scholarly journals For ourselves and for each other – Politics of embodied religious belonging in the novel We Sinners

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo ◽  
Sanna Valkonen
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
American Midwest ◽  
History Of

This article analyses religious belonging in a Christian revivalist community through a reading of Hanna Pylväinen’s novel We Sinners, a fictive history of a Laestadian family in the modern American Midwest. Like many conservative religious groups today, Laestadianism is increasingly affected by secular society’s norms and practices. We claim that the study of everyday religious belonging is essential in order to make sense of the power relations, structures, and dynamics of change within religious groups. The article approaches belonging as a thoroughly embodied state, taking the view that certain kinds of corporeality threaten the cohesion of religious communities while others strengthen it. The politics of belonging in the novel – the practices of inclusion and exclusion – are constructed in, on, and through the regulation of individual bodies. Control over clothing, behaviour, sexuality, movement, and being-in-common produces and governs embodied Laestadian subjectivity, as well as the ways in which belonging is shared.

“True Faith and Allegiance”—Religion and the FBI

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvester A. Johnson ◽  
Steven Weitzman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religion And State

This chapter explains on how the FBI’s relationship with various American religious groups complicates the typical category of religion-and-state issues. It begins with the post-9/11 era then relates the long history of the FBI engaging with religion. The chapter explains how the bureau has practiced skepticism toward religion at times while also seeking an alliance with religion at other times. The chapter argues for the importance of situating the post-9/11 era within a longer history of the FBI’s interaction with America’s religious communities.

scholarly journals Technologies of using the religious factor in Vietnam: features of the political history of the main religious groups from the beginning of the 17 century to the present time

2020 ◽  
pp. 347-369
Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Kolotov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Factor

This article is devoted to the technologies for creating religious communities, provoking conflicts between different religious groups and using local controlled conflicts for geopolitical purposes. Immersion of political contradictions in the cultural and religious environment allows skillfully concealing the interests of the forces that stand behind the conflicts they provoked.

The Contemporary Contours of Imperialism

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-63
Author(s):  
Chirashree Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Material Basis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional System

Situated largely within the Marxist debates on imperialism—but addressing the liberal formulations too—The Changing Face of Imperialism: Colonialism to Contemporary Capitalism is an important intervention regarding the material basis of imperialism and its three-hundred-year-old history of unequal power relations. The book broadly addresses five issues: (1) the nature of finance capital and the novel yet familiar processes of value extraction; (2) the world of capital; (3) global production networks and labor regimes; (4) the institutional system of nation-states in the new global order; and (5) the nature of integration from colonial regimes to now.

scholarly journals Earthquake preparedness among religious minority groups: the case of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox society in Israel

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-337
Author(s):  
Zvika Orr ◽  
Tehila Erblich ◽  
Shifra Unger ◽  
Osnat Barnea ◽  
Moshe Weinstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
Earthquake Preparedness ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Low Exposure ◽  
High Level

Abstract. To work effectively, emergency management systems that deal with earthquake threats must consider the needs of religious minority groups. Studies regarding earthquake preparedness among marginalized social–cultural groups can highlight ways to improve it. Recently, some research has focused on the effect of religion on earthquake preparedness. However, very few studies have connected the two and examined earthquake preparedness among religious groups that are also a social–cultural minority in relation to the authorities. This study examines the effects of religious beliefs and customs on earthquake preparedness among the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, a significant religious minority with unique social, cultural, and economic characteristics. Data were obtained using mixed methods including a survey, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. Results demonstrated that the majority of the community had a low level of hazard knowledge and a high level of disbelief that a devastating earthquake would occur in their area in the near future. This is despite a long-documented history of earthquakes that devastated the Levant and, in particular, dwelling locations for this community. Low exposure to media, insularity of educational institutions, and suspicion toward state authorities were shown to hinder preparedness, while strong social capital improved it. This research is unique for it studies a religious group that is also a cultural minority, which, therefore, requires special adaptations. Some of the recommended adaptations include receiving support from religious leaders, publishing preparation guidelines in proper settings, working with civilian organizations that are seen as legitimate by the religious communities, and adapting technologies and information to be religiously appropriate. To conclude, this research offers a perspective on the complex reality of hazard preparedness in a religiously diverse country. The conclusions are applicable to other countries and natural hazards.

