front cover of The Old German Baptist Brethren
The Old German Baptist Brethren
Faith, Farming, and Change in the Virginia Blue Ridge
Charles D. Thompson Jr.
University of Illinois Press, 2006
Since arriving nearly 250 years ago in Franklin County, Virginia, German Baptists have maintained their faith and farms by relying on their tightly knit community for spiritual and economic support. Today, with their land and livelihoods threatened by the encroachment of neighboring communities, the construction of a new highway, and competition from corporate megafarms, the German Baptists find themselves forced to adjust.
 
Charles D. Thompson Jr.'s The Old German Baptist Brethren combines oral history with ethnography and archival research--as well as his own family ties to the Franklin County community--to tell the story of the Brethren's faith on the cusp of impending change. The book traces the transformation of their operations from frontier subsistence farms to cash-based enterprises, connecting this with the wider confluence of agriculture and faith in colonial America. Using extensive interviews, Thompson looks behind the scenes at how individuals interpret their own futures in farming, their hope for their faith, and how the failure of religiously motivated agriculture figures in the larger story of the American farmer.
 
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front cover of On Faith
On Faith
Nathan Rotenstreich
University of Chicago Press, 1998
The concept of faith has remained inscrutable to thinkers for centuries. The late Nathan Rotenstreich believed that faith was such a difficult topic for so many because of its inextricable links to theology and religion. On Faith, Rotenstreich's last work which was edited and prepared for publication by Paul Mendes-Flohr, attempts to detach the concept from its religious underpinnings and consider it in its own right, as a human phenomenon and cognitive attitude. Faith, Rotenstreich contends, should not be confused with its historical manifestations. By making faith a philosophical rather than a theological matter, he explores its essence as an awareness of how we relate within mundane reality to all that is beyond the human world. Arguing for the intentionality of faith, Rotenstreich shows how it structures a variety of relations that range from the experience of the holy to the nature of cults, traditional religion, and the idea of servitude to God.

Rotenstreich's phenomenological study will be of great importance for religious scholars as well as for philosophers.

Nathan Rotenstreich (1913-93) was professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and his works include Jews and German Philosophy and Reason and Its Manifestations: A Study of Kant and Hegel.
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front cover of On Wings of Faith and Reason
On Wings of Faith and Reason
The Christian Difference in Culture and Science (John Henry Cardinal Newman Lecture)
Craig Steven Titus
Catholic University of America Press, 2008

front cover of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women
By Jeanette Rodriguez
University of Texas Press, 1994

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most important religious symbol of Mexico and one of the most powerful female icons of Mexican culture. In this study, based on research done among second-generation Mexican-American women, Rodriguez examines the role the symbol of Guadalupe has played in the development of these women. She goes beyond the thematic and religious implications of the symbol to delve into its relevance to their daily lives.

Rodriguez's study offers an important reinterpretation of one of the New World's most potent symbols. Her conclusions dispute the common perception that Guadalupe is a model of servility and suffering. Rather, she reinterprets the symbol of Guadalupe as a liberating and empowering catalyst for Mexican-American women.

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