Charismatic Christianity as Primal Spirituality? Some Observations from Slovenia

This chapter addresses problems and themes in the social sciences. Social sciences are understood specifically as sciences that have (or should have) the following minimal characteristics: their object of study is human behavior and they follow a certain number of methodological principles, including a marked effort towards analytical clarity; the investigation of causal explanations through the formulation of causal laws or at least causal mechanisms; and a subscription to a form of methodological individualism, if an amended one, which puts at the heart of social science the notion of choice. We discuss three principal themes. The first raises the question of the status of laws in the social sciences and, in particular, that of “consequence laws,” otherwise known as functionalist explanations. The second theme takes up methodological individualism, as compared to holistic approaches. The last theme concerns hypotheses of rationality and self-interested motivations, which increasingly figure in social scientific explanations.

In this text I am going to argue that unless it opens itself to discussions that dominate contemporary social and human sciences, and unless protection of the specificity of historical research is undertaken, there is a real risk that history might be reduced to the status of an auxiliary science of other human and social sciences that have thus far been more successful in interpreting contemporary events and phenomena which have traditionally been consigned to the field of history. I claim that the weak points of contemporary historical studies are methodology and theory separated from empirical research in such a way that they are unable to capture complex phenomena which have emerged with the advent of modernity. In order to link practice and theory, I propose to appropriate for historical research what has been called ”grounded theory”-theory developed out of data, and which uses comparative approaches and case studies as its main methods. The text contains two parts: in part one, I indicate ways in which theories in contemporary human and social science have failed to deal with historical change and in part two, I sketch a methodology of grounded theory.

Sensoriality and Wendat SteamsThe Analysis of Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Wendat Steam Lodge Rituals in Southern Ontario Steven Dorland (bio) Steam lodge rituals embody sensory-heightened and deeply spiritual events.1 Studies of Great Lakes and Great Plains practices have resulted in a greater understanding of the importance of steam ritual.2 However, intensive studies of precontact practices are lacking. Anthropologist Ivan Lopatin analyzed cross-cultural steam ritual activities but focused on the description and classification of broader sweat and steam activities.3 Due to the nature of Lopatin’s broad approach, he did not address ritual meaning and ritual experience. The analysis of Iroquoian steam lodges by archaeologist Robert MacDonald represents one of the first comprehensive studies of steam lodge structures that are located north of Mesoamerica.4 MacDonald provides a solid foundation for future inquiries by presenting the archaeological context of steam lodges, but past cultural processes have resulted in preservation issues and formation processes that limit the availability of material evidence that is needed to confront symbolic and ideational realms. Archaeologists require other avenues to address this lacuna and redirect focus to the experiential contexts of ritual practice. I propose an alternate interpretation of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century southern Ontario Wendat steam rituals. Functionalist explanations that are contextualized in modernist ontological structures discount the plurality of steam ritual practices and do not consider experiential contexts.5 I argue that steam lodge rituals must be studied in a framework that is anchored in Wendat ontology and sensorial experiences to realize the lived experience of steams. Before applying such a framework, archaeologists need to address three critical points. First, Wendat ontology greatly influenced how Wendats interacted with material things. [End Page 1] Reducing Wendat beliefs to tenets of Cartesian thinking (subject/object, mind/body) distorts material interactions and material relationships that took place in Wendat communities. Wendat steam rituals encompassed more than an interconnection of subject/object relations within an enclosed structure. Participants acted as nodes in social networks that were manifested by spiritually charged living and nonliving things, material and immaterial forms of ancestral presence, and other natural and spiritual manifestations. Steam lodge experiences transcended the physical plane. Second, Wendat steam rituals were intense sensory-charged experiences. The sensory modalities of the Western sensorium provide a partial construction of the sensorial environment of steam rituals, but senses linked to pain, temporal awareness, and spatial awareness were also actively engaged. Third, Wendat steam rituals were mediated by both social memory and sensory memory. Knowledge structures and interactions influenced Wendat lifeways, but the continuing encounters with sensory fields played a major role. Redirecting research foci to confront experiential contexts of Wendat lifeways will result in a greater understanding of Great Lakes practices and beliefs. To strengthen archaeological narratives of steam lodge rituals, this article proposes a multidisciplinary framework that integrates archaeological evidence with ethnohistorical accounts, oral traditions, anthropological case studies of North American indigenous groups, an interview with Elder Régent Sioui Garihoua (referred to as rs in this article), psychological literature, and neurosciences literature. Indigenous peoples recognize that steam lodges have both personal and broader cultural importance. The inclusion of multiple avenues of research maximizes understanding and produces rich and vivid interpretive frameworks. An overarching goal of this article is to conceptualize experiences of steam ritual sensory fields. The article does not reconstruct a universal spiritual and sensorial explanation of steam rituals but rather constructs an alternate narrative that embraces sensorial landscapes. I refer to the writings of mid-seventeenth-century Recollect brother Gabriel Sagard and the mid-seventeenth-century Jesuit accounts of Father François du Peron, Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François-Joseph Le Mercier, Father Jérôme Lalemant, and Father Paul Ragueneau.6 The accounts of Father Le Jeune refer to both Wendats and Montagnais, Innu-speaking trading partners of the St. Lawrence region. The Recollect and Jesuit accounts describe the lifeways and beliefs [End Page 2] of indigenous peoples and bolster French support for their conversion efforts. Overlapping descriptions of beliefs and practices further strengthen the analytical value of the written accounts. There are two key points that need discussion when referring to Jesuit accounts. First, as...

