Distinct Religious Traditions Research Articles

Islamic Banks' Halal Profitability Analysis: Evidence from Oman

The opportunity presented by modern living allows us to celebrate the many exquisite and distinctive religious traditions and to bring to light the many advantages that their preservation offers to society. Commercial banks were founded in a framework distinct from the Islamic context, with distinct foundational ideals and paradigms. As a result, most Muslims have not largely accepted those banks. In Oman, where the banking system transformed from regular public banking services to Islamic banking services to meet the demands and requirements of the Sharia complaint system where interest is not utilized as guided by Islamic economics. Hence, the focus of this research is on the halal earnings of Islamic banks. The primary goals of this study are to empirically investigate and assess the elements influencing the halal profits of Islamic banks in Oman while emphasizing significant data about banking performance that can aid decision- and policy-makers in the banking sector. The research subject was covered by secondary data, where the financial statements for Bank Nizwa and Al-Izz Bank for the five years from 2017 to 2021 were received from the Muscat Stock Exchange. In addition to using quantitative research to determine the relationships, this study was undertaken to investigate the halal profit of Islamic banks. Halal profit guarantees that the bank's earnings are obtained ethically and legally, in accordance with the standards and principles held by its clients. Halal profit also boosts clients' trust in Islamic banks. The discussion in the paper is anticipated to serve as a road map for a future initiative to elevate Islamic banking through an unwavering focus on innovation and the desire to provide excellence in everything banks do, including the creation and provision of a wide array of integrated products and services that are perfectly in line with Sharia principles.

Puzzle and politics of historical reconstruction

This essay focuses on the topic of the emergence of Christianity and Judaism as related but distinct religious traditions, as an example of a process of religious and cultural change, which has had an enormous impact on Western and other societies around the world. At the heart of this question lies what appear to be contradictions between normative practices in antiquity and those we know of today, leading us to consider the historical and hermeneutical issue of continuity and change over time; its how, when and why. Rejecting the idea that theological differences between Judaism and Christianity necessitated a ‘parting of ways’ between them, it is argued that social, political and colonial decision-making was essential to this process, and that, furthermore, a historical focus on institutional realities in the ancient Mediterranean world, including in Jewish society, will challenge many long-held assumptions about the origins not only of Christianity but also of Judaism. The general historical reconstruction offered is then applied to a specific archaeological site, Capernaum, showing how traces of the larger pattern of development from the first to the fifth century CE may be seen in the histories of two buildings in this town.

From honourable to villainous: political competition and sectarianisation in Turkey

ABSTRACT This contribution examines how political considerations influence the creation of religious discourses and interpretations among rival religious actors. It analyses how the religio-political discourses of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gülen movement in Turkey shifted once they became political rivals in the 2010s. Building on the sectarianisation thesis, I show how the leaders in both movements employed religio-political rhetoric to delegitimise one another. The AKP leadership portrayed the Gülen movement as a heretical religious group used by foreigners. The leaders in the Gülen movement represented the AKP as a corrupt and authoritarian organisation, which deviated from religion and suppressed sincere Muslims. The sectarianisation thesis has frequently been used to explain the relationship between theologically distinct religious traditions. I use it to address the rivalry between theologically similar groups. In this case, the leaders need to engage in massive propaganda that simultaneously combines political and theological messaging. Through sectarianisation, leaders in the AKP and the Gülen movement consolidated the support among their ardent supporters. However, the sectarianisation in Turkey not only deepened the conflict between the AKP and the Gülen movement but also divided the opposition against the authoritarian state.

