Religious Territory Research Articles

Plurality Awareness In Surakarta-Indonesia: Conflict of Map, Awareness of Elite, and Future Challenges

The purpose of the study is to describe pluralism in society and active efforts or positive interactions in the pluralistic environment to create harmony, tolerance, and mutual respect. This research employs qualitative analysis and descriptive analysis as its technique for analyzing the data. The researcher uses his logic when discussing this research, in which the researcher is an instrument of the research. The validity of the result of this research is carried out by data triangulation analysis. The process of validating the result is also carried out with a focus group discussion which involves seven expert lecturers in the history of civilization. In practice, recognition can be made verbally, in documents, and in behavior (attitude). Active efforts or positive interactions can be in the form of mutual cooperation activities, willingness to get along, helping each other, visiting each other, gathering in a forum to solve a problem, or other activities. In principle, conflicts that have occurred in Surakarta can be identified and triggered by several factors: ethnics factors; political factors (macro politics, national and micropolitics, regional; economic factors (the dominant factor); the factor of social segregation, which consists of social segregation based on ethnic trading area, social segregation based on religious territory, and cultural segregation between the Kasunanan and Mangkunegaran communities having different characteristics.

A metaphysics of spiritual experience

AbstractA discussion of the metaphysics of spiritual experience requires that we are clear about the nature of metaphysics, and I take as my starting point the ‘transcendent metaphysics’ described and supposedly eliminated by A. J. Ayer. Most analytic philosophers agree with Ayer (and Kant) that transcendent metaphysics in the relevant sense is deeply problematic, and they associate it with platonism, theism, and religious thinking more generally. Assuming then that spiritual experience takes us into religious territory, and this territory is forbidden, a metaphysics of spiritual experience is going to involve transcendent metaphysics, and it will be similarly problematic. Ayer's conception of transcendent reality is itself deeply problematic, and I shall argue that his metaphysical framework helps to motivate atheistic spirituality by ruling out the possibility of an empirically grounded and hence defensible religious alternative. I shall challenge this framework, set out an alternative with the help of Arthur Schopenhauer, and spell out the implications for a metaphysics of spiritual experience.

From Hilltop Landmarks to Suburban Place Makers: Brisbane’s Post-War Religious Territories and Communities

ABSTRACT This paper examines the shifting urban and architectural manifestations of Christian churches built in twentieth century Brisbane, the capital of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. In doing so, it considers how religious communities contributed to the formation of Brisbane’s modern cityscape. Based on texts published in the journals of Brisbane’s four largest Christian denominations, a chronological mapping of the development of the city’s religious territories from 1945 to 1977, and an architectural analysis of a select number of Brisbane churches, this paper demonstrates how during the post-war era Brisbane’s Churches shifted their urban planning approach from representational hilltop landmarks to community centres, and their architectural manifestation from grand (modern) monuments to suburban place makers. It also discusses what urban and community building strategies were pursued in this multi-denominational religious territory, and how this affected church architecture. While comparable shifts did occur elsewhere, both abroad and interstate, the paper argues that Brisbane, with its hilly topography, property-oriented religious leaders, and lack of government-funded community infrastructures, heightened opportunities for the Churches to use modern architecture and urban planning to express their faith and social values.

The Repertoires of Religious Nationalism: The Case of İsmet Özel

AbstractThis article problematizes the study of religious nationalism, which lacks conceptual, religious, and nationalist “seriousness.” These problems of “seriousness” obscure the nature of religious nationalism as they overstretch and do not do justice to the concepts of religious nationalism, religion, and nationalism, respectively. Seeking for the nature of and a path to religious nationalism, it is suggested that the later writings of İsmet Özel, a well-known poet and public intellectual in Turkey, make an emblematic case for a religious type of nationalism, demonstrating not only religious seriousness with his Islamist ideology but also a central orientation to the nation through his exclusive focus on Turkishness and Turkey. In so doing, this article introduces a wide range of categories to specify the ways in which religious nationalism is operationalized and to measure the patterns of religious nationalism in an attempt to overcome the problems of “seriousness.” It identifies and examines six main patterns in Özel’s thinking and shows their interactions: religio-national identity, exceptionalism, religious territoriality, civilizational othering, sectarianism, and anti-secularism.

