Sacred Traditions Research Articles

Pesaguan Dayak Kanjan Serayong Custom: The Relationship between Catholic Faith and Culture

Integrating Catholicism and Kanjan Serayong culture within the Pesaguan Dayak community exemplifies the dynamic interplay between religious and cultural rituals, particularly in funeral ceremonies, fostering communal solidarity and cultural resilience through a seamless blend of traditional and Catholic practices. This research aims to elucidate how these cultural and religious elements coexist and reinforce each other within the community. Employing qualitative methods, the study includes interviews with three Pesaguan Dayak Indigenous Leaders and informants, participant observations, and literature analysis guided by Victor Turner's theory of ritual structure. The findings highlight that both Catholicism and Kanjan Serayong culture places a strong emphasis on rituals, particularly funeral ceremonies, which are central to honoring the deceased and fostering communal solidarity. The study reveals a profound respect for sacred traditions and cultural heritage, showing that rituals reflect a seamless blend of Catholic and indigenous practices, indicative of cultural adaptation and resilience. This research underscores the need for further studies on cultural inculturation within Indigenous communities, comparative analyses across different cultural contexts, and interdisciplinary collaborations to enhance the understanding of Indigenous spirituality and cultural heritage preservation. Additionally, this study recommends involving local communities in the research process to promote mutual learning and effective cultural preservation strategies.

Совершенная свобода личности и неумолимость культурной истории: Абсолют в религиозной метафизике К.Н. Леонтьева

The following article considers K.N. Leont’ev’s religious and philosophical ideas concerning the historico-cultural process, its fateful direction and its eschatological end. The restriction of individual freedom in the domain of cultural history was assumed by Leont’ev due to his interpretation of faith in a personal God, the Owner of the world’s fate. A specific religious and philosophical thesis was made by Leont’ev that the cultural benefits of man are determined by his own choice between the sphere of obedience and the sphere of revolt in regards to his relation to the Absolute. In the 19th century, humanity was inspired by the spirit of egalitarianism, but while attempting to challenge the divine authority, it will sooner or later find out that it was poorly mistaken and experience the restrictions of human nature in the face of the inevitable and catastrophic end of the cosmos. While being based on the hermeneutical teachings of H.-G. Gadamer, who philosophically rehabilitated man’s historicity and his pre-conceptions of cultural temporality, the author asserts that one should pay attention to the religious and philosophical schemes of Leont’ev in the context of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, which determined his thinking. It may be possible that the application of this method will lead to a more perfect understanding of Leont’ev’s religious metaphysics.

Piety, Purity, and Pain: The Head Shaving Ritual for Women in Ultra-Orthodox Communities and Its Underlying Concept of Halachah

Abstract Within the Hungarian and Galician Hasidic communities, women customarily shave their heads shortly before their weddings. Henceforth, they meticulously adhere to this practice, preserving a shorn appearance throughout the duration of their married lives. This practice has long stood at the center of a halachic and quasi-halachic discourse. An analysis of the arguments presented reveals that the halachic and kabbalistic foundations of this custom are extremely tenuous and largely dependent on homiletical interpretations. Although the precise origins of this practice remain elusive, its proponents have elevated its normative status, venerating it as an ancient and sacred tradition. This study endeavors to comprehend the underlying motivations driving the preservation efforts of this custom. The analysis herein demonstrates that the observance of this custom aligns three fundamentally non-halachic principles: a zealous commitment to minhag (custom); a “lust for asceticism,” historically associated with select Hasidic groups since that movement’s inception; and a demand for self-sacrifice, perceived as an ideal within greater ultra-Orthodox society. This study concludes that the normative standards emanating from these avowed non-halachic principles are regarded within ultra-conservative circles as an indispensable element of the Halachic system, thereby integrating these principles into their broader halachic worldview.

Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition, by Syaifudin Zuhri

Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition, by Syaifudin Zuhri

Духовное кольцо Пскова

Pskov is an ancient Russian city known for its unique architecture, rich historical and cultural heritage. It attracts many tourists annually. Pskov architecture is an integral part of Russian culture and art. The paper presents brief overview of the tourist walking route around Pskov. However, this route forms a kind of sacred ring, including the external band of stone walls of the Kroma stone. It is an example of a unique architectural school of military architecture, temple heritage, and fresco painting. Hence, Pskovites preserved sacred traditions from ancient times, and successfully involved the modern architectural decisions into national art development.

Preservation of Indigenous Women's Traditions and Behavior Within The Framework of Cultural Relativism in Indigenous Communities (A Study of Empirical Approaches in Legal Anthropology)

Customs and values within Indigenous communities form the basis of customary behavior in understanding human conduct, particularly in the context of Balinese indigenous women's behavior as guardians of tradition in an empirical approach to legal anthropology. This means that the legal norms used to observe the behaviors of Balinese indigenous women as custodians of indigenous traditions within the frame of cultural relativism represent legal realities apparent in legal situations or any legal events that genuinely occur within the indigenous community, as manifestations of the indigenous women's behaviors in preserving sacred traditions. This is based on an empirical approach to Legal Anthropology. Whether acknowledged or not by the indigenous community, the empirical approach to cultural relativism fundamentally holds a social and cultural value system that can serve as the social capital of the nation. The community's attitudes and behaviors rooted in tradition are guided by values believed to be true, exemplifying the traditional values and cultures passed down through generations and perceived as instruments for social control and religious values that guide human life, manifesting the preservation of local cultural relativism among the local indigenous community. Indigenous communities in these regions become the focal research site with the hope of safeguarding traditional values as a reinforcement of customary practices, the culture, and the traditions of the local indigenous community, which embody the manifestation of protected local wisdom governed by regional customary laws. The methodological approach utilized involves the Empirical Approach of Legal Anthropology linked with the theory of cultural relativism, leading to the conclusion that the approach involves field observations, interviews with research informants, and analyzing primary, secondary, and tertiary data sources through the lens of cultural relativism concerning the behaviors of indigenous women based on an empirical approach within the context of indigenous customary law.

Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia (Inventing a Sacred Tradition) Syaifudin Zuhri

Buku ini merupakan kajian komprehensip tentang bagaimana tradisi kewalian diciptakan, dimulai dengan pertanyaan tentang pemujaan wali Muslim: bagaimana para wali ini ditemukan, dipasarkan, dialami dan pada saat yang sama ditentang. kultus Wali Pitu memperjelas bagaimana tradisi kewalian disesuaikan untuk memenuhi gaya hidup modern dan permintaan pasar dan bagaimana tradisi yang diciptakan ini dikaitkan dengan formasi sosio politik dan konteks sosiokultural. Secara lebih luas, buku ini mencontohkan tradisi pemujaan wali keliling dalam setting translokal dan dinamika situs ziarah yang dilihat dari perspektif multifaset geografi budaya, batas, dan pertemuan antara Islam Jawa dan Hindu Bali.

Islam and the Contemporary World: Interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr

ABSTRACT In 2009, I had the honour to interview Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is a Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, Washington, DC, as part of the ‘Muslim Heritage Interview Series’. During the interview, Nasr touched on various topics related to Islam and modernity, Sufism, spirituality, consumerism and the environment. Thirteen years had elapsed since that interview and, with so many changes having taken place across the world in this intervening period, I was keen to speak to him again on some of the core themes we discussed then and to see how things have evolved in those areas over the years. The interview with Nasr covers some rare gems and insights from his illustrious career along with the following themes - Islamic Environmentalism, Trust, Resaclarization of the Sacred Tradition, Inspirational Scholars, The Concept of al-insān al-kāmil, Impact of Covid-19, Extremist Narratives, Globalization, Saudi 2030 Vision, Iran, Social and Geo-Political Trends, Traditionalism and Modernity. I conducted the interview with Nasr at George Washington University in December 2022. I do hope that the readers find the interview both enlightening and beneficial.

“Thy Law Is within My Heart” (Ps 40:7). Sacred Tradition in the Hebrew Psalter and in African Indigenous Texts

Every society possesses systems for accessing, preserving, and transmitting its traditions. These are meant to ensure that privileged knowledge entrusted to reliable custodians is passed on unchanged between generations for the preservation of society. In Africa, scholars have advocated new hermeneutical approaches to the study of the Bible, arguing that the adoption of traditional methods of exegesis served as another instrument in the colonialists’ toolkit to undermine the reception and preservation of Africa’s sacred traditions. Using African Biblical Hermeneutics, this paper studies the processes for preserving Sacred Tradition in Psalm 40. Similar processes are found in African Indigenous Sacred Texts such as the mate masie of the Adinkra textual system. I argue, therefore, that a complementary reading of the texts of the two traditions could serve to de-link from the monocular vision of traditional exegesis and offer a much more fruitful approach to interpreting these texts and making them relevant to the contemporary African reader.

Evolution of Sacred Traditions: The Inclusive Transformation of the Besale Ritual among the Suku Anak Dalam, Indonesia

This research investigates changes in the Besale ritual tradition, a ceremony aimed at cleansing the soul tainted by malevolent spirits. Initially conducted privately and exclusively for the Suku Anak Dalam, the Besale ritual has now become an open event in the Dwi Karya Bhakti Village, even accessible to the general public. This study employs a qualitative descriptive method, collecting data through observation, interviews, and documentation, and analyzing it using the Creswell model. The research findings reveal five main patterns of change in the Besale ritual tradition, involving shifts in the value system, cognitive system, interaction system, institutional system, and behavioral acceptance level. These changes did not occur spontaneously but rather through an interactive process involving various social groups within the Suku Anak Dalam. The results of this study provide valuable insights into the dynamics of cultural and traditional changes in society, shedding light on how social factors and intergroup interactions can influence cultural transformations. These findings can serve as a valuable resource for cultural preservation efforts in various evolving societal contexts.

Sources for Christian Bioethics: The Orthodox Discourse on Sin

AbstractThe article discusses ways of developing bioethical guidance in the Orthodox Christian discourse. Here, “ethical” refers to what contributes to holiness, “un-ethical” refers to sin as what hinders man’s foundational calling to holiness. To explore the development of guidance for emerging bioethical issues, we use the “therapeutic” understanding of treatment for sin in two senses. (1) It refers to the spiritual means provided by the “hospital” of the Orthodox Church for healing the fallenness of human nature in general; and (2) it helps identify in particular cases both what counts as transgression of unconditional boundaries (defining what is illicit for everyone) and what is advisable in order to help particular persons to choose rightly within the area of the “more or less licit” (or “permissible”). Sources of the Orthodox faith that frame the general understanding of the boundaries between the permissible and the impermissible reflect the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church framing her Sacred (Holy) Tradition. In Holy Tradition, prayers, as communion with God, occupy a central position. This is why Orthodox moral reasoning, and thus also Orthodox bioethics, takes the form of liturgical bioethics. Penalties of excommunication determine hard boundaries that believers should not overstep: when crossing such boundaries, they enter on a spiritually dangerous path that completely distracts them away from God. Many minor sins, by contrast, have not been codified in Canons. They are not taken to remove the sinner completely from contact with the Lord. Within this realm of actions, it depends on a person’s spiritual maturity whether such actions are classified as sinful. Thus, an act can be counted merely as a small offense if committed by a beginner, while that same act can become a grave sin for an advanced believer. Due to acceleration of the technological progress, Orthodox recourse to Holy Tradition encounters ever-new challenges. There are bioethical issues that had not surfaced at the time of the Fathers of the Church. Today, Bishops gathered at a local council can supply the guidance lacking on a newly emerging bioethical problem. Even if ratified only by such local councils, the resulting decrees can also be regarded as the expression of the Holy Spirit working within a local Church and conveying His guidance. The article illustrates this source of Christian bioethics by reference to how the Russian Orthodox Church orients and develops its position on the ethics of reproductive technologies.

THE PRINCIPLE OF DOMINANCE IN THE CHARACTERS OF THE NOVEL “DEMONS” BY F. M. DOSTOEVSKY (IN LIGHT OF THE ETHICAL TEACHINGS OF A. A. UKHTOMSKY)

The article reveals the author’s model of the world in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” based on the analysis of the genre content of the work. Appeal to the allusive plan of the novel (allusions to the motifs, images, landscapes in Goethe’s drama “Faust” and I. S. Turgenev’s story “Faust”) allows the reader to engage in a kind of dialogue between Dostoevsky and his predecessors. However, the traditions of ancient Russian literature (traditions of the vision genre, orientation to the church calendar, reliance on the biblical word and Holy Tradition) allow us to draw a conclusion about the national originality of the work. In the hierarchical structure of the novel, the highest place is occupied by the Gospel Word and the patristic heritage, Sacred Tradition. The concept of personality in the novel allows us to reveal the ethical teaching of A. A. Ukhtomsky about the dominant and the chronotope. The article for the first time considers the Ukhtomsky’s concept of the dominant using the material of Stavrogin’s “confession” and the fate of Stepan Trofimovich, and concludes that a new dominant of heroes has been formed. The significance of the novel “Demons” lies not only in the warning about the destructive processes that can occur in society and in man, but also in the depiction of ways out of the crisis and restoring the personality, in particular, Shatov, Stepan Trofimovich and other heroes are helped by conciliar consciousness, faith in the Providence of God, love, and readiness for repentance. The study was carried out on the material of the reconstructed journal edition of the novel, carried out in the Complete Works (canonical texts).

"My Church": Nostalgia, Tradition, and the Rise of the Secular Praise and Worship Anthem

Maren Morris’s song, “My Church,” is hardly controversial, with harmonies, form, and lyrics that give reverential honor to country music’s conservative and sacred traditions. “My Church” fits well within this conservative tradition, yet evangelical websites were replete with warnings of the dangerous threat planted by Morris’s secular restructuring of the traditional church and included strategies for how to thwart such threats. This article analyzes Morris’s song and music video, searching for musical, lyrical, and cultural reasons for that negative response and explores the meaning of religion through the reaction to the song.

Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination, by Braxton D. Shelley

<i>Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination</i>, by Braxton D. Shelley

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

Authority and Servant Leadership: Effective Tool for Service in the Church &amp; Society in Africa

Authority is likening to a driving agent, which is divine or human. By experimental and analytical method, we explore the magisterial interpretation by evaluating modern trends on the application of authority. Research examines the Christian teachings from the Bible and Sacred Tradition. Jesus Christ had taught the principle of pragmatic authority based on Servant Leadership at the washing of His Disciples’ feet. The quest for a Servant Leader: to feed the poor, to protect orphans, to fight for justice in Africa; is value-style of leadership in the 21st century world.

From Russian Theurgical Aesthetics to the Utopian Theurgy of Beauty and Art in the Russian Diaspora Philosophy

The paper is devoted to the analysis of theurgic aesthetics in relation to the concept of utopia that initiates a different understanding of the philosophy of the Russian diaspora representatives through the prism of utopian theurgy of beauty and art. Introducing the idea of utopian theurgy of beauty and art the authors emphasize its meaningful, axiological component. The authors interpret the utopian theurgy of beauty and art in the Russian diaspora philosophy of the first third of the 20th century as an aesthetically mystical experience of the imperfection of human earthly existence that causes a gap with socio-historical reality with direct co-existence of the creative individual with God who is considered to be the true Beauty, the cosmic Harmony, and the universal Love. The meaning of the utopian theurgy of beauty and art is in achieving the goal of possible union with the deity, as well as in affirming persons actions as a co-creator of the world process. The utopian theurgy of beauty and art of an optimistic nature, associated with the light of hope directed to the transformation of earthly existence is reflected in N.S. Arsenyev's idea of spiritual joy achievable in the mystical experience of "longing for Beauty in God"; in B.P. Vysheslavtsev's reflections about the artistic and creative embodiment of eros as thirst, the birth of the God-Man in beauty, as well as in I.A. Ilyin's philosophy, in which, despite disappointments in social changes, the faith in art as the Mystery, as "a service and a joy" always following sacred traditions is preserved. The aesthetic and pessimistic foundations of utopian theurgy are realized in the aesthetic views of V.V. Weidle, according to which art has lost its orientation to high objective spirituality; in S.L. Frank's idea of unrealized Beauty as a dream of the ultimate transformation of the world that is opposed by the bitter reality of the split of being; as well as in the philosophy of N.A. Berdyaev, who postulates the tragedy of earthly existence caused by the unattainability of the full realization of the cosmic Beauty that considers as the goal of the world process. N.O. Lossky's metaphysics, intuitionism and value system are of particular importance, as the utopian theurgy of beauty and art consists in the following: there always remains a share of the absolute truth in art that is the world of illusions and artists imagination; the absolute value of beauty universally valid for all substantial personalities is affirmed.

Authority and Servant Leadership: Effective Tool For Service in The Church &amp; Society in Africa

Authority is likening to a driving agent, which is divine or human. By experimental and analytical method, we explore the magisterial interpretation by evaluating modern trends on the application of authority. Research examines the Christian teachings from the Bible and Sacred Tradition. Jesus Christ had taught the principle of pragmatic authority based on Servant Leadership at the washing of His Disciples’ feet. The quest for a Servant Leader: to feed the poor, to protect orphans, to fight for justice in Africa; is value-style of leadership in the 21st century world.

Book Review: Operation Chaos: The Trump Coup Attempt and the Campaign to Erode Democracy, by Kevin James Shay

On January 6, 2021, a feat that could not be accomplished by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War was pulled off by an insurrectionist. That day, a man marched through the Capitol building carrying the Confederate battle flag over his shoulder. In an utterly disappointing moment for American history, his photo was captured as he stood in front of two paintings of men who held very different beliefs: Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun, the former vice president who fought for the preservation of the institution of slavery. The hopes, dreams, and ideals of the confederacy stormed the Capitol that day, all because of a U.S. president who could not understand one of the most sacred traditions of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. It is difficult to understand how some individuals choose to dismiss this attack on democracy and to ignore or misunderstand election administration processes and election results. Operation Chaos: The Trump Coup Attempt and the Campaign to Erode Democracy by Kevin James Shay takes on the question of why some individuals would go so far as to breach the U.S. Capitol in support of a president who seemingly had very little regard for democratic norms, practices, and institutions.