Diverse Trajectories at the Intersection of Religion and Sexuality During Emerging Adulthood

This chapter explores the intersection of religion and sex among emerging adults. It first discusses the extant empirical literature related to how religion influences sexual behavioral decisions as well as the link between religion and sexual values and attitudes. It then acknowledges a general waning from religion during emerging adulthood but presents diverse trajectories related to the religious lives of emerging adults and their sexual decision making. Next, the chapter discusses a variety of pathways and trajectories through which emerging adults may travel as they navigate decisions involving relationships and sexual intimacy and how such decisions are, may be, or are not influenced by religion. The four presented trajectories are religious rejecters, religious remainers, religious returners, and religious innovators. The chapter concludes by addressing some additional complexities regarding emerging adults, religion, and sex and offers some concluding questions and directions for future research.

Contribution of Sufism to the Development of Moderate Islam in Nusantara

This article analyzes the relationship between Sufism (mystical Islam) and the making of moderate Islam in Nusantara, a region that historically has been covered by various Muslim-majority populations in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. This focus is important for two reasons. First, Islam was first introduced to this region through the hands of Sufi preachers when Sufism was the the-dominant feature of Islam. Second, Islam has been practiced peacefully in this region for centuries through an adaptation with mystical practices of the local beliefs. Thus, the main question of this article is aimed at exploring the ways in which Sufism has contributed to the development of moderate Islam in Nusantara. In doing so, two different approaches are employed: the orthopraxic and historical approach and the phenomenological approach. While the former is especially employed to examine the historical introduction of Sufism into Nusantara, the latter is to analyze the essential teachings of Sufism, which are deemed flexible and inclusive towards cultural diversity. This study concludes that the development of moderate Islam in Nusantara cannot be separated from the century-long contribution of Sufism, the implication of which has created fundamental structures for harmonization of religious lives in Nusantara.

Charity in Medieval Sufi Islam: Spiritual Dimensions

The Early Chishti Sufi Shaikhs from thirteenth and fourteenth century Delhi made critical interventions in the religious lives of the Muslims in South Asia. They cultivated in their adherents the much-needed ethical vision and sensitivity towards the socially marginalized. Yet hardly any attention is paid to the pedagogy of these Sufis on religion and spirituality. Their discourses on their community are documented in their literary works like malfūzāt. Of late, malfūzāt have been studied as a literary genre for the unique processes of their making. But their didactic contents on Islam and their instructions to Sufi initiates have barely been examined. This lacuna stems on account of the usage of these religious texts as fillers for information lacking in court chronicles. The essay studies the pedagogy of the Early Chishtī Shaikhs and as they related to charity in medieval South Asia. It also examines the mechanisms deployed by them to cultivate a philanthropic vision in Muslims in the praxis of faith.

Canadian and American Religion Redux: Revisiting America’s Religious Exceptionalism and Persistence Compared to Canada

Two core lines of argument presently define our understanding of why Christianity’s historical influence continues to persist in the lives of Americans to a degree not observed in Canada (despite the recent loss of religious affiliation in both countries). These are: 1) changes in the functional dominance of social systems (i.e. shifts to the welfare state in Canada) and 2) important foundational, cultural differences between Canada and America. Using a historiographic approach (coupled with quantitative research conducted in Canada and the US), this article argues that one less well-recognized factor also deserves our attention: Charles Taylor’s observation that American religious culture was primed for the Age of Authenticity. In this article I argue that Taylor was probably right. Over and above the well-established individualistic character of the religious lives of Americans is a related, but important, additional effect—the sanctioning of the ‘this-worldly’ potential of the individual life from within its religious institutions. It is this aspect of America’s religious exceptionalism, I argue, that has also helped to render the religious lives of Americans less vulnerable to – but not immune from – the watershed effects of the sixties compared to Christianity in Canada.

