Spiritual Traditions Research Articles

Beyond the Greening of Faith: Contemplative Practice in the Anthropocene

Part of a special section on Creation Care, this essay argues that Christian responses to the ecological crisis ought to move beyond a conversation organized around the demands of prevailing environmental philosophies before which religious tradition seeks to justify itself, and towards a more dialogical, theoretically rigorous, heuristic, and contemplatively transformative exploration of the way Christian communities might deploy their spiritual and intellectual traditions in order to participate in the continuing effort to construct an integral ecological theory, practice, and politics. Drawing on the contemporary ecological criticism of writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Jan Zwicky, and Robert Bringhurst, the essay proposes that the Christian contemplative practice of reading the book of nature (theoria physike) provides a powerful example of what such Christian contemplative formation might look like in the Anthropocene.

Художественное своеобразие произведений Л. И. Чебодаевой для детей

The article, for the first time in the Khakass literary criticism, considers L. I. Chebodaeva’s literary work, which has not previously become a subject of scientific study. The aim is to identify the features of the artistic originality of L. Chebodaeva’s works for children. The scientific novelty is due to the introduction into scientific circulation of works addressed to children as an important material for the scientific study of the modern literary process of Khakassia. The article proves that animalistic images in L. Chebodaeva’s fairy tales, composed as fairy tales - dialogues, are a means of moral teaching, condemnation of human vices. The paper substantiates the use of a literary device in the stories - the boy Ayolka’s dream, the image of the hero-narrator grandfather Amon and the functions of fairy-tale narration. As a result, it has been revealed that, performing disciplinary, educational and aesthetic functions, L. Chebodaeva’s works have such an artistic form that is accessible to children’s perception; they introduce children of primary and secondary school age to the spiritual and moral values and traditions of the Khakass people, nature and wildlife of their native land, beauty and expressiveness of the artistic word and are focused on the formation of a highly moral person who honors their people, land, native language, national traditions, etc.

The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben Kevin Hargaden (bio) Crawford Gribben, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 352 pages. 'The dominance of Christianity in Ireland was never complete and has never been uncontested' (p. 2). So begins Crawford Gribben's superb account of the history of the Irish Church. Over the course of five immensely readable chapters, Gribben takes the reader across 1600 years and demonstrates that the rise of the Church was never as stratospheric as is popularly held, both within and without the Church, and he offers solid ground to place its precipitous fall in context. This is an excellent book, which will be of value to those interested in history, Christianity, or Irish culture. In the opening chapter, Gribben tells a story familiar in rough outline to many – the conversion of Ireland in the fifth century – but with much finer detail than many of us have to hand. Patrick and Palladius, the two main figures in that early stage of conversion, are explored at length. In his introduction and then continuing in this chapter, Gribben elegantly outruns popular theories about the pre-Christian religion of the Celts. What we do know for certain is limited, but this evidence does not match the widely accepted narrative that Christianity came with a persecuting zeal against the pagan beliefs that were prevalent on the island. The conversion process advanced by assimilation rather than annihilation. 'Christians co-opted traditional legends', 'sanctified festivals' and even turned some Celtic deities 'into saints' (pp. 35–36). He also disposes of the idea that can be found in some contemporary spirituality traditions that the Irish Church understood itself as an alternative to the centralised Roman orthodoxy. In the seventh century, Columbanus could write, to Pope Boniface, that the Irish Church were disciples of Peter and Paul who 'accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic teaching' (p. 56). The mission appeared complete: 'Christianity had converted the Irish' suggests Gribben, 'But Christianity might also have created the Irish' (p. 56). In chapter two, Gribben charts how a religious insurgency matured into the most stable institution on the island. A noteworthy strength of the book is how Gribben demonstrates that while Ireland is definitionally peripheral from the European continent, it was never isolated (p. 16). In one fascinating aside he mentions how the partial skeleton of a barbary ape was discovered [End Page 454] at the Emain Macha site in Armagh, dating from a century before Christ (p. 24). If nothing else, this suggests that Irish people were embedded within a wider consciousness long before they joined the European Economic Area and became poster-children for economic globalization! That outward-looking stance was embraced by the Irish missionaries who moved from their local monastic strongholds into Britain and then deep into the continent. The arrival of Scandinavian pirates we now know as Vikings drew 'Ireland into extensive international networks' and, in time, 'together in the structures of a common faith' (p.69). Through Gregorian reform, the arrival of the Normans, the rise of the mendicant orders and the tumult that followed the partial solidification of English rule in Ireland, the Church stayed strong. As Churches across Europe were about to become engines of acrimony with the Reformation, in Ireland it 'existed as a genuinely incorporating body' for the different communities that shared the island (pp. 86–87). The book is about the rise and fall of Christian Ireland, not Catholic Ireland. And chapter three is a fascinating account of how we came to have our three historic Christian identities: Protestant and Dissenter along with Catholic. More is said about why the Reformation never truly took hold in Ireland, but Gribben's suggestion that a key factor was the commitment of the 'Old English families in the Pale' to stay faithful to Rome is compelling (p. 91). A striking insight in this chapter – at least to this reviewer who is a leader in a Presbyterian congregation marked by its busyness – is how dreadfully lax the early Irish Protestants were. 'The small number of committedly Protestant clergy were sometimes left with nothing to do' (p. 99). As haphazard...

