Religion in Contemporary Senegal

Senegal is usually classified as 90% Muslim and 5% Christian. But Senegal’s dominant religious imagination is far different from anything suggested by classical labels like ‘Muslim’ or even ‘Sufi Brotherhoods’. The pervasive religious imagination sees spiritual forces at play everywhere and understands causality primarily in spiritual terms. These spiritual forces can be manipulated by individuals gifted with such powers (marabouts), positively for one’s advancement or negatively to counter or even bring down competitors or opponents. This enchanted religious imagination, often given an Islamic character, is obtrusive in Senegal’s major sports: lutte avec frappe and football. It is inescapable in politics, as politicians admit their recourse to marabouts and even more often accuse opponents of it. For women maraboutage is particularly employed for domestic realities: a husband, children, domestic security. The courts regularly feature cases arising from this imagination. The phenomenon merits research, not just to clarify the nature of Senegal’s religion itself, but also for its effects on the country’s socio-political development generally.     

Sense and Senselessness in Religion: Reflections on Creation of the Sacred

Creation of the Sacred posits that ‘religion makes sense’. In so doing, it underestimates ‘the negative’. Its emphasis on the scientific basis for tradition, here called ‘scientistic traditionalism’, underestimates the role of critique and the function of dissent in the dialectics of tradition-building. For this reason, it also cannot ‘make sense’ of monotheism, which, in its many traditions, positions itself in opposition to mere biological imperatives.     

本教圣地黄龙风景名胜区的藏文化考察

在藏文化的视野中,黄龙是一方秀丽的山川,是一块宗教的圣地,是一座文化的宝库.黄龙藏语全称叫林青夏晓东日,简称东日,意思是东方的白螺圣山即简称白螺圣山.黄龙是本教母续二十五所道场中的一所,它的主人是一对被神格化了的夫妇,他们都是藏人保家护教之神.黄龙成为藏人心中圣地的历史可以追溯到四千年前的本祖辛饶米奥时代.多少年来,无论是历代本教大师还是普通信徒无不对黄龙的魅力增添无限的遇想,演绎许多美丽的传说.随着旅游事业的发展黄龙正面临着前所未有的机遇和挑战.     

Signs and Symbols of Sacred Reality in Old Testament Religion

In this paper, I propose to deal with various sacred realities that helped the people of Israel deepen their relationship with God over the years: die Ark of the Covenant, die desert Tabernacle, die Temple, die Sabbath and other feasts, die synagogue, religious meals and creation itself.     

Transformations of the Sacred in Contemporary Chicana Culture

Abstract

Focusing on the transformation of the sacred icon La Virgen de Guadalupe into a secularized and sexualized modern woman in illustrations by Yolanda M. López and Ester Hernández, the rearticulation of ex-votos in Sandra Cisneros's short story ‘Little Miracles, Kept Promises’, and the development of a lesbian form of spirituality in Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers, this essay argues that it is the tradition of syncretism and cultural hybridization within the folk version of Mexican Catholicism and its concomitant propensity toward the deconstruction of binary oppositions (such as colonizer versus colonized; male versus female; body versus soul; sexuality versus spirituality) that forms the basis for many of the feminist revisions, reinterpretations, and transformations of Catholic figures, motifs and texts in contemporary Chicana art.     

Mark Chaves: American Religion: Contemporary Trends

Review of Religious Research -