Book cover of Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture

Book description

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Moral, Believing Animals as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Since the recent passing of Peter Berger, Christian Smith is arguably the most well-known and influential sociologist working in the field of religion. 

In this book, Smith lays the groundwork for his vision of what it means to be a person, something so often overlooked in the social sciences. Smith claims that humans have a particular set of capacities and proclivities that distinguish them from animals. Despite the vast differences in humanity across cultures and historical eras, Smith offers the possibility that human beings have a universal human personhood. Humans, who, though part of the animal kingdom, are spiritual beings…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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