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL EDUCATION OF SCHOOLCHILDREN

In this article, the author considers the problem of social education of children. Public education is always in the center of state attention as a strategic issue in all countries. After all, the social education of children is shown as a means of transferring socio-historical experience, culture, spiritual and moral traditions accumulated by mankind, the people and society. The article presents social education based on pedagogical and theoretical ideas. Thinkers have always talked and are talking about the idea of educating the best human qualities in the rising generations. The author believes that regardless of changes in the nature of education, in family education, as a rule, it is necessary to follow family precepts arising from the consciousness of the people.

From Positive to Idealistic: A Methodological Critique of Positive Psychology for Better Research on Idealistic Mentalities in Chinese Spiritual Traditions

Chinese spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism all emphasize the cultivation of idealistic mentalities (IMs) which are (1) not yet achieved, (2) clear in value judgment, (3) systematic and stable, and (4) cultivated with systematic training. While IMs are of interest to positive psychology, the methodology of positive psychology limits research on IMs. Fundamentally, positive psychology focuses on widely existing positive concepts and emphasizes being value-free, which conflicts with the features of IMs. Positive psychological studies relevant to IMs also suffer from methodological limitations: (1) recruiting samples without a spiritual background (realistic assumption); (2) ignoring qualitative differences between levels of actualization of IMs (linear assumption); (3) dividing systematic mental patterns into separate elements (reductionism); and (4) lacking value clarification during interventions. In summary, this article illustrates the methodological limitations of positive psychology in research on IMs. It encourages further research on IMs and supports the necessity of developing a new idealistic psychology for better research on IMs.

IDEOLOGICAL IMPACT ON SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS (BEGINNING)

This article examines the actual aspects of the influence of ideologies on the social life of the entire modern society and on its individual members. The author attempts to provide a theoretical and methodological justification for the answers to the following questions: what do scientists understand by political ideology? how to research ideology scientifically? how is it possible to identify different ideologies? what role do individual ideological doctrines play in politics? In order to answer these questions, the article provides a scientific analysis of the nature and essence of ideology, the specifics and forms of expression of individual ideological doctrines, their impact on public consciousness and social behavior. Numerous discussions about the essence of ideology are reduced to a dispute about the truth or falsity of the set of ideas that is designed to control, including manipulative, mass consciousness and behavior. Nevertheless, there are also objective, value-neutral approaches to this phenomenon. The complexity of an adequate interpretation of ideology is due to the fact that it varies between political theory and political practice, representing a synthesis of fundamental and operational levels, the level of "thought" and the level of "action". The objective, scientific study of ideology, first of all, can be greatly facilitated by the fact that within the framework of ideology as a specific form of public consciousness, integral and relatively autonomous systems of political thought – "political ideologies" function. Within the framework of various political ideologies, a holistic and at the same time specific set of attitudes has been developed regarding the essence of the relationship between the individual and society, society and the state, positions in relation to traditional and modern social institutions. At the same time, they always rely on classical theories of political philosophy. The article provides a detailed analysis of the key constructions of the ideology of classical liberalism, as well as critically examines the neoliberal constructions that, in the author's opinion, led to the transformation of liberalism into a totalitarian dogma of the fundamentalist kind. Following liberalism, conservatism is analyzed, which, like liberalism, is based on a specific set of ideas about the nature of human existence and social life, borrowed from the classical concepts of political philosophy, which form its theoretical core. A differentiation is made between conservative constructions that have been developed in Western Europe and the USA, with their emphasis on aggressive foreign policy, and Russian conservatism, reflected in the works of outstanding Russian social scientists – M.N. Katkov, K.N. Leontiev, L.A. Tikhomirov, K.P. Pobedonostsev, who substantiated their ideas about the existence of the state, the functions of power, about morality and human freedom in line with a conservative worldview. In addition, the conclusion is substantiated that it is the conservative, or rather, moderately conservative ideological doctrine that contains a set of ideas that most fully reflect the geopolitical, economic and social realities of Russia, the peculiarities of its spiritual and cultural tradition

The Concept of Perfection in Lev Karsavin’s Religious Metaphysics

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of the perfect, a key idea in Lev P. Karsavin’s metaphysics that largely determines his understanding of personhood and its ontological status. The associated concept of the perfect person develops throughout the entire philosophical period of the thinker’s work, from his Philosophy of History to his treatise “On Perfection,” written in the last year of his life in the Abez’ camps. In this article, I argue that the concept of perfection is the main structural element in Karsavin’s religious–philosophical system, making it ontologically full and complete. I believe the Christian idea of the perfection of man in God, philosophical variations of which Karsavin finds in Nicholas of Cusa’s system of total unity and Vladimir Solovyov’s idea of Godmanhood, is both the initial intellectual intuition and the ontological premise of the thinker’s metaphysical constructions. His religious–philosophical work has a continuity with Russian culture’s spiritual tradition, where patristic thought of man considers the ideal to be the spiritual transcendence of the person in his striving toward the Perfect God. This evangelic idea turns out to be the central binding element both of Karsavin’s Christian personology and of his metaphysics of history, which is resolved in a metaphysical vein.

CHRISTIAN-SACRAL TRADITIONS OF CHERNIGIV-SIVERSKY REGION

In the article, from the standpoint of cultural research, there is an attempt to systematize the Christian values of the saints, which formed the basis of the cultural and artistic projects of the architecture of medieval Chernigiv and generalize common European, including Slavic-Ukrainian, distinctive traditions of spiritual heritage. They were formed on the basis of pagan mythology, which was transformed into the Christian spiritual world. It was passed down from generation to generation through oral and written culture, preserved in myths, legends, legends, sermons, chronicles, and the Holy Scriptures. It was spread by members of monastery communities, priests, and pilgrims throughout Ukraine-Rus. The philosophical and Christian spiritual tradition, morality, and culture of Europeans have been preserved up to this day in a sacred form. The Christian- European influences of sacred icon painting art as a new historical stage are considered. The Christian-European influences of monumental stone and masonry architecture are considered a new historical stage, which formed the cult of traditions of common biblical images of mosaic-fresco, icon painting art, and local images of princely dynasties, canonized saints, which also occupy a sacred place in today’s Ukrainian architecture.

Origins of Dualism and Nondualism in the History of Religion and Spiritual Practice

In a previous article we proposed that spiritual traditions and practices emerged to counterbalance humans inherent “dualism”, or perceived separation from the world around us, by cultivating experiences of “subject-object nonduality” more commonly referred to as “unification with the divine” or “enlightenment”. This implies that religions (social and political institutions ostensibly based in spiritual practices) similarly aim towards overcoming the separation of self and other. However, many religions include dualistic elements. In particular, many religions incorporate “ethical dualism” in which certain individuals and groups are seen as essentially “good” or “bad”, a feature not seen in nondual traditions. Here, we explore this seeming paradox, highlighting an intriguing correspondence between the degree to which religions include dualistic or nondualistic elements and, respectively, the prevalence of conflict or cooperation as the organizing principle in their associated social context. We find major “dualistic” religions to be generally traceable to pastoral societies largely organized around intergroup conflict, whereas major “nondual religions” are generally traceable to societies in which large-scale cooperation and rule-based behavior was necessary for collective survival. Finally, we apply this pattern to the modern world, speculating that large-scale cooperation and rule-based behavior in modern society may be currently encouraging the renewal of nondual practices in modern social and political institutions that is indicated by the growing popularity of “spiritual but not religious” groups, and that this renewal of nondual practices may in turn set the frame for and reinforce behavior that will be necessary to address the historic challenges of our day like climate change and democratic backsliding.

