History Of Religion Research Articles

New Netherland’s Paradox: Dutch Tolerance / Dutch Intolerance

New Netherland’s Paradox:Dutch Tolerance / Dutch Intolerance John D. Krugler (bio) Evan Haefeli. New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. xi + 384 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $45.00. Evan Haefeli has done an excellent job of positioning New Netherland in the context of the Dutch nation and its expansive worldwide empire that stretched from the Far East to South America and to the West Indies. In focusing on the Dutch colony that eventually became New York, he argues that the colony deserves greater recognition for its contribution to American religious liberty. This is a book that historians of religion and politics in the seventeenth-century will want to read. To say that the religious landscape in New Netherland was complex understates the Dutch world. Haefeli’s title suggests that his main concern is the origin of American religious liberty, but that is a small part of the book. His main concerns are to explain “Dutch tolerance” and to assess the successes and failures of the Dutch as they implemented it in New Netherland, to demonstrate the uniqueness of this policy for North America, and then to tie these developments to American religious liberty. Haefeli worked less from new evidence (although he benefits from new translations of Dutch materials) than from a new reading of the existing evidence. New Netherland is a “new telling of an old story” (p. ix). To provide a fresh version, Haefeli devoted considerable attention to recent interpretations of the Dutch religious experience on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, he gave considerable space in the text to argue against these recent interpreters of the Dutch experience. Specialists will find these debates of greater value than general readers. Beyond a lengthy introduction and a conclusion, Haefeli divided his book into ten chapters. He spends considerable time defining Dutch experiences and how the Dutch in both Europe and in New Netherland fended off three main religious polities that could not find a home in the Dutch Reformed Church: Lutherans, Quakers, and non-Christians. He gives some attention to Roman Catholics in Europe in the context of providing examples of what the [End Page 7] Dutch did not want to be—for example, in comparing Catholic intolerance to Dutch tolerance. The Dutch were neither proselytizers nor evangelicals, at least as those words applied to Quakers. The Dutch were as firm in their belief that their Church was the true church as were the Massachusetts Bay Calvinists; the difference was that the Dutch felt less threatened by deviants. In describing the Dutch, Haefeli variously uses terms such as tolerance, liberty of conscience, religious liberty, monopoly, established church, religious diversity, and pluralism. At first glance, these terms do not seem interchangeable or synonymous. For example, how does an established church square with liberty of conscience? The author provides a subtle and nuanced analysis as he tries to explain the Dutch religious experience. Haefeli asks: “What is religious tolerance and how does it happen?” He admits that a consideration of tolerance is “a much more complicated matter” than most would think and is “difficult to study.” Dutch tolerance was “the whole process of negotiating religious coexistence.” Dutch leadership did not intend to encourage religious diversity through tolerance; rather it was how the Dutch coped with it (pp. 1, ix, 15). Two quotations, one taken from New Netherland governor Peter Stuyvesant and the other taken from his directors, capture the essence of this study and the tension it attempts to explain. Governor Stuyvesant told some Lutherans who challenged Dutch tolerance that he had “taken an oath in Holland before the supreme authorities not to allow any other religion to be established in this land” (p. 67). However, the directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company (WIC) asked Stuyvesant to “shut your eyes, at least not force peoples’ conscience, but allow every one to have his own belief, as long as he behaves quietly and legally, gives no offense to his neighbors and does not oppose the government” (p. 229). This paradox, to neither accept nor persecute, Haefeli labels “connivance,” which was the basis for Dutch tolerance. Then, however...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction: Journal of Cognitive Historiography

More than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions by Ed. Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt

Reviewed by: More than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions by Ed. Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt Carl Olsen More than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions. Ed. Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Pp. 287. The nine essays collected here are based on the presentations of the keynote speakers at the 2008 conference of the Nordic Network for Research on Pre-Christian Religion. The Network, according to the editors, aims to facilitate close interdisciplinary contact between religious studies scholars and those other fields (literature, history, philology, archaeology, and ethnology are those they list in their introduction) that have their own long traditions in the study of Old Norse religion. The contributors to this volume bring a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to the topic. [End Page 105] While Jens Peter Schjødt has some strong words for the “hyper-criticism” of “some modern philologists” (p. 269) in his concluding essay, we may take this volume as an indication that there is indeed some optimism in these parallel fields that one can actually say something about Pre-Christian religion in the North, and do so in a rigorous fashion. “Hyper-criticism” is not the only target, as many of these essays, and the volume as a whole, make a point of criticizing speculative and comparative excesses of past scholarship. The goal is a happy (but rigorous) medium, although the ideal presented varies from essay to essay. The essays range from cases-in-point to more abstract discourses on theory and methodology, although most of them combine some methodological exposition with a particular test case for their approach. A comparative angle is prominent in most of these essays. Peter Jackson’s essay “The Merits and Limits of Comparative Philology: Old Norse Religious Vocabulary in a Long-Term Perspective” discusses the degree to which historical linguistics and comparative Indo-European research can shed light on Pre-Christian Norse religion, drawing his own comparative examples from Old Norse myth, Homeric formulas, and the hieratic poetry in Vedic and Avestan from the second and early first millennium BC. He is careful to emphasize, however, that he is not attempting to uncover some “timeless ideational structure” but instead is attempting to rediscover aspects of Germanic religion “at work elsewhere, in a no less contingent historical reality” (p. 62). Jackson is not alone in this volume in noting the parallel between linguistic reconstruction of lost forms and comparative research into prehistoric religion, and he reminds us that Dumézil himself recommended that historians of religions take their inspiration from historical linguistics. His approach is not a return to Dumézil, however, and in particular he attempts to transcend Dumézil’s “top-down” approach by means of a “bottom-up” approach founded on a “careful comparison and reconsideration of the linguistic data” (p. 53). Thomas DuBois’s essay “Diets and Deities: Contrastive Livelihoods and Animal Symbolism in Nordic Pre-Christian Religions” involves a more immediate regional comparativism. Where his Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) explores the commonalities between Norse and Sámi religious cultures, here he explores one way in which Scandinavian and Sámi communities emphasized their particular ethnic identity in spite of shared economic and cultural phenomena. DuBois takes animal and food symbolism as his case-in-point, showing that, while the archaeological evidence demonstrates that wild animals were certainly important to Scandinavian communities, these communities drew their primary religious symbols from domestic animals, and while [End Page 106] Sámi communities depended more and more on domesticated species borrowed from the neighboring Scandinavians and Finns, they continued to emphasize animals traditionally important to them such as reindeer, fish, and bears as religious symbols. He suggests that there is a degree of mythic lag, in which a culture’s mythic systems fail to “keep apace of changing dietary staples and customs” (p. 66), but he also emphasizes these symbols as a way for communities to differentiate themselves from neighboring cultures. With Olof Sundqvist’s essay “‘Religious Ruler Ideology’ in Pre-Christian Scandinavia” we move into comparative research within Scandinavia...

Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan by Barbara R. Ambros (review)

