Religious sisters have created educational and healthcare systems over the past two hundred years that have transformed the Catholic community in the United States. Through their ministry, sisters have served waves of immigrants and those pushed to the margins. The growing cultural diversity of newer sisters and the diminishing number of older sisters, therefore, is both a challenge and a creative moment to be critically examined. This book examines these changes in culture and ethnicity among sisters, the structural impact of diminishing numbers, and the creative response to this new reality for religious life in the United States. In it, sisters from a variety of generations, cultures, and institutes join with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) researchers to examine and reflect on CARA's recent research findings and their impact on the life and ministry of sisters today.

Religious sisters have created educational and healthcare systems over the past two hundred years that have transformed the Catholic community in the United States. Through their ministry, sisters have served waves of immigrants and those pushed to the margins. The growing cultural diversity of newer sisters and the diminishing number of older sisters, therefore, is both a challenge and a creative moment to be critically examined. This book examines these changes in culture and ethnicity among sisters, the structural impact of diminishing numbers, and the creative response to this new reality for religious life in the United States. In it, sisters from a variety of generations, cultures, and institutes join with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) researchers to examine and reflect on CARA's recent research findings and their impact on the life and ministry of sisters today.

Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future.The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North.More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements.It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.

Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.

In this groundbreaking publication, Ewing announces the death of the conventional portrait. In an age when we are bombarded with flawless images of youthful beauty, when rejuvenation is available through a jar of cream or a scalpel, artists and photographers seek to portray the face in new ways.

/About The Book Life is the pursuit of happiness, something that is ordained not by men, but bestowed by God. Our Path to hope is our purpose, something we all must discover if we are to truly live up to our potential as human beings. In this book, I will address one of the most pressing concerns facing our country today: Immigration and cultural diversity. One is the problem and the other is the solution. As a citizen of the world, I will use my experiences to show how cultural diversity is not to be feared, but used to benefit us all. In difficult economic times, native citizens will naturally look for scapegoats, and immigrants, both legal and illegal, fit the bill. But if we are to move forward, we need to find ways to allow immigrants to freely contribute to our society in order to solve the problems we accuse them of causing. If we embrace the cultural diversity rather than fight it, we will succeed. In the global economy, we cannot afford to discount such a valuable resource as the many who leave their homes for a better life, fueled by their own Path to Hope. Immigration isn’t the problem, it’s the answer! Even when unemployment is high, millions of jobs remain unfilled 49% of businesses find it hard to fill critical jobs, 15% above the global average. By 2018, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics jobs won’t be filled even if every American graduate with an advanced degree finds employment. Immigrants bring critical skills Construction will add 1.8 million jobs by 2020. 60% of Latino immigrants arrive with a sophisticated knowledge of the trade. 25% of scientists and engineers in the U.S. are foreign-born. Immigrants are 13% of the U.S. population but make up 28% of in-home health workers. Immigrants have higher work force participation rates than those born in the U.S. The U.S. must attract and retain human capital Immigration caps force 20,000 American-educated students to leave the U.S. every year. As the U.S. population ages, unfilled jobs will hinder growth By 2030, the U.S. will need to add 25 million workers to the labor force to sustain current growth. Without immigrants, the U.S. will not have enough new workers to support retirees. More than one-third of the U.S. population growth is attributed to new immigrants. By 2050, 93% of growth in the U.S. working-age population will be due to immigrants and their children. 75% of the foreign-born labor force is in the vital 25-54 year-old category - higher than their U.S.-born counterparts. Multi-lingual immigrants boost trade Every 100 H1-B visas creates 183 jobs for American-born workers. Every 100 H2-B visas creates 464 additional jobs.

New Faces of Harbour Cities explores the changing so-called “faces” of harbour cities. Whilst urban regeneration and harbour cities are discussed as related realms within the wider field of urban competitiveness, few studies have attempted to give place to the broader set of economic, social, legal, environmental and cultural dimensions of urban waterfront regeneration in harbour cities concerning not only Western and Northern Europe, but also Aegean and Mediterranean cities. The book provides a multi-disciplinary, yet holistic analysis of the port-city interface as a major goal of creating new domains of entrepreneurial activity. Offering noteworthy potential, the abandonment of port districts offers new opportunities in placing brownfield port areas back into public use through their comprehensive revitalization. With the rapid growth of special interest in the waterfront regeneration of port districts, many harbour cities in the world are making an effort to give their cities a brand new “face”. However, there are still specific cases showing that this goal may not always find success, as is discussed for various cities in this book. Key features of the book include a highly readable discussion of the relationship between urban waterfront regeneration and port cities that both address to the evolution of the port-city interface and contemporary patterns of activity. The book also includes a wide range of international case studies in both developed and developing cities, whilst providing a balanced view of the critical issues and related cases. While focusing on key themes, the discussion also considers the critique of issues such as risk management, legal challenges in planning and the balance between the need for logistic activities and brownfield regeneration of port districts as a major asset in terms of urban image. As such, New Faces of Harbour Cities will serve as an important reference to academic studies that explore key themes such as urban waterfront regeneration, brownfield development, the port-city interface, green energy, mixed-use regeneration, and legal aspects in planning.