Postsecular Refigurations of Religion and Secularity in Maarten Van der Graaff’s Wormen en engelen (2017)

Delimiting Religion

The following article is a result of empirical study conducted in 2017-2018. It is focused on narratives about religious experience, an outstanding intensive experience that individual interprets as a contact with transcendent reality. The object of our study are the ways the subjective reality of religious experience is transmitted into the language of everyday communication. I have carried out a survey in order to find the respondents that believe they had a religious (mystical) experience. Next step I have conducted eight narrative interviews. For the present comparative analysis I have chosen two interviews from the corpus of collected data. The choice was designated by the respondents’ attitude to religion: an orthodox believer and a non-believer. The aim of the analysis is to compare how the respondents construct the narrative about religious experience and their identity. For this purpose I have examinde the general structure of the narratives; the notions of religious (mystical) experience and repertoires used; the categories connected to identification or opposition to social groups. All the above allows to define the implicit meaning of religious self-identification that respondents articulated. The analysis of the examples demonstrates that individual religiosity resists the formal categorization. In the analyzed narratives the mystical experience can be described beyond religious context. The respondents give negative evaluation to religious institute and understand religious tradition as a resource that can be used pragmatically along with non-religious repertoires.

L’antinomie entre thaumaturgie religieuse et thérapies médicales : le cas « Catholicisme et Psychiatrie » en Italie

The research we will present is based on interviews conducted with the Latin American immigrant population and the indigenous population of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC hereafter). We seek to identify religious features tracing similarities and differences between three populations: First, the native community of the BAC, second, Latin American immigrants living in the BAC, and third, Latin Americans in their home countries. In the latter case, we based on the research carried out by Gustavo Morello’s team. Analysis of the data obtained so far allows us to compare across two different processes in the Christian religion: On the one hand, the religious experience of Latin Americans in their countries of origin and the religious experience of Latin American immigrants in the BAC; on the other hand, between the latter community and the native population. This paper highlights conclusions referring: (1) The similarities in two significant processes, i.e., religious pluralism and religious autonomy; (2) the differences on religious hybridization, public presence and the use of religious artefacts. In short, it is a contribution to a better understanding of the effects produced on religious experiences in a context marked by secularization and religious pluralism.

In this paper the author analyzes the influence of Christianity on society. There will be demonstrated that through its structure, man was created to live in the community. He discovers himself by relating to the world surrounding him, as it is argued by Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber. Here we also include the relationship with the transcendent. The philosophical and sociological arguments help us understand the influence Christianity had on European society. The religion of the European nations had a strong influence on the civilization of the continent and the world. Researchers have come to the conclusion that man was created with an innate religious feeling. Rudolf Otto sought to demonstrate that man's religious experience can only be explained by the aprioric existence of the sacred. So did Mircea Eliade, who introduced a new term "hierophany" to define the act of experiencing the sacred. There were also researchers who reinterpreted the relationship with the sacred. Emile Durkheim argued that ultimately, religion in its present form will be replaced by a so-called "civic religion," which will replace religious services in churches. Accepting the perspective of Scripture, the author tries to show the idea of the presence of Divinity in the believer's life (John 14:15-26). Jurgen Moltman asserts that if society were to enter the process of Christ's discipleship, she would discover the divine alternatives that bring the long-awaited results. Max Weber argued that Christian religion, and especially the sects of Protestantism, had a decisive role in influencing the culture and civilization of modern Europe, and the world at large. From his point of view, the decision of man in capitalist society to make a great effort in his work, has a religious motivation, namely, the doctrine of predestination. Considering that the moral and theological dimension of Christianity lies at the root of human significance, Christians struggle to defend the revealed message. A good example is given by Francis Schaeffer, who in his book Trilogy pleads to preserve the traditional moral values of the Bible. Schaeffer attempts to link the idea of revelation, as it is presented in the Christian Bible, with the discovering of man's significance.

Journal Article The Competition for Worldviews: Values, Information, and Public Support for Stem Cell Research Get access Matthew C. Nisbet Matthew C. Nisbet Matthew C. Nisbet (Ph.D., Cornell University) is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. Address correspondence to Matthew C. Nisbet, School of Communication, The Ohio State University, 3084 Derby Hall, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43215, USA, e-mail: Nisbet.4@osu.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 17, Issue 1, Spring 2005, Pages 90–112, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edh058 Published: 01 March 2005