Reviewed by: Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan by Barbara R. Ambros Ellen Schattschneider Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan. By Barbara R. Ambros. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012. 280pages. Hardcover $55.00; softcover $29.00. In Bones of Contention, Barbara Ambros examines a fascinating, relatively recent development in relations with domestic animals in Japan. Over the past three decades a significant sector of the Japanese public has begun to perform kuyō (Buddhist memorialization rites) for pets, especially dogs and cats. In some instances, bereaved owners have arranged for kaimyō (posthumous Buddhist names) to be given to deceased [End Page 309] pets, which are then memorialized within family butsudan. Ambros gives close attention to recent legal battles over attempts to intern pet remains in human cemeteries, as more owners increasingly come to term their animal companions “uchi no ko” (our child). She places this intriguing ethnographic material within a larger history of animal memorialization in Japan. She notes, for example, that in the early nineteenth century, whalers at times assigned posthumous death names to slaughtered whales and held memorial services for these nonhuman leviathans. She also recounts the familiar story of the loyal dog Hachiko, who in popular mythology stood vigil at the Shibuya train station for his late owner. As many anthropologists, historians of religion, and folklorists have long noted, animals have for millennia in Japan functioned as intermediaries between human and divine worlds and between the living and the dead. In the shishimai dance at the New Year, lion-like creatures “bite off ” impurities from spectators and confer longevity. Kitsune spirits, alternating between fox and human forms, transport people between conventional life and fantasy dreamworlds. Dragon divinities, or ryujin, themselves hybrid beings composed of elements from diverse animals, move between undersea depths and mountain peaks and help transport humans between mortal and immortal domains. Yet why, starting in the years of the Bubble Economy, should a good number of Japanese have come to memorialize something so prosaic as household pets? Ambros situates this phenomenon in the memorialization boom of the 1980s, in which a great range of nonhuman entities, from needles to dolls to eels, were subjected to such rites. Ambros argues that “. . . the hybrid status of pet memorial rites—their liminal place between human and animal mortuary rites . . . makes their study a compelling topic for inquiry” (p. 9). In the book’s opening chapter, Ambros juxtaposes premodern models of human-animal relations with contemporary transformations of animal symbolism. She notes that the admittedly modern notion of the “pet”—an animal taken into domestic space as a quasi-family member—expresses a substantial departure from earlier, rather functional relationships. At the same time she argues that there were ethical and sacral dimensions to the premodern management of the animal world: the killing and consumption of whales, for example, produced a lingering sense of obligation and anxiety. Early memorialization rites for whales can be thought of, in a sense, as anticipating modern practices of pet memorialization. Building on this insight, Ambros persuasively argues in chapter 2 that the early modern use of animals as resources in Japan cannot be accounted for in purely economic or technical terms; instead, this commodification was infused with religious sensibilities, although these by no means ensured the compassionate treatment of animals. Future researchers may wish to build on this argument and consider broader ways in which premodern representations of animals may have had, in a general sense, memorial or ritual functions. Might we think of many such practices as having bridged the conventional gulf between spheres of existence? For example, painting an image of a pair of hawks in a shrine or temple has for many centuries functioned as a form of [End Page 310] veneration, and in colloquial (if not strict doctrinal) terms as an act of kuyō. The composite figure of ryujin, predicated on the creative recombination of familiar animal elements (fur, scales, horns, claws, and so on), might in turn be conceived of as a kind of metamemorialization, geared toward allowing a whole host of beings to move through the great arc of creation and transmutation toward buddhahood. Chapters 3 and 4 are to...

Myths and Narratology

This essay presents narratology as a strategy for analysis of written myths. It analyses the narrative form of a written religious narrative from ancient Mesopotamia known as The Epic of Anzû, suggesting that the narrative form of myths is a necessary object of inquiry for historians of religion; one that has consequences for our understanding of the meaning and functions of myths, of the religions that make use of them, as well as for broader discussions of religious narrative.

Jewish Revival and Respect for Islam in Nineteenth-Century Europe

On May 17, 2013, Joseph V. Montville, director of the Esalen Institute’s “Toward
 the Abrahamic Family Reunion” project (http://abrahamicfamilyreunion.
 org), addressed a select audience at the IIIT headquarters on pre-Zionist
 Jewish scholarly interest in Islam.
 He began by recalling how German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish scholars
 discovered remarkable similarities in the Torah, the Talmud, and the
 Qur’an. While hardly a surprise to Muslims, this was a “major revelation and
 surprise” to European Christian philologists and historians of religions. This
 new interest emerged as Europe was losing its fear of the Ottoman Empire,
 and of Muslims in general, because the now militarily inferior empire was in
 retreat and anti-Semitism was on the rise. Jewish intellectuals sought to blunt
 this latter trend by combating Christian disdain, if not hostility, of Jews and
 Judaism. They therefore played a major role in this scholarship, for, quoting
 from Bernard Lewis [“The State of Middle Eastern Studies,” American
 Scholar 48, no. 3 (summer 1979: 369-70)]: ...

Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh (review)

Reviewed by: Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh C. Pierce Salguero James McHugh. Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xix + 322 pp. $35.00 (978-0-19-991632-0). Historian of South Asian religion James McHugh has written a detailed exploration of smells, aromatics, and perfumes in ancient and medieval India that deserves our attention. The author refers to his book as a “primer and a reference book” (p. 7); however, the reader who spends some time with it is sure to discover that he has produced something much more. Creative and well written, the work explores a huge selection of literature (including the Vedas, epics, philosophical works, Buddhist and Jain writings, perfumery treatises, lexicons, medical texts, and more). Each chapter opens up multiple facets of the physiology, aesthetics, [End Page 282] social function, and economics of smell, while the introduction outlines how this research connects with recent trends in the history of the body, the senses, and material culture. Because of the richness of his sources and the breadth of his scope, historians of religion, literature, transnational exchange, technology, and medicine will equally benefit from reading McHugh. The historian of medicine who wishes to take the author at his word and treat the book as a reference work will readily find many useful nuggets here. One can, for instance, read an introduction to the Indian understanding of the mechanics of olfaction on pages 25 to 29. Pages 72 to 81 discuss and partially translate sections from the Carakasaṃhitā (third century BCE to fifth century CE) and Suśrutasaṃhitā (ca. 500 CE) on the role of smell in the prognosis of death and in the diagnosis of demonic pediatric disease. Also relevant is the chapter on sandalwood, where McHugh explores the literary references to, the properties of, and the uses of a range of substances known as candana (pp. 182–89). And one can consult the index for more information about individual aromatic medicines that appear ubiquitously throughout the book. The author’s characterization of his own work notwithstanding, however, it is not as a reference volume that Sandalwood and Carrion will be most useful to scholars in our field, and it is not by flipping to specific pages that we will most enjoy it as readers. Pardon the expression, but this book simply begs us to stop and smell the roses as we make our way through it. Whatever your entry point might be, you cannot read more than a page or two before you find yourself immersed in a fascinating, textured description of an alternative universe in which medicine is intimately intertwined with religion, trade, aesthetics, and sensual experience. For example, you may have come to chapter 7 because you were interested in looking up a synonym for a commonly traded aromatic medicine (pp. 173–74). But on the surrounding pages you will read about the pervasive ethnic and geographic stereotypes that shrouded aromatics in an exotic mystique (pp. 171–77), narratives of lavish tribute missions from the Mahābhārata and other sources (pp. 166–71), and literary depictions of the merchants and perfumers of an idealized medieval city (pp. 162–66). Read on, and in the next chapter you will learn how aromatics were evaluated by merchants (pp. 189–95) as well as how they were faked (pp. 195–98). As you continue still further, do not be surprised if you learn how that same aromatic substance was used in temple construction or in adorning the gods in Hindu ritual, how it was spoken of in the Kāmasūtra or in a pun or a riddle, or what role it played in the formula for the famous perfumes “Moon Juice” and “Uproar.” Though you may initially have been interested in simply finding a synonym, soon you realize you have happily lost yourself in McHugh’s guided tour of the vivid Indian “smellscape.” Will some historians of medicine complain that the book overly prioritizes religious perspectives? That it spends too little time on the medical matters that concern us most? Perhaps. For this reviewer, however, the appeal of the...

