Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2196082
I. Okeke
ABSTRACT With the invasion of Nigeria by the colonialists and introduction of foreign religions by their missionary counterparts over a hundred years ago, it would appear that the indigenous religious practices and holies, especially in Igboland have fallen Jericho-wise. Alas, this is far from the truth. A deep and careful study of Igboland reveals that notwithstanding the seeming massive conversion to the missionary religions and urbanisation, there still exist substantial vestages and elements of indigenous religious practices, holies and belief system of the people so converted. Evidences abound that the people regularly patronise indigenous worship centres, engaging in indigenous prayers while seeking solutions to the challenges that they confront on a daily basis. The paper makes a finding that the presence of the missionary religions, urbanisation and other agents of change have not provided the people with holistic answers or solutions to their problems, making the people resort to the patronage of indigenous worship and worship centres. The paper makes use of document analysis, interviews and observation as methods of data gathering, anchored on the change theory framework and adopting the qualitative/ethnographic approach in its data analysis.
{"title":"Contemporary appearances of indigenous holies in Igboland: a study of Uboma people","authors":"I. Okeke","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2196082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2196082","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With the invasion of Nigeria by the colonialists and introduction of foreign religions by their missionary counterparts over a hundred years ago, it would appear that the indigenous religious practices and holies, especially in Igboland have fallen Jericho-wise. Alas, this is far from the truth. A deep and careful study of Igboland reveals that notwithstanding the seeming massive conversion to the missionary religions and urbanisation, there still exist substantial vestages and elements of indigenous religious practices, holies and belief system of the people so converted. Evidences abound that the people regularly patronise indigenous worship centres, engaging in indigenous prayers while seeking solutions to the challenges that they confront on a daily basis. The paper makes a finding that the presence of the missionary religions, urbanisation and other agents of change have not provided the people with holistic answers or solutions to their problems, making the people resort to the patronage of indigenous worship and worship centres. The paper makes use of document analysis, interviews and observation as methods of data gathering, anchored on the change theory framework and adopting the qualitative/ethnographic approach in its data analysis.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45164164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-30DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2196083
O. O. Afolabi
ABSTRACT Although different Churches in sub-Saharan Africa enacted various models of conflict resolution which mostly are either biblically based or grounded on the denomination’s background, doctrines and beliefs system, some church conflicts are unable to respond to the biblically or denominational conflict resolution mechanisms owing to a lack of integrating African moral belief systems of conflict resolution. Thus, there is still the need for the incorporation of the African traditional principles of conflict resolution in resolving conflict in a local church. Therefore, this paper will explore these principles and how to apply them to church conflict resolution.
{"title":"Adopting African traditional principles of conflict resolution in a local church setting: a Yoruba cultural perspective","authors":"O. O. Afolabi","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2196083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2196083","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although different Churches in sub-Saharan Africa enacted various models of conflict resolution which mostly are either biblically based or grounded on the denomination’s background, doctrines and beliefs system, some church conflicts are unable to respond to the biblically or denominational conflict resolution mechanisms owing to a lack of integrating African moral belief systems of conflict resolution. Thus, there is still the need for the incorporation of the African traditional principles of conflict resolution in resolving conflict in a local church. Therefore, this paper will explore these principles and how to apply them to church conflict resolution.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46943028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-23DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2201462
Joshua S. Smith, S. M. Patterson
ABSTRACT Queer exclusion from the Mormon Plan of Salvation causes both this worldly and eternal theological concerns for many LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints. In this essay, we take up questions regarding the embodied nature of personal revelation within Mormonism to understand the ways that LGBTQ+ Mormons in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have resituated and reconfigured authority and divine truth. Drawing on archival records from the Mormon LGBTQ+ organisation, Affirmation, we argue that as LGBTQ+ Mormons searched to find their place in the Plan of Salvation they turned to theologies of the Spirit taught to them by the LDS Church. Our attention to the ways that LGBTQ+ Mormons have struggled to locate truth and (self-) affirmation within their embodied experiences offers further insight into the body as a central site for the production of knowledge and belief. Ultimately, we assert that LGBTQ+ Mormons have utilised these theologies of the Spirit to critique the covenantal hetero-captivity of the Plan of Salvation.
