Question Of Religion Research Articles

Imagined Buddhisms and the Limits of Female Liberation in Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire

This study considers how Urdu Indian writer, Qurratulain Hyder historicizes the role of Buddhism in her magnum opus, River of Fire. Previous studies have approached the question of religion in River of Fire in relation to the radical nationalisms of Hinduism and Islam. Meanwhile, Buddhism—a religious philosophy often perceived as innocuous in the polemics of Partition—has received only a passing nod. This study demonstrates that Hyder’s imagination of Buddhism from the perspective of female domesticity, unravels a more complicated religious and literary legacy than what was generally understood among her contemporary intelligentsia. In the opening chapters of the novel, Hyder draws on classical Buddhist literatures such as the Therīgāthā, to challenge romanticized imaginations of Buddhism. This article teases out this intertextuality between the novel and the Buddhist canon as a moment that foregrounds the implications of liberation for generations of women silenced by hegemonic religious and national histories. Drawing on Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety, I argue that Hyder explores alternative conceptions of feminine self-realization and liberation which interrogate not only traditional monastic notions of freedom and liberation but also feminist and Buddhist discourses of equality in the nation.

Race and Colonialism in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion

Abstract Scholars have paid limited attention to the crucial relationship between Hegel's racism, his support for colonialism and his views on religion. This essay offers a critical reconstruction of how race and coloniality shape the question of religion (and vice versa) throughout Hegel's attempts to critique and ultimately vindicate European modernity. Paying special attention to the seminal role of ‘fetishism’ in his works, I argue that Hegel's intellectual concerns are racialized from the inception of his project. I conclude by suggesting an alternative philosophical approach to the concept of the ‘fetish’ and ‘fetishism’ to resist Hegel's racist and pro-colonial tendencies.

The Police des Cultes under the Directory

In the period of the Directory, political leaders faced the challenge of sustaining a constitutional republic after a time of revolutionary government. They sought to restore civil peace within the framework of the new liberties achieved by the Revolution. One enduring element of this project was the question of religion, the police des cultes of the Directory, as one of the biggest obstacles to civil peace was the schism within the Catholic Church in France. However, the categories of thought, the philosophical views, and certain specific laws inherited by the Directory all served to constrain the options available to the government and its agents.

A politikai vallás Agamben nyomán. Határ és politikum

My paper raises the question of political religion. Although Voegelin introduced the term (political religion) in 1938 to characterize the totalitarian powers of the 20th century, he did not specify what „religion” means in this compound term. I claim that following Agamben we can articulate the peculiarity of political religion. To substantiate my claim I retrace his steps to reconstruct his philosophical position, while placing him alongside relevant thinkers on religion, and some religious texts. According to my thesis, before the appearance of political power, the political space is originally partitioned by the duality of the sacred and the profane. The political space is criss-crossed by the intersecting boundaries of the sacred and the profane in multiple layers. Yet modern political totalitarianisms cannot be derived directly from this religious concept of the sacred, only in a modified way. As I see it, Agamben moves from the ambiguity within the sacred to the concept of the homo sacer and the zone of indistinguishability. This last move will finally allow us to specify political religion.

Listening for Religion in Lagos: Preliminary Reflections

ABSTRACT For three weeks in January and February 2021, a team of researchers ventured into the streets of Lagos, Nigeria to document the relationships between sound, urban space and religious institutions and practices. In this article we present an overview of the conceptual issues that shaped our investigation into sound, including questions of noise, listening and religion. We also offer preliminary reflections on what we heard, as well as share samples of some of the sounds we recorded. Finally, we offer thoughts about future iterations of this project and reflect on how projects such as ours contribute to the development of African sound studies.

What distinguishes a small religion from a large cult?

When we take big and small as inherent characteristics of a religion, then it is not merely a question of religion, but of political theology. This article will illustrate this argument with the example of Christianity. This article will illustrate this argument with the example of Christianity. In this discussion, there is no shortage of praise for purely religious life and criticism of universal religion in pursuit of political influence. Political influence is not the original intention of purely religious life. The spiritual structure of religion means that religion is a relationship between man and God, not between man and man.

Spiritual Exercises and the Question of Religion in the Work of Pierre Hadot

This paper addresses John M. Cooper’s critique, and related critiques, of Pierre Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life for collapsing the distinction between philosophy and religion, via the category of “spiritual exercises”. The paper has two parts. Part 1, a pars destruens, will show how Hadot presents three cogent rebuttals of these charges, with which he was familiar as early as the 1980s, following the publication of the first edition of his 1981 collection, Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique. In part 2, a pars construens, putting aside the vexed category of “religion”, we will examine how Hadot reconsiders the place of the sacred in ancient philosophy, positioning the latter as not the attempt to rationally dispel any sense of the sacred in the world, but to relocate it from within the sanctioned cultic places and temples of traditional Greco-Roman religion to within the inner life of the godlike sage.