This article discusses how religious place-making contributes to the mobility and transnational connection of migrants during their periods of transit and fragmented journeys. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Pentecostal Charismatic Christian churches in Rabat and Casablanca, it describes how the establishment of religious places by West and Central African Christian migrants is an outcome of the blockades and ruptures that many of them experience in the buffer zone that Morocco has become. Moreover, this article demonstrates how the religious and social practices within these migrant spaces contribute to the development of mobility in terms of both the sending and receiving nations, as well as the believer’s integration into transnational Charismatic Christian territories. In this context of forced immobility and limited religious freedom, the transnational and decentralised dimensions of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity have been particularly suitable for stranded Christian African migrants who aim to remain their agency and achieve in a better future, potentially through emigration to Europe.

In contrast to functionalist explanations for the spread of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, this article discursively analyzes conversion narratives to understand the localization of a global cultural phenomenon. The narratives were drawn from interviews, conducted in 2005, with members of the El Shaddai and Jesus-is-Lord movements. Approached from the perspective of critical realism, the narratives embody a diversity of plots, creative tensions, and distinctively Filipino elements that speak of a reconstituted self and a new engagement with society. They reveal the informants grappling with the question of God’s existence, which finds resolution in individualized experiences of transcendence that generate and infuse local meanings to Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.

In contrast to functionalist explanations for the spread of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, this article discursively analyzes conversion narratives to understand the localization of a global cultural phenomenon. The narratives were drawn from interviews, conducted in 2005, with members of the El Shaddai and Jesus-is-Lord movements. Approached from the perspective of critical realism, the narratives embody a diversity of plots, creative tensions, and distinctively Filipino elements that speak of a reconstituted self and a new engagement with society. They reveal the informants grappling with the question of God’s existence, which finds resolution in individualized experiences of transcendence that generate and infuse local meanings to Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.

Social science has long operated under the assumption that enchantment, seeking out this-worldly manifestations of the supernatural, impedes the cultivation of self-discipline. How, then, to account for a Christian brotherhood whose testimonial practice is at once enchanting and disciplining of the self? In this article, I define self-discipline in terms of its distinctly reflexive (self-aimed and self-governed) and methodical (systematic and auto-regenerative) character, and in doing so, I disentangle the concept from rational calculation as one (among other possible) means of disciplining the self. I draw on Ricoeur’s theory of personal identity to theorize a relationship of the self whose reflexive and methodical character is found not in rational calculation but in arational narration. I then show how the testimonial practice of a charismatic Christian businessmen’s brotherhood is disciplining of the self insofar as it is enchanting, how the practice is methodical and reflexive because it is one of arational narration.

