A Systems Theory of Religion, still unfinished at Niklas Luhmann's death in 1998, was first published in German two years later thanks to the editorial work of André Kieserling. One of Luhmann's most important projects, it exemplifies his later work while redefining the subject matter of the sociology of religion. Religion, for Luhmann, is one of the many functionally differentiated social systems that make up modern society. All such subsystems consist entirely of communications ...

-Good chance of Oscar nomination for acting and screenplay

The story of one of the most compelling religious leaders of modern timesFrom the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson—revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe—built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. Swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, he came to believe that he could deny death and change history.Samu...

Something has changed.After the horrors of World War II, people everywhere believed that it could never happen again, but today the evidence is unmistakable that anti-Semitism is dramatically on the rise once more. The torching of European synagogues, suicide terror in Israel, the relentless comparison of the Israelis to Nazis, the paranoid post–September 11 Internet-bred conspiracy theories, the Holocaust-denial literature spreading throughout the Arab world, the ...

A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, John Freund describes how his joyful childhood is shattered by the German invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia. Hoping at first that the conflict and persecution would soon blow over, John’s Jewish family suffers through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt – en route to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. John’s loss of innocence and suffering are made all the more poignant as his vivid w...

Shattering the Illusion is the first book to gather and comparatively analyze policies addressing child sexual abuse complaints in a selection of religious institutions in Canada. Although there is a substantial body of literature regarding Christianity and sexual abuse, very little of it focuses on religious institutions in Canada and their respective policies.In the foreword, Tracey J. Trothen summarizes the Cornwall Inquiry, out of which this book arose. She then examin...

Forty years ago, at the height of the counterculture movement, several hundred hippies drove their school buses into southern Tennessee and founded one of Americas largest, modern-day intentional communities, The Farm. In its heyday, the community was home to over 1,500 optimistic young people and the young at heart. Their purpose for coming together was to support each other in a quest for personal growth and an alternative lifestyle that could help raise the standard of living for impove...

All 17-year-old Leslie Meisels knows in June 1944 is that he must get his family out of the terrible conditions in the ghetto in Debrecen, Hungary. Over his mother’s objections, his decision to push their way on to a transport could have sent them all to a death camp. Instead, they join the roughly 20,000 “Jews on ice” whose lives are saved — temporarily — in Austria. After the war, when Leslie is finally starting a new life in freedom in North America, he meets Eva, who is also a Holocaus...

How and when did the kiss become a vital sign of romance and love? In this wide-ranging book, pop culture expert Marcel Danesi takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of the kiss, from poetry and painting to movies and popular songs, and argues that its romantic incarnation signaled the birth of popular culture.

Shamanism, Santería, Wicca, and Charisma are connected via the trance state or ecstasy. Philpotts detail the theology and practices of shamanism, Santería, and Wicca, and then regretfully demonstrate why the proponents of these religions appeal to a form of Christianity.

The United States has a long history of religious pluralism, and yet Americans have often thought that people’s faith determines their eternal destinies. The result is that Americans switch religions more often than any other nation. The Chance of Salvation traces the history of the distinctively American idea that religion is a matter of individual choice.Lincoln Mullen shows how the willingness of Americans to change faiths, recorded in narratives that describe a wide va...

Jesus' very presence on the scene as the New Testament age was unfolding (1st century A.D.), engendered opposition, created conflict, while ushering in grace. His ideas by the accounts of many were radical for his time, first century, and even today in the twenty-first century. Why is this so? The NIV Archaeological Study Bible (2005), NIV Student Bible (2002), and on careful examination of corroborating Extra-Biblical evidence provide a context for the Word view about Jesus. Both Bibles a...