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religious studies
f eatured
title
WOMEN IN OCHRE ROBES
Gendering Hindu Renunciation
MEENA KHANDELWAL
Focuses on the lives of female Hindu ascetics and the
significance of gender to the tradition of renunciation.
November / 256 pages
$18.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5922-5
$57.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5921-7
Meena Khandelwal offers an engaging and intimate
portrait of extraordinary Hindu women in India who
“wear ochre robes,” those who have renounced family
and worldly concerns for lives of celibate asceticism
and spiritual discipline. Their initiation into the largely
male Hindu ascetic tradition of sannyasa renders them
“dead” to their previous identities, and although
symbolically “dead,” these women struggle with,
and joke about, the tensions and ironies of living in
the world while trying not to be of it.
Khandelwal juxtaposes the common refrain that
“in renunciation there is no male and female”
with observations that suggest that gender is
indeed relevant. In exploring these apparent contradictions, she brings together worldly and otherworldly
values within renunciation and argues that these
create tensions that are at once philosophical, social,
and emotional. This book reveals the “female voice”
in renunciation.
August / 192 pages
$16.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5796-6
$49.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5795-8
“…This book provides richly detailed accounts of the
author’s many months living with, observing, and
interacting with sannyasinis, their followers, and
fellow ascetics. Descriptions of daily life at the ashrams,
reports of long conversations, attention to the details
of place, dress, food and its preparation, and the
descriptions of visitors all help create vivid pictures of
the lives of the sannyasinis.” — Anne Mackenzie Pearson,
author of Because It Gives Me Peace of Mind: Ritual Fasts
in the Religious Lives of Hindu Women
Meena Khandelwal is Visiting Assistant Professor
of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at the
University of Iowa.
A volume in the SUNY series in Hindu Studies
Wendy Doniger, editor
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www.sunypress.edu
GODHEAD AND THE NOTHING
THOMAS J. J. ALTIZER
An eminent theologian argues that nothingness
is necessary in order to fully actualize the Godhead.
Eminent theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer breaks
new ground by exploring the ultimate transfiguration
of the Godhead as a question of the Nihil or nothingness
and God. The Nihil is essential to the full actualization
of the Godhead in that it fully occurs in both a
primordial and an apocalyptic sacrifice of the Godhead.
Virtually unexplored by philosophical and theological
thinking, the Nihil is luminously enacted in the deepest
expressions of the imagination, and most clearly and
decisively so in the Christian epic tradition. Altizer looks
at the works of philosophers and theologians such as
Spinoza, Barth, Hegel, Nietzsche, and epic writers such
as Dante, Milton, and Blake to ultimately posit a God
that is necessarily a dichotomous God.
“Startling in its originality and cumulative power, this is
a remarkable achievement in philosophical theology
by a major thinker who has reshaped the way in which
God is understood in a post-Nietzschean world.
The most significant and widely read of the death of
God theologians, Altizer focuses on the inseparability of
nothingness and God. A consummation of his lifework,
this question is considered in its most important
historical and metaphysical expressions. This work
cannot leave the reader indifferent. It will provoke
admiration and disagreement, but it will be read.”
— Edith Wyschogrod, coeditor of Lacan and
Theological Discourse
Thomas J. J. Altizer is Professor Emeritus of
Religious Studies at the State University of New York
at Stony Brook. He is the author of a number of books,
including The Contemporary Jesus; History as Apocalypse
(both published by SUNY Press); The Genesis of God:
A Theological Genealogy; Radical Theology and the Death
of God (with William Hamilton); The Self-Embodiment
of God; and The Descent Into Hell: A Study of the Radical
Reversal of the Christian Consciousness.
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RECONCILING YOGAS
RELIGION AND PEACEBUILDING
Haribhadra’s Collection
of Views on Yoga
CHRISTOPHER KEY CHAPPLE
HAROLD COWARD AND
GORDON S. SMITH, EDITORS
With a New Translation of
Haribhadra’s Yogadrstisamuccaya by
Christopher Key Chapple and John Thomas Casey
Presents the various religious approaches to Yoga
described by Haribhadra, the eighth-century sage,
who held a universal view of religion. Includes a
translation of his original text on Yoga.
Reconciling Yogas explores five approaches to the
accomplishment of Yoga from a variety of religious
perspectives: Jaina, Hindu, and Buddhist.
