Books published by Lexington Books

According to originalism, the meaning of a text is determined at the time of its writing. Originalism in Theology and Law explores the similarities and differences between the theological application of this idea to the Bible and its legal application to the American Constitution.

This book provides insight into barriers women experience when seeking treatment for substance use disorders. Findings indicate that models of "maternal instinct" often impede efforts for women seeking treatment, and recovery is more achievable when proper social and structural supports are in place.

This book uses glocalization theory and the methods of historical ethnomusicology to interpret the life and times of a notable European composer, Franz Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924) in his sociocultural context.

Virtuous conduct is the philosophy of agency within Early Confucianism. Drawing on the ideas of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, this book characterizes Early Confucianism as a progressive philosophy due to its human-centered program for social reform, its process view of self-cultivation, and its development.

The Emergence of the Evangelical Egyptians traces the complex cultural encounter between American Presbyterian missionaries and the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox leaders over indigenous Protestant conversion in late Ottoman Egypt, 1854-1878.

An Advaitic Modernity?: Raimon Panikkar and Philosophical Theology poses Raimon Panikkar as a stimulating dialogue partner in postmodern philosophical theology who can help us rethink the relationship between transcendence and immanence through an advaitic critique of modernity. Andrew D. Thrasher argues that Panikkar advaitic critique of modernity may transform several discourses, such as how Panikkar's cosmotheandric metaphysics may reshape a theology of religion and offer a religious interpretation of a relational ontology that builds on the Heideggerian ontological tradition and how Panikkar's metaphysics solves problems in Heidegger's ontology.

This is the story of the region where monotheism multiplied, where Christianity came into being, where Judaism reinvented itself, and where Islam won some of its greatest triumphs. This book tells the story of the monotheistic faiths in Galilee from Jesus and Josephus to the Crusades.

In Transforming Lives, Alexander Roedlach highlights the essential role that faith community nursing and health ministries play in local health and well-being. Roedlach argues that health systems and governments should partner with these programs in public health outreach efforts.

By examining non-fiction travel narratives and travel fictions in relationship to each other, Daniel Cooper Alarcón highlights the sophisticated ways that both types of writing have anticipated ideas central to critical studies of travel, tourism, and migration.

This bookexamines the simultaneous increase of informal sector employment and decreasing access to space for people making a living in the Panamanian informal economy.

This volume examines questions concerning the construction of gender and identity in the earliest days of what is now Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Methodologically explicit, the contributions analyze textual and material sources related to these religious traditions in their cultural contexts. The sources examined are predominantly products of patriarchal elite discourses requiring innovative approaches to unveil aspects of gender otherwise hidden. This volume extends the discussion represented in the volume Gender and Second-Temple Judaism (2020) and highlights the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary research beyond anachronistic discipline distinctions.

This book studies the interactions between presidential candidates and hosts on broadcast late-night talk shows in the United States. Using Discourse Analysis, we develop a comprehensive understanding of the Entertainment-Political Interview as a cultural, interactional, and ideological genre.

This study leads the way to comprehend the need for further research on technology security in the fight against sex trafficking, exploring the ways the Internet and social media can both enable and combat against sex trafficking.

Gordon Merrick and the Great Gay American Novel is the first biography of Gordon Merrick, the most commercially successful writer of gay novels in the twentieth century. This book shows how Merrick's novels were largely based on his own life and time as a Princeton theater star, a Broadway actor, a New York reporter, an OSS spy, and the friend of countless artists and celebrities as an expatriate in France, Greece, and Sri Lanka. He lived much of his life as an openly gay man with his longtime partner, Charles Hulse. His 1970 novel, The Lord Won't Mind, broke new ground by showing that an affirming, explicitly gay novel could be a bestseller. His subsequent gay novels were both a cultural phenomenon and a lightning rod for literary critics. This book also examines the complex, often conflicting responses to Merrick's novels by gay readers and critics, and it thus recovers the early post-Stonewall debates over the definition of ';gay literature.' By reconstructing Merrick's life and critical fortunes, this book expands our understanding of what it means to be a gay man in the twentieth century.

This book brings together essays on Orthodoxy and anarchism by prominent Orthodox theologians and scholars.

Exploring Caste and Sexuality in Indian English Writing: Outcast Subcultures examines the ways in which caste intersects and shapes matters of desire, gender, religion, and language. This book argues that the epistemology violence in contemporary India derives its strength from caste texts.

A Hindu-Jewish Conversation: Root Traditions in Dialogue is a historical, theological, and phenomenological engagement of the Hindu and Jewish traditions, two "root" traditions that give rise to other-in some ways very different-types of religious traditions. Rachel Fell McDermott and Daniel F. Polish explore conceptions of the divine, which are frequently cited as the most serious obstacle to a serious theological engagement between the two traditions; differences in attitude towards heroes, saints, and holy people; the religious resources and challenges experienced by Hindu and Jewish women; what can be learned about Hindu and Jewish spiritual outpouring by comparing Hindu devotional poetry and the Book of Psalms; the ways in which the two traditions address the fraught question of theodicy, or why bad things happen to good people; the status of "the land" and nationalist claims on it; and the uncomfortable question of caste and its possible social parallels in the Jewish tradition. The authors weave considerations of these topics into an ongoing conversation that offers students of both traditions new ways of thinking both about their intersections and about the history of religion in general. A coda explores these same issues by recounting an actual series of discussions convened between Hindu and Jewish practitioners.

