The Disintegration and Death of Religions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Mass Conversion ◽  
Varied Range ◽  
The One

This chapter attempts to design lines of thought that will enable scholars to establish and explain the phenomenon of ‘religion death.’ This requires some academic courage: in order to explain disappearance, presence needs to be established first. And establishing presence requires the resurrection of the notion of distinctiveness for concrete religious traditions. Once this heuristic step has been taken, it becomes possible to outline patterns of attrition, code-switching, and extinction. Two extreme cases form the book-ends of these processes: genocide on the one hand and mass conversion on the other. In between is a richly varied range of options in which outside forces and internal developments can be seen at work in continuing processes of change and adaptation that may lead to the disappearance of a particular religion. The chapter concludes with brief reflections on the responsibilities of scholars who work with religious communities that are rapidly disappearing.

Religie als bron van zingeving en sociale binding. Godsdienstpsychologische reflecties bij Gijs Dingemans’ In vredesnaam

2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Hetty Zock
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stereotyped Behaviour ◽  
Existential Meaning ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
The One

The author argues that individual usage and appropriation of religious traditions has become increasingly important. Therefore, church leaders and pastors should pay more attention to the psychological functions of religion. On the one hand religion serves as a source of existential meaning-making and on the other hand as a powerful glue of group identities. By discussing the psychological theories of Erik H. Erikson, Hubert Hermans and James W. Jones, the Janus face of religion is highlighted. Religion may lead to intolerance and stereotyped behaviour (when it is only used to reduce identity anxiety and narcissistic problems), but it may also stimulate empathy and dialogical capacities.

The Normative Power of Images: Religion, Gender, Visuality

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Knauss ◽  
Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
The Common ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

In this introductory article to the special issue of Religion and Gender on gender, normativity and visuality, we establish the theoretical framework to discuss the influence of visual culture on gender norms. This introduction also provides a reflection on how these norms are communicated, reaffirmed and contested in religious contexts. We introduce the notion of visuality as individual and collective signifying practices, with a particular focus on how this regards gender norms. Two main ways in which religion, gender and normativity are negotiated in visual meaning making processes are outlined: on the one hand, the religious legitimation of gender norms and their communication and confirmation through visual material, and on the other hand, the challenge of these norms through the participation in visual culture by means of seeing and creating. These introductory reflections highlight the common concerns of the articles collected in this issue: the connection between the visualisation of gender roles within religious traditions and the influence of religious gender norms in other fields of (visual) culture.

scholarly journals RELIGION, MARGINALITY AND POWER RELATIONS: RELIGIOUS CONVERSION AND RELIGIOSITY OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN PENYENGAT

Al-Albab ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ansor ◽  
Laila Sari Masyhur
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Relation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Native People ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The One

Using a theory of power relation of Michel Foucault, the following research analyzes the behavior of religious conversion in the community of the Indigenous People of Anak Rawa in Penyengat Village, Siak District, hereinafter referred to as the Native People. The research will show that in the middle of the domination of the State and theologians, the community of Indigenous People actualizes power to maintain its identity in the midst of the invasion of new values and culture. To support the argument, the researchers traced the religiosity of the Indigenous People focusing on several events of everyday life such as traditions of marriage, death, and celebration of religious holidays. In addition to adapting to the country’s religious traditions they have adopted, this community also modifies the ritual traditions of each religion so that these traditions become a means of preserving their communal identity as a native tribe. The research ultimately shows the interplay between the State and theologians as the dominant group, on the one hand, and the indigenous community as a subjugated group, on the other, in the use of power. Keywords: Indigenous People, Religion, Power Relation

scholarly journals Ethno-religious stereotypes and their functioning in Ukrainian society

2009 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
The One ◽  
Religious Stereotypes ◽  
Ukrainian Society

Religious life in all eras is accompanied not only by real facts, but also by their subjective perception. It is fixed not so much reality as the imagination of it. Among the common beliefs, a special place belongs to stereotypes, which, on the one hand, systematize and generalize ideas about the world, helping people to adequately perceive and interpret being, and on the other - preserving these ideas, which sometimes prevents people from entering new life. History has given rise to many religious stereotypes, by virtue of which the constitution and preservation of ethnic groups, nations, religious communities, and confessions took place. However, uncontrolled domination, and especially the use of these stereotypes in the theory and practice of social and individual existence, led to complications in the functioning of ethno-religious communities, to their struggle, even destruction, resulting in the disappearance of some and other ethnicities, nations, religions. and churches. The reality of the society in which we live is on

scholarly journals The Potential of Religion in the Promotion and Implementation of the Concept of Sustainable Development

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryszard F. Sadowski
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Ecological Potential

AbstractThis article presents religion’s potential where the promotion and implementation of the concept of sustainable development are concerned. First inspired by Lynn White in the 1960s, discussion on religion’s role in the ecological crisis now allows for an honest assessment of the ecological potential of various religious traditions and their contribution to the building of a sustainable world. This article on the one hand points to the religious inspirations behind the concept of sustainable development, and on the other highlights the joint action of representatives of religion and science in the name of sustainable development, as well as the involvement of religions in the concept’s implementation.

scholarly journals An Exploratory Study of Language Use and Preferences among Nursing Lecturers and Students at Mzuzu University in Malawi

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-198
Author(s):  
Agness C C Hara
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nursing Profession ◽  
Classroom Setting ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The One

