Christian Culture Research Articles

Border-making as illiberal politics

Abstract Radical Right-wing populism frequently involves ‘divide and rule’ strategies as a means to attain and consolidate political power. In the cases of Viktor Orban’s political regime in Hungary and Donald Trump’s four-year presidency (and its aftermath), we find a pronounced attempt to create narrative hegemony of a sense of nation built upon Christian civilization and foundationalist understandings of national identity. Moreover, both cases reveal processes of social border-making that are reflected in norming and the creation of distinctions based on degrees of national authenticity. Applying an ontological security and critical borders studies approach, this paper will specifically focus on the different ways in which border-making processes, or bordering, are implicated in the exercise of illiberal political power in the Hungarian and US cases. Despite many similarities, the actual mobilization of popular support reflects local conditions and has resulted in rather different political outcomes.

Imię Stanisław w słowiańskiej tradycji onomastycznej

St. Stanislaus, bishop and martyr, is one of the few saints of the Church bearing a traditional Slavic name. It belongs to an Indo-European Anthroponomastic system as a compound name whose components represent a pattern inherited from the period of the Indo-European community. This is a fortune-telling name (a nomen-omen) given to a child on a wish of the parents, who wanted him to be famous (Polish ‘slawa’ means ‘fame’)- Today, in our Christian culture, in choosing a name for the child we considerthe following: 1) the child ‘brought’ his/her name (i.e. is given the name of the day’s patron; this is the gist of our ‘nameday’), 2) a family tradition, 3) respect for the grandfather or father (grandmother, mother), 4) fashion. Today’s anthroponomastic system in Slavic languages (except Bulgarian) has grown cold leaving us unable to acquire precise understanding of the meaning of the name. Besides, nowadays names only denote, theydo not mean anything. Compound Slavic names refer in their structure to names from other groups of the Indo-European community and are closely linked with a nation’s spiritual culture and appropriate ultimate and instrumental values. In Indo-European languages a different number of lexical components is used in names as their first or second part: in Old Indian - 865; in Old Persian and Median - 43; in Greek - 1015; in the Celtic group - 336; the German one - 1800 and in the Slavic group - 220. The most numerous in Old Polish anthroponomastics were names with the component slaw. As the first component - slaw appears in 4 names, and as the second, in 100. This component has appeared from times immemorial in Indian, Avestan, Greek and Illyrian names. Name Stanislaus is known in all Slavic countries, while its feminine form only in Polish, Bulgarian, Serb and Croatian. In Poland it has been in use since very old times up to now. Numerous surnames and names of places derive from it. The popularity of the name waned slightly in the 19th century, but it has never come into disuse as was the case with many Slavic names, which were ‘dug out’ in the 19th century, and not infrequently, erroneously read. A great number of Indo-European names with the component - ‘slaw’ testifies to the fact that people who bore that name always wanted to be the bearers offame, good fame that is, such as St. Stanislaus, bishop and martyr, has enjoyed.

A Study of the Acceptance of Christian Culture in Modern Enlightenment Journals

A Study of the Acceptance of Christian Culture in Modern Enlightenment Journals

Adventures in Lollard Street: An Experimental London Playground, 1955–60

Abstract This essay situates the emergence of the adventure playground movement in Britain within social and intellectual contexts. It provides a detailed account of the Lollard Adventure Playground, London, which lasted from 1955 to 1960, and describes the general ecology of the playground including indoor activities, the administration of the playground, and its mediation through pamphlets and journalism. It argues that the playground combined a Christian ethos evident in the early playground movement with the growing permissiveness of autonomous play, and shows how adventure playgrounds were a locus for tensions around class and gender.

