Introduction

MOVE ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Richard Kent Evans

This chapter introduces the main argument of the book: that MOVE people believed, from the very early days of the group, that their leader, John Africa, was a prophet, that his teachings, both written and embodied, had miraculous effects on the body, and that the shared beliefs and practices that constituted MOVE were religious in nature. To MOVE people, Vincent Leaphart was John Africa, a prophetic figure who was capable of performing miracles, healing the sick and injured, and communicating on behalf of the divine. John Africa inspired a remarkable level of devotion in his followers, who called themselves his “disciples.” To many people outside the group—including the police, the court system, MOVE’s neighbors, and other religious groups—MOVE was anything but a religion. At almost every turn, MOVE, a group that was desperate to be recognized as a religion, found themselves categorized as secular.

EMPIRISMA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Limas Dodi

According to Abdulaziz Sachedina, the main argument of religious pluralism in the Qur’an based on the relationship between private belief (personal) and public projection of Islam in society. By regarding to private faith, the Qur’an being noninterventionist (for example, all forms of human authority should not be disturb the inner beliefs of individuals). While the public projection of faith, the Qur’an attitude based on the principle of coexistence. There is the willingness of the dominant race provide the freedom for people of other faiths with their own rules. Rules could shape how to run their affairs and to live side by side with the Muslims. Thus, based on the principle that the people of Indonesia are Muslim majority, it should be a mirror of a societie’s recognizion, respects and execution of religious pluralism. Abdul Aziz Sachedina called for Muslims to rediscover the moral concerns of public Islam in peace. The call for peace seemed to indicate that the existence of increasingly weakened in the religious sense of the Muslims and hence need to be reaffi rmed. Sachedina also like to emphasize that the position of peace in Islam is parallel with a variety of other doctrines, such as: prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and so on. Sachedina also tried to show the argument that the common view among religious groups is only one religion and traditions of other false and worthless. “Antipluralist” argument comes amid the reality of human religious differences. Keywords: Theology, Pluralism, Abdulaziz Sachedina


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Michael Kavanagh ◽  
Susilo Wibisono ◽  
Rohan Kapitány ◽  
Whinda Yustisia ◽  
Idhamsyah Eka Putra ◽  
...  

Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country and as such is host to a diverse range of Islamic beliefs and practices. Here we examine how the diversity of beliefs and practices among Indonesian Muslims relates to group bonding and parochialism. In particular, we examine the predictive power of two distinct types of group alignment, group identification and identity fusion, among individuals from three Sunni politico-religious groups - a fundamentalist group (PKS), a moderate group (NU), and a control sample of politically unaffiliated citizens. Fundamentalists were more fused to targets than moderates or citizens, but contrary to fusion theory, we found across all groups, that group identification (not fusion) better predicted parochialism, including willingness to carry out extreme pro-group actions. We discuss how religious beliefs and practice impact parochial attitudes, as well as the implications for theoretical models linking fusion to extreme behaviour.


Author(s):  
Alice Korkor Ebeheakey ◽  
Steve Kquofi ◽  
Eric Appau Asante ◽  
Charlotte Buerkie Nubuor

In African traditional religion, priding oneself in the beliefs and practices of one’s culture is intensely essential. The driving force for this is mainly the need to satisfy the will of a higher power. Cultural practices, being a channel between the living, the dead and the spirits is one of the ways in which a group of people satisfy the will of these higher beings. Body marking, among the Dangme, forms a great deal of aspects of cultural practices which connotes spirituality. This study discusses the concept of spirituality as enshrined in the body marks of the Dangme people of Ghana. To obtain the relevant information needed, the qualitative approach to research has been adopted using interviews and observation as the main data collection tools. These give a rich and in-depth understanding of the body marks that are practiced for spiritual purposes among the Dangme. This paper is a collation of findings from studies conducted between February, 2012 and February, 2019. It is evident from the research that, marks for spiritual purposes seemed to be practiced irrespective of the clan individuals hail from. These marks are seen as methods (or modes) of maintaining direct contact and proving allegiance to the spirits that protect them as a people.


1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Davies

Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars has reinvigorated the debate over the nature of late mediaeval religious practice and belief, examining the ‘richness and complexity of the religious system by which men and women structured their experiences of the world, and their hopes and aspirations within and beyond it.’ Duffy questions the assumption that there was in that period a wide gulf between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion. In so doing he has not only illuminated the religious practices and beliefs of late mediaeval England but he has stimulated discussion about the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion in other periods. Duffy eschews the use of the term ‘popular religion’, which he argues carries questionable assumptions about the nature of ‘non-popular’ religion and about the gap between the two. He prefers ‘traditional religion’, on the grounds that it does greater justice to ‘the shared and inherited character of the religious beliefs and practices of the people…’ ‘Traditional religion’ while being rooted in inherited and shared beliefs was, nevertheless, capable of great flexibility and variety.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Sikka

AbstractLiberalism, as a political paradigm, is committed to maintaining a stance of neutrality toward religion(s), along with other comprehensive systems of belief. Multiculturalism is premised on the view that the political policies of internally diverse nations should respect the beliefs and practices of the various cultural, ethnic, and religious groups of which those nations are composed. Sometimes synthesized, sometimes standing in tension, these two political frameworks share a common goal of minimizing conflict while respecting diversity. Although this goal is, in principle, laudable, I argue in this article that the operation of liberal and multiculturalist forms of public reasoning inadvertently diminishes critical reflection and revision in the area of religion, with potentially dangerous consequences both for the health of religion and for social stability. Measures to counter these dangers, I propose, include a relaxation of the restrictive rules that define liberal public reason, and education about religion in schools.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (12) ◽  
pp. 1819-1840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sampo Tukiainen ◽  
Nina Granqvist

