Revival Movement Research Articles

Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam by Brannon D. Ingram

Brannon D. Ingram’s monograph casts fresh light on the global life of the Deoband movement, which is “arguably the most influential Muslim reform and revival movement outside of the Middle East in the last two centuries” (2). The seminary (madrasa) associated with this movement was founded in 1866 in the North Indian town of Deoband by religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) who were at once Ḥanafī jurists and Chishtī ṣūfīs. They reimagined “Sufism through law, Sufism as ethics, Sufism in politics” (3). The author elucidates this movement’s internal differences and uses its complex history, in both South Asia and South Africa, to illuminate broader features of global Islam, including “the place of Sufism in the modern world, the position of the ʿulama in Muslim public life, and the very notion of Islamic tradition” (11). The study is grounded in a range of primary texts authored by and about Deobandī scholars. The book’s title, Revival from Below, refers to how the Deobandīs have pursued “a bottom-up reform largely invisible relative to the top-down reform of Islamist political projects” (18). I will return to the limitation of this argument at the end of this review. Here, let us appreciate how the author approaches the binaries that structure his object of study in a dialectical fashion: “Deobandi tradition arises out of a tension—sometimes productive, sometimes strained—between the anthropocentric and the bibliocentric, between the centrifugal force of a global movement and the centripetal force of intimate encounters, between the dispersal of books and the proximity of bodies, between esoteric centers and exoteric peripheries, and above all, between the ‘little’ tradition of the maslak, to which they adhere as Deobandis, and the ‘great’ tradition of the Sunna, to which they adhere as Muslims” (23-24). Download

Ethno-religious socialisation, national culture and the social construction of British Muslim identity

This paper interfaces a specific theory of socialisation, derived from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s influential book The Social Construction of Reality, with the empirical story of Muslim settlement in Britain. It makes a key distinction between the primary socialisation experiences of immigrants, which unfolded in their countries of origin, and that of their diaspora-born offspring whose identity is forged between an inherited ethno-religious culture and the wider British collective conscience. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Islamic revivalist movement Tablighi Jama’at, the paper explores the cultural embodiments of religion as it evolves over generations through an examination of identity markers such as language, dress and food. The analysis triangulates Berger and Luckmann’s concepts of primary and secondary socialisation with a tripartite model of British Muslim identity developed by Ron Geaves. It further argues, in light of Kwame Gyekye’s theory of nation-building, that recent government efforts to promulgate a set of fundamental British values in schools represent an essentially Durkheimian attempt to supply the ‘social glue’ that binds citizens together. While the article acknowledges the increasing salience of religion for many British-born Muslims, it argues for the ongoing influence of ethnicity and nationality in determining their lived experience.

A Study on the Language Situation of the Republic of Dagestan in Russian Federation

Republic of Dagestan is the most diverse ethnic republic (subject) in the Russian Federation, with 30 to 40 languages. For the residents of Dagestan, Russian language is another state language and interethnic communicative language. In the region, the number of Russians has been decreasing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the number of Russian speakers has been steadily increasing. This study looked at the overall language situation of the Republic of Dagestan, where languages of republican level and Russian language are the most common. And the proportion of Russians is the lowest in the Russian Federation, and showed the status and usage of Russian language with the function of state language and inter-ethnic communicative language, and the efforts of the Russian central government to expand and preserve the use of Russian language. The population (105,800 people) and ratio (3.6%) of Russians in Dagestan are very low, but the Russian speakers and usage area are increasing. First, it is mandatory to educate Russian, the state language of the Federation, as a federal entity, a territorial administrative unit in the Russian Federation. Second, because it is essential in the communication between 190 ethnic groups as lingua franca of the Russian Federation. Third, the Republic of Dagestan has 14 state languages including Russian, Tat, Azeri, Kukh, Nogai, and Chechen, in addition to the eight languages specific to the Republic, but the number of users is divided and the prestige of Russian, the state language of the Russian Federation and languages of republican level. Fourth, through the revision of the Education Act of 2018, Russian is not only the state language of the Russian Federation, but also the status of the mother tongue and the education of the mother tongue chosen by parents and students. Fifth, because of passive national culture-language revival movement in Dagestan, it is known that Dagestan is in danger of extinction.

