Buddhist texts quoted as Scripture by the Gospel of John: a discovery in the lower criticism. (John vii, 38; xii. 34.)

Mode of access: Internet.

A handbook of comparative religion,

Mode of access: Internet.

The relation of St. Payl to contemporary Jewish thought.

Mode of access: Internet.

Connecting and Educating Hindus: Hinduism Today and the Mediatization of a Global Hinduism

Hinduism Today is a quarterly magazine that appears in roughly 15.000 copies, shipped to nearly 60 countries worldwide. The majority of readers are Hindus in diverse diaspora countries, mainly Singapur, Malaysia, Mauritius, Trinidad und the USA. Its editors are monks of Kauai Adheenam, belonging to the Śaiva Siddhānta Church, situated in Kauai, Hawai’i, USA. One of the magazine’s declared goals is to foster global Hindu solidarity and educate Hindus worldwide about their religion. In this paper, I want to take a look at the history of this magazine in connection with the Śaiva Siddhānta Church, and at the development of the expressed aims behind its publication. For this, I draw on fieldwork done in Kauai in January, 2014. After a brief introduction to some theoretical and methodological preliminaries of my work, I shall, give an overview of the history of the Śaiva Siddhānta Church, founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Following this, I will deal in more detail with the origins and development of the magazine and the websites connected with it. I will focus especially on the role the magazine was intended to play for global Hindu diasporas. A fourth chapter will analyze the modes of definition employed in order to depict Hinduism as a unified global religion. In conclusion, I shall briefly reflect upon the specific agenda of “Global Hinduism��� and the strategies of positioning as followed by the publishers of Hinduism Today.

Belonging to a „Billion Strong Global Religion“: Hinduism Today, Hindu Communities and conversion to Hinduism in the Śaiva Siddhānta Church

The Śaiva Siddhānta Church (ŚSC), based in Kauai HI, USA, has been holding rites of conversion to Hinduism since the 1960s. These rites include studying one’s “former” religion, officially declaring severance from it in the presence of a minister or mentor, choosing and officially adopting a new Hindu name as well as aligning with “the Hindu community”. Starting from here, this paper will address the question of community with respect to (1) the meanings of the term, (2) the idea of Hinduism as “a global religion” upheld by numerous “communities” worldwide and (3) the relevance of “community” in the conversion process. For doing so, I will draw on source material published by the Himalayan Academy, a branch of the ŚSC, in the global magazine Hinduism Today, in book publications and on their various websites.

The land of the Veda : being personal reminiscences of India; its people, castes, thugs, and fakirs; its religions, mythology, principal monuments, palaces, and mausoleums; together with the incidents of the great Sepoy rebellion and its results to Christianity and civilization /

Mode of access: Internet.

The credo of Christendom, and other addresses and essays on esoteric Christianity /

Includes bibliographical references.

The life of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ : together with the lives of his holy apostles, evangelists, and other primitive martyrs, and a dissertation on the evidences of Christianity /

Mode of access: Internet.

Lectures on the doctrines of Christianity : in controversy between Unitarians and other denominations of Christians : delivered in the First Independent Church of Baltimore /

Mode of access: Internet.

An ecclesiastical history of Ireland : from the first introduction of Christianity among the Irish, to the beginning of the thirteenth century : Compiled from the works of the most esteemed authors ... who have written and published on matters connected with the Irish church; and from Irish annals and other authentic documents still existing in manuscript /

Includes bibliographical references.

The land of the Veda: being personal reminiscences of India; its people, castes, thugs, and fakirs; its religions, mythology, principal monuments, palaces, and mausoleums: together with the incidents of the great Sepoy rebellion and its results to Christianity and civilization.

Mode of access: Internet.

The land of the Veda : being personal reminiscences of India; its people, castes, thugs, and fakirs ; its religions, mythology, principal monuments, palaces, and mausoleums: together with the incidents of the great Sepoy rebellion, and its results to Christianity and civilization ; also, statistical tables of Christian missions, and a glossary of Indian terms used in this work and in missionary correspondence /

Mode of access: Internet.

Christianity and Christian Identity in the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3)

Previous scholarship has often maintained that the Gospel of Philip is a collection of Valentinian teachings. In the present study, however, the text is read as a whole and placed into a broader context by searching for parallels from other early Christian texts. Although the Valentinian Christian identity of the Gospel of Philip is not questioned, it is read alongside those texts traditionally labelled as "mainstream Christian". It is obvious from the account of Irenaeus that the boundaries between the Valentinians and other Christians were not as clear or fixed as he probably would have hoped. This study analyzes the Valentinian Christian Gospel of Philip from two points of view: how the text constructs the Christian identity and what kind of Christianity it exemplifies. Firstly, it is observed how the author of the Gospel of Philip places himself and his Christian readers among the early Christianities of the period by emphasizing the common history and Christian features but building especially on particular texts and traditions. Secondly, it is noted how the Christian nature of an individual develops according to the Gospel of Philip. The identity of an individual is built and strengthened through rituals, experiences and teaching. Thirdly, the categorizations, attributes, beliefs and behaviour associated on the one hand with the "insiders", the true Christians, and, on the other, with outsiders in the Gospel of Philip, are analyzed using social identity theory the insiders and outsiders are described through stereotyping in the text. Overall, the study implies that the Gospel of Philip strongly emphasizes spiritual progress and transformation. Rather than depicting the Valentinians as the perfect Christians, it underlines their need for constant change and improvement. Although the author seeks to clearly distinguish the insiders from the outsiders, the boundaries of the categories are in fact fluid in the Gospel of Philip. Outsiders can become insiders and the insiders are also in danger of falling out again.

Religion, the study of religion and other products of transnational and colonial imaginings

The category of ‘religion’ as contemporary scholarship has demonstrated is a fairly recent innovation, dating back only a few hundred years in Western thought, and ‘world religions’ as we think of it and as we teach it is an even more recent category, emerging out of European colonialism. Thus the academic study of religion is both the product and, at times, the agent of colonial modes of knowledge. And yet, it is perhaps because ‘religion’ continues to be invented and reinvented through connections across cultures that investigating the work of religious ideas and practices offers such fruitful possibilities for understanding the work of culture and power. This article investigates religion and the study of religion as a mode of anti-colonial practice, seeking to understand how each have the potential to cross boundaries, build bridges and produce critical insights into assumptions and worldviews too often taken for granted.