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.

Collectivistic Christianities and Pluralism: An Inquiry into Agency and Responsibility

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-59
Author(s):  
Slavica Jakelić
Keyword(s):  
National Identities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Religious Others ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This essay addresses the relationship between religious traditions, secularisms, and fundamentalisms by looking at collectivistic Catholicisms in the communist and post-communist Croatia and Poland. In response to both theorists of modernity and critics of secularism—who present modernity as a process of secularization and religion as modernity’s other—Jakelić advances the idea of ‘collectivistic religion,’ to refer to religions that are public in manifestation, historically embedded, constitutive of specific group identities—next to linguistic, territorial, cultural, or national identities—and defined in part by the presence of religious (or non-religious) others. On the one hand, she considers the collectivistic Catholicisms that reject the cultural and moral pluralism of modernity but, in the process, end up espousing one of modernity’s aspects—its homogenizing impulse. On the other hand, she traces two instances in which collectivistic Catholicisms in Croatia and Poland affirm the links between Catholicism and national identities but remain open to their Muslim and secular others respectively.

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 Clothing and meaning making: a multimodal approach to women’s abayas

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Bouvier
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multimodal Approach ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This article takes a multimodal discourse approach to women’s fashion in the Middle East. It places the Islamic abaya in the UAE in the context of the wider literature on fashion and identity, exploring the way in which clothing features and forms can prescribe ideas, values and attitudes, and framing this discussion within newer ideas on globalization. As Roland Barthes argued, it is not so much personal choice or diversity in fashion that is of interest, but the kinds of values and expected behaviours that they imply. The abaya, on the one hand, represents a more newly arrived idea of traditional, local and religious identity, linking to some extent to an imagined sense of a monolithic notion of Islamic clothing. But, on the other hand, this is itself reformulated locally through international representations, ideas and values, and integrated with newer ideas of taste.

scholarly journals Marching the devotional subject: The bodily-and-material cultures of religion

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urmila Mohan ◽  
Jean-Pierre Warnier
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cognitive Gaps ◽  
The One

Drawing on the Maussian notion of the technologies of the body, on the Schilderian theory of the Körperschema, on the neurocognitive sciences and the Foucauldian concept of subjectivation, this article shifts the study of religion away from the verbalized creeds, doctrines and texts towards the consideration of the bodily-and-material cultures that are prominent in most, if not all, religious traditions. This shift helps us to understand how the bodily-and-material cultures of religious practice contribute to producing the devotee and obtaining compliance. The potential synergies, tensions and cognitive gaps between the verbalized creeds, on the one hand, and the bodily techniques and material culture, on the other hand, are emphasized for a better understanding of the complexities of the devotional subject.

Deviance or otherness inside: Construing heretics

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Maijastina Kahlos
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Relational Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
Competition For Resources ◽  
Collective Term

In internecine Christian struggles, differences and disagreements existing within Christianity were taken as deviance and heresy. Heresy and orthodoxy are relational concepts, which means that they are defined in relation to one another. Orthodoxy and heresy are best seen as a process in which councils and bishops set the boundaries of the norm and the deviant. On the one hand, church leaders reduced the variety of rival Christian groups to a single collective term of ‘heretics’. On the other hand, councils and legislators were almost obsessed in their care in naming, listing, and classifying specific heretical inclinations. This chapter introduces three heresies as examples of the construction of deviance. ‘Arianism’ represents the mechanisms by which doctrinal disagreements were deduced into a fundamental heresy. ‘Donatism’ stands for local disagreements that ecclesiastical leaders at first categorized as a schism but later defined as a heresy. ‘Pelagianism’ exemplifies the competition for resources between Christian groups.