{"title":"For time and eternity: feeling the spirit in the lives of LGBTQ+ Mormons","authors":"Joshua S. Smith, S. M. Patterson","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2201462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2201462","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Queer exclusion from the Mormon Plan of Salvation causes both this worldly and eternal theological concerns for many LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints. In this essay, we take up questions regarding the embodied nature of personal revelation within Mormonism to understand the ways that LGBTQ+ Mormons in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have resituated and reconfigured authority and divine truth. Drawing on archival records from the Mormon LGBTQ+ organisation, Affirmation, we argue that as LGBTQ+ Mormons searched to find their place in the Plan of Salvation they turned to theologies of the Spirit taught to them by the LDS Church. Our attention to the ways that LGBTQ+ Mormons have struggled to locate truth and (self-) affirmation within their embodied experiences offers further insight into the body as a central site for the production of knowledge and belief. Ultimately, we assert that LGBTQ+ Mormons have utilised these theologies of the Spirit to critique the covenantal hetero-captivity of the Plan of Salvation.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42024711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-22DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2185648
Kathleen M. Foody
ABSTRACT This article draws on conversations about liberal religion to explore how international events attempt to stage ‘good Islam’ for non-Muslim publics. It does this by focusing on an understudied event from post-empire Britain: the 1976 World of Islam Festival. Here, I focus on how Muslim and non-Muslim actors, ideas about universalism, perennialism and religion, and international politics organised the presentation of ‘good’ Islam in the 1970s. I attend to how liberal renderings of ‘good religion’ operate in a feedback loop with racist, xenophobic and specifically anti-Muslim sentiments in the years just before Muslim politics would take centre-stage in global imaginaries.
{"title":"The World of Islam: ‘good’ religion, perennialism, and public culture in the 1970s","authors":"Kathleen M. Foody","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2185648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2185648","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article draws on conversations about liberal religion to explore how international events attempt to stage ‘good Islam’ for non-Muslim publics. It does this by focusing on an understudied event from post-empire Britain: the 1976 World of Islam Festival. Here, I focus on how Muslim and non-Muslim actors, ideas about universalism, perennialism and religion, and international politics organised the presentation of ‘good’ Islam in the 1970s. I attend to how liberal renderings of ‘good religion’ operate in a feedback loop with racist, xenophobic and specifically anti-Muslim sentiments in the years just before Muslim politics would take centre-stage in global imaginaries.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48169866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-20DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2186448
Michał Kosche
ABSTRACT The ecological question is currently one of the key issues in international public debate. This article attempts to present fundamental principles of a personalistic understanding of integral ecology with an emphasis put on the essence of a so-called ‘ecological conversion’. ‘ecological conversion’, however, cannot be perceived in a narrow sense only. Hence, the following paper is in accordance with a broad perspective that not only equates ‘ecological conversion’ with environmental ecology, by also sees the necessity of incorporating human ecology of both individual and social dimensions.
{"title":"Integral ecology and ‘ecological conversion’ in the light of personalistic hermeneutics","authors":"Michał Kosche","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2186448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2186448","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ecological question is currently one of the key issues in international public debate. This article attempts to present fundamental principles of a personalistic understanding of integral ecology with an emphasis put on the essence of a so-called ‘ecological conversion’. ‘ecological conversion’, however, cannot be perceived in a narrow sense only. Hence, the following paper is in accordance with a broad perspective that not only equates ‘ecological conversion’ with environmental ecology, by also sees the necessity of incorporating human ecology of both individual and social dimensions.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44450836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-21DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2021.1891109
M. Alves
{"title":"Political discourse of history and action in the political project of José De Alencar during imperial Brazil","authors":"M. Alves","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2021.1891109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2021.1891109","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141217146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2022.2156566
Cristina Rocha, K. Openshaw, R. Vokes
ABSTRACT Much of the literature on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (Pc/C) and African diasporas in the Global North has focused upon African-Majority or -Initiated churches that are either branches of African churches or were created in the diaspora. This focus often frames the appeal of Pc/C to African migrants in terms of: a) its emphasis upon the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ offering a path not only to salvation, but also to earthly riches; b) its opportunities for achieving status among church hierarchies, which is attractive to socially marginalised groups, and; c) the practical assistance it provides to support settlement. However, African diasporas have diverse histories of migration, and settlement experiences. This article considers the appeal of Pc/C to a group of professional African migrants in Australia, who self-identify as ‘middle-class’. It argues that professional African migrants have consciously favoured the Australian megachurch Hillsong over Australia’s African-Initiated churches. They have done so in pursuit of a process of an imagined class-mobility, and as a result, their choice of church can be understood as largely strategic.