Bellah’s Durkheim: A fruitful reinvention?

The contribution is based on Robert Bellah’s introduction to Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973) and second on other references to the French sociologist in Bellah’s work as well as in Bortolini’s insightful remarks on the “homology” between Durkheim and Bellah. The publication of the book took place in a time of Durkheimian effervescence: Steven Lukes’ Emile Durkheim.His Life and Work was published on the same year and a new Durkheimology appeared in the English-speaking world: attention shifted from methodology, as expressed in Suicide or in the Rules of Sociological Method, to morality with a focus on the moral basis on a non-pathological society. Bellah’s statement is quite strong: Durkheim can “be seen as a theologian of French civil religion”. The paper will examine’s this point of view with respect to the state of French society at the turn of the century and Durkheim’s social project. One side question concerns the choice of texts: the editor did not give enough weight to texts that might have strengthen Bellah’s point of view, particularly l’Education morale. Bortolini mentions Bob’s long and silent work on Durkheim and his critique of mainstream analysis of The Elementary forms of Religious Life, reducing religion to a mere projection of society (:142). The biographer insists on the ambivalent, if not contradictory, vision of Durkheim in Bellah’s work, in which he finds a key to the interpretation of the oeuvre. The article focuses on how to account for its complexity, which is never as clear as in the interpretation of Durkheim’s sociology in a post-rationalist direction. Bortolini’s concept of role model/hero incarnated by the founding fathers (here Weber and Durkheim) is analyzed in connection with Parsons’ reconstitution of a pantheon. The question of civil religion is reexamined in the light of the transatlantic transfers carrying different meanings of civil religion.

Questions of religion and Knowledge of God in the Writings of Priest Pavel Florensky

Questions of religion and Knowledge of God in the Writings of Priest Pavel Florensky

In Search of a Historiography of Clergy Sexual Abuse

Clergy sexual abuse has become a key area of interest in the study of U.S. Catholic history. For decades, survivors and whistleblowers have written passionately about the pain and scandal of clerical abuse. Journalists and social scientists have described their suffering as a “crisis” caused by individual and organizational pathologies, while lawyers and criminologists have advocated for financial and carceral solutions. Questions of religion and history took a backseat to these framings of clerical abuse as deviant, clinical, and judicial. After a recent influx of new resources, American Catholic historians now have the opportunity to reshape the discourse by contextualizing clergy sexual abuse within Catholic history and culture. Although this work has just begun, emerging projects suggest that intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches might unlock new ways of understanding not just clergy abuse but also the related topics of Catholic childhood, gender, and sexuality.

Bab’i Bunty in Semirech’e: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Central Asia during the First World War

Bab'i bunty – women's riots - were a form of collective action in which women responded to crisis by making conscious and explicit use of their sex to achieve clear political goals. Owing to rapidly rising prices of food and manufactured goods from 1916 onwards the First World War saw widespread bab'i bunty across the Russian empire. In Semirech'e – the only region of Russian Central Asia with a substantial settler population - the class politics of these protests were complicated by questions of ethnicity and religion. This article explores a series of bab'i bunty which erupted in the towns of Lepsinsk and Vernyi and their surrounding districts, in which Slavic soldiers' wives (soldatki) targeted Muslim-owned businesses, but also those owned by their fellow settlers. In between these outbreaks in the summer of 1916 Semirech'e would become the centre of a violent uprising by Kazakhs and Kyrgyz against the Tsarist regime.

Henri Grégoire in Nice: The Communication Strategy of a National Convention Member in the Alpes-Maritimes Department, 1793

