Increasing numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews are flocking to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to participate in Amish country tourism and to consume kosher dairy products, sometimes produced through economic collaborations between Orthodox Jews and local Amish/Mennonite farmers. Through an ethnographic examination of these phenomena, we demonstrate how Amish tourism fosters illiberal interreligious encounters among the triangle of ultra-Orthodox Jewish tourists, Amish/Mennonite farmers, and Christian tour guide mediators. Whereas historically tourism to the Amish was driven by white nostalgic longings for a European peasant past and the American frontier, Orthodox Jews project a nostalgic vision of the Eastern European shtetl onto the Amish and their dairy products. We borrow the concept of political temporalities (Little 2022) to explore an illiberal political temporality formed by the encounter among illiberal religious groups in a recreational tourist setting. Despite nostalgic projections, these religious groups converged over their visions of an American religious present and future.
{"title":"Illiberal Jewish-Christian Encounters: Political Temporalities in Amish Country Tourism","authors":"Rachel Feldman, Ayala Fader","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae064","url":null,"abstract":"Increasing numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews are flocking to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to participate in Amish country tourism and to consume kosher dairy products, sometimes produced through economic collaborations between Orthodox Jews and local Amish/Mennonite farmers. Through an ethnographic examination of these phenomena, we demonstrate how Amish tourism fosters illiberal interreligious encounters among the triangle of ultra-Orthodox Jewish tourists, Amish/Mennonite farmers, and Christian tour guide mediators. Whereas historically tourism to the Amish was driven by white nostalgic longings for a European peasant past and the American frontier, Orthodox Jews project a nostalgic vision of the Eastern European shtetl onto the Amish and their dairy products. We borrow the concept of political temporalities (Little 2022) to explore an illiberal political temporality formed by the encounter among illiberal religious groups in a recreational tourist setting. Despite nostalgic projections, these religious groups converged over their visions of an American religious present and future.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142265817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Challenging the false neutrality of secularism, J. Z. Smith (1988) declared that between “religion” and “religious studies” there is “no difference at all.” The subsequent rise of area studies matched the decline of comparative programs whose underwriting logic faltered under postcolonial scrutiny. This turn toward particularity and data expansion was a way of reckoning with the ethnocentric universalizing of modern social theory. Today, scholars in both religious studies and anthropology worry about how ethnocentrism persists in the very form of “the data.” However, the former have largely misunderstood the contributions of anthropology’s ontological turn—specifically the “radical” variant “perspectivism”—to disciplinary reform. I explain why perspectivists suggest replacing talk of multiple views with talk of multiple worlds to model a genuine alternative to cultural relativism.
J. Z. Smith（1988 年）对世俗主义虚假的中立性提出了质疑，他宣称 "宗教 "与 "宗教研究 "之间 "根本没有区别"。地区研究的兴起与比较项目的衰落相得益彰，后者的支撑逻辑在后殖民主义的审视下摇摇欲坠。转向特殊性和数据扩展是对现代社会理论以种族为中心的普遍化进行反思的一种方式。如今，宗教研究和人类学领域的学者都在担心民族中心主义是如何以 "数据 "的形式持续存在的。然而，前者在很大程度上误解了人类学本体论转向--特别是 "激进 "变体 "视角主义"--对学科改革的贡献。我将解释为什么视角主义者建议用多重世界来取代多重观点，从而真正替代文化相对主义。
{"title":"Decolonizing “the Data” of Religious Studies: A Case against the Worldview Model of Difference","authors":"Lisa Landoe Hedrick","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae068","url":null,"abstract":"Challenging the false neutrality of secularism, J. Z. Smith (1988) declared that between “religion” and “religious studies” there is “no difference at all.” The subsequent rise of area studies matched the decline of comparative programs whose underwriting logic faltered under postcolonial scrutiny. This turn toward particularity and data expansion was a way of reckoning with the ethnocentric universalizing of modern social theory. Today, scholars in both religious studies and anthropology worry about how ethnocentrism persists in the very form of “the data.” However, the former have largely misunderstood the contributions of anthropology’s ontological turn—specifically the “radical” variant “perspectivism”—to disciplinary reform. I explain why perspectivists suggest replacing talk of multiple views with talk of multiple worlds to model a genuine alternative to cultural relativism.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142184392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In a speech delivered on July 4, 1854, Sojourner Truth declared “the blood of one man, Abel, did not call from the ground in vain [Genesis 4:10]. The promises of Scripture were all for the black people.” Some recent biographers of Truth interpret this as a reference to the curse of Cain (Genesis 4:11–13), which, they contend, Truth calls down upon white people. Other scholars have shown how some nineteenth-century Black interpreters used the Cain and Abel story to explain white violence and hatred. Building on both lines of research, I argue that Truth typologically links Abel’s blood to the blood of the lamb in Revelation 7:14. In doing so, Truth is not only invoking the curse of Cain and providing an explanation for white hatred but also offering a scriptural promise for Black people.
