The Plight of Western Religion

‘Religion’ can be used to mean all kinds of things, but a substantive definition––based on the premise of superhuman powers––can clarify much. It allows us to attempt to differentiate religion from culture, ethnicity, morality and politics.This definition of religion necessarily implies a perception of reality. Until recent centuries in the West, and in most cultures still, the ordinary, natural and immediate way of understanding and experiencing reality was in terms of otherworldly or spiritual forces. However, a cognitive shift has taken place through the rise of science and its subsequent technological application.This new consciousness has not disproved the existence of spiritual forces, but has led to the marginalization of the other-worldly, which even Western churches seem to accept. They persist, but increasingly as pressure groups promoting humanist values.Claims of ‘American exceptionalism’ in this regard are misleading. Obama’s religion, Evangelical support for Trump, and the mega-church message of success in the capitalist system can all be cultural and political phenomena. This eclipsing of the other-worldly constitutes a watershed in human history, with profound consequences not just for religious institutions but for our entire world order.

Gospel Drag

Gender has been under-theorized within studies of people of African descent. This problem has led to the misunderstanding, suppression, and exclusion of transgendered and gender non-conforming people's experiences and identities within research on black sexuality, including black queer sexuality. This problem has been especially egregious in the burgeoning scholarship on black masculinity that has ignored black female and transmale masculinities that challenge the very ontological conceptions of black manhood upon which this scholarship is based. Black transgender and gender non-conforming people have created and continue to fashion a myriad of strategies to construct their identities in various positional relationships to binary gender and sexual categories. Performance has been a means through which these strategies are enacted. Bailey and Richardson interrogate African American gender common sense as demonstrated in dominant institutions of the black mega church and historically black colleges and universities, impact our understanding of trans- or non-conforming masculinities. They also examine how Ballroom and drag culture (and other gender queer communities) allow for and facilitate the construction of both hegemonic and alternative embodiments of masculinities.

Gereja Ekstra Biblikal dan Tanggung Jawab dalam Menyelesaikan Amanat Agung

There has emerged a kind of phenomenon of extra-biblical churches in present days. This article is a qualitative study that aimed to explain the phenomenon of the extra-biblical church. By using the descriptive analysis method on the extra-biblical church phenomenon, there are some findings concluded from this study, namely: First, the extra-biblical church is a church whose existence and legitimacy exceeds Bible standards, its pattern and behavior exceed the demands of the Bible. Secondly, the extra-biblical church legitimized by tradition, traditional and traditional forms have several deadly good traditions such as the tradition of growth not multiplication, the tradition of teaching not obedience, the tradition of service in not outreach and so on; Third, the extra-biblical church is oriented and has a mega church structure that is so complex and very expensive that it is difficult to duplicate and multiply. As a result, there is a decrease in intensity in carrying out the grand mandate. AbstrakBelakangan ini muncul semacam fenomena gereja ekstra biblikal. Ini merupakan kajian kualitatif yang bertujuan untuk menjelaskan fenomena gereja ekstra biblikal tersebut. Dengan menggunakan metode analisis deskriptif pada fenomena gereja ekstra biblikal tersebut, ada beberapa kesimpulan yang didapat dari kajian ini, yakni: Pertama, gereja ekstra biblikal adalah gereja yang eksistensi dan legitimasinya melebihi standar Alkitab, pola dan perilakunya melampaui tuntutan Alkitab. Kedua, gereja ekstra biblika dilegitimasi oleh tradisi, berpaham dan berbentuk tradisional memiliki beberapa tradisi baik yang mematikan seperti tradisi pertumbuhan bukan pelipatgandaan, tradisi pengajaran bukan ketaatan, tradisi pelayanan ke dalam bukan penjangkauan ke luar dan sebagainaya; Ketiga, gereja ekstra biblika berorentasi dan berstruktur gereja mega yag begitu rumit dan sangat mahal sehingga sulit diduplikasi dan dimultiplikasi. Akibatnya, terjadi penurunan intensitas dalam melakukan amanat agung.

Pentecostal Forms across Religious Divides: Media, Publicity, and the Limits of an Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism

Scholars of Pentecostalism have usually studied people who embrace it, but rarely those who do not. I suggest that the study of global Pentecostalism should not limit itself to Pentecostal churches and movements and people who consider themselves Pentecostal. It should include the repercussions of Pentecostal ideas and forms outside Pentecostalism: on non-Pentecostal and non-Christian religions, on popular cultural forms, and on what counts as ‘religion’ or ‘being religious’. Based on my ethnographic study of a charismatic-Pentecostal mega-church and a neo-traditional African religious movement in Ghana, I argue that neo-Pentecostalism, due to its strong and mass-mediated public presence, provides a powerful model for the public representation of religion in general, and some of its forms are being adopted by non-Pentecostal and non-Christian groups, including the militantly anti-Pentecostal Afrikania Mission. Instead of treating neo-Pentecostal and neo-traditionalist revival as distinct religious phenomena, I propose to take seriously their intertwinement in a single religious field and argue that one cannot sufficiently understand the rise of new religious movements without understanding how they influence each other, borrow from each other, and define themselves vis-à-vis each other. This has consequences for how we conceive of the study of Pentecostalism and how we define its object.

From proto-missional to mega-church: A critique of ecclesial ‘growth’ in Korea

In the last couple of decades, the Korean church experienced a loss of credibility as well as a decrease in membership. The premise of this contribution is that the mega-church phenomenon in Korea contributed to this state of affairs. Many Korean churches, influenced by dramatic sociopolitical and economic changes, developed a distorted understanding of its nature and mission. Korean churches began to compete against each other to grow bigger. An institutional ecclesiology and ecclesiocentric understanding of mission formed the basis of this endeavour. To counter this tendency, some churches turned to missional ecclesiology to facilitate the reformation of the Korean church. According to empirical data, Korean society rates mega-churches negatively while they evaluate missional churches positively. This provided further impetus for the current emerging missional movement in Korea.

Tyler Perry, T.D. Jakes, and the Birth of Gospel Cinema

Since Perry’s plays share with his film production a similar thematic focus on Christian morality, Keith Corson’s contribution to this collection charts the rise of regional theatre and the translation of the financial, aesthetic, and political model of “gospel theatre’s” urban circuit to the multiplex. In the process of identifying the evangelical influences of some contemporary African American films, which Corson calls “gospelcinema,” the chapter compares Perry’s films with televangelist T.D.Jakes’s in order to argue that their films have helped reshape notions of a Black film audience. Gospel cinema narratives often function as morality tales that align closely with the rise of the Black mega church as they express a middleclass idealism that is rooted in a doctrine of prosperity, self-help, and individualism. Yet, as Corson defines it, gospel cinema also features a unique blend of melodrama, folk humor, and camp aesthetics that complicate a simple faith-based reading.