Faith-based action and urban regeneration

After describing the challenges, myths, exclusions and opportunities of urban regeneration, this article explores the potential interface between faith-based action and different forms of urban regeneration. Focusing on different South African cities, it considers how faith-based action could participate in regenerative urban work. Faith-based action will refer to the varied responses of churches and faith-based organisations to urban challenges and transitions. It interrogates whether faith-based action only represents many similar approaches that address urban problems superficially without mediating long-term, systemic change, or whether it indeed contributes to urban transformation in the sense of radical inclusivity and socio-structural spatial justice. Finally, it considers socio-theological sources that could potentially ground urban faith-based action theologically – such as an urban spirituality, an understanding of regeneration as integral liberation and mobilising socio-spiritual capital – whilst making a distinctive contribution to the processes of socially inclusive urban regeneration.

Healthy-minded religious phenomenon in shalawatan: a study on the three majelis shalawat in Java

As a movement, majelis shalawat becomes religious phenomenon that recently flourish in Indonesia, particularly Java. It emerges as urban spirituality like majelis dzikir that previously popular among people. However majelis shalawat is dissimilar with majelis dzikir due to its characters are not sadness, sorrow, and crying; it prefer to express happiness, cheerful, and enjoying religion. These characters indicate a Healthy-minded religious phenomenon, a term which is came originally from William James and popularized by W.H.Clark. Among many majelis shalawat groups ini Indonesia, the three most famous and biggest are Majelis Shalawat Habib Syech (Surakarta), Habib Luthfi (Pekalongan), and Maiyah Cak Nun (Yogyakarta). This research explores characteristics of majelis shalawat that indicate healthy-mindedness. Furthermore, it also discovers various motivations that lead people (jamaah) to follow the majelis shalawat. Conducting qualitative method and Psychology of Religion approach, and employing interview and observation as method for data gathering, it results several findings. First, as a religious activity, shalawatan reallydepends on the role of its charismatic leader. The charisma of Habib Luthfi, Habib Syech, and Cak Nun is the main attractive factor for jamaah to come. It ; "> is because the charismatic leaders have deep understanding of religious knowledge and they also are blessed with certain talent such as beautiful voice and having good skill on music. Besides that, the leaders are often giving smart joke. Second, through shalawatan, people feel happiness and optimistic to face their life, preferring extrovert attitudes, have more free theology, and feels conducive atmosphere for their religious growth. Those are evidences that majelis shalawat has healthy-mindedness characters. Third, people motivation also in in attending majlis shalawat consist of religious escapism, strengthening solidarity and ukhuwah islamiyah, to learn more religious knowledge (thalabul ‘ilmi), and to gain religious transformation.Majelis shalawat sebagai sebuah gerakan merupakan fenomena keagamaan yang marak di Indonesia khususnya Jawa. Kehadirannya lebih sebagai spiritualitas urban namun tampil berbeda jika dibandingkan majelis dzikir yang terlebih dahulu populer. Majelis shalawat tidak menunjukkan cirri sendu, muram, dan tangisan seperti majelis dzikir, namun justru memperlihatkan cirri bahagia, senang, dan menikmati agama. Karakteristik beragama yang demikian oleh Clark dan William James disebut healthy mindedness. Dari beberapa majelis shalawat di Indonesia, tiga yang terbesar adalah Majelis Shalawat Habib Syech (Surakarta), Habib Luthfi (Pekalongan), Maiyah Cak Nun (Yogyakarta). Penelitian ini menelusuri apa saja karakteristik majelis shalawat yang merupakan indikasi healthymindedness, kemudian mengungkap pula ragam motivasi yang mendorong jamaah mengikuti majelis shalawat. Dengan menerapkan metode kualitatif dan pendekatan Psikologi Agama, dan dengan interview serta observasi sebagai alat utama pengumpulan data, penelitian ini menghasilkan beberapa temuan. Pertama, sebagai sebuah aktifitas keagamaan, majelis shalawat cukup bergantung dari peran sang tokoh utama pemimpin majelis shalawat. Karisma Habib Luthfi, Habib Syech, dan Cak Nun merupakan daya tarik terbesar bagi jamaah. Hal ini karena selain memiliki kedalaman ilmu agama, para pemimpin karismatik tersebut juga diberkahi dengan kemerduan suara dan kemampuan bermusik, bahkan humor cerdas juga sering muncul sehingga menjadi daya tarik tersendiri bagi jamaah. Kedua, dengan mengikuti majeliss halawat, jamaah merasakan kebahagiaan dan optimism dalam menatap kehidupan, mereka bersikap lebih ekstrovet, berteologi secara lebih bebas, dan merasakan situasi yang mendukung untuk perkembangan keberagamaan mereka. Hal-hal tersebut menandakan bahwa majelis shalawat memiliki karakter healthy-mindedness. Ketiga, motivasi jamaah dalam mengikuti majlis shalawat, yaitu untuk mendapatkan jalan keluar yang agamis, menguatkansilaturahim dan ukhuwah islamiyah, mencari ilmu(thalabul ‘ilmi), dan untukmencapai transformasi keagamaan.

