Faithful Narrative Research Articles

Growing up in transit. Personal development and resistance of migrant adolescents travelling through Mexico unaccompanied

Mexico is a major global migration corridor. The last decade has seen an increase in adolescents travelling unaccompanied from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, mainly due to violence and natural disasters. This group of migrants is exposed to migration risks such as trafficking and exploitation, as well as multiple deportations and long waiting times without appropriate access to health and education services. These conditions have significant documented adverse impacts on health and mental health, but the impact on personal development has been less explored. Thus, this article aims to explore the impact of migration transit on identity and resilience of unaccompanied migrant youth, psychosocial mental health constructs that are important for wellbeing and personal development. Through 47 semi-structured interviews conducted with migrant youth and different migration workers in summer 2021 in two migrant shelters in Mexico City and Guadalajara, we found that possibilities for identity building for migrant youth were restricted in a context of curbed freedom. Violence and poverty led to loss of crucial formative years, pushing many to aspire only to work – regardless of the type of work. Resilience overlapped with resistance but was generally maintained with cultural narratives of goal achievement, faith and hope. Strong responsibility towards sending remittances to family made family one of the main goals of the migration journey. Workers highlighted how regional migration management, underlined by discriminatory policies which place profit and national security ideology before a recognition of common humanity, is a considerable barrier to funding services and advancing access to rights for youth. However, youth showed recognition of their own agency and humanity, which represents an important basis on which to build a counter-discriminatory vision and management of this migration. Results are reported according to COREQ guidelines.

Sermons That “Cut Like a Sword”: Samuel Blair’s Rhetoric During the Great Awakening

The article examines the style of Samuel Blair, a revival preacher of the Great Awakening who has often been omitted in the studies on the colonial pulpit tradition. Two texts by Blair, a sermon (A Perswasive to Repentance, 1743) and a revival account (A Short and Faithful Narrative, 1744) are studied rhetorically and presented as representative of the “rhetoric of the revival,” a particular mode of preaching in which the speaker employs a wide array of rhetorical patterns, biblical innuendos and communicative strategies aimed at eliciting emotional responses.

“I Hope I Have a Treasure in Heaven, Because My Heart Is There”: Salvation and Damnation in the Conversion Narrative of Patience Boston

abstract: This essay considers the 1738 conversion narrative of Patience Boston, a young Native woman executed for murder in York, Maine, in 1735. Titled A Faithful Narrative of the Wicked Life and Remarkable Conversion of Patience Boston , it contains Patience’s first-person account of her religious experiences while in York’s prison awaiting execution and was edited and published by York’s two ministers, Samuel Moody and his son Joseph. We analyze this text as a composite work of Patience Boston, Samuel Moody, and Joseph Moody, arguing that the evangelical piety of the two ministers resulted in the production of a conversion narrative that challenged colonial New England’s entrenched hierarchies of status in its confident proclamation of Patience’s heavenly salvation. We discuss Patience’s Narrative in comparison to earlier criminal narratives and analyze the role of New England’s Indian wars in shaping Samuel’s and Joseph’s desire to present Patience to the public as the model of a perfect Protestant Indian. We also consider the Narrative as an early exemplar of the piety of the Whitefieldian awakenings of the 1740s, arguing that this style of piety made it possible for Joseph to believe himself likely damned while simultaneously proclaiming Patience’s assured salvation.

Beyond Literal Idolatry: Imagining Faith through Creatively Changing Identities

This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads to unnecessary suffering. The initial foundation examines the process of growth and the role that the imagination plays in the construction of narrative identity—an important part of human development. Literal idolatry interrupts this original process through the creation of a social imaginary that corrupts natural measures for self-correction. At the same time, a creative faith contains the capacity to dislodge the rigid boundaries of literal idolatry. A creative faith narrative identities in ways that open beyond simple coherence and completeness. It can also revitalize social institutions and public spaces. The argument concludes by arguing fictional narratives augment the work of theology in grounding and inspiring creative faith.

