Religious Quest Research Articles

Becoming More Grounded: The Enduring Appeal of Ancient Pilgrimage for the Contemporary Seeker

This article builds on a previous essay and arises from research carried out between the summer of 2018 and the spring of 2020 among pilgrims who had participated in the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain and St Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg in the northwest of Ireland. Research focused on embodied experience in relation to pilgrim motivation, groundedness and the enduring power of sacred travel as ritual. Convergent considerations about psychology, theology and pilgrimage studies were deployed as lenses of analysis of the pilgrims’ experience. The findings brought clarity in relation to pilgrims’ motivations and the subsequent satiation experienced as they became more grounded in relation to the physical rituals of the pilgrimage. The experience of full-blooded, fleshy embodiment, the analysis suggests, has considerable psychological dividend and is, the discussion argues, of theological significance, particularly from the perspective of Incarnation. As pilgrimage scholars have noted, a refreshing outcome of 21st Century research is the way in which it has been lifted out of the ‘narrow fields of religious or medieval studies’ and yet the analysis of this study suggests that we not dismiss the enduring possibility of religious quest as a still traceable element in the experience of contemporary pilgrimage.

Religious Doubts and the Problem with Religious Pressures for Christian Students

Educational literature has underscored the importance of higher education attending to students’ religious development. For Christian students, environment plays a role. Recent Christian religious development literature focusing on environmental predictors of growth found that higher religious pressures, assumed to be a controller according to Self-Determination Theory, predicted religious growth for students. The current study examines this finding by considering the influence of religious pressures along with normative experiences of religious doubt on spiritual/religious development variables of relatedness and self-mastery. A web-based survey procured responses from a large sample of students from both Christian and public/secular institutions. Controlling for sex and institution, multiple linear regression modeling was used to develop a model hypothesizing that when religious doubts are high, greater pressure would result in lower levels of religious development. The model was supported for spiritual/religious self-mastery but not for relatedness. Students’ quotes were presented to illustrate the findings that emerged from the data analysis. Results clarify the deleterious role of religious pressures for Christians at certain developmental and situational milestones who are also simultaneously experiencing religious doubt and/or questioning their beliefs about God. Given past findings about the uncomfortable and unsatisfying, albeit necessary, role of engaging in some religious doubt and exploration, religious pressures can sabotage effective adaptation. The results underscore the importance of higher education administrators allowing space and support for religious questioning and doubt. Moreover, administrators in Christian universities should help facilitate the honest expression of their students’ doubts and questions and the minimization of environmental religious pressures.

Colour as Symbols in the Select Works of Yann Martel

Colours can draw an identity to all living things. Natural colours can either calm down or disturb a person’s inner Self. At the times of crisis, it tends to give the individual soul wit and hope. Colours also have alchemical significance and can impact every man’s mind in certain ways. Colour representations have been used by many symbolists throughout literary history from the past to the present. Symbolists point out the importance of symbols in the poems of symbolist poetry. Moreover, the use of colour symbolism in literature contributes to the treasure of literary forms. In Canadian literature, Yann Martel holds a prominent position for his adaption of symbols and uses them to portray the inner quest of his characters. Frequently, his symbolism embodies a deep search for a spiritual quest with a religious component. Colour is one of the most important aspects in deciphering the psyche of his heroes. He has constructed various symbolic interpretations that exhibit the spiritual longing of individuals. Many colours like red, black, white, green, orange, etc have been used as symbolic representations to decode the mind set and religious beliefs. Among them, black and white colours play a vital role in an in-depth portrayal of the leading characters. The religious quest of the characters has been satisfied through the identification of colour representations and ancient relics. They were satisfied at the end. Hence, his works depict that colours have symbolic dramatic elements that naturally novelize the central theme of the search for Self. It also emphasizes the development of the Self with the supremacy of faith in the Almighty God. This paper deciphers the black and white colour symbols in the novels, “Self”, “Life of Pi”, “Beatrice and Virgil”, and “The High Mountains of Portugal” of Yann Martel.

