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	Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

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	▪	Evolution and Religion in Schools
	▪	Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
	▪	Computers and Biology
	▪	The Rise of Genetic Engineering
	▪	Cell Biology and Medicine
	▪	The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
	▪	Mein Kampf
	▪	The Marshall Plan
	▪	Mao Zedong
	▪	Hollywood and World War II
	▪	The Survival of the Maya
	▪	The Olmec Art
	▪	Managing the Workplace

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▪

Ambrose


	Ambrose, Bishop of Milan

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▪	American Indian Religions


	Native American Religions

	Our assumption is that nowadays these Native American peoples are likely to receive a sympathetic hearing. As little as two generations ago, that would not have been the case. Apart from a few anthropologists and ethnographers, most scholars would have considered native religious ways "primitive." Only with the advent of the more sophisticated understandings of myths, rituals, symbols, and social organizations that social scientists have developed since World War II has it become clear that Native Americans, like native Africans and Australians, have had a genius equal to that of native Europeans or Asians. Nowadays the majority of serious scholars are attentive to this genius, coming to the native peoples they study with an inclination to appreciate rather than dismiss.

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▪	American Religious History


	History of Religion in the U.S.

	That complex and diversified phenomenon known as "American Religion" is a product of the cultural heritage of Old Europe adapted and molded in the crucible of the American physical environment. The heritage is not only British but European, even Asian; not only of the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but of twenty-five hundred years. Granted that the institutions of American religion are the immediate offspring of Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements, their roots, nevertheless, lie deeply embedded in the matrix of ancient Palestine, Greece, and Rome. We should, therefore, first turn to the broad cultural setting in which the Judaeo-Christian tradition found nourishment, so that we may more adequately assay the interplay of forces which contributed to the making of the American religious mind.

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Amish


	The Amish

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▪	Anabaptists


	Anabaptists Movement

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▪	Anglican Church


	The Church of England

	The Church of England as it now exists is the most enigmatic and baffling of the national institutions. It is the very embodiment of paradox. Theoretically it is the Church of the English nation; actually its effective membership is claimed by no more than a petty fraction of the citizens. It is a reformed Church, but it refuses fellowship with all other reformed churches, with the partial exception of the Church of Sweden. It is at once the most authoritative, and the least disciplined of all Protestant churches, the proudest in corporate pretension, the feeblest in corporate power.

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▪	Anti-Catholicism


	American Anti-Catholicism

	Contemporary Catholic commentators such as James Martin have remarked that some of the most virulent forms of a new anti-Catholicism appear to live a flourishing life in the culture-at-large, well outside the purview of denominational structures and theological debates. Such anti-Catholicism lives a resolutely "secular" existence, although now and then it appears in odd religious form in places such as Bob Jones University. As Martin has so deftly argued, many of the most eloquent critics of contemporary Catholicism's role in American political, social, and ethical culture seem to steer clear of theological/religious language entirely. Their concerns seem almost-entirely cultural, without any interest in questions of transcendence or religious discourse, theological or otherwise.

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▪	Anti-Semitism


	Anti-Semitism Throughout The World

	Anti-Semitism is understood as systematic opposition to Jews because they are Jewish. To anti-Semites, simply being Jewish is offensive. It is not the isolated, rare negative remark that constitutes anti-Semitism but a characteristically anti-Jewish pattern of thought in which Jews are held to be at fault almost regardless of the problem. The same holds true of a national society or local community.

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Anticult


	Anticult Movement

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▪	Apocalypticism


	Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism

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▪	Apostle Paul


	Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles

	It is a good sign when interest in Paul leads to a blossoming of Pauline literature, as it has recently. For Paul belongs to Christianity's fundamental beginnings. Here he must be regarded as the very symbol of the Gentile Christianity of the first early Christian generation. At the same time he is, without doubt, the most significant theologian in all of early Christianity. Thus it is no wonder that he has left deep and lasting impressions in the history of Christianity even to the present time. His influence can scarcely be overestimated.

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Apostles


	Twelve Apostles

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▪	Arian Heresy


	Arianism

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▪	Athanasius


	Athanasius, Theologian and Bishop

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▪	Aztec Cult of Huitzilopochtli


	The Aztec Cult of Huitzilopochtli

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Baptists


	Baptists

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▪	Being Born Again


	Born-Again Experience

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▪	Bible Criticism


	The Bible and its Critics

	Criticism at root refers to the exercise of one's judgment. In effect, all interpreters of the Bible use their judgment to discriminate between possible meanings and senses of the text. They may well also want to give more weight to certain passages than others, to find meaningful interpretations for passages which seem to be of little obvious interest or whose apparent sense seems contradictory to expectation. This kind of intelligent, discriminating reading has been a perennial feature of Scriptural interpretation and is at the basis of present standard historical disciplines of text criticism, source criticism, and various forms of literary criticism, with which (almost) all biblical scholars work. However, the term 'biblical criticism' can also have a much more antagonistic sense, when it is directed against dominant, ecclesiastical understandings of the Bible. Many of the developments which I will sketch out belong to this category. As will become clear, much of what is now standard critical practice was in fact pioneered by those who used it to attack orthodox readings.

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▪	Bible as Literature


	The Literature of the English Bible

	So many different meanings and usages are attached to the phrase 'The Bible' that it is desirable at the very outset to understand exactly what is meant when people speak of the Bible as a part of English Literature. To Jews of the modern world, as well as to the Hebrews of the era before Christ, the Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, means the 'Old Testament,' consisting of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.

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▪	Black Churches


	Black Baptists

	The cultural origins of the black Baptists are to be found in the South rather than the North as was the case with the founding of the mother congregations of the African Methodist Church and the African Methodist Zion Churches in the mid-1790s. This basic difference still holds true for the black Baptists�even though they now dominate the urban scene. Regardless of this preponderance, these churches are still characterized by a distinct Southern religious milieu which stresses enthusiastic and demonstrative worship.

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Buddhism


	Origins of Buddhism

	The coming, twenty-five hundred years ago, of Gautama Buddha was an epoch-making event in the history of Indian civilization and culture. He was the first historical figure to make a profound impression on the Indian mind, to challenge the thought processes of all India. So great was his influence that even though Buddhism no longer exists as an organized religious institution in India his message and personality are still a living reality in the life of India and will long continue to be a source of strength. Indeed, it was the Buddha's role to recast and revitalize for mankind a way of life which can be applied universally, regardless of time or place or prevailing culture.

