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Testing the Boundaries: Self, Faith, Interpretation and Changing Trends in Religious Studies
Editor: Patricia ‘Iolana and Samuel Tongue
Date Of Publication: Feb 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2669-3
Isbn: 1-4438-2669-3
As individuals, we have the ability (although not always the opportunity) to create our own paradigmatic image of the Divine; moreover, as a society we can alter, transform, or even replace those paradigms. Progressive movements exist in nearly every faith tradition—moving towards the future of our world and our belief systems; these movements include both radical and reformist thinkers, and they are challenging the lenses that we employ to image, worship, connect with and understand the Divine.

With so many possible interpretations and paradigms competing for social acceptance and support, the choice must be made carefully and wisely, bearing in mind the inevitability of change whilst remaining open to pluralities of thought and practice. This is especially important when it comes to the future of theology and religious studies—in particular to the relations between the various global faith traditions.

In Testing the Boundaries, ten scholars explore the praxis of faith including our image of Self in relation to the Divine, our relation to the religious Other, our struggle for religious identity in new locales, the limits of language and translations in sacred texts, our responsibility to nature, our nomadic and transitory tendencies, traditions in the academy, and our interreligious relationships. They test the boundaries of traditional theology and their interdisciplinary fields—dancing in the liminal space where possibilities gather.

Patricia ‘Iolana is Adjunct Professor of Neo-pagan, Depth Thealogy and Shamanistic Studies at Ocean Seminary College and a founding Board Member of the Institute for Thealogy and Deasophy. She is also a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. Her most recent publication is entitled Literature of the Sacred Feminine: Great Mother Archetypes and the Re-emergence of the Goddess in Western Traditions (2009).

Samuel Tongue is a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. His thesis argues for a “poetics of writer response” that is aware of the tensions inherent in poets’ uses of biblical texts when juxtaposed with the pre-eminent historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. Samuel is also a published poet. He co-edited the Special Issue of the electronic journal for eSharp: Communicating Change: Representing Self and Community in a Technological World (2010).

“Deftly joined together by the editors, these highly accomplished essays collectively reflect on the re-imagining of religious/post-religious structures in a multicultural world. Each essay fully deserves to be consulted by specialists in its own disciplinary and cultural terrain(s). As a whole, the book augurs extremely well for the futures of the mobile and versatile interdisciplinary spaces that it begins to map.”

—Professor Yvonne Sherwood, Professor of Bible, Religion and Culture, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow

“This is a remarkable collection of essays by a community of younger scholars who here give us hope for the future at a time of bleak outlook for the study of the humanity. Written with assurance and sound good learning, they cross many boundaries of disciplines, as well as faiths and cultures. They have the virtue of not being afraid of some of the categories that impose themselves on more established writers, combining good scholarship with imagination and a willingness to think outside boundaries without losing the discipline that boundaries establish and require. They will be of interest to a wide number of people within the fields of religion, women’s studies, cultural studies and more. I am deeply impressed.”

—Professor David Jasper, FRSE, University of Glasgow and Renmin University of China

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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