Faith Traditions Research Articles

GEOCULTURAL APPROACH OF THE WORLDOUTLOOK RESEARCH PROGRAM: ON THE PROBLEM OF INTERACTION OF LIBERAL AND TRADITIONAL STANDARDS

The reсonsidering of the methodological foundations of modern theoretical jurisprudence includes both the search for new approaches and the identification of the limits and conditions for their adequacy. At the same time, the needs for studying the interaction of the value-worldoutlook nature and the spatial conditionality of the state and law, considered in the logic of an open system, correspond with the geocultural approach. This approach is based on the multi-valued category “geoculture”, that allows one to comprehend the cultural codes and meanings of the transformation of reality and space (world projects), including those that exist as ideas about ideal forms of public power and social regulation. The geocultural approach may be part of such methodological phenomena as the worldoutlook research program, world-system analysis and geomeasurement. At the present stage, the geocultural approach of the worldoutlook research program is most suitable for analyzing the conflict of geocultures, allowing to take into account the replacement of geocultural standards, the crisis of the modern capita list world economy, legitimized by liberal geoculture, and the search for new mo dels of world order, carried out in the framework of the conflict of liberal and traditional values. The importance of understanding this conflict is due to the critical attitude of liberalism towards traditional statehood, its fulfillment of the role of an instrument of “controlled chaos” and an instrument of dominance of the West. The reсonsidering of liberal geoculture is permissible on the basis of the doctrines of traditional religious faiths, among which the Russian Orthodox Church is dominant in the post-Soviet space. Liberal geoculture is a multidimensional phenomenon, which at the same time puts forward the idea of protecting human rights and freedoms, and is an instrument for implementation of an elitist policy, characterized by excessive criticality in relation to the state and government, as well as any categories reflecting collective soli darity. Moreover, human rights, which are an integral part of liberal geoculture, initially stem from the Christian idea of a man as an ontologically free human being, the image and likeness of God, whose status metaphysically extends to anyone, but only his own. Substantially there are three interdependent problems in the phenomenon of human rights, the answer to which predetermines the practice of legal regulation: who is a person (in a particular geoculture), who is recognized as the ontological subject of human rights violations, who is recognized as the relevant subject of human rights protection. The complexity of the attitude of traditional Christianity to human rights, including denial (due to historical reasons for using human rights to marginalize Christianity), understanding, and recognition, is confirmed by the historical practice of the Russian Orthodox Church, which positively interprets this phenomenon in its conceptual documents at the present stage. The foregoing makes it expedient to use the canonical positions and official documents of traditional religious faiths in lawmaking and lawenforcement practice, which are the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches for Belarus.

Reframing the Orphan Mandate

Caring for the orphan is a biblical mandate for those who follow the Christian faith tradition. Yet, far too often, this charge has led to coercion and exploitation of marginalized populations. This manuscript will examine this phenomenon through the adoption of Indigenous people starting in colonial America, when Christian missionaries from Europe believed it was their spiritual obligation to “save” young Indigenous children from their “heathen” culture. This belief still shapes many adoption practices today. The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is presented as a step towards legal reparations for the harm done to Indigenous people during this time period. The idea of reparations is discussed as a vital step towards another Christian biblical mandate calling for active repair of broken relationships. Ultimately, this manuscript concludes with an application of the model of praxis from liberation theology to reframe how Christian social workers may approach caring for the orphan.

Introducing the South African Spirituality Scale (SASS): measuring spirituality among medical students in a heterogeneous clinical environment

ABSTRACT The purpose was to develop a standardised scale of spirituality that can be used in clinical settings across the heterogeneous spectrum of South African cultural, religious and faith traditions. Participants (n = 445) were recruited from local health science students and Factor Analysis with promax (oblique) rotation was used to determine underlying dimensions in the data. Finally, a Factor Analysis of 32 items was conducted with six factors explaining 61% of the variance. Internal consistency for each of the scales examined using Cronbach's alpha, was adequate with all alphas > .7. All the subscales were significantly correlated with p < .0001, with only the positive correlation between “Beyond” and “Meaning” (r = .63) found to be of note. Six distinct reasonably internally consistent factors were identified to underlie the responses to the spirituality scale items, namely: “Beyond”, “Awareness”. “Meaning”, “Others”, “Journey” and “Connection”. These results can be used to further develop this local measure of spirituality.

What is the Socio-Historical Method in the Study of Religion?

The purpose of this article is to answer what the socio-historical method is when applied to the study of religion, as well as detail how numerous disciplines (e.g. archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, theology, musicology, dramatology, etc.) contribute to its overall employment. In the broadest (and briefest) definition possible, a socio-historical study of religion coalesces the aims, philosophies, and methodologies of historiography with those of the social and cultural sciences, meaning it analyzes the interpretation and practice of religion through the lens of social/historical contexts, scientific discovery, and from within each faith tradition. The result is that the contexts surrounding a particular religion becomes the primary subject of study in order to better understand the origin, development, and expression of the religion itself. This article explains that the socio-historical study of religion is, in essence, an eclectic methodology that focuses on describing and analyzing the contexts from which the interpretation and practice of religion occurs. The goal is to examine how different aspects of a religion function in the broader socio-political and cultural milieu. Its most fundamental postulation is that the social history of a religious community affects how it interprets and practices their faith. By approaching religious inquiry from a socio-historical perspective, researchers are better able to recognize religion as a cultural and institutional element in ongoing social and historical interaction. Three sections will help to explain the socio-historical method: 1) a definitional dissection of the term “socio-historical”; 2) an elaboration of the principles inherent to the methodology; and 3) a case study example of the socio-historical method in practice.

Clergy attitudes toward vaccines and vaccine advocacy: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT Background: Recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have affected members of religious communities. While major religions support vaccines, the views of individual clergy who practice and propagate major faith traditions are unclear. Our objective was to explore clergy attitudes toward vaccines and vaccine advocacy. Methods: In 2018–2019, we conducted qualitative interviews with clergy in Colorado and North Carolina. We inductively analyzed transcripts using a grounded theory approach, developing codes iteratively, resolving disagreements by consensus, and identifying themes. Results: We interviewed 16 clergy (1 Buddhist, 3 Catholic, 2 Jewish, 1 Hindu, 1 Islamic, 7 Protestant, and 1 Unity). Analyses yielded seven themes: attitudes toward vaccines, congregational needs, public health climate, perceived responsibility, comfort and competing interests, reported advocacy efforts, and clergy health advocacy goals. Most clergy had positive vaccination attitudes and were open to vaccine advocacy, although discomfort with medical concepts and competing interests in their congregations influenced whether many had chosen to advocate for vaccines. Over half reported promoting vaccination in various contexts. Conclusions: In our sample, U.S. clergy held complex attitudes toward vaccines, informed by experience and social norms as much as religious beliefs or Scriptures. Clergy may be open to vaccine advocacy, but a perceived lack of relevance in their faith communities or a lack of medical expertise may limit their advocacy efforts in diverse contexts. Amidst growing vaccine hesitancy, pediatricians could partner with clergy in their communities, answer questions about vaccines, raise awareness of recent outbreaks, and empower clergy in joint educational events.

The Devil is in The Detail: Disclosing The Impact of Religion on the Milk System in Ethiopia

The influence of religion within food systems in developing economies has been understated in scholarly studies. With its different Christian, Islamic, and traditional faiths, Ethiopia offers a promising field for investigating the impact of religion on the milk system, the most important animal protein source in Ethiopian diets. In a first chapter, we investigate how the presence of a religious fasting period influences household milk intake in the country. The second and third chapter explore how milk producers have adapted to the demand seasonality caused by religious fasting practices in two different major milk production areas. In the two final chapters we investigate if and how religious ties facilitate milk transactions. This dissertation concludes that religious fasting practices have a clear impact on milk consumption and production in the country, thereby creating considerable market inefficiencies. Furthermore, we find evidence of market coordination problems along

Migration – A New Normal

This article, originally presented as the Jewish lecture at the 44th International Conference for Dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims, explores the Jewish view on welcoming refugees and migrants anchored in an exploration of the communal narrative of the Jewish people from biblical times as well as in a reflection on the author’s personal life story. It asks how our societies live up to the values of our faith tradition and explores examples of how Jewish communities are trying to positively address the challenges of global migration.

Holy Places and Religious Language in New Religious Movements

AbstractThe idea of sacred sites or holy ground has been an important aspect of a number of major world religions. While the concept has received longstanding scholarly attention in connection with the traditional Abrahamic faiths, the ways in which late-modern and contemporary movements have developed the idea has been little studied. This paper reviews the ways in which twentieth-century new religions adopted and developed the idea of holy place. Three movements form the core case studies: The Panacea Society, a breakaway Anglican group based in Bedford in England, which came to believe their garden was the site of Eden; the American Theosophical Society, which founded a utopian community in California understood as the site of the emergence of a new spiritual age; and Jamaican Rastafari who came to regard a territory south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia as salvific. Common themes emerging from the case studies include the ways in which ideas about holy ground (1) draw on available theological motifs, (2) express emerging theological principles, and (3) are catalysed by stress or challenge. Finally, the discussion reflects on the role of holy ground in these movements in the light of classic and contemporary understandings of place and religious imagination.

Multifaith Third Spaces: Digital Activism, Netpeace, and the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change

Multifaith spaces typically imply sites where people of diverse faith traditions gather to participate in shared activities or practices, such as multifaith prayer rooms, multifaith art exhibitions, or multifaith festivals. Yet, there is a lack of literature that discusses online multifaith spaces. This paper focuses on the website of an Australian multifaith organisation, the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC), which we argue is a third space of digital activism. We begin by outlining the main aims of the multifaith movement and how it responds to global risks. We then review religion and geography literature on space, politics and poetics, and on material religion and embodiment. Next, we discuss third spaces and digital activism, and then present a thematic and aesthetic analysis on the ARRCC website drawing on these theories. We conclude with a summary of our main findings, arguing that mastery of the online realm through digital third spaces and activism, combined with a willingness to partake in “real-world”, embodied activism, can assist multifaith networks and social networks more generally to develop Netpeace and counter the risks of climate change collaboratively.

Faith Borders, Healing Territories &amp; Interconnective Frontier? Wellness &amp; Its Ecumenical Construct in African Shrines, Christian Prayerhouses &amp; Hospitals

The religious geography of most health-seekers in modern Africa easily transverses the faith worlds of other religious traditions, thus building inevitably a lively-network of ecumenical spaces that surprisingly create an interpenetrating dialogue between African traditional shrines, Christian prayerhouses and western hospitals. The open-border policy of healing sites in Nigeria and Ghana in particular provides ecumenical directions and enriches interfaith conversations among different religious traditions. Consequently, the present study underscores the subversion of the dogmatic rhetoric of the different faith traditions in the quest of health and wholeness at healing sites. This ecumenical triangulation of the faith-borders projects a new religious landscape where the hostile rhetoric of faith traditions are clearly suspended, and a new appreciation of other faiths in definition of health and wellness is popularly entrenched. The existential blurring of dogmatic and traditional faith-borders raises new questions—and interesting perspectives in the modern study of religions, health and inter-faith/ecumenism in Africa.

