Religious Mentality Research Articles

Diálogos con la Reina de los Cielos. Visiones y locuciones de una monja chilena del siglo XVIII

This article analyses an unpublished text written by a nun in Santiago of Chile around the mid-eighteenth century. The text, written by her confessor’s command, recounts the visions and locutions that she had with the Virgin Mary, which revolved around the figure of the confessor. This makes quite a special report because the priest appears as a central character of the visions, and the one who benefits from the intercession of the nun before the heavenly beings. At the same time, the account gives evidence of the nun’s awareness of her role, her limitations as a woman and her mediator power. On the other hand, the nun’s narrative shows not only the way of living her faith, but also allows us to get nearer to the ‘religious mentality’ of her time.

Hendrina Cecilia Kruger se godsdienstige mentaliteitsprofiel in haar mistieke oordenkingsbundel (ca. 1750–1810) uit die trekboertyd

Hendrina Cecilia Kruger’s religious mentality profile in her mystical devotional book (c. 1750−1810) from the Trekboer period. The religious views of the Trekboers on the frontier were shaped by pietistic religious literature circulating in the Cape interior. The religious ego-text of Hendrina Cecilia Kruger reflects elements of two streams of pietism: Dutch Second Reformation devotional literature and the works of German pietists in the line of Spener and other German mystics. The cumulative impact of experiential faith in Reformed mysticism and the mystical views of German pietism produced a spirituality of exceptional intensity in the pioneering communities of Reformed believers on the frontier. It is concluded that the mystical religious mentality of the Trekboer pietists exhibited exceptional levels of faith amidst dire physical and emotional conditions on the frontier. In spite of high levels of mystical pietism in her devotional book Kruger remained committed to the basic tenets of Reformed spirituality.

Фиксация астрономических явлений в новгородском летописании (по материалам базы данных «Хронология новгородского летописания IX — середины XV в.»)

The article reveals the reasons for disobedience and forms of protests among tatar peasants of the Muslim religion in the Volga and Ural regions in the post-reform period, which was held under “religious connotation”. Motivation of antigovernment protests organized by tatar farmers involved closely intertwined ethno-confes-sional and social aspects. The protests of the peasants were directed against the establishment of the new order and at the preservation of the existing social relations. Even cases of protest against the abuses of the authorities had a distinct interfaith connotation, because the peasants considered it was about the actions of officials of the Orthodox faith against the Muslim population and representatives of the traditional faiths. As illustrated in the article, the reasons for the protest social behavior of rural societies of Muslims were often violations of traditional ways of life caused by the requirements of the veterinary - sanitary and medical measures. The religious mentality and ignorance of the tatar farmers of the Russian language and literacy, rumors about the upcoming mass forced baptizing of Muslims also contributed to protest the social behavior of rural societies.DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2015)4.1-16

PENGEMBANGAN KARAKTER RELIGIUS SISWA MELALUI PENERAPAN CONTEXT RICH PROBLEMS YANG TERINTEGRASI DALAM PEMBELAJARAN KIMIA PADA MATERI IKATAN KIMIA

The concept of chemistry is difficult and complicated because it is abstract. Students are encouraged to have a religious mindset. The current learning process in chemistry subjects is still teacher-centered. Different students' understanding needs to be addressed. Therefore, low-ability students can not understand the concepts; consequently the students' learning outcomes and mindset are less religious while learning chemistry. An effort for students to think religiously and improve student learning outcomes is through the use of learning methods and adequate learning resources to improve learning activities and students more active in the learning process. This problem can be solved by developing the 'religious character' of students through the application of Context Rich Problems. This research is PTK (class action) with qualitative and quantitative approach. This research was conducted in MA Nahdlatus Shaufiah Wanasaba. Sampling using simple technique. The sample of the research is the students of class X. The results show that, the religious character and learning outcomes from cycle to cycle have increased. The average score of the students' religious characters in the first cycle was 66.67% and the second cycle was 94.63%. The completeness of each learning outcomes in the first cycle is 44.44% and cycle II is 92.59%. We conclude that the development of the religious character of the students through the application of integrated Context Rich Problems can be used as an alternative to enhance the ability of religious character and student learning outcomes.