BOOK REVIEWS451 occurs by the late fourteenth century, that changes were more interactive between church and state, religious and secular players, and notions about charity and social welfare, than any uniform broad social movement or radical change in thinking. Religious motives remained important. However, the scale of welfare institutions changed, and their operations required more and more public funding. With the broadened programs of medical care in large hospitals like Santa Creu in Barcelona, came also specializations in treatments, program delivery , and care packages. Also evident is a distinction between the deserving poor and undesirables like professional prostitutes and beggars. Finally, Brodman argues that the plight of poor people was addressed by two entwined sets of practice, charity and welfare, voluntary acts for individuals and politically governed social programs for the common good. While the author takes care to guard against presentism and read modern notions into medieval practices, conventions, and institutional forms, his theme rings relevant today with our concerns about social welfare, types of poverty, causes and solutions, and distinctions between direct intervention and immediate help for the unfortunate, and longer range social programs for the welfare of elements in society that have been present always. One might have wished that the historical treatment were more informed by the current fields related to social work and health care. The persistence of need for social welfare and Christian charity and our current struggle over forms of program delivery, funding, and matters of conscience, cannot but help make this investigation into the origins of welfare in our history resonate with the contemporary. This is not just a book to recommend to medievalists, therefore, but to the broader audience of social historians and social science, and beyond history as a background to those studying in such professional fields as social work, criminology, counseling , nursing, and allied health. In its pages modern readers will find much to cause them to contemplate notions of charity and welfare that were articulated centuries before, are still relevant, and which prompt heightened consciousness of the human condition and means for helping others. The subject necessarily reminds one of the ever present differences between the haves and have nots, the privileged and unfortunate, the rich and the poor, and their awareness of each other. As such this book is thought-provoking beyond its purely historical dimension. Lawrence J. McCrank Davenport College Epithalamium Beate Virginis Marie. By Giovanni di Garlandia. Testo critico, traduzione e commento a cura di Antonio Saiani. [Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere "La Colombaria," Studi CXXXIX.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 1995. Pp. 682. Ore 130.000.) What has to be considered, unquestionably, the first known lyric of Italian literature , a canzone d'amore in fifty-five decasyllable verses found on the verso 452book reviews of a parchment dated February 28, 1 127, and preserved in the Church Archives of Ravenna, is going to be published by Alfredo Stussi in the next issue of Cultura Neolatina. News concerning this matter can be found in the Sunday literary supplement of Sole 24 Ore (February 28, 1999, p. 29), which carries an ample account by Professor Vittore Branca. Definitely relevant is the fact that the literary text is accompanied by musical neumatic composition. What makes this profane (so to speak) poetry similar to the great religious work ofJohn of Garland (1 195-1272), together with a profound, indeed supernatural, sense of man and world as divine, is the artistic shaping of Delight and Pain in love as dramatis personae. The pattern, as Antonio Saiani shows in his superb commentary , is certainly to be found in classical sources, but scholars of the Middle Ages and historians will find very interesting a wide spectrum of biblical references , above all to the Psalms, mediated through liturgy and early Christian hymnography so well blended in the works of those who had access to cultural education. Medieval studies have given us the excellent subsidia of J. De Ghellinck, L'essor de la literature latine au XIF siècle (2nd ed., Brussels, 1954) and E. R. Curtius,Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern and Munich, 1953; English translation: NewYork, 1963), both to be taken as still fundamental for the amalgam of...