NON-DISCRIMINATION AND NON-STIGMATISATION AS GLOBAL BIOETHICAL PRINCIPLES: INTRODUCING AN OVERDUE PROTESTANT DISCUSSION WITH UNESCO

Until now there has been no official dialogue between UNESCO and the Protestant faith tradition regarding article 11 of the UDBHR; therefore, this article forms a first and preliminary introduction to the discussion. The purpose of this discussion is to formulate a theological ethical foundation for article 11 of the UDBHR. It is important from Protestant and UNESCO perspectives to formulate an ethical foundation. On the one hand, this conversation contributes to strengthening the credibility of the declaration, while on the other hand, it offers this instrument a necessary religious status. It is clear that article 11 of the UDBHR states that non-discrimination and non-stigmatisation are two principles that have been accepted by the world community and should to be promoted in the context of health. These two global bioethical principles are recognised and accepted by Protestant social ethics in the faith framework of the covenant and can, therefore, be promoted by the Protestant community in the context of health in South Africa and the world.

A Question of Identity: Vocation, Professionalization, and Atla Membership

“Who are we as theology librarians, and what does involvement in Atla mean to us? Does serving as a theology librarian signify an exercise in religious vocation and is our association a faith-based organization with professional dimensions? Or are we librarians in a professional association concerned with content in theology and religious studies?” There are different responses to this query, and these differences can lead to tension as theology and religious studies librarians with diverse perspectives work together to build a shared future in Atla. The panelists—representing different faith traditions, institutional settings, educational and professional backgrounds, and perspectives on their work as librarians—reflect on their roles as theology and religious studies librarians with regard to three guiding prompts: (1) What is your sense of vocation and identity as a librarian? (2) How does Atla function for you, in terms of spiritual formation and/or professional development? and (3) What are your expectations from Atla?

Beauty, Embodiment, and Stewardship: Theological Libraries and Theological Ecology

Many faith traditions affirm a profound connection between physicality and spirituality. Similarly, libraries, even while facilitating sublime intellectual connections between authors and readers, have done so, and to an extent continue to do so, as physical places and through the physical medium of books. Given these connections, it is perhaps not surprising that theological libraries can serve as a nexus for exploring the relationship between the physical and the spiritual, between the largely incorporeal acts of intellectual analysis and spiritual contemplation and the physical ecology in which such acts occur and the physical (and digital) media that make them possible. As we have become increasingly aware of the fragility of our physical environment, such connections have taken on greater significance, both as a topic for intellectual analysis and a guide for faithful praxis. This paper offers further consideration of these themes and explores ways in which theological libraries, our collections and services, can both model and further good stewardship.

First Nations/Native Americans and Religion: Bibliographic Conversation and Recommendations

A quick search using the subject “Indians of North America – Religion” in Bridwell Library’s catalog retrieved 130 results out of a collection of about 490,000 volumes. This suggests (a) The Library of Congress may want to consider revising some of its subject headings (but that is a topic for another time), (b) religious and spiritual practices among native North Americans/First Nations are not widely studied by our students. While there are certainly exceptions, likely this situation is not unique among theological libraries. This session represents an effort to rectify this by sharing and inviting colleagues to share recommendations of resources on spirituality and religious beliefs and practices of various native North American/First Nations groups and their relation to the faith traditions that are more broadly represented in our collections.

My Fortune is the Work of Others: A Response to Prof. John C. Coffee, Jr. Regarding Lockstep Law Firm Partnerships and Tournament Theory

My Fortune is the Work of Others: A Response to Prof. John C. Coffee, Jr. Regarding Lockstep Law Firm Partnerships and Tournament Theory

Religion and pro-environmental behaviour: a comparative analysis towards environmental protection

Faith factors strongly influence pro-environmental behaviours toward proactively solving environmental problems. This paper investigates different faith traditions and their link to the concept of environmental protection rooted within the major religions in Malaysia. In addition to a systematic literature review, data were collected using a cross-sectional qualitative study based on interviews with religious experts in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. The study found that the religions of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism strictly prohibit the mismanagement of the environment. These religions dictate that one of the core responsibilities of humans is to act as caretaker of the Earth and its population. These religions are also believed to restore faith in protecting the environment and have the potential to be an effective medium to promote pro-environmental behaviour. This study proposes that the Malaysian Government integrate the element of religion in environmental policies that are used to nurture pro-environmental behaviour. Major mediums, such as education and media that are used to promote environmental awareness, should use religion as an element to heighten pro-environmental behaviour in order to cultivate sustainable communities.