Priestly Dignity in the African Religious Context

The mammoth crowd witnessed at the Christian religious gatherings on regular basis, generally tagged “Prayer Ministries”, around the towns and cities, goes strongly to confirm the view of scholars of Religion and Anthropology that “Africans are naturally religious”. Religion indeed makes a tremendous impact on the social, political and economic life of the Africans. The alarming rate of rush by people to these Prayer Ministries, to obtain divine favours and miracles from those of their religious leaders, whom they judge to be different from others in terms of possessing spiritual powers and aura of godliness, indicates the great influence that certain grade of leadership has in religion for them. In Christianity as in African Traditional Religion, religious leadership is generally provided by the priests. Against this back drop, this paper aims to highlight the priestly dignity as significant and important as well as symbolic for the Africans’ religious wellbeing. Consequently, while it appraises the priestly dignity as a “value” recommendable to the priestly office, it alerts the priests in the African context of the danger of abuses, manipulations and exploitations susceptible to this dignity. It also proffers a conscientious effort on the part of all towards a re-adjustment of the African Christians’ religious mentality to an authentic Christian faith focused on the triune God.

The Mission School and the Religious Mentality of Modern Joseon

The Mission School and the Religious Mentality of Modern Joseon

Mysticism and The Notion of God in Nishida’s Philosophy of Religion

In Nishida Kitarō’s An Inquiry into the Good and The Logic of Locus and the Religious Worldview , written respectively at the beginning and at the end of his philosophical career, one can find remarkably similar references to mysticism which nevertheless give opposite evaluations of the phenomenon: while mysticism is highly praised in the former, it is disparaged in the latter. This essay is a reflection on the nature of and the reasons for these opposing evaluations, focusing on the changes in Nishida’s ideas of God and ultimate reality. This, perhaps, is a starting point to an assessment of the evolution of Nishida’s thought and its import for the problem of religion. It is argued that the rejection of mysticism by Nishida later in life corresponds to a narrowing of the horizon of his philosophy, and, regardless of its depth and truth-value, this reduces its importance as a philosophy of religion. For Nishida’s narrowing scope makes his later philosophy unfit to provide an understanding of religious experience as such, as it has grown constricted to the interpretation and apologetics of a particular religious mindset.

Comments on Marc Sageman's Polemic “The Stagnation in Terrorism Research”

Marc Sageman's lamenting about the “Stagnation in Terrorism Research” stands in stark contradiction to my conclusion in the Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (2011) that “Terrorism Studies—d...

Corruption, Islam, and Secular Ethics in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s L’homme rompu

In his often-overlooked novel, L’homme rompu (1994), Tahar Ben Jelloun addresses the issue of corruption in Moroccan society. The narrative explores Mourad’s inability to resist corruption in a world where women, in their struggle to join the male-dominated workforce, risk adopting their corrupt mindset. In this novel, Ben Jelloun not only presents secular ethics as a solution to a country with a predominantly religious mentality, he also seems to be ahead of his time; the ever-present theme of corruption would not gain the spotlight until 2010.

The Indirect Comparative Method. An Attempt at Trying to Find a Path between the Scylla of Iconography and the Charybdis of the History of Religious Mentality

The inventorying work which has been carried out in Poland unceasingly since the 1950s has provided the basis for carrying out large-scale iconographical and iconological research. The main subject of the research is sacred art dating from the late 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The majority of the works that have been studied were executed by anonymous artists working in provincial painting workshops. The message conveyed in the fine arts often does not provide the viewer with enough data to interpret it correctly, nor to gain a deeper understanding of the true meaning of church paintings. In the search for meaning it is essential to refer to the written word in its diverse forms. The character of sacred art largely determines the literary sources to which we refer. These consist primarily of collections of sermons, prayers and sacred songs. The use of the so-called indirect comparative method not only widens the scope of research through the use of selected examples of Polish religious texts but, most importantly, it shows the similarities between the literary sources and the realm of the fine arts. In our research, devotional literature only plays an ancillary part compared to paintings and engravings. But it is this very literature that widens our perspective and enables us to arrive at conclusions.

Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama by Clifford Davidson (review)

Clifford Davidson. Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama, with contribution collaboration with Sheila White. AMS Studies the Middle Ages, No. 30. New York: AMS Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 242. $84.50. English medieval drama, which has come down us only small body texts, has produced stunning amount research into its contexts. Clifford Davidson, who established the EDAM (Early Drama, Art, and Music) Project at the Medieval Institute Western Michigan University the 1970s (1) (and for long time was editor Comparative Drama) is one the most prominent pioneers this truly interdisciplinary approach. The very first sentence the book review states that the importance the local in historical time and (ix), for the study the Corpus Christi plays was brought home him more than forty years ago, on his first visit St. Michael-le-Belfry near York Minster. The title modestly promises a context, but with equal justice one could distinguish five or six contexts. These do not strictly coincide with the subject matter one chapter each, but there certainly is distribution emphases. Chapter 1 (York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays) concentrates on the social and administrative context and offers important insights into local conflicts surrounding the production the pageants. Guilds often pleaded poverty that prevented them from participating. After the Reformation there was also reluctance on the part individuals, as the four drapers who refused support their guild's Death the Virgin 1554. The Corporation York harshly rebuked this great encoragyng suche lyke wilfull persones and disordre the sayed craftes (11; after REED York 1:313). The wording suggests that the refusal reflected more general mood, but it also shows that the Corporation felt strongly about continuing the plays. In 1569, year after Elizabeth's succession the throne, they were banned under pressure from the ecclesiastical authorities (16), but against, apparently, the wishes most York's citizens (167). Chapter 2 (The York Plays and Visual Piety) concentrates on an aspect religious mentality and devotes considerable space the effect playing out the Passion scenes. While allowing that the spectators were not necessarily uniformly reverent (49), Davidson concludes that Bakhtinian spirit blasphemous Schadenfreude about Christ's suffering at the hands the Torturers is most unlikely. Strong support for this view comes from the antitheatrical, Wycliffite Tretise Miraclis Pleyinge, which admits that the Passion plays often move spectators to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris (50). The subject is also touched on chapter 3 section (67-69) called Blood, Suffering, and Devotion, and the book returns it the final, collaborative chapter. In the main, chapter 3 (The Color Devotion) deals with the painters' contribution the overall effect the pageants; it benefits particularly from Davidson's earlier work on the material culture medieval York. Chapter 4 (The Pageant Route, the City as Stage, and the Sacred), which treats the physical context the pageants, is special interest that it touches on the relationship between the Corpus Christi procession and the Corpus Christi play or pageant. The traditional view that the play or plays somehow evolved from the procession is almost certainly untenable. In the York records, which are far from providing complete picture, however, the first mention the play antedates that the procession, if only by year. (2) Plays growing out of the procession have created logistical problems that seem impossible overcome. As Davidson puts it, instead ever having been joined, it is more likely that the pageants and the procession had always been separate (87). But even this arrangement would have involved logistical complication (87). …

The Phenomenon of Plica Polonica in Lithuania: A Clash of Religious and Scientific Mentalities

The Phenomenon of Plica Polonica in Lithuania: A Clash of Religious and Scientific Mentalities

Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists

Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists

Satanic Indifference and Ultimate Reality

Satan has captured the imagination of writers in the English language for centuries. This figure and the notion of evil have gone through many changes in English literature of the 19 and 20 centuries. Something changed Satan during this time, and made him into an arbiter of truth rather than a figure of rebellion. In The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain used him as the grand narrator of the universe who explains the truth of all existence, that life an illusion. The American horror author H.P. Lovecraft carried this one step further, using Rudolf Otto's mysterium horrendum to divest Satan of his supernatural status. Satan was transformed from a symbol of evil in a Manichean universe to an articulate arbiter of the revelation that human existence means nothing cast against the broad spectrum of the cosmos. There are many vantage points from which to examine a subject like Satan. To paraphrase Mark Twain's comments about man, Satan is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so this paper will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time.” There are many platitudes about Satan that have been as grossly misunderstood as his legacy. The most interesting comes from Percy Shelley: “Depend upon it, that when a person once begins to think that perhaps there no Devil, he in a dangerous way.” (Shelley 1965, 87) At first glance, this appears to be similar to the statement in Charles Baudelaire's “The Generous Gambler,” that “the devil's slickest trick to convince you that he does not exist!”(Baudelaire 1991, 407) Shelley seems to state that the Devil a real force in the world, and if one to deny this force's existence, one in danger of falling into sin. However, Shelley's “On the Devil and Devils,”—from which this statement taken—presents a rebuke of the Christian religion, invoking the Devil in order to explain how a Manichean universe—one with a Devil—could justify and give greater moral agency to the Devil than to God. This a call to understand that—in the religious mindset—if there good, perhaps there evil. Baudelaire's story takes this a step further and presents the Devil not as this necessary force, but as a freethinker and explicator of truth. The narrator, a preacher relates: This paper will be using the word “Satanic,” as it originally means—adversarial. An illuminating article, “The Doctrine of Satan I: The Old Testament” by William Caldwell puts this in perspective. The word Satan, he states “often used in the Old Testament as a verb, meaning to be or act as an adversary. Satan as a noun means a human adversary” or a “superhuman adversary.” According to Caldwell, “[. . . ]it appears as though these adversaries are[ . . . ]only functionally separate from God.” He further states that “angels that have evil tasks are not themselves thereby evil,” Moreover, “the Book of Job” mentions “one of the 'sons of God,' or angels, called Satan or Adversary. Anything like a clear outline of Satan appears here for the first time in the Old Testament. But even here it the Satan. The presence of the article denotes the function of adversary rather than a character personally adverse to the good.” In The Biblical World 41.1 (1913): pg. 32 1 Reis: Satanic Indifference and Ultimate Reality

Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (review)

Reviewed by: Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt Christian Cannuyer Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt. By Febe Armanios. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2011. Pp. xvi, 254. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-199-74484-8.) This book explores the religious beliefs as identifying parameters of the Coptic Christian community in Ottoman Egypt (1516–1798), mostly through using unexploited church archives. It is a new research field, since the history of the Copts during this intermediary period—although a pivotal one in the shaping of modern Egypt—has scarcely been studied. In the decades following the Ottoman conquest, a sense of misfortune triggered an outpouring of religious piety among all Egyptians, Muslims as well as Christians. The author tries to examine how the Copts coped with this trend, exploring the ways in which they used religion to define their identity. Due to the fragmentary nature of sources, the book can only be a string of “snapshots” of Coptic religious life under Ottoman rule. The first chapter provides a general look on how the conquest affected the management of the community, and mainly how the lay elite (the archons), as a result of their links with the new rulers and of their growing wealth, supplanted the clerical leadership, even the previously almost absolute authority of the Patriarch. The second chapter investigates the popularity of the martyr Salib (d. 1512), who perished for publicly defaming the Prophet of Islam. Significantly, the martyrdom—a text of dynamic “communal remembrance” from the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods—carefully avoids anti-Islamic controversy. The popularity of a more ancient martyr is scrutinized in the third chapter: St. Dimyana, whose cult as a beneficent miracle-worker was centered on springtime festivities in the Nile Delta and reveals complex conceptions of the female ascetic ideal. Chapter 4 focuses on the modalities of the annual Coptic pilgrimage from Cairo to Jerusalem through the lens of eighteenth-century sources. This devout practice was connected to an antique Christian tradition but also exposed commonalities with the annual Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca. It emphasized how lay and clerical elites collaborated to ensure a Coptic presence in the Holy City. The last and fifth chapter analyzes some sermons produced by Coptic higher clergymen (especially Patriarch Yu’annis XVIII [1769–96] and Bishop Yusab [r. 1791–1826]), who were reacting against the aggressions of the “heretical” Catholic missionary enterprises. The Coptic hierarchy responded by scorning all the heterodox practices, which were proliferating as a consequence of intermarriage, socialization, or outright conversion. Throughout the book, Febe Armanios shows how popular religion was the glue that held Coptic believers together. She challenges some scholars such as Bernard Heyberger and Molly Greene who tend to view religion as a minor marker of identity among Ottoman dhimmis and the Christians as essentially sharing the religious mentality of their Muslim neighbors. On the contrary, [End Page 617] says the author, religion served as a conduit for articulating those irreducible characteristics that shaped the distinct identity of the Copts. Thus, her work improves our understanding of the Ottoman period. However, a greater acknowledgment would have been welcome of the pacific coexistence between the different religious communities and its effect on Egyptian society, at a time when conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Europe caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Very interestingly, Armanios also demonstrates that the resurgence of the patriarch’s authority in the second part of the nineteenth century and the resultant opposition of the lay elite reflected well-established trends from the eighteenth century. In this way, the author’s remarkable study contributes to clarify the complexity of Muslim-Christian relations and of the internal dynamics of the Coptic community not only in the Ottoman period but also in contemporary Egypt. Christian Cannuyer Faculty of Theology Catholic University of Lille Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Alessandro Orsini, Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists, trans. from Italian by Sarah J. Nodes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 317 pp.

