Religious Moment Research Articles

Answering Sraffa on Religion: Wittgenstein Walking the Tightrope

The subject of religion, one might think, although discussed in the Tractatus, is conspicuously absent from or in Wittgenstein’s later works, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations. Using Sraffa’s comments as a starting point, I tentatively deal with the absence of the subject by considering the question whether Wittgenstein’s religious views are compatible with his philosophies in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations. Answering this question involves examining Wittgenstein’s own central concern about his convictions in his later years, namely, to what extent one can honestly be a religious thinker nowadays. Presumably, his philosophy might not allow a “philosophy of religion”, if his own views on religion are not compatible with his philosophy. I tackle these issues beginning with Wittgenstein’s conversations with Ludwig Hänsel, then move to his later views and relevant passages in the Philosophical Investigations. With this in place, I uncover a religious moment that is not completely apparent in his later book, namely, an admission of errors that is a sort of confession.

Orthodoxy and Authority: Rites of Passage in the Vita Wilfridi and the Vitae Cuthberti

The seventh-century Easter controversy raised questions of orthodoxy and the consequent authority of the clergy to minister rites. References to rites of passage are present in three of the most important sources written in early eighth-century Northumbria: the Vita Wilfridi and the Vitae Cuthberti. This article uses rites of passage to examine two debates, concerning Bishop Wilfrid's continental credentials and the relationship between the Vita Wilfridi and the Vitae Cuthberti. How the three authors use these important religious moments gives insight into the saintly image they wished to portray. The article argues that rites of passage in the Vita Wilfridi are designed to prove Wilfrid's continental (and thus orthodox) credentials but also show the extent to which this is a constructed image. In addition, it suggests that the rewriting of the first Vita Cuthberti was prompted by questions of orthodoxy raised in the Vita Wilfridi and subsequently weaponized in the febrile atmosphere of early eighth-century Northumbria.

HARMONISASI MASYARAKAT MUSLIM DAN KRISTEN: POLA INTERAKSI BERMASYARAKAT DUKUH PURBO

Purbo Hamlet is one of the hamlets in Jolotigo Village, Pekalongan Regency, the majority of which are Protestant Christians, and the rest are Muslims. In their social life, the people of Dukuh Purbo, both Muslims and Christians, both establish harmonious relationships and prioritize living together with one another. The attitude of tolerance and dialogue between the two communities for religion in Dukuh Purbo is an urgent matter and should not be negotiable in Hamlet Purbo. This study aims to explain cooperative relationships that can form harmonious relationships that have been passed down from generation to generation in Dukuh Purbo, factors that can build harmonization relationships in Hamlet Purbo, and patterns of interaction carried out by inter-religious communities in Hamlet Purbo. This research includes field research using a qualitative approach. The selection of research subjects using purposive sampling technique. The primary subjects in this study were the hamlet head of Dukuh Purbo, Islamic religious leaders and Christian religious leaders, and four community members who were active in community activities in Dukuh Purbo. Methods of data collection is done by interview, observation, and documentation. Data analysis was carried out by data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of the study explain that there are three forms of harmonization between religious communities in Dukuh Purbo, namely harmonization in social society, harmonization in formal education, and harmonization in sacred religious moments. To maintain and strengthen harmonization, firstly, tolerance and mutual respect are instilled as early as possible from the family, school, and community environment, and a sense of belonging to each other, and secondly, two-way interactions carried out by community leaders, religious leaders, and the general public Dukuh Purbo.

Potential of Islamic Tourism in District Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan: A Case Study of Naukot Monument Attributed to Sayyid Ali Hamadani

Mansehra, one of the most important districts of Hazara Division, is generally known for its natural landscape and pleasant weather that attract thousands of visitors from across the country and abroad every year.Its geographic location adds more value to its potential as a tourist destination. Located on the ancient and modern trade routes, Mansehra has been receiving and transmitting cultural flow from muti directions since early historical times. With the results, the region has witnessed the emergence, development and fall of various religious moments, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity. Material evidence of these religious practices can still be noticed in the form of stupas, temples, mosques, shrines, Gurudu waras and churches. The present paper is an attempt to highlight the historical and religious significance of the Muslim period sites with special reference to the Naukot monument and its potential for pilgrimage tourism.