The Bible, the School, and the Constitution: The Clash That Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine

Until recently, partisans in contemporary battles over vouchers for attendance at Catholic schools have dominated popular historical scholarship on religion and public education. A simplistic ethnocultural conflict framework, in which nineteenth-century anti-Catholicism drove the development of nonsectarian public schooling, has prevailed. Hence, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas could inaccurately declare in his 2000 Mitchell v. Helms opinion that nonsectarian public education was “born of bigotry.” While it appeared to liberals that Thomas was making things up, his decision was reasonable for someone who merely read the most popular secondary books on the topic. During the last two decades several groups of scholars have been developing a more nuanced and defensible view. Historians of education have examined the social history of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century religion and education; historians of religion have challenged monolithic views of Catholicism and Protestantism; cultural historians have exploded our understandings of nativism and immigration; and legal historians have retraced the changing meaning of church-state separation. Steven K. Green has been a leading thinker in the group of legal historians, and his recent book is the most authoritative legal history of nineteenth-century church-state-school relations to date.

Modernist Spirituality

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the biblical critic Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) advanced a reform agenda that had significant political and theological implications and that helped to define “Modernism.” Contemporary scholars have explored many facets of this reform agenda, but have not so far investigated Loisy’s ideas about ritual. Based on an analysis both of Loisy’s own religious practice and of his most important Modernist book, this article fills that gap. Loisy approached ritual, particularly the Eucharist, as an historian of religion with a growing interest in, and commitment to, comparative work. At the same time, Loisy celebrated the mystical and sacramental character of the Eucharist, its capacity to help Christians experience a genuine communion with God. This effort to combine critical history and Christian spirit, although imperfectly realized, defined Loisy’s Modernist spirituality.

Claude Langlois's Vision of Nineteenth-Century French Catholicism

This article examines some of Langlois's major works on nineteenth-century French Catholicism, which taken together suggest a vision langloisienne defined by three central, intimately interrelated insights. First, for Langlois a chronology of French Catholicism based on an assumption of an ineluctable process of dechristianization needs to be replaced by a more nuanced and contingent understanding of the evolution of belief and practice. Second, a revised chronology illuminates important sectors of creative vitality within Catholicism, particularly with regard to female religious congregations. Third, historians of religion must be willing to use a variety of methods in exploring their subject; social scientific approaches are crucial, but they complement rather than replace traditional narrative, biography, and a close reading of literary texts. The article concludes with reflections on the normative posture that is implicit in Langlois's historical writing, a position based on his commitment to the values of toleration and equality.

Raffaele Pettazzoni from the Perspective of the Anglophone Academy

AbstractThere should be no need to emphasize the significance of Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959) to historians of religions. However, there are only two books by Pettazzoni available in the English language: the monographThe All-knowing God(1956; original:L’onniscienza di Dio, 1955) and an anthology ofEssays on the History of Religions(1954), which is “a collection of sundry writings on various subjects connected with the History of Religions, which have been already published on different occasions in Italian and foreign periodicals” (Pettazzoni 1954).2 Added to this is a tiny collection of articles in English (in fact, the American Theological Libraries Association database references only three). This seems to constitute a serious neglect of such a productive scholar, who has been called an “exemplary historian of religions.” This paper will attempt to assess the reception of the work of Raffaele Pettazzoni in the Anglophone Academy, to question the adequacy and accuracy of that reception, and to indicate what might be learned from it.

Money Matters: The Neglect of Finance in the Historiography of Modern Christianity

The subject of religion and finance is seriously neglected within the historiography of the church during the modern period. This essay explores the pioneering ‘Financing of American Religion’ project and suggests possible fruitful avenues of research into the financing of British religion. By way of a case study, it analyses the size of the religious voluntary sector as a whole and then, within that, the individual finances of a range of Anglican voluntary organizations, all home missionary organizations within the diocese of London. Historians of religion have shown a certain reluctance to grapple with the columns of figures and minutiae of detail contained in cash books, general ledgers and annual reports. This essay serves as a brief taster of the wealth of material contained in such sources.

Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire

Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire. This paper highlights the Western scientific traveller as an intermediary between Orient and Occident around the turn of the nineteenth century by presenting a case study on the Belgian archaeologist and historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868-1947), and the dossier of the journey he undertook in Northern Syria, May 1907. After a discussion of this classicist’s relation to the Orient, I give an account of Cumont’s Syrian tour, based on three different writing contexts : the academic output of the expedition in Northern Syria, Cumont’s private travel notes, and both his active and passive correspondence. Still focusing on the case of Franz Cumont and the dossier of his archaeological journey in 1907, in a third and fourth section I examine two ways in which the Orient was brought to the Occident by the scientific traveller. Firstly, by the acquisition and transfer of archaeological material from the Orient to the Occident, providing Western institutions with Eastern artefacts. Secondly, by the transfer of ideas and images : how did the Occidental scientific traveller, the archaeologist, convey his experiences with the “ real” Orient to the European readership ? I will disclose how Franz Cumont expressed his evaluation of the ancient Orient, which he studied, and the contemporary Orient, which he experienced during his travels.

'The Hole in the Wall': Sacred Space and 'Third Space' in The Family of Love

A city comedy of disputed authorship, The Family of Love deals with the spatial constitution of the sacred. Familists convene in a seedy London inn, dubbed the 'Hole in the Wall,' and, under the direction of a female leader, dispense with traditional sacred space and its ceremonies in rituals of carnal communion. This essay examines the role of the theater in re-imagining spatial paradigms of the sacred in the aftermath of religious reformations. The stage provides what historian of religion J. Z. Smith has termed a 'third space' where hegemonic and nonconformist models of sacred space meet up and are modified in an attempt at the spatial accommodation of dissent. In its function as a 'third space', the theater opens up the marginal 'Hole in the Wall' to public view; the play concludes with a validation of the Family’s unorthodox spiritual and spatial arrangements, now under masculine leadership.

The Soul of C hina: A Durkheimian Perspective on Religion and the Mainland

The Soul of China: A Durkheimian Perspective on Religion and the Mainland Keith Kerr and Bai Juntao “The old gods are growing old or are already dead, and others are not yet born.” ([1912] 1965: 475)—Emile Durkheim I write this from Pu Tong University (pseudonym), a sprawling school of 30,000 students in China's northwest, where I am living and working as a visiting professor of sociology. My “regular” job is an assistant professor at a private, liberal arts school in the northeast United States. This is my sixth trip to China, although my first to work and live here for so long. Undoubtedly, each trip has brought new personal and cultural discoveries. But a “war” is a first for me. From past experiences traveling here, I knew Americans held many misperceptions about China, especially regarding religion. Despite popular belief, religion is not banned in China (well, sort of…like everything here…it's complicated). What is certain is that unlike in the United States, religion is not often discussed. This is in part an outgrowth of Chinese culture that is indirect and “polite” and due in part to religion's history in China during the twentieth century when religion was violently suppressed. Hence, my shock and paranoia when my first day on campus I was asked by the administrator overseeing my stay a frank question I had never been asked in my five previous trips: “Are you a Christian?” The tone was not the friendly tone of inquisitiveness. It was the bureaucratic tone that warned I may need to select my next words carefully. Caught off guard by this unusual question, unsure myself whether I fell into this category or not, I was at a loss for words. I was born into a Christian family, raised in Texas, and so was certainly of a Christian culture, but did not identify with the changed theological and political face of Christianity. As I struggled to formulate a coherent statement that would capture this, the administrator filled the silence, “It doesn't matter, just don't try to convert the students. You can talk about religion, you just can't minister to them.” I did not know how to respond. Part of me was offended and resistant to being told what I could and could not talk to my students about—not that conversions had ever replaced my lectures. And if it had, I am not at all certain what I would convert the students to. But my first response was resistance to overt control over my freedom in the classroom. But mostly, I was confused. I was confused by the unusual directness from a Chinese person, and confused by the motivation behind the statement. Part of me wondered whether my observations had been incorrect. Perhaps the reports of religious persecutions that I had read about and the rumors that were told to me by my evangelical friends in Texas (friends, mind you, who had never been to China) were correct. I was not naïve. I knew that restrictions existed; I knew that for some in China, religion had brought trouble, but I had long concluded these were historical artifacts, and in contemporary China, overblown and bordering on Western propaganda and paranoia. In many ways, the visible pluralities of religion one sees on Chinese streets are greater than what would be experienced in most US cities. Mostly, though, I was confused because I knew from previous experience that many religions have a strong and visible presence here. Catholic churches are well represented, although they are barred from recognizing the Vatican's authority. Likewise, open and underground evangelical Christian churches are well known, although members run the risk of arrest from government officials for failure to register their religious organizations. In fact, recent numbers indicate that anywhere from 20 to 100 million Chinese identify themselves as Christian (US Department of State ). Judaism, although to a much lesser degree, also exists in the Mainland, although it is not officially recognized by the government. But Buddhism is by far the most visible of the traditional religions. Monks are a common sight on Chinese streets, especially near towns with large temples. And temples...

