Spiritual Power Research Articles

Who’s Afraid of Identity Politics?

Who’s Afraid of Identity Politics?

Uncommon, undeclared oesophageal foreign bodies

We report two cases of unusual and undeclared oesophageal foreign bodies. A small double-rounded calabash or bottle gourd Lagenaria siceraria, stuffed with traditional medicine designed to acquire spiritual power. A whole tricotyledonous kola nut Cola nitida also designed to make medicine to gain love from a woman after passing it out in stool. Each case presented with a sudden onset of total dysphagia and history of ingestion of foreign bodies was not volunteered by any despite direct questioning. Plain radiograph of the neck and chest in either case did not reveal presence of foreign body. Both were successfully removed through rigid oesophagoscopy.

Signo, significação e discurso

This paper intends to present the foundations of the greimasian semiotic theory and their new theoretical developments. We also introduce the linguistic concepts proposed by Saussure and Hjemslev and their development in semiotics of passions and in tensive semiotics. To demonstrate the application of the theory, a publicity text is analyzed. This text is organized around the figure of Jesus Christ. The notion of Christ’s spiritual power in western society enables the understanding and the integration of internal and external values in the concept of man. The divergent values represented by the self and the other – fundamental concepts in the development of human thinking – are integrated in the notion of compassion and Christian pain. In the idea of compassion of Christ, the self and the other share a place of equal values. In the contemporary representations of Christ, the sacred-Christian values are attenuated and there is a development of other values associated to the image of Christ. The figure of Christ is still recognizable, but the sacred pain is no longer central in contemporary discourse. The symbols and religious figures are fundamental elements in the area of culture and the changes in values related with these figures reflect (and refract) changes in the social organization.

Swords into Ploughshares? Ante‐Nicene Christianity and the Ethics of Political Violence

AbstractChristian attitudes to power, politics, and violence have been complex and multifaceted for over two thousand years. On the one hand, the idea that all warfare is unjust might well originate with Christianity and its teachings; on the other hand, it is true that the Church’s policies have been sufficiently flexible for Christianity to become the great crusader religion. In this context there is a contrast in thinking between what Christianity was once presumed to be and what it became but perhaps ought not to be. It is traditionally accepted that during the Ante‐Nicene Period (approximately its first three centuries) the Church was essentially pacifist before it was ‘militarised’ by Constantine’s unification of temporal and spiritual power in the early fourth century. The basic purpose of this review is to give a sense of the beliefs of Ante‐Nicene Christianity, to test the historical validity of exemplary but competing claims, and by so doing expose and unpack the quintessential normative character of the debate.

Spiritual power: the internal, renewable social power source

Models of social power have not included spirituality as a source of power, which may miss an important dynamic in organizations. A definition of spiritual power is proposed based on empirically demonstrated effects of spiritual practice. Unlike other sources of power, spiritual power is independent of external resources, does not deplete as it is spent, and stimulates transcendent responses. The article discusses how the concept of spiritual power contributes to the existing literatures on workplace spirituality and social power.

Religion, cultural studies and New Age sacralization of everyday life

Through an interpretation of New Age spirituality, this article is concerned with how cultural studies – as a discipline that emerged in the shadow of secularization theory – can be involved in the reappraisal of religion. At once part consumer culture and part counterculture, the New Age is something of a conundrum that raises alluring questions about social and cultural change. In the name of re-enchantment and taking back control of one’s life through inner spiritual power, it appears to be aimed precisely at those forces of social rationalization that are seen to engender secularization. The piece suggests that such emergent religious movements not only challenge us to rethink the frameworks through which religion has been conceptualized, but that they provide multiple possibilities for the examination of the sacred in light of cultural studies’ disciplinary concerns with contemporary sociocultural dynamics, in particular as they are experienced within the ambit of everyday life.

Women, Property and Urban Space in Tenth‐Century Milan

This paper deals with Milan, north‐west Italy, in the tenth century CE. It investigates the nature of property ownership and transfer, within the intramural circuit, in the suburbs and further afield. Its particular focus is on the property in which women dealt, both as members of religious communities and as wives and widows. The main conclusion is that women of all sorts and in many different sorts of situations owned far less property than men. The reasons for this pattern, which is common across western Europe in this period, remain obscure. It certainly has something to do with perceptions of female passivity prevalent in contemporary texts but it does not necessarily mean that some women could not have agency in other ways, notably as nuns with spiritual power.