Introduction: The Making of Sámi Religion in Contemporary Society

This Special Issue of Religions approaches “Sámi religion” from a long-term perspective seeing both the past religious practices and contemporary religious expressions as aspects of the same phenomena. This does not refer, however, to a focus on continuity or to a static or uniform understanding of Sámi religion. Sámi religion is an ambiguous concept that has to be understood as a pluralistic phenomenon consisting of multiple applications and associations and widely differing interpretations, and that highlights the complexities of processes of religion-making. In a historical perspective and in many contemporary contexts (such as museum displays, media stories, as well as educational programs) the term Sámi religion is mostly used as a reference to Sámi pre-Christian religious practices, to Laestadianism, a Lutheran revival movement that spread among the Sámi during the 19th Century, and last but not least to shamanism. In this issue, we particularly aim to look into contemporary contexts where Sámi religion is expressed, consumed, and promoted. We ask what role it plays in identity politics and heritagization processes, and how different actors connect with distant local religious pasts—in other words, in which contexts is Sámi religion activated, by whom, and for what?

루터의 종교개혁 찬송 “다함께 즐거워하라”

The aim of this article is to research Luther’s reformation hymn “Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein” and its theological and historical meaning in terms of hymn as a medium of proclamation of the gospel. This hymn was one of Luther’s earliest hymns. We can find that it is, despite of hymn, a meaningful and accurate testimony of Luther’s theology (shown in Luther’s theological work). This hymn typically represents christian soteriology in line with Luther’s theology of justification. This hymn is a spiritual hymn that proclaims very clearly how a sinner comes to grace and reaches salvation.BR It is clear that this hymn serves as a medium of propaganda of the Reformation and the gospel. In other words, Luther’s hymn was a sung propaganda for the Reformation. If the Reformation is recognized as a ‘preaching revival movement,’ it would not be an exaggeration to say that the early Reformation was a ‘hymnal movement.’ The essence of evangelical faith was proclaimed through song impressively and at the same time individually appropriated. This hymn, which effectively conveyed the evangelical teachings, was a “by song proclaimed gospel” and at the same time a “Reformation hymn,” promoting and maximizing Luther’s Reformation and its teachings.

Innovation, professional identity, and generational divides in medicine: The case of gynecologic laparoscopy in the USA.

Studies have linked the diffusion of medical innovations to a distinctive professional project. In this project, physician specialists embrace an innovation, work to advance its successes, link these successes to their core-skill definitions, and use this linkage in boundary work to promote their professional identities and expand their jurisdictions, largely by distinguishing themselves from others within their profession. Drawing from a case study examining the diffusion of laparoscopic sterilization procedures in American ob/gyn, this article suggests that a specific type of revitalization movement may serve as an unwitting catalyst for these innovation/professional projects. To promote a"new"specialist identity, this revitalization movement employs foil labeling in its boundary work that dishonors, not outsiders, but established clinicians within the specialty. This dishonoring motivates these clinicians, as a generational cohort, to embrace radical innovations and break established work patterns. Radical innovations may spread across medical fields, not so much through projects bonding professionals to a unified collective, but through reactive projects within highly specialized fields prone to fragment along generational lines.

