Mystical Sociology PDF Download

Author: Dann Wigner
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532636873
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This book investigates the process of spiritual borrowing between the emergent church (EC) and the Christian mystical tradition. From its inception, the EC has displayed interest in mystic practices, but the exact nature of this interest or how these practices are appropriated and reinterpreted in the EC context has not been researched. My research shows that the emergent church is appropriating Christian mystic practices by investing these practices with their own theological content. The practices themselves are changed to fit in their new context, showing that EC belief shapes EC behavior. My study adds a new case study perspective to the sociological examination of the process of spiritual borrowing, especially through close inspection of how a spiritual practice changes to fit a new theological context. Additionally, my book contributes to the study of the complex relationship between belief and behavior.

Author: Philip Wexler
Publisher: After Spirituality
ISBN: 9781433123399
Category : Mysticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A double-edged sword of remysticization is described; on the one hand, offering social materiel for everyday counter practices to excess, unintentionally reinforcing the hegemonic regime of commodification; but also, providing an opening toward a multidimensional critical theory to offer a new vision of social practice and social theory, beyond resacralization and after spirituality.

Author: Peter C. Jupp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131718663X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The emergence of spirituality in contemporary culture in holistic forms suggests that organised religions have failed. This thesis is explored and disputed in this book in ways that mark important critical divisions. This is the first collection of essays to assess the significance of spirituality in the sociology of religion. The authors explore the relationship of spirituality to the visual, individualism, gender, identity politics, education and cultural capital. The relationship between secularisation and spirituality is examined and consideration is given to the significance of Simmel in relation to a sociology of spirituality. Problems of defining spirituality are debated with reference to its expression in the UK, the USA, France and Holland. This timely, original and well structured volume provides undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers with a scholarly appraisal of a phenomenon that can only increase in sociological significance.

Author: Kevin J. Christiano
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 144221693X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This third edition of Sociology of Religion introduces students to key principles in the sociological understanding of religion, with revisions and updates throughout. The book offers an overview of the nature and function of religious institutions and practices, asking sociological questions about the changing role of religion in today’s “post-traditional” world. After an introduction to the many facets of religion and key theories for its study, the book examines central themes such as changes in religious life in the United States; the intersections between religion, social class, and power and between gender, sexuality, and religion; globalization and religion; religion in mass media; and more. The third edition features new material on the relationship of race and ethnicity to religion, the perceived rises of both secularism and fundamentalism, and the role of religion in public debates on sexuality. Sociology of Religion addresses both the foundations of the field and the profound changes it has undergone, placing new examples against their historical background. Charts, photos, down-to-earth examples, and a readable style make the book an ideal introduction for students.

Author: Philip Wexler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429978405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In Mystical Society Philip Wexler, a well-known critical theorist with a background in social psychology and a special interest in spirituality, examines the revitalization of spirituality manifesting itself in society and in education. Describing what he calls "cultural changes toward the sacred," he documents a cultural shift, brought about by technological and societal changes, toward a new mysticism. Wexler explores the meaning for this new spirituality for our daily lives, for social theory, and for education. From the pervasiveness of a spiritual vernacular to the integration of spiritual practices into our highly individualized and technologized lives, Wexler lays out the evidence for a growing movement, and then draws parallels to periods of mystical revitalization from the past. In the course of this discussion, he draws on the work of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, as well as from contemporary social theory.

Author: Richard H. Jones
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438486340
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title The purpose of this book is to fill a gap in contemporary mystical studies: an overview of the basic ways to approach mystical experiences and mysticism. It discusses the problem of definitions of “mystical experiences” and “mysticism” and advances characterizations of “mystical experiences” in terms of certain altered states of consciousness and “mysticism” in terms of encompassing ways of life centered on such experiences and states. Types of mystical experiences, enlightened states, paths, and doctrines are discussed, as is the relation of mystical experiences and mysticism to religions and cultures. The approaches of constructivism, contextualism, essentialism, and perennialism are presented. Themes in the history of the world’s major mystical traditions are set forth. Approaches to mystical phenomena in sociology, psychology, gender studies, and neuroscience are introduced. Basic philosophical issues related to whether mystical experiences are veridical and mystical claims valid, mystics’ problems of language, art, and morality are laid out. Older and newer comparative approaches in religious studies and in Christian theology are discussed, along with postmodernist objections. The intended audience is undergraduates and the general public interested in the general issues related to mysticism.

