Spiritual Trajectory Research Articles

Establishing Faith – The Close Relationships, the Early Influences and the Aspect of Integrity and Trust

Abstract This study examines the establishment of Christian faith amongst Norwegians aged 30–40, with focus on the impact and nature of early religious influences. Employing an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, the research synthesizes quantitative data from 585 participants, complemented by qualitative follow-ups with 10 respondents from the initial cohort. The tripartite investigation probes into the dynamics of Christian faith formation in this demographic. It particularly scrutinizes the synergy between personal relationships and engagement in Christian practices. The findings suggest a composite of activities that collectively underscore their significance. While youth ministry and parental influence during adolescence play notable roles, the qualities embodied in personal relationships – characterized by warmth, trustworthiness, and integrity – may be more crucial than the structural aspects of the relationships themselves. These insights contest conventional views of predominant influences on faith formation and religious acculturation, underscoring the salience of authentic interpersonal connections in navigating one’s spiritual trajectory.

Trajectories of spirituality: Producing and assessing cultural evidence at the International Criminal Court

Abstract In this article, we examine the production and assessment of evidence about spirit beliefs in the international criminal trial of Ugandan rebel commander Dominic Ongwen, submitted by the defense to show that their client committed the crimes he is accused of under duress. This duress defense was ultimately rejected by the ICC Judges, based on a binary understanding of ‘believing’ that depicts Ongwen and other LRA commanders as impostors. However, our analysis of how this evidence about Acholi spirituality is entextualized in testimony-taking and recontextualized in the Judgment reveals that this belief-binary is not exclusively the outcome of the Judges’ recontextualization efforts. In fact, the foundations are already established at entextualization stage, in the questioning by the defense. These continuities, we argue, offer a fresh perspective on the notion of text trajectory, redirecting attention to the underlying ‘grammar’ of the legal language game. (International Criminal Court, text trajectory, entextualization, recontextualization, evidence, spirit belief, Dominic Ongwen, Uganda)*

Exploring the religious and spiritual trajectory of cathedral choristers in England

ABSTRACTThe present paper reports findings from interviews with thirty ex-choristers from cathedrals and collegiate chapels in England, aged from eighteen to eighty. These interviews explored choristers’ religious commitments before entering choir school and factors for staying with, leaving, or later returning to religious practice. The findings suggest that the attitudes to religion among ex-choristers mirror those of the wider population and confirms the trend that ex-choristers may be seeking spirituality but not religion. The study concludes that, although choristers are not invited into the spiritual community on a level that allows them to engage cognitively with organised religion, they remain open to its emotional connotations as expressed in music. They might, nonetheless, subsequently find faith if they get help to explore the meaning of liturgy and music within it. However, there have been accounts where this faith is forced upon them in a way that pushes them away.

Hz. İbrâhîm’in Dini: İbrâhimî Hakîkat Üzerine Sûfî Görüşler

This essay examines the Quranic narratives of Abraham as interpreted by Ibn al-ʿArabī and his followers. Ibn al-ʿArabī was keen to identify the essential reality of the prophets in his famous work Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. While in the Fuṣūṣ, Ibn al-ʿArabī focuses on his epithet al-khalīl (intimate friend) and his relation to the affirmative attributes of God, the Abrahamic reality is further gleaned from the ways in which the Quran describes his spiritual trajectory. This central prophet of the three major world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is at once an iconoclast and the paragon of divine unity (tawḥīd), but also represents true religion, life, light, the divine names of origination and the intellect.

Big Sur: Kerouac’s Spiritual Drop Scene

Big Sur is an important novel in Kerouac’s late period. The origin, content and purpose of this novel are significantly different from his previous works. Through analyzing the symbolic images in the novel, we can understand Kerouac’s painful reflection on his resistance against the American mainstream culture, his deep understanding of the failure to convey his spiritual appeals and his inability to compromise with the society. The study of Big Sur not only shows Kerouac’s spiritual collapse, but also reveals the spiritual trajectory of the Beats from fanaticism to decay.
 