Suspense and Christian Culture: Visual Analogies in Alfred Hitchcock’s Movies

In this text, the author analyzes the convergence between Christian culture and relevant films of Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense filmography. Rather than focusing on Hitchcock’s status as a Catholic director, he makes an empirical analysis that allows him to find certain visual analogies between the Christian imaginary and the frames of certain films of the master of suspense. This article understands cinema as a kind of mental, psychological, or spiritual cartography/geography, and this is how it connects to the theme of space, where cinema is not just as analogous to physical space but the experience of viewing as a space. The Christian iconography of death, understood as participation in an eternal time, helps to understand the projection of the concept of suspension of judgment in constructing suspense that is not only iconographic but also spatially ontological. The author also suggests an epistemological connection between the mysterious nature of space in medieval art and architecture and the aesthetics of perfect crime in films. The allegory of Christ’s Passion will be seen as a recurring thread in Hitchcock’s visual analogies. His cinema and his particular way of seeing reality through space continue to demonstrate the validity of his art in writing new episodes in Western culture.

The Role of Institutions in the Civilization Schism (the Case of Christianity)

The geopolitical transformations of recent decades have added to the topicality of the study оf civilizational differences between the East and the West relevant. Religion is often cited as a contributing factor to these differences. This can be confirmed by the example of the split of the Christian Church into the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and, as a consequence, the emergence of the Western and the Eastern Christian civilizations. As a rule, the authors “isolate” religion from the social system, considering it independently of all other spheres, as the primary factor that triggers the emergence of civilization. In this work, the emergence of a new Western and Eastern Christian, is considered within the framework of the institutional approach, as a process of formation of a certain complex institutional structure that regulates the life of society and consists of a whole complex of interconnected and interdependent economic, political, and socio-cultural institutions, including religion. This process can begin in the bowels of the “mother” civilization, causing its crisis. The stages of development and resolution of such a crisis are analyzed using the example of a split in the united Christian world using a matrix approach. This approach assumes that civilization is characterized by a civilizational matrix formed by an institutional core that simultaneously contains market and redistributive institutions on the basis of dominance/complementarity, and a shell that includes cultural-religious and national-demographic characteristics, the naturalclimatic and material-technological environment. The necessity of both strengthening dominant institutions in the institutional core and creating balancers (complementary institutions) for the sustainable development of civilization is shown.

Nationalism, Italy and the Exhibition of the Holocaust: Findings of a Study on the Recently built Museums of Campagna and San Donato

Abstract In recent years, Italy has seen a proliferation of Holocaust Museums and Memorials. This article focuses on two recent additions: the Museum of the Twentieth Century and the Shoah in San Donato Val di Comino (Frosinone), and the Memory and Peace Museum Giovanni Palatucci Study Center in Campagna (Salerno). It uses qualitative methods including in-depth interviews, direct observation, analysis of information panels, other audio and visual elements, and is guided by a theoretical framework rooted in theories of nationalism. The research findings show that these museums present an overly positive narrative of Italy’s role in the Holocaust lacking critical examination and perpetuating the myth of the “good Italian” already identified by other scholars. The museums emphasize favourable conditions for Jewish internees without considering factual evidence that could have provided a more balanced perspective. Additionally, they fail to acknowledge Italian collaboration with Nazi Germany, both, at the exhibition sites and elsewhere. Both museums highlight a Christian salvific narrative, stressing the role of Christian Italians saving Jews, and perpetuating stereotypes of Jews as passive victims. Additionally, Jews are excluded from the notion of “Italianness” and portrayed as “others.” Also, fascism is excluded, deemed incompatible with the idealized Italian Christian civilization proposed by the museums.

Idols and Icons: Franciscan Theology and Artistic Inculturation in Mexico, 1524–1699

Indigenous people in Mexico encountered and interacted with the visual images of Mary, Jesus, and the Saints via Catholic missionaries in the sixteenth century. I examine the complexity of Franciscan changing attitudes and practices toward transforming what they perceived as idols into icons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indigenous Christians also adapted and synthesized artistic forms and meanings. Furthermore, artists from various cultures drew sources from Indigenous Mexican, European, and Asian traditions and created a visual Christian culture.

