Early Religion Research Articles

Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration

AbstractAbundant scholarship analyzes the United States' incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, but the subject of religion in the camps and religious responses to the incarceration has been long overlooked. The government promised freedom of religion in the camps while encouraging Japanese Americans to consolidate worship into one Buddhist, one Catholic, and one Protestant church in each incarceration center. Incarcerees found strength through fellowship and religious faith. Outside of the camps, progressive Christians tried to alleviate the harms caused by the injustice and increase tolerance around the country. The field offers examples of early race relations work within American Protestantism and introduces the ways in which the government prioritized and attempted to enforce freedom of religion within a fabricated and restricted wartime environment. Further examination of these events will complement studies of 20th century liberal Christianity, American Buddhism, religious liberty and the state, the early civil rights movement, religion and World War II, and Asian American theology.

Semantic linking of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North

The Sources strand of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North project aims to bring together and document the primary evidence for the early religions of Northern Europe. In order to be useful for researchers these sources must include metadata or semantic links that can connect them to concepts relevant to the study of religions. This paper outlines ways in which some very different source types, including textual sources, place-names, pictures and figurines, can be incorporated into a single resource. The aim is to both facilitate analysis and to separate documentary processes from interpretative ones. This structure has been tested using a web interface for both searching and data entry. Some possibilities for representing the visual and spatial data associated with the proposed resource are also demonstrated.

Ibn Kammūna’s and Ibn al-ʿIbrī’s Responses to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Proofs of Muḥammad’s Prophethood

‭Two non-Muslim intellectuals who were active in Iraq in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Syrian-Orthodox Christian Abū l-Faraj ibn al-ʿIbrī, better known as Barhebraeus (d. 685/1286) and the Jewish philosopher Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284), were almost exact contemporaries. They enjoyed the heyday of their careers in the period following the Mongol conquest when the Mongols had not yet converted to Islam. This article explores some of the similarities in scholarly interests and activities of the two thinkers and takes into account the possibility that they knew each other’s work. Both scholars wrote apologetic works partly devoted to disproving the Muslim claim that Islam superseded all earlier religions. In their responses to the Islamic proofs of Muhammad’s prophethood, they focused on the work of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, in particular, and there are clear similarities in the argumentation of the two thinkers against al-Rāzī’s arguments, which are pointed out in this article, leading to the question of a possible dependency of the one work on the other.‬

Theological reflection: Moving from the implicit to the explicit

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, religion and theology have become increasingly separated from spirituality and affective experience in westernised societies. In addition to this rift, the body is frequently seen as marginal to spiritual life. The implications of these divisions for students engaging in theological reflection can be observed in reflections that are overly intellectualized or conversely overly emotional and lacking theological depth. In this article, it is suggested that through a balanced attending to bodily awareness, the recognizing and naming of emotions and the exploring of theological questions, theological reflection can offer a supporting framework in which theology and spirituality can be held together in partnership rather than as separate enterprises. If there is a playful and creative openness to reflection as an integrative praxis at risk of encountering the unexpected then the process of theological reflection can provide an opportunity for transformative learning.

Imagining the World Beyond: Representations of Heaven and the Netherworld in Early Chinese Religion

Imagining the World Beyond: Representations of Heaven and the Netherworld in Early <scp>C</scp>hinese Religion

The Notion of “Shi” 式 and Some Related Terms in Qin-Han Calendrical Astrology

The discovery in 1977 at Fuyang (Anhui province) of several mantic instruments dating from the beginning of Western Han (ca. 165 B.C.E.) marked a decisive change in modern studies of early Chinese science, divination, and religion, many of which now regard theshi式 as the material basis for modes of thought in Warring States, Qin, and Han culture. While the examples of devices discovered to date have provided a valuable interpretative key to early Chinese schematic cosmography, the meaning of the termshiremains a source of perplexity as its connotations are imprecise and can vary from one author to the next. Whether this change is an accurate representation of ideas about theshiin pre-Han and Han is precisely the issue at stake in the present paper. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) the existence during the Han of several instruments of theshitype no longer permits the use of the term to refer to a singular and unique device, even though evidence drawn from the received texts tends to show the contrary; (2) the multiple meanings of the termshi, as well as the gradual shift between its strict sense as mantic device (shipan式盤) and its broad sense as calendrical astrology (shizhan式占) give rise to serious misunderstandings when it is used alone; (3) since these mantic devices are primarily offshoots of pre-Han and early Han astrographic and calendrical theories, the patterns and designs that appear on their surface (shitu式圖) need to be considered within the larger scope of the spatial representations of calendrical time cycles, of which the excavated texts and artifacts now offer numerous examples; (4) the widespread use of the termshi-method (shifa式法) in modern studies when referring to some mantic techniques described in the manuscripts raises the interesting question of how to delineate boundaries between the early developments in calendrical astrology and the hemerological practices in general.