 Big Sur, on the coast of California, is a 99-mile-long rugged and beautiful waterfront. “Big Sur is fabulously romantic, … with its rugged terrain, its treacherous sea, and its challenging climate” (Wallraff, 2002). Kerouac, the soul of the Beat Generation, finishes his novel Big Sur there. The agony and desperation shown in the novel helps to understand the ideological doom of the Beats. While On the Road, Kerouac’s best-known work, records the height of Beat Generation, Big Sur, which was published in 1962, written 7 years before Kerouac’s death, accurately summarizes the spiritual end of the Beat Generation. After Big Sur, Kerouac has never written works shown his spiritual pursuit and agony, which makes this novel the one that reveals his deep frustration and desperation over his spiritual struggle. In Big Sur, though the “spontaneous prose method” Kerouac has developed is applied, the symbols in Big Sur can still impress the readers by their concise and direct relation with Kerouac’s crushed feelings (Kostas, 2002). He never tries to escape from his true feelings for his definite failure, so the symbols pave the way for a thorough understanding of Kerouac’s spiritual journey and the ineluctable collapse of his dream. As Aram Saroyan said in the preface to Big Sur: “In Big Sur, we have the plaintive but magnificent aftermath” (Aram, 1992).

Memories of Negritude: the popular movement on the outskirts of Olinda as a Heritage of EJA

This article addresses part of the political, professional and spiritual trajectory of Yalorixa (a Candomble female priestess), Master in Education, specialist in Youth and Adult Education, Black Movement militant, Maria Conceição da Silva, with the objective, through this narrative, of registering and preserving the history of popular movements, black culture and Youth and Adult Education in Olinda, a city in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil. The life story, the basis of this article, was narrated in the virtual lecture "Memories of Blackness: the popular movement in the outskirts of Olinda as the Heritage of Youth and Adult Education", promoted and recorded on video, on July 9, 2020, by the Collective of researchers of the Masters and PhD course in Museology from the Lusófona University of Humanity and Technologies (ULHT), called Sociomuseology+Paulo Freire. Keywords: Yalorixá; Popular movements; Black culture; Olinda, Eduacation

Preventing Sexual Harassment at Workplaces – the Legal and the Spiritual Perspective

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the spiritual trajectories of promoting harassment-free workspaces. The paper develops a bilateral model of individual and organizational spirituality about both the intentionality and outcomes of spiritual modes of thinking, decision-making, and performance. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper follows the case analysis method. It draws upon the experiences of an NGO working as an external change agent for instituting the spirit of the PoSH Act, 2013 in organizations. The authors have shortlisted 10 case studies from more than 100 sexual harassment cases handled by the NGO for addressing the larger issues of spirituality in organizations. The paper is interspersed with anecdotal and ethnographical references to continually juxtapose the letter and spirit of the legislation preventing harassment in India. Findings: As evangelists of harassment-free workspaces, the authors find that realization of this goal will not be possible with only passive, mechanistic compliance with the letter of law or the rules of the organization laid down in this regard. Research Limitations: The major limitation of this paper is that it only accounts the secondary information, the empirical investigation is missing. Managerial Implications: The aim of harassment-free workspaces as a building block of a harassment-free world is a collective journey of individuals, Internal Complaint Committees, organizations, and society as a whole. That organization where the spirit is given more importance than just the letter, and the closer an organization is to the principle of equality, as expected of us by the universe, the closer it is on its spiritual path to creating harassment- free workspaces. Originality/Value: The paper draws on the first-hand experience of the NGO and is an original contribution to the further development of research in this area.

Chronotope Dynamics in M. Yu. Lermontov’s Poem Alone I Set out on the Road…

In this paper, the author studies the chronotope dynamics in Lermontov’s lyric poem Alone I Set out on the Road… in order to reveal the meaning-generation processes (the so-called “semantic plot” and its ramifications) in the evolution of the lyrical character’s spiritual trajectory, who is on his “meditative philosophical journey” (O. V. Zyryanov) and gradually transforms into the lyrical subject of the poetic text. The interpretation is based on the segmentation of the chronotope system into its main components, with the description of their correlation, whose dynamics defines the position of the lyrical character and the subject of the text in their process of transformation. This aims at clarifying the multi-valency of the system of spatial and temporal elements developing according to a logic contradicting the conceptualisation of dichotomic connections and an interpretative movement in the exclusive terms of thesis — antithesis — synthesis. In Lermontov’s lyrical text, within their motif development, both the upper and the lower spatial spheres are semantically doubled (cf. the earth, the desert, the sky, heavens), while the correlations between these and other elements forming an overall global space, as a consequence of each being addressed intensively by the lyrical character/subject in his role as an active initiator (agent) of chronotopic/textual communication, outline the character’s successful conquest of the total chronotope system as a whole universe, in which spiritual omnipraesentia is achieved. Instead of a model of unification with nature or another pre-existing ideal world ready to offer itself to be acquired through life/text experience, the poem elaborates a model of creation of spirituality in such forms as the acquisition of metaphysical values of existence which are bound to the earth as the centre of primary experience. There, human creative force in cultural eternity creates forms of mediation linking the internal and the external, the lower and the upper spheres, the human and the conceptualisation of divine essence, and also direct life experience and its textual transfiguration. All of these emerge in the chronotope system of Lermontov’s poem.

Letter to Károly Kerényi / Draft Introduction to Secret Germany

Letter to Károly Kerényi / Draft Introduction to Secret Germany1 Furio Jesi (bio) Turin, 2 May 1965 Dear Professor, Please allow me to trouble you again, only a few days after my last letter, to submit to you the first section of the volume that I have recently been commissioned to write. The book—which I would like to entitle Secret Germany—is intended to study the survivals of certain mythical images in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German culture.2 I feel the need to know your opinion on this introductory "programmatic declaration" of sorts, for you have lived the problems explored therein with the consciousness [coscienza] of a scholar of myth, as well as a non-passive spectator of modern European civilization. In particular, your participation in Thomas Mann's spiritual trajectory leads me to seek your views as an incomparably sensitive witness to the grave moral implications of the work of the greatest German artist of the twentieth century. You will perhaps tell me that the very nature of your position rules out declarations that would prove too superficial, in contrast with the demands of a personal, intimate spiritual experience, which is not to be publicized. But I know that you are a teacher [un maestro], and as a teacher I have known you. That is why I take the liberty of interpellating you, and I hope to benefit from your understanding. Along with my gratitude, dear Professor, please receive assurance of my heartfelt and cordial devotion. Yours, Furio Jesi [Attached typescript] Germany's contribution within the frame of nineteenth and twentieth-century European culture has been considered to be so typical, among Germans and non-Germans alike, as to permit the inclusion of 'Germanism' among the analytical categories of the modern history of [End Page 999] civilization. The historical reality of Germanism was an indisputable fact both for those who assumed a polemic attitude against it—from Hölderlin to Nietzsche, Thomas Mann and Lukács—as well as for those who saw in it an ideal to promote and defend—from Fichte to Stefan George, Frobenius and the theorists of Nazism. The events of the past fifty years have dramatically underscored the need to take a clear position with regard to what is defined as Germanism, and the choice that is thereby faced by all conscientious human beings is above all a moral choice. But one runs the risk of superficiality and unfairness if one sees in Nazism the culmination and emblem of Germanism, thereby subjecting to the same verdict, as though they were responsible for the same faults [colpe], Frobenius and Rosenberg, Gottfried Benn and Goebbels. The dilemma thrown up by the rallying to Nazism of numerous German intellectuals, and even more so by the presence of elements that inspired Nazism in artists that were nevertheless adversaries of that political regime, was already at stake at the time of the First World War, the Declaration of German intellectuals3 and Thomas Mann's Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. Back then, it was Romain Rolland who, with his famous formula of a trahison des clercs, produced a blanket condemnation of all those who had accepted to share and support the fate of Wilhelmine Germany. But the Second World War, with its excess of horrors and the tragic ambiguity of almost all its protagonists, has painfully taught us to proceed more cautiously. When the guilt becomes so great and the world undergoes such a vast and profound upheaval, even the rigorous application of moral criteria becomes more difficult. Pain sometimes overwhelms the clarity of one's gaze, and the desire for vengeance often supplants feelings of justice. The experience of the past decades should, alongside so many tragic consequences, also bear some positive fruit: the emergence of an insuppressible need to go deeper, to see in guilt that which is everyone's responsibility because it was accepted by everyone (or almost everyone), albeit with mental reservations to which morality can hardly accord value. From this investigation—we can foresee this already, and not because of any prejudice on our part—Hitler's comrades will certainly not come out looking less guilty. But it will be...

The naked truth: mindfulness and the purification of religion

To arrive at an understanding of what drives the much debated spiritual turn in Western Europe, we study the spiritual trajectories and identifications of mindfulness practitioners in the formerly predominantly Roman Catholic context of Flanders in Belgium. Fifteen semi-structured interviews addressed their religious and spiritual biographical trajectories as well as the symbolic boundaries they draw with adjacent religious and spiritual groups. We find marked evidence of a process of ‘religious purification’, which unfolds as a critique of the formal and external aspects of both religion (organisations, dogmas, ritual) and spirituality (woolly and frivolous New Age word games). To validate and justify, alternatively, the ‘pure’ and ‘grounded’ spirituality that results, those concerned consistently invoke the authority of science.

Longitudinal Differences in Spirituality and Religiousness between Men and Women in Treatment for Alcohol Use Disorders.

This study compares men and women with alcohol use disorders on levels and trajectories of spirituality and religiousness over 30 months while controlling for critical covariates. Men (n=92) and women (n=65) entering abstinence-based treatment were assessed for drinking behavior, spirituality, and psychosocial variables in a longitudinal panel study. Multiple regression tested for baseline differences and multi-level models tested for differences from baseline to 6 months (early recovery) and from 6 to 30 months (later recovery) in seven dimensions of spirituality/religiousness. Between baseline and 6 months, women had higher scores than men for forgiveness of others and lower scores than men for negative religious coping. Between 6 and 30 months, the acceleration of positive change in self forgiveness was significantly greater for women than men. Differences in negative religious coping and forgiveness might relate to differences in shame and guilt and their resolution by gender. Future research should examine whether gender differences in spirituality serve as an asset to women as they pursue addiction recovery.

Decreased Drinking and Alcoholics Anonymous are Associated with Different Dimensions of Spirituality.

A 30-month panel study recruited 364 individuals with alcohol dependence. Multilevel models examined drinking and AA at six months as predictors of both the levels and trajectories of seven dimensions of spirituality assessed five times over 6 - 30 months. Controlling for AA involvement, less drinking was associated with higher levels of purpose in life, self-forgiveness, and spiritual/religious practices. Controlling for drinking, greater AA involvement was associated with higher levels of positive religious coping, daily spiritual experiences, forgiveness of others, and spiritual/religious practices. Neither AA nor drinking predicted trajectories of spirituality. Data visualizations identified a pattern of elevated purpose in life and self-forgiveness among individuals who were abstinent and among individuals who drank less intensely. Reduced drinking influenced aspects of spirituality that have been shown to respond to experience and maturation. AA was associated with aspects of spirituality embedded in the 12 steps which have been shown to be responsive to learning and modeling. This knowledge has the potential to inform decisions about recovery options, and contributes to theoretical understandings of the nature of spiritual change over the course of addiction recovery.

‘They Know not What They Do’: The Spiritual Meaning of Technological Progress

This article considers the spiritual trajectory of modern technology. The concern that technology brings about a profound disengagement with reality through an environment constituted by disburdening devices must be taken seriously. It would seem that the drive towards technological availability—increased utility or productivity—produces pathologies on the basis of the concealment of teleology. I argue that it is unclear whether that imperative towards greater availability expresses itself in the pathological pursuit of means or whether it will necessarily re-orient itself towards a more fully projected good. In other words, is the drive to availability a dialectical process? I present an argument to affirm our negative capability based on the possibility of recognizing that we know not what we do.

Sweet Communio: Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation. By Arie de Reuver; transl. by James a. De Jong

Sweet Communio: Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation. By Arie de Reuver; transl. by James a. De Jong

Sweet Communion: Trajectories of Spirituality from The Middle Ages Through The Further Reformation – By Arie de Reuver

Sweet Communion: Trajectories of Spirituality from The Middle Ages Through The Further Reformation – By Arie de Reuver

Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton

Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton Paul R. Dekar William Apel : Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton . : Foreword by Paul M. Pearson ( Maryknoll, NY : Orbis , 2006 ) pp . xxi + 202 . ISBN 13: 978‐1‐57075‐681‐8 ( paperback). $19.00 . In an icon over my desk, Thomas Merton, portrayed wearing the Cistercian cowl, sits in a Zen position. With great serenity, Merton unites two spiritual trajectories. With his raised right hand he seems to recall Jesus saying in a number of contexts, “do not be afraid” or “peace be with you.”1 With his left hand pointed down, Merton seems to recall the Buddha saying, “Be mindful.” On the back of the icon, an inscription observes that Merton pointed a way forward in this time of profound cultural change, and danger. As William Apel states in his preface, Thomas Merton corresponded with people around the world, especially during the last years of his life, a period when four books on Asian religions appeared: Gandhi on Non‐Violence (1965), The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), Mystics and Zen Masters (1967), Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968) plus the Asian Journal (1973). Merton’s approach to dialogue was experiential rather than dogmatic, as suggested in a passage in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians…We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.2 Merton saw his study of the world’s religions and his engagement with a great variety of people as a contribution in the direction of world peace and unity. He received correspondents at the Abbey of Gethsemani; he visited some elsewhere, whether in New York City—Daisetz T. Suzuki (1964)—or in Asia (1968). Most, however, he never met. As a spiritual discipline he encouraged his interfaith friends to embrace others, that they too might unite in themselves and experience in their own lives all that is best and most true in the numerous spiritual traditions, “a kind of arduous and unthanked pioneering.”3 After an introductory chapter on Merton’s life of letters, Apel organizes his book around a cluster correspondents chosen for the depth and variety of their religious experiences: Abdul Aziz (Muslim), Amiya Chakravarty (Hindu), John Wu (Chinese), Abraham Heschel (Jew), D. T. Suzuki (Buddhist), Glenn Hinson (Protestant Christian), Thich Nhat Hahn (Buddhist), June Yungblut (Religious Society of Friends), and Dona Luisa Coomaraswamy (Roman Catholic with Jewish origins). Each chapter introduces the friend, a theme specific to each individual and the text of a significant letter by Merton to that individual. Notes and bibliography guide readers to such literature as Rob Baker and Gray Henry, eds., Merton and Sufism (1999), Beatrice Bruteau, ed., Merton and Judaism (2003), or Robert H. King, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh (2003). For twenty‐first century persons of faith, Apel has lifted up the most urgent contribution, perhaps, of Merton, who wrote, If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother [and sister], to make the world better, more free, more just, more livable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic “rejection of the world” and “contempt for the world” is in fact not a choice but the evasion of choice. [Those] who pretend [they...

Sweet Communion: Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation (review)

Reviewed by: Sweet Communion: Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation Tom Schwanda (bio) Sweet Communion: Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation. By Arie de Reuver. Translated by James A. DeJong. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. 303pp. $29.99 Sweetness is a word that abounds in our culture today. While its contemporary coinage is more likely to be found among conversations of teenagers and twenty-somethings, the deeper theological meaning is not that dissimilar. Readers of medieval or Reformation texts, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, will be familiar with this important spiritual term of delight. More specifically, the terminology "sweet communion" was employed in the Netherlands in an eighteenth-century Psalm versification. The author recognizes the anachronistic nature of this but chooses to employ it because it accurately captures "the interchange between God and humanity that is called 'hidden' or 'sweet' because it takes place in heart-to-heart intimacy. This fellowship is also called 'hidden' because of its mysterious quality that never fully relinquishes it secrets" (15). Thus begins the brief but helpful orienting introduction to this valuable resource. The Nadere Reformatie a seventeenth century spiritual movement in Netherlands frames this research. While in the past it has often been translated as the Second Reformation, a more nuanced rendering is the Further Reformation. The theological architects of this movement of the heart recognized that the efforts of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century had not included the critical need for reforming devotional [End Page 108] intimacy with God. Therefore, the Nadere Reformatie or Dutch Pietism reflected many of the same themes as the parallel seventeenth-century movements of Pietism in Germany, and to an even greater extent Puritanism in England. De Reuver who teaches systematic and historical theology at the University of Utrecht establishes his agenda by inquiring about the degree of continuity and discontinuity between the spirituality of the Dutch Further Reformation and the late medieval church (19). Before launching into his study the author first considers the important methodological question of definition and grapples with the meaning of mysticism. Readers of this journal would readily agree with his assessment that this "term is both diffuse and loaded" (20). After examining the etymological background of mysticism, de Reuver rejects the understanding of mysticism as a blurring of the distinctive nature between humanity and God. Instead he posits that mysticism "is the faith-knowledge that comes over a person by the Word and the Spirit and includes an intimate communion with God himself" (22). Therefore he rejects the previous misguided Protestant critiques of mysticism by Ritschl, Barth, and Brunner. More significantly he contends that the Reformed leaders of the sixteenth century did not totally reject mysticism outright but only those expressions that dissolved the boundary between God and humanity, restricted it to meritorious approach that ignored grace, and elevated the monastic setting to the marginalization of all of God's people (22). He concludes this section by asserting, "Whoever emphasizes the idea of mystery in the term 'mysticism' in any case, is in step with an honorable tradition" (23). The first two chapters are devoted to Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas à Kempis respectively. Each chapter begins with a biographical sketch that situates the individual within his context. Rather than create a fixed template that requires the themes of each writer to conform to a common structure de Reuver wisely allows the organic nature of these spiritual writings to shape each chapter. For Bernard those topics include his monastic context, the influence of his writings, and a very helpful summary of his treatment of God's love, meditation on Christ, bridal mysticism, and union with God. For à Kempis the obvious focus is upon the Imitation of Christ, which further is divided into an examination of discipleship, cross-bearing, humility, the inner life, loving God, and heavenly matters. The reader immediately notices that this is a highly researched and carefully written document. The pages are brimming with footnotes that both validate sources as well as broaden the scope of this expansive research. For example, when the influence of Bernard's writings is discussed it is generously traced through both Calvin and...

Spiritual and Religious Implications of Aging with HIV: A Conceptual and Methodological Review

ABSTRACT Spirituality and religious practices can buffer people from stressful life circumstances and promote positive biopsychosocial outcomes. The beneficial effects of spirituality and religious practices have been documented in aging and HIV. Unfortunately, little is known about spirituality and religious practices in older adults with HIV. As the number of older adults with HIV increases, with an estimated 91,000 adults over 50 being diagnosed with this disease in the United States, spirituality and religious practices may help HIV-positive people to age successfully. Crisis competence and spiritual trajectories are ways of conceptualizing spiritual development when confronting aging with a life-changing event such as a being diagnosed with HIV. Methodological issues in studying spirituality in adults aging with HIV are identified including defining spirituality and religiosity, heterogeneity of the population, timing of diagnosis, mode of transmission, sexual orientation, religious and cultural stigma, and hardiness. Implications for possible interventions are also posited.

"No Girl Leaves the School Unmarried": Mabel Shaw and the Education of Girls at Mbereshi, Northern Rhodesia, 1915-1940

In the 1920s and 1930s the main educational center for Africans in Northern Rhodesia was the London Missionary Society station of Mbereshi, in the present Luapula Province of Zambia. The most prestigious institution of the Mbereshi complex was Mbereshi Girls' Boarding School, the earliest girls' school in Northern Rhodesia. Under Mabel Shaw, principal from 1915 to 1940, this school gained an international reputation. This article examines the school's attempt to inculcate a form of Christian neo-traditionalism as a defense for its girls, who were educated above all for Christian marriage, against what Mabel Shaw saw as the superstition and degradation of village paganism and against the viciousness and materialism of what she considered to be neo-pagan African urban life. Struggling with this Janus-like enemy, Mabel Shaw's thinking followed a deeply spiritual trajectory which contrasted and ultimately clashed with the approach of the secular colonial education authorities.1