This article discusses knowledge gained through experiencing the presence of God through the ‘spiritual senses’ as a resource in an Evangelical Lutheran parish. Believers’ being-in-touch experiences with the divine produce a special kind of knowledge that can be shared and passed on in the parish. This ‘spiritual asset’ plays an important part in parochial activities. This development can be explained by the rise of experience-based religiosity and charismatic Christianity, a global Christian trend which is also affecting the mainline churches.
{"title":"Spiritual senses as a resource","authors":"Anna Haapalainen","doi":"10.33356/temenos.60308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.60308","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses knowledge gained through experiencing the presence of God through the ‘spiritual senses’ as a resource in an Evangelical Lutheran parish. Believers’ being-in-touch experiences with the divine produce a special kind of knowledge that can be shared and passed on in the parish. This ‘spiritual asset’ plays an important part in parochial activities. This development can be explained by the rise of experience-based religiosity and charismatic Christianity, a global Christian trend which is also affecting the mainline churches.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"289-311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I pointed out that in previous centuries memento mori exhortations, while popular, were hardly necessary. One’s mortality was all too obvious. However, things are rather different in modern Western societies. Modernity has made the Grim Reaper persona non grata. Death and decay are sequestered in hospitals, hospices, mortuaries, and cemeteries, and much cultural energy is expended developing strategies to obscure and to sanitise the brutal facts of mortality. But still, we are, of course, haunted by the inevitability of death. How could we not be?
{"title":"Death, the Gothic, and popular music: Some reflections on why popular music matters","authors":"C. Partridge","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.58356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.58356","url":null,"abstract":"I pointed out that in previous centuries memento mori exhortations, while popular, were hardly necessary. One’s mortality was all too obvious. However, things are rather different in modern Western societies. Modernity has made the Grim Reaper persona non grata. Death and decay are sequestered in hospitals, hospices, mortuaries, and cemeteries, and much cultural energy is expended developing strategies to obscure and to sanitise the brutal facts of mortality. But still, we are, of course, haunted by the inevitability of death. How could we not be?","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"127-150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses religious belonging in a Christian revivalist community through a reading of Hanna Pylvainen’s novel We Sinners, a fictive history of a Laestadian family in the modern American Midwest. Like many conservative religious groups today, Laestadianism is increasingly affected by secular society’s norms and practices. We claim that the study of everyday religious belonging is essential in order to make sense of the power relations, structures, and dynamics of change within religious groups. The article approaches belonging as a thoroughly embodied state, taking the view that certain kinds of corporeality threaten the cohesion of religious communities while others strengthen it. The politics of belonging in the novel – the practices of inclusion and exclusion – are constructed in, on, and through the regulation of individual bodies. Control over clothing, behaviour, sexuality, movement, and being-in-common produces and governs embodied Laestadian subjectivity, as well as the ways in which belonging is shared.
{"title":"For ourselves and for each other – Politics of embodied religious belonging in the novel We Sinners","authors":"Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo, S. Valkonen","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.48605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.48605","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses religious belonging in a Christian revivalist community through a reading of Hanna Pylvainen’s novel We Sinners, a fictive history of a Laestadian family in the modern American Midwest. Like many conservative religious groups today, Laestadianism is increasingly affected by secular society’s norms and practices. We claim that the study of everyday religious belonging is essential in order to make sense of the power relations, structures, and dynamics of change within religious groups. The article approaches belonging as a thoroughly embodied state, taking the view that certain kinds of corporeality threaten the cohesion of religious communities while others strengthen it. The politics of belonging in the novel – the practices of inclusion and exclusion – are constructed in, on, and through the regulation of individual bodies. Control over clothing, behaviour, sexuality, movement, and being-in-common produces and governs embodied Laestadian subjectivity, as well as the ways in which belonging is shared.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"37-60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69645231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mindfulness-based practice methods are entering the Western cultural mainstream as institutionalised approaches in healthcare, education, and other public spheres. The Buddhist roots of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and comparable mindfulness-based programmes are widely acknowledged, together with the view of their religious and ideological neutrality. However, the cultural and historical roots of these contemporary approaches have received relatively little attention in the study of religion, and the discussion has been centred on Theravāda Buddhist viewpoints or essentialist presentations of ‘classical Buddhism’. In the light of historical and textual analysis it seems unfounded to hold Theravāda tradition as the original context or as some authoritative expression of Buddhist mindfulness, and there are no grounds for holding it as the exclusive Buddhist source of the MBSR programme either. Rather, one-sided Theravāda-based presentations give a limited and oversimplified picture of Buddhist doctrine and practice, and also distort comparisons with contemporary non-religious forms of mindfulness practice. To move beyond the sectarian and essentialist approaches closely related to the ‘world religions paradigm’ in the study of religion, the discussion would benefit from a lineage-based approach, where possible historical continuities and phenomenological similarities between Buddhist mindfulness and contemporary non-religious approaches are examined at the level of particular relevant Buddhist teachers and their lineages of doctrine and practice.