The aesthetics of the religious and the sacralization of “positivist” science – “idealism” (Adam Asnyk) and decadent religious poetry of early modernism (Stanisław Korab-Brzozowski)

Religious images and motives in nineteenth-century poetry (particularly in the period of dominant Positivism) became gradually aestheticized and lost much their original symbolic impact. This was partly due to the consequences of Kantian philosophy that introduce a dichotomy between phenomena and noumena. Positivism was merely interested in the relation between objects belonging to the phenomenal world. Critical theology (D.F. Strauss, Ernest Renan) started to analyze religious symbols and New Testament stories from the point of view of history and (compared) myth, applying positivist methodology to the “humanities”. Poets wishing to recapture the religious potential (the “Holy”) of traditional symbols and ritual had to recontextualize them. The “sacred” does not reside in the symbols themselves, but it is transferred to the relation established by the individual between his position in the world and a symbol or ritual. The religious moment results from experiencing this “unrepeatable” relation (its unrepeatability being the condition of contact with transcendence, relating the symbol as phenomenon with the noumenal sphere that is present as a trace – the individually experienced symbol points to its absence). In Polish late romantic poetry (e.g. Adam Asnyk) the individualization of the experience of transcendence is impeded by the patriotic connotations of religious symbols and rituals that presuppose the experience of belonging to a (“national”) community (a “relic” of Polish romantic messianism, c.f. the aftermath of the January Uprising). The modernist poet Stanisław Korab Brzozowski succeeded in developing a poetic method of recontextualizing traditional religious symbols that allowed to show the incompatibility between the phenomenal and the noumenal sphere as an inner experience of a subject (e.g. a wooden cross stretching its arms to an empty heaven) as a direct reaction to Renan´s relativization of the Christian “Heilsgeschichte”, unmediated by Polish romantic messianism).

Inglês

This article deals with form in a circle as the African position themselves to dance, and that this legacy is manifested in Candomble in Brazil in the concluding moments of his beliefs to the Orishas, seek to highlight the representation and symbolism of dance, rhythm and body in religious moments in the holy yards. Describe the dance associated with the orishas and their stories through gestural, these acts born of a peculiar symbology to a religious space that carries in its African heritage representations. In this context, we discuss that religious moments of Candomble dances are organized into choreography is during the celebration or the incorporation of-saint children-, and that they are distinct, and only a long coexistence as ritual, those who attend consent know them and describes them, that is, what the orisha being represented. However, the corner will also address historical issues and stages experienced by orishas on the earth plane and touches performed on percussion instruments will give the style tone to be danced at the time that the orishas present in candomble yard. Moreover, we evidenced the body's relationship to religion in an intense and extensive learning process, which are internalized according to the dogmas, religious foundations and the archetype of the orishas, bequests that are transmitted to the initiated in Candomble by older religious of community.

The sacred second: religious moments in a Colombo marketplace

How does the marketplace of a busy city shape the religious practices of its shopkeepers? Combining historical and ethnographic research, this article examines the cosmopolitan past and present of Colombo’s Pettah neighbourhood. Its role as an Indian Ocean port resulted in a continual influx of new religious players, leaving its present pluralistic pantheon, from which shopkeepers (many of whom have made their own transoceanic journeys to work in other port cities like Dubai) can choose the saint or god best suited for their needs. Meanwhile, the pace of the marketplace has structured religious time accordingly; sacred moments are improvised sporadically among the bustle of the business day. Religious ritual is now part of the general pattern of marketplace routine, along with a number of other habits for passing time – unscheduled but expected activity, both personally meaningful and socially symbolic. In turn, religious performance can enhance market performance, instrumentalised in spur-of-the-moment sales techniques, lines between sacred and profane continually blurred.

Suffering, Salvation, and the Filipino: Francis Schüssler Fiorenza’s Theology of Divine Emancipatory Solidarity in the Context of Poverty and Marginalization

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza’s “emancipatory solidarity” theory is here proposed as the framework for an alternative Filipino soteriology that focuses not on the Cross as sole salvific event, but on Christ’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection in its entirety as key to human redemption in its fullness, including both the physical and spiritual dimensions. In contrast to the concept of redemption as the mere alleviation of suffering, this paper suggests an alternative interpretation of the Filipino virtue of fortitude in the face of suffering as in itself constitutive of a redemptive religious moment and experience.

