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MexicanAmerican folk and religious healing, often referred to as curanderismo, has been a vital part of life in the Mexico-U.S.border region for centuries. A hybrid tradition made up primarily of indigenousand Iberian Catholic pharmacopeias, rituals, and notions of the self, curanderismo treats the sick person witha variety of healing modalities including herbal remedies, intercessory prayer,body massage, and energy manipulation. Curanderos,“healers,” embrace a holistic understanding of the patient, including body,soul, and community. Border Medicine examines the ongoingevolution of Mexican American religious healing from the end of the nineteenthcentury to the present. Illuminating the ways in which curanderismo has had an impact not only on the health and cultureof the borderlands but also far beyond, the book tracks its expansion from MexicanAmerican communities to Anglo and multiethnic contexts. While many healers treat Mexican and MexicanAmerican clientele, a significant number of curanderoshave worked with patients from other ethnic groups as well, especially thoseinvolved in North American metaphysical religions like spiritualism, mesmerism,New Thought, New Age, and energy-based alternative medicines. Hendricksonexplores this point of contact as an experience of transcultural exchange. Drawingon historical archives, colonial-era medical texts and accounts, earlyethnographies of the region, newspaper articles, memoirs, and contemporaryhealing guidebooks as well as interviews with contemporary healers, Border Medicine demonstrates the notableand ongoing influence of Mexican Americans on cultural and religious practicesin the United States, especially in the American West.

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Asian American Religions brings together some of the most current research on Asian American religions from a social science perspective. The volume focuses on religion in Asian American communities in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, and it includes a current demographic overview of the various Asian populations across the United States. It also provides information on current trends, such as that Filipino and Korean Americans are the most religiously observant people in America, that over 60 percent of Asian Americans who have a religious identification are Christian, and that one-third of Muslims in the United States are Asian Americans. Rather than organizing the book around particular ethnic groups or religions, Asian American Religions centers on thematic issues, like symbols and rituals, political boundaries, and generation gaps, in order to highlight the role of Asian American religions in negotiating, accepting, redefining, changing, and creating boundaries in the communities' social life.

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Until very recently, the idea of ancient Jewish sciences would havebeen considered unacceptable. Since the 1990’s, Early Modernand Medieval Science in Jewish sources has been actively studied, but the consensus was that no real scientific themes couldbe found in earlier Judaism. This work points them out in detail,and posits a new field of research: the scientific activity evidentin the Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Jewish Pseudepigrapha. Thepublication of new texts and new analyses of older ones revealscrucial elements that are best illuminated by the history of science, and may have interesting consequences for it. The contributors evaluate these texts in relation to astronomy, astrology andphysiognomy, marking the first comprehensive attempt to accountfor scientific themes in Second Temple Judaism. They investigatethe meaning and purpose of scientific explorations in an apocalyptic setting. An appreciation of these topics paves the way toa renewed understanding of the scientific fragments scatteredthroughout rabbinic literature. The book first places the Jewish material in the ancient contextof the Near Eastern and Hellenistic worlds. While the Jewish textswere not on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, they find ameaningful place in the history of science, between Babylonia andEgypt, in the time period between Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Thebook uses recent advances in method to examine the contacts andnetworks of Jewish scholars in their ancient setting. Second, theessays here tackle the problematic concept of a national scientifictradition. Although science is nowadays often conceived as universal, the historiography of ancient Jewish sciences demonstratesthe importance of seeing the development of science in a localcontext. The book explores the tension between the hegemony ofcentral scientific traditions and local scientific enterprises, showing the relevance of ancient data to contemporary postcolonialhistoriography of science. Finally, philosophical questions of thedemarcation of science are addressed in a way that can advancethe discussion of related ancient materials. Online edition available as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library and in partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW).

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Religious institutions are among the most segregated organizations in American society. This segregation has long been a troubling issue among scholars and religious leaders alike. Despite attempts to address this racial divide, integrated churches are very difficult to maintain over time. Why is this so? How can organizations incorporate separate racial, ethnic, and cultural groups? Should they? And what are the costs and rewards for people and groups in such organizations? Following up on Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith's award-winning Divided by Faith , Against All Odds breaks new ground by exploring the beliefs, practices, and structures which allow integrated religious organizations to survive and thrive despite their difficulties. Based on six in-depth ethnographies of churches and other Christian organizations, this engaging work draws on numerous interviews, so that readers can hear first-hand the joys and frustrations which arise from actually experiencing racial integration. The book gives an inside, visceral sense of what it is like to be part of a multiracial religious organization as well as a theoretical understanding of these experiences.

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Argues that popular films perform a religious function in our culture The first edition of Film as Religion was one of the first texts to develop a framework for the analysis of the religious function of films for audiences. Like more formal religious institutions, films can provide us with ways to view the world and the values to confront it. Lyden argues that the cultural influence of films is analogous to that of religions, so that films can be understood as representing a “religious” worldview in their own right. Thoroughly updating his examples, Lyden examines a range of film genres and individual films, from The Godfather to The Hunger Games to Frozen , to show how film can function religiously.

