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 respec …

From Logos to Christos is a collection of essays in Christology written by friends and colleagues in memory of Joanne McWilliam. McWilliam was a pioneer woman in the academic study of theology, specializing in Patristic studies and internationally recognized for her work on Augustine. For countless students she was a teacher, a mentor, an inspirati …

Travel and Religion in Antiquity considers the importance of issues relating to travel for our understanding of religious and cultural life among Jews, Christians, and others in the ancient world, particularly during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. The volume is organized around five overlapping areas where religion and travel intersect: travel rel …

This book uncovers an early collection of sayings, called N, that are ascribed to Jesus and are similar to those found in the Gospel of Thomas and in Q, a document believed to be a common source, with Mark, for Matthew and Luke. In the process, the book sheds light on the literary methods of Mark and Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts of th …

The papers published in this volume were originally read and discussed at a three day seminar sponsored by the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion/Societie Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses at Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, May 28th to 30th, 1976. This seminar served the important function of bringing together the majority of the C …

The introduction of Aristotelianism into the West created conflict, disruption, and turmoil. Not least, it confronted the Middle Ages with a serious problem concerning the possible conflict between reason and faith. In part, the controversy surrounding Aristotelianism in the Christian world came from the Islamic channels through which much of the A …

Following a critical review of previous theological scholarship on Heidegger and a survey of North American philosophy of religion, the book examines Heidegger’s philosophy of religion and its influence on the North American variety of the same.

During the upheavals of the Reformation, one of the most significant of the radical Protestant movements emerged — that of the Anabaptist movement. Profiles of Anabaptist Women provides lively, well-researched profiles of the courageous women who chose to risk prosecution and martyrdom to pursue this unsanctioned religion — a religion that, unl …

In this re–examination of the roots of the relationship between religion and science, David Hawkin focuses on the concept of autonomy as he explores the question: Is there continuity and compatibility between the autonomy that underlies Christian faith and the role of individual freedom in the technological age?

What makes this work particularly …

Har Dayal's The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature published in 1931 was the first extensive study in English of the Bodhisattva doctrine. Dayal discussed the Bodhisattva doctrine as it was expounded in the Buddhist Sanskrit texts, and it remains a question whether anything more can be added to his excellent study. However, no oth …

A study of modern Muslim ethics, focused upon the lives and writings of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mawlana Mawdudi, this book sheds light upon the modern ethical problems of contemporary Islam.

Sayyid Ahmad Khan, often called a liberal, a modernist, or an acculturationist, represents the "liberal" trend of Sunni Muslim ethics. Khan's approach borrows mu …

This work explores the relationship between religion, social patterns, and the perception of the character of scripture in four modes of Ancient Judaism: (1) the Jerusalem community of the fifth to fourth centuries B.C.E. (ie, the Early Second Temple Period); (2) the Judaism of the Graeco-Roman Disapora down to the end of the fourth century of the …

“Every time we raise our voices, we hear echoes.” Jo-Anne Elder, from the Foreword

Through short stories, journal entries and poetry, the women in Voices and Echoes explore the changing landscape of their spiritual lives. Experienced writers such as Lorna Crozier, Di Brandt and Ann Copeland, as well as strong new voices, appear to speak to each …

This book contains, almost without change in content or style, the Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in February, 1974. The theme of the lectures has been well worked over by contemporary theologians from almost every conceivable angle of Christian thought. Yet the subject was chosen because of a) a life-lo …

The figure of Jesus has fascinated Western civilization for centuries. As the year 2000 approaches, eliciting connections with Jesus’ birth and return, excitement grows — as does the number of studies about Jesus. Cutting through this mass of material, Whose Historical Jesus? provides a collection of penetrating, jargon-free, intelligently orga …

Nine Canadian scholars of Buddhism consider philosophical and cultural issues in Buddhist thought. Part I, “On Being,” discusses the philosophical problem of Being in the school of the Middle Way, Mādhyamika Buddhism, and in the Tantric School of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Part II, “On the Indian Milieu,” surveys Hindu views of Buddhism and expl …

Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity discusses the diverse cultural destinies of early Christianity, early Judaism, and other ancient religious groups as a question of social rivalry.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first section debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately n …

A history of Chinese immigrants encounter with Canadian Protestant missionaries, “His Dominion” and the “Yellow Peril”: Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859-1967, analyzes the evangelizing activities of missionaries and the role of religion in helping Chinese immigrants affirm their ethnic identity in a climate of cultu …

The early Salvation Army professed its commitment to sexual equality in ministry and leadership. In fact, its founding constitution proclaimed women had the right to preach and hold any office in the organization. But did they?

