Offers reliable knowledge about women's diverse faith practices throughout history and prehistory, and across cultures. Across the span of human history, women have participated in world-building and life-sustaining cultural creativity, making enormous contributions to religion and spirituality. In the contemporary period, women have achieved greater equality, with more educational opportunities, female role models in public life, and opportunities for religious expression than ever before. Drawing on the expertise of a range of scholars, this two-volume reference book chronicles the religious experiences of women across time and cultures. The book includes sections on major religions as well as on spirituality, African religions, prehistoric religions, and other broad topics. Each section begins with an introduction, followed by reference entries on specialized subjects along with excerpts from primary source documents. Entries provide numerous suggestions for further reading, and the book closes with a detailed bibliography. . Provides an overview of the religious experiences of women across time, faiths, and cultures.

Featuring more than sixty brand new maps, photographs, diagrams and charts, the Atlas of World Religions is an essential companion to any study on the key religions of the world.

Entries define the spiritual and intellectual concepts and religious movements that distinguish Judaism and the Jewish experience; discuss central personalities and places, formative events and enduring literary and cultural contributions and illuminate the lives of ordinary Jewish men and women. Essays explore Jewish history from ancient times to the present and consider all aspects of Judaism, including religious practices and rituals, legal teachings and legendary traditions and rationalism, mysticism and messianism.

The definitive reference for Caribbean religious phenomena from a Caribbean perspective. Organized alphabetically, entries examine how Caribbean religious experiences have been shaped by and have responded to the processes of colonialism and the challenges of the postcolonial world. Systematically organized by theme and area, the encyclopedia considers religious traditions such as Vodou, Rastafari, Sunni Islam, Sanatan Dharma, Judaism, and the Roman Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches. Detailed subentries present topics such as religious rituals, beliefs, practices, specific historical developments, geographical differences, and gender roles within major traditions.

New religious movements—commonly known as cults—are defined as organizations that have arisen within the last 200 years. Most treatments of these movements have typically resorted to sensationalism rather than objectivity, and New religious movements tend to receive negative media publicity. Despite their unfavorable portrayal in popular culture, however, new religious movements are a global phenomenon and much remains to be studied about these movements. This resource traces the rise and development of new religious movements throughout the world. The main body of the dictionary consists of close to 600 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements.

Sikhism traces its beginnings to Guru Nanak, who was born in 1469 and died in 1538 or 1539. Sikhism has long been a little-understood religion and until recently they resided almost exclusively in northwest India. Today the total number of Sikhs is approximately twenty million worldwide. About a million live outside India, constituting a significant minority in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Many of them are highly visible, particularly the men, who wear beards and turbans, and they naturally attract attention in their new countries of domicile.This historical dictionary covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on key persons, organizations, the principles, precepts and practices of the religion as well as the history, culture and social arrangements.