“That Was Our Candy!”: Sweet Foods in Indigenous Peoples' Traditional Diets in Northwestern North America

At least 50 different plant foods in Indigenous Peoples' traditional diets in northwestern North America—including berries, root vegetables, greens, and tree sap and inner bark—are known for their sweet taste. Some were, and are, appreciated as confections themselves and others were used to sweeten foods and medicinal preparations. These sweet foods were remembered fondly by many elders from childhood times. However, many of these original sweet foods are no longer widely consumed, having been largely replaced by imported molasses, brown sugar, white sugar, syrup, and honey, which were readily incorporated into Indigenous Peoples' food systems following their introduction by Europeans in the past couple of centuries. This shift in use of sweeteners—as well as the adoption of wheat flour, and other introduced and refined carbohydrate foods—has had both positive and negative implications for First Nations' health and well-being. Today, Indigenous cultural revitalization movements in northwestern North America are drawing on the elders' knowledge and memories of their healthy, time-honored foods to recreate and celebrate ancestral dishes, especially those fondl remembered for their sweetness

Fionnt�n de Br�n, Revivalism and Modern Irish Literature: The Anxiety of Transmission and the Dynamics of Renewal (review)

Fionntán de Brún, Revivalism and Modern Irish Literature: The Anxiety of Transmission and the Dynamics of Renewal (Cork: Cork University Press, 2019), 262 pages. The back-page blurb on this highly significant monograph by Fionntán de Brún, Professor of Modern Irish in Maynooth University, makes the point that ‘revivalism is writ clear in the history of modern Ireland’, a statement with which few would disagree. But the originality of this study is that it evaluates revivalism as a ‘critical cultural practice’, a position that sets out to underline the extent to which all revivals contain within them ‘a set of fundamental concerns which arise from our experience of time, cultural memory and the quest for continuity’. De Brún’s concern in this instance is with literature written in the Irish language, unfortunately not a specialism of this reviewer. Apologies in advance for any lacunae, omissions or inaccuracies that may be found in the lines that follow. The Introduction lays out the author’s ambition very clearly, arguing that the displacement or decline of a language such as Irish makes us aware of the fragility of the medium itself: ‘… initial realisation that culture is a medium, a construct that is negotiable rather than fixed, brings with it an appreciation of the role of agency in human affairs, in particular that if a language can be lost it might also be recovered’. This clever formulation explains de Brún’s decision to follow the fortunes of the Irish language over the centuries and to illustrate how its very precariousness has given birth to renewed interest and vigour at various junctures. There is nothing like the threat of extinction to make people consider the value of what it is they may be losing. Hence de Brún’s study is not confined to the years most often associated with the Irish revival, namely from the early 1890s to the early 1920s. He argues, in fact, that the attempt to revise and revitalise the past is not confined to those years. For example, he cites the Counter-Reformation movement as having been a particularly significant one for the Irish language, in that it produced the first sustained publishing of Irishlanguage books, as well as a marked renewal of language and literary production in Irish. Similarly, Protestant bible societies at the beginning of the nineteenth century, sensing that they had little chance of evangelising the indigenous and mainly rural population in Ireland without making religious texts available in Irish and having people fluent in the language to preach the Good News, set about addressing this void, with positive results for the national language. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 340 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews De Brún’s approach to revivalism draws on the theory of Henri Bergson, whose understanding of time is one where the past and present coexist. Gilles Deleuze brings this further, saying: ‘Not only does the past coexist with the present that has been, but … it is the whole, integral past; it is all our past, which coexists with each present’. Finally, drawing on Nietzsche’s notion of ‘eternal recurrence’, Deleuze highlights the importance of ‘becoming’ over ‘being’. Linking all this to the emphasis one encounters today on ‘new speakers’ of Irish, de Brún argues that his approach ‘reflects the sense in which “becoming” is seen increasingly as essential to language revival and revitalisation rather than an unbroken continuity’. These ideas are undoubtedly complex, in what is an academic study and as such unlikely to appeal to the general reader. But the game is worth the candle for those who persist with it. Chapter One asserts that the type of revival being considered by de Brún ‘is predominantly cultural and linguistic, and is characterised by a common set of fundamental concerns centred on the will to reform the present by recourse to values associated with the past’. The Gaelic League tended to favour the everyday speech of the people over Gaeilge Chéitinn (Keating’s Irish, a concept to which we will return) in its attempts to encourage a new literary language during the 1880–1920 Revival movement. In some ways Máirtín Ó Cadhain...