Greek Philosophy as a Religious Quest for the Divine

Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but the project of becoming divine, a project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiratio

A Spiritual Biography Project : Lisa Kim’s Pilgrimage

This study explores the spiritual faith journey of Lisa Kim, a fourteen-year-old interviewee born into a Christian family, by examining the interplay of psychosocial facets in the faith development theory of James W. Fowler and a theological perspective of the Holy Spirit. Drawing on the seven categories of the developmental and theological (including biblical) viewpoint related to the Holy Spirit, this study seeks to analyze the faith stage of Lisa. Lisa’s faith stage could align with the “mythic-literal” position seen in the structuring features of Stage 2 and by some dimensions of the initial transition into Stage 3. Her faith stage also has some aspects of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a man-works-performance-based faith, which results in American youth failing to follow Jesus Christ theologically. This study will first analyze her faith stage grounded in seven categories – the “locus of authority,” the “form of world coherence,” the “bounds of social awareness,” the “symbolic function,” the “form of logic,” the “perspective taking,” and the “form of moral judgment” - throughout her significant spiritual development. Then, this study will explore Lisa’s spiritual journey by leading her to discover gifts and vulnerabilities and offering some specific suggests for her future faith life. Finally, for her ongoing spiritual journey through the power of the Holy Spirit, I will conclude by briefly stating how her parents and church should do in the ministry of education today. The results led ideas for reflecting her own pilgrimage in the faith and her spiritual or religious quest for meanings, applying her faith in life today, and learning religious commitment and belief in the spiritual journey.

Features of the artistic embodiment of the image of Opta’s Hermitage Monastery in the essay “K.G.A. Sederholm, Father Clement, hieromonk of Opta’s Hermitage” by Konstantin Leontiev

The article discusses the features of the artistic embodiment of the image of Opta’s Hermitage Monastery in the essay “K.G.A. Sederholm, Father Clement, hieromonk of Opta's Hermitage” by Konstantin Leontiev. It is shown that the image of Opta’s Hermitage, created in Konstantin Leontiev’s essay, is multifaceted. Its structure includes a description of the monastery and the nature surrounding it, as well as images of monks that form the artistic anthropology of the work. The image of Father Clement is necessary to mention. The article notes that the author's attitude to Opta’s Hermitage, his belief in the monastery’s exceptional spiritual role for the Orthodox world is artistically embodied, in particular, in the lexical content of the essay. In addition, the work compares the artistic embodiment of the image of Optina Hermitage in Konstantin Leontiev’s essay and in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. It allows us to conclude that Fyodor Dostoevsky, endowing the image of Opta’s Hermitage with a sacred meaning, deprives it of the picturesqueness and poetry present in Konstantin Leontiev’s essay. The article concludes that Konstantin Leontiev’s essay to a certain extent approaches the essay genre. It is of special, syncretic nature and is of value not only in terms of ideological and philosophical content, but also as an original work of art reflecting the aesthetic views of the writer, his religious quest and philosophical views. The image of Opta’s Hermitage created by Konstantin Leontiev can be included in a number of key topoi that determine the self-awareness of Russian literature.

Challenges in the Valorization of the Funerary Heritage; Experiences in the Municipal Cemetery of Murcia (Spain)

The cemetery is a cultural landscape that represents themes of great relevance to interpret the structure of a society, roles, and hierarchies, as a reflection of its social life. The cemetery gathers a whole symbolic universe where local social histories are represented, beyond the history of art and the architectural aspect. As a heritage element, the cemetery shows us the socio-cultural changes of a territory: religious questioning, changes linked to the family, individualization of contemporary society or broader questions about socio-economic structure. This article presents the experience conducted during the last 6 years in the Cemetery “Nuestro Padre Jesús” in Murcia (Spain), through a collaboration among the Sociedad Murciana de Antropolgía (SOMA), the University of Murcia and the Municipality of Murcia, developing the project “Funerary Cultures”, whose main objective is to promote the heritage, cultural and historical values of the funerary culture. Specifically, as a result of this teaching innovation experience, the six thematic guides to visit the cemetery are presented as an experience of patrimonialization of elements of the cemetery and its consequent selection and consensus exercise to determine what was considered as heritage in the context of the cemetery. Finally, a proposal of a systematic process in the valuation and selection of the material objects in the cemetery is presented; this proposal allows us to establish a debate on what considerations to take into account when considering the relationship between cultural heritage and the cemetery as a cultural landscape in permanent transformation.