A Vital Void: Reconstructions of Downtown Beirut

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hashim Sarkis
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
International Scope ◽  
South Lebanon ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reconstruction Project ◽  
The City

A few lines before the end of The Tiller of Waters, the protagonist, Nicholas Mitri, wakes up after his death in a void. Once he orients himself, he realizes that this void is actually the center of Beirut that he has inhabited alone during the 1975–1990 civil war and that he has been desperately trying to narrate and preserve throughout the novel. Mitri, a Greek Orthodox man from the predominantly Muslim West Beirut, had been forced out of his house by Shiite Muslim refugees from South Lebanon who had, in turn, been displaced by an Israeli invasion. Homeless, he drifts to his father’s textile shop in downtown Beirut, the contested battle zone between Christian East and Muslim West Beirut. There, he lives alone like Robinson Crusoe in the wilderness of the city center and recounts his family’s story and the history of the different peoples and religious groups that inhabited his life and the prewar city. The house where he lived with his Greek Alexandrian parents and with the Kurdish maid he loved, the shop owned by a Sunni Muslim next to his father’s in the bazaar of downtown Beirut, and the parlor where his mother was trained by an Armenian piano teacher are all eventually wiped out—not by the war but by the reconstruction project. The void, at the end of the story, represents the futility of his efforts to preserve the places. The buildings and streets, it turns out, are more fragile than the memories that inhabit them. The civil war that entrapped Mitri was triggered in 1975 by disagreements between Lebanon’s Christians and Muslims over the presence and power of the Palestinian militias in Lebanon. The war would briefly stop in 1977, with the intervention of Arab forces led by Syria, only to be resumed again, this time with the participation of the Syrians on the side of the Palestinians and Muslims. When the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982 to support the Christians and expel the Palestinians, the war took on an international scope with a failed American and European military intervention.

scholarly journals Expressing friendship in letters: Conventionality and sincerity in the multilingual correspondence of nineteenth-century Catholic churchmen

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58
Author(s):  
Francesco De Toni
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Standards ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractThe relationship between the polite and conventional nature of friendly language and the sincerity of the writer’s feelings is a central topic in linguistic and historical research on friendship in epistolary communication. This relationship can be understood in the context of the emotional values and conventionalised emotional practices that characterise the writer’s emotional community.The language of friendship has a significant role in the history of letter writing in religious communities. However, epistolary and emotional practices among religious groups in the modern era remain a rather unexplored filed of research. In this regard, the nineteenth century is of particular interest, as it saw the consolidation of sincerity as a central notion in European standards of letter writing.Bringing together historical pragmatics and the history of emotions, this paper describes the forms and functions of sincerity in the negotiation of friendships between nineteenth-century Catholic churchmen. The article analyses a corpus of letters in Italian and Spanish from the multilingual correspondence of European Benedictine missionaries in Australia between the 1850s and the 1890s. The results of the analysis show that sincerity and emotional self-disclosure, while dependent on the pragmatic conventions of letter writing, belonged to cross-linguistic cultural scripts typical of religious communities.

scholarly journals The Relation of the Majority and Minority of Religious People in Aceh Singkil

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Arifin Zain ◽  
Syahrin Harahap ◽  
Syahrin Harahap ◽  
Hasan Bakti Nasution ◽  
Hasan Bakti Nasution
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Religious People ◽  
Aceh Province ◽  
History Of

Aceh Singkil is one of the districts in Aceh province that has a history of inter-religious conflict. There have been several conflicts here, including in 1979 and in 2015. The conflict not only caused by disharmony but also caused by casualties and moral and material losses. The main problem in this paper is how relations are established between the majority and minority religious communities in Aceh Singkil. This research is a field research with qualitative analysis and data collection techniques used is in-depth non-structured interviews. The results of the study show that socially, the majority and minority religious groups coexist both in the areas of religion, social and culture and life is helping each other. Presumably conflicts arise due to several factors, including the weak enforcement of rules and the establishment of houses that are not in accordance with existing standards.

scholarly journals W imię Boga Jedynego! (Aleksiej Warłamow „Zatopiona arka”)

2018 ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Lewandowska
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Russian People ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

The article is an attempt to present a religious situation described by Aleksey Varlamov in his novel Zatonuvshiy kovcheg. The spiritual life of Russians after Perestroika not only turned out to be a period of resurgence of Orthodox Christianity, but also the emergence as well as restoration of previously existing sects. Therefore, this novel amounts to a new voice of the discussion on the Russians’ spiritual life then, now and in the future. The author tries to prove that the reawakening of sects brings danger to Russian people, especially to the young generation. This paper presents an analysis  of those fragments of the novel that refer to religious subjects and contain descriptions  of sects (the Old Believers and the Skoptsy). Besides, spiritual leaders of these sects (Vassian and Luppo) are characterized. The insight into the history of these religious groups is provided and supplemented with Varlamov's descriptions from the novel.

FBI and Religion

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Assessment ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.

“What Freedom?”

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-331
Author(s):  
John Owen Havard
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Free Condition ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
John Owen

John Owen Havard, “‘What Freedom?’: Frankenstein, Anti-Occidentalism, and English Liberty” (pp. 305–331) “If he were vanquished,” Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “I should be a free man.” But he goes on: “Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free.” Victor’s circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic “freedom” described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: “Such would be my liberty.” This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested “harem” episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor’s imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature’s desire to live in South America. Locating Victor’s concluding appeal to his “free” condition within the novel’s expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel’s pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel’s geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel.

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