{"title":"‘Middle-class’ Africans in Australia: choosing Hillsong as a global home","authors":"Cristina Rocha, K. Openshaw, R. Vokes","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2022.2156566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2022.2156566","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Much of the literature on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (Pc/C) and African diasporas in the Global North has focused upon African-Majority or -Initiated churches that are either branches of African churches or were created in the diaspora. This focus often frames the appeal of Pc/C to African migrants in terms of: a) its emphasis upon the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ offering a path not only to salvation, but also to earthly riches; b) its opportunities for achieving status among church hierarchies, which is attractive to socially marginalised groups, and; c) the practical assistance it provides to support settlement. However, African diasporas have diverse histories of migration, and settlement experiences. This article considers the appeal of Pc/C to a group of professional African migrants in Australia, who self-identify as ‘middle-class’. It argues that professional African migrants have consciously favoured the Australian megachurch Hillsong over Australia’s African-Initiated churches. They have done so in pursuit of a process of an imagined class-mobility, and as a result, their choice of church can be understood as largely strategic.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49457860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2023.2175880
Gabriel O. Apata
ABSTRACT The history of resistance to black racial oppression in the US dates back at least to slavery. From abolition to the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther party, and the BlackLivesMatter Movement, each of these oppositions to racial injustice has been much discussed in the literature, but less often discussed is the role that Pentecostalism played in shaping black struggle for racial justice. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by showing how Pentecostalism in the US emerged as perhaps the first organised black protestant movement of the post bellum years. It traces its roots to African culture and argues that Pentecostalism embodied the positive ontology of black cultural expressionism and empowerment, which laid the foundation for the resistance movements that came later. This is the ontology of the spirit and performance from which blackness drew its resilience and resistance to racial oppression.
{"title":"How Pentecostalism Emerged as a form of Resistance to Racial Oppression in the US","authors":"Gabriel O. Apata","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2175880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2175880","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The history of resistance to black racial oppression in the US dates back at least to slavery. From abolition to the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther party, and the BlackLivesMatter Movement, each of these oppositions to racial injustice has been much discussed in the literature, but less often discussed is the role that Pentecostalism played in shaping black struggle for racial justice. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by showing how Pentecostalism in the US emerged as perhaps the first organised black protestant movement of the post bellum years. It traces its roots to African culture and argues that Pentecostalism embodied the positive ontology of black cultural expressionism and empowerment, which laid the foundation for the resistance movements that came later. This is the ontology of the spirit and performance from which blackness drew its resilience and resistance to racial oppression.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48885699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2022.2140686
Ngoc Tho Nguyen
ABSTRACT Tianhou (天后) is a popular religious figure rooted in Fujian, China. Historically, she was continuously ‘standardised’ by late imperial China, making this character a standard symbol. In the late 17th century, Chinese immigrants propagated the Tianhou cult in Southern Vietnam, further developed, and made Tianhou the identity marker of their community. However, in Camau and other places of Southern Vietnam, this symbol became partially changed due to the process of localisation and cross-cultural exchange. The Chinese successfully incorporate Chinese Tianhou rituals with Vietnamese family rites (especially the worships of Kitchen God and ancestors) to gain both community consolidation and cross-ethnic integration. The illusionary incorporation effectively consolidates the ties between peoples and improves the position of the ethnic Chinese in the local society. This paper mainly applies the concept of ‘inventing tradition’ and Seligman’s and Weller’s (2012) viewpoint of the cultural interaction of notation, ritual and shared experience to generalise the nature and significance of liturgical transformation in the Tianhou cult among the ethnic Chinese in Camau. The study shows that cultural adaptation, as a means for survival and evolution, has been the goal of an endless struggle among the Chinese in contemporary Vietnam.