Studying Jewish Women

This chapter explores the problems of studying Orthodox Jewish women, in particular the 'double invisibility' they experience, first from the perspective of male Orthodox Jews, and, second, in the lack of knowledge about them in the non-Jewish world. Orthodox women engage in a wide range of communal and domestic religious activities, in spite of their exclusion from an active role in worship in synagogue and from some areas of Torah study. Activities defined by Orthodoxy as the supreme religious privileges of women, such as keeping a kosher kitchen, preparing food for sabbath and festivals, and nurturing and educating children, remain largely invisible to Orthodox men. Standard descriptions of women's practices in the domestic and individual spheres omit many widespread customs and practices, often characterized as 'superstitions' although they form an integral and meaningful part of many women's religious lives. A major problem in studying women's religious lives and the ways in which they differ from and intersect with those of men is imagining how women fit into one's overall picture of Jewish religious activity. Neither the 'separate but equal' apologetic nor the simplistic identification of 'oppressed and oppressors' made by some feminists provides an adequate way of thinking about the relationship between male and female lived experience of Judaism. Given that Orthodox Judaism is undeniably patriarchal, it may reasonably be asked whether women have any access to power or agency within the religious life of the community, particularly in matters of ritual and correct practice.

Red Threads and Amulets: Women’s ‘Unofficial’ Life in the Family

This chapter explores unofficial domestic customs. The least visible aspect of Jewish women's lives is the individual customs or practices they perform in a domestic or everyday context, many learnt from female relatives, and the part these play in their religious lives. Individual practices are often so automatic that women do not reflect on them. In some cases, they receive so little attention from rabbis or in popular Jewish literature that women themselves discount or denigrate them as 'superstitions', even as they practise them. There has been a decline in older practices, which are more likely to be identified as magical or superstitious by women operating partly within a Western worldview, whereas more pietistic practices have increased in number among young women with higher levels of formal Jewish education. Other factors that facilitate and shape change in women's religious lives include developing technology in the Western world, such as the replacement of domestic manufacture by industrial production, leading to the demise of customs associated with these technologies, and the growing possibilities offered by the Internet in spreading knowledge of recently invented or expanded customs. Traditionalist women, though principally Western in their education and thinking, are still inextricably linked to their Jewish identity, which often includes customs and practices for which they might struggle to find a rationale, but which they are committed to observing. These customs provide a fertile field for women to adapt and reinterpret existing practices, and to invent new ones that express their most urgent concerns and aims.

Contested Prayers and Powerful Blessings: Women’s ‘Unofficial’ Life in the Community

This chapter deals with unofficial communal activity. A wide range of informal communal activities provides women with opportunities for religious or spiritual self-expression and for creating ritual contexts that function as substitutes for the communal rituals closed to them. It is here that they show most creativity and originality, often adapting or even inventing rituals. In Israel, the related practice of women praying in the standard synagogue service but then conducting a separate women-only Torah reading has taken root in several places. Until recently, the only regular prayer service for women in London was in Stanmore under the auspices of Stanmore and Canons Park United Synagogue. Many women feel that these services constitute the high point of their religious lives, offering an opportunity for quiet reflection and participation. This also allowed women the opportunity to learn more about the service and individual prayers, the sense of active participation. Recently, a new trend has emerged within the British Orthodox community. Small groups of highly educated professionals in their thirties and forties from the Modern Orthodox sector of the community, have begun to hold services known as partnership minyanim, in which women lead non-obligatory parts of the service, as well as reading the Torah and haftarah and being called up to recite the Torah blessings. Women also give sermons at these services, and recite Kaddish if they are mourners. Consideration of these non-official communal rituals provides further support for the threefold division of Orthodox women into haredi, Modern Orthodox, and traditionalist groups.

Reconceptualising the Elements of Islamic Propagation: Religious Response and Adaptation to New Media

The internet has tremendous effects to social and religious lives, including Islamic propagation (da'wah) activities. This paper aims to examine the fundamental concepts of da'wah in response to the mushrooming of cyber based-da’wah as well as adaptation to new media culture. Using a qualitative research for conceptual design, this study has found that the proliferation of cyber religious proselytizing leads the elements of da'wah have become ever-widening concepts. The concept of da’i, for instance, has experienced the reconceptualisation that not only refers to person who convey Islamic teachings through religious sermon (khutbah), but also denotes to a creative content provider for da’wah purposes in the internet. Additionally, the power of preaching in the new media lies in good, comprehensive, and argumentative messages. Similarly, redefinition of the concepts ma'du, feedback, and other da'wah elements occur as response to digital media culture.