scholarly journals Monastic Form-of-Life Out of Place: Ritual Practices among Benedictine Oblates

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Thomas Quartier

Although ritual participation in Christian churches is decreasing in the Netherlands, one of the most secularised countries in the world, monasteries are increasingly attractive to people not committed to a life in an abbey, but who rather transfer monastic practices to their personal life. Guesthouses are full, reading groups conduct meditative reading, and monastic time management is applied in professional arenas. Obviously, the ritual practices conducted beyond abbey walls have a different character than the ritual repertoire of monks and nuns. The ritual transfer is a challenge, as monasteries are secluded spaces, separated from the world. In its history, monasticism has turned out to be especially capable of this process. What does the transfer from one context to the other imply when people ritualise prayer, reading and everyday practices without being monastic? A specific group of people who conduct this transfer intensively are Benedictine oblates, laypersons affiliated to a particular monastery. This article addresses the following main question: which monastic ritual practices do Benedictine oblates in the Netherlands perform, and how do they transfer these to their personal context? To explore this question, the results of a qualitative research among 53 respondents are presented—oblates of three Benedictine abbeys in the Netherlands. The results demonstrate experiences on a new ritual field, with practices that seem to be ‘out of place’ but are highly vivid to the practitioners.

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
Mechteld Jansen

AbstractAs a result of immigration of many Christians from all parts of the world to the Netherlands, about 1,000 'immigrant churches' have been established in the country during the last decades. This paper focuses on two churches in the Netherlands that mainly consist of members of Asian descent: the Gereja Kristen Indonesia Nederlands (GKIN) and the Geredja Indjili Maluku (GIM). Both are Protestant churches that have a history within the Netherlands for many years. Since these churches are not very well-known in the worldwide family of Reformed churches, I will describe their historical and cultural backgrounds quite extensively. This also includes the Dutch missionary involvement with the former Dutch colony of Indonesia. Subsequently, I will turn to their actual situation, and my main question will be how they view and carry out their missionary vocation in Dutch society. In the final section, it will be maintained that these churches do not simply mirror the missionary approach of the Dutch in Indonesia, but they consider themselves partners with other churches in a revised mission in which their own features can be a blessing for the whole Dutch society.


2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kurowiak

AbstractAs a work of propaganda, graphics Austroseraphicum Coelum Paulus Pontius should create a new reality, make appearances. The main impression while seeing the graphics is the admiration for the power of Habsburgs, which interacts with the power of the Mother of God. She, in turn, refers the viewer to God, as well as Franciscans placed on the graphic, they become a symbol of the Church. This is a starting point for further interpretation of the drawing. By the presence of certain characters, allegories, symbols, we can see references to a particular political situation in the Netherlands - the war with the northern provinces of Spain. The message of the graphic is: the Spanish Habsburgs, commissioned by the mission of God, they are able to fight all of the enemies, especially Protestants, with the help of Immaculate and the Franciscans. The main aim of the graphic is to convince the viewer that this will happen and to create in his mind a vision of the new reality. But Spain was in the seventeenth century nothing but a shadow of former itself (in the time of Philip IV the general condition of Spain get worse). That was the reason why they wanted to hold the belief that the empire continues unwavering. The form of this work (graphics), also allowed to export them around the world, and the ambiguity of the symbolic system, its contents relate to different contexts, and as a result, the Habsburgs, not only Spanish, they could promote their strength everywhere. Therefore it was used very well as a single work of propaganda, as well as a part of a broader campaign


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

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.


Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as textual events. Several chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings. Others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. In addition to studies that analyse individual lyric texts and lyric authors (Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar), the volume includes treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events re-examines the relationship between the poems’ formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of sociopolitical discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as enacting cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.


Author(s):  
James Kennedy ◽  
Ronald Kroeze

This chapter takes as its starting point the contemporary idea that the Netherlands is one of the least corrupt countries in the world; an idea that it dates back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this chapter, the authors explain how corruption was controlled in the Netherlands against the background of the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic, modern statebuilding and liberal politics. However, the Dutch case also presents some complexities: first, the decrease in some forms of corruption was due not to early democratization or bureaucratization, but was rather a side-effect of elite patronage-politics; second, although some early modern forms of corruption disappeared around this period, new forms have emerged in more recent times.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Giesela Rühl

The past sixteen years have witnessed the proliferation of international commercial courts around the world. However, up until recently, this was largely an Asian and a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Only during the past decade have Continental European countries, notably Germany, France and the Netherlands, joined the bandwagon and started to create new judicial bodies for international commercial cases. Driven by the desire to attract high-volume commercial litigation, these bodies try to offer international businesses a better dispute settlement framework. But what are their chances of success? Will more international litigants decide to settle their disputes in these countries? In this essay, I argue that, despite its recently displayed activism, Continental Europe lags behind on international commercial courts. In fact, although the various European initiatives are laudable, most cannot compete with the traditional market leaders, especially the London Commercial Court, or with new rivals in Asia and the Middle East. If Continental Europe wants a role in the international litigation market, it must embrace more radical change. And this change will most likely have to happen on the European––not the national––level.


1957 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert van Niel

This year academic circles in the Netherlands are celebrating the centennial of the birth of C. Snouck Hurgronje; Arabist, scholar of Indonesian affairs, and formateur of Dutch colonial policy. Most Dutch scholars and many students of Indonesian affairs would readily agree that few men have had as intimate acquaintance with the Indonesian archipelago and its people and have had as wide a reputation as an expert on this part of the world as the late Snouck Hurgronje. Unfortunately his writings and policies are known to English-reading scholars only at second hand. Except for a few brief articles, only his books, Mekka and The Achehnese, and his lectures in Mohammedanism have appeared in English. Other important writings have appeared in German and French, but the great bulk are in Dutch. There are presently plans to translate some parts of Snouck Hurgronje's collected works and also to make available certain writings which were done after the collected works were published, but the publication plans for these translations and reprints are still indefinite.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndikho Mtshiselwa ◽  
Lerato Mokoena

The Old Testament projects not only a Deity that created the world and human beings but also one that is violent and male. The debate on the depiction of the God of Israel that is violent and male is far from being exhausted in Old Testament studies. Thus, the main question posed in this article is: If re-read as ‘Humans created God in their image’, would Genesis 1:27 account for the portrayal of a Deity that is male and violent? Feuerbach’s idea of anthropomorphic projectionism and Guthrie’s view of religion as anthropomorphism come to mind here. This article therefore examines, firstly, human conceptualisation of a divine being within the framework of the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism. Because many a theologian and philosopher would deny that God is a being at all, we further investigate whether the God of Israel was a theological and social construction during the history of ancient Israel. In the end, we conclude, based on the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism, that the idea that the God of Israel was a theological and social construct accounts for the depiction of a Deity that is male and violent in the Old Testament.


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