Review: Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US, by Anna Piela

Countless academic research projects discuss the perennial niqab bans that pop up in various Western municipalities, addressing the legality of these policies as well as the media coverage. However, the voices of the women who choose to wear the niqab are rarely heard. Anna Piela attempts to rectify this research gap by centering on the personal experiences of women who wear the niqab in the United States and United Kingdom, two contexts that are also underdiscussed with the hyper-focus on niqab bans in France and Canada. Building on Piela’s training in gender studies and feminist methods, Wearing the Niqab relies on extensive interviews, in which the women share their own faith narratives and the various reasons they have for wearing the niqab.Chapter 1 provides important context to how the British and U.S. media misrepresent niqabi women with a critical discourse analysis of nearly a hundred articles. Piela finds two common frames in the coverage of niqabi women: “paternalistic feminist,” or helping the women who are assumed to be oppressed; and “security discourses” around fear of what is hidden under the niqab. In response to these stereotypical portrayals, chapter 2 analyzes how niqabi women express themselves through digital media spaces, often using humor, intimacy, and authenticity to come across as less threatening. This chapter could employ media and religion theories a bit more in terms of how the women use media to make accounts of their religious lives.While the background chapters provide useful foundations, Wearing the Niqab is groundbreaking when it begins to highlight Piela’s extensive interviews and observations in chapters 3 through 5. Chapter 3 is one of the highlights of the book, as Piela concentrates on the religious act of wearing the niqab. Feminist scholars trained within a secular-liberal context have a difficult time conceiving of wearing the niqab as a gesture of agency, but Piela frames the women’s discussion around wearing the niqab as acts that are about inhabiting, not resisting, norms. In this chapter, the women articulate their view that wearing the niqab is a form of submission to God’s will, a way to emulate the Prophet and his followers, an act of worship, and a way to grow closer to God. The secular-liberal framing of the niqab as purely a repressive cultural act fails to account for these religious motivations.Building on the theoretical work of the previous chapter, chapter 4 examines the distinct formulation of agency in secular contexts. For instance, women may have religious motivations for wearing the niqab but within the “secular-liberal discourses” (91) of the United States and United Kingdom, it might be more advantageous to consider arguments about rights and freedoms. While the women often utilize narratives of choice, this can sometimes backfire when the courts often protect religious actions that are requirements.Finally, chapter 5 analyzes the racialization of Muslims and misogyny in Islamic communities and wider society. Muslim women who wear the niqab, especially those who are Black, often face intersecting forms of oppression because they are hyper-visible in the niqab but also experience misogyny and racism. This chapter analyzes the complexities of race in ways that studies of Islam too often ignore. For example, Black Muslim women sometimes find the niqab protects against anti-Black racism, whereas White Muslims are perceived as foreign and threatening when they wear the niqab. Piela also discusses the strategies that niqabi women deploy to deal with discrimination and appear less threatening in public, such as showing that they are “engaged” in their surroundings or always being friendly and helpful. When the women face more serious public harassment and violence, they develop strategies to determine safe and unsafe spaces to wear the niqab.Despite the challenges of researching the relatively unorganized group of women who wear the niqab, Anna Piela offers an insightful analysis of the experiences, negotiations, and narratives of niqabi women. Starting in the opening chapters, the book might capture the reader’s attention more effectively if it featured the material from Piela’s interviews with niqabi women and ethnographic accounts. Moreover, sections that discuss online advocacy would benefit from deeper analysis of the role of digital media in creating space for religious expression. With that said, this book offers an original contribution to larger conversations on religious practices within liberal-secular public spaces, personal narratives of religious meaning, and feminist studies of agency.