ИСЛАМДЫҚ ЖӘНЕ ХРИСТИАНДЫҚ ЖЕРАСТЫ МІНАЖАТ ОРЫНДАРЫНЫҢ ҚҰРЫЛЫСЫМЕН ҚЫЗМЕТІНДЕГІОРТАҚ БЕЛГІЛЕР

The article is devoted to the analysis and historical and comparative analysis of scientific data on the underground cults of Islam and Christianity. The content of scientific conclusions concerning the arrangement and activity of underground prayer places of the world's leading religions, their similarities and features in spiritual traditions is revealed.The use of a historical-comparative approach in research on the history of the formation of underground prayer places in the experience and knowledge of world religions determines their common features and similarities. When clarifying the history and time of construction, the functioning of religious underground prayer places, methods of research of theological science were used, which make it possible to accurately determine the typological function of the object, reveal the content of the religious and spiritual activity of underground prayer places, and determine their impact on the social and social environment. Presented for scientific circulation with an analysis of the traditions of worship and architectural similarities and features of religious temples in the world's leading religions.

The Bible between Literary Traditions: John C. H. Wu’s Chinese Translation of the Psalms

In the history of Chinese Bible translation, the Psalms have been a privileged site for the encounter between biblical thinking, poetics, and Chinese classical literature. This encounter was initiated by the translators of the Delegates’ Version, followed by John Chalmers, and outstandingly represented in particular by John C. H. Wu吳經熊. In his version of the Psalms, underpinned by his cultural stance of “beyond East and West”, Wu borrows numerous Chinese idioms and popular verses and transposes Chinese traditions from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Specifically, Wu’s rendition inaugurates an intertextual dialogue between the Psalms and Shijing, involving the disciplines of both comparative literature and comparative scripture at the same time. By adapting various Chinese classical poetry styles for his version of the Psalms, Wu transforms their spiritual traditions and broadens their representation spaces by injecting a Judeo-Christian spirit. Relocating the biblical texts among multifarious Chinese literary traditions, Wu’s translation of the Psalms achieves a deep interaction between the Bible and Chinese culture, provokes questions, and provides insights regarding the relation between biblical theology and intercultural poetics.

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

Smoky Mountain Air: Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music (mini-series)—“E3: Sacred and Spiritual Music in the Mountains”

“It ain't a thing,” I said to Matt Sparks as he approached me to write this review of Episode 3 of the Smoky Mountain Air podcast mini-series Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music. And truly, it was an enjoyable fifty-nine minutes. Since I am a non-American, it didn't come naturally to me to review a podcast from such a distant environment. Listening to the episode, at times, I felt as if I were looking into another world—but throughout my digital visit to the Appalachian podcast-scape, my stay was educational, interesting, and, most importantly, enjoyable. If you are looking for an hour of singing, spirituality, and snack-sized tidbits of knowledge about music and America, set your sights on this mini-series.Set up as a review of the music of the Black churches of Appalachia, the podcast features an array of distinguished professors as they converse about the history and future of America. Standing out is Dr. Kathy Bullock, who accompanies Episode 3 with beautiful singing and piano playing. Joining her are the Rev. Dr. Virgil Wood, a longtime church leader, educator, and civil rights activist, and the hosts: Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson. These four participants put great effort into almost an hour of discourse centered on “sacred and spiritual music.”The interaction of the guests on the show evokes a strong sense of community. They share common experiences of growing up in America and a deep love of music. Throughout the episode, Bullock bursts into songs and hymns glorifying spirituality, perseverance, and the power to overcome hardship. The grace with which the podcast guests traverse difficult subject matter, including a shared history of racial struggle, is to be admired.The distinguished guests are a remarkable beacon of excellence in America. Each participant serves as an example that, despite the hardships of racial as well as economic issues, America manages to produce individuals of extraordinary merit and achievements. In the first part of the podcast, Bullock explains the difference between spiritual music and gospel music. Her explanation is succinct as well as encompassing, pointing out that spiritual music was associated with the enslaved of America, while gospel music is influenced by blues and jazz and, in her words, is “today's spiritual.” Throughout the podcast, there are pauses to enjoy old-timey spiritual music. These rare and authentic recordings carry a tradition of freedom, salvation, and spirituality, as if carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.The podcast is a pleasant hour of discussion riddled with anecdotes about the history of spiritual music in America, and of course, some good music from a distant, yet still controversial past. As Bullock states in the introduction: “If you're singing together, you can't be arguing.”

"The Black Man" by Sergei Yesenin: Motive-figurative Constants and Artistic Genealogy (Mystical Aspect)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the last poem by the bright representative of the Silver Age of Russian poetry Sergey Yesenin. The poem "The Black Man" is not only and not so much the poet's confession before his death, but the result of the poet's work, the logical, albeit tragic, completion of his artistic and life searches. The article examines the key images and motifs of the Yesenin poem in trans-literary and trans-cultural aspects, including references to medieval mysticism, mediated by the Russian literary tradition of the XIX-early XX century. The reception of mystical experience in the artistic world of Yesenin takes place through a rethinking of the traditions of Orthodox spirituality, the European Christian worldview and the romantic picture of the world.

Contributors

Lara Ayad is an independent researcher and art historian. She is the author of “The ‘Negress’ of Alexandria: African Womanhood in Modern Egyptian Art” (African Arts, Winter 2020). She currently hosts the television show AHA! A House for Arts on WMHT public media.Kaira Marie Cabañas is the 2021–22 William S. Seitz Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the National Gallery of Art and Professor of Art History and affiliate faculty in the Center for Latin American Studies and Center for Gender, Sexualities and Women's Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is author of Immanent Vitalities: Meaning and Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Art (2021) and Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art (2018), among other volumes. She also served as editor of the Portuguese-language book O silêncio que as palavras guardam (2021), by artist and therapist Lula Wanderley.Elizabeth Harney is an art historian and curator at the University of Toronto, where she teaches art theory, histories of African modernism, and anticolonialism and global postwar visual cultures. As the inaugural curator of modern and contemporary arts at the National Museum for African Art, Smithsonian Institution, she designed the museum's collection policy and a suite of exhibitions. Harney is the author of Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora (2003) and In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (2004), as well as coeditor of Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Arts (2007) and Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism (2018).Matthew J. Mason is a doctoral candidate at St. John's College and the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. His research explores the relationship between art, exhibition, and politics in the modern and contemporary periods, with a particular emphasis on non-Western art, specifically that of Latin America and Australia.Dorota Jagoda Michalska is a PhD candidate at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her texts have been published in Afterall Online, L'Internationale, and Kajet Journal. She has also written for the Venice Biennale (2017), the Prague Biennale Matter of Art (2022), and Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. Her research currently focuses on questions of race and decoloniality within the context of Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as on global decolonial histories of surrealism(s).Slavs and Tatars is an art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Since its inception in 2006, the collective has shown a keen grasp of polemical issues in society, clearing new paths for contemporary discourse via a wholly idiosyncratic form of knowledge production: including popular culture, spiritual and esoteric traditions, oral histories, modern myths, as well as scholarly research. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions across the globe, including the Vienna Secession; MoMA, New York; Salt, Istanbul; and Albertinum Dresden, amongst others. The collective's practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances. The collective has published more than twelve books to date, including most recently The Contest of the Fruits (2021).Alberto Toscano teaches in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, and the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (2017, 2nd ed.) and coeditor of The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (2022). He edits The Italian List series for Seagull Books.

Incommensurability: an obstacle to the integration of psychotherapy and spirituality. the desert fathers as an overcoming epistemological paradigm

In recent years, the body of literature that deals with trying different ways of integrating spirituality into psychotherapeutic practice has grown exponentially. Probably the interest in this topic has arisen with regard to the inclusion in the DSM-IV of the new category "Religious or Spiritual Problem" (Code V62.89). Until then, religious or spiritual issues had been viewed in the clinical practice as symptoms of some mental illnesses like, for example, the delusions with religious content typical of schizophrenics. But with the fourth edition of the aforementioned manual, there began to be an interest in the study of spirituality as it expresses a fundamental aspect of personality. In this vein, various models of integration of spirituality and psychotherapy have been formulated. Our intention is to study the problem of incommensurability as one of the epistemological and methodological problems that supposes a project of this type. We present the writings of the Desert Fathers as an explanatory model that guarantees an epistemologically legitimate integration of spiritual traditions with psychotherapeutic practice. And for that reason, we argue that their writings could constitute a way to overcome the relationship of mutual incommensurability that apparently exists between scientific rationality and spirituality.