The birth of the social sciences and specifically of sociology begets some open questions, among which the debate on altruism and the concept of social solidarity. The term altruism was firstly used by Auguste Comte. It is one of the few terms born within the scientific field that will enter the common language roughly maintaining the same meaning. For the positivist Comte, altruism represented the powerful impulse to the intellectual and moral development of humanity to which we must strive as a future state. The term commonly means all those actions whose benefits fall on others and not on the agent (actor). In short, for Comte, altruism means “to live for others” (vivre pour autrui). The centrality of altruism as part of the reflections of social sciences can be found in many classic authors. Durkheim, for example, explains the foundations of social solidarity in modern society precisely through the opposition between altruism and egoism and defines its implications in the book Le Suicide in 1897, also identifying what will later become the main typology of suicide by contrasting altruistic suicide with egoistic suicide. Likewise, both Weber and Marx, while not using the term altruism as such, refer to it indirectly. The former, when describing the ethics of love for the charismatic authority as opposed to legal and rational authority, the latter, when corroborating his polemics against Christian charity. The interest in altruism as an object of study of social sciences, however, is progressively waning - especially in Europe. From the second half of the last century, theoretical and empirical studies show the indifference of social scientists towards this object, except for the Russian-American sociologist Sorokin, who in 1949 founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism. In recent years, however, the topic seems to take renewed vigor, especially in the United States with the birth in 2012 of the section “Altruism, Morality & Social Solidarity” within the American Sociological Association. It considered these three aspects as a single field of disciplinary specialization, since they are significantly dependent on socio-cultural reality. This is the situation in the United States. In Europe, there is a renewed interest in studies on altruism, especially in French-language sociology, above all starting from the numerous contributions to reading and re-reading work on Marcel Mauss’s on gift of 1925, and in following the anti-utilitarian movement and studies of the school of social representations of Moscovici, which leads to the definition of the elementary forms of altruism. The book aims to analyze the concept of altruism starting from classical philosophy up to the systems of ideas of contemporaneity, considering the approaches and authors of reference in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary way. The representations of altruism and egoism in contemporary society are constantly changing, following the transformations of society itself. Having abandoned the idea that the factors leading to altruism or egoism lay only in human nature, we find them in people’s conduct, freedom, relationships, their associative forms and society. The attention is thus turned to two elements of the daily life of individuals: culture and social relations. The book tries, therefore, through the meso-theories developed in recent decades, which study the relationships between life-world and social system, to describe the links between altruism, egoism, culture and social relations. We will pay particular attention to the relationality of individuals, in an attempt to overcome the dichotomy altruism/egoism by reading some aspects little considered by previous studies - or contemplated only indirectly or marginally. The ultimate goal is to highlight how positive actions are necessary for the contemporary society and how social sciences must go back and study positive socio-cultural actions and phenomena, not only negative, as a way to promote them for the well-being of the society.

Basic and strategic research for infectious disease control at the interface of the life, health and social sciences

Charismatic Christianity and globalization This book has shown that within a century of its commencement, Charismatic forms of Christianity existed in most countries and affected all forms of Christianity in our contemporary world – however we regard or manipulate the statistics on affiliation. I have attempted to demonstrate the complexity of what we call ‘Pentecostalism’, both in terms of its origins and of its distinctive characteristics. As the subtitle of Cox’s Fire from Heaven declares, religion itself in the twenty-first century has been ‘reshaped’ through the ‘rise of Pentecostal spirituality’. Whatever our opinion or personal experience of Pentecostalism, it is a movement of such magnitude that Christianity itself has been irrevocably changed. The mushrooming growth of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and the ‘Pentecostalization’ of older, both Protestant and Catholic churches – especially in the Majority World – is a fact of our time. Ghanaian theologian Cephas Omenyo writes that the Pentecostal experience is becoming ‘mainline’ Christianity in Africa, ‘not merely in numbers but more importantly in spirituality, theology and practice’. This observation applies to other continents too, as we have seen. With all its warts and wounds, this composite movement continues to expand and increase across the globe.

The social sciences are intimately linked to understanding the societies in which we live. This is why the question of the historical and political anchoring of this knowledge arises. As postcolonial studies have shown, the social sciences have produced theories, concepts, and paradigms in Southern societies conveying a discourse on “modernity.” According to Edward Said, scientific knowledge is a form of power that confers authority on the person who produces it. However, knowledge is largely...

Accounts of Pentecostal ecumenism tend to take two basic shapes. In one, the story of Pentecostal and charismatic ecumenism is subsumed into the wider course of twentieth-century ecumenism, whose centre has been the World Council of Churches. The other regards Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity as an ecumenical movement in its own right, expressed in innumerable informal relationships and recently embodied in the Global Christian Forum. These two popular visions often keep Pentecostals, charismatics, and mainstream ecumenists talking past one another. An inventory of the gifts offered, gifts received, and gifts withheld or rejected among these parties in twentieth- and twenty-first-century ecumenism leads to a different interpretation of their interrelationship. The ecumenical movement at large and Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity itself are both among the renewing tides in Christ’s ecclesial ecumene. The most significant Pentecostal/charismatic contribution to ecumenism may be its own spirit, and vice versa.