From Wesleyanism To Pentecostalism: Historical And Theological Perspectives

Undoubtedly, Pentecostalism is the most influential religious movement of the twentieth century. Not only has this movement changed the religious landscape of the world, but it has also contributed enormously to the growth of Christianity in many societies. The contributors to the rapid growth of Pentecostal churches as compared to mainline historic churches have attracted scholarly attention for some time now. Current theological interest in this subject has prompted this study that traces the success of Pentecostalism to its adherence to foundations laid by the Wesleyan Holiness revival movement of the nineteenth century. Through a historico-theological survey, the author contends that Wesleyan teachings and practices such as the authority of the Bible, holiness, use of spiritual gifts, evangelism, social ministry, and others, are key to the survival of global Christianity now and in the years to come.

Examining Our Past Relationship with Climate to Understand Climate’s Current Importance: An Exploration of Climate Change During the Little Ice Age

From the years 1300 until the 1850’s people living in Western Europe battled a terrifying and seemingly insurmountable foe, the Little Ice Age. Examining how people of this time not only survived but thrived during an era of cataclysmic climate change can offer us positive perspectives and productive mechanisms going forward in our own battle with climate in modern times. Explored are massive famines and epidemic disease, volcanic eruptions and their after-effects, specific historical events such as the Black Plague and the Irish Potato famine and how all of these devastating events overlap to create a vivid picture of human fortitude. This article uncovers the tools and ingenuity Western Europeans employed to overcome a rapidly changing climate and how those tools are properly utilized to battle devastating climatic events. In exploring both scientific theory, including anthropological works such as Anthony Wallace’s Revitalization Movement, and the modern church’s position on climate change, this article hopes to address the current circumstance of global climate change and provide a potential way forward for modern humans in light of scientific reason and theological discussion about our unavoidable role in the environment.

Balakot resurgence of conflict and religious, scholarly analysis

Allah initiates the establishment of attainment and achievement, so beginning of one and the same code decreed for mankind is Allah in his rulings, or else its always failure. Simultaneously, it is decreed that they also code everything, even commands and forbidden things and relays it to humans through prophecy, Allah does not speak to everyone directly. So the beginning of prophecy series was done by Hazrat Adam (A.S) and end of the destiny was done by Hazrat Muhammad ﷺ. During Sixty three years of his life in peace He took the process to highest reaching stars, and testimony of the companions of the Prophet's legacy at Hija-tul-wada is a proof. Responsibility for the mission was inherited by scholars who comprehensively handled it in every time and place. Syed Ahmed Shaheed was a renowned member of the same party. His great achievement is that the religion of Muhammad and his followers renewed Sunni embraces it while the first stages, has led to emigration and jihad, that's your secret of success in the eyes of Muslims lies in the same. To achieve this goal, He selected great northwest, NWFP as center of militant activity. Thanks to Allah Almighty whose support and help led to successive victories and made practical implementation of the system possible. Revivalist movement that was near to illuminates the whole country, but people personal interests, greed and love for wealth and splendor began to pursue than the movement turned towards the Valley of Hazara and the final battle was fought here in Balakot too and he received martyrdom. Death of the martyr is the life of nation. Manifestation of the countless Islamic revivalist movement in the sub region which exist today did not deny anyone.

Creating Response-Able Futures? Discussing the Conservative Laestadian Desire to Mother within Reproductive Justice