Cross-shaped pendants of the ‟scandinavian” type as markers of ethnocultural processes: a new look at an old problem

Medieval cruciform pendants of this “Scandinavian” type are associated with the Norse hird culture; however, as material finds from various regions accumulated, most researchers were inclined to believe that this phenomenon originated in Old Rus’, if not in even more southern realms. At the same time, the connection of problems of this type with Eastern Christian ancient doubts, since ancient artifacts of Byzantine types are quite far from the ‟Scandinavian” ones. It is suggested that the Western Sarmatian type crosses served as the prototype of the remaining crosses, which arose with the solar or plant sacred world of the ancient nomads rather than with the Christian cult. The subsequent appearance of pendants of the ‟Scandinavian” type, first among the Merovingian antiquities, complements the ideas of the Germanic-Sarmatian cultural symbiosis known to archaeologists. Increased distribution of pendants in the Crimea and the basin reflects ethnic migrations, advancement into East Slavic lands and Scandinavia – obviously confessional and cultural processes, as the symbolism of the Sarmatian cross gradually acquired a Christian character.

An Arab Predecessor to Western (Trans-)Secular Thought: The European Enlightenment’s Encounters with Ibn Ṭufayl and the Islamic Enlightenment

ABSTRACT This paper challenges the supposed geopolitics of Enlightenment secularism in a case study on the European Enlightenment’s reception of Ibn Ṭufayl’s classical work, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Alive, Son of Awake). It demonstrates how, by appropriating the tropes, literary techniques, and fictional setting of the Islamic “original,” Christian (Protestant) culture began unknowingly inventing its own patterns of secular thought. It argues then that to the pantheistic Enlightenment’s transsecular approach this tale, allegorically depicting Islamic philosophy’s (falsafa) independence from religious orthodoxy and its perfection in mystical wisdom (tasawwuf), offered both a conception of truth and of the Orient that might have felt very familiar.

Religion: Memory and Innovation

The current issue of Approaching Religion is based on a summer school and conference arranged in Åbo/Turku, Finland, in June 2023, on the theme of “Religion: Memory and Innovation”. The event was organized jointly by the Polin Institute for Theological Research (Åbo Akademi University), the Centre for the Study of Christian Cultures (University of Turku) and the Donner Institute for Research in Religion and Culture. The aim was to bring together doctoral candidates and researchers from various academic fields that engage with the study of religion, such as theology, religious studies, history, philosophy, the arts, social and political sciences, and so forth. At this seminar, papers were presented that engaged with the theme of religion, memory and innovation from both historical and contemporary perspectives, looking also to the future where possible. In the current issue, therefore, we understand memory and innovation both as dramatic breaking points in history and as slowly evolving transformations, and we address past, present and emerging trends and trajectories within culture, society and the scholarly community. The societal relevance and impact of research in this field have also arisen as central themes in the presentations.

Rediscovering Christian Culture and Spirituality in the Fluid Reality of Europe

This article points to the plight of man in the 21st century and his intimidating spiritual and axiological confusion. The 2020 COVID pandemic, the 2022 war in Ukraine and high economic inflation have exposed the lack of stable ethical values and lasting references for Europe. On the one hand, many EU citizens live today in uncertainty and fear, falling in line with populist slogans, and on the other hand, strong xenophobic and fundamentalist currents have emerged in the Catholic Church. Europe is arguably not so much in need of a return to over-institutionalized Christianity, but rather of a search for new forms and systems that would express the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth in innovative ways. Postmodernity with its characteristic elements, i.e., pluralization, mercantilization and rapid change, seem to be completely incompatible with the conventionally accepted Christian understanding of God, the concept of man and the world around him. Therefore, this is a great challenge to all Christian theologians.

