A conversation with a stranger: Debunking religiosity and poverty in South Africa

My previous research explored narratives and discourses from marginalised migrants in their quest for survival. This contribution approached the South African context through the lens of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 ‘Ending poverty in all its forms’ and employed John Hick’s notion of ‘soul-making’ to analyse themes that emerged from a summary of a conversation with a stranger. Faith in God, forgiveness and vulnerability are thematically discussed within the context of the struggle for survival through a conversation held with a homeless man in Sinoville, Pretoria, on 03 August 2021. Inspired by this conversation, the article highlights religious expressions of the homeless, their vulnerability and their perceptions of God to contend that some of the homeless prayerfully deploy religiosity and seek God’s guidance to practise Christian values in their daily lives to survive on the margins of society. The contribution challenges dominant narratives on poverty in the context of homelessness and religiosity. The contribution concludes that current developmental discourses need to be decolonised to promote new models for ‘development from below’ which appreciate the role of religion and promote participation of the marginalised in local development initiatives.Contribution: This research contributed to the UN SDG 1 on ending poverty in all its forms by interrogating the vulnerability and religious narratives of homeless people in South Africa through the story of an encounter with a homeless stranger.

A Transforming Path – The Pilgrims’ Songs

This article introduces the composition of the Pilgrim Psalms (120–134). Psalm 122 plays a key role in this. Jerusalem, the destination of the trip, will be a stop on the way. The pilgrimage to the place of faith becomes a path to the points of suffering in society. The background comes into view with Psalm 123, a psalm lacking an expression of trust, the low point of the entire trip. It begins the spiritual work that always occurs in places of faith: The language of power and the language of religion have become intermingled and perverted perceptions of God. Psalm 123 counteracts this misunderstanding of God by addressing God. In Psalm 123 the power and nature of prayer can be experienced intensely. Prayer is the discovery of God’s surrender to us humans and an act of freedom in relation to the existing balance of power.

Dieva īpašību atainojums latviešu tautasdziesmās teopoētikas kontekstā

An innovative view to theological texts as a literary genre has been established in research of the modern religions and designated as theopoetics, because, irrespective of whether a theological text is written in the poetic genre, in the form of a story or the style of a more dense, theoretical prose, it is based on the poesis: innovative, intuitive and an imaginary composition of the authors where the central figure is God. Therefore, approximately ten thousand recorded and published folk songs, as well as other Latvian folklore texts about God, are equal to theopoetics as a genre of creative writing with its specific expression tools. Folk songs are a product of purposeful human spiritual/intellectual activity and imagination, a typical cultural phenomenon of the relevant society, which helps to study the public’s views about the perception of God. To approach adequately to analysis and interpretation of such texts, in the late 20th century, a new method of research on religious texts – theopoetics – was established. Theopoetics is a method of analysing religious texts that encourages us to look at the ancient metaphors of God from another angle. It explores the language possibilities of figuratively creating God’s patterns, unlike the previous “scientific” God’s theories as the systematic attempt of theology to find God through the living (“incarnated”) God. Theopoetics theorists accept reality as a source of divine revelation as well as personal experience and metaphor-influenced divine understanding in various religions. This method allows to establish the essence and possible interpretations of the basic metaphors used in every individual religion: 1) critically weigh up the previous explanations of God; 2) study the interaction of applied metaphors, models and concepts within religion; 3) offers the potential of transformative, revolutionary models, using the language and metaphor layer that is widely understandable and used by people in everyday life. Research of metaphors does not impose objective or general criteria for assessing understanding of God; therefore, the aim of theopoetical discourse is not to prevent competing interpretations but to multiply the number of perceptions of God, to extend the emotional feeling, and to reveal new opinions. Folk songs figuratively represent God in metaphors and comparisons, but the theopoetics method has not been applied in the previous studies of God either because it is a relatively new methodological system, or because God’s perception in the folk songs has not been the focus of researchers of contemporary religions.

Philosophy of God in The View of Philosophers

In every episode of human history, every human being must need God. There is no one who is not godless, even though they worship God according to their respective perceptions of God himself. According to historians, human devotion to God, the Creator is something that is both essential and existential needs of every human being. This fact can be seen also in the historical-sociological intellectual exploration conducted by Karen Armstrong about the search for humanity against God. From classical times to modern times, in Armstrong's search it turns out that every human being always constructs the concept of God. It is done by theologians, philosophers, Sufis, or reformers. Therefore, this article will explore the existence of God in the perspectives of philosophers which includes ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, moral arguments, and arguments of religious experience.

On Perceiving God

This chapter focuses on a gap in existing cognitive scientific explanations of religion: although they may explain various religious beliefs, they are weak at explaining religious experiences—including the very perception-like experiences that believers often take as grounding their belief in God. The account argues that cognitive science of religion (CSR) to date provides neither the full-blown concept of a deity nor dedicated cognitive resources for arriving at the perception of one. The gap is not inevitable, however: it is shown how certain religious experiences could indeed qualify as direct perceptions of God, on a traditional model of perception. Moreover, one can explain how humans acquired the conceptual and computational resources to perceive supernatural beings by supposing that human beings have actually interacted with such beings in evolutionarily significant ways throughout history. The chapter closes with some epistemic implications of looking at CSR in this “reformed” way.

Attachment to God Uniquely Predicts Variation in Well-Being Outcomes

Prior research shows that one's relationship with God is often patterned on interpersonal attachment style. In other words, the expectations people have about the supportiveness of close others tend to color perceptions of God. Past research also shows that well-being corresponds with a more secure view of others in attachment relationships, both interpersonal and divine. This raises an important theoretical question: Are the associations between attachment to God and well-being due to the unique nature of that bond or are they merely due to the incidental overlap between human and divine attachment style? We predicted that having a more secure (i.e., less anxious and avoidant) attachment toward God would tend to predict better well-being, even after statistically controlling for interpersonal attachments. We found broad support for this prediction in two large samples over a wide range of well-being indicators. These data suggest that attachment to God uniquely fosters well-being.