The last half-century of religious studies scholarship has seen the diminishing importance of belief as a concept of analysis. The putative inaccessibility of beliefs and the concept’s Western Christian provenance has led many scholars of religion to reject the concept. Recent years have seen attempts to rehabilitate the concept of belief, including Kevin Schilbrack’s 2014 Philosophy and the Study of Religions. Schilbrack proposes that by engaging with contemporary philosophical reflection on belief—specifically dispositionalist and interpretationist theories—the traditional critiques of belief can be overcome. The purpose of this paper is to further develop this approach by proposing an additional, currently overlooked, element of belief—its affectivity. This approach builds on current research from enactivist cognitive science and avoids the objections traditionally levelled at belief, while enabling a more sophisticated analysis of power dynamics in religion
在过去半个世纪的宗教研究学术中,信仰作为一种分析概念的重要性不断降低。信仰的不可接近性和这一概念的西方基督教渊源导致许多宗教学者拒绝接受这一概念。近年来,人们试图恢复信仰概念,包括凯文-希尔布雷克(Kevin Schilbrack)2014 年出版的《哲学与宗教研究》(Philosophy and the Study of Religions)。施尔布拉克提出,通过当代哲学对信仰的反思--特别是处置主义和解释主义理论--可以克服对信仰的传统批判。本文旨在进一步发展这一方法,提出信仰的另一个目前被忽视的要素--其情感性。这种方法建立在当前颁布主义认知科学研究的基础上,避免了传统上对信仰提出的反对意见,同时能够对宗教中的权力动态进行更复杂的分析。
{"title":"The Feeling of Believing","authors":"Jack Williams","doi":"10.1558/imre.24340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24340","url":null,"abstract":"The last half-century of religious studies scholarship has seen the diminishing importance of belief as a concept of analysis. The putative inaccessibility of beliefs and the concept’s Western Christian provenance has led many scholars of religion to reject the concept. Recent years have seen attempts to rehabilitate the concept of belief, including Kevin Schilbrack’s 2014 Philosophy and the Study of Religions. Schilbrack proposes that by engaging with contemporary philosophical reflection on belief—specifically dispositionalist and interpretationist theories—the traditional critiques of belief can be overcome. The purpose of this paper is to further develop this approach by proposing an additional, currently overlooked, element of belief—its affectivity. This approach builds on current research from enactivist cognitive science and avoids the objections traditionally levelled at belief, while enabling a more sophisticated analysis of power dynamics in religion","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265027","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}
Anthropologists have pointed to the politics at play in the uneven application of the term “belief” to describe different cultural representations of reality. They have observed that westerners sometimes reserve the term “belief” for the description of non-western epistemologies, while categorising their own perspectives, informed by theories of scientific empiricism for example, as “knowledge.” This is an important critique, so what to do when our non-western interlocutors insist on being called “believers?” This article considers the ideas of a Nigerian Pentecostal church who not only characterize their faith using the language of “belief,” but even aspire to be branded “fanatics” by outsiders. Drawing on the teachings of the church, striking congruences between the understandings of belief deployed by this group and by scholars of religion are brought to light, collapsing the distance between self-described African Christian “fanatics” and those who critically analyse them.
{"title":"“Call me a fanatic\"","authors":"Naomi Richman","doi":"10.1558/imre.24628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24628","url":null,"abstract":"Anthropologists have pointed to the politics at play in the uneven application of the term “belief” to describe different cultural representations of reality. They have observed that westerners sometimes reserve the term “belief” for the description of non-western epistemologies, while categorising their own perspectives, informed by theories of scientific empiricism for example, as “knowledge.” This is an important critique, so what to do when our non-western interlocutors insist on being called “believers?” This article considers the ideas of a Nigerian Pentecostal church who not only characterize their faith using the language of “belief,” but even aspire to be branded “fanatics” by outsiders. Drawing on the teachings of the church, striking congruences between the understandings of belief deployed by this group and by scholars of religion are brought to light, collapsing the distance between self-described African Christian “fanatics” and those who critically analyse them.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265220","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}
Using an example of German Christian development cooperation, this paper examines strengths and weaknesses of an intersectional analysis in relation to “religion.” I will make a twofold argument. First, I will argue that the rhetoric of “bad religion” present in development cooperation is based on an intersectional logic and reproduces marginalization. Second, I will present that intersectional approaches often conceptualize “religion” in an essentialist way. By doing so, I will explore the common features of “development” and “intersectionality,” referred to here as the intersectional logic of development, describe the role of “religion” within it and demonstrate a dualistic logic of reading positions as hegemonic and non-hegemonic within this intersectional logic of development. Drawing on the concept of assemblage developed by Jasbir Puar (2007), this essay concludes by proposing some programmatic considerations that allow addressing these challenges and further developing intersectional studies as well as the critical study of religion.