{"title":"On the Buddhist roots of contemporary non-religious mindfulness practice: Moving beyond sectarian and essentialist approaches","authors":"Ville Husgafvel","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.55371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.55371","url":null,"abstract":"Mindfulness-based practice methods are entering the Western cultural mainstream as institutionalised approaches in healthcare, education, and other public spheres. The Buddhist roots of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and comparable mindfulness-based programmes are widely acknowledged, together with the view of their religious and ideological neutrality. However, the cultural and historical roots of these contemporary approaches have received relatively little attention in the study of religion, and the discussion has been centred on Theravāda Buddhist viewpoints or essentialist presentations of ‘classical Buddhism’. In the light of historical and textual analysis it seems unfounded to hold Theravāda tradition as the original context or as some authoritative expression of Buddhist mindfulness, and there are no grounds for holding it as the exclusive Buddhist source of the MBSR programme either. Rather, one-sided Theravāda-based presentations give a limited and oversimplified picture of Buddhist doctrine and practice, and also distort comparisons with contemporary non-religious forms of mindfulness practice. To move beyond the sectarian and essentialist approaches closely related to the ‘world religions paradigm’ in the study of religion, the discussion would benefit from a lineage-based approach, where possible historical continuities and phenomenological similarities between Buddhist mindfulness and contemporary non-religious approaches are examined at the level of particular relevant Buddhist teachers and their lineages of doctrine and practice.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"87-126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In making a contribution to the debate on multiple modernities, this article addresses the growing fragmentation of contemporary interpretations of Islamic religious traditions. It argues that the polysemic nature of these interpretations mirrors to a certain extent the increasing functional differentiation of modern society. To substantiate this argument, the paper will first present a theoretical framework of global modernity that selectively draws on theories of multiple modernities, Modern Systems Theory, and of (post-)structuralist thinking. The empirical part of the paper takes the case of the Islamic institution of Jihad as its illustrative example. From a genealogical perspective, it analyses a number of steps of the (re-)interpretation of Islamic religious traditions from the classical period of pre-modern Islamic empires, via the Islamic reform movement of the nineteenth century, to the multiple voices of Islamic modernities in contemporary times.
{"title":"Understanding the Multiple Voices of Islamic Modernities: The Case of Jihad","authors":"Dietrich Jung","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.52712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.52712","url":null,"abstract":"In making a contribution to the debate on multiple modernities, this article addresses the growing fragmentation of contemporary interpretations of Islamic religious traditions. It argues that the polysemic nature of these interpretations mirrors to a certain extent the increasing functional differentiation of modern society. To substantiate this argument, the paper will first present a theoretical framework of global modernity that selectively draws on theories of multiple modernities, Modern Systems Theory, and of (post-)structuralist thinking. The empirical part of the paper takes the case of the Islamic institution of Jihad as its illustrative example. From a genealogical perspective, it analyses a number of steps of the (re-)interpretation of Islamic religious traditions from the classical period of pre-modern Islamic empires, via the Islamic reform movement of the nineteenth century, to the multiple voices of Islamic modernities in contemporary times.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"61-85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69646748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a new perspective on the century-old discussion of sacral rulers in the history of religions generally, and pre-Christian Scandinavian religions specifically, namely the application of a cultural evolutionary theoretical framework based on the work of Robert N. Bellah. In doing this, the article opens the possibility of wider typological comparisons within this paradigm and suggests a nuancing of Bellah’s typology with the addition of the category of ‘chiefdom religion’. This is utilised in the main part of the article, which features a comparison between the figure of the sacral ruler in pre-Christian Scandinavian and pre-Christian Hawaiian religions through an analysis of: 1) the position of the ruler in society, cult, and ideology; 2) the societal structure in which these religions are found; 3) the idea of a ruler sacrifice; 4) incestuous relationships and their ideological implications; and, finally, 5) the idea of a double rulership. Following this comparison, the perspectives in and the usefulness of cultural evolutionary theories in the history of religions are briefly evaluated.