The relationship between the temporary and the permanent is a central issue in studies of temporary organizing. Recent research highlights that projects, as key forms of temporary organizations, both constitute and are constituted by their wider institutional contexts. However, there is still a lack of more detailed understanding of the actors and their activities through which projects produce and advance institutional change. To address this issue, we draw on extensive fieldwork to study the activities that constitute establishment of the Innovation University. This endeavour gained the status of a spearhead project and advanced nationwide university reform in one northern European country. Our central contribution is two-fold. We sediment a more robust approach to institutions within project literature by defining them as widely shared beliefs and practices that actors enact and (re)produce through their various activities. On this basis, we develop a model of an institutional project for regulative change and show that it is more parallel and multiplex and less sequential in nature than existing studies might convey. Our model also creates new understanding of the role of the ‘lock-ins’ shaped by projects to promote regulative change and casts light on the temporal linkages and temporal boundary objects in institutional projects. In closing, we discuss several future avenues for research in both project literature and institutional theory.


2021 ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
ANDREY P. ZABIYAKO ◽  

The purpose of the article is, firstly, to determine the territorial and chronological boundaries of the formation of early symbolism and early forms of religion in the basin of the Lower Amur, and secondly, to explicate early beliefs and practices in the context of modern theories of religion. The territorial boundaries of early symbolism and early forms of religion are located in the Lower Amur region within the boundaries of the distribution of the Osipovskaya and Mariinskaya archaeological cultures. These cultures belong to the Early Neolithic and are located in chronological intervals of 13,000-10,000 years ago ( Osipovskaya culture ) and 10,000-9,000 years ago ( Mariinskaya culture ). The oldest beliefs and practices archaeologically recorded in the Lower Amur region are the gender cult, zoolatry and thanatology. The gender cult is represented by its male and female varieties. Zoolatry is manifested primarily in the forms of bear cult, ichthyolatria (worship of fish) and ornitholatria (worship of birds). Thanatology reveals itself in thanatocracies - the funeral practice of inhumation of the body with the ritual use of fire and buried objects. Gender cult and zoolatry are objectified in the objects of mobile art. Thanatology is objectified in the burial complex.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 433-466
Author(s):  
J. Edward Walters

Abstract The fourth-century Syriac corpus known as the Demonstrations, attributed to Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, provides a unique window into the early development of Christianity among Syriac-speaking communities. Occasionally these writings attest to beliefs and practices that were not common among other contemporaneous Christian communities, such as Aphrahat’s apparent belief in the “sleep of the soul” and the implications of that belief for his concept of the soul-body relationship and what happens to the soul and body at the resurrection. Aphrahat addresses this topic in the context of a polemical argument against an unnamed opponent, which provides the occasion to consider whom these arguments might be addressed against. The present article seeks to understand Aphrahat’s views on the body and soul within the broad religious milieu of the eastern Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity. The article concludes with an argument for reading and understanding the Demonstrations as a witness to the contested development of Christian identity in the Syriac-speaking world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris L. De Wet

This article examines John Chrysostom’s (ca. 349–407 CE) statements about Manichaeism. The study enquires regarding the extent of Chrysostom’s knowledge of Manichaean beliefs and practices, and whether he possibly had contact with Manichaeans. The study is not so much interested in determining how accurately or inaccurately Chrysostom understands and characterises Manichaeism, although at some points the analysis does venture into some of these issues. In the first instance, Chrysostom’s views about Manichaean theology and, especially, Christology are delineated. Proceeding from the negative evaluation of the material cosmos in Manichaeism, the study then looks at Chrysostom’s critique of Manichaean views of the body, especially as it relates to freedom of choice. Chrysostom’s accusations of Manichaean practices, namely, starving as salvation and the accusation of castration, are also examined. Finally, Chrysostom’s response to the Manichaean rejection of a corporeal resurrection is analysed, after which some conclusions are drawn.


Author(s):  
Vassa A. Pyatkova ◽  

The article describes a variety of approaches to realizing the phenomenon of telepathy in Russia in the late 19th – early 20th century. Telepathy kindled interest of scientists, occultists, members of religious groups and general public. Reasons behind the interest towards this phenomenon varied in each specific case. Scientists viewed telepathy as a phenomenon that was worth exploring, and created theories that would explain it. At the same time, some of them regarded such studies as a way of justifying the possibility of life outside of a physical body. Telepathic experiments aimed to prove the independence of human psyche from the body were also conducted by those not associated with academic science. Occultists preferred describing the phenomenon of telepathy without resorting to scientific terminology and used occult anthropological concepts instead. In popular occultism represented by mentalism, telepathy was viewed as a practice capable of improving the quality of living. Christian spiritualists and some representatives of Orthodox clergy took interest in telepathy as a means of proving the immortality of soul. Moreover, they used the telepathy theory to justify the efficacy of traditional religious practices, in particular the prayer. Despite of the variances in the reasons behind the interest towards telepathy and in its explanations, the interest to this phenomenon reflected a common trend of that age towards rethinking the anthropology


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