In Europe, the general trend of secularization continues. It is attested by the loss of authority of the Catholic church on the societal level and in societal subsystems. This trend is confirmed by the decline of personal religiosity (beliefs, church practice, and moral attitudes). However, the situation is more complex than that: some paradoxes should be stressed. Not infrequently religious authorities are considered to be experts on ethical matters and are requested by civil authorities to give advice; popular religious practices are re-legitimized; at different territorial levels, Catholicism - and to a lesser extent other Christian religions - is invoked to affirm the specific identity of a city, a region, and even of Europe. The courts now-a-days sometimes take into account religious identities and their particularistic exigences and characteristics. Consequently, religious institutions - and most specifically the Catholic church - appear to be a resource used on the levels of the society, subsystems, and the individual. However, its impact is subject to the fact that its specific religious character - to wit its doctrine and specific moral standards - is watered down. This in itself may be considered a consequence of secularization.

This chapter begins with a discussion on the Gospel of Truth, which is the beginning of a work from the Jung Codex. The followers of Valentinus regarded it as a fifth gospel. It has by now been established beyond doubt that the gnostic Valentinus himself wrote this work. The Gospel of Truth contains detailed reflections on Christ as the Name, that is: the essential revelation of the Unknown God. The chapter now talks about the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, which has led young scholars in the United States to start a new quest for the historical Jesus. The Cologne Mani Codex is one of the world's smallest books. The chapter highlights that the only hope for the Christian religion is for the Roman Catholic Church to integrate Gnosis and personal religious experience. In this way it could be transformed from an authoritarian institution into a constitutional monarchy.Keywords: Christian religion; Cologne Mani Codex; Gnosis; Gospel of Thomas; Gospel of Truth; Roman Catholic Church

A number of empirical studies have shown the continuous lack of adherence and the growing autonomy of the population regarding religious institutions. This article reflects on the kind of relationship between deinstitutionalisation and religious experience based on the following hypothesis: the evident decline in religious institutions does not necessarily lead to the disappearance or the weakening of religious experience; rather, it runs simultaneously with a process of individualisation. Our aim is to provide empirical evidence of such transformations; therefore, we do not get involved in speculations, but take into account the contributions of scholars concerning three key terms integrated in the conceptual framework of “religious experience’’: “experience of God”, “God image”, and “institutional belonging”. We analysed 39 in-depth interviews with a qualitative approach; interviews were conducted during the years 2016–2018 amongst Evangelical and Catholic populations in three Latin American cities (Córdoba, Montevideo, and Lima) and in the city of Bilbao (Spain). These interviews clearly indicate a growing autonomy from the religious institution, while evidencing a rich range of experiences of God and a great diversity of God representations. In both cases, they point to processes of individualisation of believers who elaborate their own religious experience in a personal and complex way.

474 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:3 JULY 199 7 most noteworthy clarifications in this chapter is the distinction of three basic understandings of the term 'metaphysics' in the Architectonic. Quite relevant is also Tonelli's stress on the difference, blurred by Kemp Smith's translation, between essential and ultimate ends of reason at A 84o/B 868, which is taken as evidence of the unprecedented relation between ethics and metaphysics advocated by Kant. ALFREDO FERRARIN Boston University Edward Allen Beach. The Potengiesof God(s):Schelling'sPhilosophyof Mythology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Pp xii + 317 . Board, $18.95. An interesting theme of this book is the necessary ambivalence of human consciousness toward the object of religion. Parallel to this psychological ambivalence, objective ambiguities turn up in the history of religions: whether religion's object is one or plural, natural or spiritual, a completed entity or a developing one. Schelling devoted the last half of his life (in the lecture hall if not in print) to a two-sided attempt to revive theistic metaphysics and to "demonstrate" the reality of God in the history of religions. Beach's tide, with its ambiguity about the number of deity, reflects Schelling's bold attempt to validate the sky-monism of hunter-gatherers and the polytheism of early agricultural peoples as genuine religious experience. He made them phases of the development of true, revealed (i.e., Christian) religion by making their objects necessary components (or potencies) of the divine essence, displayed in mock independence in the history of mythology, but once properly developed and subordinated, the support for the experiential revelation of the actual, personal God. Schelling's programme in the late or Positive Philosophy is complicated both by its subject and its presentation in discrete lecture courses. Other scholars have treated the complexity of Schelling's attitude toward philosophy after the 182os, his repudiation of the static conceptualism of his own Identity-Philosophy and of Hegel's system as merely "negative" philosophy, and his demand that will, decision (freedom) and actuality be taken as the supports and starting-points of a second or "positive" philosophy. The classic study here is Walter Schulz's Die VoUendungdes Deutschen ldealismus in der Spiitphilosophie ScheUings(end ed., Pftitlingen: Neske, 1975). Beach focusses instead on the complexity of the vehicle Schelling chose to convey this positive philosophy: the history of religions, or in Scheiling's terms the philosophies of mythology and revelation . Though Schelling turned to theistic metaphysics late in life, he always regarded myth and symbol as the point where aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion converged. He developed an eye for the nuanced phenomena of religious experience, resisting the tendency of the nineteenth-century academy to reduce religious representations either to a flat mirroring of historical events or to an externalization of internal psychic conflicts. Beach shows how Schelling incorporated the historical and especially the psychological dimensions of religious experience into a nonreductive account of the unfolding of the divine reality in human cultures, inside a history generated not accidentally by the mere accumulation of unrelated events, but one driven by the logic BOOK REVIEWS 475 of the unfolding of the divine essence. The genius of Schelling's view of religion is to argue that "screens" placed by linguistic, cultural, and temporal differences do not divide the worshipper/intuiter from the "true God" but are preparatory vehicles necessary for the lived encounter with God. Comparing Schelling's method to the "hermeneutics of suspicion" practiced by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Freud which resulted in purely reductive theories---e.g., Feuerbach's thesis that the gods are simultaneous projections of human capacity and incapacity--Beach argues that Schelling's theory offers a "sublimated projection theory" of religion. Rooted in the conviction that human consciousness is "Godpositing " but confronted with the facts that there are inconsistent paradigms of religion and its object(s), this theory first works deconstructively upon these ambiguities, then opens itself up for an "ecstatic," intuitive or experiential moment of spiritual illumination, but finally returns to rational discourse for a moment of "theodicy" or "confirmation." Beach abstracts this picture from Schelling's actual speculation, which is more technical and often pedantic, but all...

The article claims that PT needs to change as a discipline in three directions. First, we cannot longer lump every person in our category of religion based on the normative conceptions of our own (Christian) religion. We need criteria to distinguish between normal experiences, spiritual experience and religious experience. Secondly, the process of opening up the material object of PT has decentred the (all-knowing) theological scholar who builds theory on lived spirituality and / or religion. Thirdly, we need to develop a new form of methodology to build theory on practical reasoning, namely practice-oriented methodology.

This paper is going to discuss about the process of interfaith dialogue in an African perspective. The type of interfaith dialogue shall be different from the traditional Western perspective. In a traditional form, normally dialogue involves the so called world major religions namely, Christianity and Islam only. Both of these two religions are foreign religions originated from the Middle East. In African perspective the two religions are foreign, therefore, according to science of religions, they are known as secondary religious experience. However, the African religion to Africans is primary religious experience at the same time this religion is the host to the two religions (Islam and Christianity).This study shall propose the dialogue to be carried out in a modern way, unlike the traditional one. In this new type of dialogue, African religion shall be treated equally with other foreign religions. The objective of this dialogue is to learn to tolerate as well as enriching from each other. The study shows that from the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize whether Africans had a religion at all. However, from 1969 up to 1993, the Roman Catholic Church started to recognize the African religion. A contribution to interfaith dialogue by Western, Asian and African scholars in Religions shall give a great contribution to the study of interfaith dialogue in a new perspective. Keywords: dialogue of living together, convivenz, second Vatican Council, primary and secondary religious experiences DOI: 10.7176/JPCR/52-03 Publication date: February 28 th 2021

This article analyzes the early religious memories of a gay man without religion, based on his life narrative. The aim is to understand the tensions between religious socialization during childhood and adolescence, marked by the strong influence of Catholicism in a small-town setting, and the process of breaking away from religious institutions. The life narrative technique is used to explore religious memories and experiences. In the first part, the verbatim account is presented, allowing the participant’s voice to be heard directly, without interference or interpretative mediation, highlighting the nuances of his personal narrative. In the second part, a critical analysis is carried out based on theoretical references, examining how religious experiences and family principles shaped his identity and religious sense. Issues such as gender normativity, religious prejudice, and the re-signification of faith emerge as central themes. The conclusion is that the interviewee expresses a de-institutionalized belief, contributing to the understanding of the intersection between sexual orientation and people without religion.

