The Limits of Meaning

Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that everything goes smoothly, that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail, or when they seem "meaningless"? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe...

Medicine Between Science and Religion

Offers a sustained exploration of ‘religion’, ‘science’ and ‘medicine’ in Western and Tibetan medical contexts. Discusses the situated confluence and/or friction of medicine between religious and scientific world views in various contexts of healing . Offers original ethnographic ex...

Engaging the Spirit World

In many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have taken on a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life. The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world show the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their in...

The Last Shaman

The Arakmbut are an indigenous people who live in the Madre de Dios region of the southeastern Peruvian rain forest. Since their first encounters with missionaries in the 1950s,they have shown resilience and a determination to affirm their identity in the face of many difficulties. During the l...

Order and Disorder

Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examin...

Fortune and the Cursed

Innovation-making is a classic theme in anthropology that reveals how people fine-tune their ontologies, live in the world and conceive of it as they do. This ethnographic study is an entrance into the world of Buryat Mongol divination, where a group of cursed shamans undertake the ‘race agains...

The Gate to Perfection

A timely book: as Israelis and Arabs are moving towards a settlement, this study offers a valuable historical dimension, from the Jewish point of view, to the main issue involved, i.e., the idea of peace. The authors maintain that peace has always played an important role in Jewish thought, tha...

Beyond Rationalism

This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so ...

Repent and Believe

Why does lasting happiness seem so elusive? In a world increasingly marked by anxiety, isolation, and despair, many people sense that something essential is missing. Despite unprecedented material comfort and technological progress, society is struggling with rising rates of suicide, addiction, a...

Facing Death Together

Reveals how some members of liberal American Jewish communities transform their relationships to Jewishness and to each other through engaging in collective mourning rituals—even amid secularizationToday, great numbers of people are turning from traditional religious practices and beliefs of the ...

Preaching on F.I.R.E.

Preaching on F.I.R.E. captivates both novice and seasoned preachers, while its principles ignite sermons that hold congregations in rapt attention. This work challenges conventional, detached approaches to biblical study and replaces them with a dynamic four-step process—F.I.R.E.—that honors Scri...

Connected Struggles

How cultural and religious diplomacy influenced Canada-Mexico relations.

The Greater Glory

Stephen Casey was twenty-one when he entered the Jesuit Order in Canada in 1947. The striving for Christian perfection eventually led him to depression and a complete breakdown - he almost lost his ability to speak. After thirty-seven years as a Jesuit he left the priesthood.

Wash, Wear, and Care

How clothing and laundry provide a window on to the structuring of care and work in nursing homes.

The Religious Sense

The Religious Sense, the fruit of many years of dialogue with students, is an exploration of the search for meaning in life. Luigi Giussani shows that the nature of reason expresses itself in the ultimate need for truth, goodness, and beauty. These needs constitute the fabric of the religious sen...

Vatican II and Beyond

A look at the impact of Vatican II through the Canadian Religious Conference and the lived experience of Sisters Alice Trudeau and Mary Alban.

The al-Baqara Crescendo

A study of the poetics and hermeneutics of the Qur?an’s narrative structure, focusing on Surat al-Baqara.

The Risk of Education

How an effective education gives young people the fundamental support of tradition and historical perspective, nurturing their ability to understand and discern.

Into Silence and Servitude

A critical examination of the recruitment and formation of American Catholic nuns during the final decades of convent expansion.

Scripture, Skepticism, and the Character of God

The intersection of the Bible, the morality of God, and the crisis of faith in Victorian England.

The Subversive Evangelical

A close investigation of a new wave of "reflexive evangelicals," whose playful critique of their own faith wins crowds.

Is It Possible to Live This Way? Volume 3: Charity

Unusual yet reasonable approaches to living life as a Christian.

Sacred Cyberspaces

Every contemporary institution has had to confront the ever-evolving technologies of the digital age. Focusing on the Catholic Church, Sacred Cyberspaces reveals how old conflicts over power, influence, and legitimacy within religious organizations unfold on the internet, shedding light on the fu...

Building Mennonite Belonging

Building Mennonite Belonging charts a course for Canadian Mennonites, particularly those in Mennonite Church Canada, to address changing racial and ethnocultural identities in a diversifying society.

Identities Under Construction

Examining how young adults construct their sexual, gender, and religious identities.

Little Theologians

Children don't just learn theology. They actively create it, playing with ideas and drawing together aspects of their own lives to form theological understanding. In Little Theologians David Csinos offers a groundbreaking exploration of how cultural contexts intersect with the theological meaning...

Generating Traces in the History of the World

An illuminating work on the Christian experience.

Rediscovering Reverence

A surprising and insightful work, Rediscovering Reverence offers a rational explanation of what the modern western world calls "religion" and argues that it is not what most people assume. Questioning western culture's evolving use of the word "religion" over the last five centuries, Ralph Heintz...

God's Plenty

Religious life in Canada has changed dramatically in recent decades due to secularization and the population shifts resulting from urbanization and immigration. New varieties of pluralism have emerged, entailing massive changes in a culture once assumed to be almost uniformly Christian.

Turning to the World

From lofty ideals to the complex realities of the Catholic Church's commitment to justice and peace-building since Vatican II.

Seeding Buddhism with Multiculturalism

How Buddhist immigrants in Toronto transmit their teachings and traditions to the next generation.

Common Ground

What happens when two prolific religious scholars sit down and, together, read sacred texts of their different religions?

Sanctifying Misandry

In Sanctifying Misandry, Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson challenge an influential version of modern goddess religion, one that undermines sexual equality and promotes hatred in the form of misandry - the sexist counterpart of misogyny.

Fernand Dumont

The innovative theological thought of a sociologist and public intellectual who turned to theology late in his life.

West Coast Mission

This ethnographic study considers where Christianity in Vancouver is headed now that it is a minority belief system in the broader culture. Ross Lockhart describes how Christians are organizing their communities, shaping their beliefs, and expressing themselves in mission in their mostly secular ...

A Culture of Faith

A comprehensive overview of evangelical Protestant congregations in Canada.

Different Gods

The complex role religion plays in immigrant adaptation and integration.

Is It Possible To Live This Way? Volume 1: Faith

A compilation of Giussani's conversations with young people who have chosen the path of the consecrated life in the Church

For the Sake of the Common Good

This book is a tribute to Lois Wilson, bringing together essays by prominent figures who have worked alongside her and who have been influenced by her practical Christianity, progressive values, and commitment to ending oppression. The collection acknowledges her inspiring legacy while taking on ...

Is It Possible To Live This Way? Volume 2: Hope

Unusual yet reasonable approaches to living life as a Christian.

Religious Inventions

Ancient writings, including the Jewish and Christian Bibles, reflect lived human experiences rather than mere dogma. Religious Inventions investigates the social contexts of these writings, exploring how modern views on religion can illuminate ancient texts and challenge our understanding of both...

Decolonizing Church

Decolonizing Church brings together a diverse group of theological voices to consider Christianity in Canada from decolonial perspectives.

Thinking about Faith, Volume 1: Love

Why did the early Christians follow Jesus Christ? Why did they write books, have councils, celebrate the eucharist and other sacramental rites? Tibor Horvath proposes that love for Jesus Christ is at the origin of the Christian faith. In the first volume of a trilogy on Thinking about Faith, love...

Being Arab

Arabs in North America are often perceived to be a monolithic group. Being Arab explores how Muslim and Christian Arab-Canadian youth actually negotiate their ethnic and religious identities. Focusing on the experiences of students from five colleges in Montreal, Paul Eid considers the influence ...

The Blue Banner

On 10 June 1925, the date the United Church of Canada was founded, two-thirds of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church of Canada - including every Presbyterian congregation in Halifax - vanished. Even before the United Church came into existence, however, non-uniting Presbyterians were for...

The Meaning of Sunday

Explaining varying levels of religiosity and church attendance in Canada.

Why the Church?

From its beginnings, the Church has presented itself as a human phenomenon that carries the divine within it. As a social fact, its reality given form by men and women, the Church has always affirmed that its existence surpasses the human reality of its components and that it stands as the contin...

At the Origin of the Christian Claim

The new revised edition of At the Origin of the Christian Claim presents an intriguing argument that the relationship between a person and God is based not on the person’s search for the mystery but on the mystery making itself known.

The Uncomfortable Pew

In The Uncomfortable Pew Bruce Douville explores the relationship between Christianity and the New Left in English Canada from 1959 to 1975. Focusing primarily on Toronto, he examines the impact that left-wing student radicalism had on Canada’s largest Christian denominations, and the role that C...

Defining Work

For rural clergy, the lines between private life and professional life can blur. Their offices are often in their homes, parishioners are also neighbours, and professional duties are intertwined with emotional caregiving and volunteer activity. In a society that defines work as paid, public, and ...

Where Is God?

In an extended interview with Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli, Julián Carrón examines our current place in time to revive the essential core of Christian faith. Where Is God? discovers and rediscovers the contents of Christianity, asking how they can be witnessed again in a society that is not ye...

The Christian Moses

How ancient Christian debates concerning Moses' ability to see God embroiled social rivalries and defined the limits of humanity.

In Praise of Mixed Religion

Advocating for a profound shift in thinking about the mix-and-match approach to religion.

Relation and Resistance

Relation and Resistance explores the stories and lives of racialized women connected with religious diaspora communities in Canada. Contributors from across disciplines show how these women are conceptualizing traditions in transformative ways, challenging prevailing assumptions about diasporic r...

Desiring a Better Country

Essays that explore the incoherencies of pluralistic secularism and pursue a Catholic alternative.

Prayer as Transgression?

A compelling account of the ways that prayer shows up in public healthcare.

To Give One’s Life for the Work of Another

This volume presents spiritual exercises of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, drawing from the transcripts of Father Luigi Giussani’s addresses. To Give One’s Life for the Work of Another explores the nature of God, self-awareness, and the fundamental components of Christianity, in the ...

Convergent Knowing

A compelling exploration of a new epistemic framework for Christian ethical thinking.

