The Implications of Transient Migration and Online Communities for Changing the Church in Asia

Gender: A Public Feeling?

Religion, Emotion, Sensation ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823285679.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 174-186

Author(s):

Max Thornton

Keyword(s):

Online Communities ◽

Affect Theory ◽

Limit Case ◽

Transgendered People ◽

Corporate Body ◽

Theological Turn ◽

New Materialisms ◽

The Church

This essay reframes and reconceives gender as both a public feeling (in Cvetkovich’s sense of the term) and an affective assemblage. The latter concept, which extends the former, is designed to accommodate the multiplicity of factors, forces, processes, and agencies implicated in gender in general, but in non-normative gender in particular. The essay’s affective assemblage is eclectically composed from Deleuzoguattarian philosophy, pheonomenology, new materialisms, and affect theory, and enacted in the limit case of non-transitioning transgendered people in online communities. Gender as an affective assemblage takes a theological turn in the essay’s concluding section where it counters a territorialized reading of Christ’s body, one which seeks to exclude non-normative genders from the church. Calling for the church’s self-deterritorialization, the essay proposes a corporate body enfleshed by queer affective assemblages that would facilitate gendered exploration and discovery.

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Digitalisation and the church – A corporeal understanding of church and the influence of technology

STJ | Stellenbosch Theological Journal ◽

10.17570/stj.2019.v5n3.a26 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 561-576

Author(s):

Annette Potgieter

Keyword(s):

Religious Experience ◽

Online Communities ◽

Virtual Communities ◽

Lord's Supper ◽

The Body ◽

Body Of Christ ◽

Digital Era ◽

Secular World ◽

Physical Presence ◽

The Church

We live in a digital era, where connection and connectivity move away from physical presence, but find shape in online communities and forums. This trend extends from the secular world into the religious experience, as can be seen from examples such as E-kerk (E-Church). The body is a vehicle through which Paul defines the church and the medium through which Christians live a new life in Christ. Virtual communities, however, lack bodily presence and thus the tactile experience of the Lord’s Supper and the communal aspects of baptism. This raises the question whether it is possible for an individual to participate online in the body of Christ and if so, how?

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Spiritual Healing, Sick Kids and the Law: Inequities in the American Healthcare System

American Journal of Law & Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0098858800002847 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 29 (2-3) ◽

pp. 269-299

Author(s):

Janna C. Merrick

Keyword(s):

Medical Science ◽

Spiritual Healing ◽

Best Interests ◽

Legal Rights ◽

High Tech ◽

Divine Love ◽

Religious Minority ◽

Human Need ◽

East End ◽

The Church

Main Street in Sarasota, Florida. A high-tech medical arts building rises from the east end, the county's historic three-story courthouse is two blocks to the west and sandwiched in between is the First Church of Christ, Scientist. A verse inscribed on the wall behind the pulpit of the church reads: “Divine Love Always Has Met and Always Will Meet Every Human Need.” This is the church where William and Christine Hermanson worshipped. It is just a few steps away from the courthouse where they were convicted of child abuse and third-degree murder for failing to provide conventional medical care for their seven-year-old daughter.This Article is about the intersection of “divine love” and “the best interests of the child.” It is about a pluralistic society where the dominant culture reveres medical science, but where a religious minority shuns and perhaps fears that same medical science. It is also about the struggle among different religious interests to define the legal rights of the citizenry.

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Ideas and Leaders in Contentious Politics: One Parish Priest in El Salvador's Popular Movement

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x13009862 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 (01) ◽

pp. 76-101

Author(s):

PETER M. SANCHEZ

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

El Salvador ◽

Liberation Theology ◽

Contentious Politics ◽

Religious Leaders ◽

Political Movement ◽

Parish Priest ◽

Historical Moment ◽

Resource Mobilisation ◽

The Church

AbstractThis paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

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