Between Poetry and Prayer: The Mystagogy of "Primary Wonder"

Between Poetry and Prayer:The Mystagogy of "Primary Wonder" Ryan G. Duns S.J., PhD (bio) There are times, early in the morning when I arise or late at night before I retire, that I find myself nostalgic, pining for days when belief was easier. In actuality, I do not think belief has ever been easy, though it may have been easier to take it for granted in earlier eras. Sometimes, though, I wish I could feel something of the ardor of the great saints—a Therese Lisieux, a Julian of Norwich, a Thomas Aquinas. Every now again, usually in the midst of my annual retreat, do I experience intimations or stirrings that, if not launching me into states of ecstasy, do reassure me that in prayer I am not simply talking to myself. On one occasion, not long after entering the Society of Jesus, I flung myself down before the Blessed Sacrament after a very dry and difficult week. Someone had left a copy of Thomas Aquinas's Adoro te devote in the chapel and, listless and cranky, I took it up and read. At first, probably owing to my sour disposition and frustration, I read it solely as a poem, a quaint but disconnected bit of pious verse. As I tried to "make sense" of it, I found myself caught up in a process not of my own devising. Speaking metaphorically, it was as though cracks appeared in the poem and I found it praying for me and through me. You might call it a Romans 8:26 moment when, "the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" (NRSV). Without stirring from my seat, I knew myself to have been moved in a profound way. This experience has led me to consider the relationship between poetry and prayer and how some poems might serve as privileged sites where the willing reader might risk encountering anew the mystery abiding at the heart of all creation. In this essay, I explore the mystagogical sensibility I detect within Denise Levertov's poetry. Although it would be instructive to canvass her entire oeuvre, my focus will be on "Primary Wonder," a poem written a year before her death in 1996.1 As both a resource for my own prayer as well as within the classroom, I have found the poem speaks well to contemporary audiences in an age skeptical about the possibility of encountering God. In fact, several students have reported back to me that this poem has served as a propaedeutic for their embrace of contemplative prayer and their return to Christianity. [End Page 75] Poetry can serve as a locus for a graced poiēsis, leading to a transformation of how one perceives the world (aesthesis). By drawing on the work of the Irish philosopher William Desmond, I believe we can appreciate how Levertov's poem can be the site for a mystagogical poiēsis, a transformative re-making in which one is grasped by and led into the heart of divine mystery. As a priest and fellow sojourner in our secular age, I want to probe the threshold between poetry and prayer by considering how Levertov's "Primary Wonder" evokes and provokes the experience it describes. Readers may not be acquainted with the word mystagogy, so allow me to clarify how I intend to use it. Jesuit theologian Paul Crowley, adhering closely to the work of Karl Rahner, employs the term "in its root sense of guiding an initiate into the world of faith, into its depths as they are realized interpersonally in God."2 Mystagogy engrafts an initiate into the larger narrative of faith, finding their reality transformed. It describes a process of "making," a Spirit-led poiēsis through which one's mode of apperception is graciously retuned. To traverse the mystagogical itinerary is to be led by Divine Mystery into Mystery's very heart where one is neither annulled nor annihilated but rather renewed and reoriented by sojourning in intimate communion with the Holy One. Tracing the mystagogical or mystical-poetic itinerary found in Levertov...

The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind, by Courtenay Raia

Reviewed by: The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind by Courtenay Raia Christine Ferguson (bio) The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind, by Courtenay Raia; pp. ix + 424. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019, $105.00, $35.00 paper. In her introduction to The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind, Courtenay Raia asks, "Can investigators who gave positive testimony regarding telepathy, telekinesis, spirit communication, or other such phenomena really be taken seriously?" (8). For almost fifty years now, historians of science and cultural studies scholars have answered this question with a resounding yes. In the early 1970s, George Stocking and Malcolm Jay Kottler produced complex, archivally situated examinations of the spiritualist investigations of Alfred Russel Wallace and E. B. Tylor, their efforts fueling a groundswell of spiritualism and science studies that would later manifest in landmark monographs by Janet Oppenheim, Alison Winter, and Roger Luckhurst. Interest in psychical research has intensified and diversified since the millennium's turn, its history pursued by Peter Lamont, John Warne Monroe, Egil Asprem, Jason Josephson-Storm, Richard Noakes, and others. If by "taking seriously," Raia means subjecting historic scientific investigations of spiritualist phenomena to rigorous academic inquiry, paying careful attention to their scientific, religious, cultural, and biographical dimensions, and refusing to patronize, ridicule, or simply debunk their subjects, then psychical research has been taken very seriously for quite some time. Indeed, the onus of proof seems now to lie with anyone who wishes to claim otherwise. Raia shows some awareness of this extensive precedent in her endnotes, but never fully acknowledges it in her central argument. Instead, The New Prometheans insists that the psychical pursuits of its Victorian professional subjects remain marginalized because [End Page 580] it is "hard for academics to see psychical research as a genuine scientific effort" (x). Of convinced psychical researchers, she writes, "we dismiss out of hand what they are saying and wonder, instead, why they are saying it: are they duped, delusional, dishonest? … Psychical activity is thus immediately deflected away from scientific considerations and captured by interests of a more biographical, cultural, or even occult nature" (8). The term "we" is made to do quite a lot of heavy lifting, and readers might well begin to wonder who it describes. If it is historians of science or spiritualism, then this allegation of ignorance is demonstrably untrue. Has even a single of the academic studies of psychical research produced over the last two decades been written with the primary intention to prove that its champions were "duped, delusional, or dishonest"? And if it is dismissive for scholars to focus on the topic's biographical and cultural dimensions, then why does so much of The New Prometheans do exactly that? It is not, after all, Raia's intention to authorize the psychical convictions of her subjects. Even if it were, such an endorsement would not necessarily represent a more ethical approach to the early work of the Society for Psychical Research than a more neutrally agnostic historiographical position. The Victorian psychical research community was a broad church whose members advocated, if unevenly, a healthy skepticism in their investigations; they did not always agree, and their work could just as easily debunk as credit spiritualist phenomena. Such problematic rhetorical gestures undermine an otherwise engaging account of the psychical research of four "New Prometheans": William Crookes, F. W. H. Myers, Oliver Lodge, and Andrew Lang. Raia's first chapter contextualizes their work in light of the so-called crisis of faith narrative, arguing that this narrative, if by no means culturally ubiquitous, was very much real for the individuals she studies. Chapter 2 focuses on Crookes's notorious investigative séances with the medium Florence Cook, providing a fascinating account of his potential motivations for entering the psychical fray and of his shifting relationship to spiritualism, one far more equivocal than the movement's frequent and unilateral declaration of his allyship suggests. The next two chapters are devoted to Myers. The first examines the spiritual struggles and youthful romanticism that marked his early career at Cambridge, and the second shows how his formulation of an optimistic theory of human psychological evolution drew upon his ongoing interactions...

How the Bible Works

This article is about Russian Baptists’ perception of their faith as a text. I argue that they practice their lived faith by interiorizing the language of the Russian Synodal Translation of the Bible as their ‘language of reasoning’. I support this claim by analyzing two aspects of faith: as an act of conversion and as a process of living a Christian life. To illustrate the mechanism of sustaining faith, I use the case of a rehabilitation ministry for addicted people to unpack narratives of conversion, gender order, and family life. Biblical literalism is the basis of the Russian Baptist faith narrative, and in this article I scrutinize the mechanism of its construction.

When responsibility entered the room: interrogating the silence in Christians’ life narratives

ABSTRACT This paper identifies some of the methodological considerations involved in narrative research with conservative faith groups, while addressing the things left unsaid through an exploration of silence in the author’s own life narrative of faith and sexuality. The challenges posed by silence – temporal silence and concealment – require greater focus in narrative research methods. Moreover, the pervasive and palpable effects of silence in sexuality research with (nominally) Evangelical Christians calls into question what we (can) know about sexuality in conservative faith communities using qualitative research methods.

Faith Narrative and Ethical Practice in the Literacy Field

What is the intersection between being a person of faith and a literacy teacher? How do educators experience literacy instruction when trying to connect their faith and practice? Using the lens of researchers Clandinin and Connelly (2000) these questions were explored from the perspective and experience of one of the co-authors. Three themes of Christian pedagogy emerged from the results of this narrative inquiry: the power of words, the power of forgiveness, and the power of voice.