YOUTH, RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY AT THE ENGLISH COLLEGES IN ROME AND VALLADOLID, 1592–1685

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the records of 595 entrants to the English College, Rome, and 309 entrants to the English College, Valladolid. These Colleges, set up to train young English men as Catholic priests at a time when Catholicism was proscribed in England, required all entrants to complete questionnaires covering their social, educational, and religious background. TheResponsa Scholarumare the autograph manuscripts of students at Rome; theLiber Primi Examinisconsists of summaries of oral examinations written down by the interviewers. Through a combination of quantitative analysis and close reading of individual accounts, this article explores responses to the questionnaires, focusing on the engagement of young people with religion and religious identity. It argues that their self-writings shed important light on our understanding of both early modern religion and of early modern childhood and adolescence.

Lagerwey, John, and Lü Pengzhi (eds.): Early Chinese Religion. Part 2; vol. 1: The Period of Division (220–589 ad)

Lagerwey, John, and Lü Pengzhi (eds.): Early Chinese Religion. Part 2; vol. 1: The Period of Division (220–589 ad)

The Stone Maitreya of Leh: The Rediscovery and Recovery of an Early Tibetan Monument

AbstractThe rediscovery, conservation and repositioning of an ancient stone carved Buddha in Leh, Ladakh is one of the most important events in recent years for students of early Tibetan history and religion. Uncovering an inscription next to the carving has made it possible to date this artefact to the eleventh century or even earlier, while deciphering the inscription has confirmed that the figure should be identified as the Buddha Maitreya. This identification permits a better understanding of how the cult of Maitreya among of the emperors of imperial Tibet extended to western Tibet, and how the Maitreya images of western Tibet represent a specific local iconography.

New Views of Early Japanese Religions

New Views of Early Japanese Religions

Does Religion Still Matter? Religion and Public Attitudes toward Integration in Europe

AbstractRecent years have seen a proliferation of studies on the determinants of support for the European Union among national publics. Scholars have analyzed economic, political, informational, and identity factors as influences, but there has been less exploration of cultural factors, most notably religion. This article replicates our earlier studies exploring the impact of confessional culture and religious commitment on support for the European Union, expanding the purview from early member states to more recent accessions and candidates for membership. UsingEurobarometer 65.2(Papacostas 2006), we demonstrate that religion still shapes attitudes toward European integration, but in varying ways and to different extents in several parts of the Union. In early member states, Catholics — especially committed ones — are more supportive of the European Union than Protestants, confirming earlier findings. In more recent accessions, however, religion's impact is weaker and assumes different configurations. Finally, we present evidence that even in the early member states religion is losing its influence over Europeanist sentiment and suggest that this development presents obstacles to further political integration.

Early Chinese Religions

Early Chinese Religions

Gods in the desert: religions of the ancient Near East

Gods in the Desert explores the fascinating religious cultures of the ancient Near East. From the mysterious pyramids, tombs, and temples of Egypt to the powerful heroes, gods, and legends of Mesopotamia, Glenn Holland guides readers through the early religions that are the root of many of today's major faiths. Holland compares the religions of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine, including Israel and Judah, from the Neolithic era through the conquest of Alexander the Great. He provides a historical survey of each region, then discusses the gods, the rulers, the afterlife, and the worship rituals. This accessible overview makes clear how these religions converged and diverged, and are intimately connected to many of the religions we recognize today, sometimes in surprising ways.