At the Origin of the Christian Claim

In At the Origin of the Christian Claim Luigi Giussani examines Christ's "claim" to identify himself with the mystery that is the ultimate answer to our search for the meaning of existence.

The Service of Faith

Asking what is the place of religion in development work, The Service of Faith offers an ethnography of the Mennonite Central Committee’s Christian development work in Indonesia, exploring the challenges, conundrums, theologies, and ethical commitments that shape Mennonite service.

The Journey to Truth Is an Experience

As a young priest, Luigi Giussani was troubled by Catholicism's inability to effectively deal with secularism or laicism. In 1954 he began to develop a vision of faith rooted in experience. His ideas resonated with students and led to the birth of the Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth) movement...

The Secrets of a Vatican Cardinal

A first-hand account of the Eternal City in wartime Italy from within the Vatican's inner circle.

Caught in the Current

While Evangelicalism is known for its defence of orthodoxy and resistance to liberalizing trends, it is being reshaped by the modern zeitgeist in ways that evangelicals themselves do not realize. Offering an insider’s view into British and Canadian evangelical churches, Caught in the Current expl...

Catholic Power in the Netherlands

Dutch Catholics long constituted by far the most cohesive political subculture in Western Europe. For nearly half a century virtually all Catholics in the Netherlands supported a single political party - the Catholic party - resisting appeals from both the left and the right. Then in the mid-1960...

Contemplation and Incarnation

Marie-Dominique Chenu was a key figure in the re-vitalization of theology and renewal of the Church that culminated in the Second Vatican Council. He successfully combined a return to the medieval sources of theological reflection with a new sensitivity t

The Son of Man in Mark

Ephesians, Baptism and Pentecost

Patriarchs and Prophets

Shaykh Ahman Sirhindi

Standing and Understanding

The Ethics of Catholicism and the Consecration of the Intellectual

Arguing that the religious values of a particular culture can account for differences in the role of intellectual elites, André Bélanger compares the very distinct traditions of French Catholicism and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to demonstrate the strong relationship between the Catholic tradition ...

Christian Ethics

Not Talking Union

Why the majority of Mennonites rejected labour unions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880-1950

In Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880-1950 William Katerberg shows how evangelical, high church, and liberal Anglicans used contradictory ways of appealing to the past to make sense of their place and purpose in a North

Life and Religion at Louisbourg, 1713-1758

The French stronghold of Louisbourg has been the subject of numerous books and articles in recent years. However, Life and Religion at Louisbourg is the first comprehensive examination of the religious aspects of life in this outpost during the eighteenth century.

The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914

At the turn of the twentieth century economic development transformed Canada's prairie region, as the region's population exploded due to migration from central and eastern Canada and immigration from Britain, the United States, and Europe. This boom sev

A Case of Witchcraft

An extraordinary tale of passion, intrigue, and revenge, A Case of Witchcraft is the true story of Urbain Grandier, a seventeenth-century priest who was accused and found guilty of sorcery. Although popularized by Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, the story has never been told in its entirety...

Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience

Canadian evangelicalism was a powerful religious impulse in the nineteenth century and continues to be a powerful force, with evangelicals making up fifty per cent of practising Protestants in the mid-1990s. Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience

The Zoroastrian Faith

Zoroastrianism has played a significant role in the development of the world's major religions. A tiny world-wide community of Zoroastrians still exists: a small group lives in Iran; others, commonly known as Parsees, are found on the west coast of India; and Zoroastrians from both Iran and India...

Idea of the Victorian Church: A Study of the Church of England, 1833-1887

The Doukhobors

Communion and Liberation

The Communion and Liberation movement, founded by Monsignor Luigi Giussani, is based on the belief that salvation is possible for everyone. It requires only that Christ be recognized as immediately present. Communion and Liberation: A Movement in the Church describes the origins of this movement ...

The Canada Fire

G.A. Rawlyk examines the remarkable growth and evolution of "radical evangelicalism" in British North Amercia from the American Revolution to the War of 1812. He argues that radical evangelicalism was the leading edge of Protestantism and was more democratic and populist than contemporary evangel...

The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada

Presbyterianism was not only the largest and most influential Protestant denomination in the Maritimes during much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but also one of the largest and most influential Protestant denominations in Canada. While t

Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'an

A revelation of the guiding spirit of the Islamic moral code.

Multiculturalism and Religious Identity

An examination of how religious identity is recognized and managed politically in two multicultural nations.

Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour?

To George Rawlyk Canadian evangelicalism has always been, and still is, more accommodating that its American counterpart. In Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? he sets out to define the quintessential nature of evangelicalism in Canada in the 1990s and to distinguish it from the more extreme evangel...

The Diary of a Country Clergyman 1848-1851

The texture of life in pre-Confederation settlements has been traced chiefly through the published diaries of women in Upper Canada. The Diary of a Country Clergyman, a welcome complement to these narratives, introduces a male perspective on rural life in Lower Canada.

Wrapped up in God

Between 1776 and 1830 the Maritime provinces were the site of important waves of religious revivals. Focusing chiefly on Baptists and Methodists, George Rawlyk uses rich primary sources to examine these happenings. Most contemporary interpreters of revivals have explained them in terms of their s...