Rape narratives analysis through natural language processing: Survivor self-label, narrative time span, faith, and rape terminology.

Rape-survivor identity is a sign of recovery and positive therapeutic progress among rape victims. This study is one of the few to focus on factors predicting self-labeling as a survivor among self-acknowledged rape victims by evaluating the contribution of the time span of the rape narrative, rape terminology, and expression of faith. The data were elicited from 3,794 rape narratives published on Brave Miss World, a website established, inter alia, to allow rape victims to share their stories. To identify the key concepts within rape narratives, we performed text mining based on natural language processing (NLP) and developed a model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the model's goodness-of-fit analysis. The results indicated a good fit between the theoretical model and the data. Time predicted expressions of faith and the use of rape terminology, and there was a positive correlation between faith and the use of rape terminology. Both expressions of faith and the use of rape terminology mediated between time span and self-labeling as a survivor, with a significant positive effect on self-labeling as a survivor. The results suggest that addressing rape-victim faith and the use of rape terminology in the depiction of their sexual trauma may be beneficial for the therapeutic process and postrape recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Icons of Faith in The Brothers Karamazov: A Kierkegaardian Reading

Through a creative and critical reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, this paper explores how the novel portrays a narrative of faith which corresponds to Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophical notion of faith. By analyzing the actions and utterances of the narrative agents, the researcher draws from the novel its conceptions of justice, death and rebirth, acceptance, active love and responsibility, the metaphor of the heart, and mystery. These are subsequently correlated to the Kierkegaardian categories of the double movement, teleological suspension of the ethical, infinite resignation, receiving again, subjectivity, and subjective truth. The paper has the double-aim of (1) providing a philosophical framework for understanding the convoluted issues of faith explored in the novel, and (2) presenting a novelistic expression of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. This dialogue between the two thinkers provides deep reflections on the experience of pain and loss in the world of a Benevolent God.

After Identity Politics? Faith in Liberal Citizenship

The ambivalent role of religion in modern citizenship is hardly new, whether in terms of the “hardware” (legal-political institutions and processes) or “software” (public attitudes and habits). Faith narratives can vigorously contest liberal claims of civil belonging and freedom, such as on gender and secularism. Yet liberal citizenship also benefits from justice claims anchored in interpretations of religion, ranging from equality and solidarity to nonviolence and reconciliation. Identity politics is a formative part of liberal citizenship, with a dominant tribal discourse legitimated by the accommodation of minority ethno-religious claims to equity and equality. Nativist populism aggravates an already adversarial relationship between faith and liberal citizenship, notably for minority religions. This paper argues for symbiosis between liberal citizenship and diverse religious identities—a political theology that takes pluralism seriously. While liberalism purports to minimize expectations of individual virtue, civic pluralism calls for the inclusion of collective and individual ethical commitments, beyond ruptures of secular and sacred that shape a jurisprudence on the “burdens of accommodation.” Evidence from Canada, among other liberal settings, suggests that the alternative is civic fragmentation that favours majoritarian tribalism.

In Community, Alone, in Community: Towards an Understanding of Christian Faith for the Post-Enlightenment, Post-Evangelical, Post-1960s Revolution Generation

Abstract: The Christian Creeds outline the central beliefs of Christianity, providing a universal statement of faith for Christians everywhere. This is an account of one perspective on the Creeds, which begins in a narrow Christian community, moves through isolation and solitude, and ends at the edges of a new community; a journey which edges towards the human goal of self-acceptance and understanding. The doctrines are often perceived as fact, but are there grounds for a more nuanced approach? Theologically, some insiders have developed new approaches to Christianity, while traditional Church theology maintains a stubborn outward attitude of non-compromise. Others who have attempted to develop a more existential approach have been often vilified and disowned by the Church. But is there a third way? One which encompasses neither theological technicality nor angry emotional rejection, but a gradual dawning, personal realization that we are all moving from one type of community to another, and that the answers lie in doubt rather than certainty. This paper analyses internal and external dialogues the author has experienced, when moving from the confines of a small Evangelical Christian Church community, through solitude, to the tentative edges of a new multi-vocal community. Starting with an analysis of Fowler’s methodology as a tool to evaluate the faith narrative, the author will examine the multiplicity of voices that have informed her journey. She will stop on the way to challenge and encourage the young adult who has become an outsider, to acknowledge the voices of dissenters, to accept a different form of spiritual friendship, and to encounter an evolving community which accepts new voices of gender, doubt and radical interpretation. Finally, she will visit a new creed and ask whether, in the famous words of T. S. Eliot, ‘... the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’