Alessandro Orsini, <i>Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists</i>, trans. from Italian by Sarah J. Nodes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 317 pp.

Religiosity and religious identity in Armenia: Some current models and developments

This article is about realities embedded in the notions of “religiosity” and “Armenian religious identity” in contemporary Armenia. It is focused on some patterns of the Armenian national religion and official forms of Armenian Apostolic Christianity. In particular, the article discusses links, attitudes, interrelations, contradictions and mutual influences of doctrinal Armenian Apostolic Christianity and its vernacular versions. The Armenian version of vernacular Christianity includes the religious practices of worshipping local saints, magic, healing and divination. An attempt to outline three conventional models of religiosity within the Armenian Apostolic Christian identity, those of “grassroots”, “privatized”, and “fundamental”, has been made in the paper, and the main patterns of attitudes among these models are discussed. In fact, these models of religiosity represent different religious subcultures, with different systems of signs and different patterns of religious mentality, though sharing the s...

The Financing Sources of the Jesuits’ Colleges in the Modern Age

This paper is divided into three parts. In the first studies the birth of the Jesuit College and its foundational nature. The second deals with the debate on financing college, within the religious mentality of the modern centuries. Finally we study the main sources of funding that had the Jesuit schools which allowed their educational performance.

Re‐imagining Leviathan: Schmitt and Oakeshott on Hobbes and the problem of political order

Both Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt were deeply preoccupied with what Oakeshott called ‘the experience of living in a modern European state’; both felt that the state's proper origins and trajectory had not been grasped, that proper statehood had profoundly been put into doubt in the twentieth century, and that state authority and legitimacy needed to be shored up in an age of ‘mass politics’. Not surprisingly, then, both developed their conception of political association with and sometimes against Hobbes. Both profoundly disagreed with conventional readings of Hobbes as propounding a materialist or ‘scientistic’ philosophy. Most importantly, both consistently de‐emphasized, or entirely discounted, Hobbes's contractualism – they cut off any possible route from Hobbes's thought to liberal theories of explicit or tacit consent. Instead, both stressed a concern with the cultural preconditions of political order. Oakeshott's civil association turned out to be an idealized picture of modern European individualism as a unique civilizational achievement that sustained a very limited state whose authority could only be acknowledged, rather than contested. Schmitt, on the other hand, advocated a deeply authoritarian fusion of political and religious elements, a sort of neo‐Erastian dictatorship as the solution to the problem of political order. Idiosyncratic as these visions might appear, they in fact sum up two ways of thinking about political order still prevalent today: the notion that liberal democracy is only for the West; and the idea that, ultimately, political cohesion depends on a shared religious mentality.