Shifting agency: male clergy, female believers, and the role of icons

ABSTRACTIn Eastern Orthodox traditions, an icon is a religious image, a depiction of a saint or a significant event. Icons are deployed by believers as symbols, teaching tools, and aids to concentration, but they can also function as social agents that decentralize authority normally concentrated in jurisdictional hierarchies. In the Russian Orthodox Church, all but the lowest formal positions are held exclusively by men, even though women make up the majority of the parishioners. Even among male believers, lay men and junior priests are subject to the power of a very few senior priests, abbots, and bishops. But while Church hierarchies control wealth, real estate, assignments, seminaries, and so on, they do not monopolize spiritual power. Heavenly authority supersedes the clergy's, and, discursively, heavenly participation by means of miraculous icons can limit hierarchs' power. When parishioners choose to address their problems by appealing to an icon directly rather than submitting a request that it be included in a formal service, they are bypassing the formal Church structure. Priests, monks, and bishops can ask for miracles, but they can not make them. Icons act as leveling mechanisms shifting power from (masculine) authorities to the (predominantly feminine) laity.

Begetting extraordinary humans

We are very grateful to Verso Books for giving us the permission to publish this version of Chapter eight (Fifth component 2), The metamorphosis of kinship, Verso (2012).

The “new masculinity”: Addiction treatment as a reconstruction of gender in Puerto Rican evangelist street ministries

This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork including twelve months of participant observation and 428 interviews with 84 converts and leaders in Pentecostal ministries founded and run by former addicts in Puerto Rico, describes redefined masculinity as a treatment for addiction. Industrial disinvestment and resulting unemployment and drug trade in urban North and Latin America have led to narcotic addiction among Latino and African American men and attendant homicide, infection, and incarceration. Pentecostal-evangelical street ministries are prevalent in these regions. Their alternative vision of masculine honor and power addresses a cultural crisis of men’s social space. They replace the unachievable ideal of the male breadwinner with an image of male spiritual power. In place of the violence of the drug trade, they cultivate male domesticity and responsibility for the home. In place of a deleterious drug economy, they offer the social and cultural capital of ministry networks and biblical knowledge. Yet the trajectories of ministry converts reveal the limits, as well as the promise, of evangelist masculinity as a treatment for addiction. In the course of building leadership among their converts, the ministries create their own, internal hierarchies, fall short of the spiritual democracy they espouse, and lead to relapse among those left at the bottom.

What is it about the Book? Semantic and Material Dimensions in the Mediation of the Word of God

When the Christian Bible is referred to as the ‘Word of God’, the common understanding is that this refers to its textual content. There are, however, a variety of other uses made of the bible that point to an understanding of the Word of God as not just the textual content but also the material book itself. This article explores a number of uses of the physical bible as an instrument of spiritual mediation or power that have been practised since the early days of Christianity to the present time. Some of the understandings underlying these material practices are explored, along with differences in the religious-cultural context that sustain these different views, including the differences in religious hermeneutics between the oral and written word, the importance of the concept of the book in Christian identity, the relationship of fetishism and theological understanding, and cultural differences in understanding the relationship between textual and material signification.

'Where he lies, I lie': Tagore meets Kabir

What drew Rabindranath to Kabir? Although a poet’s purpose is never entirely transparent, the enquiry here is necessary to understand the ‘myriad-minded’ reach of Rabindranath’s art. In India’s cultural history as well, it is worth asking the question because One Hundred Poems of Kabir represents the merger of two of India’s foremost cultural institutions, Kabir and Rabindranath, within the global institution of English. From his early teens, Rabindranath had displayed the spiritual power of his poetic imagination, which progressed from awe at the distant father figure of the upaniṣads to an intense relationship with the personal godhead of vaiṣṇava poetry, especially as in Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda. But it was when he came upon Kabir’s poems that he found an answering echo to his growing attraction for a philosophically more sophisticated idea of an abstract, nirguṇa deity who could nonetheless be a viably and personally realised presence. His English versions of Kabir’s poems are necessarily, then, approximations of that resonance, which explains their closeness in form to Rabindranath‘s own expression of spirituality, most notably in his Gitanjali. My aim here is to understand the Kabir–Rabindranath unity by viewing Rabindranath’s translations in the light of his own poetry of spiritual self-affirmation.

