideals he embraced.