This bookdiscloses the history of relations among members of the Quakers of Philadelphia and Japanese intellectuals, educators, and activists. Throughout the modern era, these ties, often between women, have transformed efforts for peace, equality, and women's rights in Japan and the United States.

Safe childbirth and midwifery occupied medical professional and government officials throughout the interwar and war years, but economic constraints and war preparation took precedence. Mothers and midwives made childbirth and professional decisions based on their desires and needs rather than at the direction of the local and central government.

This book examines the rituals and texts of the Hutsuls, who inhabit a small mountainous region located in today's Ukraine. The pages cover local affairs, habits, and dispositions as they manifested themselves in rituals and texts in the late nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century.

In Earth Polyphony, Suhasini Vincent analyzes the theory of ecocriticism in its entirety, and its existence in the global paradigm of climate change. Vincent shows how a polyphony of voices can affect law and decision making in the era of the Anthropocene, and aptly shows how voices can coexist as in Bakhtinian polyphony where multiple perspectives coexist despite contradictions and differences.Vincent argues that both material and non-material worlds are endowed with storied forms of knowledge that prompt ecocritical writers to engage in new experimental modes of expression. She explores the 'material turn', the 'animal turn' and the 'narrative turn' to highlight how law meets literature, prompts eco-activism, and how these crisscrossing narratives influence each other to spark judicial activism in forums around the planet.

The book provides robust discussions on the ways in which Jamaicans are experiencing flawed democracy; the impact it has not just on the political system and their political participation but also economic development and socio-cultural challenges.

The US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and the return of international sanctions against Tehran turned out to have enormous implications for the Middle Eastern country's commercial interactions with its largest trading partner, China, affecting corrosively every aspect of economic, financial, and technological relationship between the two sides.

Sophos Ontology: On Post-Traditional Spirituality discusses religious plurality and post-traditional perspectives on emergent forms of sacred sensibility, particularly for those identifying as "spiritual but not religious." This book is divided into three parts. The first part is a retrospective account of multiple religious traditions, with emphasis on esoteric thought as influenced by mystical writings, covering western, eastern, and Native American traditions. The second part discusses the need for a new conceptualization of the "sacred" as expressed through multiple spiritual perspectives relevant to a pansentient, post-traditional process ontology. Other topics in this section include the importance of an ethically shaped spirituality, collective influences, dreams, imagination, and the role of pluralism in shaping beliefs. Part three explores the role of faith, redefined as spiritual commitment, mysticism as direct experiential knowledge, and transpersonal theory influenced by comparative studies in altered states of consciousness, paranormal research, and the metaphysics of discovery - all contributing to the development of present and future spirituality.

America's debates over secularism are not what they seem. Far from being primarily about religion and its place in politics, these battles over ill-defined secularism are now seen as a diversion in an escalating culture war caused by incapacitated government. Government's failure to generate needed policies have made Americans angry and unkind: liberals becoming increasingly condescending while the right becomes more transparently racist. Politicians, unable to legislate, still need voters, and they succeed by swiftly changing "issues," which are often coded as religious but are mostly about everyday matters.Kenneth J. Long argues that public failure elicits personal vice. The liberal values of tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion are "virtues" of the condescending. The belief in science, a tool, is strange at best, and the disdain for the anti-scientific is likewise condescending. For the right, "Christian" is increasingly popular among those who are growing ever less religious and serves as cover for a racist white identity politics. Problems of Political Secularism: Broken Politics, Unkind Cultures illuminates the troublesome outcomes posed by "protecting" autonomy through restraint of representative government and by pitting constituency against constituency to "safeguard" faith from government and vice versa. People of goodwill, faithful and not, are needed to redirect our focus from the symptoms (cultural warfare) to the structural governmental causes.

This book discusses how an internationally renowned ballet company sustained itself without financial support for years because of the energy and manipulations of its charismatic founder, Serge Diaghilev, while also reshaping modern ballet and music.

Astrophilosopy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe applies Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and the associated process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and others to the interdisciplinary layers of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of discovery. This collection, edited by Andrew M. Davis and Roland Faber, asks questions such as "How have process thinkers imagined universal creative evolution and its implications for philosophies, theologies, and religions beyond earth?" and "How might their claims as to the primacy of organism, temporality, novelty, value, and mind enrich current discussions and debates across disciplines?"As experts in their fields, the contributors are informed by, but not limited to, process conceptualities. The chapters not only advance recent discussions in astrobiology, cosmology, and evolution but also consider a constellation of philosophical topics, from shared extraterrestrial knowledge and values to the possibilities or limitations afforded by A.I. technology, the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the increasing need to nurture the cosmic dimensions of theological and religious traditions.

Kierkegaardian Phenomenologies offers a timely consideration of phenomenological engagements within the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. This collection not only reflects the current state of scholarly conversations in Kierkegaardian studies and phenomenological research, but also envisions new directions in which they should go.

In the past, a number of jihadists initiated processes of ideological de-radicalization and doctrinal revisions that transformed their stance towards violence. The book investigates the reasons why this does not happen among contemporary jihadists and posits that, once jihad ceased to be national and became global, it no longer had a set of features that made de-radicalization possible.

In Donald J. Trump and the Politics of Mass Society, Albert P. Melone studies Trump's behavioral patterns in the fourth year of his presidential term and the three tumultuous years leading to the 2024 presidential election year.