Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse

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Robert A. Orsi

St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes, is the most popular saint of the American Catholic laity, particularly among women. This fascinating book describes how the cult of St. Jude originated in 1929, traces the rise in Jude's popularity over the next decades, and investigates the circumstances that led so many Catholic women to feel hopeless and to turn to St. Jude for help. Robert A. Orsi tells us that the women who were drawn to St. Jude - daughters and granddaughters of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and Ireland - were the first generations of Catholic women to make lives for themselves outside of their ethnic enclaves. Orsi explores the ambitions and dilemmas of these women as they dealt with the pressures of the Depression and the Second World War, made modern marriages for themselves, entered the workplace, took care of relatives in their old neighborhoods, and raised children in circumstances very different from those of their mothers and grandmothers. Drawing on testimonies written in the periodicals devoted to St. Jude and on interviews with women who felt their lives were changed by St. Jude's intervention, Orsi shows how devotion to St. Jude enabled these women to negotiate their way amid the conflicting expectations of their two cultures - American and Catholic.

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Harvey Whitehouse

For the past thirty years, adherents of the millenarian cult of the Pomio Kivung in Papua New Guinea have been awaiting the establishment of a period of supernatural bliss, heralded by the return of their ancestors bearing 'cargo'. The author of this book, Harvey Whitehouse, was taken for a reincarnated ancestor, and was thus able to observe the dynamics of the cult from within. From the stable mainstream of the cult, localized splinter groups periodically emerge, hoping to expedite the millennium; the core of this volume concerns the close study of one such group in two Baining villages. The two aspects of the cult studied here - on the one hand a large, uniform, and stable mainstream organization with a well-defined hierarchy demanding orthodoxy of views, and on the other hand a small-scale and temporary movement, emotional and innovative in its views - stand in sharp contrast one to the other, but are here seen as divergent modes of the same process, implemented in differing ways. This original theory of 'modes of religiosity' which Whitehouse here develops draws on recent findings in cognitive psychology to link styles of codification and cultural transmission to the political scale, structure, and ethos of religious communities.

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Bill Hybels with Ashley Wiersma

What if you knew that by simply crossing the room and saying hello to someone, you could change that person's forever? Just a few steps to make an eternal difference. It has nothing to do with methods and everything to do with taking a genuine interest in another human being. All you need is a heart that's in tune with the Holy Spirit and a willingness to venture out of your 'Circle of Comfort' and into another person's life. Just Walk Across the Room brings personal evangelism into the twenty-first century. Building on the solid foundation laid in Becoming a Contagious Christian, Bill Hybels shows how you can participate in the model first set by Jesus, who stepped down from heaven 2,000 years ago to bring hope and redemption to broken people living in a fallen world. Now it's your turn. Your journey may not be as dramatic, but it can have a life-changing impact for someone standing a few steps away from you---and for you as well, as you learn the power of extending care, compassion, and inclusiveness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The highest value in personal evangelism is cooperating with the Spirit, says Hybels. This means playing only the role you're meant to play---walking when the Spirit says to walk, talking when he says to talk, and falling silent when he suggests that you've said enough. Hybels encourages you to 'live in 3D' ... ---Developing friendships ---Discovering stories ---Discerning appropriate next steps ... as a means of learning to understand the Holy Spirit's promptings. With fresh perspectives from his own reflections and experiences collected during his most recent decade of ministry, Bill Hybels shows with convincing and inspiring clarity the power of this personal, richly relational approach to evangelism. The stakes are high. The implications are eternal. And you may be only a conversation away from having an eternal impact on someone's life---if you will just walk across the room.

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Christopher M. Palmer

This second edition features new and expanded coverage of contaminant hydrogeologic investigations. It presents a practical approach to completing investigations and stresses the basics of collecting data that can withstand regulatory scrutiny and achieve remediation. Based on "real world" problems, Principles of Contaminant Hydrogeology, Second Edition focuses on applications, and in particular on applications to small- and medium-sized firms, for which speed, accuracy, and cost are all crucial factors in the site assessment and closure process. It takes you step-by-step through the investigation, and includes client-consultant-regulator interaction, budgets, ethics, and data extrapolation for solving problems.