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

ЕСКІ ЖӘДІГЕРЛЕРДЕГІ АРАБГРАФИКАЛЫ ЭПИГРАФИКАЛЫҚ ДЕРЕКТЕР (ҚР МОМ МАТЕРИАЛДАРЫНЕГІЗІНДЕ)

In this article, the author examines the Arabic inscriptions on nine exhibits kept in the fund of the Central State Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Chronologically, these original artifacts date back to the 19th century. Four of them are made of wood, two –of bone and three –of metal. During the research work, the volumes (width, length, thickness) of the exhibits were firstmeasured, scientific characteristics were recorded, and then they were grouped according to the thematic and chronological principle. Verbatim and subscript translations of the Arabic texts of all the exhibits into the modern Kazakh language were made. In the process of translation, the features of the content of the texts of each exhibit are revealed and systematized. In particular, the general content and contextual similarity of unsystematic religious texts on four, i.e. wooden andbone (horse shoulder blades), of these valuable monuments are considered interrelated with the spiritual worldview, customs and traditions of the Kazakh ethnic group. The information in the texts of iron artifacts that are homogeneous in type, but differ in content (iron forms, a single-edged sword, aibalta) is also translated and analyzed. Although the information in these texts is not interconnected, however, they provide a lot of specific factual materials for researchers studying the history of traditional weapons used by the Kazakh people during various wars. The study of various inscriptions on such epigraphic monuments (not only in Arabic) has been carried out by individual museum scientists in recent years. This article is a logical continuation of such work.

Две духовные традиции в творчестве Коста Хетагурова (идеологема жертвенности)

The article is devoted to clarifying the contribution that Kosta Khetagurov made to the development of Ossetian public consciousness, taking into account its special religiosity. For the first time, the religious aspect of Kosta Khetagurov’s creative heritage is considered from a functional point of view, in direct connection with the transitional period through which Ossetian society passed at the junction of epochs. The ideologeme of sacrifice, which he put on the public agenda as a spiritual and moral imperative, turns out to be the ideological basis that allowed two spiritual traditions to be brought to a common denominator. It is possible to discover a plot in which it is declared as a moral maxim, central to his entire work. He puts this ideology in a form that is directly correlated with the cattle-breeding lifestyle characteristic of the way Ossetians live in the mountains and are well known to each of them. At the same time, the image of the shepherd as a spiritual shepherd turns out to be quite organic for the Christian doctrine, in which sacrifice also appears as one of the cornerstones. By bringing two spiritual traditions to a common denominator, Kosta Khetagurov removes potential contradictions, organically bringing together the past and the future, specific and universal, locally limited and having no boundaries. This opens up an opportunity to study the social consciousness of that era not only from a new angle, but also comprehensively and systematically.

Transformative learning in the setting of religious healers: A case study of consultative mental health workshops with religious healers, Ethiopia.

ObjectivePsychiatric interventions that consider the socio-cultural and spiritual traditions of patients are needed to address stigma and improve access to mental health services. Productive collaboration between traditional healers and biomedical practitioners hold promise in such efforts, and applying tenets of transformative learning hold potential for mitigating an overemphasis on biomedical models in such collaboration. We present a framework for how to engage in health system reform to enhance mental health services in communities that are distrustful of, or unfamiliar with biomedical approaches. Our research question was how to bridge two seemingly opposing paradigms of mental health care, and we sought to understand how the theory of transformational learning (TLT) can be applied to learning among Religious healers and biomedical practitioners in culturally appropriate ways to improve collaboration.MethodsTLT informed the development, implementation, and evaluation of an educational intervention in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that aimed to improve delivery of mental health services at two Holy water sites. The initiative involved both psychiatrists and religious healers with extensive experience providing care to mentally ill patients. Using a focused ethnographic approach that incorporates document analysis methodology, this qualitative study examined recordings and minutes of stakeholder meetings, workshops and informal interviews with participants, analyzed for evidence of Mezirow's 11 stages of transformative learning. A participatory action approach was used to encourage practice change.ResultsAll participants exhibited a high degree of engagement with the of the collaborative project and described experiencing “disorienting dilemmas” by Mezirow's classic description. Opportunities to reflect separately and in large groups encouraged a re-examination of attitudes previously contributing to siloed approaches to care and led to instrumental changes in mental health care delivery and a higher degree of coordination and collaboration between psychiatrists and traditional healers.ConclusionOur study demonstrates the utility of TLT in both the design and evaluation of initiatives aiming to bridge cross-cultural and cross-professional divides. The learning process was further enhanced by a collaborative participatory action model adjusted to accommodate Ethiopian socio-political and cultural relations.