Salvation Religions Research Articles

Internal Secularisation at the Festival of Saint Rosalia

The dynamic relationship that exists between a religious rite and its territory is interpreted and analysed by religious anthropology as a form of protection, offered by the sacred to the place in which it resides. According to this interpretation, passage through the territory of what is reputed to be sacred or even its very presence as a sanctuary, drives evil away and is believed to perform a generally stable protective function. Within such a dynamic, the rite that actually creates this sacred passage, i.e., the procession of relics, lays the foundations for an analysis of the two specific variables that are, in actual fact, intwined: on the one side is the rite, and on the other, the territory. Such a relationship appears all the more problematic due to the progressive rationalisation of the religious dimension, extensively dealt with by Max Weber (Weber 1920) and accepted by contemporary sociology on religion, as it is now a supernatural phenomenon that is only considered to have a representational dimension. The internal secularization at the festival of Saint Rosalia happened in 2023, with the landing of the triumphal cart in New York. The rite moves to another new territory and transforms it. The cart of Saint Rosalia, preserved in the Columbus Citizens Foundation in New York, represents the identity of Sicilian immigrants but also a new form of ritualization on a new territory through an “ancient” ritual. When the sacred is located within the institutional dimension of a salvation religion presided over by an institution, it appears separate from any purely mechanical (and therefore magical) dimension, while the territory becomes a variable in which a multiplicity of factors are contained. These factors not only give importance to the very aspects of the ritual itself, boosting its civil and secular parts, but also to the religious programme, which undergoes unexpected transformations introduced by the presiding institution. The main object of this analysis is, therefore, to establish an interactive path whereby, on the one hand, the territory, through its various cultural components (both secular and religious), shapes the religious rite and how it places restrictions on those protective functions, while on the other, how the rite places its own constraints on the cultural transformations that take place in the fabric of society.

Religionis et societatis, la mirada arcaica de la razon

In these times of generalized neoliberalism that we are living, as totalitarian gazes are falling, it seems relevant to discuss the social role of religion from the critical-social perspective of modernity and especially, from the humanism of the future. Of course, I will drastically limit the scope this analysis being the topic so broad and complex. Thus, with rigorous humility, I will look at only one basic aspect of Max Weber’s religious thought, framing it and contrasting it with the critical vision of the Mesoamerican tradition. Max Weber argued that all religions form part of a historicaluniversal process whose evolution can be explained as driven by an inner logic constructed by the relentless urge toward the rationalization of ideas and life, especially in the case of salvation religions. This line of thought, with its universalist pretensions, leads us to question the validity of deterministic schemata that should be limited to the Western world and to European concerns -given their reductionism not only when compared to religious visions such as Kierkegaard’s with respect to Christianity (for him rationalism was not enough)- but also inasmuch as they leave out polytheistic projects and syncretic combinations such as the traditional conceptions of colonized peoples (where religions are monotheistic in name only, not having followed the steps of the Weberian protocol), or the ancient civilizational horizons such as China, India or Mesoamerica, whose evolution does not necessarily lead to the sort of final-stage rationality the German thinker had in mind

Muslim Theologies of Solidarity and Disavowal and the Challenge of Religious Pluralism

ABSTRACT Rawls' conception of political liberalism does not reckon exclusivist salvation religions to be, for that reason alone, unreasonable. He posits, however, that exclusivist doctrines of salvation are likely to become more generous in their views of the religious other with the experience of toleration. While the religious welcome toleration by the majority, relaxation of doctrines of salvation dilutes the urgency of religious truth, and so reduces a religion's ability to justify its existence. Paradoxically, political toleration creates a countervailing demand within a religious community to articulate more precisely what is intolerable in the religious other. This paper explores the dialectic between toleration and nontoleration in the history of Muslim sects and suggests that this history offers lessons on the kinds of strategies that can be successful in promoting religious tolerance in a Muslim society, as well as the limits that might reasonably be expected in those societies.

The Two Great Heterodoxies in Ancient India: An Example of Max Weber's Anti-Hegelian Approach

Max Weber's studies on the economic ethic of the world religions are considered very often as being Eurocentric. However, it is not always specified in which regard this is the case. In this essay, I distinguish between normative, heuristic and conceptual Eurocentrism. Weber's Eurocentrism is heuristic and conceptual, but not normative. He adhered to a one-sided analysis of the history of religion from a European viewpoint and with European concepts, but never claimed that the West is superior to the East, contrary to those authors who subscribe to a truly evolutionary model. One case in point here is Hegel's philosophy of religion, from which Weber's approach deviated not only in the theory of concept formation, but also in the interpretation of what could be termed with Hegel a consummate religion. Weber's decisive term here is salvation religion, and for him religions of this type appeared in the West as well as in the East. For the East, early Buddhism and Jainism are cases in point. Weber considered all salvation religions normatively speaking on equal footing, but with different consequences for life conduct, originating from different worldviews and tied to different developmental histories. To demonstrate this is the purpose of his multiple comparisons between the West and the East as well as within the West and the East.

‘Salvation’ (Soteria) and Ancient Mystery Cults

Abstract In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was often held that ancient mystery cults were ‘religions of salvation’ (Erlösungsreligionen). Such interpretations have been criticised by Walter Burkert in Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), who argued against the other-worldly character of Greek mysteries. Burkert’s work remains one of the most important studies of mystery cults today; nevertheless it does not examine the actual use of the Greek word soteria (‘salvation’, ‘deliverance’, ‘safety’), which is central for determining whether Greek mystery cults were indeed ‘Erlösungsreligionen’. This article investigates the extent to which Greek mystery cults could offer soteria (‘salvation’) in the eschatological sense. By examining the language of soteria in the best-known mystery cults in ancient Greece, it will ask whether Greek eschatological hopes were ever expressed in the language of soteria or in other terms. It will be demonstrated that, even when used in relation to mysteries, soteria did not mean anything other than protection in the here-and-now, so that what was offered was predominantly a this-worldly ‘salvation’. If early Christianity indeed derived its most important concept (soteria) from Greek religion, it was a derivation with a significant adaptation and change in meaning.

РЕЛІГІЙНА РАЦІОНАЛІЗАЦІЯ ТА ЇЇ ЗНАЧЕННЯ ДЛЯ ПОЯВИ МОДЕРНИХ ОСВІТНІХ ІНСТИТУЦІЙ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the general pattern of the historical development of Western society, which consists in a gradual increase in the trend of rationalization. Under rationalization is understood the process of gradual replacement of random, situational, openly irrational motives of human actions into logical, predicted, wholerelevant. An understanding of the rationalization and of the by M. Weber explores the essence of the modernist project as a disenchantment of social relations. At the same time, disenchantment was understood by them not only as the liberation of society from the rule of magic and superstition. Disenchantment is the growth of trust in the mind, science, education, rational procedure in all manifestations of social life, which is the leading trend and the internal meaning of the entire era of modernity. The role of religions of salvation is clarified to form integral pictures of the world not only for the religious outlook, but also for the born philosophical systems. It turns out that religious rationalization was only the beginning of the universal process of rationalization of social relations. A consequence of this trend is the differentiation of value spheres and the emergence of New European social institutions: the market, law, bureaucracy etc. Modern transformations are made possible through religious rationalization and secularization. The role of scientific rationality as an educational reference point in the Enlightenment is researched. During this time the school begins to draw knowledge not from the religious tradition, but from science. The importance of religious rationalization for the emergence of modern educational institutions, including secular schools and universities.

Moral Law in International Human Rights: Common Sense, Political Realism, Skepticism

Can a state be moral? The question does violence to common opinion-arousing reactions which might be attached to irony. Wouldn't it prove better for the speech on ethics in international relations to be included in a history of utopia? The notion of morals in an oversimplified acceptance as it is implied in this sentence is that of the religions of salvation or of Kantian autonomy applied to states after World War I. Accordingly, one can understand how deeply and generally prevalent are the postulates of political realism when applied to international relations today, thus amounting to reductionist assertions of the definition of morals.

Confucian Life Orientation

The chapter of Max Weber’s The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism analyzes the basic life orientations within Confucian ethics, and their economic implications. The author suggests that since the Chinese civilization had no powerful independent social class of priesthood, its functions were performed by the state bureaucracy. Furthermore, the author points out the absence of natural law and formal juridical logic in Chinese life, which had a significant impact on Chinese legal consciousness. In the main part of the chapter, the author reveals the essence of Confucianism as a type of rational secular ethics. He emphasizes the freedom of metaphysics, and the secular nature of Confucianism. Weber makes the notion of “decency” central to his analysis of the Confucian ethical worldview. He also demonstrates, through the concept of “deference” (xiao), the structural identity of personal relationships within the family and the bureaucratic hierarchy. The economic views of Confucian-educated bureaucrats, or the so-called mandarins, is analyzed as based on the strict rejection of any professionalization and specialization. The author emphasizes the positive attitude of Confucianism towards personal wealth and well-being, which was not perceived as an ethical problem. Weber underlines the importance of a classical literary education of potential candidates for responsible positions in the civil service, and the resulting personal benefits. Weber also posits the fundamentally pacifist nature of Confucianism. Weber concludes with the thesis of the absence in Confucianism of any methodical life orientations that characterize the religions of salvation.

On the Place of the Study on Confucianism in Max Weber's Work

Max Weber's (1864-1920) study on Confucianism, dealt with in this essay, was first published in a journal in 1915, then, in an extended version, as a chapter in volume 1 of the ”Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion” in 1920. It is here embedded in the development of ”Economy and Society” and the ”Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion” as well as in their interrelationship. It is shown that the study on Confucianism serves a double purpose in Weber's overall writings. From a systematic point of view, Confucianism can be regarded as a border case within a sociology and typology of religious rationalism. From a point of view of developmental history, it can be regarded a backdrop, against which the uniqueness of the Western trajectory is depicted. In Weber's view, Confucian scholarship shares some common elements with Greek scholarship. Both lack the ideas of salvation and prophesy. Whereas in the West Greek philosophy merged with Christianity, a salvation religion, in China Confucianism remained untouched by the idea of salvation. Therefore, Confucianism rationalized world affirmation rather than world rejection and did not create the same deep seated conflicts between this world and the world beyond, which caused a peculiar dynamic in the West.

Max Weber's comparative-historical sociology today: major themes, mode of causal analysis, and applications

Contents: Introduction Part I Reconstructing Major Themes: Introduction Max Weber's types of rationality: cornerstones for the analysis of Rationalization processes in history Should the 'dynamic autonomy' of ideas matter to sociologists? Max Weber on the origin of other-worldly salvation religions and the constitution of groups in American society today The past and present influence of world views: Max Weber on a neglected sociological concept. Part II Weber's Mode of Causal Analysis: Introduction The perpetual and tight interweaving of past and present in Max Weber's sociology Macro comparisons: precautions, possibilities, achievements and limitations The theoretical framework and causal methodology. Part III Reconstructing Significant Developments from Weber's Oeuvre: the Rise and Expansion of Confucianism, the Caste System, and Monotheism: Introduction The rise and expansion of Confucianism in China The rise and expansion of the caste system in India The rise and expansion of monotheism in ancient Israel. Part IV Utilizing Weber I: the Importance of Deep Culture: Introduction: The legacies of ascetic Protestantism and American uniqueness: the political culture of the United States The cultural foundations of modern citizenship. Part V Utilizing Weber II: Multi-Causal and Contextual-Conjectural Analysis: Introduction The origin and expansion of Kulturpessimismus: the relationship between public and private spheres in early 20th-century Germany Culture and the location of work in contemporary Western Germany: a Weberian configurational and comparative analysis. Part VI Conclusion: Bringing Weber Back In: Appendices References Index.

Teaching Truth in Third Space': The Use of History as a Pedagogical Instrument at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah

While there has been increasing academic interest in the intersections between religion and tourism and the management of religious heritage sites, there has been little written on how these sites are interpreted to visitors and the religious doctrines or worldviews that frame the interpretational content and methods at these sites. Using the case study of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, this paper examines the ways in which religious heritage sites are used by ‘religions of salvation’ (Riesebrodt 2010: 66), specifically The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to further their salvation-oriented goals. Not only is the ‘core business’ of religious sites more than just the creation of a ‘sense of place’ (Shackley 2001a, 2001b, 2002), but also involves an emphasis on both the maintenance and shifting of religious identities depending on the religious background of the visitor, making religious heritage sites a type of Third Space (Bhabha 1994; Soja 1996).

Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (review)

Reviewed by: Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience Russell Jeung (bio) Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience, by Carolyn Chen. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. xii + 230 pp. $38.50 cloth. ISBN 978-0-691-11962-5. Religion, I argue, shapes Asian Americans' political, social, and cultural behaviors more than any other factor. Yet Asian American studies tends to neglect this field. Fortunately, Carolyn Chen's Getting Saved in America is a remarkable, much needed corrective to this lacuna as it describes the ability of the sacred to radically transform people. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographies, she eloquently argues that by becoming religious, her subjects also become ethnic Americans. Rather than simply preserving ethnic traditions or facilitating adaptation, religion provides the symbols, structure, and traditions to convert the identities and communities of immigrants. Chen asserts that this process of religious conversion in the United States also entails the transformation of Taiwanese into Taiwanese Americans. This sociological study contributes greatly to Asian American studies and religious studies through its comparative approach. First, by contrasting Taiwanese conversion to evangelical Christianity with Taiwanese conversion to Buddhism, Chen demonstrates how these different religious communities operate. She shows that evangelical Christianity has institutional structures that motivate individuals to become religious seekers. For example, her ethnographic site, Grace Church, hosts small groups, or cell meetings, that function much like a Taiwanese extended family would. As immigrants join these groups for social reasons, they also are exposed to existential issues that encourage exploration of one's purpose in life. [End Page 113] Through this communally informed process, a large percentage of Taiwanese immigrants in the United States have chosen to become Christians. In contrast, Taiwanese immigrants who have been practicing Buddhists have made a choice to adopt a minority religion. In these cases, Chen shows how Buddhist moral vocabularies and ethical practices differ from Christianity, as well as Chinese popular religion. As practiced at the Dharma Light Temple, Chen's other field site, Buddhism is a path toward radical self-sufficiency. Chen's Taiwanese respondents assert that Buddhism is a form of education through self-power and is not a religion. Buddha thus is not a deity to be worshipped, but a symbol of their Buddha nature and of individuals' ability to transcend their worldly selves. By adopting such symbols and ways of religious identification, these immigrants explicitly reject the Christianity of their co-ethnics as well as the popular religiosity of their families in Taiwan. Another contribution is Chen's examination of the gendered differences and similarities in religious conversion. While Taiwanese women and men faced different issues in immigrating, religion helps both to resolve the contradictions in their new American realities. Taiwanese American women chafe at their traditional, familial obligations, especially when expected to work and to be independent in their new American contexts. As they articulate new senses of self through conversion, they embrace identities free from their kin-centered expectations. On the other hand, Taiwanese American men are more likely to face career obstacles in their new countries, such as language barriers and racialized glass ceilings. They, too, adopt new religious identities, separate from their career status, which enables them to transcend their problems. Along with detailing the construction of new communities and new identities, Chen convincingly argues how sacred religion disciplines and changes individuals even at high costs to their freedom. Here, Chen addresses the classical sociological question of how to maintain social order in a context of change and individualism. For Taiwanese, the process of migration uproots them from traditional moors of kinship and relational responsibilities. How, then, do they develop new ethical mores and transmit them to their families? Getting Saved in America illustrates how Christianity and Buddhism, as salvation religions, help to create morally autonomous individuals. In seeking to transcend this world and gain salvation, her subjects undertake spiritual disciplines that require the monitoring of their interior states. Chen shows how Taiwanese American Christians use prayer and Bible study to deal with temptations, while the Buddhists practice mindfulness to avoid negative emotions and thoughts. This self-regulation enables Taiwanese [End Page 114] immigrants deal with what they see as the...

‘Standing Upright Before the Heavens’: Metamorphoses of Customary Christianity

In what sense can we call western European societies ‘Christian’ when for two centuries, at admittedly very uneven rates and with more or less violent conflicts, a general process of secularization has been moving their citizens away from confessional allegiance or non-allegiance, institutionalizing pluralism of religious or philosophical ‘opinions’ and defining legitimate forms for their expression in the public space? By emphasizing the cultural dimension of Christianity rather than its aspect as a dogmatic institution divided into rival confessions and churches, structuralist anthropology revealed the prominence, within local rural or urban societies, of symbolic logics in which it was possible to identify the working of a thinking and mode of transmission - a ‘Christian custom’ - adapted to the changes in the hierarchical relations between clerical competences and civil society. Creating and ordering the world, constructing the person and imagining a destiny after death, mobilizing a number of supernatural mediators in an economy of incarnation and redemption: all these subjects of dogmatic pronouncement and theological speculation are being tested, not only in the teaching, rites and acts of devotion prescribed or tolerated by the church but equally through naturalist or technical knowledge and social practices which are a priori alien to the domain of ‘religion’. In the same way practices ensuring regular exchanges between living and dead as social beings are not restricted to funeral customs and their political ramifications. Narrative traditions and votive practices that are part of the homage paid to patron saints, bonds of spiritual kinship, dream experiences and games of chance: ethnographic exploration of these heterogeneous areas of social life has become necessary in order to restore the coherence, not so much of a salvation religion as of a system of reciprocal obligations that gives substance, in its own way, to the doctrinal inventions of Christian eschatology.

Individualization of Society and Religionization of the Individual

The theoretical strategy of sociologists like Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman employing “individualization” as a key concept to understand the “second modernity” or postmodernity is effective to understand the recent transformation of religiosity in the world. The problematic arises when trying to understand in a coherent way how this individualization and the rise of new religiosity and religion's new role in the public space. This paper attempts to find clues to this problematic by taking up (1) the rise of spirituality concerning death and dying and (2) the growth of spiritual networks through self-help movements. Since the late 1980s, spiritual networks for those facing the crises of death and loss, and for those suffering from addiction and handicap, have increased conspicuously in Japan. This indicates that there is a trend of religionization of individuals who are living in an individualized society. If we broaden our perspective to the whole world, we can also observe the spread of salvation religions in such forms of “fundamentalism” and “cults.” They are proposing to participate in the public space advocating collective religious ties. However, in less distinct ways, those sympathetic with more individualized spirituality are also raising their voices in such agenda as environmental issues and bioethical problems. Individualization of society generates religionization of individuals that is in some manner related to the new forms of participation of religiosity in the public space.

Should the 'Dynamic Autonomy' of Ideas Matter to Sociologists?: Max Weber on the Origin of Other-Worldly Salvation Religions and the Constitution of Groups in American Society Today

Should the 'Dynamic Autonomy' of Ideas Matter to Sociologists?: Max Weber on the Origin of Other-Worldly Salvation Religions and the Constitution of Groups in American Society Today

Should the ‘Dynamic Autonomy’ of Ideas Matter to Sociologists?

Dominant schools of sociological theory today tend to downplay, or even omit entirely, a consideration of ‘dynamically autonomous’ ideas. This investigation reconstructs a case study - Max Weber’s analysis of the rise of otherworldly salvation religions - in which just these ideas are discovered as capable of placing thrusts into motion toward the constitution of groups and social change. Does Weber’s argument regarding the causal impetus of ideas remain plausible in secularized societies? Tensions in the American world-view, it is argued, give birth to dynamically autonomous ideas that, in an analogous manner, call forth new groupings. Analyses of social change in American society that refer alone to political and economic interests, social networks, rational choices, power, interaction, resource mobilization, state authority and structural differentiation are seen to omit an important, if often amorphous, background causal force.

The Truth Will Set You Free: Towards the Religious Study of Science

This article explores the notion that science can be viewed as a religion and that our understanding of science will be enhanced, if we study it in the same manner that we use to study any other religion. More specifically, it builds on concepts developed by Max Weber in his analysis of salvation religions to describe some ways in which science promises liberation and the institutional conditions under which that liberation will take place. While to a certain extent this exploration might be viewed as an effort to demythologize science, it is not an attack on science, as much as it is an attempt to demonstrate the potential benefits of opening up the scientific enterprise to more thorough and creative external examination.

Approaches East and West to the History of Religions: Four Japanese Thinkers

In Japan recently, new overviews for the comparative study of the history of religions have been presented. Taking into account the plurality of Japanese religions, religious studies scholar Yamaori Tetsuo has reevaluated the theories of the history of Japanese religions. Umesao Tadao, a leading ethnologist and scholar in the comparative study of civilizations, reviews the historical phases of religions East and West on the Eurasian continent with his theory of the hypothesis of phasic correspondence. Murakami Yasusuke, a theoretical economist with expertise in Japanese history, studies the encounters between a nomadic society and an agricultural society in the light of Robert N. Bellah's theory of religious evolution to give insight into the origin of historic religions. Another religious studies scholar, Shimazono Susumu, attempts to revise Bellah's theory both with a new framework on salvation religions and with an original understanding of New Spirituality Movements.

Les pèlerinages dans l'Afrique traditionnelle

Strating with experiences originating in the main religions of salvation, one could tend to believe that pilgrimage is a constant factor within the anthropology of religions. However, such a belief is based more upon a particular inventory of the more or less `modern” times of the history of Europe and Asia than on a typical if not exhaustive knowledge of all religious traditions. There is a double question: does pilgrimage exist in the so-called archaic or traditional religions?; and is there everywhere a move to a sacred place, with performance of specific rites? The author produces some elements of an answer to both questions, based upon his knowledge of traditional Africa. Although this knowledge is only fragmentary, and restricted to Guinea and Togo, it is nevertheless possible to define some stimulating guidelines on the topic of pilgrimage within the framework of a conception of the universe which differs both from the traditional Christian perspective and from the space representation developed from Euclidean geometry. In Africa, gods and goddesses are carried away by people to areas where myths and rites may vary considerably from one place or group to another. Religions have predominantly commemorating, initiating or healing functions. The question is whether such a concept gives birth to so-called “memory places” analogous to the pilgrimage places familiar to our societies, and if one of the main objectives of religion was to dominate wide geographical areas by pinpointing sanctuaries.

Shinto and the Typology of Religion

The typology of religion has been attempted by various authors at two distinct levels which may be termed the analytic and the holistic respectively. An analytic typology seeks to identify various elements which occur in different religious systems and to give these names such as myth, priest, prayer, purification ritual, and so on. A holistic typology seeks to consider whole religious systems or traditions as unities in themselves and to classify them in accordance with some overarching concepts. Popular categories here have been prophetic religion, mystical religion, revealed religion, nativistic religion, state religion, higher religion, or (with the anthropologists) great tradition, little tradition, and such like. In a well-founded and comprehensive approach neither the analytic nor the holistic typology should take priority but there should be some interdependence between the two. It seems possible to say, for example, without being finally committed to the concepts currently in wide use, that religions of salvation (holistic typology) do not in their initial form offer or require rites of transition (analytic typology). Cases which seem to count against this should be considered in terms of their diachronic development, for rites of transition may be brought into use as an accommodation to the needs of society. Primal religions, however, (see further below on this concept) would normally be expected to provide rites of transition for