{"title":"“The Promises of Scripture Were All for the Black People”: Sojourner Truth on the Blood of Abel and the Lamb","authors":"Jeremy Schipper","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae066","url":null,"abstract":"In a speech delivered on July 4, 1854, Sojourner Truth declared “the blood of one man, Abel, did not call from the ground in vain [Genesis 4:10]. The promises of Scripture were all for the black people.” Some recent biographers of Truth interpret this as a reference to the curse of Cain (Genesis 4:11–13), which, they contend, Truth calls down upon white people. Other scholars have shown how some nineteenth-century Black interpreters used the Cain and Abel story to explain white violence and hatred. Building on both lines of research, I argue that Truth typologically links Abel’s blood to the blood of the lamb in Revelation 7:14. In doing so, Truth is not only invoking the curse of Cain and providing an explanation for white hatred but also offering a scriptural promise for Black people.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142184355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although graves of famous figures are often important sites of commemoration where religious communities invoke a normative past, the very act of commemoration can coexist uneasily with a religious community’s values and self-understanding. This is the case with Muhammadiyah, an Indonesian modernist Islamic mass organization focused on the purification of Islam from what they consider heretical innovations, including memory practices at graves. Yet, to differentiate themselves from radical Islamist organizations they find objectionable, Muhammadiyah’s leadership has begun to draw on their organizational history and its physical remnants, including graves, to articulate a “moderate” identity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Yogyakarta, I show how Muhammadiyah’s conflicting desires produce an ambiguity that is productive for articulating the organization’s complex ideological positionings. In so doing, I argue against the pervasive claim that with modernity, Islam lost its tolerance and appreciation of ambiguity.
{"title":"Grave Matters: Ambiguity, Modernism, and the Quest for Moderate Islam in Indonesia","authors":"Verena Meyer","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae061","url":null,"abstract":"Although graves of famous figures are often important sites of commemoration where religious communities invoke a normative past, the very act of commemoration can coexist uneasily with a religious community’s values and self-understanding. This is the case with Muhammadiyah, an Indonesian modernist Islamic mass organization focused on the purification of Islam from what they consider heretical innovations, including memory practices at graves. Yet, to differentiate themselves from radical Islamist organizations they find objectionable, Muhammadiyah’s leadership has begun to draw on their organizational history and its physical remnants, including graves, to articulate a “moderate” identity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Yogyakarta, I show how Muhammadiyah’s conflicting desires produce an ambiguity that is productive for articulating the organization’s complex ideological positionings. In so doing, I argue against the pervasive claim that with modernity, Islam lost its tolerance and appreciation of ambiguity.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141745331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What exactly is addiction? Scholars, clinicians, and addicts themselves consistently arrive at a fork in the road in their respective quests for the meaning of addiction: choice or compulsion, crime or disease? Despite these many inquiries, one important aspect of addiction’s past remains unexamined—its deep theological history. Christian theologians writing in Latin from the second to the seventeenth century used the term addiction metaphorically to describe the sinful human condition. In this article, I uncover the genesis and development of the Christian addiction metaphor in the writings of Roman theologians Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine. I analyze their theologies of addiction to show how the language and logic of Roman pecuniary jurisprudence structures their thinking about sin, salvation, and free will. To conclude, I suggest that the disease-crime ambivalence constitutive of our contemporary understanding of addiction originated in their oxymoronic definition of sin as both generational enslavement and willful servitude.