A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (review)

Reviewed by: A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic Jonathan M. Yeager J. Rixey Ruffin, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Pp. x, 266. $65.00. Although William Bentley (1759–1819) did not pastor a very large church in Salem, Massachusetts, he ranks as one of the most interesting religious figures in the early Republic. The kind of Christianity he advocated was unique, that is, if we agree with the thesis presented by J. Rixey Ruffin in A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic. Within the pages of Ruffin's elegantly written and theologically sophisticated monograph, one finds the story of the rise and fall of perhaps Salem's most controversial clergyman. Bentley upheld what Ruffin labels "Christian naturalism" (4), a combination of Arminianism, rationalism, liberalism, deism, Unitarianism, and eventually Republicanism. Besides an introductory chapter and prologue, the book essentially consists of two parts covering Bentley's intellectual progression: part I (chapters 1–5) looks at the years between 1783 and 1791, and part II (chapters 6–10) examines Bentley's life and thought between 1791 and 1805. In the first half of the book, we learn just how radical Bentley was as a New England cleric. During the time that his Calvinist colleague James Diman, at the East Church in Salem, was preaching that humanity is incapable of saving itself, Bentley was delivering discourses with an Arminian bent, teaching that grace could be earned because humans had the ability to act morally. The two men differed on the sacraments as well. Diman allowed communion only to those who could affirm that they had experienced a new birth, but Bentley permitted anyone to partake of the Lord's Supper (32–7). As opposed to Diman, Bentley baptized children born out of wedlock without requiring a confession of guilt from the parents, baptized people at their respective residences rather than at church, and had no qualms performing this rite on days other than Sunday, all radical adulterations of normal ministerial protocol in New England at that time (83–4). With Bentley, we find a man who cannot be placed in any one theological camp. He is Arminian in that he opposed the total depravity of Calvinism—empowering individuals to make their own moral choices—but he is closer to Socinianism in saying that Jesus could wield no spiritual power of his own: Christ was nothing more than a man to Bentley. Like the deists, Bentley denied that miracles continue to take place and argued that God is no longer active in the world. Yet different from the deists, but similar to Latitudinarians, Bentley surprisingly confirmed the legitimacy of the miraculous accounts in scripture. Miracles, he reasoned, were necessary, but only during biblical times, to convince an uneducated, unsophisticated, and unenlightened people the value of moral living. As it turns out, Bentley was no Latitudinarian either, since he eschewed the placement of spiritual value on the sacraments and conversion (71–3). What emerges is a very unusual theology, placing Bentley "in a category of Christians that was his alone" (61). Indeed, Ruffin calls Bentley "a one-man faction of reasonable Christianity" (76). In the second half of the book, Ruffin shows how Bentley's convictions changed in the 1790s. Politically, he evolved into an avid Republican, preaching the necessity of civic virtue all the while alienating the wealthy capitalistic merchants in his congregation who felt betrayed by Bentley's outspoken support for America's [End Page 547] embargo against Britain. Earlier in his career Bentley had conceived that wealth was a sign of morality, and that the poor were lazy and deserving of their predicament, but his opinion altered over time to one that had a greater sympathy for the downtrodden, coming full circle to blame social inequality on corrupt politicians and an incessant materialistic culture (109–30). Once committed to Republicanism, Bentley proved to be a key contributor to Jefferson's party by writing articles for the misnamed Impartial Register and backing Salem's rising political star Jacob Crowninshield, a parishioner in the East Church who...

Wise Up: Creating Organizational Wisdom Through an Ethic of Kaitiakitanga

Organizations are searching for innovative business approaches that deliver profits and create shared value for all stakeholders. We show what can be learned from the relational wisdom approach of Indigenous Māori and reframe the prevailing economic argument that has seen companies profit and prosper at the expense of communities and ecologies. We develop an ethic of kaitiakitanga model premised on Māori values which holds the potential to enrich and further humanize our understanding of business. The Māori economy is a globally connected, prosperous, and profitable sector of the New Zealand economy. By drawing on Māori values, we present a wisdom position through an ethic of kaitiakitanga or stewardship to emphasize and illustrate the interconnectedness of life in a woven universe. Through practicing kaitiakitanga, organizations can build businesses where wisdom is consciously created through reciprocal relationships. In this worldview of business, humans are stewards endowed with a mandate to use the agency of their mana (spiritual power, authority, and sovereignty) to create mauri ora (conscious well-being) for humans and ecosystems—and this commitment extends to organizations.