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▪	Buddhism and Christianity in Japan


	The Conflict of Buddhism and Christianity in Japan

	The first treaty between Japan and the United States, concluded in March 1854, signified the formal end of more than two centuries of almost total seclusion, during which Christianity had been proscribed as the "evil religion" (jashu) the West. The first limited treaties were gradually expanded, and a number of ports were opened for foreign trade and residence. Extraterritorial privileges were granted, and customs duties were fixed at moderate rates. The implications of the opening of Japan can hardly be overestimated. It coincided with and to a great extent contributed to the final collapse of the Tokugawa regime and the subsequent restoration of Imperial rule in 1868. The last years of the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) were characterized by the conflict between the advocates of open intercourse with the West and those who wanted to return to seclusion and expel the foreigners. The conflict continued in the Meiji period (1868-1912) as a tension between the main trend to adopt Western ideas and institutions and the opposite trend to maintain or reaffirm national traditions.

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▪	Catholic Priesthood


	Catholic Priests

	In the selection and training of personnel for the more important professional and technical roles in our society greater attention is being directed to the background experiences of candidates. This kind of information, only partially revealed in tests of interests and abilities, is more fully obtained in questionnaires and depth interviews with individuals. Candidates for the priesthood, Sisterhood and Brotherhood in the Catholic Church are also being submitted to closer examination, sometimes before beginning their studies, more often during their training period.

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▪	Catholicism


	Catholic Faith

	The characteristically Catholic way of carrying on a committed quest sees Church tradition as the principal source of Christian doctrine and its understanding. The Bible holds a central place within this tradition. It does not stand in isolation as a separate source of Christian doctrine.

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▪	Catholicism and History


	Catholic Interpretation of History

	Although through many centuries the Church of Rome showed great variety in philosophy and doctrine, the tendency since the Protestant Reformation has been to solidify its teaching and to define more carefully its authority. In view of some of the narrowing tendencies of the papacy, it was actually a liberalizing move when Pope Leo XIII in 1879 made Thomas Aquinas the authoritative philosopher of the church. This honor to St. Thomas, confirmed by Canon Law in 1917, gave the church a philosophy of broad outlook and high esteem for reason. But it meant also that Roman Catholic thought was henceforth to move in a philosophic tradition of the Middle Ages.

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▪	Chinese Buddhism


	Buddhism in China

	Buddhism was not an indigenous religion of China. Its founder was Gautama of India in the sixth century B. C. Some centuries later it found its way into China by way of central Asia. There is a tradition that as early as 142 B. C. Chang Ch'ien, an ambassador of the Chinese emperor, Wu. Ti, visited the countries of central Asia, where he first learned about the new religion which was making such headway and reported concerning it to his master. A few years later the generals of Wu Ti captured a gold image of the Buddha which the emperor set up in his palace and worshiped, but he took no further steps.

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▪	Christian Martyrs


	Christian Martyrdom

	Clement of Alexandria wrote from experience. In 202�203, during the persecution of Septimius Severus, he had been forced to flee to Asia Minor. In his Miscellanies (Stromata, 4.4), he discusses the perfection of martyrdom that had eluded him and compares martyrdom to the valiant death of classical heroes: �And the ancients laud the death of those among the Greeks who died in war, not that they advised people to die a violent death, but because he who ends his life in war is released without the dread of dying.� Just like the heroes of epics and the arena, the Christian martyrs displayed a contempt of death that allowed them to face the end with unnerving self-control. �We conquer death and are not conquered by it,� boasted the martyr Flavian. And Cyprian proclaimed that martyrs could be killed, but they could never be harmed.

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▪	Christian Morality


	Christian Moral Code

	Christ's moral code is religious in its very essence. To express it another way, Christian morality should in structure correspond to religion. Indeed, this is true of all genuine morality, morality which sees man as a creature made in the image of God. This chapter will develop the parallel structure of religion and morality in the following stages.

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▪	Christology


	The Study of Jesus Christ

	In the light of Christian faith, practice, and worship, that branch of theology called Christology reflects systematically on the person, being, and doing of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 5 BC--c. AD 30). In seeking to clarify the essential truths about him, it investigates his person and being (who and what he was/is) and work (what he did/does). Was/is he both human and divine? If so, how is that possible and not a contradiction in terms as being simultaneously finite and infinite seems to be? Should we envisage his revealing and redeeming 'work' as having a impact not only on all men and women of all times and places, but also on the whole created cosmos? In any case, can we describe or even minimally explain that 'work'? In facing and tackling these and other such questions, historical, philosophical, and linguistic considerations play a crucial role. They can be distinguished, if not finally separated.

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▪	Church Fathers


	Christology of the Later Fathers

	"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself " ( II Cor. 5:19). In these simple words Paul expressed the central Christian conviction which Christian theology ever since has labored to preserve, to defend, and as far as possible to understand. Ever since the fifth century we have been accustomed to consider that the central problem of Christology is how to maintain the true humanity of the Saviour without obscuring the affirmation that God was indeed acting in Christ. The first four Christian centuries faced rather a different problem in the intellectual definition of the faith-to assert the true deity of the God who acted in Christ without obscuring the ancient faith of Israel that "the Lord our God, the Lord is one" ( Deut. 6:4, R. S. V., margin). By the end of the second century the possible alternative solutions had been explored. Holding firm to the unity of God, or, as that age would have said, to the divine monarchy, one might say that Father and Son are merely two appearances of the same subject--two parts (prosopa, personae, as in dramatis personae) assumed by the same simple being. This is modalism, commonly known from the name of one of its conspicuous representatives as Sabellianism. Or one could adopt the opposite course and say that God the Father, and he only, is God in the true sense. Then the Word who was known on earth was another, a second and subordinate, divine entity--theos kai kurios heteros--as Justin Martyr rather carelessly says, although that phrase would not mean for him quite what it does for us. Arius later formalized this subordinationism. But this is dangerously close to polytheism, and it might be safer to say that the eternal Word is simply an attribute of God, or an aspect of his working, and that in these last days he spoke supremely through Jesus as he had in old times spoken through prophets and sages. This was the view that was attributed to Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch.

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▪	Church Sex Abuse


	Church Sex Abuse Scandals

	A tremendous amount of media attention in recent years has focused on sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests. Almost every major news magazine and newspaper has provided feature stories about Catholic priests being sexually involved with both children and consenting adults of both genders. Most of these articles have also been highly critical of how local religious superiors, bishops, pastors, and the Church at large has handled cases of sexual abuse and victimization. Many have suggested that the Church has been too secretive about this problem and that little compassion, understanding, and assistance has been offered to the victims of clergy abuse. Many have expressed outrage that clergy sexual abuse has occurred and has been allowed to continue. Some priests have been moved from parish to parish leaving a long trail of abuse wherever they go. Even legal authorities have been reluctant to pursue criminal proceedings against clergy members (Young & Griffith, 1995). Sensational cases have dominated the press.