Mehmet Gurses. Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

Reviewed by: Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey by Mehmet Gurses Vera Eccarius-Kelly Mehmet Gurses. Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. xi + 179 pp. Cloth, $65. ISBN 978-0472131006. Anatomy of a Civil War, an empirically rich, methodologically rigorous, and politically relevant study, successfully evaluates the decades-long Kurdish struggle for equality by placing the armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish state at the center of its analysis of social change. Mehmet Gurses convincingly posits that Kurds in Turkey have experienced a full-fledged civil war, and he rejects the use of terminology that is frequently used to marginalize and criminalize Kurdish resistance to state repression. Gurses concludes that opportunities for peace will not emerge as long as the Turkish state apparatus circumvents fundamental and meaningful sociopolitical and cultural reforms for Kurdish communities. While some may disagree, Gurses persuasively argues that the formation of a separate Kurdish state entity may be one of the only logical and remaining options for Kurds to create lasting (positive) peace. Gurses offers a straightforward organizational structure to enhance the use of his data, which is embedded in the larger theoretical analysis. His book provides four interwoven segments to guide the reader through a complex set of questions. Focusing on the impact of violence committed against noncombatants, Gurses explores the sociopolitical consequences of the decades-long civil war in Turkey. He pursues several essential and frequently interconnected questions to identify patterns of collective change that have reshaped Kurdish values and norms and contributed to organizational capacities for protest and direct action. The central questions around which the book is organized are related to (1) whether war can engender more positive attitudes towards women; (2) if exposure to war can create a deeply engaged and democratically-oriented citizenry; (3) how civil war contributes to forging a national identity; (4) if war between two same-faith groups can reshape the minority’s relationship with particular faith traditions; and (5) if civil war conditions can encourage secularization. The first part of the book is dominated by an impressive discussion of the existing body of literature related to civil wars and ethnic conflict. Here Gurses connects the specifics of the Kurdish conflict to numerous other global examples ranging from Latin to African case studies. Part two examines a wide variety of existing theories that link the democratizing potential of wars to micro-level experiences with civil wars. The third segment, a particularly compelling part of the book, contextualizes how war dynamics shape gender relations within Kurdish communities. Gurses demonstrates that Kurdish women have become visible in all areas of public life over the past three [End Page 188] decades through their involvement in activism, their roles as elected officials, and their contributions as armed combatants. Furthermore this section proposes that civil war experiences have created essential conditions for change, which in predominantly Kurdish provinces have advanced democratization and secularization movements. The final part of the book scrutinizes the literatures of ethnic conflict and peace to examine salient obstacles to achieving peace in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict (among them are linguistic and cultural patterns of repression and social prejudices held by Turks against Kurds). In an effort to test for all five questions, Gurses relies on a mixed methodological approach that allows for an examination of the underlying causes for social and political changes that appear to manifest within Kurdish cities. He relies on a large data set of 2,100 interviews carried out in three Kurdish majority provinces in Turkey, namely Diyarbakır, Van, and Sanlıurfa. Both Diyarbakır and Van provinces were selected for the study because they have been at the center of the armed conflict between PKK combatants and the Turkish government. Tens of thousands of internally displaced people from the countryside arrived in the major regional cities resulting in a precarious economic situation for the predominantly Kurdish population. As a result, pro-Kurdish parties have risen to an influential political position in both provinces. In contrast, Sanlıurfa, is a more ethnically diverse province with a sizeable...

