This is a significant in-depth study that explores the cultural context of the religious experience of West Indian immigrant communities. Whereas most studies to date have focussed on how immigrants settle in their new home contexts, Janice A. McLean-Farrell argues for a more comprehensive perspective that takes into account the importance of religion and the role of both 'home' and the 'host' contexts in shaping immigrant lives in the Diaspora. West Indian Pentecostals: Living Their Faith in New York and London explores how these three elements (religion, the 'home' and 'host' contexts) influence the ethnic-religious identification processes of generations of West Indian immigrants. Using case studies from the cities of New York and London, the book offers a critical cross-national comparison into the complex and indirect ways the historical, socio-economic, and political realities in diaspora contribute to both the identification processes and the 'missional' practices of immigrants. Its focus on Pentecostalism also provides a unique opportunity to test existing theories and concepts on the interface of religion and immigration and makes important contributions to the study of Pentecostalism.

Pentecostals throughout Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora use music to declare what they believe and where they stand in relation to religious and cultural outsiders. Yet the inclusion of secular music forms like ska, reggae, and dancehall complicated music's place in social and ritual practice, challenging Jamaican Pentecostals to reconcile their religious and cultural identities. Melvin Butler journeys into this crossing of boundaries and its impact on Jamaican congregations and the music they make. Using the concept of flow, Butler's ethnography evokes both the experience of Spirit-influenced performance and the transmigrations that fuel the controversial sharing of musical and ritual resources between Jamaica and the United States. Highlighting constructions of religious and cultural identity, Butler illuminates music's vital place in how the devout regulate spiritual and cultural flow while striving to maintain both the sanctity and fluidity of their evolving tradition.Insightful and original, Island Gospel tells the many stories of how music and religious experience unite to create a sense of belonging among Jamaican people of faith.

This encyclopedia provides an overview of the main religions of Latin America and the Caribbean, both its centralized transnational expressions and its local variants and schisms. These main religions include (but are not limited to) the major expressions of Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Mormonism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses), indigenous religions (Native American, Maya religion), syncretic Christianity (including Afro-Brazilian religions like Umbanda and Candomblé and Afro-Caribbean religions like Vodun and Santería), other world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam), transnational New Religious Movements (Scientology, Unification Church, Hare Krishna, New Age, etc.), and new local religions (Brazil’s Igreja Universal, La Luz del Mundo from Mexico, etc.).

Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle

Volume 5 provides an account and interpretation of the historical development of the region from around 1930 to the end of the twentieth century. Its wide ranging study of the economic, political, religious, social and cultural history of this period brings the series to the authorial present. Highlights include the 'turbulent thirties;' decolonization; the 'turn to the left' made in the 1970s by anglophone Caribbean countries; the Castro Revolution; and changes in social and demographic structures, including ethnicity and race consciousness and the role and status of women.

Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain provides a major empirical contribution to the literature of secularization. It moves beyond the now largely sterile and theoretical debates about the validity of the secularization thesis or paradigm. Combining historical and social scientific perspectives, Clive D. Field uses a wide range of quantitative sources to probe the extent and pace of religious change in Britain during the long 1960s. In most cases, data is presented for the years 1955-80, with particular attention to the methodological and other challenges posed by each source type. Following an introductory chapter, which reviews the historiography, introduces the sources, and defines the chronological and other parameters, Field provides evidence for all major facets of religious belonging, behaving, and believing, as well as for institutional church measures. The work engages with, and largely refutes, Callum G. Brown's influential assertion that Britain experienced 'revolutionary' secularization in the 1960s, which was highly gendered in nature, and with 1963 the major tipping-point. Instead, a more nuanced picture emerges with some religious indicators in crisis, others continuing on an existing downward trajectory, and yet others remaining stable. Building on previous research by the author and other scholars, and rejecting recent proponents of counter-secularization, the long 1960s are ultimately located within the context of a longstanding gradualist, and still ongoing, process of secularization in Britain.

In this classic text the authors examine the links between racism, psychological ill health and inadequate treatment of ethnic minorities. Through a series of case studies they discuss: * the psychological legacy of colonialism and slavery * the racist bias in psychiatric and psychological theory * diagnostic bias * the role of religion in mental health or illness * the value of anthropological and pschoanalytic insights. The concluding chapter in this edition reviews the development of 'transcultural psychiatry' and summarises changes in administration of the Mental Health Act.

In addition to being a religious country--over ninety percent of Americans believe in God--the United States is also home to more immigrants than ever before. Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City focuses on the intersection of religion and civic engagement among Miami's immigrant and minority groups. The contributors examine the role of religious organizations in developing social relationships and how these relationships affect the broader civic world. Essays, for example, consider the role of leadership in the promotion and creation of "civic social capital" in a Haitian Catholic church, transnational ties between Cuban Catholics in Miami and Havana, and several African American congregations that serve as key comparisons of civic engagement among minorities. This book is important not only for its theoretical contributions to the sociology of religion, but also because it gives us a unique glimpse into immigrants' civic and religious lives in urban America.