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▪	Communism and Religion


	Christianity and Communism

	It has often been pointed out that Communism could only have been developed on soil prepared by Christianity. Its emphasis upon the significance of what happens in human history is itself a reflection of the Biblical view of history as the arena of God's activity. The acceptance of the importance of human history, of the collective decisions of men, of time and events and nations is so much taken for granted among us that it is easy to forget that it represents a quite distinctive view of life not characteristic of classical antiquity or of contemporary cultures uninfluenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition. There is, therefore, in Communism a deposit of Christian influence of great importance, in contrast, for example, with Neoplatonism or Buddhism, and with other religious systems characterized by the effort to escape from time and history to the changeless and the eternal.

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▪	Comparative Religion


	Sociology of Religion

	An unprecedented level of paradoxical religious movement characterizes the contemporary era. On the one hand, there are a greater number of people than ever before who are expressing either secular perspectives on life or views of their own religions that are completely independent of traditional religious authority, dogma and law. There is more and more experimentation in some quarters on the basic meaning systems of traditional religion. This is due both to the unprecedented level of involvement of women in public religious life and to the interesting interaction of the liberal state and free religious inquiry and experimentation. Furthermore, the unprecedented mixture of people of all faiths in many parts of the globe, especially in large cosmopolitan centers, has also given birth to great creativity in religious life.

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▪	Congregationalism


	History of American Congregationalism

	No Christian communion has ever been quite content until it has claimed for its doctrines, polities, and practices the authority of the New Testament, and usually to the exclusion of any other communion's right to advance such claims. An earlier school of Congregational historians claimed New Testament authority and priority for Congregationalism and supported their claims both with zeal and documentation. Most competent historians would now agree that they made their case too strong. No competent scholar would deny that there have been throughout the entire course of church history marginal movements tending to assume group forms of organization and asserting some independence from outside ecclesiastical authority. These movements were fluid as water, appearing and disappearing without apparent organic connection and yet with arresting persistence.

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Covenant


	Covenant

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▪	Covenant Ark


	Ark of the Covenant

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Davidians


	Branch Davidians

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▪	Democracy and Religion in America


	Religion and Politics in America

	It would be hard to understand American politics today without understanding American religion. And it would be equally difficult to understand either without a sense of history, a sense of how the interplay among religion, politics, and culture has shaped our nation's story. Since our country's earliest days, religion has profoundly molded both politics and the culture, directly and indirectly, in ways that no one could have imagined or predicted. To sort out the complex history of the relationship among religion, politics, and culture, we have organized this chapter around four themes -the Puritan temper, pluralism, the evangelical dimension, and populism.

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▪	Early Christianity


	The Birth of Christianity

	The creative source of Christianity was the faith in the risen and glorified Jesus. How did this faith arise? How did there come into being a consciousness of a new object of religious devotion, i.e. Jesus, who had triumphed over death and had become the Christ on the right hand of God? The death of Jesus on the cross seemed to make definite shipwreck of all the expectations which he had planted in the hearts of his disciples. Soon, however, these hopes were destined to be recreated, enriched with greater assurance than ever before, and founded on the certitude that the master had won a definite victory over death. The church expressed and defended this faith in a cycle of stories which stretch from the death of Jesus to his ascension. The relationship between the faith and the stories is not quite so simple as has been traditionally thought. The stories not only provide the foundation for the faith; they express it and at the same time defend it.

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▪	Eastern Orthodox Church


	The Orthodox Church

	Orthodox Christians in America today believe that their church had its origins not in this country but in the land of Palestine nearly 2,000 years ago. This unique community of faith was established by Jesus Christ in a public manner with the call of the first apostles in Galilee. This community of believers was enlivened by the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost when the apostles and disciples were empowered to begin their missionary activity. This is described in the Book of Acts of the Apostles.

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▪	Ecumenical Movement


	Sociology of Ecumenism

	For more than half a century, the ecumenical movement has penetrated deeper and deeper into the life of all of the churches, and has led them to seek, by various paths, the unity of the church. This movement takes concrete form in a certain number of institutions, which can both render it effective or paralyse it. We shall have to consider ecumenism both as movement (organized movements as well as the more diffuse aspirations) and as institutions (World Council of Churches, world-wide confessional alliances, Pan-Orthodox Conference, Roman Secretariat for Unity, Second Vatican Council).

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▪	Episcopal Church


	The Evangelical Episcopalians

	Sometime during the summer of 1830, the Rev. Dr. James May, an Episcopal clergyman and at that time rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, boarded a Hudson River steamboat on his way to a well-earned rest in the New York mountains. Sharing the same steamboat and the same destination was "a prominent Presbyterian Clergyman of the city of New York," the Rev. Dr. George Washington Bethune. The two divines fell to talking denominational shop, and "in the course of their conversation the Presbyterian spoke most favorably of the Protestant Episcopal Church." May was evidently taken aback; he was not accustomed to unsolicited endorsements from Presbyterian quarters. But Bethune was insistent: "I do not see," said he, "what is to hinder your Church from becoming the dominant Christian body in this country before the close of the next half century."

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▪	Evangelicalism


	The Origins of Evangelicalism

	Once a profligate slave trader, John Newton (1725-1807) later became one of the leading evangelicals in the Church of England in the second generation of the Evangelical Revival. While Jonathan Edwards's congregation at Northampton, Massachusetts, was moving in a cloud of revival wonders, Newton was a ten-year-old boy at a boarding school near London who was already neglecting most of what his late, pious mother had earlier taught him; while John Wesley's heart was being strangely warmed, twelve-year-old Newton was suffering repeated struggles between sin and conscience; and while Whitefield was stirring the crowds at Cambuslang in Scotland, Newton at sixteen had taken up and laid aside his religious profession three or four different times.

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▪	Evolution and Religion


	Religion and Evolution

	A vague notion exists with multitudes that science is infidel, and that Evolution in particular is revolutionary--that is, revolutionary of the doctrines of the Church. Men of such views often say, "I know that religion is true. I do not wish to hear anything that threatens to unsettle my faith." But faith that can be unsettled by the access of light and knowledge had better be unsettled. The intensity of such men's faith in their own thoughts is deemed to be safer than a larger view of God's thoughts. Others speak of Evolution as a pseudo-science teaching that man descended from monkeys, or ascended as the case may be. They have no conception of it as the history of the divine process in the building of this world. They dismiss it with jests, mostly ancient jests; or, having a smattering of fragmentary knowledge, they address victorious ridicule to audiences as ignorant as they are themselves.

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▪	Evolution of Religion


	Evolution of Religion

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▪	Existence of God


	Arguments for the Existence of a God

	It is often suggested that morality requires and presupposes religion, and that moral thinking will therefore support theistic beliefs. A familiar line of popular thought runs somewhat like this. Moral principles tell us what we must do, whether we like it or not. That is, they are commands, and such commands must have a source, a commander. But the requirements of morality go beyond what any human authority demands of us, and they sometimes require us to resist all human authorities. Moral requirements go beyond, and sometimes against, what the law prescribes, or the state, or our friends, or any organized church, or the public opinion of any community, even a world-wide one. They must therefore be the commands of some more than human, and hence supernatural, authority. Also, if these commands are to overrule, as they claim to do, all other considerations, we must have an adequate motive for obeying them no matter what threats or temptations urge us to disobey. Such a motive can be supplied only by our knowing that there is a being who has both the will and the power to give rewards and to impose penalties which outweigh all worldly losses and gains. Morality needs a god, therefore, both as a supreme source of commands and as an all-powerful wielder of sanctions to enforce them. Besides, moral thinking includes a confident demand for justice, an assurance that what is unfair and unjust cannot in the end prevail, and justice requires that there should be some power which will somehow balance happiness with desert.

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▪	Feminism and Theology


	Feminist Theology

	It has frequently been said that feminist theology draws on women's experience as a basic source of content as well as a criterion of truth. 1 There has been a tendency to treat this principle of "experience" as unique to feminist theology (or, perhaps, to liberation theologies) and to see it as distant from "objective" sources of truth of classical theologies. This seems to be a misunderstanding of the experimental base of all theological reflection. What have been called the objective sources of theology; Scripture and tradition, are themselves codified collective human experience.

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▪	God and Evil


	Evil and God

	Even if the existence of God be premised, it is not apparently to be taken for granted that He is good; or rather, if there is a good God, there is also, many hold, an evil one. This is the teaching of Zoroastrianism, which postulates the presence in the universe from the first of an evil antagonist to the omniscient and apparently omnipotent God of the other religions, an antagonist who becomes prominent in the later books of the Old Testament. Or take the immortality of the soul, which one would have thought to be inseparably bound up with a religious attitude to the universe. Buddhism denies it and denies, it partly because it denies the reality of individuality, the ego being for Buddhism, in the words of the Editor, only "a degrading composite of temporary obstructive delusions." Other examples of radical disagreement in regard to fundamentals could be cited. They are numerous enough to suggest that the fundamental truths of religion are not, to say the least, self-evident.

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▪	Greek Religion


	The Religion of the Ancient Greece

	The religion of the ancient Greeks had a long and varied history. It continued on the higher plane of anthropomorphic polytheism for many centuries, back of which extended many more of a cruder animistic past. During its whole development it was quite unchecked by tradition or revelation or by dogma. It adapted itself plainly to the political, social, and intellectual changes in the evolution of the most gifted of peoples, continually borrowing and assimilating new and foreign ideas. From the sixth century B. C. onwards it was profoundly influenced by poets, philosophers, and artists. In brief, Greek religion was part and parcel of Greek civilization, showing the same mobility, love of freedom, and spirit of progress which we associate with all other phases of that culture. And long after the political greatness of Greece had vanished, Greek religion was destined to influence Christianity by which it was to be superseded.

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▪

Heresy


	Heresy in Medieval Europe

	The debates about the nature of Christian belief and the sources of legitimate authority in the Christian community that began to trouble the peace of the early churches two thousand years ago had both immediate and longer-lasting effects. From the epistles of St. Paul to the great age of church councils in the fifth and sixth centuries, the twin concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy were constituted as the third of the divisions that defined a true Christian, following the distinctions between Christianity and paganism on the one hand, and Christianity and Judaism on the other. The substance of Christian belief was articulated in apostolic and patristic literature, based upon an increasingly homogeneous scriptural canon and selected traditions, circulated widely, and finally, from the fourth century on, given juridical form by councils and prelates. Those against whom the early Fathers wrote and the early councils legislated were first described (as they are in the epistles of St. Paul) as factious, sectarian, and schismatic; that is, they were regarded as attempting to divide the indivisible community of the Church. From the second century on, they were increasingly described as heretics -- that is, as people who chose (from the Greek word hairesein) a belief that the representatives of orthodox Christian communities defined as heterodox and therefore untenable by a true Christian.

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▪	Hindu Nationalism


	Hindu Nationalists

	The riots that erupted in Mumbai in January 1993 actually did not sweep across the city in a sustained wave of violence. Clashes between Hindus and Muslims hit certain sections, while other areas went completely untouched. With the exception of particular middle-class neighborhoods (Worli, Andheri, and Santa Cruz), the riots primarily engulfed the urban slums populated by workers in the informal sector as well as a fair number of lower middle-class clerks and office workers who were unable to afford the astronomical housing prices in the apartment complexes of Mumbai. The four neighborhoods receiving the most publicity and forming the empirical basis of popular speculations about the riots in Mumbai were: Jogeshwari, Behrampada, Dharavi, and Govandi/Deonar (an area surrounding Baiganwadi). About 60-67 percent of the riot victims were Muslims, a statistic in itself indicating a concerted effort was made to destroy the lives and property of Muslims. Both the political party Shiv Sena and the city police have been implicated in the selectivity of the riot's path of destruction.

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Hinduism


	The Foundations of Hinduism

	Sometime between 1800 and 1500 B.C.E. the subcontinent of India was subjected to a series of discrete and limited invasions by a people who called themselves "Aryans" ("noble ones"). These Aryans spoke a language that belongs to what is now called the Indo-European language family, a family that includes such diverse modern European languages as Greek, Latin, German, the Scandinavian languages, French, Spanish, and English. The Aryans came into India from the steppes of Central Asia and from the region to the east of the Caspian Sea. Their invasion occurred at the same time that other members of this same language family were moving out of Central Asia and into ancient Turkey, Greece, and Northern and Southern Europe. The Aryans brought two significant items with them: First, several devastating weapons of war such as the bow and the two-horse chariot, weapons that made them invincible in battle; and, second, their oral compositions that came to be called "the Vedas." During their very early invasions the Aryans probably encountered the remnants of a once-flourishing and magnificent civilization along the banks of the Indus River, one of the five major rivers of the Punjab and northwestern India. This river culture is called the Harappan or the Indus civilization, and it existed from about 2500 to 1800 B.C.E.

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▪	Historical Jesus


	Historical Jesus Christ

	Though there are many historical narratives in the Bible that are significant for Christians, orthodox Christian faith has traditionally understood itself as rooted supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Whether Judaism could survive the discovery that Moses never existed and the Exodus never occurred is not for me to say, but it has seemed to many Christians that Christian faith could not survive if Jesus did not live, die, and rise from the dead. This story of Jesus I shall call 'the incarnational narrative'. I shall use this phrase to designate the story of Jesus of Nazareth, taken from the New Testament as a whole, as that story has traditionally been told by the Christian Church. Thus understood it is not a story about a mere human being, but an account of Jesus as the Son of God, a unique, divine person. 'The incarnational narrative' is therefore my way of designating a particular account which is theologically rich. I do not, however, wish to endow the narrative with more theological baggage than is necessary. In so far as possible, I shall assume a version of the narrative that does not take sides on questions that are disputed in-house among different streams of historic Christian orthodoxy.