Violence and Religion: Walter Burkert and René Girard in Comparison

Violence and Religion:Walter Burkert and René Girard in Comparison Wolfgang Palaver (bio) Translated by Gabriel Borrud1 Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the relationship between violence and religion has been the center of focus of ever more discussions and examinations. Often, however, these inquiries lack a profound theory that will enable a real understanding of how the two phenomena are related. Walter Burkert and René Girard are two thinkers who grasp the connection between religion and violence, and the present essay will take a closer look at how the two understand this connection. There are similarities and differences between the two thinkers, and these will be highlighted in three sections. In the first, attention will be turned to Burkert and Girard's interpretation of how religion and violence are related—and how this understanding can offer an evolutionary explanation of religion. The second section will examine Girard's thoughts on the mimetic roots of violence, which will serve as a frame of comparison between the two thinkers. A final section will contrast Burkert and Girard with regard to the biblical religions of Judaism and Christianity. [End Page 121] 1. Two "Seismographs" for the Relationship Between Religion and Violence The art historian and scholar Aby Warburg once called Jakob Burkhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche "sensitive seismographs," referring to their ability to register the ramifications of the past with uncanny precision.2 Warburg's characterization is appropriate for Burkert and Girard as well, as each shows a hypersensitive understanding of the role religion and violence play in the origins and stability of human culture. It is no coincidence that Burkert and Girard arrived at their respective theories almost simultaneously—both mentioned the significance of violence and religion for the foundation of civilization in works published in 1972. Just years after World War II, the atrocities in the Nazi concentration camps, and the United States's dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Girard and Burkert revealed in explicit terms just how central violence and religion were in the formation of human culture. The significance of Girard and Burkert's ideas only grows in the context of contemporary critiques of religion, especially those coming from Darwinian circles. The virulent critique of the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, for instance, comes to mind. In all of Dawkins's prolific work, however, he fails to offer a convincing explanation of the evolutionary nature of religion: in a word, he doesn't adequately answer the question of why religion is a universal cultural phenomenon.3 Dawkins asserts that religion is a mere by-product of certain psychological dispositions—for instance, a by-product of the naïve readiness to place one's trust in a superior, or a by-product of an instinctive dualism. However, by implementing a mere cognitive construct in his explanation of how religious rituals have shaped human culture over thousands of years, he only broaches the subject matter. One of the main reasons why Dawkins falls short of explaining the omnipresence of religion in human civilization is his rather one-sided and rash explication of violence, which in his opinion stems solely from religion.4 Dawkins proposes that humans are peaceful, quasi-Rousseauian beings that inherit their violent streak only through religious agitation. Following Dawkins's line of thought, the abolition of religion would mean the creation of a world of peace; however, even those who support his very legitimate critique of religious fundamentalism will find these thoughts rather naïve. Burkert and Girard, meanwhile, are able to delve into the essence of religion by explaining both its ritualistic nature and its importance for human evolution. In the case of Burkert, one sees his interest in evolutionary theory from the outset, as his book Homo Necans (first published 1972)5 contains passages [End Page 122] that refer directly to the work of the behavioral scientist Konrad Lorenz. In the "Gifford Lectures" of 1989, Burkert even speaks of the "tracks of biology in early religion."6 In an article published in 2000, Burkert shows that religion is an indispensable part of the process of humanization—and fundamental to the evolution of human culture.7 The concrete examples that Burkert employs to...

An Iron Age II Pictorial Inscription from Jerusalem Illustrating Yahweh and Asherah

During the P.E.F. excavations at the Ophel in Jerusalem in the 1920s a large sherd of an Iron Age II jug was found with a pictorial design incised on the surface. The design shows two humanoid figures above a series of semi-circles bordering the broken edge of the sherd. The figures are joined by rough lines above and below the waist. The details of the figures include traditional Canaanite elements that indicate they are deity figures, one male and one female, and it is proposed that they represent Yahweh and Asherah. If so, this would add to the growing record of textual and symbolic imagery of Yahweh and Asherah together from Iron Age Israel and Judah. The sherd and its inscription are critical to our understanding of early Israelite religion, its relationship to its Canaanite antecedents, and to the nature of folk religion in Judah in the period of the monarchy.