Identity, Integrity, and Religious Doubt in Later Life

Drawing as a qualitative method has been employed to elicit views on aging. The subject matter of the drawings, without an explanation from participants, can be misinterpreted. Therefore, in this research, we explored college students’ drawings of the life course and the extent to which the content of these drawings corresponded to their written descriptions. A content analysis was performed on 524 college students’ life course drawings and their descriptions. Participants drew, on average, five life stages. The majority (75%) of the human beings represented were alone in each life stage. Twelve percent of the drawings were non-human representations of the life course (e.g., flower, tree). The majority of the images (85%) included in the drawings were not mentioned in the written descriptions, for example, hair changes (e.g., from long and straight to curly and short for women). Some physical characteristics (e.g., wrinkles [29%], hunched back [22%]) and some contexts (e.g., tombstones [37%], nursing home [100%]) were present in both the drawing and descriptions. Findings highlight which ideas associated with aging participants thought needed an explanation and which they might have seen as intrinsic to aging, warranting no explanation, emphasizing the importance of examining both drawn and written content when using drawing as a method in aging research. A more thorough and precise examination of the beliefs and perceptions of college students, who will serve as future professionals working with older adults, allows for the development of educational and engagement strategies that accurately target commonly held misperceptions regarding aging.

Exploring associations between existential isolation, quest religiosity, and well-being

ABSTRACT The current work examined the association between existential isolation and religious quest orientation (i.e., spiritual belief uncertainty). First, Study 1 measured existential isolation and quest religiosity along with several measures of social isolation. Replicating past research, existential isolation was positively related to alienation and loneliness but negatively associated with belonging needs and social desirability. More importantly, however, quest religiosity was associated with reduced existential isolation. Building on these results, Study 2 sought to understand how existential isolation and quest religiosity related to well-being by using path modeling. We found that greater quest religiosity was related to lower existential isolation, which in turn, predicted increased psychological and spiritual well-being. These results suggest a complex relationship between existential isolation among the religiously skeptical, and that their openness and acceptance may help them cope with isolation and enjoy psychological benefits.

Review: The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle, by Courtenay Raia

Review: <i>The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle</i>, by Courtenay Raia

ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE MODERN MUSICAL ART OF EASTERN EUROPE

The peculiarities of the world model and the human model in the Eastern European music art of the postmodern era were revealed. The research is based on a hermeneutical analysis of the contemporary Russian and Ukrainian composers’ works. The research method builds on the systematic and historical approaches. It allows to consider the individual musical text as a subsystem of a higher order system. The sociocultural context was considered. The scientific novelty consists in revealing the specifics of the Eastern European artists’ worldview of the last third of the XX and beginning of the XXI centuries. It is the consequence of studying their creativity in an anthropological dimension. The anthropological essence of the music of contemporary Ukrainian and Russian composers lies in a certain inconsistent polarity. The polarity is represented by the ironic and fragmented worldview combined with the religious quest. The awareness of the chaos and apocalyptic culture is combined with the religious support in its various manifestations. Therefore, the character in modern music has a dual essence. He is both marginal and a personality with strong spiritual support. In the works of contemporary Russian and Ukrainian composers, two postmodern worldview poles are organically combined: a destructive worldview and a desire for harmony. This polarity is caused by the crisis mentality of the modern post-totalitarian society.

The Existential Quest: Doubt, Openness, and the Exploration of Religious Uncertainty

ABSTRACT Terror management theory suggests people can manage existential concerns through faith in their cultural systems, including religious beliefs. It is not clear, however, how people with a religious “quest” orientation manage such existential concerns. The present research explored the intersection between existential concern and religious quest. Quest individuals experience doubt, which comes at the cost of greater death-related anxieties (Study 1, n= 654), cognitions (Study 2, n = 167), and vulnerability against mortality reminders (Study 3, n= 226). Second, mortality salience (MS) led people high in quest to become more culturally open-minded (Study 4, n = 100), and less likely to believe-in or commit-to their supernatural agent (Study 5, n = 120). These responses were mitigated when quest individuals were first prompted to explore (a step toward resolving) their doubts and uncertainties (Study 6, n = 462). Implications for quest orientation and existential defense- vs. growth-motivation are discussed.

Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire"

Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire"

Библиография литературной критики и эссеистики А.С. Долинина, 1906–1920 гг.