The politics of national celebrations in the Arab Middle East

Why do countries celebrate defining religious moments or significant events in their history, and how and why do their leaders select certain events for commemoration and not others? This book is the first systematic study of the role of celebrations and public holidays in the Arab Middle East from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the present. By tracing the history of the modern nation-state through successive generations, the book shows how Arab rulers have used public holidays as a means of establishing their legitimacy and, more broadly, a sense of national identity. Most recently, some states have attempted to nationalize religious festivals in the face of the Islamic revival. With its many illustrations and copious examples from across the region, the book offers an alternative perspective on the history and politics of the Middle East.

Buber's distinguishing philosophy from religion

In this paper the author discusses Buber's distinguishing the spheres of philosophy and religion. Relying both on Pascal's insight that the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is essentially different from abstract God of the philosophers and on his own spiritual experiences, Buber thinks that philosophy as such is abstract while religion is distinguished by its personal relationship, immediacy and concreteness. According to the thinker of the dialogue, philosophy is based on subject-object relation and is limited to objective communication. It is reduced to the mere thought exchange and does not require any personal life commitment which is otherwise the case in the true religion. In contrast to the detachment of the theoretical position, religion culminates in the immortal moment of the meeting with eternal Thou, i.e. with the living God. Differently from philosophy which insists on logic and consistency, religion is distinguished by its paradox. Instead of following the path of philosophy which mediates and reconciles the opposites, religion demands from us to bear the antinomy of the human condition. After having discussed many Buber's arguments in favour of the primacy of the living religion over the abstract philosophy namely of I-Thou relationship over the impersonal I-It relationship, the author examines the relation between the philosophical and religious moment in Buber's thought itself. At the end of the paper the author, agreeing great deal with Buber's reasoning, advances his own opinion on the relation between religion and philosophy.

American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Moment – By Barry Hankins

American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Moment – By Barry Hankins

Touched by Grace during the Psychoanalytic Hour: the Transformation of a Religious Resistance

Case material is presented illustrating a phase in religious transformation in which the quality of the religious moment—first expressed in transference hints and a dream, and finally augmented by an idiosyncratic enactment of the patient’s—became sufficiently intense that it crossed formal religious boundaries. The patient resisted direct reference to her religious beliefs, yet the deeper roots of her God representations took alternative forms of expression. The analyst’s appreciation of this, which was rendered articulable through a carefully refined countertransference experience, eventually enabled a sincere experience of joining, one that superseded apparent religious differences between analyst and patient.

Under the gaze of the state: policing literature and the case of Taslima Nasrin

This article situates Taslima Nasrin, the controversial writer from Bangladesh, in a particular political and religious moment in the history of Bangladesh, to analyse the difficult relationship the postcolonial state shares with a writer whose work deliberately unsettles the issues of minority and of women and/in religion. The complex mosaic of Nasrin’s work, comprising as varied genres as newspaper columns, poetry and popular novels, has engendered, in the last ten years, unprecedented responses both for and against her writing. This has brought the issue of literature and its uneasy negotiation with state politics to the forefront of national debate. Despised by Islamists and fundamentalists, equally loved and loathed by the reading public, considered with caution by secular intelligentsia and fellow feminists, and ultimately banned by the state, Nasrin is a unique case in point. Her work, written under the gaze of the state defying the fundamentalist fatwa demanding her death, hence invites discussions on state censorship invoked using religious sensibility as a marker of literary judgement and the associated perils of women writing on women in a postcolony like Bangladesh.

‘Why worship?’: Schleiermacher speaks to the question

A study of the origins, acts and efficacy, aims and ends of worship according to Friedrich Schleiermacher. Worship originates in inexpressible feeling, is ‘incarnate’ within a particular community, and functions dialectically. Worship consists of singing, preaching, prayer, baptism, the Lord's Supper and the ‘Power of the Keys’ (forgiveness). The efficacy of these acts derives from the mission and ministry of Christ, supported by the power of the Holy Spirit, and made effective through human action, insofar as it is conformed to the divine governance of the world. The chief aim of worship is to communicate the ‘religious moments in life’. Viewed negatively, worship can have no real or intended impact on God. Viewed positively, worship ends in the perfection of the common consciousness of the church. At its best, worship assists the human community in its proper development by ‘tuning us in’ to those feelings and dispositions that will best help us to act in accord with God's design. When this is true, worship can be said to truly continue and reflect the mission and ministry of Christ.