Coal, Steel and the Holy Cross: Post-War Churches and Chapels of the Hunter Region, NSW

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarly research into the boom in church construction that took place in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Building on recent work by Lisa Marie Daunt and others, it focuses on a regional location as a noteworthy arena of this activity and seeks to understand the forces behind the appearance of a number of striking examples of modern church and chapel architecture. Due to its development as a major mining and industrial manufacturing centre, the Hunter region of New South Wales became a place of significant church construction. After the Second World War the region experienced a wave of church building activity as authorities looked to accommodate expanding congregations and as new religious territories emerged, particularly within the suburban growth areas of Newcastle. This paper examines key developments in church design and construction within the Hunter region in the post-war decades by considering three areas of architectural change and innovation: the simplification of traditional form, the introduction of new spatial arrangements, and the creation of physically and visually rich interior environments through the use of textured materials. Structuring the study around these areas clearly reveals how change took place in the transition from a conservative modernism to a range of innovative designs. The paper argues that not only do these changes reflect the impact of liturgical reform and the desire to enhance the church-going experience of modern-day worshippers, they also need to be understood in terms of a shift away from the patronage of established local architectural practices to the commissioning of Sydney architects who were employing new ideas for church and chapel design.

“It's All under Christianity”: Religious Territories in Kenya

Abstract This article presents key features of Kenyan Christianity's process of Pentecostalization, emphasizing the phenomenon's dual dynamic of homogenization and fragmentation. Against the backdrop of this inherent dynamism, we introduce the religious territory perspective, which we present as actual and discursive arrangements of (il)legitimate religious practice. The borders of these territories are self-fashioned, and may be redrawn from one moment to the next or over long stretches of time. We argue that the demarcation of such religious territories reveals people's unique conception of their religious environment and their own positionality therein. We thus emphasize the intertwining of moral legitimization and actual practice, and the performative aspect of the discursive presentation of such inner religious geographies.

From Protestant Temple to Ancestral Ox Park

This article proposes to question the movements and the practices of groups of lay exorcists (mpiandry) of the Malagasy Protestant movement of Revival (fifohazana). These groups of a decade of exorcists dressed in white pastoral robes walk through urban neighborhoodsn from the treatment and prayer rooms located in the reception centers of the movement, and the hamlets or rural villages, to the patient's home to take care of. The performance of exorcists fits not only outside the institutional space, but also outside of temporality usually reserved for hunting demons. At the time of exorcism and the burning of magical-religious protection charms, religious takes center stage, and the residential area of the patient's family is temporaly infiltrate by mpiandry. Therefore, the emotions engendered take a more complex dimension that support or rejection of exorcists practices. Exorcists move and surround the hamlet, and religious interferes in the houses of the ancestral village, the court, cultivated land and the ox park (family representations of the Betsileo region and also the economic resources). The neighborhood (sometimes distant) approaches. The exorcists are moving away from their reasons for coming (the illness of a family member) to impose practices on religious territory of ancestor worship. Through this ethnographic case, we will seize religious events in the public space, and the confrontation of secular Protestantism practiced outside institution and ancestor worship. Lutheran Protestantism then come into the ancestral religious territoriality, to its deterritorialization.

The Second Religious Globalization in Africa: Changes in the Religious Landscape and the Consequences for Social Peace: The Case of Cameroon

AbstractThis article describes the changes in the religious landscape in Africa – on both the Christian and the Muslim sides – using the example of Cameroon, with the objective of determining the eventual implications that these changes can have for social peace in Africa. The country has seen a shift from planned and controlled evangelization and Islamization carried out by recognized political and religious authorities, to evangelization and Islamization done by individuals who, even though they represent religious currents recognized around the world, act autonomously. The religious landscape has consequently changed fundamentally on the geographical level: moving from the usual cleavage between the Christian South and the Muslim North to a total breakdown in ethno‐regional religious territories. The same thing can be observed for various Christian denominations, which are no longer confined to their historic ethno‐regional territories. Religious organizations are now set up in an anarchic manner. All of this is taking place in a fragile local and regional environment which could, as argued here, present a genuine threat to social peace in Cameroon.

AnsgarKlein & OlafZimmermann (eds). Impulse der Reformation: Der zivilgesellschaftliche Diskurs (Dynamic of the Reformation: The Civil Society Discourse). Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2017, xv + 332 pp.

Unlike many of the books published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, the focus of this book is neither the events of the 16th century nor the significance of the Reformation for theology and church history. Instead, this volume is intended to reflect the importance of the Reformation for civil society today. Thirty relatively short contributions are organized around seven main areas: the Reformation jubilee; state and society; Protestantism, values, and political culture; churches and civil society; economy and ecology; the social question; and European and international civil society. The authors include university academics, activists, and those in leadership positions in church-related institutions and agencies, coming from German-speaking Europe. In a review such as this, it is impossible to do justice to all the contributions, touching on issues as diverse as gender equality, the role of local churches in civil society, social policy, civil disobedience, development issues, just war and military intervention, and the role of lay people within the church. While some contributions make explicit reference to the 16th-century Reformation and its impact, for others the focus is the contemporary role of the church in society. For those interested in a discussion about the relationship between the Reformation and the modern state and society, the first two sections on the “Reformation jubilee” (3–39) and on “state and society” (31–58) are of particular importance. The essays by Peter Maser of the University of Münster (“History of the Reformation Jubilees” (3–10)) and Thies Gundlach, vice-president of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) (“Culture of remembrance and structuring commemorations” (11–19)) are particularly pertinent contributions to a consideration of the memorialization of the Reformation anniversary since the 16th century. Maser provides a historical overview of previous anniversaries, while Gundlach identifies the tension between presenting past events and highlighting the relevance of the Reformation for contemporary society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the focus of the essays is the situation in Germany, and more particularly the relationship between church and society as it developed in West Germany following the Second World War. Only one contribution, that of Markus Meckel, a pastor and activist in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) who served as GDR foreign minister after the free elections of 1990, explicitly deals with the heritage of civil society and the Protestant churches in East Germany. Overall there seems little consideration of contemporary changes in the German religious landscape, seen maybe most dramatically in eastern Germany, the heartland of the Reformation, which is also one of the least religious territories in Europe. While 40 years of communist rule undoubtedly played a particular role in shaping the decline of religious adherence in eastern Germany, there are also major shifts taking place in the former West Germany, especially in the cities. Moreover, apart from the essay by Jeannette Behringer (“European Civil Society and the Role of Protestant Churches”), there is little consideration of the relationship between Protestantism and civil society as it has developed in other European countries, and just one essay, “The Reformers Were Never in Africa,” by Volker Faigle, deals with the situation outside Europe. This may be explained by the overall shape of this volume, and the choice of authors, but given the oft-made claim that the Reformation was a global event, it might have been worth giving greater consideration to the relationship between the Reformation and civil society outside Germany. Notwithstanding such reservations, this volume provides an easily accessible range of contributions on the relationship between church and society, 500 years after the Reformation. Dr Stephen G. Brown is editor of The Ecumenical Review.

Centring Home in Mobility: Overseas Chinese Christians and the Construction of a Node of Religious Belonging in China

Although the formation of overseas Chinese communities in cities constitutes a major trend in reform era China, conceptualisations of the relationship between the overseas Chinese and China remain divided. The overseas Chinese are seen either as temporary migrants with little attachment to the country or as inescapably connected to China through native place. This paper aims to move beyond this dichotomous understanding by examining the processes of place-making among overseas Chinese Christians in Shanghai, one of China’s major urban centres. It draws on ethnographic research conducted within a Christian network and illustrates how these Christians negotiated the forces of global capitalism, state regulations, and an indigenous Christian trajectory to construct a religious territory and centre Shanghai as home. By showing how they understand their place as Christians, this paper argues that economic restructuring in the reform period enabled the emergence of cities as new centres where the overseas Chinese are making a place for themselves. It contributes to the literature on the overseas Chinese and China by redirecting attention from the native place as the locus of overseas Chinese attachment to the city as a new centre of belonging.

Perspectivas contemporâneas sobre o mundo lusófono

Em um contexto de intensificação das relações comerciais e culturais entre países no âmbito internacional e do incremento na formação de blocos determinados por diversa gama de afinidades e interesses comuns, os vínculos entre os países de língua portuguesa têm despertado um crescente interesse por parte das pesquisas acadêmicas no âmbito das Ciências Humanas e Sociais (Antropologia, História, Sociologia, Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais). Os artigos selecionados no dossiê "Perspectivas contemporâneas sobre o mundo lusófono" são contribuições originais teóricas e/ou análises de dados empíricos sobre os seguintes eixos temáticos: laicidade/secularização e territórios religiosos em Portugal; tradição e modernidade em Moçambique; cultura, internacionalização e a Capoeira; Educação em Cabo Verde e as políticas educacionais globais; movimento social e resistência estudantil no Brasil e Portugal; e por último, a formação brasileira e releituras a partir do Barroco.

New Routes to Iran’s International Trade in the Safavid Era

Safavid era (1501–1729) begins a new age in the history of Iran. With the beginning of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Albuquerque, a Portuguese general, conquered Hormoz Island in southern Iran. ­Geographical ­discoveries, in general, and bypassing the Cape of Good Hope, in particular, in South Africa, changed traditional trade routes in Iran’s international trade. Under the new conditions that the Ottoman Empire held western areas of overland trade routes, Silk Road and Spice road failed in playing their former roles. On the other side, religious conflicts in the Safavid, Ottoman and Uzbek drew new plan of religious territories influencing road map. This paper tries to explain new map of Iran’s trade routes through ­studying Iran and economic and commercial requirements within 16 th century.

Law, Religion, and the State in Singapore

Singapore, an island republic of just over 770 km2 and with a population of 5.3 million, is considered to be the world’s most culturally and religious diverse territory (Pew 2014). Three major ethn...

THE DELEGATION OF THE XVIRI TO ENNA CA. 133 BC AND THE MURDER OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

Abstract In the Verrine orations, Cicero mentions an unusual delegation of public Roman priests, members of the xviri sacris faciundis, to the Sicilian city of Enna shortly after the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Most historians have traditionally followed Cicero's lead in associating these two events, assuming that the religious mission was orchestrated by the Roman Senate in order to influence the Roman plebs in the aftermath of Gracchus' spectacular murder. An alternative interpretation makes the Sicilians the intended audience. A closer look at the evidence for the delegation, however, and consideration of Roman conceptions of religious territory make both connections unlikely. I argue instead that the delegation of priests was motivated above all by territorial religious concerns raised by recent catastrophes in the Roman province.

AGAMA DAN KEKERASAN TERHADAP PEREMPUAN (ANALISIS GENDER DAN FILSAFAT TAOISME-ISLAM)

Violence against women often occurs in various fields of life. The violence is a product of a patriarchal culture that is not just touching the social sphere, but also venturing into religious territory. Religion is considered as a justification and the things that make the practice of violence against women becomes a habit. View of gender bias in the various dimensions of life, including religion also took part in the practice of letting the violence against women, even seen as root causes of the violence. Through the analysis of gender and Taoism-Islam, the issue of violence against women is trying to find a comprehensive explanation for the violence seen not only physicallyquantitative, but also spiritually-qualitative. Relation equal reciprocity in the relationship becomes important bid proposed Islamic gender analysis and Taoism.

Catolicismo "renovado" en Argentina. El caso del "Padre Ignacio": Rituales, sanaciones y nuevos espacios religiosos

En el presente trabajo nos proponemos explorar y caracterizar una de las modalidades que adquiere el catolicismo actual en la Argentina centrándonos en los procesos de transformación de la territorialidad religiosa, en su relación específica con los rituales. Para ello nos centraremos en un movimiento carismático de sanación arraigado en la ciudad de Rosario, Provincia de Santa Fe, que congrega a más de diez mil fieles por fin de semana. En el caso de estudio, notamos que la religiosidad franquea las fronteras de los espacios institucionales formales, para incluir ámbitos externos y distintos a ellos, no siempre con arreglo a preceptos institucionales. Nuestro interés se focaliza en los intercambios efectuados entre el cura, a quien se le atribuyen cualidades sanadoras, y los asistentes, otorgando centralidad a las bendiciones (imposición de manos mediante) y al deber hogareño encargado a los asistentes. En este sentido, buscaremos evidenciar cómo se genera y qué características adquiere dicho intercambio que contribuye en la adopción de un marco interpretativo desde el cual los sujetos organizarán y reinterpretarán sus experiencias.

The Eternal Mother and the State: Circumventing Religious Management in Singapore

Most modern states have policies for the management of religion. For those with diverse religious communities, how to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the various religions becomes an important challenge for governments. Hence, modern secular states often delineate a proper “domain” for religion in society in order to properly regulate it. In response, religious groups, many transnational in nature, can adopt various strategies to respond to state regulation, ranging from resistance, to accommodation, to acceptance. This paper examines how, in its negotiations with state-imposed restrictions, the Yiguan Dao – a transnational Chinese syncretic sect that has experienced phenomenal growth in Asia and beyond – has chosen not to identify itself publicly as a “religion”, but rather adopts a more “secular” identity in its official dealings with the public and the state by emphasising its “cultural” and “scientific” aspects. Further, the sect utilises the practice of religious territoriality to transform officially secular residential properties into the sacred sites of temples in order to circumvent state restrictions on religious buildings. This paper demonstrates how a religious movement can undergo organisational change and adopt innovative territorial practices, and manage to flourish in the face of state regulations as well as the negative views of other, more “orthodox”, religions.

Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 A.D.) (review)

Reviewed by: Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 A.D.) Stephen Mitchell Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 A.D.). By Antigone Samellas. (Bern: Peter Lang. 2010. Pp. x, 556. $110.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-039-11789-5.) This monograph is a recognizable sequel to Antigone Salmellas’s first book, Death in the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 AD): The Christianization of the East—An Interpretation (Tübingen, 2002). Both are discursive readings of the changed mentalité of the later Roman Empire that can be ascribed to the effects of Christianization. Social and psychological alienation, understood in a very broad sense, provides the subject matter that links the first three chapters of the new book. The first, on life as theater, argues that whereas much “pagan” classical conduct rested on the adoption and acting out of personae on life’s stage, a fully internalized Christian set of values required alienation from secular activity and an emptying of personality. By discarding the masks that made an individual visible and effective in society, the inner person was revealed to God’s judgment. The second chapter on the growth of asceticism deals with alienation in its most recognizable form—the retreat of the individual from communal society and the family, already apparent in some philosophical movements, which took extreme forms in the desocialization of Christian hermits and other ascetics and could lead to a level of social estrangement that was the virtual equivalent of death. The third chapter discusses changing attitudes to mental illness and healing in later antiquity, tracing a line from initial stigmatization to a Christian recognition that the symptoms of apparent madness often were to be understood as revealing the character of the inner person. These three essays in social psychology draw on a rich tradition of late-classical philosophical and patristic literature, but one ancient writer provides a welcome linking thread through all of them—St. John Chrysostom, whose sermons on the theater at Antioch [End Page 80] and on the renunciation of earthly pleasures and comforts in favor of the solace of the desert echo through chapters 1 and 2, and whose homiletic letter to the afflicted monk Stageirios is a key reference for chapter 3. The second half of the book moves away from the single theme of alienation to offer a reading of the intellectual and political transformations that followed from the conversion of the later Roman Empire and the internalization of Christian values by Roman society. Chapter 4 suggests that bishops and other Christian leaders of the Christian Church attempted to replace classical utopias with the actualized charitable institutions of the Church, an aim that was inhibited by their need to act in harmony with, and indeed to reinforce, the authoritarian and hierarchized structures of the Roman Empire. Chapter 5, a thought-provoking study of imperialism and Christianity, charts the transformation of Christianity from initial marginality to become a force that reinforced and transformed Roman imperial power. By detaching itself from Judaism, Christianity avoided the destructive consequences of direct political opposition to Rome and was unthreatened by the decadence of Greek institutions through offering an explicit alternative to Hellenic culture. Thus by the end of the later empire, Christian orthodoxy could claim to occupy the cultural and religious territory of both Greeks and Jews, as it provided reinforcement to Roman political power. Chapter 6 explores the paradox that the extreme punishments inflicted on Christian martyrs, which were central to the self-definition of the faith, but nevertheless were adopted as models for their own understanding of proper punishment both in the context of divine and secular justice. Chapter 7, loosely attached to the rest of the book, examines the question of the psychological importance to individuals of reading scripture. This book is long and learned, and its loose structure makes it anything but an easy read. However, the writer has an impressive command of the patristic literature and a productively catholic approach to modern scholarship ranging from social psychology to Greek epigraphy. She does not make the case that alienation is the experience that provides the key to understanding late antiquity, but has provided much challenging historical material to...

Dimensiones de la experiencia identitaria y territorialización religiosa

El artículo se propone analizar la experiencia identitaria de actores sociales que forman parte de la comunidad judeo-ortodoxa Jabad Lubavitch de la Argentina, construyendo una tipología de dimensiones de la experiencia identitaria que distingue entre lo institucional, lo comunitario-cultural y lo espiritual. Dicha tipología permite, a su vez, analizar la construcción del territorio religioso y las relaciones entre el núcleo duro y las periferias. Se observa cómo el proceso de construcción identitaria supone la nuclearización y periferización de los actores en función de estas tres dimensiones. Finalmente, se analizan los procesos de localización y universalización de los referentes identitarios en las estrategias de construcción de la identidad.

La variété des langues dans leChristus totusselon saint Augustin

The dead ends in which communitarianism has ended up call for a renewed emphasis to be placed upon universal ties. In order to understand Christian universality in its original form, stemming from Pentecost, the present article follows Augustine's lead in exploring its grounds in the Christus totus. The inclusion of all those called in Christ cannot be achieved without taking account of local diversity, which the Spirit binds together into a harmonic whole. The cue for Christian universality is the fulfilment of the gift of languages in the preaching of the Gospel for the benefit of every different culture. Taking its rise in the multiple repetitions of Pentecost that accompany the initial spread of the Gospel in Acts, the dynamic universalising tendency in Christianity is driven by a divine initiative which is critically important as the disciples move into new cultural or religious territory.