{"title":"The Intersectional Logic of “Bad Religion”","authors":"Leonie C Geiger","doi":"10.1558/imre.23812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23812","url":null,"abstract":"Using an example of German Christian development cooperation, this paper examines strengths and weaknesses of an intersectional analysis in relation to “religion.” I will make a twofold argument. First, I will argue that the rhetoric of “bad religion” present in development cooperation is based on an intersectional logic and reproduces marginalization. Second, I will present that intersectional approaches often conceptualize “religion” in an essentialist way. By doing so, I will explore the common features of “development” and “intersectionality,” referred to here as the intersectional logic of development, describe the role of “religion” within it and demonstrate a dualistic logic of reading positions as hegemonic and non-hegemonic within this intersectional logic of development. Drawing on the concept of assemblage developed by Jasbir Puar (2007), this essay concludes by proposing some programmatic considerations that allow addressing these challenges and further developing intersectional studies as well as the critical study of religion.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139263624","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}
Whether there is such a thing as religious belief has been queried by philosophers who think the attitudes that get called religious beliefs are radically different from standard types of belief. It is sometimes claimed that so-called religious beliefs are, for example, resistant to experiential evidence in ways that genuine types of belief are not. A recent proponent of this contention, Brian Clack (2016), has argued that the lack of connection between religious attitudes and the world of everyday experience entails that these attitudes should be classified as “belief-like imaginings” rather than as bona fide beliefs. While admitting that contentions such as this prompt useful reflection upon the specificities of religious belief, I argue that the view that what are ordinarily called religious beliefs are not really beliefs amounts to an unwarranted linguistic stipulation. The concept of belief has a diversity of applications rather than being restricted to the narrow subset which dubious empiricist assumptions might lead us to privilege.
{"title":"Is There Such a Thing as Religious Belief?","authors":"Mikel Burley","doi":"10.1558/imre.24309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24309","url":null,"abstract":"Whether there is such a thing as religious belief has been queried by philosophers who think the attitudes that get called religious beliefs are radically different from standard types of belief. It is sometimes claimed that so-called religious beliefs are, for example, resistant to experiential evidence in ways that genuine types of belief are not. A recent proponent of this contention, Brian Clack (2016), has argued that the lack of connection between religious attitudes and the world of everyday experience entails that these attitudes should be classified as “belief-like imaginings” rather than as bona fide beliefs. While admitting that contentions such as this prompt useful reflection upon the specificities of religious belief, I argue that the view that what are ordinarily called religious beliefs are not really beliefs amounts to an unwarranted linguistic stipulation. The concept of belief has a diversity of applications rather than being restricted to the narrow subset which dubious empiricist assumptions might lead us to privilege.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265844","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}
Following the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 where a protest led to the later-termed armed insurrection, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) was removed from her committee assignments for the role she played and her beliefs in QAnon. Greene’s passive language in her apology about being “allowed to believe things that weren’t true” landed, for her critics, as a disingenuous attempt to absolve herself of any blame. From a scholarly standpoint, however, her remarks provide a particularly useful case study for an examination of how the modern discourse on belief works. We normally talk about beliefs not as something one is “allowed” to have, rather as something an individual internally has and then only later expresses. Greene’s comments, though, point toward a rather different understanding of how beliefs—or better, belief claims—function than many might realize. This article uses two specific parts of Greene’s comments to reframe how we understand belief and suggests that we adopt a performative theory of belief, studying belief as a socio-rhetorical tool used to create and maintain a strategically useful but fictive internal space that functions as a mechanism of governance to manage dissent instead of a set of naturally occurring and internal convictions.
{"title":"Allowing Belief","authors":"Jacob Barrett","doi":"10.1558/imre.24339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24339","url":null,"abstract":"Following the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 where a protest led to the later-termed armed insurrection, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) was removed from her committee assignments for the role she played and her beliefs in QAnon. Greene’s passive language in her apology about being “allowed to believe things that weren’t true” landed, for her critics, as a disingenuous attempt to absolve herself of any blame. From a scholarly standpoint, however, her remarks provide a particularly useful case study for an examination of how the modern discourse on belief works. We normally talk about beliefs not as something one is “allowed” to have, rather as something an individual internally has and then only later expresses. Greene’s comments, though, point toward a rather different understanding of how beliefs—or better, belief claims—function than many might realize. This article uses two specific parts of Greene’s comments to reframe how we understand belief and suggests that we adopt a performative theory of belief, studying belief as a socio-rhetorical tool used to create and maintain a strategically useful but fictive internal space that functions as a mechanism of governance to manage dissent instead of a set of naturally occurring and internal convictions.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139262843","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}
{"title":"“I Believe in Bees”","authors":"Jack Williams, David G Robertson","doi":"10.1558/imre.26873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.26873","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139263858","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}
Receiving an organ is an event that marks a turning point in the patient’s life trajectory, not only because it marks the beginning of a new phase in the therapeutic process, but also because it opens up an unprecedented existential perspective in the recipient. This perspective is typically told through an autobiographical narrative marked by an implicitly religious or spiritual vocabulary centred on the feeling of rebirth and the sacredness of organ donation. Starting from the analysis of a corpus of qualitative interviews, the article aims to show the spirituality implicit in the autobiographical narratives of a group of members of the Associazione Nazionale Emo-Dializzati (ANED) of Turin (Italy). The data indicate that this implicit dimension is the product of a co-construction between patients and health workers in the context of the specific organizational culture of the hospital ward. This finding suggests possible directions for the implementation of spiritual care interventions in clinical practice.
{"title":"The (Un)Expected Gift","authors":"S. Palmisano, Nicola Pannofino","doi":"10.1558/imre.23883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23883","url":null,"abstract":"Receiving an organ is an event that marks a turning point in the patient’s life trajectory, not only because it marks the beginning of a new phase in the therapeutic process, but also because it opens up an unprecedented existential perspective in the recipient. This perspective is typically told through an autobiographical narrative marked by an implicitly religious or spiritual vocabulary centred on the feeling of rebirth and the sacredness of organ donation. Starting from the analysis of a corpus of qualitative interviews, the article aims to show the spirituality implicit in the autobiographical narratives of a group of members of the Associazione Nazionale Emo-Dializzati (ANED) of Turin (Italy). The data indicate that this implicit dimension is the product of a co-construction between patients and health workers in the context of the specific organizational culture of the hospital ward. This finding suggests possible directions for the implementation of spiritual care interventions in clinical practice.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265011","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}
The present contribution explores how the field of Roman History has formalized and justified the absence of “belief”—and religious belief in particular—as part of its standard research programme. In positing an unbridgeable gap between ancient Romans and modern human beings mainly based on the idea that “belief” and “faith” are modern Protestant concepts, Roman History inadvertently transmogrified its subjects of study into a legion of zombies incapable of holding meta-representations of their own religious (and non-religious) beliefs. While Roman History might have been an outlier in its staunch commitment to this exclusionary approach, the post-1970s move towards the abandonment of “belief” insofar as the study of ancient religion(s) is concerned was part of a widespread paradigm shift within the Humanities, which only very recently has been questioned. The history of the concept of “belief” in both Roman History and anthropology, as well as its rejection from the former’s disciplinary toolbox, are tackled, while the peculiar disciplinary concepts of Roman “orthopraxy” and “demythicization” (sometimes hailed as explananda or replacements for the absence of “belief” in Roman antiquity) are also explained. Finally, a cognitive rebuttal of this absence is provided through a reappraisal of David Chalmers’ “philosophical zombies” mental experiment.