Reviewed by: Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches Jon Bialecki Omri Elisha , Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 276 pp. It would be factually accurate to describe Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches, the first ethnographic monograph by Omri Elisha, as a single book. After all, it takes on a single problematic—that of politically and theologically conservative American Evangelicals who feel compelled to engage in a form of voluntaristic social work usually associated with the sort of "social gospel" movements normally connected with liberal, mainline denominations. It does so in a single site—Knoxville, Tennessee—and it is contained within a single volume. However, when considering the merits of this work, and what it has to tell us about the current state and potential future directions of the contemporary anthropology of Christianity, it is probably best to consider this to be two separate books, or better yet (given that the religious nature of the topic) it is profitable to think of this as a volume capable of being given both an exoteric and esoteric reading. The exoteric reading might be called the privileged one; it certainly is what stands out in sharp relief during the initial reading of the book. It is, like all good ethnography, a nuanced snapshot of particularly situated people struggling to work through a particular problem: in this case, the problem is that of how to practice and campaign for Christian charity in an age that is ideologically and structurally neoliberal. Though these individuals may not be humanists in the classic sense of the word, the portrait drawn of them by Elisha certainly is, a sketch of persons who function as much as full characters as they do as exemplars of larger socio-cultural trends. This is particularly the case in the moments when the ethnographic description attends to the way people struggle with the [End Page 973] painful antinomies of their religious and economic situation, as well as to their attempts to overcome it through various forms of what might have been called "consciousness raising" had it occurred in a different milieu. Elisha's informants are caught in the snares of an ethical individualism, a petit bourgeoisie consumerist quietism, and a salvation economy skeptical of the social and the institutional; despite this, Elisha depicts a handful of "morally ambitious" individuals who struggle to extricate both themselves and their fellow megachurch believers. This ambition impels them into a different creative and agentive mode of interacting with those they consider the poor and the oppressed, imagined as the proper objects of Christian charity and concern. If such a movement were to come to its completion, Elisha's informants contend, it would augur a real revival, completely transforming their city in ways that even they find difficult to articulate. Working against class type, and struggling to bridge racialized economic divides, this is a study of people engaged in a particular kind of moral involution, attempting to overcome the very forces that shape and limit their subjectification. At the exoteric level, this book would be compelling for those interested in contemporary charity and gift economies, those interested in the subjective shape of neoliberalism in the contemporary world, or those who attend to social movements. The second, esoteric reading of this book lies not at the level of expressed content, but the formal decisions made by the author in framing his ethnographic object. What is of interest here is Elisha's choice to think through his wider object, a recognizable "Bible Belt" evangelical Christianity, as a multiplicity, while not falling into what Joel Robbins (2003:193) has called "an object dissolving critique." Here, instead of being either epiphenomenon or essence, Christianity is a series of open, differentiating potentialities; the direction of charitable practices designed to address and denature structural forms of inequality are always present in the form of Southern Evangelism that Elisha documents, but it is not always actualized, and frequently not actualized on the same form. This means that Elisha also has to make use of an analytics of different speeds, intensities, durations, and thresholds, as well as of different attractors that...

Persecution has long constituted part of the spiritual repertoire of evangelical Christians in Ethiopia. Ever since its introduction by Western missionaries, the new Christian faith has provided an alternative model to the one that pre-existed it in the form of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (eoc). The new dimension of Christianity that is anchored in the doctrine of personal salvation and sanctification provided a somewhat different template of what it means to be a Christian by choice rather than belonging to a preset culture. This was antithetical to the conventional mode of culturally and historically situated Christianity, which strongly lays emphasis on adherence to certain prescribed rituals like fasting, the observances of saintly days, and devotions to saints. Its introduction by foreigners is often contrasted with an indigenous faith tradition which is considered to have a long history dating back to the apostolic times. The tendency of evangelical Christians to disassociate themselves from the local culture, as emblematic of holiness and separation from the world, viewed from the other optic, lent it the label mete, literally “imported” or “of foreign extraction”. The state support the established church had garnered for a long time, plus its massive influences, also accorded the eoc a privileged position to exercise a dominant role in the social, political, and cultural life of the country. This article explores the theme of persecution of Evangelical Christians in light of the above framework. It crucially examines the persecution of Pentecostals prior to the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 and afterwards. Two reasons justify my choice. First, it lends the article a clear focus and secondly, Pentecostalism has been one of the potent vehicles for the expansion of evangelical Christianity in Ethiopia. I argue that the pre-revolutionary persecution stems from the fact that the Pentecostals presented some kind of spiritual shock waves to the familiar terrains of Christianity and that the main reason for their persecutions during the revolution was the fact that they countered hegemonic narratives that presented themselves in the form of Marxism, which became the doctrine of the state under the banner of “scientific socialism.”