Women in God’s Army is the first study of its kind devoted to the critical analysis of this central claim. It traces the …

Our ancestors saw the material world as alive, and they often personified nature. Today we claim to be realists. But in reality we are not paying attention to the symbols and myths hidden in technology. Beneath much of our talk about computers and the Internet, claims William A. Stahl, is an unacknowledged mysticism, an implicit religion. By not ac …

George Lindbeck once characterized postliberalism, which received its initial structure from his book The Nature of Doctrine, as an attempt to recover pre-modern scriptural interpretation in contemporary form. In Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine, Jane Barter Moulaison explores the su …

On December 6, 1989, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle entered an engineering school in Montreal and murdered fourteen women before killing himself. Responses to what has come to be known as “The Montreal Massacre” varied, from the initial shock and mourning and efforts to “make sense” of the tragedy to an outpouring of writing, art, …

Is it possible to write an artistically respectable and theoretically convincing religious novel in a non-religious age?

Up to now, there has been no substantial application of theological criticism to the works of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan, the two most important Canadian novelists before 1960. Yet both were religious writers during the …

These essays represent a multidisciplinary approach to the study of religion and, especially, Judaism.

Setting aside common scholarly concerns with source criticism and history of interpretation, Shimon Levy argues that in Numbers 11 the redactor has forged diverse elements into a unity. Observing that much of what is said about Second Commonwealth …

Sharing without Reckoning is the first full-scale treatment of the ancient and persistent distinction between “perfect” and “imperfect” rights and duties. It examines the use of the distinction in jurisprudential, philosophical and religious material from Classical times until the present; proposes a connection between imperfect right and t …

How do we deal with difference personally, interpersonally, nationally? Can we weave a cohesive social fabric in a religiously plural society without suppressing differences?

This collection of significant essays suggests that to truly honour differences in matters of faith and religion we must publicly exercise and celebrate them. The secular/sacr …

This volume, one in a series of books examining religious rivalries, focuses in detail on the religious dimension of life in two particular Roman cities: Sardis and Smyrna. The essays explore the relationships and rivalries among Jews, Christians, and various Greco-Roman religious groups from the second century bce to the fourth century ce.

The thi …

Based on exhaustive reference to primary source material, this volume explores the relationships between religious mythologies and religious philosophical system within the theistic traditions in India. Not content merely to explore these relationships, the author further examines the relevance of mythology and philosophy in a discussion of salvati …

How are Baptists distinctive as a Christian denomination? Canadian Baptists, confronted with the question of discovering a common identity from the welter of strands of influence that make up their heritage, may infer several answers from the essays in Memory and Hope.

Focussing on Baptist history in central and western Canada, Memory and Hope disc …

Nellie L. McClung (1873-1951) was an internationally celebrated feminist and social activist whose success as a platform speaker was legendary. Her earliest notoriety was achieved as a writer, and during her lengthy career she authored four novels, two novellas, three collections of short stories, a two-volume autobiography and various collections …

The period since the close of World War II has been agonizingly introspective—not least because of the pain of reassessing Christianity’s attitude to Judaism. The early Christian materials have often been examined to assess their role in the long-standing negative attitude of Christians to Jews. The motivation for the early church’s sometimes …

Canada's Indian policy has, since the 1830s, consisted mainly of attempts at cultural replacement. Although rarely practised, cultural synthesis of native and western cultures has been advocated as an important alternative especially in the last ten years. This book is a study of E.F. Wilson (1844–1915), a Canadian missionary of British backgrou …

"Traditions in Contact and Change" was the theme of the fourteenth quinquennial congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. This selection from 450 papers by scholars form all over the world address the theme.

