Sex, Marriage, and Family in the World ReligionsCoeditor, Sex, Marriage, and Family in the World Religions (New York/London: Columbia University Press, 2006) (with Don S. Browning and M. Christian Green)
Description
Spanning thousands of years, this new collection brings together writings and teachings about sex, marriage, and family from the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions. The volume includes traditional texts as well as contemporary materials showing how the religions have responded to the changing conditions and mores of modern life. It reveals the similarities and differences among the various religions and the development of ideas and teachings within each tradition. Selections shed light on each religion's views on a range of subjects, including sexuality and sexual pleasure, the meaning and purpose of marriage, the role of betrothal, the status of women, the place of romance, grounds for divorce, celibacy, and sexual deviance. Separate chapters devoted to each religion include introductions by leading scholars that contextualize the readings. The selections are drawn from a variety of genres including ritual, legal, theological, poetic, and mythic texts. The volume contains such diverse examples as the Zohar on conjugal manners, a contemporary Episcopalian liturgy for same-sex unions, Qur'anic passages on the equality of the sexes, the Ka-masu-tra on husbands, wives, and lovers, Buddhist writings on celibacy, and Confucian teachings on filial piety. Table of Contents
Reviews
"An excellent resource for scholars and teachers." -- Dana Fritz Cates, Religious Studies Review "Impressive... [and] well-edited." -- Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative & Emergent Religions "A valuable resource for furthering critical debate." -- Karen-Marie Yust, Theology Today "[an] essential book on marriage" -- Christian Century "An extraordinary compendium of original texts and balanced analysis of how the world's great religions deal with sex, marriage and family life. For social scientists and therapists whose systematic learning about religion may have ended before graduate school, this is the best single source for understanding how our most influential religions arrived at their contemporary perspectives on our most intimate human bonds." -- William J. Doherty, University of Minnesota, Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart “This volume is a major step toward providing resources for a world-wide dialogue. People of differing religious traditions gain access to the basic texts of their own and others’ traditions. Graduate and undergraduate classes in comparative world religions will find an efficient resource for comparing religious teachings on human sexuality, the family, gender issues, and the ritualizing of these practices. The book will be an equally valuable resource for those in the social science disciplines and for all those interested in the interdependent relationship that exists between religions and public laws and policies. For anyone interested in where human families are headed, this volume explains how religions have shaped where human families have been.” -- Journal of Law and Religion |
|