Author: S. Restivo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400970587
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
The problems I address in this book are among the least studied in the soci ology of science and knowledge. Part I is a critique of the claim that there are parallels between ancient mysticism and modern physics, and a sociological analysis of this claim as a strategy in intellectual conflict. This study must. ultimately be rooted more firmly in a: type of sociology of knowledge that is just now beginning to crystallize (and which I discuss in Chapter 7), and a sociology of religion that is not so much unknown as underground, and timid, that is, a non-worshipful materialist sociology of religion. My study of physics-mysticism parallelism is a vehicle for exploring epistemic strategies. I thus conclude Part I by sketching a materialist, emancipatory epistemic strategy. My conclusion brings together a number of ideas formulated by myself and others over the past several years, but stops short of a systematic synthesis. A more integrated and coherent "model" than what I can sketch here must wait on the results of research now in progress in the critical (as opposed to apologetic or worshipful) sociology of knowledge.

Author: William B. Parsons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199751196
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The term ''mysticism'' has never been consistently defined or employed, either in religious traditions or in academic discourse. The essays in this volume offer ways of defining what mysticism is, as well as methods for grappling with its complexity in a classroom.This volume addresses the diverse literature surrounding mysticism in four interrelated parts. The first part includes essays on the tradition and context of mysticism, devoted to drawing out and examining the mystical element in many religious traditions. The second part engages traditions and religio-cultural strands in which ''mysticism'' is linked to other terms, such as shamanism, esotericism, and Gnosticism. The volume's third part focuses on methodological strategies for defining ''mysticism,'' with respect to varying social spaces. The final essays show how contemporary social issues and movements have impacted the meaning, study, and pedagogy of mysticism.Teaching Mysticism presents pedagogical reflections on how best to communicate mysticism from a variety of institutional spaces. It surveys the broad range of meanings of mysticism, its utilization in the traditions, the theories and methods that have been used to understand it, and provides critical insight into the resulting controversies.

Author: Laura E. Weed
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031180135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The authors in this volume explore a wide variety of the contemporary approaches to mystical and religious experience to elucidate what religious experience is, in its own terms, and how its practitioners understand it. This anthology features contributions that point out that contemporary studies of consciousness, sociology, hermeneutics, neuroscience, medicine, and other fields, are revealing that there is much more to be said for the inner life of a human’s consciousness than reductionists and behaviorists will allow. This book is one of very few that primarily takes the stance of academic practitioners, explaining their own experience, rather than that of academics trying to explain the phenomena away, as really politics, or sociology, or delusion, or psychological pathology, or literary flights of fancy, or an aberration of any of the other academic fields. Most of the authors in this volume embrace the task of explaining and analyzing religious experience, mysticism, and the healing power of silence and presence, using the resources of all of the academic disciplines, as appropriate. The essays contained analyze religious, and non-religious, mystical and profoundly personal experiences across several world religions, and in areas such as art and music, as well as in solving personal crises such as family disruption and patriarchal oppression. The authors address the subject matter through analyses of the frequent and destructive failures of language, or just noise, to capture or express the nuances of the inner life of a person. It is this very ineffability of self that renders the spiritual, emotional and interior life of individuals beyond cognition and perception, of the straightforward sorts embraced by most cognitive disciplines. The contributors come from a variety of cross-disciplinary fields to bring forth the possibilities for an intuitive and creative, rich and growing inner life for a human. This text appeals to students, researchers, and practitioners.

Author: Philip Wexler
Publisher: After Spirituality
ISBN: 9781433117398
Category : Cabala
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The book is devoted to the comparative study of contemporary mysticism. Chapters written by leading scholars of Jewish, Buddhist and Christian Mysticism address the dramatic global proliferation and transformation of mystical traditions in recent decades. This volume is suited for courses on contemporary or classical mysticism, comparative religion, Jewish studies and Buddhist studies and more.