Franz Kafka: a question of Jewish identity: two perspectives

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Franz Kafka- The Jewish Element in His Life Chapter 3 Max Brod and Marthe Robert- The Background of Their Philosophical Approaches Chapter 4 Modes of Criticism Chapter 5 Max Brod and the Religious Moment (A Metaphysical View) Chapter 6 Marthe Robert and the Duality of Identity (Psychoanalytical-Structural Approach) Chapter 7 Summary Chapter 8 Endnotes Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 Index

Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England—the Work of Osbern Bokenham by Sheila Delany (review)

running head? sheila delany, Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Enghnd—the Work ofOsbern Bokenham. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xii, 236. isbn: 0-19-510989-9. $19.95. Sheila Delany's book is as complex and ambitious as its title and subtitle suggest; ImpoliticBodies examines the work ofthe Osbern Bokenham and his workin a range of contexts linked by ideas of the body, but also as diverse as Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England implies. In the process ofher examination, she makes a case for the value of Bokenham's all-female legendary as an important work ofthe fifteenth-century, showing it working in multi-valent ways. Readers ofDelany's earlier works won't be disappointed; while sharing critical perspectives and lively (if occasionally contentious) prose with her previous oevre, Impolitic Bodies also illuminates the importance of an obscure figure whose work does a great deal more that most fifteenth-century authors are generally given credit for. In 'Introductions,' Delany lays out her project. Acknowledging Bokenham's obscurity (the only current edition ofhis work is Delany's translation ofhis Legendary, published in 1992), she provides a useful biography, and locates him at Clare Priory in East Anglia, during 'an especially disturbed period of England's national history' (22). For those ready to dismiss the fifteenth century and its literature as dull or insignificant, Delany notes that Bokenham's poetry is 'both good enough and important enough to illuminate Chaucer's work and Chaucer reception, gender studies, late-medieval European cultural history, the development of hagiography, and English political life. The friar's achievements are substantial' (4). She then reveals how her work will consider these virtues through the lenses of three different types ofbody: the corpus ofpoetic and theological works that Bokenham used and critiqued, the female body represented in his hagiography, and the 'body politic' of English society on the brink of the Wars of the Roses. This discussion reveals Osbern Bokenham as a poet aware of his limited audience, his literary forebears, and the political world to which he was connected by friends and patrons. The corporal metaphor, Delany demonstrates, is essential to Bokenham in the structuring ofhis work and in producing its doctrinal meaning. While not building a 'text-as-body' herself, Delany relies on these metaphors as a 'taxonimic device' (28). She begins with the textual body of literary tradition, focusing particularly on Bokenham's ambivalence towards Chaucer, especially his Legend of Good Women, which the Legendary echoes structurally and thematically in order to critique. She next considers the actual bodies ofthe thirteen saints in Bokenham's own work, with attention to the theological and moral implications of his specific portrayals, and finally considers the role of the individuals who make up Bokenham's patrons and audience and their function in the body politic. Delany concludes with a consideradon of the 'issues of historicist and feminist theory relevant to my argument about the sexual politics of Bokenham's legendary' (28). The enormous scope ofthis project is apparent from its first chapter, but Delany further divides her categories, particularly in the three chapters on the corporeal bodies of the saints in Bokenham's collection. The three chapters that cover the arthuriana second part ofDelany's taxonomy fragment the saint's bodies into pieces, considering them in the groups suggested by the ordering of the legends in the text. This is a microcosm ofthe whole work, which (in a very medieval way) divides and subdivides, ending up at a conclusion which is titled 'Last Things and Afterlives,' perhaps in recognition ofthe fragmentary nature of the work's argument. This is not a criticism; that Delany rejects a neat summation ofwhat Impolitic Bodies provides prevents her discussion from being reductive, from enclosing what she proves to be a complex and intriguing work in overly-neat categories. What I was left with at the end of her book, apart from a desire to go read Osbern Bokenham myself, was a strong sense of how important a so-called (not by Delany) 'marginal' or 'minor' workmay be, how it can engage its literary, historical, and religious moment in complex ways. Delany...