{"title":"The ritual incorporation and cross-cultural communication in Camau, Vietnam: a case study of the Tianhou cult","authors":"Ngoc Tho Nguyen","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2022.2140686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2022.2140686","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Tianhou (天后) is a popular religious figure rooted in Fujian, China. Historically, she was continuously ‘standardised’ by late imperial China, making this character a standard symbol. In the late 17th century, Chinese immigrants propagated the Tianhou cult in Southern Vietnam, further developed, and made Tianhou the identity marker of their community. However, in Camau and other places of Southern Vietnam, this symbol became partially changed due to the process of localisation and cross-cultural exchange. The Chinese successfully incorporate Chinese Tianhou rituals with Vietnamese family rites (especially the worships of Kitchen God and ancestors) to gain both community consolidation and cross-ethnic integration. The illusionary incorporation effectively consolidates the ties between peoples and improves the position of the ethnic Chinese in the local society. This paper mainly applies the concept of ‘inventing tradition’ and Seligman’s and Weller’s (2012) viewpoint of the cultural interaction of notation, ritual and shared experience to generalise the nature and significance of liturgical transformation in the Tianhou cult among the ethnic Chinese in Camau. The study shows that cultural adaptation, as a means for survival and evolution, has been the goal of an endless struggle among the Chinese in contemporary Vietnam.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48972099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT Studies on the relationship between religious activity and environmental issues are becoming increasingly significant in view of the enormous environmental difficulties confronting modern civilisation. The study of the relationship between religion and nature has produced contradictory results. Some studies found that religion had a significant influence on people’s attitude toward nature, whereas others found the opposite. The goal of this study is to see how the predictor (stewardship, dominion, and belief in a controlling God) mediated the link between religiosity and pro-environmental support. We conducted an online experiment (N = 280) on the Tangkhul Naga in Northeast India. The findings show that stewardship has a direct and substantial association with religiosity, but dominionship and belief in a controlling God do not. Tangkhul Nagas indicate that people or communities with stewardship tendencies are more inclined to support environmental causes. This paper contends that a strong inclination of stewardship and pro-environmental activism stems from their ancestor’s belief system and their way of life in which they embraced animism and worshipped nature prior to accepting Christianity, as evident from literature and folklores. This paper aims to ascertain that such a belief system is critical at a time when global societies are attempting to minimise the present environmental crisis.
{"title":"The influence of religion on beliefs of stewardship, dominionship and controlling god towards pro-environmental support","authors":"Sophayo Khamrang Varah, Eknee Khongrei, Mirinchonme Mahongnao, Franky Varah","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2023.2177317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2023.2177317","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Studies on the relationship between religious activity and environmental issues are becoming increasingly significant in view of the enormous environmental difficulties confronting modern civilisation. The study of the relationship between religion and nature has produced contradictory results. Some studies found that religion had a significant influence on people’s attitude toward nature, whereas others found the opposite. The goal of this study is to see how the predictor (stewardship, dominion, and belief in a controlling God) mediated the link between religiosity and pro-environmental support. We conducted an online experiment (N = 280) on the Tangkhul Naga in Northeast India. The findings show that stewardship has a direct and substantial association with religiosity, but dominionship and belief in a controlling God do not. Tangkhul Nagas indicate that people or communities with stewardship tendencies are more inclined to support environmental causes. This paper contends that a strong inclination of stewardship and pro-environmental activism stems from their ancestor’s belief system and their way of life in which they embraced animism and worshipped nature prior to accepting Christianity, as evident from literature and folklores. This paper aims to ascertain that such a belief system is critical at a time when global societies are attempting to minimise the present environmental crisis.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45896204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}