The Power of the Illegitimate

Abstract Based on archival research and supplemented by ethnographic observations, this article critically revisits the history of La Divina Pastora, the Madonna of Spanish origin, in colonial Trinidad, focusing on how the spirituality and materiality of two statues of this Marian image intersected, competed, and reinforced each other: a fair-complexioned La Divina Pastora in northern Trinidad, created and patronized by the Catholic central authorities; and a dark-skinned, miracle-working La Divin/Sipari Mai in Siparia, formerly a peripheral Spanish mission in southern Trinidad. Tracing the trajectory of their lives and relations reveals the complexities of the ecclesiastical history of Trinidad, unearthing the contradictions and tensions between the patriarchal making and remaking of religious orthodoxy and the popular praxis of faith for day-to-day substantive issues needing medico-spiritual solutions. Unlike extant studies, addressing the two distinct statues representing the same Marian image, this article utilizes a holistic approach in order to appreciate why and how the Madonna at Siparia emerged, survived, and thrived as a shared empowering object, despite the colonial obsession with racial-cultural purity and regimes of the boundaries of belonging. The conflicts among the Christian communities were intertwined and thwarted the Catholic central authority’s attempts to exploit La Divin/Sipari Mai’s transgressive power to attract Hindus to the Church. The tangled conflicts also created conditions in which Hindu supplications for miraculous cures persisted and thrived, despite discrimination and repression by the Catholic authorities. The incessant interactions between Catholics and Hindu devotees in Siparia led to the combination of their originally divergent practices and worldviews and the transformation of the dark-colored Madonna from La Divina Pastora to La Divin/Sipari Mai, an alternative spiritual construction that represented various maternal/female bodies, each conforming to distinct religious traditions.

In an Ottoman Holy Land: The Hajj and the Road from Damascus, 1500–1800

In an Ottoman Holy Land: The Hajj and the Road from Damascus, 1500–1800

Le rapport de la Communauté de l’Emmanuel avec ses paroisses parisiennes

Cet article propose d’étudier le rapport entretenu par la Communauté de l’Emmanuel avec le monde paroissial. En prenant comme échelle d’observation les quatre églises parisiennes qui lui ont été confiées, il s’agit de saisir dans la quotidienneté, l’intégration du plus important mouvement issu du Renouveau charismatique européen à de l’Église catholique. Cette intégration se traduit concrètement par des accommodements entre des conceptions issues de traditions religieuses distinctes (protestante et catholique). L’approche sociologique se focalise ici sur l’observation de l’adaptabilité de l’Emmanuel. L’intégration n’est pas seulement appréhendée comme un mouvement unilatéral de régulation par l’institution ecclésiale. Plus largement, cet article aborde la relation que des chrétiens convertis, les membres de la communauté, entretiennent avec des chrétiens nominaux, les paroissiens ordinaires. Comment en effet concilier en un seul lieu une certaine virtuosité religieuse, portée par l’Emmanuel, avec une vie paroissiale ordinaire ?

Scottishness and ‘foreigners’: the role of a developing Scottish ‘machinery of government’ before 1939

Before 1939 continental Europeans were settling in Scotland, in a polity shaped by distinct religious and legal traditions. In the same period, ‘Scottish’ state institutions were gaining significant powers over welfare, public health and local government. This article, as the foundation for a wider study on migrants in Scotland, uses state records to examine this machinery’s attempts to engage with foreignness. It concludes that although officials largely engaged on the basis of increasingly restrictive alien United Kingdom legislation from 1905, this was also a period in which migrants could benefit from the official Scottishness of both ministers and mandarins.

Transactions with God: Market, Moralities and Agency in the Worship of the Goddess of the Treasury in Northern Vietnam

This article explores the complex moral choices of those who have negotiated the encounter between marketisation and distinctive religious traditions within and beyond Asia. I focus on the dramatic rise in the worship of the Goddess of the Treasury in northern Vietnam since the onset of marketisation. She is believed to possess a special power: to grant those who borrow a sum from her symbolic treasury the same amount as real profit and actual wealth through earthly business activities. I show that the Goddess's rise does not reflect the universalising effects of marketisation, but instead how Vietnamese religious ideas of faithfulness and sincerity continue to inform worshippers’ choices as active moral agents. Rather than robotic doers of market principles or passive followers of ‘superstitious’ beliefs in rejection of market changes, worshippers are creative actors who innovatively employ traditional moralities in novel ways to meet their present-day quest for economic prosperity.

Organizational ethnography and religious organizations: the case of Quaker decision-making

How should we study the management practices of religious organizations to do justice to their distinctive religious motivations and traditions? In this article, we articulate how a specific research approach – organizational ethnography – may enable a deeper understanding of religious and/or spiritual organizational practice. We approach our methodological research questions by engaging with the literature on the distinctive decision-making practices of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), commonly known as the Quaker business method. Having shown that the Quaker business method destabilizes a simple binary between “insider” and “outsider” and between believers and nonbelievers, we bring the theory and practice of organizational ethnography into conversation with Quaker accounts of decision-making. We conclude with pathways for future research in the space this destabilization creates.

Seeing the other in cinema: interreligious connections through the senses

This article asks about the processes of ‘seeing the other’ using the medium of cinema. Films discussed include Baraka, West Bank Story, Eve and the Fire Horse, and Babette’s Feast. Each demonstrates unique perspectives on distinct religious traditions, exploring differences as well as resemblances. Two consequences emerge. First, films are not merely ‘escape’ that people watch and then forget about. Instead, what we see ‘on screen’ changes our relationships with other people ‘off screen’. Watching movies becomes part of the social construction of reality, constructing our understandings of race, religion, gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Thus, films that demonstrate strong interreligious connections may affect our perceptions of seeing each other. Second, comparing these films allows us to see how interreligious connections are not merely about ‘dialogue’, but about shared food, smells, sights, and spatial locations. The sensate body stands at the heart of religious life, as well as the heart of interreligious connections.

Holy water: the works of water in defining and understanding holiness

Holy water has a central role in shaping the understanding and beliefs of holiness in general, but how does holy water work, and what defines holy water? By analyzing holy water in three different religious traditions—Christianity in Northern Europe, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, and Hinduism—the aim is to discuss the metaphysical essence of water in human understanding and ideas of holiness embodied in water. On the one hand, holy water represents purity and has to be protected from defilement, but on the other hand, many holy rivers are severely polluted. This seeming paradox will be analyzed by focusing on actual beliefs and uses of holy water in ritual and religious practices. Holy water transmits purity and holiness, but it also transfers, transports, and transforms impurities. In the process of obtaining spiritual purity, devotees may pollute the holy because holy water is believed to have a divine agency. By comparing ritual practices and beliefs in three distinct religious traditions in Europe, Africa, and Asia, it is possible to enhance the understanding of the ways holiness and holy water are perceived to work in cultural‐specific religious worldviews based on essential capacities of water cross‐culturally. This directs the attention to the structuring mechanisms at work because water is conceptualized and used as holy in remarkably similar ways in many religions. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1205. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1205This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Science of Water > Water Quality