Haribhadra, a prolific Jaina scholar who espoused
a universal view of religion, proclaimed that truth
can be found in all faiths and sought to elucidate
differences between various schools of thought.
In Yoga, he discovered a form of spiritual practice
common to many faiths and juxtaposed their paths
to demonstrate the common goal of liberation.
Utilizing the structure of Patañjali’s advanced eightfold
path of Yoga in the Yoga Sutra, Haribhadra formulates
his own eight stages of Yoga to which he assigns titles
in the feminine gender that echo the names of goddesses.
Discussed are the Jaina stages of spiritual ascent and
two forms of Yoga for which there is no other account.
Also included is a new translation of the
Yogadrstisamuccaya, an eighth-century text
by Haribhadra.
“This is a rare piece of work and a wonderful contribution to the field. This book offers what may be the first
translation of its kind.” — Ashok K. Malhotra, author of
An Introduction to Yoga Philosophy: An Annotated
Translation of the Yoga Sutras
Christopher Key Chapple is Professor of Theological
Studies and Director of Asian and Pacific Studies at
Loyola Marymount University. He has published
several books, including Karma and Creativity and
Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions,
both with SUNY Press. John Thomas Casey is
Visiting Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola
Marymount University.
religious studies
Acknowledging that religion can motivate
both violence and compassion, this book looks
at how a variety of world religions can and do
build peace.
In the wake of September 11, 2001 religion is often seen
as the motivating force behind terrorism and other acts
of violence. Religion and Peacebuilding looks beyond
headlines concerning violence perpetrated in the name
of religion to examine how world religions have also
inspired social welfare and peacemaking activism.
Leading scholars from the Aboriginal, Hindu, Buddhist,
Confucian, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions
provide detailed analyses of the spiritual resources
for fostering peace within their respective religions.
The contributors discuss the formidable obstacles
to nonviolent conflict transformation found within
sacred texts and living traditions. Case studies of
Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Cambodia, and South Africa
are also examined as practical applications of spiritual
resources for peace.
October / 192 pages
Illustrated: 8 tables, 1 figure
$17.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5900-4
$54.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5899-7
“This book grows on you and merits more than
a quick read. Due to its scope, it offers an abundance
of useful insights and ramifications. There can be
no doubt as to the significance of this book.”
— Robert D. Baird, editor of Religion in Modern India
Harold Coward is with the Centre for Studies
in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria
and is the author and editor of many books, including,
most recently, Yoga and Psychology: Language, Memory,
and Mysticism, also published by SUNY Press.
Gordon S. Smith is Director of the Centre for Global
Studies at the University of Victoria and the author and
editor of many books, including (with Daniel Wolfish)
Who Is Afraid of the State?: Canada in a World of Multiple
Centres of Power.
November / 352 pages
$24.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5934-9
$73.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5933-0
A volume in the SUNY series in Religious Studies
Harold Coward, editor
For a list of contributors, see page 58.
www.sunypress.edu
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religious studies
HINDU BIOETHICS
FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
WOMEN IN THE YORUBA
RELIGIOUS SPHERE
S. CROMWELL CRAWFORD
OYERONKE OLAJUBU
Explores contemporary controversies in bioethics
from a Hindu perspective.
August / 256 pages
$20.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5780-X
$62.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5779-6
October / 192 pages
$16.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5886-5
$49.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5885-7
S. Cromwell Crawford breaks new ground in this
provocative study of Hindu bioethics in a Western setting.
He provides a new moral and philosophical perspective
on fascinating and controversial bioethical issues that
are routinely in the news: cloning, genetic engineering,
the human genome project, reproductive technologies,
the end of life, and many more. This Hindu perspective
is particularly noteworthy because of India’s own
indigenous medical system, which is stronger than ever
and drawing continued interest from the West.
The Hindu bioethics presented in this book are
philosophically pluralistic and ethically contextual,
giving them that conceptual flexibility which is often
missing in Western religions, but which is demanded
by the twenty-first century’s complex moral problems.
Comprehensive in scope and passionate in nature,
Crawford’s study is an important resource for analyses
of practical ethics, bioethics, and health care.