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▪

Holocaust


	Holocaust: The Final Solution

	The cooperation displayed by German government officials attending the Wannsee Conference was necessary for implementating the Final Solution. The killing process required the participation of the bureaucratic apparatus of the German state, and the consensus reached at the Wannsee Conference ensured this cooperation. German sociologist Max Weber wrote many years before the ascent of Nazism that when fully developed, bureaucracy stands for the principle of "without scorn and bias." Weber observed that to the degree that the modern bureaucracy eliminates from its duties love, hatred, and all other emotional and irrational elements, it fulfills its functions. "Precision, speed, unambiguity . . . strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs -- these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic organization." Indeed, Weber may well have been describing the role of the Nazi bureaucracy in the Holocaust.

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▪	Human Sacrifice in Aztec Religion


	Human Sacrifice in Aztec Religion

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▪	Inca Religion


	The Inca Religion

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▪	India Before Buddhism


	Indian Religion at the Time of Buddha

	Buddhism was influenced by the social and religious environment in which it developed. In approximately 1500 B.C.E., the Aryans crossed the mountains of the Hindu Kush and invaded India. When they arrived, they found aboriginal peoples such as the Mundas and Dravidians. The Dravidians had a highly developed culture and constituted a large proportion of the population. Although they were subjugated by the Aryans and integrated into society as slave classes, the Dravidians influenced later Indian culture in many ways. Elements of their religion such as the worship of goddesses, snake gods, and tree spirits played a particularly important role in the Hinduism of later centuries.

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▪

Islam


	Islam: Quran and the Prophet

	Earlier in the 20th century Muslims were often referred to as Muhammadans, the religion of Islam as Muhammadanism. That the usage has now been abandoned is partly a reflection of the political changes that have occurred since the time when most of the Islamic world was under European colonial rule. Europeans, especially in south Asia, saw the respect Muslims accord their Prophet as tantamount to worship. Muslims did not usually refer to themselves as Muhammadans (except as a descriptive term when addressing Europeans), because to do so would seem to imply that they worshipped Muhammad as Christians worshipped Christ. For orthodox Muslims such an implication was highly offensive. Muslims worship God, not Muhammad. The Messenger was a prophet, not a deity or divine avatar. To suggest otherwise would be to breach the boundary between God and humankind, the creator and his creation. Theologically maintenance of that boundary is the central article of the Islamic faith. 'There is no god but God. Muhammad is the Messenger of God.'

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▪	Islam and Democracy


	Democracy and the Muslim World

	Religious resurgence and democratization are two of the most important developments of the final decades of the twentieth century. In many areas, movements of religious revival coincide with and sometimes reinforce the formation of more democratic political systems. In other areas, the two dynamics are in conflict. In the Muslim world, these issues are raised with special force because of the strength of the Islamic resurgence and the intensity of the demands in recent years for greater popular participation in the political processes.

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▪	Islam and the West


	Europe and Islam

	Between these two terms, "Europe" and "Islam," there is, or there would appear to be, a certain asymmetry. The one is a geographical expression, the name of a continent, one of several -- the number has varied from two to seven -- into which the earth's surface is divided. The other is a religion. One might reasonably speak of Europe and Asia, of Europe and Africa, or one might speak of Islam and Christendom, or of Islam and Buddhism. But what can one say about Europe and Islam? This asymmetry is more apparent than real. Europe is a European notion, as is the whole geographical system of continents, of which Europe was the first. Europe conceived and made Europe; Europe discovered, named, and in a sense made America. Centuries earlier, Europe had invented both Asia and Africa, the inhabitants of which, until the age of European world supremacy in the nineteenth century, were unaware of these names, these identities, even of these classifications which Europeans had devised for them. Even in Europe, the notion of Europe as a cultural and political entity was relatively modern -- a postmedieval secularized restatement of what had previously been known as Christendom.

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▪	Islamic Fundamentalism


	Fundamentalism in the Arab World

	Both in its militant and passive forms, contemporary Islamic fundamentalism possesses three general attributes: pervasiveness, polycentrism, and persistence. It is pervasive since Islamic groups and movements have sprung up in virtually every Muslim community regardless of size or political, economic, and cultural setting. Nor is Islamic revival limited to particular social and economic classes. While much of its grassroots support is based on the lower, lower-middle, and middle classes, there is increasing evidence of widespread emulation of Islamic lifeways among the upper-middle and upper strata. The Islamic rebirth movement is also polycentric since it possesses no single revolutionary leadership or organizational epicenter. To a significant degree, the return to Islamic roots has had a local character as a response to particular crisis conditions existing in various national environments. Yet to the extent that crisis situations in different societies are similar, the Islamic movement could eventually assume a truly transnational character. Finally, Islamic fundamentalism has shown an unusual degree of persistence during the last century and in previous eras, with a cyclical propensity to intrude upon the sociopolitial process to shape its evolution.

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▪	Islamic Law


	Law and Islam

	A striking element in the cultural configurations that are grounded in Islam is the primary place that law has within them. In Islam, law consists of a comprehensive set of rules for human conduct as provided through Allah's command, with those rules being instrumental in controlling negative social and political tendencies. As the fourteenth-century Arab philosopher ibn Khaldun asserted: "Man is by nature a domineering being; and his desire to overcome . . . others, and subdue and coerce them is the source of wars and trespassing" ( Mahdi 1957:178). Responding to this force, "the Law . . . is designed to preserve and protect human society" ( Mahdi 1957:193). The central position accorded to law in Islam has long been recognized by Muslim jurisprudents and by Western legal scholars. The internationally renowned Islamic law scholar Joseph Schacht, for example, concluded: "Islamic law is the epitome of Islamic thought, the most typical manifestation of the Islamic way of life, the core and kernel of Islam itself" ( 1964: 1).

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▪

Jainism


	The Jains

	Jain renouncers are men and women who have left their families and given away all their material possessions to lead a wandering life of asceticism and religious teaching. There are several different Jain traditions, and the rules which renouncers follow vary between them, but in all cases the life they prescribe is one of justly famed severity. Jain renouncers all go barefoot, they do not bathe, and they do not shave or cut their hair, so in some traditions the men have beards, but it is common practice twice each year to pull out the hair from both the head and face by hand; and on many of the older men only wispy white remnants of a beard remain. All Jain renouncers carry a special broom with which to brush insects from their way without harming them. They lead a celibate and itinerant life, travelling in small, single-sex groups, and making their way on foot between towns and villages, teaching the importance of non-attachment and non-violence, and encouraging others to follow their example in fasting and other ascetic practices. The ideal, and in some cases the actual culmination of the renouncer's life, is a fast to death.

