Golden State of Grace?

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Lois Ann Lorentzen
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Grateful Dead ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Religious Landscape

Non-Californians rarely refer to the Golden State as a sacred place or religious landscape. Yet, California fascinates, in part, due to its religious extravagance–think Jim Jones, Heavens Gate, the Crystal Cathedral, Harold Camping’s predicted end of the world, the Grateful Dead. Everything is here, and then some. This essay looks at California as an epicenter of religious expression and a global microcosm for hybrid religions, new religions, and experimental religious practices. The essay analyzes migration, the California/Mexico border, genders/sexualities, race/ethnicity, commercialization, embodiment/disembodiment, and the natural world as lenses on California’s religious landscape.

scholarly journals Discovering the two faces of religious charismatic action – traditional and modern: a model

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-304
Author(s):  
Jane Williams-Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Natural World ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Rational Calculation ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
And Control

In this paper, the author examines the issue of charisma and prophecy in secularized societies. In traditional society the charismatic personality or the prophet brought a universalizing and rationalizing message which simultaneously expanded and penetrated the sphere of external order in the world, giving people the ability to manipulate and control the natural world. The disenchanted world is the end product of this process, when no more mysterious forces come into play, and when one can in principle master all things through rational calculation. The gift of rationality almost randomly bestowed in the ancient world becomes, for Weber, the rightful inheritance of the modern individual. Clarity brought by charisma in a dark and foreboding world loses its brilliance and its ability to beckon when the world is filled with light. In investigating charisma in only traditional societies, Weber saw charisma as one dimensional, solely as the force of rationality. So envisioned, charisma dissipates in the very act of realizing itself through the transformation of the world. Given Weber's analysis, therefore, one would not expect to find genuinely new religions emerging within our transformed and rational modern society. In the examination of the founding something that is best identified by the sociological term charisma, though obviously in modern guise, is clearly evident. This points to the possibility that charisma is not static but has the dynamic capacity to be responsive to the structural characteristics of the society in which it operates.

‘God Hath Put such Secretes in Nature’: The Reformed Kirk, Church-Building and the Religious Landscape in Early Modern Scotland

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 260-275
Author(s):  
Andrew Spicer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Religious Landscape

Although the Reformed tradition advocated the primacy of the Word of God, the writings of Calvin and other theologians also emphasized the importance of the natural world for revealing the glory of God. As early as 1534, Calvin argued that God had raised everywhere, in all places and in all things, his ensigns and emblems, under blazons so clear and intelligible that no one can pretend ignorance in not knowing such a sovereign Lord, who has so amply exalted his magnificence; who has in all parts of the world, in heaven and on earth, written and as it were engraved the glory of his power, goodness, wisdom and eternity …

Kaebyŏk

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-53
Author(s):  
Don Baker ◽  
Seok Heo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Transformation ◽  
Won Buddhism ◽  
The Many ◽  
Important Shift

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Korea’s new religions is an expectation of kaebyŏk, a “Great Transformation” which will eliminate the many conflicts human beings are facing today and produce a world in human beings will find themselves instead in cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with both their fellow human beings and the natural world. Kaebyŏk once referred to the creation of the world. The use of kaebyŏk in Korea to mean “re-creation” first appeared in the teachings of Ch’oe Cheu, the founder of Tonghak. It was reiterated by Kim Hang, the author of Correct Changes. Kang Ilsun, revered by the Chŭngsan family of religions, further elaborated on the reasons kaebyŏk is imminent and how we can hasten its arrival. Park Chungbin, the founder of Won Buddhism, then suggested that kaebyŏk of the material world was already happening and proposed steps we should take to ensure that we keep pace spiritually. These four Korean religious leaders stimulated an important shift in the Korean world-view which has influenced not only followers of Korea’s new religions but the spirituality of Koreans in general.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

Varieties of Understanding

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Normative Considerations ◽  
Shed Light

According to a long historical tradition, understanding comes in different varieties. In particular, it is said that understanding people has a different epistemic profile than understanding the natural world—it calls on different cognitive resources, for instance, and brings to bear distinctive normative considerations. Thus in order to understand people we might need to appreciate, or in some way sympathetically reconstruct, the reasons that led a person to act in a certain way. By comparison, when it comes to understanding natural events, like earthquakes or eclipses, no appreciation of reasons or acts of sympathetic reconstruction is arguably needed—mainly because there are no reasons on the scene to even be appreciated, and no perspectives to be sympathetically pieced together. In this volume some of the world’s leading philosophers, psychologists, and theologians shed light on the various ways in which we understand the world, pushing debates on this issue to new levels of sophistication and insight.

Fundamentality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Healey
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
Natural World ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Quantum Field Theories ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
The World ◽  
Energy Physics

The metaphor that fundamental physics is concerned to say what the natural world is like at the deepest level may be cashed out in terms of entities, properties, or laws. The role of quantum field theories in the Standard Model of high-energy physics suggests that fundamental entities, properties, and laws are to be sought in these theories. But the contextual ontology proposed in Chapter 12 would support no unified compositional structure for the world; a quantum state assignment specifies no physical property distribution sufficient even to determine all physical facts; and quantum theory posits no fundamental laws of time evolution, whether deterministic or stochastic. Quantum theory has made a revolutionary contribution to fundamental physics because its principles have permitted tremendous unification of science through the successful application of models constructed in conformity to them: but these models do not say what the world is like at the deepest level.

Beyond Concepts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Garrett Millikan
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Language Function ◽  
Natural Signs ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Information ◽  
Natural Ontology

This book weaves together themes from natural ontology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and information, areas of inquiry that have not recently been treated together. The sprawling topic is Kant’s how is knowledge possible? but viewed from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. The assumption is that we are evolved creatures that use cognition as a guide in dealing with the natural world, and that the natural world is roughly as natural science has tried to describe it. Very unlike Kant, then, we must begin with ontology, with a rough understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, only later developing theories about the nature of cognition within that world and how it manages to reflect the rest of nature. And in trying to get from ontology to cognition we must traverse another non-Kantian domain: questions about the transmission of information both through natural signs and through purposeful signs including, especially, language. Novelties are the introduction of unitrackers and unicepts whose job is to recognize the same again as manifested through the jargon of experience, a direct reference theory for common nouns and other extensional terms, a naturalist sketch of uniceptual—roughly conceptual— development, a theory of natural information and of language function that shows how properly functioning language carries natural information, a novel description of the semantics/pragmatics distinction, a discussion of perception as translation from natural informational signs, new descriptions of indexicals and demonstratives and of intensional contexts and a new analysis of the reference of incomplete descriptions.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
Degree Of Stability ◽  
Important Exception ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Religious Landscape

In recantation of his earlier approach, Peter L. Berger now claims: ‘The world today, with some exceptions […], is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.’ The most important exception that Berger refers to is Western Europe. The introduction to Part II provides an overview of the religious landscape in Western Europe. The data show that the current religious situation in the countries of Western Europe is in fact subject to considerable variation. It would therefore be erroneous to describe Western Europe as secularized. At the same time, the data reveal that there have been clear secularization tendencies over the last few decades. To grasp the diversity of religious tendencies, Part II deals with three cases: West Germany with moderate downward tendencies, Italy with a considerably high degree of stability, and the Netherlands displaying disproportionately strong secularizing tendencies.

How is science to be carried forward, and its conclusions reported?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Briggs ◽  
Hans Halvorson ◽  
Andrew Steane
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Proof ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Component Part ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
The World

The chapter appraises science as an intellectual activity that is appropriately carried out on its own terms. Consequently, it is not appropriate to introduce references to God as a component part of a mathematical proof, nor of a system of forces in the natural world, nor of a sequence of impersonal processes in the biosphere. This does not mean that it is inappropriate to be thankful to God and to celebrate all these aspects of the world as gifts. They can be employed as opportunities to express appreciation through studying and understanding them better in their own right. Nevertheless, there may be processes, such as those which shape a person’s self-identity, in which it is appropriate to recognize God’s more direct role. Good practice concerning acknowledgements sections in scientific publications such as doctoral theses and journal articles is then discussed.

Montaigne on Monsters and Monstrosity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Long
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

Monsters take on many roles in Montaigne’s Essays, almost always in novel ways. They do not take on their usual roles as markers of other races, genders, or bodies, as threats or objects of repulsion. Rather, the authorial self and his work are seen as monstrous; Europeans and their culture are seen as monstrous; the knowledge systems that create monsters are themselves monstrous; man’s vanity is monstrous. But most of all, the monster is the provocation to meditation on man’s presumption, and on the limitations of human knowledge and power in the face of the world and the divine. As the sign of the diversity and mutability of the natural world and thus of divine omnipotence, the monstrous and unusual is valued by Montaigne over the normal or usual. It is also the mark of human creativity, dependent as it is on the vagaries of the imagination, new and radically different from the rhetorical, literary, and artistic norms. This is why the Essays themselves can be considered a monstrous work.

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