Theory Of Religion Research Articles

The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China

From the early 1980s onward, popular religion has enjoyed a momentous revival in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), as in many other parts of rural China. But despite its immense popularity, popular religion still carries with it an aura of illegality and illegitimacy. Not properly Daoism or Buddhism, which are among the officially recognized religions, popular religion in theory constitutes illegal, superstitious activities. This article addresses questions of the legality and legitimacy of popular religion by analyzing the case of the Black Dragon King Temple in Shaanbei and its temple boss. It examines how not just popular religiosity but the actions of local elites and local state agents have enabled the revival of popular religious activities, focusing particularly on the legitimation politics engaged in by temples and their leaders.

Religious and epistemological mysteries

In Faith After Foundationalism D.Z. Phillips quotes approvingly a passage that O.K. Bouwsma uses to sum up religious epistemology.1 Bouwsma likens those of us who are worried about the knowledge of transcendent things to people who are trapped in a room where they push continually against various closed doors, hoping to open them to what lies outside. The doors, however, are all dummy doors; they never open and one never catches a glimpse of the beyond. Still, the people inside them believe that these doors might open, and they cling to the hope of seeing out. The analogy is remarkably apt. Most believers assume that there is something "outside" the reach of religious language, some transcendent object to which it refers and which gives it its sense. At the same time, they say that knowledge of this object is impossible. After all, as the argument goes, we are natural beings with manifold limitations in our powers of knowing; and when we try to grasp transcendent things, we press our means of knowing beyond their scope. Our language is made for describing objects within the world, whereas the central mystery of theistic religion lies entirely beyond the "room" in which this language applies. If only we could escape our epistemological limitations and pass through the doors that confine us, then we might grasp what we cannot now even describe. The mystery would then dissolve, for as St. Paul says, we might see God "face to face" (I Cor. 13:12). Apparently Bouwsma endorsed the idea that there are things outside the prison-house of human knowing. For he mentions another door in this enclosure that can only be opened from the outside i.e., by way of revelation. But Phillips clearly does not accept the analogy in this sense. No, for him the expectation that we might have knowledge of transcendent things is illusory, and the claim that God is a mystery that lies beyond our understanding has nothing to do with our inability to see what lies beyond this life. It has nothing to do, that is, with our lack of metaphysical knowledge, or with our grasp of what Immanuel Kant called "things in themselves". In what follows, I want to explain, largely in my own words, the rejection of metaphysics that underlies Phillips's account. God, he suggests, is a mystery, but this is not because the hope of knowing him of seeing beyond the walls of our human limitations has yet to be realized. God is not an object

Filling in the Cracks with Resin: A Response to John Burris' "text and Context in the Study of Religion"

I am grateful to the editors of MTSR for inviting a reply to John Burris' recent article (2003). Because David Chidester's Savage Systems (1996) was published after the manuscript for Manufacturing Religion (1997) had been submitted to the press in late-1995, I am pleased that Burris juxtaposes these two books, for I think that they have some important things in common, not least of which is the manner in which both squarely place the study of religion into a geo-political context. Moreover, I think it sensible to identify the influence that some of Ivan Strenski's work had on my thinking at a formative stage in its development, notably his use of the in context method in his Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History (1987). But at some points Chidester and I diverge, I think, although not necessarily be cause I emphasize text whereas he emphasizes context, as Burris argues. And, because of the rather harsh criticisms that Strenski has leveled at the work of those who focus on the category religion— e.g., Gary Lease, Tim Fitzgerald, and myself—I think it unwise to place too much emphasis on those points where our works appear to converge, despite both of us being concerned with contextualizing theories and theorists of religion.1 And despite being flattered to find

The Reconstitution of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion

For the Internationale Gesellschaft für Religionspsychologie (International Association for the Psychology of Religion [IAPR]), its XIVth conference, held on September 28-30, 2001, in Soesterberg, The Netherlands, was an important event. Although the terrorist attacks on the United States (September 11, 2001) prevented several colleagues from traveling to The Netherlands, the conference attracted a substantial number of participants from 20 countries, most of them European, but also including colleagues from Australia, India, and the Americas. The central topic, "Coping with religion"-an ambivalent formulation, chosen on purpose to bring to the fore a variety of perspectives on psychology's dealing with religion in theory, research, or therapy-allowed for fascinating plenary sessions and a wealth of interesting paper sessions, in which also psychological research other than that related to coping was also reported. Most important for this short note is a report on the General Meeting of the membership of the IAPR.

Research and Theory Religion and Spirituality in Coping With Stress

Relations among and between religion, spirituality, and the ability to cope with stress were examined using a sample of 115 graduate students in counseling. Religion and spirituality positively correlated with coping with stress. Counseling students who expressed spirituality through religious beliefs had greater spiritual health and immunity to stressful situations than counseling students who identified themselves as spiritual but not religious. Counseling students with a religious/spiritual affiliation indicated more discomfort counseling clients hostile to religion compared with counseling students with a spiritual‐only affiliation. The results have implications for preparing counseling students to work with clients with religious/spiritual issues.