Part Lion, Part Wolf

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438
Author(s):  
Mathieu E. Courville
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In this essay, I begin by examining arguments concerning “Orientalism” from the work of the late Edward W. Said. I then highlight the way that Kurban Said’s novella Ali and Nino is indebted to this tradition, the author relying upon it in order to create a complex world within a few pages. On the one hand, this novella is a wonderful work of art with which to work out some of Edward Said’s key ideas, and on the other hand, appreciating Edward Said’s key ideas is also crucial for a better appreciation of this novella’s complexity. The second part of the paper focuses on the novella itself, so as to think of Ali and Nino with Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism in the foreground of one’s mind. In conclusion, I not only highlight why this also sheds light on art and literature, religion and politics, history and current affairs, in such a geopolitically important area as the Caucasus as well as elsewhere the world over; I also point out parallels between the Orientalist stereotypes examined in this essay and key ideas from ascetic religious traditions.

scholarly journals Interreligious Dialogue, Comparative Theology and the Alterity of Hindu Thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ankur Barua
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
British India ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
The One

A key question at the heart of contemporary debates over interreligious dialogue is whether the Christian partner in such conversations should view her interlocutors through the lens of Christian descriptions or whether any such imaging amounts to a form of Christian imperialism. We look at the responses to this question from certain contemporary forms of ‘particularism’ which regard religious universes as densely knit, and sometimes incommensurable, systems of meanings, so that they usually deny the significance, or even the possibility, of modes of bible preaching such as apologetics. While these concerns over the alterity of other religious traditions are often viewed as specifically postmodern, two Scotsmen in British India, J. N. Farquhar (1861–1929) and A. G. Hogg (1875–1954), struggled exactly a hundred years ago with a version of this question vis-à-vis the religious universe of Vedāntic Hinduism and responded to it in a manner that has striking resemblances to ‘particularism’. We shall argue that Hogg can be seen as an early practitioner of a form of ‘comparative theology’ which emerges in his case, on the one hand, through a textual engagement with specific problems thrown up in interreligious spaces but, on the other hand, also seeks to present a reasoned defence of Christian doctrinal statements. We shall note a crucial difference between his comparative theological encounters and contemporary practitioners of the same – while the latter are usually wary of speaking of any ‘common ground’ in interreligious encounters, Hogg regarded the presuppositions of the Christian faith as the basis of such encounters. The writings of both groups of theologians are structured by certain ‘dilemmas of difference’ that we explore.

scholarly journals Between History and Universality: Understanding Identity in the Public Sphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Nisar Alungal Chungath
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

Identity is not a fixed and frozen prison-house for the self, but a liquid continuum, affected and shaped by the ‘outside’ or the world. The self, which is situated and which undergoes revisions and transformations, keeps identity as a frame within which it makes sense of things. On the one hand, there is a ‘history’ within which an identity is rooted and through which meaning-making is made possible, and on the other hand, every person aspires to be a ‘universal’ and recognition-worthy human being. Both inherent identity and inherent universality of the self should be considered in their interactions in the public sphere, which has been traditionally viewed as a space of discrete individualities. The ontological force of this argument aside, the paper demonstrates that reduction of an identity without crediting its aspiration for universality and consideration of universality without crediting the historical underpinnings of identity are both acts of violation. 

scholarly journals Fallible Authority

Ecclesiology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Adrian Suter
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Papal Authority ◽  
The One ◽  
Deontic Authority ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Old Catholic theologians have often underlined the relationship between papal supremacy and infallibility and the priority of the former: the pope has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, therefore he must be obeyed; but at the same time, he may be obeyed, because he will not mislead the Church due to his infallibility. This article analyses this relationship, applying differentiations on two axes: on the one hand, Bocheński’s typology of epistemic and deontic authority; on the other hand, the notions of personal, formal and constitutional authority. The fact that the infallibility dogma of Vatican i considers papal authority at the same time as epistemic and constitutional authority, is identified as a major weakness of the dogma. The article will then approach the question how church leaders should practise their deontic authority in a context where their (and everybody else’s) epistemic authority is considered to be fallible.

Mysticism, history of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Payne
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
The One

Contemporary authors generally associate mysticism with a form of consciousness involving an apparent encounter or union with an ultimate order of reality, however this is understood. Mysticism in this sense, it is argued, can be found in virtually all cultures and religious traditions, and is perhaps as old as humanity itself. None the less, there is no agreement on the identifying characteristics of mystical states; the term ‘mysticism’ and its cognates have undergone long evolution and been used in a bewildering variety of ways. Such ongoing disputes about the nature and significance of mysticism only underscore both the challenge and the importance of studying its history. On the one hand, without consensus on a definition, scholars disagree on which texts and figures merit inclusion in a historical survey of mysticism. On the other hand, arguments about whether mystical experiences are ‘everywhere the same’ can hardly be settled apart from attention to the historical evidence.

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