Religious Imagination Research Articles

Religious suasion: introduction to the special issue

AbstractIn this introduction, we outline a comparative tool for studying communicative ideologies and practices, which we call ‘religious suasion’. Developing a conversation about religious forms of ‘suasion’ is important because it provides a vocabulary for comparing parallel practices of religious influence across different religious communities, allowing for more nuanced understandings of what might commonly – and negatively – be termed ‘proselytizing’. The proposed analytical frame is not concerned with how the ‘convert’ might experience religious change, nor with how social and religious change unfolds on a grand scale. Rather, it interrogates and puts into dialogue multiple forms of discursive practice, demonstrations of virtue, and material forms of religion to reach beyond suasive strategies based on formal doctrines about religious propagation that tend to be associated with traditionally evangelistic religious communities, especially with Christianity. Focusing on the rhetorical strategies, religious imaginaries, and ethical evaluations that underpin how religious actors pursue change in others and in and of the world, ‘religious suasion’ contributes to the development of an anthropology of influence.

The Financial Millennium

As a financial technology with a millenarian attitude, cryptocurrencies were bound to produce their own heretics and schismatics. Communicating over Telegram channels, conference calls, symbol-laden images, and multi-hour YouTube videos, believers assert that Bitcoin and Ethereum are the exoteric forms of the hidden “chosen one”: XRP, a prominent but not industry-leading cryptocoin. For those who believe, XRP is one component of a total economic and social transformation under a set of secret laws about to be revealed. Elites will be brought low, believers will become rich, global financial infrastructure will be rebased in a jubilee, and miraculous technologies and beings will be disclosed. For many theorists, this monetary apocalypse is part of an explicitly Christian apocalyptic event. In this article, I draw on archives across a variety of formats to explain the evolution of an apocalyptic crypto sect and use these archives to reflect on the context and future of religious imaginaries in the blockchain space.

Network, Cryptography, and the Next World to Come: An Everlasting American Techno Millenarianism?

To understand the nexus between networked cryptography and American religiosity, it is essential to embed this inquiry within the broader context of religious imaginaries associated with communication networks in nineteenth-century North America and their evolution into the spiritual landscape of the twentieth century. Throughout United States history, network imaginaries have exerted a substantial influence, engaging in a continuous dialogue with the evolution of religious thought, attributing eschatological expectations to networks, and ascribing them with a profound sense of ultimate purpose and significance. This investigation finds its ultimate context within the early techno-libertarian communities of 1990s California, pivotal in shaping the design, development, and objectives of networked cryptography online, ultimately giving birth to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain protocol.

Revisiting Frederick Douglass and the Nineteenth Century Religious Imagination

Revisiting Frederick Douglass and the Nineteenth Century Religious Imagination

Heresia confucionista e imaginação religiosa: um estudo das interpretações de Mozi por missionários do protestantismo no século XIX

Abstract: Mozi first came to the English missionary Joseph Edkins’ attention in 1858 as a Confucian heretic. Subsequently, the Dutch missionary Johann Jakob Maria de Groot translated Mozi’s Funerary Doctrine, which has strong religious overtones. Protestantism missionaries were represented by Joseph and Groot, whose renderings of Mozi were replete with theological interpretations. Mozi was imagined as a religious canon, containing Christian doctrine, by the two missionaries who were keen to find commonalities between Mozi and Christianity. They also used Mozi’s status as a Confucian heretic to criticize Confucianism, the archenemy of Christianity. Through this religious imagination of Mozi, more missionaries and sinologists joined Mozi’s translation, and the journey of the canon’s transmission to the West started.

STUDI ISLAM MELALUI PENDEKATAN FENOMENOLOGI (TELAAH PEMIKIRAN ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL)

The approach to studying Islam by Charles J. Adams is divided into two main things, namely the normative or religious approach and the descriptive approach. The normative approach is an approach that is based on religious commitment, and still includes the subjective objectives of the reviewer and of course the results of the study will tend to be more subjective. The phenomenological approach that Schimmel applies in Islamic studies is a phenomenological approach that he knew from Friedrich Heiler. Implementation of this approach through systematic steps (techniques), namely examining first the phenomenon (the world of external manifestations of Islam) and then the deeper and deeper layers of human responses to God (the world of religious imagination and experience), to reach the deepest sacred essence of each religion, the center, the God, the Deus Absconditus (objective world of religion) and Schimmel has implemented it well through the intended steps.