The bibliography of literary criticism and essays (articles, reviews, literary portraits and parallels, critical and biographical essays, etc.) by Arkady Semyonovich Dolinin (1880–1968), first published here, gives an idea of the field of interest of a great Soviet literary critics before the beginning of his scholarly activity, in the first decades of the XX century. The paper traces the path of Dolinin - literary critic, his appeal to the classical (F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, A.I. Herzen, etc.) and modern (A.P. Chekhov, B.K. Zaitsev, F. Sologub, D.S. Merezhkovsky, etc.) literature, his artistic and aesthetic preferences (from realism to modernism), and his religious and philosophical quest against the background of social and political struggle during the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War. The paper gives an analysis of Dolinin's method: biographical and psychological approach, Critical attitude to the sociological (“pypinism”) and formal- aesthetic (“shklovskism”) methods, comments on the ideological and creative relations with S.A. Vengerov, his teacher at Petrograd University. Special attention is paid to Dolinin's intensive critical work in 1918 –1920 in the Arkhangelsk newspaper Renaissance of the North, where he chronicled Russian literary life at a historical turning point, reflecting on the works of V.V. Rozanov, L.N. Andreev, A.M. Gorky, A.M. Remizov, A.A. Blok, etc. An important achievement of Dolinin was the discovery of young, still unknown talents: L.M. Leonov, B.V. Shergin, A.V. Tufanov.

Self-Determination Theory and Perceptions of Spiritual Growth

College students have reported desire for contextual help cultivating religious and spiritual need fulfillment, yet little is known about how environmental factors achieve this outcome. Guided by Self-Determination Theory, a sequential, explanatory, mixed methods design utilized survey responses of undergraduate students enrolled in a Christian evangelical university (n = 869). Participants answered questions about faith maturity, autonomy, support, and religious pressures in the university environment, and narrated descriptions of their own spiritual growth and the university’s role in that process. Hierarchical regression found that autonomy support more strongly predicted vertical faith maturity when religious pressures were lower. Narrative descriptions were analyzed according to level of internalization, utilizing the self-determination continuum, and reported informational and controlling aspects in the environment. Qualitative results corroborated quantitative results regarding the importance of autonomy support. Findings suggest the importance of Christian universities engaging in approaches to fulfill the diverse and potentially evolving psychological needs of students, including competence, relatedness, and autonomy needs, according to Self-Determination Theory. College administrators are advised to proactively support the cultivation of warm and safe environments demonstrative of religious values and to allow for religious questioning.

The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India. By Supriya Gandhi (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2020) 252 pp. $29.95

Drawing from an impressive range of sources in several genres and languages, Gandhi has persuasively reconstructed, engagingly narrated, and insightfully analyzed the significance of the ideas, life, and times of prince Dara Shukoh (1615–1659), would-be heir to the Mughal Empire (1526–1858). Because each of these genres had its own conventions of exposition and bodies of reference, interdisciplinary historians like Gandhi must master the appropriate methodology to analyze each source individually and then to combine the evidence through intertextual synthesis.The Mughal imperial court sponsored detailed Persian-language histories of the dynasty as well as philosophical and literary works in prose and poetry. Many of these diverse sources contain evidence about the Dara himself and the context in which he was born and in which he developed intellectually, which Gandhi skillfully extracts and weaves into her biography. Additionally, imperial painters constructed images that include Dara, his contemporaries, and their architecture and environment; Gandhi knowledgeably reads and explains this colorful visual language (although the eighteen images included in the book are rendered only in grayscale).Throughout, Gandhi argues that Dara and his closest sister, Jahanara (1614–1681), even more than others in the imperial dynasty, devoted themselves to exploring and mastering Sufi mysticisms, theologies, and philosophies, written in Persian and Arabic. Indeed, both of them wrote esoteric works within these genres. Further, Dara incorporated Indic (“Hindu”) religious traditions through personal meetings with ascetics and through written sources in Sanskrit and Hindi (via Persian translations that he sponsored) in order to prove that the highest truths of Islam could also be found in Indic mystical traditions. Gandhi’s history of Dara’s religious quest for the ultimate truth shows its culmination in Dara’s final book Sirr-i Akbar (“The Greatest Secret,” completed in 1657). While Dara concentrated on the “continued refinement of his inner self and his intellect” in order to make himself “a perfect ruler, one who was also the perfect philosopher” (179, 182), his three rival brothers more successfully mobilized financial and military resources for the inevitable war of succession that only a single victor would survive.Gandhi continually remains in dialogue with other historians, many of whom have characterized Dara as the ecumenical antithesis of Aurangzeb, his Islamicist younger brother (1618–1707), who militarily defeated and executed Dara for heresy, succeeding as the last of the “great” Mughal Emperors. Gandhi’s scholarship demonstrates the oversimplification of that binary argument about the brothers’ influences, instead showing how Dara’s ideas emerged from strong Indic as well as Islamic strands already long present at the imperial court, most famously but not exclusively developed by Emperor Akbar, his great-grandfather (1556–1605). Much of Gandhi’s explicit historiographical discussion appears in her fifty-eight pages of endnotes, about one-quarter of the book (the volume has no bibliography).The accomplished interdisciplinary methodology of Gandhi’s book should make it attractive to a wide readership. She writes in a style and with an authority that makes her work accessible to general readers as well as edifying to specialist scholars. Future writers about the Mughal Empire specifically, and histories of Islam and India generally, will gain much from Gandhi’s work.