The Buddhist Nuns and Dialogue in Wartime Myanmar: Understanding the ‘Banality of Othering’

This paper contends that dialogue must be understood dispassionately with the aim to appreciate what David Bohm (2013) called ‘incoherence’, and the need to embrace multiplicity in narratives, even if that implies incongruence in the understanding of dialogue. Using ethnographic methods and findings, I situate the politics of self and the other, and argue that determining the other and acknowledging the ‘banality of othering’ need to be examined in discussions around dialogue. I present a background of the interfaith tensions between the Buddhists and the Muslim-Other in Myanmar and by means of ethnographic anecdotes unpack the underplayed importance of determining the other within one’s own faith tradition and emphasise the needs and possibilities of engaging with them. Female religious leaders are often the innate other in many religious traditions, and their stories, experiences, and recommendations are disproportionately discounted, and that necessitates redressing. In a first, this study reports the role of Buddhist nuns, or the lack of it, in transitional Myanmar in the belief, practice, and scholarship of dialogue, and emphasises the need for their meaningful involvement.

Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering by Cynthia R. Wallace

Reviewed by: Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering by Cynthia R. Wallace Sara Judy (bio) Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering Cynthia R. Wallace Columbia University Press, 2016. ix + 316 pp. $65.00 hardcover. $27.00 paperback. Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering by Cynthia R. Wallace is as much about justice as it is about suffering, as Wallace, through her analysis of justice-oriented feminist literature, seeks to "do justice" (xiv) to these texts in their specificity and particularity. Wallace's sense of ethical responsibility toward her objects of study, and toward the theory she is in conversation with, operates in the volume as an ever-present awareness that there are lived, material implications to the arguments we make in and about literature. The result is a remarkably personal work of criticism that weaves together critical analysis of Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Ana Castillo, and Chimamanda Ngzoi Adichie with Wallace's own personal experiences of suffering in a body marked "woman" by the world. Located within the framework of "new literary critical ethics" (13), Of Women Borne brings a theologically informed, religiously attentive, and particularly womanist perspective to bear on poststructuralist questions around the ambivalence and ambiguities of language and meaning in literature. Drawing on a range of theological influences, Of Women Borne is most attentive to the Black and Latina feminist contributions to and interventions into the tradition of liberation theology. Unlike John McClure's Partial Faiths (2007) or Amy Hungerford's Postmodern Belief (2010) Wallace's analysis of postmodern postsecular literature does not question religion's place in a postmodern society—the women she writes about express important but ambiguous relationships to religion in their creative and critical writing. Rather, Of Women Borne is interested in representing the ways in which feminist, ethical, justice-oriented literature has shaped philosophical and theological discourse in the postmodern age. For Wallace, "the very idea of suffering implies not just an is but an ought" (22), and her examination of suffering in literature is predicated on the understanding that the world "ought" not to be so racist, so patriarchal, so dominated by pain and selfishness. The authors she engages imagine [End Page 167] that it might, through difficult acts of self-sacrifice, be otherwise—not free of pain, but a world where we choose to endure pain toward more restorative ends. The first chapter, on poet Adrienne Rich, attempts to re-vision Rich as a forerunner of an ethic of care and mutual responsibility which still informs feminist discourse. In chapter two, Wallace reads a number of novels by Toni Morrison, demonstrating how Morrison's perpetual negotiation of particularities and universals implies a need for multiple ethical paradigms. Next, Wallace moves from Black womanist liberation theology to the tradition of Latina feminist theology, through a reading of the liberatory potential of Ana Castillo's So Far From God (1993). Here, Wallace begins to more explicitly interweave her personal investments in this project, and her analysis of Castillo is enriched by a sense of deep responsibility to account for what Wallace, as a white critic, may not know. The final chapter focuses on Nigerian author and popular public feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's historical novels, to question how we might pay "responsible attention" (170) to global and historical suffering, without reinscribing it. Throughout Of Women Borne, Wallace displays a generous attunement to the complexity of the questions she poses, always refusing easy answers in favor of attending to a multiplicity of meanings, and always leaving open the possibility of indeterminacy ("and yet" is a regular refrain in her writing). However, despite Wallace's insistence on specific and contextually determined understandings of suffering, her analysis can sometimes generalize the category of religion to mean specifically Christianity. The result of this tendency is that religious difference is occasionally glossed over, as in the chapter on Rich, which makes little distinction between Rich's critique of Christianity and her ambivalent relationship to Judaism. This generalized sense of religion also misses opportunities for particularity within certain denominations and faith traditions; the chapter on Morrison makes no mention of Morrison's Catholicism, which would seem to offer rich opportunities for attention...

