Bøger af Pamela E. Klassen

Explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births. This book investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism defy the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. It challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing.

So, it was January the 18 and it was the middle of the night. And it was very, very cold. Snow was we went just about knee deep in snow And we went on the road going toward Posen, capital of Wartegau. And so we said, Let s take that direction. Just going by the moon and the stars. (Katja Enns) Going by the Moon and the Stars tells the stories of two Russian Mennonite women who emigrated to Canada after fleeing from the Soviet Union during World War II. Based on ethnographic interviews with the author the women recount, in their own words, their memories of their wartime struggle and flight, their resettlement in Canada and their journey into old age. Above all, they tell of the overwhelming importance of religion in their lives. Through these remarkable stories Pamela Klassen challenges conventional understandings of religion. The women s voices, intimate and powerful, testify to the importance of religion in the construction of personal history, as well as to its oppressive and liberating potential. Going by the Moon and the Stars will be of great value to all those interested in the Mennonites and Mennonite history, religion, women s studies, ethnic studies and life history.

Spirits of Protestantism reveals how liberal Protestants went from being early-twentieth-century medical missionaries seeking to convert others through science and scripture, to becoming vocal critics of missionary arrogance who experimented with non-western healing modes such as Yoga and Reiki. Drawing on archival and ethnographic sources, Pamela E. Klassen shows how and why the very notion of healing within North America has been infused with a Protestant "e;supernatural liberalism."e; In the course of coming to their changing vision of healing, liberal Protestants became pioneers three times over: in the struggle against the cultural and medical pathologizing of homosexuality; in the critique of Christian missionary triumphalism; and in the diffusion of an ever-more ubiquitous anthropology of "e;body, mind, and spirit."e; At a time when the political and anthropological significance of Christianity is being hotly debated, Spirits of Protestantism forcefully argues for a reconsideration of the historical legacies and cultural effects of liberal Protestantism, even for the anthropology of religion itself.