{"title":"Christian Addiction: The Metaphor of Debt-Bondage in Roman Theology","authors":"Lucas McCracken","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae058","url":null,"abstract":"What exactly is addiction? Scholars, clinicians, and addicts themselves consistently arrive at a fork in the road in their respective quests for the meaning of addiction: choice or compulsion, crime or disease? Despite these many inquiries, one important aspect of addiction’s past remains unexamined—its deep theological history. Christian theologians writing in Latin from the second to the seventeenth century used the term addiction metaphorically to describe the sinful human condition. In this article, I uncover the genesis and development of the Christian addiction metaphor in the writings of Roman theologians Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine. I analyze their theologies of addiction to show how the language and logic of Roman pecuniary jurisprudence structures their thinking about sin, salvation, and free will. To conclude, I suggest that the disease-crime ambivalence constitutive of our contemporary understanding of addiction originated in their oxymoronic definition of sin as both generational enslavement and willful servitude.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141611230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article is an attempt to think through how interreligious relations might be theorized. It will show how conventional assumptions about interreligious relations can be traced to colonial understandings of the category religion, which determine what we classify as interreligious. I argue that interreligious relations, as we understand it today, developed through the rise of secular nationalism, when religion and politics were purportedly separated as a means of reordering European power structures aligned with Christianity during the formation of the modern nation-state. This rearrangement of power gave rise to Christian ecumenism, which helped pave the way for an evolving secular governance that eventually developed into multicultural pluralist societies in a postcolonial world. This article shall demonstrate how the assumptions that underlie contemporary interreligious relations have little to do with the relationships of people with different religious identities, as one might expect, but instead serve to promote national narratives of pluralism that uphold the liberal ideologies authorizing Western multicultural societies today.
{"title":"Theorizing Interreligious Relations","authors":"Adil Hussain Khan","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae056","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an attempt to think through how interreligious relations might be theorized. It will show how conventional assumptions about interreligious relations can be traced to colonial understandings of the category religion, which determine what we classify as interreligious. I argue that interreligious relations, as we understand it today, developed through the rise of secular nationalism, when religion and politics were purportedly separated as a means of reordering European power structures aligned with Christianity during the formation of the modern nation-state. This rearrangement of power gave rise to Christian ecumenism, which helped pave the way for an evolving secular governance that eventually developed into multicultural pluralist societies in a postcolonial world. This article shall demonstrate how the assumptions that underlie contemporary interreligious relations have little to do with the relationships of people with different religious identities, as one might expect, but instead serve to promote national narratives of pluralism that uphold the liberal ideologies authorizing Western multicultural societies today.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141511183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article critiques the appeal to psychological models as an interpretive gambit in the study of ancient Judaism. It shows how scholars ascribe an emotional profile to the ancient Jews to narrate the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as a movement from mourning to joy. Then, the article models an alternative approach to emotions in ancient Jewish history by rereading a narrative on Jewish life under Roman rule in the Palestinian Talmud. Ultimately, the article seeks to demonstrate that although mourning and rejoicing are problematic as the scaffoldings of a meta-narrative of Jewish history, these categories nevertheless provide a new perspective on the political potency of emotions in the lives of religious minorities in the Roman empire.