This article discusses the Conservative Laestadian women’s desire to mother and the procreational ethos of the Conservative Laestadian religious movement in the framework of reproductive justice and ecological crisis. The data draws from my doctoral study in which I examined the aspirations of women who belonged in the Conservative Laestadian religious revival movement in Finland. In my attempt to understand the Laestadian women’s desire to mother within the procreational ethos of this conservative religion, and to form an alternative approach to the issue in feminist ethico-ecological framework, I employ Donna J. Haraway’s concept of response-ability together with Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory of matrixial feminine transconnectivity. With this article, I propose that in their multivocality, diversity, and intertwined nature, the Laestadian women’s accounts of motherhood assist in understanding the many aspirations, intentions, agencies, and affects that operate within the desire to mother in this conservative religious movement. The Laestadian women’s diverging accounts enable us to consider motherhood as a manifold issue for a pious woman: a natural duty and an obligation, but also a position through which to claim the status of a subject. This invites us to think of the Laestadian women’s desire to mother more broadly as an entangled ethics of relationality, care, and kin-making beyond human reproduction. To promote a response-able approach to the issue of the desire to mother on the edge of the ecological disaster, we must address the unquestioned transgenerational and procreational models of motherhood and how these complicate the discussion on the reproductive rights of religious female subjects in the Western world. However, as the desire to mother extends toward shared response-ability and more inclusive futures, it requires questioning the human desire to reproduce.

Islamic law in modern times

This article is devoted to the problem of Islamic law development in modern times. Economic and political backwardness of Muslim countries and especially the fall of the Ottoman Empire exacerbated the crisis of Muslim social thought. It led to searching the ways out of the current situation. Moreover, the revival movement encouraged theologian lawyers to search the ways of formalizing and popularizing Islamic law among Muslims. Within the framework of the problem, we consider the reasons that infl uenced the process of Islamic Law revival, as well as the results of this process. Economic, social and political events in the Islamic world triggered the processes of the education system modernization, led to the revaluation of Islamic Legal Heritage. All these transformations caused the creation of research centres and number of conferences and weeks devoted to the problems of Islamic law came in response to all the changes.

Be Pious and Patriotic: A Comparison of Chinese Christian and Muslim Teaching on Just War in the Early Stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941

ABSTRACT This article will reconstruct how Chinese Christians and Muslims, as civilians, sought a sense of justice in the midst of war through their religious discourses in their magazines, The True Light Review and Yue Hua. It will firstly analyse the particular situation that Christianity and Islam in China faced in 1930s and will compare their characteristics in terms of hermeneutics of their respective sacred texts and the strategy of linking up social circumstance and religious thought. It will study how Yue Hua understood the Japanese aggression through the lens of the Islamic revival movement, focusing particularly on how it argued that Japanese pan-Asianism was not an option for the Islamic revival movement in China. With regard to The True Light Review, it will analyse how the Baptist pacifist position changed during the war and how the writers in the semi-occupied Shanghai International Settlement interpreted their religious teaching to understand the war of resistance as a just war. It will argue that linking literary creativity with deep spiritual piety and solidarity for compatriots is the key to differentiating the use of religious discourse as a mere political tool from religious political discourse.

Korean missions: Joy over obligation

Korean Christianity has produced an exceptionally large number of martyrs. At the same time, this phenomenon is marked by joyful witness in Korea and in other parts of the world. This article explores some of the key stages in the early growth of Korean Protestant Christianity from the perspective of joy: the evangelists in the 1880s, the revival movements in the early 1900s, and the sending of the first Korean missionaries. These examples show that Christian mission was understood more as the natural and joyful outcome of being in Christ than as a duty and command.

African Pentecostal spirituality as a mystical tradition: How regaining its roots could benefit Pentecostals

Western academic theology do not succeed in accounting for the identity and faith culture of African Pentecostals for at least two reasons. In the first place, because as part of the Pentecostal movement it grew from the holiness, divine healing and revivalist movement that went back to Pietism and emphasised a holistic effective spirituality, and secondly, because it links with the holistic tradition of African traditional religions and worldview that share some aspects of the Old Testament realist way of thinking. African Pentecostalism needs another language to describe its unique way of doing theology in direct conjunction with spirituality. It is argued that the language of the time-honoured practice of mysticism is suitable for explaining its spirituality. Theology and spirituality should mutually inform and constitute each other, as emphasised in mystical theology, for Pentecostal theology to be a valid reflection and meditation on the experience of consciousness of the involvement of God. African Pentecostals will benefit by learning from this ancient tradition by using concepts of mystical theology to find words to state the unsayable. The article closes by asking what the language of mysticism would entail for Pentecostals. Several aspects that define Pentecostal spirituality demonstrate their relation with mystical theology, such as a separate experience of sanctification, an acknowledgement of affections in expressing religious sentiments, a different way of interpreting and participating in reality, ecstatic speech and a continual emphasis on a personal, experiential encounter with the Spirit of God.