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Stewart Elliott Guthrie

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsFaces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Stewart Elliott Guthrie Willem B. DreesWillem B. Drees Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 91, Number 1Mar., 2000 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/384646 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2000 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Harmony R. Reynolds, Akiko Maehara, Raymond Y. Kwong, Tara Sedlak, Jacqueline Saw, Nathaniel R. Smilowitz, Ehtisham Mahmud, Janet Wei, Kevin Marzo, Mitsuaki Matsumura, Ayako Seno, Anais Hausvater, Caitlin Giesler, Nisha Jhalani, Catalin Toma, Bryan Har, Dwithiya Thomas, Laxmi S. Mehta, Jeffrey Trost, Puja K. Mehta, Bina Ahmed, Kevin R. Bainey, Yuhe Xia, Binita Shah, Michael Attubato, Sripal Bangalore, Louai Razzouk, Ziad A. Ali, C. Noel Bairey-Merz, Ki Park, Ellen Hada, Hua Zhong, Judith S. Hochman Coronary Optical Coherence Tomography and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Determine Underlying Causes of MINOCA in Women, Circulation 161 (Nov 2020).https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.052008

The Methodological and Epistemological Foundation of C.G. Jung’s Theory of Religion and its Relationship to Ultimate Reality and Meaning

Jung s'est d'abord defini comme un scientifique, donc par extension comme susceptible d'etre interesse par le phenomene humain dans toutes ses diversites. Lorsqu'il invite l'analyse transcendentale a justifier l'existence de l'inconscient collectif avec sa structure archetypale, l'A. affirme que l'on a le droit de penser qu'il a depasse les limites de la methode scientifique et qu'il a franchi la sphere de l'analyse philosophique. Pour l'A., l'approche jungienne est philosophique. Les images archetypales et les representations ne revelent pas une realite transcendante ultime comme elles ne revelent pas non plus la nature veritable des archetypes qu'elles expriment mais elles nous apprennent des verites importantes concernant les besoins et les aspirations des humains. C'est pour cette raison que les systemes religieux ne sont pas des creations vaines de l'esprit mais des tentatives puissantes pour exprimer des sensations tres profondes et des envies de l'âme humaine dans sa recherche de la realite transcendante.

The aporetics of a tennis-playing brontosaurus, or a critical theory of religion: A rejoinder to Russell T. McCutcheon and William E. Arnal

En 1997-98, cette revue a presente un debat entre McCutcheon et Arnal concernant leur interet a la contribution du postmodernisme a l'etude de la religion. L'A. du present article considere que leur desaccord sur ce sujet est purement theorique et leur adresse ici une replique. Il y etudie plus a fond les questions qu'ils ont soulevees afin de determiner pourquoi tous deux arrivent au bout du compte au meme endroit, a savoir que l'utilisation du postmodernisme pour soutenir l'inclusion de la theologie comme une approche legitime provient d'une interpretation simpliste du postmodernisme qui banalise la possible distinction entre approches theologiques et non-theologiques de l'etude de la religion. L'A. prose donc une lecture alternative de la contribution du postmodernisme, particulierement la deconstruction, de la theorie de la religion.

Defining the Canon: a Response To Arnal and Gill's "Approaches To the Study of Religion"

In issue 11-2 of MTSR (1999), both William E. Arnal and Sam D. Gill offer excellent examples of how they pedagogically approach the study of religion with their first-year graduate students. Arnal designs a fairly straight-forward course by combining Daniel Pals' Seven Theo ries of Religion (1996), with Brian Morris' Anthropological Studies of Religion (1987), and a reader. Gill, on the other hand, takes a broadly com prehensive and intentionally ritualistic approach to his course. Gill utilizes the first half of the term to demonstrate historical links be

What if I don't want to play tennis?: A rejoinder to Russell McCutcheon on postmodernism and theory of religion

What if I don't want to play tennis?: A rejoinder to Russell McCutcheon on postmodernism and theory of religion

Seven Theories of Religion

Seven Theories of Religion

Seven Theories of Religion. Daniel L. Pals

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsSeven Theories of Religion. Daniel L. Pals Laura S. GrilloLaura S. Grillo Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 37, Number 1Aug., 1997 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463487 Views: 7Total views on this site Copyright 1997 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Seven Theories of Religion

Seven Theories of Religion

Bataille's theory of religion revisited: A reply to criticism by Tim Murphy

Bataille's theory of religion revisited: A reply to criticism by Tim Murphy

Wittgenstein and expressive theories of religion

Dans une confrontation entre Wittgenstein et Frazer, ce n'est pas une bataille entre approche instrumentale et approche expressive qui est en jeu. La question est semble-t-il de savoir si les rituels apparaissent a travers un processus similaire a celui par lequel la science avance (notamment l'hypothese et l'experience) ou s'ils sont spontanes dans leur caractere, des elements entierement naturels pour l'homme. Les derniers travaux de Wittgenstein visent a montrer qu'il est impossible de proposer une approche unique du langage. Pour Wittgenstein, le concept de proposition n'a pas de forme generale

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

The spiritual potential of otherness in film: The interplay of scene and narrative

The spiritual potential of film is grounded in its ability to render “Other” what is presented visually on the screen. However, the narrative structure of a film interacts with the filmed scene to modify its spiritual potential. While scene and narrative can be artfully manipulated to express mystical and theistic sensibilities, film seems inherently biased towards the immanent spirituality of cosmological or plenum religions, but not without some practical difficulties. Schrader's transcendental style can be seen as expressing a quasi‐mystical spirituality. The popular film Places of the Heart intimates a cosmological consciousness, whereas Tender Mercies evokes a spirituality more characteristic of theistic religion.

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Stewart Elliott Guthrie

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsFaces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Stewart Elliott Guthrie Benjamin C. RayBenjamin C. Ray Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 75, Number 2Apr., 1995 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/489606 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1995 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion