Religious Revival Research Articles

Idee dżadidyzmu we współczesnej Rosji

The development of the Muslim religion in the Russian Federation is undoubtedly a very important and, at the same time, interesting element influencing the contemporary socio-political situation in Russia. One of the most important components of religious revival in this country was the change in the Russian Muslims’ attitude to issues related to religiosity. In the conditions of religious pluralism, Muslims in Russia, scientists, thinkers, and publicists often refer to the intellectual output of Russian Muslim socio-political activists whose activity took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The article aims to show how the jadidism movement is being received in contemporary Russia. Nowadays, the ideas of jadidism are also the pretext for discussing the nature of Russian Islam and its future.

Right-wing Terrorism and Emerging Threats to the US National Interests

The USA acclaims to be a multicultural land of opportunity assimilating migrant settlers since its inception,but another facet of the USA is a culture of white racial supremacy, and orthodox beliefs regarding blacks, women, religiousand ideological others. The policy of constructing the ideological other, i.e., communism, was the highlight of cold warpolitics. The end of the cold war brought a shift in US policy and led to the rise of right-wing nationalist groups. The Trumpvictory was the triumph of these groups leading to an exponential rise in incidents of domestic terrorism during the TrumpEra. The paper employing Realist IR theory analyzes the Right-wing terrorist ideology through secondary data. One outcomeof the study is that the ideology of populism employing violence is causing civil unrest and is a stigma for USA soft image,and the rise of domestic terrorism is associated with the wave of global religious revivalism.

Seeking a Place for Islam in Post-Soviet Russia

One of the main characteristics of the post-Soviet transformation was the religious resurgence. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the post-Soviet Islamic revival in the 1990s. The awakening of Islam and seeking the place for Muslims in the society significantly influenced the formation of today’s Russian Federation. The authors examine the factors that influenced the role of Islam in newly created post-Soviet Russia and the federal government’s response to its dynamics. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the Islamic revival after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The second chapter is focused on the Kremlin’s reaction to new radical movements that emerged during the Islamic awakening and the separatist sentiments in Russia’s Muslim regions. Using the qualitative research method, the authors drew a conclusion that Islamic radicalisation in post-Soviet Russia was caused by several external and internal factors. The political developments in the Russian Federation between the second half of the 1990s and the early 21st century were characterised by restrictions on religious freedom and consolidation of federalism.

Система традиционного образования в примечетской школе Дагестана: история и современное состояние

Introduction. In the post-Soviet period, powerful processes of religious revival were observed in Russia, which were of a rather complex and contradictory nature. Logical consequence of the Islamic revival was the emergence of need for knowledge of the professed doctrine, which contributed to emergence of Muslim educational institutions of different levels (maktabs, medreses, Islamic universities), that actualized the problem of studying this aspect. Theoretical justification. The emergence of the Islamic doctrine initially contributed to increasing interest in religious knowledge, intensified the need to obtain it, and there was historically strong argumentation for this: in particular, authority of the scientist in society, social status, material welfare of a person, etc. Research methods. The object of the research is Islamic education. The subject of the research is the initial segment of Muslim education in Dagestan in the pre-revolutionary and modern periods. A sociological survey on the study of the initial segment of Muslim education (schools at the mosque) was conducted in 2020 in cities (Makhachkala, Khasavyurt, Derbent) and districts (Botlikhsky, Buinaksky, Kazbekovsky, Khasavyurtovsky) of the Republic of Dagestan. Within the framework of this project, three surveys were conducted (expert, parents and pupils): 1. Mass survey of parents whose children study and do not study at maktab; 2. Expert survey; 3. Survey of pupils of schools at the mosque. The questionnaires were discussed in the Department of Sociology and processed in the SSPS program - 25, for what 3 matrices were created: pupils, parents, experts. Calculations were performed as a descriptive statistics for each matrix separately. Also, a crostabulation (cross-over or conjugation) analysis was carried out according to socio-demographic parameters - gender, age, place of residence, attitude to religion. Among the respondents were parents N = 255, pupils N = 444, experts N = 59 persons. The research method is a mass standardized survey. Results and its discussion. For the Muslim republics (subjects) of Russia, both in the pre-revolutionary and in the modern period, Islam and Islamic education are of great importance. Therefore, in the wake of Perestroika and the expansion of the field for free expression of their attitude to religion, along with the population's appeal to religion, Islamic educational institutions of various levels began to appear widely. The interreligious situation and relationships depend on the quality of education, the used programs and the level of teacher training at these educational institutions – especially in the polyreligious region such as Dagestan.

Антиклерикальный дискурс в современной российской науке

One can often read about the religious revival that came about in Russia after the collapse of Soviet power, both in the media and in scientific literature. According to opinion polls, the majority of Russians are believers, mostly orthodox Christians. The Russian state clearly patronizes religion, at least some specific ("traditional") religions. In socio-political discourse, the prevailing view is that religion is a good thing, and if sometimes religion is a source of problems, it is associated with some deviations from the norm, a perversion of the very essence of religion. This point of view can easily be found in Russian scientific periodicals. However, a critical attitude towards the growing role of religion in Russia is also often expressed in Russian science. The article highlights the main reasons for the dissatisfaction of scholars with the current state of affairs. It is also shown that such works have no influence on the religious situation in Russia. Although anti-clerical sentiments are quite clearly expressed in Russian science, they do not fall into the socio-political discourse, since there is simply no such force in Russia that could consistently promote the principle of secularism. In search of an additional electoral resource and a replacement for the Soviet ideology, the authorities did everything to enhance the importance of religion and strengthen the authority of religious leaders. As a result, today, despite the fact that the real level of religiosity of the population is apparently much lower than is commonly believed, politicians (even opposition ones) are not ready to openly doubt the positive role of religion, fearing PR problems.

Political Reforms as Religious Revival: Conceptual Foundations of Tanzimat

Abstract Parallel to Arab Nahḍah, Ottoman modernization program is associated with the Tanzimat, a period of drastic social, political and institutional transformation. The word tanẓīmāt itself, however, merely means “regulations” or “reorganization” and very little has been done in investigating the conceptual or ideational foundations of Tanzimat reforms. The question at stake here is how these series of reforms were justified and legitimized within the Ottoman political culture. Accordingly, this paper focuses on reform debates among Ottoman bureaucrats and statesmen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and proposes the concept and doctrine of taǧdīd (renewal) as a key to understanding Ottoman reform and religious transformation. Ottoman reformers at the turn of 19th century resorted to the doctrine of centennial renewal in order to both criticize the moral shortcomings of Ottoman political system and legitimize innovation. Within this logic, Ottoman reformist sultans and politicians have frequently been referred to as muǧaddids, that is restorers. This paper will present an account of the concept of taǧdīd based on Ottoman political and historical writing from the period. I argue that Ottoman reform was inseparable from the logic of religious revival and that Ottoman debates should be considered as part of and discussed in relation to the 18th-century Muslim revivalism which has attracted growing attention in the last decade.

The time–space tactics of Chinese Buddhist and Taoist believers under state–religion tension

This study explores the experience of elderly rural Buddhist and Taoist believers in communist China where the ruling party has maintained decades-long regulatory control over religion. Based on ethnographic observation and oral histories, the analysis begins with how the actors made sense of and coped in their relationship with the state during the fieldwork period (May–June 2020) when state regulations restricted public religious practice because of COVID-19. The analysis then looks back on how practitioners experienced tightening state ideological control from the early 2010s to before COVID-19; further back at the religious revival during the opening and reform (1980s–2010s); and finally, the Cultural Revolution period (1960s–70s) when strict atheistic measures were imposed. Their narratives reveal the practical logic (habitus) which practitioners used to mediate their resistance against and compromise with the authoritarian state. Specifically, four logical modes that involve actors’ different time–space tactics were identified, namely state–religion disengagement, state–religion enhancement, religious (dis)enlightenment, and karma. The implications of these ostensibly conflicting modes of thinking in mediating the actors’ resistance–compliance interface in contemporary China are discussed.

Charismatic Christianity’s Impact on Growth and Revival in Singapore: The Case of the Methodist Church from 1889–2012

Abstract This paper aims to explain patterns of Charismatic revival by utilizing a quantitative lens on church growth in Singapore during the mid-1900s. The research digitized and then analyzed data from the archives of the Methodist Church of Singapore between the years 1889 and 2012. The annual conference reports recorded several variables over this 123-year period such as church membership, baptisms, and professions of faith. In recent years, it also records the average Sunday attendance at each of 23 churches throughout Singapore. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the historical data and concludes that, in line with predictions from the cognitive science of religion (CSR), religious revival can serve to energize religious communities that are primarily reliant on rituals with high frequency and low-arousal (see Whitehouse 2004). Typically, high frequency and low-arousal rituals allow for high levels of consensus and social identification among large religious groups. However, as a byproduct of their high frequency and low-arousal, the repeated rituals are predicted to suffer from the effects of tedium, which lowers motivation for the information presented during the rituals and can have negative effects on group cohesion. The ethnographic and historical records investigated within the theory of Divergent Modes of Religiosity (DMR) have suggested that short bursts of reinvigoration can be used to revitalize motivation in doctrinal religions. While the data from Singapore’s Clock Tower Revival events in the 1970s suggest that such an event did occur, the DMR, as traditionally formulated, is unable to capture the dynamics of Singaporean Christian demographics because 1) it does not clearly account for the high number of converts who have entered the religion and 2) it cannot account for the sustained presence of high-arousal rituals in the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Singapore since the Clock Tower Revival. Demographic data from Singapore, in particular the Singaporean Methodist church, complicate CSR’s current approach to tedium because it appears that the religious communities in Singapore have not only sustained their motivation, they have grown since the initial revival period in the 1970s, suggesting that new amendments to our approach to tedium in doctrinal religions may be appropriate (Lane, 2021, 2019; Lane, Shults, & McCauley, 2019). As such, this paper discusses how the data from the Methodist church in Singapore are more easily explained through the use of a new approach toward understanding social cohesion in religions that relies on a cognitive (i.e., information processing) approach that links social and personal information schemas with rehearsal, memory, and personal experiences. The theory also aims to formulate its claims with sufficient specificity to be modeled in computer simulations (Lane 2018, 2013) to be further tested against other historical groups, which this paper discusses in regards to future directions for the research.

Armed Conflict and Religious Adherence Across Countries: A Time Series Analysis

AbstractA fundamental question in the comparative sociology of religion is: What are the drivers of cross-national differences in religiosity? The existential insecurity argument raises the expectation of higher levels of religiosity in contexts of social crisis. We test this argument against countries’ armed conflict experiences, employing global longitudinal data on religious adherence over almost half a century. We did not find evidence of religious revival when measuring the consequences of armed conflict with a 5-year lag, indicating that armed conflict-related social crises do not tend to lead to sudden changes in the religious adherence of a country. However, we did find more consistent indications of a higher proportion of religious people when using accumulated measurements of armed conflict, highlighting the importance of investigating the armed conflict history of a country when assessing its religious consequences. Our results show that countries with a more devastating experience of armed conflict tend to present higher proportions of religious adherence in comparison with countries with a less devastating armed conflict history. We concluded that armed conflict tends to partially drive religious persistence in societies that have experienced it, and that the pace at which this takes place is gradual rather than immediate.

Evangelical “Others” in Ulster, 1859–1912: Social Profile, Unionist Politics, and “Fundamentalism”

AbstractThis article considers the existence of a distinctive form of fundamentalism in the northern-Irish province of Ulster. It does so by examining the Protestant minorities that grew significantly in the decades after the Ulster revival of 1859. These evangelical others are important because their members were more likely to have fundamentalist tendencies than those who belonged to the main Protestant churches. The existing scholarship on fundamentalism in Northern Ireland focuses on Ian Paisley (1926–2014), who was a life-long adversary of Irish republican separatism and a self-identified fundamentalist. Yet, the focus on Paisley draws attention away from the potential origin of fundamentalism in the early twentieth century that is associated with religious revival in the early 1920s and the heresy trial of a “modernist” Presbyterian professor in 1927. George Marsden's classic study defined fundamentalism as an American phenomenon, yet, with Paisley and developments in the 1920s in mind, he noted that “Ulster appears to be an exception.”1 To what extent was that true? Was there a constituency of potential fundamentalists in the north of Ireland in the early twentieth century? If there was, did the social and political circumstances of the region and period produce a distinctive Ulster variety of fundamentalism?

Общественное мнение о роли примечетских школ в противодействии религиозному экстремизму (на примере Дагестана)

The religious revival and religious education are the most important issues for modern Russian society. The confessional revival manifests not only in the possibility to demonstrate the attitude toward the religion (believer / non-believer), but also in the emergence of radical ideas in the mass consciousness, especially among the younger generation. It is expressed in the manifestation of the extremeness of consciousness, moreover, of religious consciousness, which lead to the practices of forceful resolution of the problems. Empirical data show that the population of Dagestan sees in the mosque school, as an initial segment of Muslim education in the Republic, a potential to oppose radical ideology in modern Dagestan society.  The respondents underline that the maktab teachers raise true Muslims, actively opposing the appearance of destructive phenomena whith religious connotation in the society. At the same time there is a statistically small part of respondents, who critically assesses the role of maktabs in opposing Salafi ideology. The results of the expert survey indicate that the state of the absence of the educational structures control over Muslim education and the ideological attitudes of the maktab teachers create a fertile ground for the emergence of Salafi ideas among the students. The respondents suggest the parents of pupils to control the learning process in the mosque school in the framework the of the Russian Federation laws.

Deifying Communist Soldiers: The Coastal Defence Culture and the Continuation of Apotheosis in Contemporary China

ABSTRACT This article examines the history and cultural significance of the Chongwu Army Temple in Fujian Province, which is dedicated to the religious worship of 27 Chinese Communist soldiers. Placing this temple in the context of the coastal defence culture of southeast China, the article argues that the deification of fallen Communist soldiers is not a modern invention and is not as incongruous as it may at first appear. Rather, it is a continuation of the tradition of ‘apotheosis’, or the elevation of great people to divine status, which continues to flourish in grassroots religious life in Chinese society and elsewhere. While the military and government treat the temple as a political resource, it remains a site of active worship for local people, and the religious and political dimensions may sometimes align in a mutually accepted narrative. Thus, local cultural history and religious traditions, as well as the complexities of local politics and civil–military relations, are highly relevant to the study of China’s grassroots religious revivals.

Glossolalia and the Problem of Language. By Nicholas HarknessThe Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil. By Maria José de Abreu

Glossolalia and the Problem of Language. By Nicholas HarknessThe Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil. By Maria José de Abreu

Positioning Religion in International Relations: The Performative, Discursive, and Relational Dimension of Religious Soft Power

Amidst the global religious resurgence in the post-secular world, the field of international relations finds itself unwilling or unable to situate religion back to theoretical paradigms subject to the Westphalian–Enlightenment prejudice. Advocates of religion’s theoretical and empirical significance often turn to religious soft power, a burgeoning theory that gradually becomes the anchorage of discussion but still suffers from conceptual ambiguity and limited explanatory capacity. This essay endeavors to fill in this lacuna by presenting the interdisciplinary attempt to integrate soft power in IR with the three dimensions of power in sociology, which results in a typology of performative, discursive, and relational dimensions of religious soft power. The explanatory and predictive capacity of this model is tested in the empirical case of the evangelical group’s influence on US foreign policy of the post 9/11 Global War on Terror. A process-level historical account based on archival sources furthers scholars’ knowledge of transnational religious actors’ ability to seize both systematic transformations at the international level and contentious dynamics in the domestic environment, which generates a reorientation in norms, identities, and values that contributes to the outcome of foreign policy, thereby answering the un-addressed question of how religion influences domestic and international politics. The bridging of IR, sociology, and historical sociology, three fields often intertwined, suggests a future direction for not only the religious return to IR but also the overcoming of the “intellectual autism” of this discipline, which needs to be better prepared for continuous challenges of soaring populism, nationalism, and clash of civilizations in the twenty-first century.

Is religion the ‘opiate of the masses’? Religion and political trust in China

The past few decades have witnessed a radical religious revival in China, where economic inequality has been sharply increasing as well. This study examines the impact of religion on the Chinese public’s perceptions of income disparity and political trust. The findings show that there is a significant difference in the perceived fairness of personal income distribution between religious and non-religious people. As the opiate thesis on religion predicts, religious beliefs are positively associated with a high level of perceived fairness about personal and national income distribution. Such perceptions of fairness contribute to fostering citizens’ trust in both political institutions and government officials. However, contrary to the opiate thesis, religious beliefs are negatively associated with institutional trust. Moreover, religious beliefs offset the positive effect of the perceived fairness of income distribution on institutional trust. Hence, when income distribution is perceived to be unfair, institutional trust declines more drastically among religious believers than among their non-religious counterparts.

Dead is not better: The multiple resurrections of Stephen King’s Revival

Stephen novel, Revival, plays with its title in several respects. It is first a familiar Frankenstein-esque narrative about a mad scientist who seeks to revive the dead. It is also, however, about religious revivals, both in the specific sense of the religious gatherings held by minister and main antagonist Charles Jacobs, and in the more general sense of attempting to find something in which to place one’s faith in a world where accidents can claim the lives of loved ones. Beyond this, Revival plays with its title in two more senses. First, it elaborates on the recurring theme in King of existentialist angst precipitated by the death of a child or loved one, which King uses to question God’s benevolence or existence. In order to ask these questions, King also resurrects the spirit of Mary Shelley, taking from Frankenstein the theme of reanimation of the dead. The narrative’s conclusion, however, offers yet another revival as it transitions us from the horror of Shelley to the weird fiction of Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft. Thus, through these various revivals, King’s novel charts the evolution of twentieth- and twenty-first-century horror from Shelley to Lovecraft and our contemporary ‘weird’ moment.