How to Avoid Moralism, Apologetics, and Intimidation

How to Avoid Moralism, Apologetics, and Intimidation

Secularisation and Nationalism: A Critical Review

The author aims to analyse the relationships between secularisation and nationalism. In the course of the debate regarding the origin of nationalism, some scholars have argued that nationalism has filled the void left by historical religions. Nationalism could therefore be considered a religion of modernity, or a functional equivalent of historical religions. The author aims to reconsider this issue. First, he explores the sociological origins of the theory of nationalism as a religion of modernity deriving from Durkheim’s Sociology of Religion. Second, he provides an overview of the different versions of this theory. Finally, he assesses the weaknesses of these approaches and proposes an alternative theoretical framework in which to reconsider the relationships between secularisation and nationalism.

Pilgrimage in Turbulent Contexts: One Hundred Years of Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

In this paper, I review select developments in the last one hundred years of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic pilgrimage to sites found today in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I argue that only by viewing the pilgrimages under analysis as dissipative systems, is one able to explain historical change in this most turbulent of contexts. When combined with an understanding of pilgrimage as social action, this approach enables historians of religions to account for not only the restructuring of pilgrimages over time but also to understand dynamics surrounding ritual birth and death. Furthermore, the political strategies of traditionalists and revivalists who attempt to authenticate contemporary ritual behavior by linking it up to purportedly longstanding, unchanged practices are undermined. After initially focusing upon changes in pilgrimage catalyzed by socio-political events, I discuss the birth of distinctively new pilgrimages associated with the rise of the State of Israel as well as the demise of several other pilgrimages in the years since 1948.

Schematic Rock Art, Rain-Making and Islam in the Ethio-Sudanese Borderlands

Two sites with schematic rock paintings in Western Ethiopia, where Islamic ceremonies connected with rain-making are performed and miraculous events are said to occur regularly, are interpreted in the light of such factors as the beliefs of local informants, the Islamic appropriation of prehistoric rituals in Northern Africa, the characteristics of similar sites linked to rain-making rituals throughout Eastern Africa and the apotropaic meaning of schematic marks in many traditional cultures. Probably painted by the ancestors of the current Koman language speakers during the Later Stone Age or shortly afterwards, the rock art contextual analysis reveals the complexity of interregional relationships and processes affecting the multi-ethnic frontier regions in pre-colonial times and shows how the local groups have recombined prehistoric and historic religions and ideologies into an original mix that bears witness to the region’s multifaceted history.

The End of “The Protestant Era”?

More than fifty years after delivering the talk “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935” to the American Society of Church History, Robert Handy is still the default authority on religion and the Great Depression. This is a tribute to his remarkable insights, but it is also an indication that the Depression merits more attention from historians of religion. A number of scholars have taken the religious history of the 1930s seriously. Yet we tend to think of the work of Joel Carpenter, Leo Ribuffo, Alan Brinkley, Beth Wenger, Kenneth Heineman, and others as primarily about fundamentalist institution-building, New Deal demagogues, or Jews and Catholics in New York and Pittsburgh, and only incidentally about the Great Depression.