A Role for Religion?

The perspective of the preceding chapters has been humanistic but non-religious. This chapter is concerned with the possible role of religion in education. Endeavoring to steer between two kinds of fundamentalists—those who view particular scriptures as morally authoritative, and the “new atheists” who aim to abolish religion entirely—it argues that the crucial insight (stemming from Immanuel Kant) is to recognize the priority of morality. Once that is appreciated, secular humanists can ally with devotees of any religion, provided that the faithful have reached an ecumenical stage of religious progress. The educational consequences allow religion a role in the classroom, for comparative studies that promote dialogue among religions (and between religions and forms of secular humanism), and that appreciate both the contributions and the blemishes of the world’s major religions.

Composting arcadia: Stories from Pākehā women “of the land” in Wairarapa, Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>I suggest that this thesis is a compost pile from Wairarapa that slowly turns over harmful but potentially fertile tales of arcadia. I narrate this thesis drawing on the fleshly stories of ten Pākehā (colonial settler) women “of the land’ and the ethico-onto-epistemology of Donna Haraway’s compost making. Composting is Haraway’s (2016) latest feminist call to trouble and queer the self-contained secular humanism of Western modernity. Uprooting the Western separation of ‘nature’ from culture, Haraway’s philosophy provides an earthly foundation in which to compost arcadia. Arcadia is an antique ‘nature’ myth that has been enmeshed in the process of Western world making from Classical Greece to the European ‘Age of Discovery’. Arcadia was used by the British to colonise Aotearoa New Zealand in the nineteenth century. As a Pākehā, I have been compelled to explore this myth because of the way it has seeped into transcendent understandings of land for descendants of colonial settlers like myself. Commonly known as a rural paradise, arcadia was a strategy for ‘normalising’ and ‘naturalising’ European occupancy in New Zealand (Evans, 2007; Fairburn, 1989). British arcadianism arrived on the shores of New Zealand, Victorian and romantic. Therefore, in this thesis I posit that through both settler and romantic ideals, Pākehā continue to use arcadianism to relate to land. For example, presently in Aotearoa there is a populist national debate that has, broadly speaking, pitted farmers and environmentalists against each other. Sparked by recent situations such as the ‘dairy boom’ and the decline in New Zealand’s water quality, tensions have mounted between those wanting to increase agricultural production and those who believe more environmental preservation is needed. After pondering such issues I realised these positions both express contrasting sides to the New Zealand arcadian narrative: A settler arcadia that promulgates the establishment of a small family farm and a romantic arcadia that envisions a pristine ‘natural’ paradise. I worked through these issues on, in, and with, the ground of Wairarapa with Pākehā women who were engaged in various kinds of rural land practice. Using a critical autoethnographic voice and the idea of geography as ‘earth writing’ I draw on creative qualitative modes, visual approaches and ethnographic adventures to form fulsome stories that compost arcadia. The figure of Pan, the deity of the actual place of Arcadia, helps me with this composting project. Pan is a human-goat hybrid, queer trouble maker, and, as a trickster, has invoked in me my critical autoethnographic, fictional voice. My encounters with women and Pan showed me fertile ways in which Pākehā have inherited the histories of arcadia and how these histories are corporeally significant and fruitfully challenge the separation of ‘nature’ and culture. Such meaningful matter or matters have, in turn, provided verdant ways to discuss Pākehā becoming and response-ability. Through the material stories of trees, pasture, hills, mountains, waterways, animals and family, compostable arcadias emerged, yielding, what I call in this thesis, landhome making. Landhome making queers the essentialising qualities of ‘homeland’ and ‘homemaker’ but most importantly relates the significance of land in the making of home for the women of this thesis. Landhome making is about exploring, through everyday practice, what it means to be Pākehā for participants and myself that — resultantly — contributes to wider national discussions on how Pākehā might ‘become with’ land (Haraway, 2008; 2016; Newton, 2009).</p>