A South African view of Pentecostalism as another response to modernism

A popular way used by most sociologists, anthropologists and theologians to define the Pentecostal movement, its origins and growth is by way of the Deprivation Theory, implying that Pentecostalism can be explained in terms of its origins among the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised. However, it is argued that Pentecostal identity was rather formed by its Bible reading practices, its hermeneutics that resulted in its doctrinal understanding of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Full Gospel message and the lifestyle it generated that caused others to convert to Pentecostalism. It is submitted that this was the result of utilising a specific Bible reading method prevalent in holiness circles of the 19th century, which involved reading from a primitivist-restorationist and revivalistic perspective, and also served as the primary cause of the establishment of Pentecostalism and its growth. Individuals were attracted to Pentecostalism not because they were deprived – although many of them were – but with the way they read and interpreted the Bible, the resultant religious quest for Jesus and their enchanted worldview. Deprivation and disorganisation should rather be viewed as facilitating rather than causing its attraction, implying that the popularity of the movement is to be sought somewhere else – in the dynamics of the movement itself. It is concluded that Pentecostalism is a countercultural paramodern movement that defined its praxis-oriented identity and restorationist-primitivist spiritual ethos as a social and spiritual response to modernistic liberalism and Protestant fundamentalist cessationist orthodoxy.

About the embodiment of humanistic values in the G. Presgurvic’s musical “Romeo and Juliet”

About the embodiment of humanistic values in the G. Presgurvic’s musical “Romeo and Juliet”

The questions students ask? A preliminary examination of the questions raised in religious education classes in Catholic schools

ABSTRACTThe importance of religious questioning in establishing and maintaining religious affiliation is well recognised. Questions and how teachers respond to them is also a critical aspect of strong pedagogy and is an important part of teacher training and formation. Many curriculum documents in religious education assume that student questions are an important part of the teaching and learning process. This study seeks to examine the questions that students in Catholic schools raise in religious education class. This has been overlooked in the research literature and it is hoped that work will generate further interest in the topic. The study utilises a mixed methodology incorporating interviews with religious education coordinators as well as focus groups of experienced teachers. Results are discussed for infants (K-grade 2), primary (grades 3–6) and for secondary students (grades7-12). For secondary and primary students, questions are categorised under three descriptive headings; metacognitive; thematic content; ‘Why does the Church … ?’ Infant questions are described using different categories. A range of implications are drawn from the findings including how to better prepare teachers to facilitate, encourage and respond to questions and the demands the student questions place on those involved in teacher formation and in the ongoing support of teachers.

‘I don’t think I ask questions really’

This paper presents the findings from a small qualitative study of young people’s religious and spiritual questions. In addition to the questions asked by the young people, the nature of their questioning will be explored, and their apparent lack of religious or spiritual curiosity. In conversation with the literature on curiosity, a theoretical explanation of why these young people may not be curious about religious or spiritual questions will be presented. Finally, this paper will explore how the interview itself provided an incubator for religious and spiritual questioning, as a context which seemed to provoke – and not simply capture – the young people’s questions.