Genji and Faust : A Comparative Reading

Murasaki Shikibu's Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust are two literary works that represent milestones in world literature, the former the most central work in Japanese literature and the second a culmination in the poetic achievement of one of Germany's leading poets. The Tale of Genji was written around the year 1000 AC, during the Heian period, a time when aristocrats highly valued the fine arts, such as poetry, in the form of waka [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or tanka [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], literature in general, music and calligraphy. Faust, on the other hand, was written seven hundred years later, during the early nineteenth century. Writers of this period adopted the classical world of Greek antiquity as their model, with the national literature focusing on an idealized picture of mankind and striving to combine reason and sentiment, mind and nature. While, of course, a huge body of criticism has emerged around both The Tale of Genji and Faust, no one has yet compared these two works. Genji and Faust, the two protagonists, are exceptional individuals: Genji transcends the conventional limitations of mankind, while Faust aspires to transcend them. They represent individuals who surpass all other human beings because of their superior intellects, conviction, vision and courage. I compare these two protagonists, even though the literary works belong to different periods in human history as well as different cultures. Despite these differences, there are striking similarities in how the writers portray these exceptional individuals. Juxtaposing Genji and Faust illuminates the universal yearning to transcend the realms of human commonality. Through their ambitious actions they both often challenge social and religious principles. My analysis reveals how this yearning and the defiance of religious limitations play out against two entirely distinct religious traditions. First, I introduce each character briefly and discuss why these protagonists seem so otherworldly. Second, taking into account the respective religious backgrounds of these works as a whole, I analyze the transgressions in which the characters entangle themselves as they strive toward lofty aims. Third, I define the limitations of comparison regarding their atonement and potential salvation. GENJI, THE SHINING PRINCE Murasaki Shikibu portrays Genji as an unusual being; from early on, is described as being outstanding in every faculty, whether music, poetry or painting, and his beauty, as a glowing halo, envelops his person. Genji is of high birth, the son of the Kiritsubo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Emperor, but for political reasons is relegated to the status of a commoner and at Court officiates as Imperial Counselor. Therefore, is also called the Shining Prince: from childhood on, Murasaki Shikibu states, he was already so charmingly distinguished in manner (Tyler 12) (Ima yori namamekashiu hazukashige ni ohasureba [Abe, Akiyama and Imai 115]) and if I [narrator] were to list all the things at which excelled, I would only succeed in making him sound absurd (Tyler 13) (Subete ihi tsuzukeba, kotogotoshiu, utate zo narinu beki hito no onsama narikeru [Abe, Akiyama and Imai 115]). His pleasing appearance enchants all who see him and regardless of his emotional state, his seems otherworldly: He wept as thought back over the past, making as did so a vision of infinite beauty (Tyler 236) (Taishou, yorozu no koto kakiatsume, oboshi tuzukete naki tamaheru keshiki ito tsuki sezu namameki tari [Abe, Akiyama and Imai 171]). Genji pursues many women, and engages in innumerable love affairs. Many of his romantic liaisons are controversial, such as that with Oborozukiyo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], daughter of the Minister of the Right and thus a political rival of Genji, and even more so with Fujitsubo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], his stepmother. …

Qualitative Field Research – Methods and Theory: The African Atlantic Research Team Reports

AbstractThis paper reports on the African Atlantic Research Team (AART) of Michigan State University and its investigation of Cuba's distinct religious traditions as practiced in the eastern, Oriente region. The report emphasizes the Team's methodological approaches as these are related to propositions put forth by such research scholars as Emile Durkheim, Jurgen Habermas, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman, and others. The paper discusses how AART members have listened to their field experiences and determined that academic sources do not fully conceptualize the components of Cuba's distinct religious traditions. The paper does not abdicate disciplinary guidance as the Team combines academic offerings with experiential field understandings to arrive at its research posture. As the founding director of the Team, I am responsible for insuring that our work represents the religious traditions’ best understanding as expressed within and by practitioners in a given context. This paper reports on this work.

The glocalizations of Eastern Orthodox Christianity

This article introduces the notion of multiple glocalizations as a means of analysing Christianity’s historical record and argues that multiple glocalizations are constitutive of the intertwining between religion and historical globalization. It proposes that four concrete forms of glocalization can be observed: vernacularization, indigenization, nationalization and transnationalization. Each of these offers different combinations of universal religiosity and local particularism. The salience of this interpretation is demonstrated through a cursory analysis of the historical record of Christianity’s fragmentation. It is argued that the very construction of distinct religious traditions (Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism) is an expression of this broader process. Finally, the historical record of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is examined in order to provide for additional historical instances of these forms of glocalization.

The view from the border: a comparative study of autonomism in Alsace and the Moselle, 1918–29

This article offers a comparative analysis of the origins and development of autonomism in interwar Alsace and the Moselle. Upon the liberation of the provinces in November 1918, the local populations of Alsace and the Moselle enthusiastically welcomed French troops. For President Raymond Poincare´ this enthusiasm constituted a clear ‘plebiscite’. But, in light of perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the new French rulers, this enthusiasm proved short-lived and rapidly gave way to a widespread malaise. In response to local fears for the preservation of their distinctive social, linguistic and religious traditions, Autonomist organisations emerged to oppose the loss of what they perceived to be the soul and character of Alsace and the Moselle. They rapidly became a pervasive force in local politics, cutting across ideological and class barriers and dividing parties. For the French government, autonomism represented a serious threat to national unity. For local autonomists, however, it represented an attempt to preserve local socio-economic structures and linguistic and cultural practices. The discussion here seeks to reposition autonomism within the context of local politics and to compare the distinct experiences of Alsace and the Moselle in the decade after their return to French rule.