Reviewed by: Religious Experience in the Work of Richard Wagner by Marcel Hébert Richard Bell Religious Experience in the Work of Richard Wagner. By Marcel Hébert. Edited by C.J.T. Talar. Translated by C.J.T. Talar and Elizabeth Emery. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2015. Pp. xlvii, 128. $65.00. ISBN 9 8-0-813-227412.) Although the Jesuit philosopher Abbé Marcel Hébert (1851-1916) left seminary "a convinced Thomist" (p. xxi), his philosophical outlook was to change considerably after studying Kant and Schopenhauer. This, together with the growing interest in Wagner in France (see especially the Revue wagneriénne) and the symbolist movement which looked to Wagner for its inspiration, meant that it was natural for this priest to turn to the composer for new inspiration in what was later to be termed "Modernism." Hébert taught at the École Fénelon in Paris, becoming its director in 1895. However, when his unorthodox views become known to the Church hierarchy, he resigned his position and in 1903 "quietly left the church" (p. xxiv n. 10). Although his book Le sentiment religieux dans l'œuvre Richard Wagner (1895) sparked interest, its impact being enhanced by the review of the Wagnerian Abbé Arthur Mugnier, "the confessor of all Paris," it has fallen into obscurity, unjustly in my view. Therefore I welcome this translation with its foreword by Stephen Schloesser and introduction by the translators C.J.T. Talar and Elizabeth Emery (who have also included a translation of Mugnier's review). Their rendition reads well and Hébert's original footnotes are supplemented by references to English [End Page 599] translations of Wagner's prose work by William Ashton Ellis, to modern translations of the Ring, and to English translations of secondary literature. The purpose of Hébert's book is to trace the evolution of Wagner's view of "religious experience" ("sentiment religieux") in key stage works and theoretical writings, starting with the sketches Jesus of Nazareth (1849) and finishing with Parsifal (1882). The book is full of insightful remarks showing, for example, a close study of Arthur Schopenhauer with nuanced comments on the relation of Wagner to the philosopher (pp. 52–56). I wonder though whether he does full justice to Christian theology in the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, where he claims that the composer had replaced the ancient beliefs of Christianity with "an entirely naturalistic and humanitarian faith" (p. 36) and that he "interpret[s] the doctrine of Jesus through his own anarchist doctrine" (p. 31). I may add that although Houston Stewart Chamberlain was impressed on meeting Hébert (letter to Cosima Wagner of December 16, 1893) he made a similar criticism of the Abbé in this book Richard Wagner. Hébert closes his work by reflecting on the then current situation in France "in which the renewal of philosophical, scientific, and historical ideas has rendered Christian theology a dead letter for the intellectual elite" (p. 97). Wagner appears to come to the rescue in that he breaks us free from 'dogma' since, as he puts it in his essay Religion and Art (1880), music alone has the capacity to "reveal in incomparable accuracy the very essence of the Christian religion" (p. 95 n. 11). The composer certainly suited Hebert's Symbolist agenda. Generally speaking, Hébert knows his Wagner although it is striking that the actual music is not discussed. Wagnerians may wonder why he dates Georg Herwegh's introduction of Wagner to the philosophy of Schopenhauer as early as 1852 (rather than 1854); but there is some justification for this view and the editors' Introduction (p. xxxii) refers to Edouard Sans' 1969 book on Wagner and Schopenhauer and qualify Hébert's claim. Note that Hébert quotes from "The Work and Mission of My Life" and "Letter on Music" to provide "an accurate summary" of his thought in the ten-volume selected works. However, the former was actually written by Hans von Wolzogen, and although Wagner did sign the original English manuscript he later distanced himself from it. The latter work is better known as "Music of the Future" and is a rough French equivalent...

All too often, when we think of religion and dance, we think of liturgical, shamanic, ecstatic, and/or trance dance. In those situations, we usually do not question whether the dancer is having a religious experience. However, this thesis begins with the question of whether a concert form of dance (such as ballet, modern, jazz, etc.) can be considered a religious experience. Framing this question within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I focus on the experiences of two dancers (Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan), who each created a new form of dance that led to the eventual formation of modern dance. I combine historical data (autobiographies, newspaper articles, secondary sources) with theories on religion and dance in order to understand both the historical atmosphere in which Fuller's and Duncan's dances arose and how to understand the complexities of the dancing body and religious experience. Ultimately, I conclude that dance was indeed a site of religious experience for Fuller and Duncan"an experience created through their dynamic processes of interacting with the religious ideas and institutions of modern society. This thesis contributes to the wider scholarly dialog of religious experience -how do scholars approach this topic without invalidating the experience of their subjects? How can we understand experiences which we do not share? By considering the dancing body, we can begin to examine religious experience as something that is performed, created, and done within one's own movement. This research also posits a new method for considering religious creativity in individuals by suggesting that we think of the relationship between individuals and religious ideas/persons as Contact Improvisation -a process in which something new is formed through the dynamic contact of two 'movers.' This allows us to rethink how we perceive the process through which people subscribe to religions, suggesting that this process is much more dynamic and interactive than commonly perceived.