Composting arcadia: Stories from Pākehā women “of the land” in Wairarapa, Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>I suggest that this thesis is a compost pile from Wairarapa that slowly turns over harmful but potentially fertile tales of arcadia. I narrate this thesis drawing on the fleshly stories of ten Pākehā (colonial settler) women “of the land’ and the ethico-onto-epistemology of Donna Haraway’s compost making. Composting is Haraway’s (2016) latest feminist call to trouble and queer the self-contained secular humanism of Western modernity. Uprooting the Western separation of ‘nature’ from culture, Haraway’s philosophy provides an earthly foundation in which to compost arcadia. Arcadia is an antique ‘nature’ myth that has been enmeshed in the process of Western world making from Classical Greece to the European ‘Age of Discovery’. Arcadia was used by the British to colonise Aotearoa New Zealand in the nineteenth century. As a Pākehā, I have been compelled to explore this myth because of the way it has seeped into transcendent understandings of land for descendants of colonial settlers like myself. Commonly known as a rural paradise, arcadia was a strategy for ‘normalising’ and ‘naturalising’ European occupancy in New Zealand (Evans, 2007; Fairburn, 1989). British arcadianism arrived on the shores of New Zealand, Victorian and romantic. Therefore, in this thesis I posit that through both settler and romantic ideals, Pākehā continue to use arcadianism to relate to land. For example, presently in Aotearoa there is a populist national debate that has, broadly speaking, pitted farmers and environmentalists against each other. Sparked by recent situations such as the ‘dairy boom’ and the decline in New Zealand’s water quality, tensions have mounted between those wanting to increase agricultural production and those who believe more environmental preservation is needed. After pondering such issues I realised these positions both express contrasting sides to the New Zealand arcadian narrative: A settler arcadia that promulgates the establishment of a small family farm and a romantic arcadia that envisions a pristine ‘natural’ paradise. I worked through these issues on, in, and with, the ground of Wairarapa with Pākehā women who were engaged in various kinds of rural land practice. Using a critical autoethnographic voice and the idea of geography as ‘earth writing’ I draw on creative qualitative modes, visual approaches and ethnographic adventures to form fulsome stories that compost arcadia. The figure of Pan, the deity of the actual place of Arcadia, helps me with this composting project. Pan is a human-goat hybrid, queer trouble maker, and, as a trickster, has invoked in me my critical autoethnographic, fictional voice. My encounters with women and Pan showed me fertile ways in which Pākehā have inherited the histories of arcadia and how these histories are corporeally significant and fruitfully challenge the separation of ‘nature’ and culture. Such meaningful matter or matters have, in turn, provided verdant ways to discuss Pākehā becoming and response-ability. Through the material stories of trees, pasture, hills, mountains, waterways, animals and family, compostable arcadias emerged, yielding, what I call in this thesis, landhome making. Landhome making queers the essentialising qualities of ‘homeland’ and ‘homemaker’ but most importantly relates the significance of land in the making of home for the women of this thesis. Landhome making is about exploring, through everyday practice, what it means to be Pākehā for participants and myself that — resultantly — contributes to wider national discussions on how Pākehā might ‘become with’ land (Haraway, 2008; 2016; Newton, 2009).</p>

Dissent from Mt. Ventoux: Between Christian and Secular Humanism in Petrarch’s de Ascensu Montis Ventosi

Petrarch’s letter de Ascensu Montis Ventosi has long served as the founding document of “renaissance humanism”. Since thebeginning of renaissance studies in the mid-nineteenth century, the letter has become almost a talisman for summoning the new, secular spirit of humanism that spontaneously arrived in Italy in the fourteenth century, took hold of the hearts and minds of Europeans in the fifteenth century, and led to cataclysmic cultural, religious, and political changes in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This reading, still common among non-specialists, especially in the English-speaking world, is overly simplistic and ignores Petrarch’s profound debt to classical and Christian tradition, obscuring the fundamentally religious character of the letter. This article examines how scholars came to assign the letter so much importance and offers an interpretation that stresses Petrarch’s continuity with tradition and his desire to revitalize rather than reinvent the traditions of Christian scholarship and contemplation.

Assimilate The Qur'an's View with Science and Technology Perspectives

Integration in the education of Muslims has become an agenda among Islamic intellectuals and activists. Where secular humanism and atheistic modernism leave Muslims with a legacy of educational dichotomy. Many contemporary Islamic educational institutions have been established since then, each with some distinctive integration models. Many Muslims advance the true integration of the Qur'an worldview in the Science and Technology curriculum whose students are at a critical stage of cognitive development, affective, spiritual, social, and ethical. This research presents qualitative reports that analyze several samples of integration models in a number of Islamic schools in Indonesia. In an effort to understand the Science and Technology Perspective this article assesses the worldview that has brought science and technology to its current stage. This research proposes a model for Islamic school education in which science and technology undergo thoughtful but holistic reconstruction, reinterpretation, and diversion of frameworks, and are organically infused with the Qur'an, and enrich 'Islamic studies' with good grounding and Science.