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▪	Jewish Diaspora


	Israel and the Diaspora

	The first phase of the history of the Diaspora ends with the Crusades. Not only did this movement as such, together with its political and economic consequences, have a catastrophic effect on the life of the Jewish people and its status in all the lands of the Dispersion, but it also brought about profound changes in Palestine itself. Even after the predominantly Jewish character of Palestine had become a thing of the past, the country had still continued to have a sizable Jewish population and the physical connection between the people and its land had remained unbroken. The Jews were at no time a nation without a country, but rather, even in the Exile, a nation which had been dispossessed of its soil by force and which had never ceased to protest against this act of political robbery and to demand the return of its stolen property. Throughout the long generations of the Dispersion every Jew firmly believed that "the Land is Israel's everlasting possession, which only they shall inherit and in which only they shall settle, and if perchance they are exiled from it they will return to it again, for it is theirs in perpetuity and no other nation's."

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▪	Jewish-Christian Relations


	Christianity and Judaism

	Jews receive frequent mention in the Christian scriptures, commonly called the New Testament. But the tenor of these references is usually disparaging, and many of the criticisms lodged against Jews or their religious practice are, regrettably, ascribed to Jesus personally. Aside from rare reports of camaraderie between Jesus and the Jews' leaders, the gospels generally show him chiding, sometimes even maligning, the scribes and Pharisees, priests and Sadducees. And these authorities, in turn, are regularly depicted as bent on embarrassing or tricking Jesus and, particularly toward the end of his ministry, even on destroying him. Nor is such malevolence limited to the leaders; sometimes the Jews as a people are also thus portrayed, especially once they too seem to join in clamoring for Jesus' execution.

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▪	Jews in America


	The Jews of the United States

	The major developments of American Jewish history grew out of both a Jewish and an American context. The chronology of American Jewish life, the structure of its communal network, and the inner dynamism that propelled it demand explanations from both American and Jewish sources and cannot be divorced from either of these histories. Yet by itself neither one can explain how American Jews lived and what the patterns of their lives meant to them.

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▪

Judaism


	Jewish Theology

	It is very difficult to give an exact definition of Judaism because of its peculiarly complex character It combines two widely differing elements, and when they are brought out separately, the aspect of the whole is not taken sufficiently into account. Religion and race form an inseparable whole in Judaism. The Jewish people stand in the same relation to Judaism as the body to the soul. The national or racial body of Judaism consists of the remnant of the tribe of Judah which succeeded in establishing a new commonwealth in Judea in place of the ancient Israelites kingdom, and which survived the downfall of state and temple to continue its existence as a separate people during a dispersion over the globe for thousands of years, forming ever a cosmopolitan element among all the nations in whose lands it dwelt. Judaism, on the other hand, is the religious system itself, the vital element which united the Jewish people, preserving it and regenerating it ever anew. It is the spirit which endowed the handful of Jews with a power of resistance and a fervor of faith unparalleled in history, enabling them to persevere in the mighty contest with heathenism and Christianity. It made of them a nation of martyrs and thinkers, suffering and struggling for the cause of truth and justice, yet forming, consciously or unconsciously, a potent factor in all the great intellectual movements which are ultimately to win the entire gentile world for the purest and loftiest truths concerning God and man.

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▪

Magic


	Ritual Magic

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▪	Maya Religion


	The Maya Religion

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▪

Methodism


	Wesleyan Movement

	An analysis of the population groups from which Methodism drew its membership indicates that the movement concentrated upon the very section of the community which was increasingly being drawn into the industrial processes. The rural groups were less accessible and, besides, they were less isolated from the Establishment, with which even an appearance of conflict was avoided. It was part of the official strategy of the revival under Wesley to focus the new propaganda where the largest number of unattached people could be reached and where the discipline of a regulated organization would give permanence to the work. The centripetal forces of industrial concentration were not, of course, in full effect until the late decades of the century, and there were many rural societies, especially in the vicinity of the larger centres of population. It remains that, as in certain of the southern counties, the early Wesleyans left "unvisited most of the purely agricultural regions," with their "sparse peasant population, bound to their field work." They dealt mainly with industrial labourers like the miners, the ironworkers, weavers, skilled artisans, and the day-labourers of the towns. Workers who migrated to the centres where economic opportunity offered a livelihood constituted the "very social material Methodism was wont to lay hold upon." Unbound to the old steadying community obligations and "being free from religious restrictions" they were a virgin field for the new teaching. Consequently, large sections of the "manufacturing population . . . heartily embraced the doctrines of Methodism."

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▪	Monasticism


	Christian Monasticism

	Monasticism is not as old as the Church. It is true that the Church of the fourth century, in which it took shape, thought it found even in the apostolic age essentially similar institutions; but the models which some persons have invoked, and still invoke, as precedents belong chiefly to legend. Yet the ancient Church was not wholly in error in its view. The idea of detachment, of forming close associations within the congregation, and of practicing a special renunciation, could obviously not occur to individuals in the earliest decades of the Church's existence.

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▪	Moravian Church


	The Life and Work of John Huss

	John Huss, the child of poor parents, was born in the Bohemian village of Hussenez, near the small town of Prachatice, not far from the borders of Bavaria. The date of his birth is somewhat doubtful, but it is usually given as between 1373 and 1375. His first education was probably received at a school in Prachatice. About the year 1389, when scarcely more than a youth, he went to the University of Prague, where he took his master's degree when he was about twenty years of age. He became noted for his piety, and rejoiced at the thought of becoming a priest. He soon began to give lectures as a public teacher. In 1401 he was made a dean of the faculty of philosophy, and in the following year he was rector of the university for about six months.

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▪	Moses. The Exodus


	The Place of Moses in Jewish History

	A fresh revolt broke out in Palestine. The successor of Ramses, Me(r)neptah ( 1225-1215) quelled it; in a stele, found near Thebes, he boasts of having destroyed Israel. The commotion at home communicated itself to the enslaved Israelites in Goshen. There arose an inspired leader, a personality of incomparable, magnitude, to become the liberator of his afflicted brethren from their house of bondage.

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▪	Muslims in America


	Muslims in the United States

	Early Muslim immigrants started arriving in small numbers around the turn of the century and continued in relatively increasing waves throughout the first half of the century. These immigrants were often characterized as adventurers attracted to the New World for its economic opportunities. Unlike many of their contemporary European counterparts, they did not come to make America their home. Their intention was to make as much money as possible quickly and then return to their homeland. Many, however, failed to realize their dreams and eventually returned, disenchanted, to their home countries. Those who were more successful and were able to adjust to the American way of life generally found in their kin relationships and trade partnerships forms of association that made any other kind of organization unnecessary.