Living Well Together in a Climate-Changed Future: Religious Imaginaries on the Cutting Edge of Genetic Technology

This essay focuses on the emotional and relational investments of scientists and others engaged in and supportive of genetic technologies used in conservation efforts, with particular attention to the different moral and religious imaginaries that fuel endeavors to save species threatened by climate change and extinction. I argue that two distinct visions and competing religious repertoires can be discerned in the secular landscape of genetic technologies deployed in coral restoration and de-extinction. Each endeavor brings forth its own forms of magic, myth- and meaning-making. At the heart of coral protection is the symbol of the holobiont, suggestive of cooperative endeavors, collective labor, networking, and distributed and embodied knowledge. Central to de-extinction imaginaries are motifs of individual competition, machine metaphors, “selfish” genetic components, and a spirit of entrepreneurial excitement and profiteering. The essay contrasts these two visions as competing accounts of relationality—or the lack thereof—and asks which religious and moral imaginaries we should embrace as we move into an era marked by intensified technological intervention and high-risk efforts to address the effects of climate change. I suggest that the values that drive de-extinction technologies are largely at odds with environmental and social goals of living well together, as humans and more-than-humans, in a present and future world transformed by climate change and species death.

Towards an ‘Eco-Theo-Logy’

Abstract The paper seeks to draw the contours of an “Eco-Theo-Logy” in the context of the unprecedented crisis of our Common Home and with special reference to Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on creation care. An “eco” theology would begin with the sense of awe and gratitude for Earth, our unique common planetary home blessed with the gift of life, and listen attentively to the growing “cry of the Earth and of the poor” (Laudato Si’, 49). Secondly, it seeks to articulate anew the theological understanding of an ‘in-carnate’ God, a God who enters human and cosmic vicissitudes and manifests in the pangs of creation. It also strives to a religious vision of the natural world as the “Gospel of creation”. Thirdly, it’s time to re-imagine the logos component of an eco-theo-logy, embracing an integral and relational approach, raising a prophetic theological voice in the face of profound inequalities and injustices that exist in our one common household, and adopting a decisively practice/action orientation.

The Poetry of the Tanatic Imaginary

The article studies the artistic representations of death in several poetic texts signed by Emilian Galaicu-Păun, Nicolae Popa, Dumitru Crudu, Leo Bordeianu, Irina Nechit, Marcela Benea, Alexandru Vakulovski. The tanatic imaginary is produced in a multitude of projections depending on the position of man towards the religious vision, through the prism of which death is only a release of the (immortal) soul from the body, from the matter that degrades and transforms into other vital structures, and with the profane perception, which defines the phenomenon as a complete end of the organism’s life cycle. The author especially researches the system of tanatic images formed through the artistic reconceptualization of the ideational relationship death-creation, intensively explored in contemporary Bessarabian poetry.

“Not to Any Mortal”: Freedom, Harmony, and Religious Imagination in Spinozan Theocracy

“Not to Any Mortal”: Freedom, Harmony, and Religious Imagination in Spinozan Theocracy

Neo-Zionism's Vision for the Issue of the Jewishness of the State in Israel

Objectives: The purpose of the present paper is to analyze Neo-Zionism’s vision for the issue of the Jewishness of the state in Israel by tracing the foundations of this trend, the factors that helped crystalizing it in Israeli state, and the impact of that on the state’s identity. Methods: The paper is based on two approaches: the historical approach and the analytical approach, the first helps in tracing the intellectual roots of Neo-Zionism trend, while the second helps in dividing the phenomenon in question in order to identify its causes, analyze its vision's results, and explain its impact on the identity of the Israeli state. Results: The Neo-Zionism trend presented a set of coherent values and ideas towards the issue of the Jewish state. In reality, Neo-Zionism was able to achieve the following: Firstly, the idolization of its visions. Secondly, the legitimization of its ideological visions. Thirdly, the legalization of its ideology and political approach. Although the trend presented a coherent intellectual perspective on the nature of the identity of the Israeli state, its religious vision led to a deepening of the identity crisis in Israeli society and created a new crisis between the nature of the identity of the state and the democratic system in Israel. Conclusions: the study recommends more research on the opposing visions to values and ideas of Neo-Zionism trend (left and Arab parties), and the alliances they can achieve in the face of the expansion of the Neo-Zionism.

