A community of education: Nepalese children living and learning religious ritual

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-79
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Maslak
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Fritz Detwiler

Graham Harvey’s reconceptualisation of religion emphasises the relational world of indigenous peoples. His suggestion that religion revolves around negotiating with ‘our neighbours’ is particularly relevant to Native American ritual processes insofar as he extends ‘neighbours’ to other-species persons. Further, by emphasising ‘lived religion’, Harvey turns our attention to the significance of embodied religion as it expresses itself in ceremonial performances. Harvey’s approach is enriched by Ronald L. Grimes’ notion of the way in which indigenous rituals take us into the deep world of other-species communities through a gift exchange economy that promotes the wellbeing of everyone in the neighbourhood. The present discussion demonstrates the applicability of both Harvey’s and Grimes’ approaches to indigenous religious ritual processes by focusing on James R. Walker’s account of Oglala Sun Dancing. Walker constructs a fourstage ritual process from information he gathered while working as a physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1896 to 1914. The entire process, from the declaration of the first candidates who announce their intention to make bodily sacrifices to the culmination of the ritual process in the last four days where the flesh sacrifices are made many months later, centres on re-establishing and promoting harmonious relations among the Oglala and between the Oglala and their other-species neighbours within the Sacred Hoop. The indigenous methodological approach interprets the process through Oglala cosmological and ontological categories and establishes the significance of Harvey’s approach to religion and Grimes’ approach to ritual in understanding embodied and lived religion.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-223
Author(s):  
Jennifer Peace

This paper discusses a worship service I designed and led in November of 2014 at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS). As a member of the faculty, a practicing Christian and a religious educator and interfaith organizer, I am invited to lead a service each year in the Chapel at ANTS. In particular, as the ANTS’ co-director of the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE), a joint program between ANTS and Hebrew College, I was charged with making the service an “interfaith” gathering, open and inviting for Unitarian Universalist, Muslim, and Jewish guests, while still providing an authentic expression of Christian worship. This article offers a first-person narrative and thick description of the service, the planning process, the broader context of interreligious education at our schools, and reflections on both the possibilities and limits of sharing particular religious rituals across diverse religious traditions for educational purposes. Drawing on the work of interreligious educators I identify a set of goals for interreligious education and explore the potential for religious ritual to both contribute to and complicate these goals. I describe the worship service as a ritual event in the life of a Christian seminary as well as its meaning and role in the process of interreligious coformation that is part of CIRCLE’s work.


Thorax ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 477-481
Author(s):  
T Melsom ◽  
L Brinch ◽  
J O Hessen ◽  
M A Schei ◽  
N Kolstrup ◽  
...  

BACKGROUNDThe development of asthma seems to be influenced by the adoption of a Western lifestyle. A study was undertaken to assess the importance of indoor environmental factors in Nepal where the lifestyle and home environment differ from that in the West.METHODSThe home environment of 121 schoolchildren with asthma and 126 controls aged 11–17 years was studied. The homes of all participants were investigated and the children and their mothers were interviewed using a standardised questionnaire. Cases and controls were identified from an ISAAC (International Study of Asthma and Allergy in Childhood) based population study of 2330 schoolchildren in Kathmandu, Nepal.RESULTSKeeping cattle inside the house during the night was related to a lower risk for having asthma (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 0.2 (95% CI 0.1 to 0.5)) while there was no association between asthma and cattle kept outside. Asthma was associated with cigarette smoking by two or more family members (OR 1.9 (95% CI 1.0 to 3.9)) and with the domestic use of smoky fuels (OR 2.2 (95% CI 1.0 to 4.5)). In analyses stratified by sex, passive smoking and the use of smoky fuels were significantly associated with asthma only in boys.CONCLUSIONSThe risk of asthma in Nepalese children was lower in subjects exposed to cattle kept inside the house and higher in subjects exposed to passive smoking and indoor use of smoky fuels. Childhood exposure to microorganisms or allergens from cattle may protect against the development of atopic disease.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Anita Stasulane

This article addresses the commemoration of the deceased by examining a peculiar Latvian religious tradition—the cemetery festival. Latvian society is moving down the path to secularization. Participation in religious ritual practices could be expected to decrease in a predominately secular society. Nevertheless, the tradition of the cemetery festival practiced in Latvia shows that the relationship between the religious and the secular is much more complex than simply being in opposition to each other. The analysis is based on data obtained by undertaking fieldwork at cemeteries in Latvia. Participant observation and qualitative in-depth interviews were the main research tools used in the fieldwork. Through an analysis of the fieldwork data, this article explains, first, how honoring of the deceased currently takes place in Latvia; second, the factors which have determined the preservation of the cemetery festival tradition despite the forced secularization of the Soviet period and the general secularization encountered today; third, the relationship between religious and secular activities and their transformation at the cemetery festival.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 110658
Author(s):  
Milan Maharjan ◽  
Samjhana Phuyal ◽  
Mana Shrestha

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-260
Author(s):  
Yatsiv M ◽  

In each historical period, light played an important mystical role in the creation of the sacred space of the temple, and was and is an integral part of religious ritual. Light is an architectural phenomenon, the formative and communicative element of the spatial structure of the temple, the most important factor in the perception of space and layout of the temple. The subject of the analysis contained in the article is the light environment in the space of modern churches of Ukraine. An analysis of the functions of light in churches is made on the example of recently built iconic Greek Catholic temples. The peculiarities of the distribution of natural and artificial light in the space of modern churches, the similarities and differences in the organization of the light environment, as compared to the historical temples, have been revealed. The influence of the light on the architectonics of temples and the visual perception of their object environment, on the formation of the corresponding mystical mood and sacred atmosphere is defined. The values and functions of electric lighting in the structure of the light environment of the temple, the directions of development of electric lighting systems due to the expansion of their utilitarian and decorative functions are determined.


1969 ◽  
Vol os-16 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Vanderlyn R. Pine

By comparing funeral practices in Bali, Japan, Russia, England, and the United States, the author shows that funeral practices are designed to provide socially sanctioned solutions to deep psychological needs at the time of bereavement. Suggested universal features of funeral practice across cultures include the provision of social support for the bereaved, religious ritual, funeral expenditure, sanitary disposal of the body, visual confrontation, and the funeral procession, which is generally conceived as a family parade.


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