Sacrifice Before the Secular

Early modern secularism—and early modern religion—are plagued by tales of demystification, where each is made into the other's mutual secret, token of bad faith and self-alienation. This essay hopes to chart an alternative story, by looking at an early modern moment when the practices of legal and theological reason worked in tandem on the problem of sacrifice. Before the secular, it argues, sacrifice did not mark sacrality as such, but was rather the material that helped rethink both the functions of authority and the transactions between contingent humanity and the universal demands of law and God.

Neighbour, Neighbourly: Reverting Islam to Converts' Status

A listing of the world's religions will never be exhaustive. What may be conclusive is the understanding that there will be as many religions on the face of the earth as there are people who would wish to be different. The difference in the mode of worship of a belief has created some sustainable practices now identified as predominant world religions. One of these is Islam, whose adherents are called Muslims. While there is a perception born of history that the Middle East is the home place of Islam, the rest of the world has been witnessing conversion to the religion of Islam for quite sometime. Now however, there is a claim that some Muslim-converts are returning to their earlier belief systems. But if conversion implies an identity change deliberately undertaken by an individual, the chances of re-identifying the individual belief personality are very low. In this paper, I examine what motivates people to change their religious belief, i.e., convert to another religion and what makes some of such people to return to their earlier religion. I examine especially the incidence of Muslim-converts leaving the fold of Islam in Nigeria. Northern Nigeria is described as predominantly Muslim, andthis may be because it historically acquired such a description due to the role religion played and is still playing in identifying differences among the people. My paper argues that it is probably because most ethnic minority Muslims identify themselves as belonging to the dominant Hausa/Fulani, including the abdication of their linguistic identities, that Islam is seen as a Hausa/Fulani religion in Nigeria. It also may be a significant factor in the phenomenon contributing to Muslim-converts leaving Islam in Nigeria.

Religion and Cultural Transformation in Early Modern England: Introduction

Pp. 553–555. ©2008 by Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. issn 0018-7895 | e-issn 1544-399x. All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce article content, consult the University of California Press Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2008.71.4.553. what was transformed or transformative in early modern English religion? In what ways did religion provoke or reflect cultural transformations? To answer these questions, the contributors of the eight essays collected here not only explore significant changes, but they also suggest that English culture was transformed less extensively or less predictably than we might expect. For several decades, various revisionist views of “the” Reformation have been posited, and scholars have limned nuances and differences. Nevertheless, like many narratives of great change that culminate in an apparently inevitable supersession, the transformation from Catholic to Protestant England assumed long ago the significance of a myth whose heuristic appeal endures, even when its triumphalist aspects are regarded with salutary skepticism. Our ability to detect contradictory, even chaotic facets of this change has long been inhibited; we are liable to overestimate the extent to which matters were settled during the entire early modern period. Discussion of “the” Enlightenment may reductively define the Reformation as a welcome stage in England’s gradual but inexorable transformation from superstitious belief to reason, from religious faith to scientific knowledge, from natural theology to nature, from coercive institutionalized ritual to a self-governing, liberated individualism. The reverse of this widely circulating coin is a nostalgic, even elegiac, tribute to preReformation society for its supposedly successful integration of what was later fractured: the living and the dead, individual and community. Binary distinctions, such as sacred/secular or even good works/faith, may be anachronistic impositions if made too sharply. In any case, such distinctions were likely perceived quite differently by early modern cultures from the way we may see them from a postmodern, even postreligious, perspective. A number of effective studies have investigated the profound heterogeneity of post-Reformation Protestant culture. This special issue follows suit by exploring some of the ways in which the Reformation did not mark a comprehensive or inevitable Religion and Cultural Transformation in Early Modern England: Introduction

Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion. Edited by John Brooke and Ian Maclean

Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion. Edited by John Brooke and Ian Maclean

Recent Studies in Religion and Renaissance Drama

AbstractAlthough early works of new historicism and cultural materialism stressed the significance of early modern religion as a context for Renaissance drama, criticism in the 1990s was largely secular in focus. However, more recent years have seen the intensive development of a school of criticism which uses the methodology of historical materialism, but analyses the religious discourses and institutional structures of early modern England. This article examines in detail some of the most recent historicist accounts of the relationship between religion and Renaissance drama.