{"title":"Rejoicing, Mourning, and Empire: Emotions and History in Ancient Judaism","authors":"Erez DeGolan","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae054","url":null,"abstract":"This article critiques the appeal to psychological models as an interpretive gambit in the study of ancient Judaism. It shows how scholars ascribe an emotional profile to the ancient Jews to narrate the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as a movement from mourning to joy. Then, the article models an alternative approach to emotions in ancient Jewish history by rereading a narrative on Jewish life under Roman rule in the Palestinian Talmud. Ultimately, the article seeks to demonstrate that although mourning and rejoicing are problematic as the scaffoldings of a meta-narrative of Jewish history, these categories nevertheless provide a new perspective on the political potency of emotions in the lives of religious minorities in the Roman empire.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141511220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the generation, sorting, and handling of waste that is produced or ends up in the religious field. Rather than assuming that waste is the negative and worthless endpoint of consumption, it introduces the concepts of “waste imaginaries” and “waste trajectories” to examine the importance of religion in the relationship between how and why things come to be defined and sorted as waste and the ways in which they are then handled and treated. By examining how Tibetan Buddhists talk about and act around different kinds of waste, both sacred and banal, the article unfolds the moral politics of waste, showing how waste trajectories are negotiated through changing and sometimes conflicting waste imaginaries.
{"title":"Tibetan Buddhism in the Age of Waste","authors":"Trine Brox","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae041","url":null,"abstract":"Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the generation, sorting, and handling of waste that is produced or ends up in the religious field. Rather than assuming that waste is the negative and worthless endpoint of consumption, it introduces the concepts of “waste imaginaries” and “waste trajectories” to examine the importance of religion in the relationship between how and why things come to be defined and sorted as waste and the ways in which they are then handled and treated. By examining how Tibetan Buddhists talk about and act around different kinds of waste, both sacred and banal, the article unfolds the moral politics of waste, showing how waste trajectories are negotiated through changing and sometimes conflicting waste imaginaries.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140925051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores how absent objects continue to work on religious communities using two case studies: the gold plates from which Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon, and the first 116 manuscript pages of that translation. Neither of these objects are available to believers now, but they played and continue to play an outsized role in the early history of the Mormon tradition, but in different ways. Based on these case studies, this article argues that scholars of material religion need to attend to the absence of objects in their explorations of how religious assemblages operate.
{"title":"Absent Objects and the Study of Material Religion","authors":"Sara M Patterson, Quincy D Newell","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae026","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how absent objects continue to work on religious communities using two case studies: the gold plates from which Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon, and the first 116 manuscript pages of that translation. Neither of these objects are available to believers now, but they played and continue to play an outsized role in the early history of the Mormon tradition, but in different ways. Based on these case studies, this article argues that scholars of material religion need to attend to the absence of objects in their explorations of how religious assemblages operate.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140569340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the idea of global Christianity in scholarship and the postcolonial and present imperial conditions that underlie it. Through an analysis of the fields of World Christianity and the anthropology of Christianity, it considers how Western Christian histories and power dynamics have impacted Christian traditions of the Global South and seriously considers the pervasive logics of geopolitical power that transform local contexts–not only altering how such communities and traditions are written about, but also impacting the traditions, practices, and people themselves. Thinking with Coptic Orthodox Christians between Egypt and the United States and Born-Again Christians in Uganda, this article examines how global power inequalities in the circuits of ideas, forms of life, and theopolitics are integral to thinking about the idea of global Christianity and its variations in scholarship.
{"title":"Power Circuits: Asymmetries of Global Christianity","authors":"Candace Lukasik, Jason Bruner","doi":"10.1093/jaarel/lfae025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae025","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the idea of global Christianity in scholarship and the postcolonial and present imperial conditions that underlie it. Through an analysis of the fields of World Christianity and the anthropology of Christianity, it considers how Western Christian histories and power dynamics have impacted Christian traditions of the Global South and seriously considers the pervasive logics of geopolitical power that transform local contexts–not only altering how such communities and traditions are written about, but also impacting the traditions, practices, and people themselves. Thinking with Coptic Orthodox Christians between Egypt and the United States and Born-Again Christians in Uganda, this article examines how global power inequalities in the circuits of ideas, forms of life, and theopolitics are integral to thinking about the idea of global Christianity and its variations in scholarship.","PeriodicalId":51659,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140569460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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