Творчество Л.Н. Андреева в рецепции Д.В. Философова (на материале литературно- критических статей 1907 года)

The author examines the peculiarities of the reception of L.N. Andreev, reflected in the literary-critical articles of D.V. Filosofov, written in 1907. The features of his critical method are characterized. It is shown that the interpretation of Andreev’s works in these works of Filosofov was subordinated to the concept of building a “new religious consciousness”, developed by him together with his spiritual allies — D.S. Merezhkovsky and Z.N. Gippius. In 1907, the creative personality of Andreev was still characterized by Filosofov as a “background” figure, in comparison with the personality of Gorky and the cohort of realists united around the publishing house called “Knowledge”. The critic saw the damage to Andreev’s world outlook in the writer’s rejection of “culture”, “consciousness” and “religious community”. At the same time, he strenuously tried to “cut off” Andreev from the “philosophy” of Gorky and the realists of the Gorky circle. In addition, Andreev’s ideological and artistic quest was investigated by Filosofov in the context of such a complex literary phenomenon at the turn of the century as “mystical anarchism”. In general, the critical assessments of Andreev’s work presented in the articles of Filosofov in 1907 are ambiguous and dialectical. Revealing the “strength” and “weakness” of Andreev the artist, Filosofov in many ways showed himself as a critic and “educator”. He not only waged a struggle with Andreev, the singer of pessimism, despair and “nothingness”, but also tried to direct this talented writer along the “correct” ideological path, turn the vector of his creative movement towards “religious revival”, that is, “new Christianity”.

“Book-Life” Metaphor in Medieval Literature and Russian Literature of First Half of 19th Century

The article deals with the semantics of the “book-life” metaphor. Variations in its lexical composition, changes in meaning are described using the material of medieval literature and Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century: on the example of N.M. Karamzin, N.M. Yazykov, P.A. Vyazemsky, A.S. Pushkin. The textual analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the most significant vital bibliometaphors for two cultural epochs were “the book-treasure of eternal life”, “book-world”, “life-edifying Scripture”; “Expense book of being”, “life is a book read a hundred times”, “novel is life”. They express a range of value judgments: in ancient Russian texts, the bibliometaphor ex-presses respectful admiration for the secrets of God’s creation. The axiological component of the vital metaphor of the 19th century is more varied: religious reverence is noticeable in it, indignation at the boredom of the “book of life,” an understanding of Life as an unfinished novel. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that a spectrum of vital bibliometaphors, that nuances the meaning of the metaphor-invariant (“book-life”) is established. An appeal to the diachronic aspect makes it possible to more clearly notice the semantic shifts in the metaphorical language: in the 19th century the comprehension of fate as a “reading” of the Holy Book common to all is complemented by the metaphor of a personal “book of life”.

Gender differences in religiosity: a report on Russian data

ABSTRACT Russia represents the largest Eastern Orthodox population in the World. Contrary to secularization trends in Western Europe, Russia has been undergoing a religious revival promoting traditional values. Extensive evidence indicates that in Christian nations women tend to be more religious than men. But what socio-economic factors explain the gender-religiosity gap in Russia? Using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE), we compare gender-specific religiosities. Fixed-effects regressions show a U-shaped relation between respondents’ age and the probability of being religious with a minimum at the age of 15 for women, and 46 for men. Furthermore, we find that women are indeed more often religious than men and that the influence of religious parents or grandparents on women’s religiosity is higher. Women compared to men demonstrate increased religiosity in response to the death of a family member. However, better education and health status reduce women’s religiosity more than that of men. At the same time, men’s religiosity is more often influenced by that of their wives. In addition, men living in urban areas tend to be more religious than those in rural areas. This finding is Russia-specific and differs from the results found in other countries.

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF CONVERSIONS IN KAZAKHSTAN

Kazakh society went through such policies as Russification and Christianization during the Russian occupation period, atheism during the Soviets period, and religious revival after its independence. After the independence, missionary work of the Christian religion along with Islam increased. As a result of the missionary activities that are increasing today, Kazakhs who have changed their religion have started to appear in the society. This research explores the Kazakhs who changed their religion as a result of the intensive missionary work that emerged after independence from a sociological perspective. Then, the qualitative research method of sociology was used to investigate the current and complex events of religious change. There are three (complementary) techniques that we have used in qualitative research. They are: Interview, document examination and observation. In our research, 25 individuals were interviewed and personal information about them was provided. The process of changing religion and the reasons they changed religion were examined.