Religion and the United Nations—Introduction

Religion and the United Nations—Introduction Matthew Weiner This special issue of CrossCurrents is dedicated to exploring the relationship between religion and the United Nations, with an emphasis on providing positive examples of potential and actual interaction, and making an argument in favor of developing partnerships between the world’s governing body and the world’s religious communities. As importantly, if not more so, we also hope that the articles collected here will provide a platform for further discussion and action among UN staff, scholars of religion, and religious communities themselves. To our knowledge, there has been little documented in terms of this kind of three‐way discussion, much to the disadvantage of all parties involved. This short introduction will explain our basic orientation to the topic of religion at the UN, the thinking behind our designating these primary categories and the article selection within, as well as provide a compass for following the arrangement of the articles that follow. The conclusion will provide a more detailed historical framework and analysis. When the co‐editors first began thinking about this topic, there was relatively little in the way of official initiatives within the UN system to engage religion, and yet paradoxically religion was everywhere in its midst. Indeed, as the UN was conceived, scholars of religion and religious workers advocated for a spiritual and religious voice at the world governing body; there was little in the way of direct and official response. In this way, the official current involvement of many internal UN agencies demonstrates decisively the growing pragmatic awareness of and interest in the role religion can play in fulfilling its mission, however yet still under construction. Although not organized discretely, the articles that follow fall into three broad categories: first is a set of articles authored by scholars of religion who argue for, and in some cases about, the role of religion at the UN. They do so mostly around issues of peace building, and we have chosen this focus to complement other pieces which come from UN program staff that are located in particular agencies that deal more discretely with social and humanitarian problems. Collectively, these articles provide both more abstract perspectives about the moral role of religion in peace building and the place of religion in civil society as it interfaces with the UN. They also provide a variety of particular perspectives that distinct religious traditions have to offer when it comes to peace building through the UN’s auspices. The second set of articles are examples of Religious Non‐Governmental Organizations, more commonly referred to as faith‐based organizations (FBOs), at work with the UN. The world governing body is, of course, a collection of nation states, steered by a collective process among them; it is also a set of connected agencies that address particular urgent human needs. As a kind of federated system, it inherently recognizes the need for diversity, debate, and input from sources other than nation states, including civil society. It does so primarily through NGOs, tens of thousands of which, with very different mission statements, register with the UN, with a goal of influence. What influence is understood, of course varies. While UN agencies seek to reach religious communities to fulfill their work, FBOs serve as a primary way (but not the only way) that religion officially works with, and impacts, the work of the UN. There are thousands of FBOs both locally situated and international, with diverse missions, all of which seek some way to interact with the UN to fulfill their own religious or spiritual mission. The articles in the third section explain some of the ways in which UN agencies have begun to engage religion. These are personal reflections by program staff members at the UN who are, through their work as described here, helping to engineer a posture toward religious non‐governmental entities in ways which help them to better fulfill their particular agency’s objectives. They report on how their agency understands religion, the way engagement can help fulfill their mission, the success they have so far achieved, and an assessment of the potential, and potential pitfalls, of engaging this realm of civil society. Through these...

Mystics (review)