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▪	Natural Theology


	Natural Religion

	Natural religion is a phrase that came into existence in an atmosphere of conflict and as a challenge to the prevailing supernaturalism of traditional orthodoxy. At its best it was significant of the attempt to deliver Christendom from its thousand years' captivity to the belief in a rigid antithesis between the secular and the sacred, and of the conviction of the best seventeenth century thought that the order of nature not only proceeded from the same source but revealed the same quality as the order of grace. But dualism was too deeply ingrained in Catholic and Protestant theology for the phrase to be sympathetically considered: it threatened the Catholic separation of reason from faith not less than the Protestant doctrines of the universal effect of the Fall: it savoured of Spinozism and, curiously enough, of the rationalistic deism which was its opposite: it infringed the dearest prerogatives both of ecclesiastics and of Calvinists: if there were any such thing as natural religion, then the uniqueness of Christ, the certainty of hell, the necessity for sola fides, indeed the whole structure of conventional apologetic were threatened. The denunciations called out by so conciliatory and orthodox a treatise as Sir Thomas Browne Religio Medici show how inveterately hostile were the Churches of Western Europe to any attempt to formulate 'a religion for the scientist'.

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▪	Olmec Religion


	The Olmec Religion

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▪	Original Sin


	Original Sin and Dread

	From the theory of freedom which we outlined in the previous section, and which supports his whole anthropology, Kierkegaard approaches the mystery of sin. All the emphasis here is on the free decision: to sin means to take a stand against God. This notion conflicts with every opinion that in any way minimizes the freedom of the sinful act, such as Hegel's doctrine of negativity, or Luther's teaching that man is born in the state of unfreedom. For Hegel, the state of innocence before sin is the immediate stage in the developing consciousness of the Spirit. But immediacy is an abstract moment, which cannot exist in itself and which is real only insofar as it is annulled in an antithesis (CD IV 399 LO 32). Thus innocence becomes a prior moment of guilt, rational to the extent that guilt follows it of necessity, but possessing no reality of itself. The stage of reflection, at which knowledge commences, negates innocence and posits sin.

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▪	Papal History


	History of Papacy

	Under the Roman Empire the popes had no temporal powers. But when the Roman Empire had disintegrated and its place had been taken by a number of rude, barbarous kingdoms, the Roman Catholic Church not only became independent of the states in religious affairs but dominated secular affairs as well. At times, under such rulers as Charlemagne (768-814), Otto the Great (936-73), and Henry III (1039-56), the civil power controlled the church to some extent; but in general, under the weak political system of feudalism, the well organized, unified, and centralized church, with the pope at its head, was not only independent in ecclesiastical affairs but also controlled civil affairs. The church interfered in secular affairs on the basis of its theory of the relation of church and state, which was formulated in substance by Augustine (354-430) and given wider and more definite application by such popes as Gregory VII (1073-85), Innocent III (1198-1216), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others.

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▪	Presbyterianism


	The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians

	American Presbyterianism was the natural child of English Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism, modified and reshaped in the colonial environment. In England, Puritanism had only gradually split into Presbyterian and Congregational wings; and even in America, where the Congregational form was dominant, there were always tendencies toward Presbyterianism. Nowhere was the tendency more marked than in Connecticut. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, Puritans largely from Connecticut planted churches on Long Island, in northern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. Many invited Scottish Presbyterian ministers to preach to them, while at the same time they maintained their Congregational form of government. There were instances in which Presbyterian congregations called Congregational ministers into their service. The denominational lines were not then sharply drawn.

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▪	Rastafarianism


	The Rastafarians

	The Rastafarian cult is a messianic movement unique to Jamaica. Its members believe that Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia, is the Black Messiah who appeared in the flesh for the redemption of all Blacks exiled in the world of White oppressors. The movement views Ethiopia as the promised land, the place where Black people will be repatriated through a wholesale exodus from all Western countries where they have been in exile (slavery). Repatriation is inevitable, and the time awaits only the decision of Haile Selassie. Known only to the true believers, the details of the actual departure are secret. In the past some fantasies called for planes to the United States, and then ships from there to Africa. Some envision the operation being launched from the shores of Jamaica by at least ten British ships at a time, while others see the operation being undertaken in Ethiopian vessels at Jamaican expense.

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▪	Reformation


	History of the Reformation

	In the decades immediately preceding the Reformation, many an educated man might have doubts about this power of the clergy over the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women; but when it came to the point, almost no one could venture to say that there was nothing in it. And so long as the feeling remained that there might be something in it, the anxieties, to say the least, which Christian men and women could not help having when they looked forward to an unknown future, made kings and peoples hesitate before they offered defiance to the Pope and the clergy. The spiritual powers which were believed to come from the exclusive possession of priesthood and sacraments went for much in increasing the authority of the papal empire and in binding it together in one compact whole.

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▪	Religion and Philosophy


	Philosophy of Religion

	A philosophy of religion is not a theology. It is not a careful analysis and synthesis of the basic doctrines of any one religious faith or denomination. It is the attempt to understand the fundamental issues with which any religious belief is involved. The Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish or any other theology may be very important additions to the fundamental core of religion. But in the philosophy of religion we confine our study to systematic criticism of the essential claims of all religions.

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▪	Religion and State


	The Separation of Church and State

	The most difficult cases in the area of the separation of church and state have been concerned with the extent to which government may provide support for private religious schools below the college level. Again, the Court has refused to take the easy way out and outlaw all support, no matter how small or indirect. Instead, the Court has spent several decades trying to define what is acceptable government support and what is not. At present, tuition reimbursements and tax credits are not acceptable, but tax deductions for expenditures by parents who send their children to religious schools are acceptable. While many people have criticized the Court's decisions on this issue, there is no perfect solution. At any point good arguments can be made that too much or too little government support is being allowed.

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▪	Religion of the Aztecs


	The Religion of the Aztecs

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▪	Religious Freedom


	Freedom of Religion

	Three months after the Constitutional Convention had adjourned in Philadelphia, Oliver Ellsworth, a delegate to the Convention from Connecticut and later chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1796-1800), in response to critics of Article VI, Section 3, cogently argued that the Constitutional provision denying any religious test for federal office was not unfavorable to religion but simply served to prohibit religious discrimination and to affirm the right of religious freedom. In doing so, he wrote, the new national government was but fulfilling its rightful role to serve its citizens.

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▪	Religious Music


	Relationship of Music and Christian Church

	Judaeo-Christian religious tradition can trace a direct line of descent from the earliest religious expression of ancient Israel. There is nothing particularly distinctive about ancient Israel as a tribal people except its religious expression: the religion of Yahweh, the one all-powerful God. That religion was remarkably intense and demanding, and its uncompromising monotheism represented an extraordinarily mature, sophisticated level of religious awareness for a tribal people. Ancient Israel's evolving religious awareness unfolds in the Old Testament, whose earliest writings offer a record of what was surely first an oral tradition of great antiquity. The Old Testament offers only a fragmentary image of musical thought and practice in ancient Israel. The chief reason for this incompleteness is that it was not the intention of the authors of the Old Testament to offer an explanation of ideas about music. Therefore, although there are many references to music, most of them are in the form of incidental comments, and it is hardly surprising that these comments present only a partial record of musical ideas and practices.

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▪	Roman Catholic Church


	Roman Catholic Church

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▪	Roman Catholicism


	Roman Catholic Church

	Roman Catholicism is two things. It is a form of faith and worship; and it is a form of government. It is a system of beliefs about God and man and the means of salvation, and a system of worship expressing and nourishing those beliefs; and it is a corporate control over the minds, consciences and moral conduct of its adherents--of all the world, if its hopes could be realized--by a very small self-perpetuating group, in the last analysis by one man. "Moral" is an elastic term and may be made to cover much; but even so, it may seem to limit too closely the fields of conduct which the church attempts to control. Nevertheless, I put it in to avoid giving the impression that the church explicitly claims the right to dominate every phase of conduct. It does not do that. But it does claim the right to determine for itself what phases of conduct it has a right to control; which means that it claims the right to control whatever it has any interest in controlling.

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▪	Roman Religion


	Religion of Rome and Early Italy

	If it is true that Rome received her earliest Greek deities from Etruria and the Oscans of Campania, this fact implies that the various parts of the peninsula already stood in relatively close connection with one another. We get the impression that the single, racially distinct cultures did not merely live in separate isolation, but that, beyond this, some bond of union had already begun to embrace them. We should have, in that case, to speak not only of the various cultures of Italy, but also of a single early Italian culture. Nor could this conception be restricted to the ' Italian ' peoples, in the strict sense ; from the first, Greek and Etruscan elements appeared within it.

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▪	Science and Religion


	Religious Thought and Science

	Science and religion represent two different aspects of human understanding and different instincts which often seem quite different, yet can be closely related. Science, with its experiments and logic, tries to understand the order or structure of the universe. Religion, with its theological inspiration and reflection, tries to understand the purpose or meaning of the universe. These two are cross-related. Purpose implies structure, and structure ought somehow to be interpretable in terms of purpose. At least this is the way I see it. I am a physicist. I also consider myself a Christian. As I try to understand the nature of our universe in these two modes of thinking, I see many commonalities and crossovers between science and religion. It seems logical that in the long run the two will even converge.

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▪	Secularism


	Secular Society

	In the post-war period there was also a renewed interest in the process of secularization. Some writers claimed that secularity was the mark of modern societies in general and of the United States in particular. The secular city was replacing communities based on more traditional forms of solidarity such as neighborhood and the family, ethnicity and race. New solidarity would emerge from the network of complex relationships that typify cities and bureaucracies, industry and the modern communications.

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▪

Sikhism


	The Sikhs and Their Religion

	Sikhism, or more exactly, the religion of the "True Name" (Sat Nam), is of Indian origin, and of markedly Indian character. It arose four centuries ago as a quest for God. A "Sikh" is a "learner, or disciple, or, possibly, one who serves." The faith has had, as well, a distinguished political career, having become in time a nationalistic community. Sikhs (sikh is pronounced seek) are known as a people of military prowess; for warlike spirit some compare them with the Cossack and the Turk. Their martial exploits brought them fame in India, and have given them a name throughout the world. But their religion in itself is interesting. They have their own peculiar priesthood, Holy Book, lofty theology, code of rigorous morality, sacred ritual, and Holy City with its noble sanctuary.

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▪

The Amish


	Amish People

	The reliance the Mennonites put on the Bible, in which each man tended to interpret the Scriptures for himself, as well as the lack of an educated ministry, led to disputes and even division within the church. Even before the emigration to Pennsylvania the Amish had split off from the Mennonites. The principal theological difference which caused this split was the Amish doctrine of Meidung--literally avoidance or shunning. Based on the Pauline injunction "not to keep company," "not to eat" with an unfaithful member (I Corinthians 5:11), but to "put away from among yourselves that wicked person," this doctrine is used to correct and punish an erring member.

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▪	The Apostolic Age


	The Apostles of Jesus Christ

	The Apostolic Age began with the death of Jesus in 29 or 30 A.D. and ended about the close of the first Christian century. This brief three-quarters of a century is significant primarily because it represented the practical application, the testing, and the crystallizing of the principles of faith and life which Jesus had set forth. Christianity then came into close contact and competition with many rival religions, such as the Roman emperor worship, Greek Cynicism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Judaism, many Egyptian and oriental cults, and, above all, with the popular mystery religions.

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▪	The Expansion of Christianity


	The Expansion of Christendom

	It might be supposed that the obligation of Christians for the dissemination of their faith would have been felt by the more ardent and responsible among them at all times and in every place. The history of Christianity shows that this has been by no means the case. There have been periods in which the enthusiasm for the carrying of the gospel of Jesus to those who had it not was a conspicuous trait of Christian mind and life. Such eras of missionary activity have alternated, however, with others in which even the most zealous piety took quite another form. There have been ages in which propaganda for Christianity among new peoples practically ceased. There have been centuries during which the boundaries of Christendom were not enlarged. At times even the area won for the faith by earlier efforts was diminished.

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▪	The Spread of Christianity


	The Spread of Christianity in the World

	The first impact of the civilization of Europe upon the ancient civilizations of the Far East, those of India, of Japan, and China, as also upon the half-civilized and uncivilized races of North and South America, came at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1492 a Genoese, Christopher Columbus, in a Spanish ship and bearing a letter to the Khan of Tartary, set out from Palos seeking India and discovered America. He landed on San Salvador. In a later voyage he reached Trinidad and other islands on the coast of South America. In 1497 another Italian, John Cabot, possibly a Genoese but long resident in Venice, sailing from Bristol, England, under the patronage of Henry VII reached Nova Scotia. In a later voyage he touched Labrador and possibly Newfoundland.

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▪	The Ten Commandments


	The Ten Commandments

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▪	Women and Judaism


	Jewish Women

	The role of the Jewish woman today is defined by ancient and deeply rooted historical precedents. It is for this reason that contemporary social forces have a different impact upon her role and status than such forces do upon women in general. I shall attempt here to clarify some patterns in the development of women's role in Jewish culture and society. These patterns can serve as a guide to those who feel a need for a change but believe that change should be directed by models within Jewish tradition and should be articulated in proper halakhic categories.

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▪	What kind of written works can you provide?
▪	How many words do you have per page?
▪	Can I contact you in case of emergency?
▪	What are your policies concerning the paper format?
▪	What about refunds?
▪	What charge will I have in my bank statement?

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