Jamaat-e-Islami and Tabligh Jamaat: A Comparative Study of Islamic Revivalist Movements

Since the turn of the 20th century, a broad range of Islamic revivalist movements have sprung up in Muslim societies around the globe, especially where Muslims have formerly experienced, primarily through European colonisation, a gradual decline in key Islamic institutions and threats to their identity. Islamic revivalist movements have consequently emerged to inculcate religious principles en masse in the Muslim World through institutional developments, socio-political activities, missionary preaching, and propagation. Movements such as Ilyas’s Tabligh Jama’at and Maududi’s Jama’at-e-Islami are at the forefront of this enterprise and have both demonstrated their potential for bringing about important spiritual and social changes, particularly in Muslim-majority societies. Having been initiated in the Indian subcontinent, both movements currently have global and transnational influence. These two movements, however, have some fundamental differences with regard to their attitude towards polity and social development. In this paper, we compare and contrast the major characteristics of the two movements. A comparative appraisal of these two significant revivalist movements is expected to contribute to an understanding of the socio-religious discourse surrounding the phenomenon of Islamic revivalism. With this comparison, we argue that the differences in their methods are complementary rather than antagonistic, and generally pursue a similar greater goal: reviving Islam and returning society to a stable and harmonious state.

Paradoxes of (In)security and Moral Regeneration in Vanuatu and Beyond

This article examines some paradoxical intersections of fear, security, and morality on Ahamb Island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific. I take as my ethnographic vantage point a child-led Christian revival movement that developed in the wake of enduring political conflicts on Ahamb during my fieldwork in 2014. The revival began as a process of moral renewal and turned into a security measure protecting the island against sorcerers found to be responsible for many of the island society’s problems. In the article, I make comparisons between the situation on Ahamb and the recent political and cultural crisis in the UK and USA where an increasing number of people perceive their moral order to be under threat. In both contexts, new charismatic actors of governance emerge and gain a following by identifying an ‘other’ as responsible for the crisis while convincingly presenting themselves as the solution. An important reason for these actors’ appeal, I argue, is that they appear to take people’s concerns seriously in a way that established authorities do not. However, in both Vanuatu, the UK, and the USA there is a paradox in how the actors present themselves as holding the solution to people’s insecurities while at the same time shaping the context for their emergence.

Philosophical roots of the slovak national revival movement in mid-19th century: A case study on the Memorandum events of 1861 in Turciansky Sv. Martin

Philosophical roots of the slovak national revival movement in mid-19th century: A case study on the Memorandum events of 1861 in Turciansky Sv. Martin

Maya revitalization in the North American classroom

ABSTRACT Studying Gaspar Pedro González’ A Mayan Life offers North American students an introduction to the material and spiritual consequences of colonialism as well as strategies for challenging its domination. This essay explains important historical contexts that clarify the novel’s strategy for Maya revitalization. It also analyzes the ways the novel negotiations the two strategies for revitalization that shaped the Maya response to Guatemala’s genocidal civil war. The popular rights or popular left groups, including the guerrillas, emphasized economic exploitation and land rights while the culturalists focused on strengthening Maya identity, language and religion. These strategies, sometimes intersecting but often in conflict, then played out in the Maya Revitalization Movement. This essay also presents methods for helping students gain ethnographic insights into Maya cultural practices in traumatic times. Through this understanding they can better grasp of the problematic of social change. A Mayan Life presents students a multifaceted testimony of oppression and resistance as well as a manifesto and model for change. It is relevant to indigenous people throughout the hemisphere as well as their allies.