Public Theology: Toward a Christian Definition

Public theology is a phrase that has been used both descriptively (like Bellah's civil religion ) and prescriptively (so that public theology is an attempt to recommend policy prescriptions seen through the narrative of faith). After a survey of the evolution of the phrase, I concede that most contemporary theologians use the phrase in a prescriptive way. Many using public theology in a prescriptivist way do so out of a revisionist theological framework. This is problematic because the majority of Christians are much more traditional in their theology. Building on a distinction between “process” and “content” in Christian ethics, the article argues for a particularist account of public theology that is shaped by liberation theology and yet still committed to conversation in a pluralist society.

Lyotardian Language Games: A Postmodernist Critique of Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

This research seeks to analyze Our Lady of Alice Bhatti in the light of Lyotardian language games. The novel is written by Muhammad Hanif who is arenowned Pakistani novelist and writer. The novel, through language games, subverts the master narratives of nation, science, justice, culture, and faith. This research explores the role of language to interpret, understand and communicate in the postmodern world as in todays world every idea exists in the form of signs or language. This reading explores the novel through textual analysis, and it is qualitative and exploratory. It ends with the findings and recommendations for further research.

Religious Imaginations: How Narratives of Faith Are Shaping Today’s World. Edited by James Walters

Religious Imaginations: How Narratives of Faith Are Shaping Today’s World. Edited by James Walters

Aesthetics as Shared Interfaith Space between Christianity and Islam

AbstractDue to its immediate message, religious aesthetics is prone to various kinds of instrumentations in the contemporary world. In this context the aesthetic fundamentals shared by different religious traditions or scriptures must be rediscovered. This article argues for theological aesthetics as an effective category of analyzing religious identity and alterity. It looks at the aesthetics of revelation and scripture, and their reflexes in the embodied faith – architecture, ritual, and faith narratives – to articulate a comparative aesthetic theology of Christianity and Islam. The focus of this article lies in the interreligious potentialities of religious aesthetics, in the case of (Eastern) Christianity and Islam, conceived as a resonance chamber for similar sensibilities in the two religions.

Ancestry, Place[s], and Identity in Spiritual Direction Narratives

In this 2017 John McKendy Memorial Lecture, Dr. Janet Ruffing, RSM, discussed spiritual direction as a narrative process, recognized or not, in which the directee tells his or her sacred tale in the interaction with a spiritual director who significantly affects the unfolding of this serial narrative of lived faith. At a time, when directees have unprecedented access to genealogical information and also live in or make retreats in a variety of places, how do these new experiences affect their identity spiritually and socially? Do they become integrated into the ongoing narrative of identity or not?

Time mapping: charting transcultural and First Nations histories and geographies in doctoral education

ABSTRACT In this article, we introduce a time mapping methodology to chart the impact of transcultural and First Nations’ histories, geographies and cultural knowledges on doctoral education. Drawing upon a ‘Southern’, postcolonial-decolonial theoretical framing and extending textual life history methodologies, we argue that time mapping is a visual methodology that has the power to disrupt managerial, auditing discourses that have come to dominate present understandings of doctoral education. We present the time maps of migrant, international candidates and Australian First Nations candidates and supervisors, creating spaces for narratives of migration, war, discrimination, destruction, colonisation, change, survival, faith, energy, language and cultural revival, growth, inspiration and the power of Country. We seek to re-humanise discourses about doctoral education.