{"title":"Zombies Roaming Around the Pantheon","authors":"Leonardo Ambasciano","doi":"10.1558/imre.24338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24338","url":null,"abstract":"The present contribution explores how the field of Roman History has formalized and justified the absence of “belief”—and religious belief in particular—as part of its standard research programme. In positing an unbridgeable gap between ancient Romans and modern human beings mainly based on the idea that “belief” and “faith” are modern Protestant concepts, Roman History inadvertently transmogrified its subjects of study into a legion of zombies incapable of holding meta-representations of their own religious (and non-religious) beliefs. While Roman History might have been an outlier in its staunch commitment to this exclusionary approach, the post-1970s move towards the abandonment of “belief” insofar as the study of ancient religion(s) is concerned was part of a widespread paradigm shift within the Humanities, which only very recently has been questioned. The history of the concept of “belief” in both Roman History and anthropology, as well as its rejection from the former’s disciplinary toolbox, are tackled, while the peculiar disciplinary concepts of Roman “orthopraxy” and “demythicization” (sometimes hailed as explananda or replacements for the absence of “belief” in Roman antiquity) are also explained. Finally, a cognitive rebuttal of this absence is provided through a reappraisal of David Chalmers’ “philosophical zombies” mental experiment.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265063","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}
This piece, a sort of epilogue to the special issue, reflects on different ways to study “religious belief.” It identifies two broad types of scholarly questions. The first concerns religious beliefs themselves, how they are held, what work they do in societies, etc. The second interrogates “religious belief” itself as a category. And yet, these two types, while having seemingly quite distinct aims and assumptions, often overlap. The piece concludes with a discussion of “scientific beliefs,” as a way of asking what, if anything, is distinctive about religious beliefs, approached through either type of question.
{"title":"Does Anyone Sincerely Believe in Science? and Several Other Questions","authors":"Charles McCrary","doi":"10.1558/imre.26879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.26879","url":null,"abstract":"This piece, a sort of epilogue to the special issue, reflects on different ways to study “religious belief.” It identifies two broad types of scholarly questions. The first concerns religious beliefs themselves, how they are held, what work they do in societies, etc. The second interrogates “religious belief” itself as a category. And yet, these two types, while having seemingly quite distinct aims and assumptions, often overlap. The piece concludes with a discussion of “scientific beliefs,” as a way of asking what, if anything, is distinctive about religious beliefs, approached through either type of question.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139264369","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}
Laura McTighe (2020, 299) argues in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion that “Religious Studies has a race problem.” I strongly agree with this argument: not only does the field largely ignore issues of race in its examination of cultural and religious differences, but also the field itself was formed and developed (largely over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) in the context of British, continental European, and American colonialism. That is, the field of religious studies has in particular a whiteness problem. In short, the study of religion has the issue of race and racialization at its centre—and thus any attempt to explore issues of critical religion should also embrace critical race theory in all its forms. Drawing on writers such as Sara Ahmed, Aime Cesaire, Angela Y Davis, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Toni Morrison, I will examine some of the contours of what a “Critical Race and Religion” approach may contribute to a decolonized study of religion—including a strong critique of the underlying issues of whiteness (and white supremacy) within the contemporary field.
劳拉-麦克蒂格(Laura McTighe,2020,299)在《美国宗教学会杂志》上指出,"宗教研究存在种族问题"。我非常同意这一观点:不仅该领域在研究文化和宗教差异时在很大程度上忽视了种族问题,而且该领域本身也是在英国、欧洲大陆和美国殖民主义的背景下形成和发展起来的(主要是在十九世纪和二十世纪)。也就是说,宗教研究领域尤其存在白人问题。简而言之,宗教研究的核心是种族和种族化问题--因此,任何探讨批判性宗教问题的尝试都应包含各种形式的批判性种族理论。我将以萨拉-艾哈迈德(Sara Ahmed)、艾梅-塞泽尔(Aime Cesaire)、安吉拉-戴维斯(Angela Y Davis)、W.E.B. 杜波依斯(W.E.B. Du Bois)和托尼-莫里森(Toni Morrison)等作家的作品为基础,探讨 "批判性种族与宗教 "方法可能对非殖民化宗教研究做出的贡献--包括对当代领域中潜在的白人(和白人至上主义)问题的强烈批判。
{"title":"Critical Race and Religion","authors":"Malory Nye","doi":"10.1558/imre.23813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23813","url":null,"abstract":"Laura McTighe (2020, 299) argues in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion that “Religious Studies has a race problem.” I strongly agree with this argument: not only does the field largely ignore issues of race in its examination of cultural and religious differences, but also the field itself was formed and developed (largely over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) in the context of British, continental European, and American colonialism. That is, the field of religious studies has in particular a whiteness problem. In short, the study of religion has the issue of race and racialization at its centre—and thus any attempt to explore issues of critical religion should also embrace critical race theory in all its forms. Drawing on writers such as Sara Ahmed, Aime Cesaire, Angela Y Davis, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Toni Morrison, I will examine some of the contours of what a “Critical Race and Religion” approach may contribute to a decolonized study of religion—including a strong critique of the underlying issues of whiteness (and white supremacy) within the contemporary field.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139264889","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}