Discerning urban spiritualities: Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street and the idols of global market capitalism

Discernment might be said to be a process of searching for meaning in the light of an (un) articulated Absolute. This search takes place in the tension between the private and public spheres of life, mostly mitigated by a community. Intermediate communities, such as churches or social movements, construct symbolic spirituality systems for its adherers to search for meaning in the light of an (un)articulated Absolute. The urban events of Occupy Wall Street and Tahrir Square also step into the tension between the public and private spheres of life, creating a (temporary) symbolic spirituality system for its adherers. These events were attempts to construct alternatives to the meta-narrative of global market capitalism. As events attempting to symbolise an urban spirituality, Tahrir Square and Occupy Wall Street dissipated rapidly, effecting rather little change at the heart of global market capitalism. This article theorises a possible reason for these urban spiritualities� dissipation, namely an overlap with global market capitalism�s idols of instant gratification and technology.Interdisciplinary Implications: Viewing Occupy Walls Street and Tahrir Square as symbolic systems of spirituality further strengthens theological urban discourse whilst adding weight to viewing mass movements as spiritualities attempting discernment.

Gabe’s Stories: Intersecting Spirituality with Speech-Related (Dis)ability

<p>This one-year multicultural feminist critical narrative inquiry focuses on how one Puerto Rican/Black working class male draws on his spirituality to negotiate his speech-related (dis)ability. By utilizing multiple qualitative methods, the researcher and child-co-researcher illuminate how he draws on his agencies and intersecting identities to negotiate teaching people lessons, teasing, and language differences. This paper highlights the abilities of children to name their spiritualities and to tell stories that clearly illustrate the intersections of spiritualities and (dis)abilities. It serves to expand constructions of children as knowledge producers, agents, teachers, justice seekers, and shapers of learning environments. Understanding children’s negotiations of interpersonal school structures has the potential to create more equitable structures that affirm the identities, increase academic success, and support the agencies of children who are marginalized across the intersecting identities.</p> <p>Key Words: Speech-Related Disabilities, Urban, Spirituality, Education, Narrative Inquiry</p>

Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

The idea and the ideal of religious poverty exerted a powerful force throughout the Middle Ages. “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff,” Christ had commanded his apostles. He had sternly warned, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter into the kingdom of God.” And he had instructed one of the faithful, who had asked what he needed to do to live the most holy sort of life, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Beginning with these biblical injunctions, voluntary poverty, the casting off of wealth and worldly goods for the sake of Christ, dominated much of medieval religious thought. The desire for a more perfect poverty impelled devout men and women to new heights of piety, while disgust with the material wealth of the church fueled reform movements and more radical heresies alike. Often, as so clearly illustrated by the case of the Spiritual Franciscans andfraticelliin the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the lines separating devout believer from condemned heretic shifted and even reversed themselves entirely depending on how one understood the religious call to poverty. Moreover, the Christian ideal of poverty interacted powerfully with and helped to shape many major economic, social, and cultural trends in medieval Europe. As Lester Little demonstrated over two decades ago, for example, developing ideals of religious poverty were deeply intermeshed with the revitalizing European economy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and did much to shape the emerging urban spirituality of that period.