Drawing on the writings of Henri Grégoire, abbot and constitutional bishop, member of the French National Convention, and other sources, the authors of the article analyse various aspects of the religious policy of the French revolutionary authorities in the new French department of Alpes-Maritimes (until 1792 — the county of Nice within the Kingdom of Sardinia). In March — April 1793, members of the Convention, in their capacity as commissioners of Paris, were on a mission to Nice, where they were engaged in organising new institutions of power and dealing with other issues of social and religious life. In historiography there is a good tradition of research on the activities of Grégoire and Jagot in the Alpes-Maritimes Department (Henri Moris, Joseph Combet, Françoise Hildesheimer, Michèle-Helyett Siffre, Georges Doublet, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Marc Ortolani). However, a number of important pieces of evidence have remained out of the historians’ view. As the authors demonstrate, in many respects the members of the Convention were successful. They reorganised all the municipalities, formed three new districts, organised the election of administrators, magistrates, judges and members of the Convention, settled relations with people’s societies which, during the breakdown of power, had tried to take over some of the administrative powers, and forced the enrolment of “new citizens” in the National Guard and as volunteers. Only the “question of religion” remained unresolved. Grégoire and Jagot avoided radical steps: the time for the total “de-Christianisation” that swept across France in waves in 1793—1794 was not yet ripe. Examples of a cautious “preaching” strategy in this matter are the numerous letters and instructions of the Convention commissioners, as well as Grégoire’s “Address” to the citizens of Nice, published in Italian, apparently at the end of April 1793, which, so far, has not been studied by historians. The Appendix to this article contains the first Russian translation with commentary of “An Address to the Citizens of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes by Citizen Grégoire, Member the National Convention and Commissioner of the Same in This Department. Nice, 1793” (“Indirizzo a’ cittadini del dipartimento dell’ Alpi Marittime del cittadino Gregoire deputato, e commissario della Convenzione Nazionale in questo dipartimento. Nizza, 1793”).

Passive Tolerance versus Political Engagement. Antistius Constans, Koerbagh, Van den Enden, and Spinoza

This article investigates the contribution of Spinoza and authors of his circle (Antistius Constans, Van den Enden and Koerbagh) on the modern conception of tolerance. In his Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), Spinoza launches the libertas philosophandi-question integrating two kinds of freedom between which there is a tension: freedom of thought and speech and freedom of religious conscience. As freedom means living and acting in society in light of one’s own interests, tolerance becomes a political issue that depends from political perspectives and priorities. This insight leads Spinoza to bringing together the control of political authority on religious affairs and a political regime of religious plurality and toleration. These ideas seem to be reminiscent of texts published in his immediate circle: the anonymus De jure ecclesiasticorum (1665); the political pamphlets Kort verhael (1662) and Vrye Politijke Stellingen (1665) of his teacher Van den Enden; the subversive dictionary Een Bloemhof (1668) and the systematic philosophical Een Ligt (1668) of Koerbagh. In these texts the question of religion and religious authority shifts to the question of the nature and origin of political authority. The authors all criticize the abuse of power in light of the idea that there is no freedom without equality and no equality without freedom. Together with Spinoza’s Tractatus politicus (1677), they thereby form an anomaly within the anomaly of the Calvinist Low Countries that regards specifically this radical democratic view. They are not so much talking about tolerance but about everyone’s active participation in political life which is necessary for the rescue of the republic.

Introduction — Ricoeur and the Question of Religion

Introduction to the volume “Ricoeur and the Question of Religion”

Freud, Moïse et Religion. Une lecture de Paul Ricœur

Freud places the triad of art, morality and religion at the heart of a cultural sphere that remains determined by the topical-economic model. Within this framework that this article examines Ricœur’s interpretation of religion in Freud. Through Ricœur’s writings on psychoanalysis, it presents an analysis of the figure of Moses in Freud before evoking the Freudian conception of religion in the economic theory of culture. The first part of the article notes the difficult articulation between the two figures of Moses in Freud’s writings: Michelangelo’s Moses and that of Moses and monotheism, according to Ricœur’s interpretation. In a second step, the article returns to the different themes addressed by Ricœur in relation to the question of religion in Freud’s thought, such as neurosis, repression, guilt and illusion.

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

Multiculturalism and National-Building Processes in Kazakhstan: Theoretical Perspective

The complexity of multiculturalism has been central to European countries' political concerns since the 19th century. The era of globalisation creates another complex dimension of multiculturalism based on continuity and discontinuity. Multiculturalism also deals with the growing numbers of the geopolitical situation in the context of Eurasian integration. Most recently, in the wake of religious extremism in the world and the ensuing contention of superpowers like the U.S.A., China and Russia created another debate on multiculturalism. Most often, multiculturalism is addressed by questions of ethnicity, religion and nationality. However, it is also essential to consider cultural differences such as gender, age, disability, and other aspects of identity and social equality. The concept of multiculturalism comes into a complex and ambiguous relationship with the ideology of the national-building process. The issue of nationalism is associated with aspects of ethnic and national identity, particularly in the era of social transformation. This paper aims to elaborate on a theoretical conceptualisation of multiculturalism and the national building process in Kazakhstan and its prospects and challenges.  Keywords: Multiculturalism, National-Building processes, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Ethnicity&nbsp

Ambrus Miskolczy. A román középkor időszerű kérdései. Régi-új viták és közelítések

Ambrus Miskolczy. <i>A román középkor időszerű kérdései. Régi-új viták és közelítések</i>

Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist by David Barak-Gorodetsky (review)

Reviewed by: Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist by David Barak-Gorodetsky Chad Alan Goldberg (bio) Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist. By David Barak-Gorodetsky. Translated by Merav Datan. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2021. xxx + 328 pp. This superb biography of the American rabbi, Zionist, and first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Judah Leon Magnes (1877–1948) makes two broad contributions. First, by emphasizing the religious roots of Magnes's political thought, David Barak-Gorodetsky contributes to a wider scholarly effort to reintroduce "the question of religion's place in the Zionist story" (xv). Second, the author provides a "comprehensive conceptual study on the American aspects of the Jewish perspective on binationalism, of which Magnes was the main representative" (xxv). The first of the book's three parts, "'Mending the World,'" traces the formation of Magnes's religious and political views in the United States. Born in California, Magnes was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in 1900 and received his doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1902. From 1906 to 1910, he served as a rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. In these years, under the influence of the rabbi and scholar Solomon Schechter, Magnes underwent a "religious evolution … beyond Reform Judaism to what would in time be known as the Conservative movement" (12). He subsequently worked to establish and then led the Jewish Kehillah of New York, an experimental attempt from 1909 to 1922 to provide the city's burgeoning Jewish population with a unified and democratic community structure. Surprisingly, Barak-Gorodetsky devotes scant space to Magnes's leadership of the Kehillah, noting only that his role as a mediator between the city's affluent, assimilated, "uptown" Jews and its poor, eastern European, Yiddish-speaking "downtown" Jews prefigured his later commitment to binationalism in Palestine (20). Barak-Gorodetsky has more to say about Magnes's Zionism, cultural pluralism, socialism, and pacifism. Magnes welcomed Zionism during his studies in Germany "because of its contribution to promoting Jewish self-respect among young Jews in Europe," and he subsequently embraced Zionism as a means of "reviving the spirit of Judaism in the United States" (26, 22). He also espoused a form of cultural pluralism similar to that propounded by the philosopher Horace Kallen. Because Magnes distinguished between religiosity and its manifestation in "formal [End Page 411] religious institutions," he was able to see "elements of the sacred" in the secular Jewish socialist and Zionist movements (48, 50). Furthermore, he understood Jewish socialism, like Zionism, as a means to "the renewal of Jewish life" (41). His pacifism likewise had religious roots in Christian pacifism and Reform Judaism's Mission Theology. Magnes's distinction between religiosity and religious institutions allowed him to criticize the latter's support for the First World War as a religious betrayal. Part Two, "'For the Sake of Zion,'" describes Magnes's political thought and practice from 1922, when he emigrated to Palestine, to 1939. As the chancellor of the Hebrew University when it opened in 1925 and its first president from 1935 until his death in 1948, Magnes envisioned the university playing a cultural and even spiritual role for the Jewish people. These years were characterized inwardly by an unfulfilled desire to achieve the closeness to God that he associated with authentic Judaism and outwardly by his involvement in the binationalist group Brit Shalom. Magnes shared with the religious philosopher and Brit Shalom member Martin Buber a "prophetic orientation for the Jewish politics of Palestine," but they "articulated [it] differently" (179). These differences stemmed in part from the influence on Magnes of William James's pluralistic ideal of a federal republic and of American reliance on political institutions and constitutionalism to "bridge political divides" (131), which informed his commitment to binationalism. Magnes's identification with the prophet Jeremiah, who advocated a "peaceful path" and preached "against the supposedly imminent danger of Jewish nationalism" but "ultimately failed to convince the kingdom of Judah to mend its ways" comes to the fore in Part Two (174, 117, 186). Interestingly, though the German sociologist Max Weber also identified with Jeremiah, Magnes's striving to bridge...

‘WHAT SAID THIS RUDE ANTIQUE’: VICTORIAN RECEPTION OF ROMAN GLASS

Artefact collections are a key means for many people to interact with classical antiquity. The physicality of objects easily appeals to the imagination, evoking associations between the object and the viewer's experiences. Reception of artefacts is thus multilayered, even regarding what may seem to be very simple objects, such as ancient glass vessels uncovered and collected around the middle of the nineteenth century. Drawing on research into the Damon Collection (Canterbury Museum, New Zealand) this study explores Victorian reception of Roman glass, demonstrating the many and often complex ways in which objects of utilitarian origin in classical antiquity gained new meaning and surprising popularity among a broad public. Glass vessels were receptacles for ideas and the imagination, from adventure to questions of religion and empire. In particular, vessels identified as ‘lachrymatories’ became a very personal empathetic link to the classical past, with influence on popular imagination enduring to the present day.