Tendrel: A Memoir of New York and the Buddhist Himalayas by Harold Talbott

Reviewed by: Tendrel: A Memoir of New York and the Buddhist Himalayas by Harold Talbott Maria Turek TENDREL: A MEMOIR OF NEW YORK AND THE BUDDHIST HIMALAYAS. By Harold Talbott. Marion: Buddhayana Foundation, 2019. 344 pp. The Tibetan term tendrel describes, among other things, auspicious connections, which benefit those involved. Harold Talbott's autobiography, thus entitled, chronicles the many people who rendered the author's existence a life worth living, indeed a precious human life—in the words of Buddhist teachings, to which the author devoted the largest part of his life. Sadly, Harold Talbott passed away shortly after the publication of this volume. His book may therefore serve as a commemoration of the author's remarkable life, of his contribution to American Buddhism as well as a celebration of the early era of Buddhism's rapid globalization in the twentieth century. In his modesty, the author does not devote many lines to report on his own achievements, important for the activity and support of his Buddhist mentors and friends. Yet Harold Talbott was an influential scholar and practitioner of Buddhism, supporter and benefactor of Tibetan lamas, prolific book editor, and cofounder of the practice center in Marion, Massachusetts, the site of early encounters between Americans and Tibetan masters. Following the epiphany paradigm found in narratives of conversion, the memoir is divided into two parts, the "before" and the "after," devoted to, respectively: the time in the author's life before he was able to meet with and appreciate the teachings of the Buddha; and the part of his life since that happened. The book's first part describes the sophisticated society amid which Harold Talbott was raised and educated. In light of the author's openness about his homosexuality and effeminate boyhood persona, the title "Swanning About" of part 1 appears quite reflective of Talbott's brilliant and self-deprecating humor—a trait that he displays throughout his work. Wit is merely one of the many merits that makes this account so delightful to read. The author impresses us with an erudite knowledge of various faith traditions. The scintillating and thoughtful descriptions of encounters with an imposing amount of cultural and religious luminaries of his day are delivered in the matter-of-fact, yet refined, narrative style we can expect of a man born into the elite and educated in the finest of American schools, but who chose to live a nearmonastic life as a full-time, lay practitioner of Buddhism. [End Page 479] Beyond the many pleasures that this book undoubtedly offers, Talbott's memoirs also provide significant insights into the emergence of networks of cooperation necessary for the functioning of contemporary Buddhism as a world religion. The operation of these plexuses, initiated by tendrel (auspicious connections), is described in the book's part 2 "In Search of the Nature of Mind." This title is, first of all, an homage to the spiritual path and goal of the Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen tradition, of which Harold Talbott became a devoted practitioner. The author also recognizes the role that intersectarian Buddhist connections played in his spiritual quest—his most notable relationship being with the Dalai Lama himself, who is the most celebrated representative of another Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the Gelukpa. Talbott also pays great respect to the two champions of interfaith dialogues that occurred during the 1960s and the 1970s: the Benedictine Prior and theologian Dom Aelred Graham (1907–1984) and the Trappist friar and poet Thomas Merton (1915–1968). In Harold's youth, the mentorship of these two Catholic monks, both fascinated by Buddhism, had a lasting impact on the formation of the author's religiosity and his later conversion to Buddhism. At the end of Talbott's book are eight appendices: transcripts of interviews with and about Dom Aelred and Merton, excerpts from teachings by great Dzogchen masters, and a list of books edited by Talbott for one of his Tibetan teachers, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche. The final appendix, and thus the closing section of the book, is an expression of the author's enduring esteem for and gratitude to the Christian faith of his childhood and youth, which takes the form of a reproduction of the emotively beautiful...