Search results for ""Author R. Marie Griffith""
University of California Press Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity
'Fat People Don't Go to Heaven' screamed a headline in the tabloid "Globe" in November 2000. The story recounted the success of the Weigh Down Workshop, the nation's largest Christian diet corporation and the subject of extensive press coverage from Larry King Live to the New Yorker. In the United States today, hundreds of thousands of people are making diet a religious duty by enrolling in Christian diet programs and reading Christian diet literature like "What Would Jesus Eat?" and "Fit for God". Written with style and wit, far ranging in its implications, and rich with the stories of real people, "Born Again Bodies" launches a provocative yet sensitive investigation into Christian fitness and diet culture. Looking closely at both the religious roots of this movement and its present-day incarnations, R. Marie Griffith vividly analyzes Christianity's intricate role in America's obsession with the body, diet, and fitness. As she traces the underpinning of modern-day beauty and slimness ideals - as well as the bigotry against people who are overweight - Griffith links seemingly disparate groups in American history including seventeenth-century New England Puritans, Progressive Era New Thought adherents, and late-twentieth-century evangelical diet preachers.
£27.00
Basic Books Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics
From an esteemed scholar of American religion and sexuality, a sweeping account of the century of religious conflict that produced our culture warsGay marriage, transgender rights, birth control--sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion. Both those who advocated for greater openness in sexual matters and those who resisted new sexual norms turned to politics to pursue their moral visions for the nation. Moral Combat is a history of how the Christian consensus on sex unraveled, and how this unraveling has made our political battles over sex so ferocious and so intractable.
£25.00
Johns Hopkins University Press Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States
This collection of essays from a special issue of American Quarterly explores the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that religion matters in contemporary public life. Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States offers a groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary conversation between scholars in American studies and religious studies. The contributors explore numerous modes through which religious faith has mobilized political action. They utilize a variety of definitions of politics, ranging from lobbying by religious leaders to the political impact of popular culture. Their work includes the political activities of a very diverse group of religious believers: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. In addition, the book explores the meanings of religion for people who might contest the term-those who are spiritual but not religious, for example, as well as activists who engage symbols of faith and community but who may not necessarily consider themselves members of a specific religion. Several essays also examine the meanings of secular identity, humanist politics, and the complex evocations of civil religion in American life. No other book on religion and politics includes anything like the diversity of religions, ethnicities, and topics that this one does-from Mormon political mobilization to attempts at Americanizing Muslims in the post-9/11 United States, from Cesar Chavez to James Dobson, from interreligious cooperation and conflict over Darfur to the global politics surrounding the category of Hindus and South Asians in the United States.
£26.50
Johns Hopkins University Press Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance
This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry. The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of suffering remain fresh and powerful. The contributors discuss matters of power and leadership and of religious expressions outside of institutional settings. The essays study women of Christian denominations, African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and Islam, addressing their roles as spiritual leaders, artists and musicians, preachers, and participants in bible-study groups. This volume's transnational mixture, along with its use of creative analytical approaches, challenges existing paradigms and summons new models for studying women, religions, and diasporic shiftings across time and space.
£30.95
Johns Hopkins University Press Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance
This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry. The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of suffering remain fresh and powerful. The contributors discuss matters of power and leadership and of religious expressions outside of institutional settings. The essays study women of Christian denominations, African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and Islam, addressing their roles as spiritual leaders, artists and musicians, preachers, and participants in bible-study groups. This volume's transnational mixture, along with its use of creative analytical approaches, challenges existing paradigms and summons new models for studying women, religions, and diasporic shiftings across time and space.
£63.26
University of Virginia Press Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in US History
Political polarization and unrest are not exclusive to our era, but in the twenty-first century, we are living with seemingly unresolvable disagreements that threaten to tear our country apart. Discrimination, racism, tyranny, religious fundamentalism, political schisms, misogyny, ""fake news,"" border walls, the #MeToo moment, foreign intervention in our electoral process - these cultural and social rifts charge our world, and we have failed to find a path toward agreement or unity.As Much Truth as One Can Bear is Marie Griffith's thoughtful response to an imperiled nation that has forgotten how to listen and debate productively, at a time when it needs vigorous discourse more than ever. Griffith performs the urgent work of examining the histories behind the issues at the root of our country's conflicts both past and present, from race and immigration to misogyny and reproductive rights. This is more than a study of the issues; it is an attempt to shed real light on how to encourage constructive dialogue and move society forward.
£25.95