The Role of Affect in Rational (Attributional) Approaches to Human Motivation

For a number of years I have been attempting to develop a general theory of human motivation in which cognitions, particularly causal attributions, play a central role (Weiner, 1972, 1974, 1979, 1980). A great deal of space would be required to document all of the virtues and all of the shortcomings of this conceptual approach. Considering only the weaknesses (which I try not to do too often), in my mind what is most lacking is a systematic statement about the place of emotions given such a rational approach to human behavior. Bruner (1956) once accused George Kelly's personal construct theory of not being able to explain men in their most religious moments (Pg. 356). Such a goal is far beyond my aspirations, but I believe it is necessary to consider emotional life more closely and to ask how affect can be better incorporated within attribution theory and how causal beliefs and feelings are interrelated. It is already possible to begin to outline some of the roles of affect within an attributional perspective. In this paper I will document: (1) that emotions are responses to particular attributions; (2) that emotions, rather than causal ascriptions, are motivators of action; and (3) that affects can function as cues guiding self-perception. I also will argue that taking affect into account yields a different interpretation of successful achievement-change programs. In addition, an underlying theme throughout the entire paper concerns a continuing attempt on my part to clarify the differences between the two main perceived causes of success and failure, namely, ability and effort.

Admetus, Verrall, and Professor Myres

Many people have failed to understand the Alcestis, and for the reasons Goethe suggests. Romanticists are grieved because Admetus, Pheres, and Heracles are human beings. As M. Masqueray observes, ‘Notre hypocrisie s'accommode mal d'une telle franchise.’ Verrall is delighted that the characters should be human beings, but refuses to permit them to ‘talk Greek.’ His ‘rational’ theory that the object of Euripides was to ‘expose’ the miraculous legend, by suggesting that Alcestis never died at all, rests on an assumption that, to an Athenian, the resurrection of the heroine, ‘as a piece of history, asserted or denied,’ was a matter of religious moment. But, for a Greek, the truth of the alleged resurrection involved no vital issues. The first lesson of religion was not ‘Believe that Apollo, through Heracles, could raise Alcestis from the dead, and, believing, have faith and hope,’ but something very different: ‘Know that thou art mortal, and, being mortal, practise moderation.’ It was the unorthodox, the ‘progressive,’ who, in ancient Athens, ventured to believe that mortal men should ‘practise immortality.’ Euripides contributed to new ideas by criticising the old. But his task was as far removed from that of Verrall's ‘Professor T. H …’ as was the mind of Nikias from that of Mr. Gladstone. For an ordinary Athenian the point was not that Alcestis rose from the dead, but that she died to save her husband's life. To argue the possibility or impossibility of her resurrection would, I submit, have appeared to the Athenian as trivial as it is depressing. If we want to understand Greek plays, we must remember that they were written by Athenians for an audience which was pagan, not Christian, Greek, not English. The characters talk Greek. It is our business, before we begin to criticise, to ascertain exactly what they say.

The Resurrection of Babylon 1

THOUGH scarcely a book to attract the general reader, Dr. Koldewey's account of the German excavations on the mounds which have for ages entombed the remains of Babylon the Great, is a work of considerable importance for all who are interested in the archaeology of the Old Testament. This, as perhaps is not generally known in England, is still a growing science; and the worst thing that can be said of the German Expedition to Babylonia is that, after so many years of patierit and persistent spadework on one of the most promising sites in the world, it has not, yet succeeded in unearthing anything of Wgher; historical or religious value than is recorded in the volume before us. Nothing extraordinary has hitherto been found; no great literary monument, no document of supreme religious moment, nothing that lends decisive help towards the settlement of any one of the unsolved problems of history or chronology. How much more fortunate in this respect were the pioneering labours of Layard and George Smith and Botta at Nineveh, of Rassam at Sippara, of De Sarzec at Tello, of De Morgan and Scheil at Susa!