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A venture into the art and science of measuring religion in everyday life In an era of rapid technological advances, the measures and methods used to generate data about religion have undergone remarkably little change. Faithful Measures pushes the study of religion into the 21st century by evaluating new and existing measures of religion and introducing new methods for tapping into religious behaviors and beliefs. This book offers a global and innovative approach, with chapters on the intersection of religion and new technology, such as smart phone apps, Google Ngrams, crowdsourcing data, and Amazon buying networks. It also shows how old methods can be improved by using new technology to create online surveys with experimental designs and by developing new ways of mining data from existing information. Chapter contributors thoroughly explain how to employ these new techniques, and offer fresh insights into understanding the complex topic of religion in modern life. Beyond its quantitative contributions, Faithful Measures will be an invaluable resource for inspiring a new wave of creativity and exploration in our connected world.

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Explores the role of race and consumer culture in attracting urban congregants to an evangelical church The Urban Church Imagined illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical congregations’ approaches to organizational vitality and diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to urban, downtown areas to build their congregations and attract younger, millennial members. The urban environment fosters two expectations. First, a deep familiarity and reverence for popular consumer culture, and second, the presence of racial diversity. Church leaders use these ideas when they imagine what a “city church” should look like, but they must balance that with what it actually takes to make this happen. In part, racial diversity is seen as key to urban churches presenting themselves as “in touch” and “authentic.” Yet, in an effort to seduce religious consumers, church leaders often and inadvertently end up reproducing racial and economic inequality, an unexpected contradiction to their goal of inclusivity. Drawing on several years of research, Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and congregants’ understandings of the connections between race, consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many members who value interracial interactions as a part of their worship experience. But these explorations often unintentionally exclude members along racial and classed lines. Indeed, religious organizations’ efforts to engage urban environments and foster integrated congregations produce complex and dynamic relationships between their racially diverse memberships and the cultivation of a safe haven in which white, middle-class leaders can feel as though they are being a positive force in the fight for religious vitality and racial diversity. The book adds to the growing constellation of studies on urban religious organizations, as well as emerging scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics in American religious life. In so doing, it offers important insights into racially diverse congregations in urban areas, a growing trend among evangelical churches. This work is an important case study on the challenges faced by modern churches and urban institutions in general.

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Sincethe 1950s, millions of American Christians have traveled to the Holy Land tovisit places in Israel and the Palestinian territories associated with Jesus’s lifeand death. Why do these pilgrims choose to journeyhalfway around the world? How dothey react to what they encounter, and how dothey understand the trip upon return? This book places theanswers to these questions into the context of broad historical trends, analyzing howthe growth of mass-market evangelical and Catholic pilgrimagerelates to changes in American Christiantheology and culture over the last sixty years,including shifts in Jewish-Christian relations, the growth of small group spirituality, and the development of a Christianleisure industry. Drawing on five yearsof research with pilgrims before, during and after their trips, Walking Where Jesus Walked offers a lived religion approach thatexplores the trip’s hybrid nature for pilgrims themselves: both ordinary—tiedto their everyday role as the family’s ritual specialists, andextraordinary—since they leave home in a dramatic way, often for the firsttime. Their experiences illuminate key tensions in contemporary US Christianitybetween material evidence and transcendent divinity, commoditization andreligious authority, domestic relationships and global experience. Hillary Kaell crafts the first in-depth study of thecultural and religious significance of American Holy Land pilgrimage after1948. The result sheds light on how Christian pilgrims, especially women, makesense of their experience in Israel-Palestine, offering an important complementto top-down approaches in studies of Christian Zionism and foreign policy.

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Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity is the first collection devoted to demonstrating the role that religion and myth have played in the creation of the categories of “race” and “ethnicity.” When scholars approach religion and race, they tend to focus on such issues as how African Americans have expressed Christianity, or how Japanese or Mexicans have lived “religiously.” This volume, meant specifically for those new to the field, brings together an ensemble of prominent scholars and illuminates instead the role religious myths have played in shaping those very social boundaries that we call “races” and “ethnicities.” It asks, what part did Christianity play in creating “Blackness”? To what extent was Japanese or Mexican identity itself the product of religious life?The text, comprised of all original material, introduces readers to the social construction of race and ethnicity and the ways in which these concepts are shaped by religious narratives. It offers examples from both the U.S. and around the world, exploring these themes in the context of places as diverse as Bosnia, India, Japan, Mexico, Zimbabwe, and the Middle East. The volume helps make the case that any account of the social construction of race and ethnicity will be incomplete if it fails to consider the influence of religious traditions and myths. Contributors include: Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Joel Martin, Jacob Neusner, Roberto S. Goizueta, Laurie Patton, and Michael A. Sells.

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From 1925 to 1941, approximately one hundred African American clergymen teamed up with leading record labels such as Columbia, Paramount, Victor-RCA to record and sell their sermons on wax. While white clerics of the era, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles Fuller, became religious entrepreneurs and celebrities through their pioneering use of radio, black clergy were largely marginalized from radio. Instead, they relied on other means to get their message out, teaming up with corporate titans of the phonograph industry to package and distribute their old-time gospel messages across the country. Their nationally marketed folk sermons received an enthusiastic welcome by consumers, at times even outselling top billing jazz and blues artists such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. These phonograph preachers significantly shaped the development of black religion during the interwar period, playing a crucial role in establishing the contemporary religious practices of commodification, broadcasting, and celebrity. Yet, the fame and reach of these nationwide media ministries came at a price, as phonograph preachers became subject to the principles of corporate America. In Preaching on Wax, Lerone A. Martin offers the first full-length account of the oft-overlooked religious history of the phonograph industry. He explains why a critical mass of African American ministers teamed up with the major phonograph labels of the day, how and why black consumers eagerly purchased their religious records, and how this phonograph religion significantly contributed to the shaping of modern African American Christianity.

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