Our Lady at the Seder Table

This paper discusses a unique miniature in a fifteenth-century Ashkenazi Passover Haggadah. The image represents a young woman holding an open book at a spread Seder table at the opening words of the Maggid, the narrative part of the Haggadah. The image of the woman is reminiscent of Christian representations of female patrons, saints, and the Virgin Mary herself. Having demonstrated this similarity, this article attempts to explain it by exploring to what degree the concept of the ‘ideal woman’ was shared in Jewish and Christian cultures. Since the lady in the Haggadah is clearly interacting with a book, the article also surveys textual evidence of female education in medieval Ashkenaz and women’s participation in religious rituals, to examine to what degree portraying the lady this way could reflect the reality of fifteenth-century Ashkenaz. The findings suggest that the authorship of the Haggadah may have deliberately drawn a visual parallel between the lady in the Haggadah and the Virgin Mary in order to challenge the latter’s unique position in Christianity and counterweight her ever-growing cult.

Creating Colonial Christian Cultures in Canterbury: St. Augustine's Missionary College

Throughout the nineteenth century, religion and Empire became increasingly fused in the Victorian imagination through a lens of providentialism that saw Empire as an instrument for worldwide Christianisation. This article uses the case of St. Augustine's Missionary College to explore the creation of a distinctly colonial Christian culture in Canterbury. This culture was both created and curated through networks and connections made between Canterbury and colonial dioceses, the imagined world of letters fostered by the College, and the presence in Canterbury of “foreign students” whose apparently exemplary lives brought the Empire home to the “garden of England.” Reinforcing the important point that Britain was part of a mutually‐constituted Empire, this article demonstrates how colonial cultures in Britain could be sustained through various means–cultural, social, and here institutional. It moreover uses the case of St. Augustine's to showcase the increasingly self‐conscious links between religion and Empire within Established Anglicanism as colonisation forged the city of Canterbury into the head of a colonial and global Anglican Communion.

Religious Culture-Based Management in the Focus of Education

The objective of this research is to enhance the standard of education by employing a religious-cultural approach, specifically a prescriptive approach. This approach entails individuals submitting to, imitating, adhering to, and adopting cultural scenarios dictated by authorities. Additionally, it involves a programmed approach through a learning process where culture develops internally within individuals based on religious beliefs and values. The research employed a qualitative-descriptive methodology. The research findings indicate that the implementation of Religious Cultural Based Management has been effectively executed. Teachers demonstrate strong enthusiasm for implementing religious and cultural norms, while the school principal plays a crucial role in overseeing management methods based on religious culture. The teacher's degree of professionalism is commendable in both the teaching and evaluation domains. The influence of religious culture on management practices impacts work discipline, motivation, and the achievement of optimal work results. Key factors facilitating the integration of Christian culture in schools encompass the proactive involvement of teachers in offering assistance and encouragement, alongside students' recognition of the significance of these endeavors. Nevertheless, there are also constraining elements, such as pupils' lack of awareness, that might result in an uneven distribution of time spent on schooling. In general, the integration of religious culture is executed proficiently and smoothly, with robust facilitating elements and few constraining elements. Implementing religious culture-based management in schools has the capacity to enhance educational standards.

Formația clasicistă a unui autor patristic: Evagrie Ponticul

This study traces the scholarly context in which one of the great pa­tristic figures of Christian antiquity was formed: Evagrius Ponticus. Bio­gra­phical data on this author are extremely scarce and, therefore, in re­con­structing the picture of Evagrius’ intellectual formation, information from a wide variety of sources is used. In this way, the study succeeds in placing Evagrius in the general context of classical Greek paideia, showing how his many connections with pagan teachers of rhetoric and philosophy, as well as with the great theologians of the time, succeeded in imprinting on Evagrius’ thought the characteristic stamp of a classical education impregnated with the Christian ethos. It was with this education that Evagrius left, in the last part of his life, for the Egyptian desert, where he used all his intellectual endowment to create a system that has become a classic in Eastern monastic theology.

Buddhism, Aryan Discourse, Racism, and the Influence of Christianity in Colonial Ceylon

abstract: Evidence from the Pali texts suggests that the Buddha opposed judging people on the grounds of their place of birth, their ethnic identity, or their skin color. In practice, however, Buddhist traditions have not been and are not free of such judgments. This article illustrates this through a case study of Buddhism in colonial and postcolonial Ceylon, with particular reference to the Aryan theory. It argues that the language of race and nation that emerged among Buddhists in this context was influenced by three factors: the academic work of European linguists and ethnographers; Christian missionary representations of Buddhism; and readings of Pali texts that attributed the term ariya (noble, good, pure) to Buddhist communities. The article first examines the concept of ariya (Pali; Sanskrit: ārya ) in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. It then surveys the discourse in colonial Ceylon on the term "Aryan," including the involvement of Christian leaders and the Buddhist internalization of the discourse in the context of Christian missionary activity, as seen particularly in the writings of the Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864–1933). Another strand in the discourse is then isolated, namely the "othering" of the minority, "Dravidian" Tamils in colonial Ceylon, and the consequences of this in the postcolonial period. Finally, the article asks whether this case study can offer insights into the fault lines within Buddhist cultures, and indeed, Christian cultures, that could give rise to racism.

Transculturation in Elizabeth Enslin's While the Gods Were Sleeping: Complexities and Connections

This paper analyzes Elizabeth Enslin’s While the Gods Were Sleeping (2014) from the perspective of transculturation focusing on what transcultural constrictions the author experiences and how she thrashes those constrictions thereby developing transcultural connections. The author, an American PhD scholar in anthropology, falls in love to a Nepali man of a Brahman family with whom she travels a long way to Nepal for the field research for her PhD study. After marriage in a high caste Hindu family, she encounters heaps of cultural differences between her Christian culture and her family’s Hindu culture. From the very first greeting by the family to the attitudes towards marriage, pregnancy, menstruation, childbirth, caste and gender, she finds innumerable divergences from her culture. Accustomed to the Christian culture, she faces big challenges to adjust with the Hindu family and the society. However, she ultimately subdues the prevailing transcultural constrictions and builds transformational connections. The study argues that this has been possible due to the author’s anthropological knowledge that poignantly motivates her to interact with the host culture by actively involving in the transculturation process. For the analytical purpose, the study applies research concepts from cultural studies particularly focusing on the concept of transculturation as defined by the scholars Mary Louis Pratt and Wolfgang Welsch and others. Finally, the study expects to open a new avenue for the analysis of cultures in the contact zone.

“The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab” – a Manual of Leadership and a Model of Dynamic Embodiment of the Eternal Word

The work of the Wallachian ruler Neagoe Basarab “The Teachings to his son Theodosius” remains an essential landmark of medieval Romanian culture and spirituality. The writing synthesizes an original vision of Christian teaching with the great models of universal political thought, becoming a manual for future rulers. Its importance is reflected in its overwhelming influence on later Romanian culture, as well as in the timeliness of its perspective on leadership based on enduring values. This study highlights the author's multiple sources of inspiration, harmoniously integrating biblical, patristic and philosophical traditions in a work that goes beyond medieval political treatises. From a theological perspective, the writing reflects a unified conception of divine revelation, promoting a mystical pedagogy that proposes a model of integral human formation. And the virtues and values enunciated have universal anthropological resonances. Thus, the integral message of Neagoe Basarab's work is not only a major expression of local political literature but also a permanent invitation to rediscover the Christian ethos that was the basis of European culture. And the recovery of this spiritual paradigm remains indispensable for overcoming the contemporary crisis.

Mass Destruction of Armenian Cultural Heritage during the Hamidian Massacres (1894-1896)

The policy of destruction of the Armenian cultural heritage in the Ottoman Empire began with the conquest of Western Armenia and has continued until the present day. Over the centuries, Armenian culture, as part of the Empire’s Christian culture, has either been destroyed spontaneously, in vast swathes or undergone various manifestations of neutralisationby various Turkish regimes. The first part of this article will outline the approaches made by Genocide study theorists concerning the origin and definition of the term “cultural genocide” existing until today, including the attempts at revising or even re-naming it. The second part outlines the chronology of Armenian cultural heritage destruction. A detailed description of the policy of demolition of the Armenian cultural heritage during Hamidian massacres as a manifestation of vandalism or cultural genocide will also be presented.