Section One, "Indian Traditions and Western Interactions," treats subjects ranging from the flood story in Vedic …

The Japanese Pure Land master Shinran (1173–1262) was a product of his age. His angst in the period of the decay of the Dharma, his subsequent search for spiritual liberation, and his ultimate discovery of the path of the nembutsu could not have occurred isolated from the social temper of his time, any more than his religious thought could have d …

Virtually from its redaction about the sixth century A.D., the Babylonian Talmud became the rabbinic document par excellence. Through its lens almost all previous canonical rabbinic tradition was refracted. Study and mastery of the Talmud marked one as a rabbi, a “master.” This book examines the character, use and social meaning of the formaliz …

Written in tribute to one of the foremost Catholic theologians in the English-speaking world, the essays in The Promise of Critical Theology address the question: Can critical theology secure its critical operation without undermining its foundation in religious tradition and experience? Is “critical theology” simply an oxymoron when viewed fro …

While the textual focus of this collection of essays is the Spiritual Exercise of Ignatius of Loyola, the essays are much more than textual analyses; they deal with the tradition and institutions associated with Ignatian spirituality, with historical and philosophical perspectives on Ignatian spirituality, with the contemporary search for spiritual …

Weaving Relationships tells the remarkable, little-known story of a movement that transcends barriers of geography, language, culture, and economic disparity.

The story begins in the early 1980s, when 200,000 Maya men, women, and children crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico, fleeing genocide by the Guatemalan army and seeking refuge. A decade …

Most Ontario universities were established by Christian denominations; a Christian ethos was assumed and pervasive, and students were required to take courses designed to teach and inculcate religion. This insightful and comprehensive study demonstrates how, as Ontario society became secularized and pluralistic, so too did universities. Today, reli …

The second volume in this two-volume work studying the initial developments of anti-Judaism within the church examines the evolution of the Christian faith in its social context as revealed by evidence such as early patristic and rabbinic writings and archaeological findings.

The founding of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria arose out of the enthusiasm of the young church in Jamaica. The first mission party arrived in Calabar in 1846 and settled into a routine of preaching, teaching, campaigning for social reform, ministerial training, and practising medicine. With the coming of the British Empire after 1890, a new gen …

Why, Salmond asks, would nineteenth-century Hindus who come from an iconic religious tradition voice a kind of invective one might expect from Hebrew prophets, Muslim iconoclasts, or Calvinists?

Rammohun was a wealthy Bengali, intimately associated with the British Raj and familiar with European languages, religion, and currents of thought. Dayanan …

Where do the origins of the rabbinic movement lie, and how might evidence from the early rabbinic literature be made to reveal those origins?

In order to shed light on the early social formation of the rabbinic guild of masters, Lightstone brings the theoretical and methodological insights of socio-rhetorical analysis to examine Mishnah, the first …

Focussing on three first- and early-second-century documents (the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement and the Ignatian epistles), this work contributes to a growing body of literature concerned with the social setting of early Christianity. Maier argues that the development of structures of leadership in the early Christian church is best accounted for b …

It is commonly assumed that all religions are essentially alike, that they are all common members of the genus Religion. But what if religions are not fundamentally similar after all? What if, on the contrary, it is better to presuppose a radical difference among the world’s various religious communities, with each faith being defined by differen …

The role and function of law in religious communities in the Roman period—especially in Judaism—has been a key issue among scholars in recent years. This thought-provoking work is the first full-scale attempt to write a historical assessment of the scholarly debate concerning this question, focussing on two closely related religious communities …

In the last twenty years, the number of texts written on clinical pastoral supervision has accelerated. Thomas St. James O’Connor analyzes these texts, nearly 300 of them, in light of three fundamental questions about the praxis of clinical pastoral supervision: (1)what is distinctive about the praxis? (2)what is an appropriate theological method …

What is “theological method”? Can there be more than one method? If so, how do you choose between them? How does method relate to experience?

Would experience affect your choice of method and method affect experience?

Abdul-Masih offers a three-part proposition. The first is that theological method is influenced by theological reasoning. That i …

Why did it take so long for the United Church of Canada to respond to violence against women?

Tracy J. Trothen looks at the United Church as a uniquely Canadian institution, and explores how it has approached gender and sexuality issues. She argues that how the Church deals with these issues influences its ability to name violence against women.

In …

What is “Religious Studies” and what is its future in Atlantic Canada? How have universities founded by Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations, and public universities, differed as they approached the study of religious life and traditions?

Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada surveys the history and place of the study of religion within C …