REL 300 Christianity and Culture

The ATLA Religion Database covers a wide range of religious traditions, controversies, and issues. You will find not only peer-reviewed articles from major religion journals, but also more popular content that provides a window on current news and opinions. Western religions are covered more closely than other traditions, but you will find important coverage of most religions. "Religion" in ATLA encompasses concerns beyond theology and doctrine to include issues like environmentalism, human rights, war and peace, religious freedom, ethics, and culture. 

Coverage:

Traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, African Religions, American Indian Religions, Paganism, Folk Religions

Subjects: Bible, archaeology, and antiquities; human culture and society; church history, missions, and ecumenism; pastoral ministry; world religions and religious studies; and theology, philosophy, and ethics

Document Types: Scholarly articles, magazine articles, essays, books, book reviews

Dates: Publication dates run from the early 1800s to the present

Searching Tips:

Below are a few examples of how to construct search phrases. Search phrases are in bold, with explanations bulleted.

hinduism and renunciation   

• searches for the keywords "hinduism" and "renunciation"

jewish civilization    

• searches for the phrase "jewish civilization"

hinduism or india   

• searches for either "hinduism" or "india"

christianity n5 gnosticism    

• searches for "christianity" within 5 words of "gnosticism", in any order

buddha w8 japan    

• searches "buddha" within 8 words of "japan", in the order that they appear

hindu*    

• searches for "hindu", "hinduism", "hindustan", "hindus"

ATLA also allows you to search by Scripture, enabling you to find articles that discuss a specific verse, either in full or focusing on particular aspects of it.

From the advanced page, under the Research tools menu to the bottom left, select ATLA Scripture Search. 

You will see a list of the books of the Bible in canonical order.  

Let’s suppose you are looking for articles discussing Genesis 1:1. Next to Genesis, you see the + plus icon. Click on it.

It will show you a list of all of the chapters in the book of Genesis. If you click on the + plus icon again next to Chapter 1, it will take you to all of the verses of Chapter 1. 

Choose a verse and click the Add to Search button on the top right to include it in your search.

The scripture you selected has now been added to your search. You can now click the Search button.

It will generate a list of all of the articles in this database that focus on the passage you are looking for. You can still retrieve these articles even if the verse you chose is included inside a longer passage. 

If you want to search for specific terms in the passage, return to the Advanced Search page, add the word(s), and click Search again.