“Crawford makes accessible a wealth of Hindu
perspectives on biomedical reasoning and practice
that are at once practical and profound. His book
is indispensable for practitioners and educators
in biomedicine and health care who are concerned
with utilizing the contributions of world traditions
to attain more comprehensive and satisfactory solutions
to some of the most challenging problems faced
by humankind. It is a tremendous resource
for understanding Hindu value theory and philosophy
of person and body, as seen through the lens of health
and medicine.” — Gregory P. Fields, author of
Religious Therapeutics: Body and Health in Yoga,
Ayurveda, and Tantra
S. Cromwell Crawford is Professor and Chair
of Religion at the University of Hawaii and the author
of many books on Hindu ethics, including Dilemmas of
Life and Death: Hindu Ethics in a North American Context,
also published by SUNY Press.
A volume in the SUNY series in Religious Studies
Harold Coward, editor
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www.sunypress.edu
Foreword by Jacob K. Olupona
An exploration of gender and power relations
in Yoruba religion—both Christianity and
Yoruba traditional religion.
Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources,
this book shows that women occupy a central place
in the religious worldview and life of the Yoruba people
and shows how men and women engage in mutually
beneficial roles in the Yoruba religious sphere.
It explores how gender issues play out in two Yoruba
religious traditions—indigenous religion and
Christianity in Southwestern Nigeria. Rather than
shy away from illuminating the tensions between
the prominent roles of Yoruba women in religion
and their perceived marginalization, author
Oyeronke Olajubu underscores how Yoruba women
have challenged marginalization in ways unprecedented
in other world religions.
“This book’s thorough study of the interplay of gender
and power relations in the Yoruba religious sphere
provides a fresh interpretation to dominant theses and
ideas in this area of study.” — Akintunde E. Akinade,
coeditor of The Agitated Mind of God: The Theology
of Kosuke Koyama
“There is no other book on Yoruba women and religion
with such breadth, ethnographic richness, and
updated data. Olajubu provides an opportunity
to consider Yoruba gender practices in various
socio-historical contexts, and she fills an information
gap on Yoruba women in more recent charismatic
and Pentecostal churches.” — Deidre H. Crumbley,
North Carolina State University
Oyeronke Olajubu is Senior Lecturer of Comparative
Religion at the University of Ilorin.
A volume in the McGill Studies in the History of Religions,
A Series Devoted to International Scholarship
Katherine K. Young, editor
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religious studies
THE JOURNEY TOWARD GOD
IN AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS
Books I–VI
CARL G. VAUGHT
A new interpretation of the first six books
of Augustine’s Confessions, emphasizing the
importance of Christianity rather than Neoplatonism.
This detailed discussion of Augustine’s journey toward
God, as it is described in the first six books of the
Confessions, begins with infancy, moves through
childhood and adolescence, and culminates in
youthful maturity. In the first stage, Augustine deals
with the problems of original innocence and sin;
in the second, he addresses a pear-stealing episode
that recapitulates the theft of the forbidden fruit in the
Garden of Eden and confronts the problem of sexuality
with which he wrestles until his conversion; and in the
third, he turns toward philosophy, only to be captivated
successively by dualism, skepticism, and Catholicism.
Augustine’s journey exhibits temporal, spatial,
and eternal dimensions and combines his head and
his heart in equal proportions. Vaught shows that
the Confessions should be interpreted as an attempt
to address the person as a whole rather than through
our intellectual or volitional dimensions exclusively.
The passion with which Augustine describes the end of
his journey is reflected best in a sentence found in the
opening chapter of the text—“You have made us for
yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
August / 208 pages
$17.95 paperback
ISBN 0-7914-5792-3
$54.50 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-5791-5
Interpreting this statement, Carl G. Vaught presents a
more emphatically Christian Augustine than is usually
found in contemporary scholarship. Refusing to view
Augustine in an exclusively Neoplatonic framework,
Vaught holds that Augustine baptizes Plotinus just as
successfully as Aquinas baptizes Aristotle. It cannot be
denied that Ancient philosophy influences Augustine
decisively. Nevertheless, he holds the experiential and the
theoretical dimensions of his journey toward God together
as a distinctive expression of the Christian tradition.
Carl G. Vaught is Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at Baylor University. He is the editor and
author of several books, including The Quest for Wholeness
and The Sermon on the Mount: A Theological Interpretation,
both published by SUNY Press.
www.sunypress.edu
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