INTERNET AND RELIGION

The internet has grown in importance as a platform for religious speech and practice, with some considering it a suitable medium for magical experimentation and rituals. Sects and religious meetings have also found a new home in digital networks. Some religious societies have opted to shift their activities online, resulting in digital religion and hyper-mediated religious experiences. The use of digital technology has also fueled religious imagination, notably in the context of animism. The use of digital technology for spiritual reasons, known as technoshamanism, is becoming increasingly popular among neopagans, occultists, and New Agers. As a result, the internet has become a haven for digital deities and technoshamanism, opening new avenues for religious expression and practice. With this context in mind, the research focuses on digital religion, with researchers discussing how digital deities and technoshamanism are changing our understanding of spirituality. The purpose of this research explores how the internet and religion are transformed in the move from offline to online contexts into digital deities and technoshamanism. The rise of digital deities and technoshamanism is altering our perception of spirituality. As a result, the influence of digital deities and technoshamanism on the nature of spirituality is still being explored and researched, with consequences for both conventional religious organizations and the larger cultural environment. The research method of this study is library research, to gather information from books, journals, and online libraries.

“No Place Is So Dear to My Childhood”: Evangelicalism, Nostalgia, and the History of an American Hymn

AbstractThis article tracks the surprising history of a love ballad about a lost sweetheart that went on to become a celebrated gospel hymn about the rural roots of America's greatness. Titled “The Little Brown Church,” but sometimes called “The Church in the Wildwood,” the song's evolution speaks to the ways in which nostalgia became central to the social and religious imagination of those American Protestants call themselves “evangelicals.” Though it first appeared in college songbooks after its publication in 1865, “The Little Brown Church” eventually became a favorite of evangelists, revivalists, and other gospel singers at the dawn of the twentieth century. For these new singers, “The Little Brown Church” spoke to more than just the simple faith they wished to restore. It also illustrated the centrality of white Protestants to the American experience at a moment when the hold these believers had on the nation was beginning to slip. And they would alter both the lyrics and the church's history to bring the two in line. The process not only reveals how nostalgia for a bygone era became vital to those who think of themselves as evangelicals in the twentieth century, but also how evangelicalism itself is something of a historical construction.

Optics and Visio Dei: Interpretations of Female Mystic Art

Religious visions are personal experiences in which individuals have a sensory experience that is in some way supernatural or divine. In the context of medieval Christianity, true visionaries were understood to have received revelations directly from God, without mediation from priests. In the tradition of the medieval Church and society, women were relegated to a subordinate role; thus, when the mystic who experienced a vision from God was a woman, the situation required careful interpretation, for in bypassing the intermediary authority of the priest, the woman was potentially subverting a hierarchy which itself was considered to have been established by God. This paper will analyze one of the most important medieval mystics, Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), and examine her writings and her images produced in Scivias. It is hypothesized that the medieval ideas of optics and biblical exegesis worked in harmony to structure Hildegard’s experiences and to legitimize those experiences to others at the time. In this paper, key images created by Hildegard were analyzed to interpret the descriptions of her experiences and their rendering in visual form in relation to the medieval theories of vision and theology itself.

Religious Mapping, Epistemic Risk and Archival Adventure in Athambile Masola's Ilifa

In this essay, I offer a feminist reading of Athambile Masola’s award-winning debut collection of poetry, Ilifa, focusing on her use of religious imagination. I demonstrate how Masola’s repeated use of religious metaphor, language, and Christian location illuminates more than aspects of religious community, piety, and belonging, important though these are. In Ilifa, specific appearances of religious language, as well as the rhetorical uses to which religious imagery and the disruption of Christian iconography are put, reveal the poet’s understanding of the making of transgenerational southern African feminist publicness. Her deployment of Christian vocabularies amplifies multigenerational African (women’s) contribution to (South) Africa’s intellectual and creative archives. While her religious references are not confined to Christianity, I limit myself to Biblical references to better tend to the intersections of feminist mapping, epistemic risk, and the poet’s engagement with two centuries of South African isiXhosa literary archive in print. Masola references these intellectual entries into publicness to negotiate her own admission into literary public life. I surface the context and conceptual landscapes of Masola’s own poetic project.