本文为宗教史上关于神圣统治者的讨论提供了一个新的视角,特别是前基督教斯堪的纳维亚宗教,即基于罗伯特·n·贝拉(Robert N. Bellah)工作的文化进化理论框架的应用。在此过程中,文章打开了在这种范式中进行更广泛的类型比较的可能性,并建议对Bellah的类型进行细微的变化,增加“酋长宗教”的类别。本文的主要部分利用了这一点,通过对以下方面的分析,比较了前基督教斯堪的纳维亚和前基督教夏威夷宗教中神圣统治者的形象:1)统治者在社会、邪教和意识形态中的地位;2)这些宗教所处的社会结构;3)统治者牺牲的思想;4)乱伦关系及其思想意蕴;最后,5)双重统治的概念。在这种比较之后,简要地评估了宗教历史中文化进化理论的观点和有用性。
{"title":"Sacral rulers in pre-Christian Scandinavia: The possibilities of typological comparisons within the paradigm of cultural evolution","authors":"S. Nygaard","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.49454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.49454","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a new perspective on the century-old discussion of sacral rulers in the history of religions generally, and pre-Christian Scandinavian religions specifically, namely the application of a cultural evolutionary theoretical framework based on the work of Robert N. Bellah. In doing this, the article opens the possibility of wider typological comparisons within this paradigm and suggests a nuancing of Bellah’s typology with the addition of the category of ‘chiefdom religion’. This is utilised in the main part of the article, which features a comparison between the figure of the sacral ruler in pre-Christian Scandinavian and pre-Christian Hawaiian religions through an analysis of: 1) the position of the ruler in society, cult, and ideology; 2) the societal structure in which these religions are found; 3) the idea of a ruler sacrifice; 4) incestuous relationships and their ideological implications; and, finally, 5) the idea of a double rulership. Following this comparison, the perspectives in and the usefulness of cultural evolutionary theories in the history of religions are briefly evaluated.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"52 1","pages":"9-35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2016-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69646178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial note: Locating the humanistic within the study of religions","authors":"S. Arvidsson","doi":"10.33356/temenos.53527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.53527","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"51 1","pages":"155-159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2015-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Proceeding from the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, this paper is an attempt to survey the historical premises of the academic study of religion, both as a practice of detaching the subject matter of religion from its institutional restrictions, and as a practice of rehearsing certain modalities of thought and action (philosophical as well as religious) flourishing in the ancient world long before Christianity conquered the sphere of public worship in the fourth century. By paying particular attention to themes of suspension and commensality in religious practice and discourse, an attempt is made to reconsider the critical task of the history of religions, famously devised by Bruce Lincoln as a reversal of the orientation of religious discourse.
{"title":"A guest at the table of the gods: Religion and the origins of academic life","authors":"Peter Jackson","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.53570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.53570","url":null,"abstract":"Proceeding from the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, this paper is an attempt to survey the historical premises of the academic study of religion, both as a practice of detaching the subject matter of religion from its institutional restrictions, and as a practice of rehearsing certain modalities of thought and action (philosophical as well as religious) flourishing in the ancient world long before Christianity conquered the sphere of public worship in the fourth century. By paying particular attention to themes of suspension and commensality in religious practice and discourse, an attempt is made to reconsider the critical task of the history of religions, famously devised by Bruce Lincoln as a reversal of the orientation of religious discourse.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"51 1","pages":"257-276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2015-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Today ‘humanistic’ and ‘humanities’ are terms rarely used in discussions on methodology and epistemology within the study/history of religions. This article laments this state of affair and reminds the readers of same basic advantages of a humanistic study of religions in comparison to chiefly social scientific approaches to religion and culture. After an initial philosophical argument on the implications of ‘humanistic’, the article touches upon the significance of historical failures, utopianism, empathy and ‘the orectic’. These discussions take place against an analysis of the mythology and ritual life of the 19th century, American, socialist order The Knight of Labor.
{"title":"The humanistic study of religions: An obscure tradition illuminated by the 'Knights of Labor'","authors":"S. Arvidsson","doi":"10.33356/TEMENOS.53569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33356/TEMENOS.53569","url":null,"abstract":"Today ‘humanistic’ and ‘humanities’ are terms rarely used in discussions on methodology and epistemology within the study/history of religions. This article laments this state of affair and reminds the readers of same basic advantages of a humanistic study of religions in comparison to chiefly social scientific approaches to religion and culture. After an initial philosophical argument on the implications of ‘humanistic’, the article touches upon the significance of historical failures, utopianism, empathy and ‘the orectic’. These discussions take place against an analysis of the mythology and ritual life of the 19th century, American, socialist order The Knight of Labor.","PeriodicalId":43012,"journal":{"name":"TEMENOS","volume":"51 1","pages":"227-256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2015-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69647194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}