Preface “To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds…

I find it fascinating that, although Max Weber and Emile Durkheim likely never knew of one another, they begin their respective works on religion in much the same way. Namely, they each state that a definition of religion cannot possibly be provided until the end of their study (Weber 399…

Charles Price, in Becoming Rasta, often refers to “seeds” (134, 142, 163). This is an apt metaphor, pointing to the themes of conception and birth that inform Rastas’ understandings of their identities. Rastafari don’t picture their identity transformations in terms of conversion; they see Rastafari as a seed present within…

From very early on, certain Christianities, unlike the pagan religions surrounding them, placed strong emphasis on their exclusive claim to “the truth” (Ehrman, NT, 452). These groups, believing eternity itself to be at stake, attacked the beliefs of not only other religions, but of other kinds of Christian believers as…

Driving through a neighborhood I once called home, I stopped my car for a frail, elderly woman waving me down from the sidewalk. “No matter what she says, don’t let her know you have any money,” said my friend from the passenger seat. The woman only needed a short ride…

Theodoret, in The Religious History, introduces his section on female ascetics by saying that they “are worthy of still greater praise [than the male ascetics], when, despite having a weaker nature, they display the same zeal as the men and free their sex from its ancestral disgrace” (29:1). This short…

Being an admirer of the existential tradition in psychology (particularly of the work of Dr. Viktor Frankl), I was eager to see how James Hansell and Lisa Damour, in their widely used textbook Abnormal Psychology, would portray it among the various theoretical perspectives. I suspected that it would be relatively…

Gods and Lineages According to Rudolf Wagner, secular movements like the communist movement in China attempt to “match the religious structure with revolutionary institutions” (Wagner 378). In the case of communism in China, I would say that this was done quite successfully, with the establishment of revolutionary analogues to gods, patriarchs/heroes, temples, sacred…

Between June and September of 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, nineteen persons were hanged and over one-hundred fifty were sent to languish in prison. One might say that all this was caused by some silly or malevolent little girls. Alternately, one might say that the tragedy was the result of a…