Reconciling Homosexuality and Spirituality in Africa as a Heresy and Survival Strategy

The fight against homophobia in Africa has motivated the emergence of various advocacy initiatives including pro-gay religious forces. One of such initiatives – which have audaciously Christianized homosexuality – has been the Nigerian based, House of Rainbow (LGBT church). Using observations and a critical exploitation of secondary sources, this book chapter critically appraises this church in the light of four socio-religious theories namely, secular humanism, postmodernism, religious liberalism and African conservatism. The chapter is divided into four main parts. The first part provides a theoretical framework composed of four movements namely postmodernism, secular humanism, religious liberalism and African conservatism. The second part explores the origin, mission and structure of House of Rainbow. The third part examines House of Rainbow as postmodernist and religious humanist Christianity; while the last part examines the extent to which the gay-only church is more a survival strategy for Nigerian LGBT people than it is a heresy.

Mickiewiczowska hermeneutyka "tego, co religijne". Próba lektury postsekularnej

Adam Mickiewicz’s Hermeneutics of “the Religious”: An Attempt at a Postsecular ReadingThis article synthetically presents the hermeneutic attitude revealed in Mickiewicz’s work (poetry as well as lectures and journalism). It is analyzed from a post-secular perspective. The poet opposes the reductive secularism of the Enlightenment and its secular humanism. He also encourages preserving “the religious” and reviving religious concepts. However, this should not be a simple return to the past (conservatism), but rather a rethinking of religion with consideration to the new, secular conditions. Mickiewicz follows the scattered interpretations of the traces of transcendence or sacrum in various traditions and different ways of thinking: from mythology, pagan practices and folk piety to sophisticated mysticism and complicated theosophy. This Romantic thinker appears as a dialogue mediator between various religious languages, as well as between opposite beliefs and discourses (the ritualized religiosity of the official Church, rationalist Enlightenment philosophy, simple and sensual folk religiosity). The aim is to renew the broken relationship (‘union’) that connects man to God and creation, and to rebuild the community. In “the religious” he tries to find the common basis or extract the universal truths. In his opinion, Christianity is what connects and summarizes all religious traditions. According to this poet-politician, the revival of the religioncentered spirit is associated with the freedom revolution (the abolition of slavery, equality of women, emancipation of nations). He believes that the transcendent perspective of human history is the main guarantee of social change and true community. In a broader context, the hermeneutic strategy of this Polish Romantic can be interpreted as a post-secular stance,mas it urges us to rethink and internalize all levels of religion, which should be continuously and constantly updated in one’s life. Mickiewiczowska hermeneutyka „tego, co religijne”. Próba lektury postsekularnejArtykuł w syntetyczny sposób prezentuje ujawniającą się w twórczości Mickiewicza (zarówno poetyckiej, jak i wykładowej czy publicystycznej) postawę hermeneutyczną, która analizowana jest w horyzoncie myśli postsekularnej. Poeta dyskutuje z redukcyjnymi przejawami oświeceniowego sekularyzmu i jego świeckim humanizmem. Zachęca do zachowania „tego, co religijne” oraz do odnowienia religijnych pojęć. Nie chodzi jednak o prosty powrót do tego, co było (konserwatyzm), lecz o przemyślenie religii na nowo – w zmienionych warunkach po sekularyzacji. Mickiewicz śledzi rozproszone interpretacje śladów transcendencji czy tropów sacrum w rozmaitych tradycjach i sposobach mówienia o tym: od mitologii, folkloru, praktyk pogańskich, pobożności ludowej, po wyrafinowaną mistykę czy skomplikowaną teozofię. Romantyczny myśliciel jawi się jako dialogujący mediator między różnymi religijnymi językami, a także zderzającymi się przekonaniami i dyskursami (religijność zrytualizowana Kościoła urzędowego, racjonalistyczna filozofia oświeceniowa, sensualna w swej prostocie religijność ludowa). Celem tych działań jest odnowa zerwanej więzi („spójni”) łączącej człowieka z Bogiem i stworzeniem oraz odbudowa wspólnoty. W „tym, co religijne” szuka tego, co wspólne, wyłuskuje prawdy uniwersalne. Tym, co łączy i podsumowuje wszystkie okołoreligijne tradycje jest, jego zdaniem, chrześcijaństwo. Odrodzenie ducha religijnego poeta-polityk wiąże z rewolucją wolnościową (zniesienie niewolnictwa, równouprawnienie kobiet, emancypacja ludów). Wierzy, że transcendentna perspektywa dziejów ludzkości jest gwarantem zmian społecznych oraz źródłem prawdziwej wspólnoty. W szerokim kontekście strategię hermeneutyczną polskiego romantyka można odczytywać jako gest postsekularny, gdyż namawia do przemyślenia i uwewnętrznienia wszystkich poziomów religii, by poprowadzić ją dalej, nieustannie uaktualniając w swojej biografii.