Dragons, saints and wells

Stories of conflict between saints and dragons flourished between the eighth and fourteenth centuries at the disputed boundary zone between folktale and hagiography. The presence of dragons at wells was an accepted image in vernacular culture, independently adopted by successive writers of saints' Lives to enliven stories about the spiritual power of their heroes and the pastoral and missionary work they performed. In the transition of hagiography from its Middle Eastern origins the dragon, originally a plausible desert snake, took on mythical status and became identified with social evils from paganism to corruption. Christian imagery of baptism involved a symbolic contrast of lethal and healing waters, given visual expression in the sculptural motif of a dragon encircling the font. But the story of the dragon-fight could carry multiple meanings. Earlier texts reflect a world in which clerical culture had to make headway against lay power, and the dragon is something to be banished, like the aggressive chieftains faced down by saints. Later on Christianity was presented as part of a harmonious social order, and the dragon is crushed by the pious force of chivalry.

Islamic Spectrum in Java

Timothy Daniels’ Islamic Spectrum in Java critically examines the myriadof ways in which Javanese Muslims draw on religious and secular ideas toproject desirable futures for their local societies, for the Indonesian nation,and for Indonesia’s place in the global economic, political, and culturalstructures of the twenty-first century. This book identifies a broad rangeof desirable futures projected by Javanese Muslims, as well as a range ofbeliefs and practices that comprise Javanese Islam (12). While this engagingwork is very likely to appeal to scholars in many fields, theoreticallyand methodologically it is foremost an anthropological study. Synthesizingsymbolic and cognitive anthropology in order to “provide ‘thick description’1 of polysemous symbols . . . and to ascertain the social distributionof knowledge and formation of mental representations in various contexts(4),” Daniels draws primarily on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in theYogyakarta area of south-central Java from 2003 to 2004.Daniels makes a complex argument, focusing on issues of globalization,localization, social change, identity formation, and the place of Islamin Javanese culture. He contends that in projecting a range of desirable futures,Javanese Muslims are able to negotiate globalization and directionsof social change on their own terms by drawing from local culture andtheir interpretations of Islam in different ways. In particular, he examinesto what extent particular ideological positions expressed by Javanese Muslimscontribute to or undermine processes of equalization—“processes ofweakening, undermining, and lessening hierarchical formations” (8). Insupporting his argument, he addresses other related issues as well, includingconcepts of spiritual power, gender, sexuality, and class ...

Le catholicisme comme religion politique en France

How political concepts which were built up by Counter-revolutionary school were been able to graft on French Catholicism since the Revolution of 1789? The historical investigation proves that positivist or socialist theorists were indebt to Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald for their religious prophecies and their theory upon relations between temporal power and spiritual power. These ideas became French catholic ideas with the Saint-Simon socialist school and the Roman Catholic priest de La Mennais and the writers as Honore de Balzac, George Fonsegrive or Paul Bourget. Upon these influences, the French Catholic left-wing put the political principle of reality in the society and not in the human person.

The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies – By Wilma Wells Davies

The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies – By Wilma Wells Davies

Reinventing the Civil Religion: Comte, Mill, Tagore

new regimes together, no longer solidified by monarchical authority and fearful obedience? ni neteenth-century political thought soon became obsessed with the question of civic emotion. It was widely agreed that people are possessed by egoism; the task of building decent and stable democracies depends on combating their narcissism, extending sympathy. It was widely agreed, too, that this new public emotion-culture must both sustain democracy and assist the aspirations of democratic nations to global justice and peace. Of all such proposals, by far the most influential were those of Auguste Comte (1798–1857). 2 A renowned philosopher and social scientist, Comte had a worldwide influence that is hard to credit today, so generally neglected are his ideas. Intellectuals from many nations, convinced that human progress required some type of humanistic “civil religion” to counteract the power of egoism and greed, rallied to his call for a new “spiritual power,” a “religion of humanity” that could guide nations toward progress through emotions

The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies

The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies