Reconciling religious identity and reproductive practices: The Church and contraception in Poland

Evidence from some contemporary ethnic groups suggests that ethnic religion may play a strong role in the lives of second generation members. This is evident in recent studies on Muslims living in Europe. But Europe's immigrant population is not just Muslim in origin. Migratory flows from Latin America, the Philippines and Eastern Europe (i.e. Romania or Ukraine) bring people from Catholic and Christian countries to Europe. And—as in the Italian case—these groups are now the majority among the whole immigrant population. Consequently, the almost exclusive focus on the Islamic component has allowed little investigation of the increase of the Christian-Catholic component. The paper describes and compares the religious paths of immigrants’ youth from Peru, the Philippines and Romania, considering the following questions: How do they interact with/develop their religious identity? Is this generation seeking less visible, less participatory means of contact with the church to better integrate with their peers? Or, on the contrary, do they choose, strategically, to reinforce the Catholic part of their identity in order to succeed better in the integration process in a Catholic country?

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Flexible Believers in the Netherlands: A Paradigm Shift toward Transreligious Multiplicity

Open Theology ◽

10.1515/opth-2017-0027 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Manuela Kalsky

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Religious Identity ◽

Paradigm Shift ◽

Religious Transformation ◽

Religious Traditions ◽

Religious Plurality ◽

And Migration ◽

Ritual Praxis ◽

The Church ◽

Hybrid Forms

AbstractThe Netherlands has undergone a radical religious transformation through secularization, individualization and migration. Expressions of Christian belief are no longer strictly defined by the Church and hybrid forms of religiosity incorporating other religions have emerged. After a brief sketch of Dutch religious plurality, the author focuses on interviews with ‘flexible believers’, people who combine elements from different religious traditions and worldviews. Through interviews, she discovers a number of characteristics of these multiple religious believers (MRB) - interviewees - such as ritual praxis, identity-making processes and belonging - and reflects on their impact for the wider picture of religiosity in today‘s post-Christian Dutch network society. She concludes that hybrid forms of lived religion like mrb, present a challenge to traditional concepts of religious identity and belonging. They require a paradigm shift from an ‘either/or’ to a relational ‘as well as’ approach within a rhizomatic network of meaning.

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Deconversion and Disaffiliation in Contemporary US Roman Catholicism

Horizons ◽

10.1017/hor.2013.75 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 40 (2) ◽

pp. 255-262 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Tom Beaudoin

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Religious Communities ◽

Spiritual Identity ◽

Classroom Teaching ◽

Religious Change ◽

Roman Catholicism ◽

Evangelical Church ◽

Social Scientific ◽

Roman Catholics ◽

The Church

Disaffiliation—when members of religious communities leave—has recently become a popular topic for theological and social scientific investigation. Today, fewer Roman Catholics than in recent memory describe themselves as strong members of their church. Many have left to seek other spiritual paths, and many of those who remain do not believe and practice as the Church teaches that they should. These essays propose that the theoretical framework of “deconversion” provides a broader and more effective way to understand forms of religious change that are occurring in contemporary America. In the classroom, teaching theology can take on a specific productive shape when the surrounding culture challenges theologians to take deconversion seriously as an element of, and larger context for, spiritual identity today. Theology remains vital when patient curiosity about the current adventure of religious identity is foregrounded pedagogically. Concluding thoughts sketch some important characteristics of an evangelical church, more concerned with its mission and witness in the world than with maintaining its internal life.

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CHRISTIANS AMONG MUSLIMS: THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN THE NORTHERN SUDAN

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s0021853702008022 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 51-75 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

HEATHER J. SHARKEY

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Urban Centers ◽

Education Services ◽

Practical Applications ◽

History Of ◽

Church Missionary Society ◽

Colloquial Arabic ◽

Local Opposition ◽

Egyptian Government ◽

The Church

Church Missionary Society missionaries arrived in the northern Sudan in 1899 with the goal of converting Muslims. Restricted by the Anglo-Egyptian government and by local opposition to their evangelism, they gained only one Muslim convert during sixty years of work. The missionaries nevertheless provided medical and education services in urban centers and in the Nuba Mountains, and pioneered girls' schools. Yet few of their Sudanese graduates achieved functional Arabic literacy, since missionaries taught ‘romanized Arabic', a form of written colloquial Arabic, in Latin print, that lacked practical applications. Thus the history of the CMS in the northern Sudan yields insights into issues of education, power and religious identity within a colonial context.

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Religion and Political Development in Central Europe around 1900: A View from Vienna

Austrian History Yearbook ◽

10.1017/s0067237800006305 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 25 ◽

pp. 13-57 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

John W. Boyer

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Political Development ◽

State Control ◽

Negative Effects ◽

State Problem ◽

Large Numbers ◽

Revolution Of 1848 ◽

The Church

To view the church-state problem from Vienna in 1900 is to view it from the capital of an ancient Catholic state in a multiethnic cultural arena, a world in which Catholicism strove, at least officially, to be supranational, and in which, although there was no Catholic nation, there was a preeminent and distinguished Catholic dynasty. This was a world in which large numbers of Austrians—many of them in rural areas—continued to affirm popular religious affections and loyalties throughout the century—values and practices that if not always consonant with official Catholic doctrine, at least afforded the hierarchical church and sympathetic aristocratic and bourgeois elites the ready opportunity to claim Catholicism as not only a historic and true but also a public and mass religion. At the same time, the long-term heritage of Josephinist state control of the church had powerful negative effects on active religiosity and religious identity, especially among the emergent Bürgertum and urban inhabitants of the monarchy. The Concordat of 1855—coming after the failed revolution of 1848–49 and on the heels of the imposition of neoabsolutist rule—was an imprudent decision precisely because it alienated both the Josephinist state and incipient bürgerlich society.

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Convent and Family Property in New Spain

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.472 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Rosalva Loreto López

Keyword(s):

Urban Growth ◽

Religious Identity ◽

New Spain ◽

New World ◽

Mutual Dependence ◽

The Church

The process of establishing women’s convents in Hispanic America must be understood as the result of converging expectations from the crown, the church, and important laypeople who were interested in re-creating a Catholic world in the cities of the New World. The importance of women’s convents depended on the regular clergy as well as the secular, both of whom were invested in replicating their own religious identity. The role of families was also critical in the processes of establishing and populating the fifty-eight convents, as it was the nun’s families who expanded their networks of power, pedigree, and the reproduction of their own lineage by way of these institutions. Finally, the study of convent wealth is also essential to understanding the mutual dependence between the urban growth of cities and the expansion of these women’s institutions.

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Religious Freedom, National Identity, and the Polish Catholic Church: Converging Visions of Nation and God

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel10050293 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 293 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kyriaki Topidi

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Public Schools ◽

Religious Education ◽

Religious Identity ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Present Contribution ◽

Individual Level ◽

The Individual ◽

The Church

In the most common representations of the Polish people, the Catholic Church is not simply considered as a part of the Polish nation; it is the Polish nation. This is reflected in the constitutional relationship of the Church and the State, in the form of a concordat. Yet, despite a formally constitutionally warranted separation, the Church retains heavy weight in the legal and political debates to the point that currently, in a time of resurgence of populism across the globe, a number of right-wing parties adopt positions based on those of the Church, establishing a dangerous nexus between religion and nationalism. The aim of the present contribution is to map this unique process within Eastern Europe in order to show how, in the case of Poland, religious identity and the exercise of religious freedoms, despite its fragmented nature at the individual level of believers, has acquired the features of an autonomous field of intervention, with clear consequences on morality and the exercise of politics, as well as religious rights and freedoms of citizens. Using the example of religious education in public schools, the article will demonstrate the complex paths of the process of secularization in the light of the historical dynamics of state, nation, and Church in Poland. In fact, it will argue that we are gradually moving away from the triumph of secularism as a “teleological theory of religious development” but firmly entering the perilous territory of religious belief as a “traditional carrier of national identity.” Tasked with the mission by Pope John Paul II to “restore Europe for Christianity,” upon joining the EU in 2004 and based on the premise that “majorities have rights too,” this shift implies new forms of religious nationalism for Poland that significantly affect religious freedom by creating dichotomies between “Us” and “Others.” It also offers, similarly to other Eastern European countries, a nuanced interpretation of religious equality that assumes the role of law as limited to protecting religions recognized by reference to established traditions, ignoring the realities of pluralized religious markets.