This article reports on the insights gained from multilingual nursing lecturers and students at Mzuzu University in Malawi on the languages they use and prefer in a classroom setting. Research (Setati, Chitera and Essien, 2009; Chowdhury 2012) has found that both lecturers and students in multilingual and multicultural settings favour code-switching practices in the classroom setting. Code-switching is, therefore, an important phenomenon, which researchers should continue exploring because of the several distinctive attributes associated with it. The study adheres to qualitative and quantitative designs through the use of a questionnaire and follow-up interviews as methods of data collection. The results reveal that both lecturers and students favour code-switching from English to Chichewa during lectures. From both lecturers’ and students’ perspectives, code-switching helps to translate and clarify difficult concepts. It also helps to prepare students for the nursing profession. The study has some practical and pedagogical implications. On the one hand, it contributes some meaningful insights for language planners and policy-makers; on the other hand, the study sheds important light on the need to include the workplace dimension during language in education and language planning conversations. This study is also important because it addresses the issue of how code-switching might effectively be exploited as a communicative and pedagogical resource in instruction.

scholarly journals Code-switching as appraisal resource in talking about third parties

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Baumgarten ◽  
Inke Du Bois
Keyword(s):  
Third Parties ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
German Immigrants ◽  
The Us ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The One ◽  
Migration Experiences ◽  
Individual Speaker

This article explores the function of code-switching in talking about absent third parties. The basis for the investigation is a corpus of sociolinguistic individual and group interviews with German immigrants in the US and American immigrants in Germany. In these interviews, the interviewees are asked to recount their migration experiences and their lives before and after migration. For each individual speaker, the interviewer and – in the group interviews – the other participants in the group are, on the one hand, potentially 'sympathetic' fellow migrants. On the other hand, however, they are potentially problematic figures, because talking about absent third parties means that these third parties might share characteristics with the interviewer or the others in the group. Talking about third parties can, thus, be face-threatening for both the interviewer and the interviewees. In the analyses presented in this article, we identify how speakers employ English-to-German code-switching when it comes to verbalizing others – specifically members of home and host cultures – in discourse and how they position themselves and their audience in relation to them.

From Idolatry to Religions: the Missionary Discourses on Hinduism and Buddhism and the Invention of Monotheistic Confucianism, 1550-1700

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 499-536
Author(s):  
Joan-Pau Rubiés
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Christian Apologetics ◽  
The One

Abstract The emergence of a European discourse to distinguish, analyze, and historicize various non-Biblical religious traditions within Asia involved a significant amplification of the concept of idolatry. The Jesuit experience of Japanese Buddhism in the second half of the sixteenth century posed a particular challenge, because of its overt atheism. The patristic models of Christian apologetics, based on distinguishing elite monotheism from popular religion in ancient paganism, had been useful in India, but in Japan had to be replaced by a system where the elite cultivated an atheistic form of esoteric monism. When focusing their dialectical firepower upon the doctrines of double truth and non-theistic monism, the Jesuits, led by Alessandro Valignano, were in fact responding to the doctrinal distinctiveness of East Asian Buddhism, notably the emphasis on provisional teachings, on the one hand, and Buddha-nature, on the other. When in China Ricci decided to classify the Confucian literati as civil philosophers rather than as a religious elite, he also transferred Valignano’s critique of Buddhist pantheism to specifically Neo-Confucian doctrines, distinct from the supposed monotheism of the original Confucians.

scholarly journals Doing mission inclusively

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Reimer ◽  
Zuze Banda
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Working Together ◽  
The One

This article posits that Christians, while being in the world, are not of this world. This duality confronts them with the twofold need to be fully compliant with the demands of their faith and its calling to evangelise this world, on the one hand; and to live fully as fellow citizens of this world, and to cooperate with them in search of solutions for this world’s challenges, on the other hand. Lessons are drawn from cultural anthropology theories to underscore dynamic processes of change, that start from non-threatening positions of working together inclusively, thus building trust, and advancing progressively, paving ways for dialogically sharing the Gospel. These developments are at the end argued and justified theologically, and then concluded with pragmatic examples drawn from live ministries born out of the co-author’s initiatives.Keywords: Evangelism; missions; cultural-anthropology; inclusiveness; change; trust; convivential; society-transformative

Afterword: From Catholic Modernity to Religious Modernities

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 508-543
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Carroll ◽  
Staf Hellemans
Keyword(s):  
Research Field ◽  
The Other ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religion And Modernity ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In a time when the two major strategies followed by Christian religious traditions in modernity have lost traction—Christendom and subcultural isolation on the one hand and liberal and socialist assimilation with modernity on the other hand—Charles Taylor’s Catholic modernity idea opens up a “third grand strategy,” a new perspective on the relationship between religion and modernity. Moreover, the perspective can be put to use in other religious traditions as well. We will, hence, argue for the extension from a Catholic modernity to a religious modernities perspective. With the help of the arguments and suggestions as well as the critiques put forward by Taylor and the other authors in this volume Modernity and Transcendence, we will chart some of the main axes of this vast research field: (1) the clarification of Catholic/religious modernity; (2) the generalization of the Catholic modernity idea into a religious modernities perspective; (3) the invention of an inspiring, post-Christendom Christianity/post-fusional religion and theology; (4) the issue of religious engagement in our time—what Taylor calls “the Ricci project”; (5 and 6) the need for encompassing theories of modernity and religion (transcendence).

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