Practical Gods: Carl Dennis’s Secularized Religious Visions

This paper examines Carl Dennis’s secularized religious visions in his Pulitzer-winning poetry collection, Practical Gods (2001). Dennis’s secularized religious visions can be quite understandable in the context of the ascending trends of secularization, diversification, and globalization of religion in America, and they demonstrate affinities with literary predecessors such as Wallace Stevens, with his aestheticized religion under the influence of Nietzsche, as well as with the innovative religious thinking of William Blake, Kazantzakis, and Oscar Wilde, and with certain aspects of Taoism and Zen Buddhism. This paper addresses Dennis’s perception of theological controversies, such as the contradiction between the omnipotence of God and the existence of evil, theological determinism vs. human free will, theological view of history vs. New Historicism, divinity in man, aestheticized religion, and earthly paradise through the focused lens of Dennis’s “practical religion”. Despite the breadth of the theses in Dennis’s conceived practical religion as examined in this paper, they are all tied up with the core of the phenomenological study of religion: that religion is important to believers of the religion irrespective of the objective truth of the religion or the actual existence of God. In Dennis’s views, as accorded with the phenomenological study of religions, God maybe an idea and a fiction, but it is a necessary fiction for humans. Thus, Dennis humanizes gods with the flaws and fragility of humanity while deifying ordinary humanity in the contemporary context. Contrasting what he views as theological determinism with its view of linear history and the apocalypse of grand events, Dennis embraces human free will, a non-teleological, aestheticized living with necessary fiction, and a transient paradise on earth. Carl Dennis’s religious vision reveals a poststructuralist (even though he did not brand himself so) abolition of the absoluteness of a transcendent signifier as well as binary opposition (between God and man, good and evil, religious/historical truth and fictionality), and it manifests an affinity with New Historicism and the phenomenological study of religion.

The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination by D. Max Moerman (review)

The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination by D. Max Moerman (review)

Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination. By Douglas E. Cowan. New York University Press, 2022. 315 pages. $89.00 hardcover; $30.00 softcover; ebook available. Joseph P. Laycock Joseph P. Laycock Texas State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2023) 26 (4): 118–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.26.4.118 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joseph P. Laycock; Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan. Nova Religio 1 May 2023; 26 (4): 118–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.26.4.118 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search Douglas Cowan has written several books exploring religion and popular culture from a sociological perspective. Two of these––Sacred Terror (2008) and America’s Dark Theologian: The Religious Imagination of Stephen King (2018) explored the connection between horror and the religious imagination. Cowan’s new book builds on this body of scholarship by adding a third element: sex. The result is a challenging book that resists simplistic or reductionistic interpretations of horror texts and instead raises challenging, and sometimes disturbing, questions about the affective relationships between these texts and people who read them. In order to explain what this book is about, it is necessary to break down the triad of elements that it examines. First, The Forbidden Body does not just explore horror, but “the horror mode.” Cowan borrows literary critic David Hartwell’s definition of the horror mode as “the creation of an atmosphere and emotional environment that sparks a transaction... You do not currently have access to this content.

Kepemimpinan Perempuan Dalam Perspektif Hukum Islam

Discourse on women to date has been dialectical. Speculative viewpoints that are not in accordance with Islamic rules or law are forcibly used as a reference for supporters of patriarchal culture. Placing women inferior to men is not in accordance with the religious vision of Islam. Different views of scholars regarding the role of women in the public sphere need to be reviewed in order to provide a comprehensive and fair understanding. So, to answer and complement research that continues to answer the dilemmatization of women's leadership, the methods used are library research and comparative studies. The results showed that the thinking of KH. Hussein Muhammad and Asghar Ali Engineer have similarities and differences that are quite clear. Both agreed, supported and explicitly stated that the position of women as leaders is permissible in Islam. However, what is interesting is the difference in methods used by the two Muslim scholars.

The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination , by D. Max Moerman

The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination , by D. Max Moerman