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Catholic Church, Fishers and Negotiating Development: A Study on the Vizhinjam Port Project

Review of Development and Change ◽

10.1177/0972266119883165 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 187-204

Author(s):

A. L. Ashni ◽

R. Santhosh

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Local Community ◽

Container Terminal ◽

Fishing Villages ◽

Accumulation By Dispossession ◽

Shipment Container ◽

The Common ◽

The Village ◽

The Church

We examine the mobilisation and negotiation of a local community against the construction of a trans-shipment container terminal in Vizhinjam village in southern India. Initiated by the state and executed by the private capital, the project represents the wider pattern of developmental regimes characterised by accumulation by dispossession. Like several other fishing villages in southern Kerala, Vizhinjam has active associational forms of civil society, largely mediated as well as shaped by the Latin Catholic church. The common religious identity of these associational forms, however, failed to generate a consensus among the local community regarding the port project. Diverse positions emerged in the village due to different class formations and mobility aspirations of the population. The political atmosphere constrained the church from strongly opposing the project due to the fear of it being labelled ‘anti-national’, since the port project was projected as essential for the nation’s development and progress.

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Deconversion and Disaffiliation in Contemporary US Roman Catholicism

Horizons ◽

10.1017/hor.2013.76 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 40 (2) ◽

pp. 262-274

Author(s):

J. Patrick Hornbeck

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Religious Communities ◽

Spiritual Identity ◽

Classroom Teaching ◽

Religious Change ◽

Roman Catholicism ◽

Evangelical Church ◽

Social Scientific ◽

Roman Catholics ◽

The Church

Disaffiliation—when members of religious communities leave—has recently become a popular topic for theological and social scientific investigation. Today, fewer Roman Catholics than in recent memory describe themselves as strong members of their church. Many have left to seek other spiritual paths, and many of those who remain do not believe and practice as the Church teaches that they should. These essays propose that the theoretical framework of “deconversion” provides a broader and more effective way to understand forms of religious change that are occurring in contemporary America. In the classroom, teaching theology can take on a specific productive shape when the surrounding culture challenges theologians to take deconversion seriously as an element of, and larger context for, spiritual identity today. Theology remains vital when patient curiosity about the current adventure of religious identity is foregrounded pedagogically. Concluding thoughts sketch some important characteristics of an evangelical church, more concerned with its mission and witness in the world than with maintaining its internal life.

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Theses from OCMS: Funerary Rites in Nepal: Cremation, Burial and Christian Identity

Transformation An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies ◽

10.1177/0265378818808944 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 35 (3) ◽

pp. 192-194 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bal Krishna Sharma

Keyword(s):

Religious Identity ◽

Traumatic Experiences ◽

Christian Identity ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Host Culture ◽

Social Sphere ◽

Church Life ◽

The Family ◽

Funerary Rites ◽

The Church

This study explores and analyses funerary rite struggles in a nation where Christianity is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and many families have Christian and Hindu, Buddhist and Traditionalist ( kiranti) members, who go through traumatic experiences at the death of their family members. The context of mixed affiliation raises questions of social, psychological and religious identity for Christian converts, which are particularly acute after a death in their family. Using empirical research, this thesis focuses on the question of adaptation and identity in relation to church life, within the familial and social sphere of individual Christians and within the wider society in which they live, particularly with reference to death and disposal. This research has used an applied theology approach to explore and analyse the findings in order to address the issue of funerary rites with which the Nepalese church is struggling. For the need of adaptation, this study seeks to understand the funerary rites of the host culture alongside Jewish-Christian characteristics of adaptation, especially in terms of the Nepalese Evangelical Christian context. It also poses the challenge of finding an identity in a wider cultural and societal milieu. The case studies and interviews have portrayed tripartite relationships and tensions between an individual, family and church or community at the death in a ‘split’ family where a Christian convert’s loyalty to the deceased and the family is tested. Participation and non-participation in the last rites create problems for both the church and the family, and some solution needs to be found. The study has discovered that adaptation of the technique of the funerary rites, rather than of their content, could ease this tension in a ‘split’ family, and enhance a family and community’s reconciliation and solidarity. The mode of disposal, whether burial or cremation, could be used and a theology of cremation be developed in order to provide a theological framework.

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