Reviewed by: Mystics Charlotte Radler (bio) Mystics. By William Harmless, S.J. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 350 pp. $18.95. William Harmless's Mystics constitutes an intelligent and interesting introduction to the study of mysticism, in which he deftly introduces the reader to central methodological issues and significant mystics in Christianity, Islam, and Zen Buddhism. Although the focus is principally Christian (in terms of introducing representative mystics) and Western (in terms of methodological discourse), this beautifully written book will serve as an invaluable teaching tool in introductory courses and seminars on mysticism at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; it will prime students for the frequently complex primary sources. In addition to the first chapter on method that contrasts Jean Gerson's understanding of mystical knowledge as experiential knowledge (5–7) with William James's pragmatic, psychological approach to mysticism (11–12), the book—organized largely in reverse chronological order, at least with respect to the Christian mystics—covers Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, [End Page 118] Evagrius Ponticus, Rumi, and Dōgen. Harmless demonstrates an impressive grasp of both the significant primary and secondary sources, and he presents his findings in a compelling way. Harmless's skillful analyses of the mystics and his discussion of significant methodological problems in the study of mysticism make this volume much more than a "best-of" volume. Harmless is deeply critical of William James's pragmatist and psychological method that emphasizes the subjective religious feelings and peak experiences of individuals and disregards the importance of institutions, communities, traditions, texts, rituals, and doctrines (12, 16). Harmless's method also shares many of Steven Katz's concerns relating to James's and Walter T. Stace's universalist "common core" hypothesis (also embraced by, among others, Evelyn Underhill, Aldous Huxley, Rudolph Otto, Joseph Maréchal, William Johnston, Mircea Eliade, and Ninian Smart). The hypothesis holds that there is an eternal, irreducible mystical unanimity or common core experience that transcends particular religious traditions and historical epochs (14, 17); all mystical experiences are essentially the same although interpreted and expressed differently in distinct religious traditions and cultures (254–257). Harmless's criticism and repudiation of James's "sunny universalism" (159) and reductive, de-contextualized, and individualist methodology reverberate through the whole book. Arguing that "[m]ysticism needs to stay embedded in the thicket of the history that created it" (x), Harmless develops a contextualist case-study method that concentrates on individual mystics and their most renowned writings. The author carefully probes the mystics' lives, contexts, and texts, rather than engaging in "mystical anecdotalism" and cherry-picking quotable mystical passages and teachings (225–226). He contrasts James's approach to mysticism with the actual practices and beliefs of several mystics. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux puts into constructive dialogue the book of Scripture and the book of experience, privileging the former as "it is . . . the Bible that interprets the mystic" (57–58); Hildegard of Bingen views her visions as texts to be interpreted in order to illumine further Christian doctrine (77); and Rumi's Sufism is a communal and ritualized mysticism (cf. Rumi's emphasis on samā; 186). Harmless also underscores that many significant mystics (e.g., Meister Eckhart) do not record any auto-biographical accounts of mystical experiences (132), which further complicates the use of subjective peak-experiences as an appropriate method for studying mystics. Harmless, moreover, provides relevant biographical information of the mystics and traces the intellectual, theological, and cultural factors inscribed in their thought (e.g. the influences of Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Francis, and Gothic architecture on Bonaventure's mystical theology [86–91, 93–95, 97, 99], and Origen's impact on Eckhart's notion of birthing [122]). Especially in his analysis of Christian mystics, Harmless effectively employs a dialogical approach, letting one mystic illuminate another (e.g., Bernard of Clairvaux helps elucidate Eckhart [126–127]) without attenuating the mystics' distinct contributions or reducing their thought to a fragmentary patchwork of influences. In the final chapter, Harmless offers a three-pronged contextualist approach for exploring the mystical that includes the study of mystical texts, mystical communities, and mystical experiences; though this "three-sided optic" outlines Harmless's own...

Narrar a Deus: a religião como meio de comunicação

O que nos dispomos a fazer nas páginas seguintes é, de um lado, tratar a religião como sistema e como poder de comunicação e, de outro, reconstruir as conexões entre universos simbólico-religiosos e ambientes sociais que mudam no tempo e no espaço. Rastrear as linhas de descendência para encontrar quais são as semelhanças irredutíveis entre tradições religiosas distintas, que nasceram e se firmaram diacronicamente em um mesmo ambiente sociocultural ou em ambientes distantes, não esgota a tarefa de uma sociologia comparada das religiões. Por tal fórmula entendemos a busca dos componentes estruturais da relação entre processo de fundação e processo de construção de um sistema de crença religiosa, entre experiência criadora inicial e sistematização sucessiva de um conjunto de crenças e práticas rituais.

Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006 (review)

Reviewed by: Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006 Peter Galadza Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006. By Paul Laverdure. (Yorkton, Canada: Redeemer’s Voice Press. 2007. Pp. xviii, 421. $19.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-978-19442-0.) This is a must read for anyone interested in Eastern Catholicism and the Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular. It is also indispensable as a micro-history of a unique North American religious community. Paul Laverdure, who holds advanced degrees in religious studies and history and is a longtime archivist, has produced a meticulously researched study based on materials written in a dozen languages and scattered in repositories throughout the Western world. The Eastern-Rite (more specifically, Byzantine-Rite) Redemptorists evolved from the pastoral solicitude of a Belgian Redemptorist, Achiel Delaere, who came to Western Canada in 1899 and soon realized that many of the Catholics in his prairie parishes were Greco-Catholics (usually called “Greek Catholics”). Motivated also by a sense of “white man’s burden,” Delaere soon learned [End Page 182] Ukrainian and in 1906 received permission to celebrate in the Byzantine Rite. Several factors combined to impede his efforts (and those of his Belgian confrères, who constituted the majority of the community until the 1930s, when men of Ukrainian background began outnumbering the Belgians). To begin with, the fact that Roman Catholic authorities prevented married Greco-Catholic clergy from Eastern Europe from following their faithful to the New World—and 95 percent of Ukrainian priests were married—created resentment among the immigrants who could not understand why they had to be served by Belgians who had only a rudimentary knowledge of their rite and often spoke poor Ukrainian. Conversely, as the archival materials demonstrate—and the faithful no doubt sensed—these Belgians considered the Byzantine Rite a necessary evil to be tolerated until the Ukrainians could be assimilated to the Roman Rite. This spawned a cycle of mutual resentment: the Belgians were offended by the ingratitude of many Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians were angered by the Belgians’ disdain for their own clergy. In regard to contempt for married priests, the Belgian Redemptorists were just as obsessive as the Vatican or other Roman Catholic authorities. This point relates to one of the few areas where Laverdure could have nuanced his presentation. What Laverdure describes as a Ukrainian nationalist rejection of non-Ukrainian clergy was actually less a matter of nationalism and more a matter of attachment to distinctive religious traditions. The immigrant prairie farmers simply wanted clergy who knew and loved their liturgy, understood their mentality, and spoke their language. To be sure, nationalism fueled the creation in 1916 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, largely composed of disaffected Greco-Catholics. Between the 1960s and 1980s, it prevented individual Redemptorists from embracing a more universalist agenda as well as English in worship. However, in its “pure” form, nationalism did not permeate North American Ukrainian Catholicism until the post-World War II takeover of Church life by political émigrés, who managed to co-opt the Church as a surrogate for lost statehood. Laverdure reveals the tensions between the Redemptorists and the first Ukrainian (Ruthenian) Catholic bishop of Canada, Nykyta Budka (appointed in 1912), as well as the conflicts that nearly led to a disbandment of the Eastern-Rite Redemptorist mission in the mid-1920s. In the late 1920s, the mission was transferred from Belgian to English Canadian control, and the latter proved to be almost brutal in their demands for liturgical and linguistic assimilation. Rescue came in 1931 when the mission was placed under the Ruthenian Vice Province of Lviv (Polish Ukraine). The creation of the Lviv Vice Province is a fascinating example of a missionary need—in western Canada—spawning a vibrant community in a Church’s indigenous territory. The Redemptorists of Ukraine became a powerful force for spiritual renewal and bolstered the Church’s ability to survive in the underground during the Soviet era (1944–89). [End Page 183] During this same period, in the west the Yorkton Province of Eastern Redemptorists (elevated from vice-provincial status in 1961) shared the fate of many religious...

Karelia: A Place of Memories and Utopias

Karelia is a vast inhabited area in northern Europe of historical significance to Finland, 1 Russia, and Sweden. In Finnish historiography, Karelia has often been described as a borderland or battlefield lying between East and West, and as a focal point. These labels date back to medieval times, when the East and the West, that is, Novgorod and Sweden, struggled for commercial and political power over the tribes that lived in the geographical area of Karelia. At the same time, this area was also the arena for a struggle that resulted in the coexistence there of two distinct religious traditions of Eastern and Western Europe until the Second World War. 2