Popular and Organized Religion in Modern and Contemporary Mexico

Popular and Organized Religion in Modern and Contemporary Mexico Martin Nesvig (bio) The Maya and Catholicism: An Encounter of Worldviews. By John D. Early. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. 311. $59.95 cloth. Contemporary Maya Spirituality: The Ancient Ways Are Not Lost. By Jean Molesky-Poz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 201. $25.00 paper. Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca. By Kristin Norget. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Pp. 319. $35.00 paper. Death and Dying in New Mexico. By Martina Will de Chaparro. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Pp. 261. $32.50 cloth. The books under review here represent the continued dynamic study of religion from the view of historical sociology. While only one of these books is strictly speaking a historical monograph (Death and Dying in New Mexico) and the other three anthropological studies, all four share an abiding interest in the longue durée of Mesoamerican religion and spirituality. Simultaneously, as a whole, they place religious mentality, spirituality, or religious ritual at the center of their analyses, although none is a throwback to studies of pure ideas stripped of social context. Although ideas—about death, death rituals, cosmology, ancestor worship, spiritual phenomenology—take center stage, the authors place them within the social contexts in which they developed and in turn discuss how structural, political, and economic developments shaped these belief systems, or how these spiritualities outlasted and endured political and social change. As a group, these studies reject stripped-down epistemological assessments of religious values and of functionalist religious anthropology. Death is the explicit theme of two of these books, which therefore take part in a venerable historiographical tradition in early modern European studies, and certainly Mexican studies—one thinks of the works of Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, and Carlos Fuentes. Will de Chaparro's focus is consonant with those of the other three authors: ancestor worship and the [End Page 225] line between the worlds of the living and the dead, which Oaxacans, New Mexicans, and Mayas all viewed as tenuous or nonexistent. Likewise, her book fits closely with that by Norget, as both discuss death rituals and ceremonies. The other two books are linked by their examination of Maya religion. But whereas Molesky-Poz principally offers a participant-observer study, Early employs both his own fieldwork and a broad historical sociology to explain the seeming discontinuity between the persistence of Mayan forms of cosmology and religious epistemology, and the importance that Mayas place on the performance of the mass by ordained priests. Overall, these works contribute to a growing literature that questions assumptions about the spiritual conquest of Mesoamerica. They demonstrate the deep continuities with very old Mesoamerican religious forms and their adaptation to new historical circumstances. At the same time, they show that, while some practices seem constant—ancestor worship or veneration, for example—their form varies considerably. There are relatively few studies of death ritual and dying in colonial Latin America—Pamela Voekel's Alone before God (2002) is one—yet this is a veritable cottage industry among early modern Europeanists. Will de Chaparro's book is therefore a welcome addition to classics such as John McManner's Death and the Enlightenment (1981), Gaby and Michel Vovelle's still-untranslated Vision de la mort et de l'au-delà en Provence (1970), Phillipe Ariès's Hour of Our Death (1981), and Carlos Eire's From Madrid to Purgatory (1995). Will de Chaparro also adds to the vibrant literature on colonial New Mexico from practitioners such as Ramón Gutiérrez, Fray Angélico Chávez, and Marc Simmons. Nevertheless, as studies of pre-1821 (or for that matter pre-1848) New Mexico are fairly few and far between, her book offers a fine compliment to Chávez's classic My Penitente Land (1974), as well as to the more recent study by Michael P. Carroll, The Penitente Brotherhood (2002).1 Death and Dying in New Mexico is a study of religious and social attitudes toward death, death rituals and practices, and baroque sensibilities on the northern frontier of New Spain. Like most historical studies concerning death and...