The Church in the Market Place: Advertising and Religion in a Secular Age

This paper explores the limits of Peter Berger's secularization thesis through an examination of religious advertising. If churches are part of a market situation, as Berger affirms, what can be said of their advertising in a secular age? Different types of religious advertising and their effectiveness are discussed in relation to more widely disseminated religious imagery in secular advertising. The conclusion suggests that certain religious themes, ideas and images still continue to enjoy prominence in public consciousness. This has a double implication: for churches as they market themselves in a plural world, and for sociologists who construct theories of secularization.     

Heavenly Bodies: Religious Issues in Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Eating Disorders

Minimal attention has been given to the role that religion may play in the development, maintenance, and treatment of eating disorders. Many religions espouse specific doctrines about the nature and purpose of the body as well as prescribe particular body grooming and eating practices. These doctrines and practices influence individuals' schemas and experiences of the body and eating, which can either contribute to or provide protection from eating disorders. This paper describes pathways through which religious beliefs and practices may impact risk for and maintenance of eating disorders. Methods for integrating religious concepts, practices, and resources into standard cognitive-behavioral treatment for eating disorders are discussed, including interventions that address purported religiously oriented contributory and protective factors. Treatment of a religious client with an eating disorder is described to illustrate the incorporation of religiously oriented interventions in practice.     

CONSCIOUS OBJECTIONS: GOD AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS DEBATES

Abstract. Consciousness studies are dogged with religious overtones, and many researchers fight hard against Christian ideas of soul or anything supernatural. This gives many studies on consciousness a particular relevance to religious belief. Many writers assume that, if consciousness can be explained physically, religious belief in a soul—and perhaps religious belief itself—must be false. Theorists of consciousness grapple with questions of materialism and reduction in trying to understand how the physical brain can produce the bizarre sensations that we call ourselves. In this essay I discuss the problems in trying to separate religion from science in such a “fuzzy” area as consciousness. I look at the question of what precisely theories of consciousness are trying to explain. I consider theories from David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, and Roger Penrose as examples of different approaches. Although all of these are materialistically based, I argue that they do not necessarily demonstrate the nonexistence of a soul and also that religious belief does not necessarily require belief in a nonmaterial soul. I conclude with a discussion of why a physical/ materialist explanation of consciousness is desired and how religious bias is still a problem in this scientific/philosophical field.     

"From This One Song Alone, I Consider Him to be a Holy Man": Ecstatic Religion, Musical Affect, and the Global Consumer

This essay considers why studying ecstatic religious parctices that include music as an integral component of trance and possession performance might be productive for sociologists, praticularly in the context of globalization. As spirit possession practices become connected with global markets, and as specific musical genres associated with trance are reinterpreted within secular frameworks (Indo‐Pakistani Sufi qawwali singing and Afro‐Cuban Ocha batá drumming, for example), ecstatic religious contexts, and decreasing emphasis is placed on the culturally specific locales from which these performance practices emerge. Why are self‐identified nonbelievers interested in consuming musical genres that have their origins in ecstatic religious practices? What do these commodified and recontextualized ecstatic religious practices provide the people who consume them?     

Generation to Generation: Passing on Religious and Spiritual Beliefs and Practices

Many families face difficulties in maintaining healthy relationships. Past research has identified that religious and/or spiritual beliefs and practices can enhance family well-being. Research has also shown that religious and/or beliefs and practices can shape the aging process. Yet there exists little information on the methods through which religious and/or spiritual beliefs are passed on to future generations. This study utilized Eriksonian conceptual ideas, and grounded theory methods to conduct interviews with 13 older adults on the process through which religious and/or spiritual beliefs are passed on to children and grandchildren. Ideas are discussed for practitioners based on study findings.     

中国西南少数民族的竹王神话与竹崇拜

中国西南少数民族世代相传的竹王神话,多维度反映出西南各族群的宗教观念。本文详细考察竹王神话的流播及其影响,分析西南少数民族宗教仪式所体现的竹崇拜。认为具有原始思维特色的西南少数民族竹王神话,蕴涵着西南少数民族自然崇拜、图腾崇拜、祖先崇拜的文化要素。竹王神话和竹崇拜长期影响着西南各族群的社会生活,其神话思维模式反映出各族先民的宗教情结和自然生态意识。     

宗教伦理学与当代社会--兼答万俊人教授《普世伦理如何可能》

这是一篇回应性的文章。作者在简要介绍了文章的由来以后,首先借用万俊人教授《现代西方伦理学史》一书中的材料阐述了西方宗教伦理思潮与西方社会的关系;然后指出在中国学界展开宗教伦理学研究的必要性,并论述了作者对建构中国宗教伦理学的一些想法;在文章的最后一部分,作者对万俊人教授《普世伦理如何可能》中的三个问题作出了回应：第一,关于“强伦理模式”;第二,有关世界宗教信仰现状的问题;第三,关于普世伦理以什么为基础的问题。     

Scientific empathy,American buddhism,and the ethnography of religion

This paper examines some of the current ideas and methods that have problematised the study of religion within a globalised community. Religion and culture cannot be considered bounded entities, to be described as unchangeable. However, their constant process of change is not something new. It becomes new due to writing patterns and contemporary ideas on the relevance of religion or the creativity of culture. By analysing some discussions on possession cults, the paper suggests that ritual and performance constitute the moments when culture and religion are mediated. It is through ritual that religious practices are adapted, and it is in a ritual performance where culture is contested and challenged. Religion becomes ‘confused culture’, that once again is re‐organised and made orderly by reflection on ritual practices. Finally, the paper suggests that the agenda for an anthropology of religion for this new century is two‐fold. Firstly, to try to become more conversant with ever changing localised practices of ritual, and secondly, to try to converse about those practices with other practitioners and scholars from different fields and in different fields.     

Islam as moral education: madrasa courses and contestation of the secular in the Republic of Tatarstan,Russia

In this paper, based on fieldwork in a small town in post-Soviet Tatarstan, Russia, I explore the dynamics of religious life in a rural community, highlighting the ways religious and secular education interact with and reinforce each other, contributing to the processes of religious revival in this community. Soviet ideas and practices of moral education as well as post-Soviet concerns about morality constitute the common ground that brings secular and religious together. Adhering to the Soviet idea that society is responsible for the moral education of its young people, local schoolteachers use Islam as a source of moral values and disciplining practices to bring up the younger generation, affected by post-Soviet transformations. Teachers increasingly rely on Islamic ethics in the moral upbringing of schoolchildren that effectively challenges the separation between secular and religious education. Religion acquires growing significance as a process of moral edification and discipline.     

Jung's psychoid concept and Bion's proto‐mental concept: a comparison

Jung and Bion both developed theoretical concepts propounding a deeply unknowable area of the psyche in which body and mind are undifferentiated and the individual has no distinct identity, from which a differentiated consciousness arises. In Jung's case, this is enshrined in his psychoid concept and the associated notion of synchronicity and, in Bion's case, in his proto‐mental concept and his ideas on group dynamics. It is by means of these two concepts that Jung and Bion approach and locate a combined body‐mind, a monism, in which body and mind are seen as different aspects of the same thing. This paper reviews the claim that although the two concepts are associated clinically with very different situations, their commonality may arise from a similar intellectual basis: both men appear to have been influenced by the same source of vitalist ideas in philosophy including Henri Bergson, and Jung's ideas also exerted a direct influence on Bion.     

Religion and Public Health

The paper begins by acknowledging several ways in which religious beliefs and behavior have had a negative impact on people's physical and mental health; fanatical violence, mortifying asceticism, and oppressive traditionalism (e.g., sexism) are mentioned. Three areas of positive influence are explored: 1) the role of religious practices in personal health; 2) the impact of social ministries on community health, and 3) the complementarity of religious ideas of salvation with medical conceptions of health in contemporary conceptions of human well-being. That religion mediates between the social and individual dimensions of well-being is a unifying theme of the paper.Philosopher of religion who taught for many years at     

Understanding Biology in Religious Experience: The Biogenetic Structuralist Approach of Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg

What are the biological bases of religious experience? Are there biological constraints upon or determinants of religious narratives and practices? How does understanding the biology of religious experience inform the ongoing reconstruction of religious rituals and myths? In The Mystical Mind, Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg address these central questions and others from a distinct perspective called biogenetic structuralism. They propose a model of how brain activity gives rise to mystical experiential states, examine how neurobiological responses to rhythmic behavior form religious ritual, and point toward the development of a megatheology, or a theological system appealing to the widest scope of religious world‐views. This paper is a critical review of d’Aquili and Newberg's exciting work.     

Transforming churches: the lived religion of religious organizations in a contemporary context

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes patterns of transformation in a specific majority religious institution, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark (ELCD), through a case study of communicative actions related to new church practices. The argument is that the patterns most often identified in the study of the religion of late-modern individuals, which is an “ever-changing, multifaceted, often messy—even contradictory—amalgam of beliefs and practices” (McGuire 2008, 4), are also relevant when scholars describe changes at the level of religious organizations. Meredith McGuire’s concepts are supplemented with other discussions of the transformation of traditions in a contemporary context. Our research question is: what characterizes the communicative actions concerning the transformation of traditions within the ELCD today? The empirical material consists of communicative actions related to practices associated with Halloween and Valentine’s Day from two distinct contexts: 1) the public debate about the Church in the newspaper The Christian Daily and 2) public announcements in the official online Church calendar. This leads to a discussion of the creative agency of religious institutions as part of the complex pattern of contemporary religion. The article argues in favor of an increased focus on the development of new practices in churches as examples of lived religion at the level of institutional religion.     

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,HEALING, AND ALTRUISM: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This essay introduces the five articles that follow, whose aim is to show how altruism emerges out of spiritual transformation and is integral to healing process in four kinds of ritual healing systems—popular, folk, an indigenous religious healing tradition, and complementary and alternative medicine represented by consciousness transformation movements. In this introduction I situate these largely marginalized religious and spiritual practices within the context of the religion‐science discourse, which has focused for the most part on the relationship between the established, mainstream religions and the dominant biomedical system. Antecedents of two of these types of religious practices, Spiritism and consciousness transformation movements, were part of the development of the psychological sciences in the nineteenth century but lost ground in the twentieth. Despite discrimination and persistent negative attitudes on the part of the established religions and biomedicine, these healing traditions have not only survived through the twentieth century but appear to have gained both followers and interest in the twenty‐first. In future decades, at least for complementary and alternative medical practices and perhaps also for spirit healing centers, there may be a reversal in status through greater acceptance of their unique combination of scientific and religious perspectives.     

面纱·身体·伊斯兰教——由法国“罩袍禁令”引发的思考

法国"罩袍禁令"一经颁布,世界舆论哗然。一块小小的面纱为何能引发世界如此广泛的争论?它在冲突或争论之中为何被赋予重要意义?面纱所遮掩的女性身体在其中又扮演何种角色?面纱、身体、伊斯兰教三者之间又存在怎样的内在关系?本文试图对这些问题进行分析,并提出女性身体除了表达一个族群对自己文化、宗教特性的坚守之外,也成为其反抗外来力量的工具和媒介。     

Psychology as an Art and as a Science: A Reflection on the Myth of Prometheus

This article focuses on the radical shift in consciousness that occurs when we move from a workaday, natural scientific sphere of life to the celebrative sphere of religious practice, of the arts and the humanities. The quotidian, workaday world is here understood as the birthplace of science and technology and the festive world of personal encounters makes its appearance here as the birthplace of the arts, the humanities and of religious practices.     

Sacralisation – the role of individual actors in legitimising religion

The article makes a contribution to the study of religion by developing the analytical concept of sacralisation as the process whereby individual religious actors and groups construct religious tradition by attributing value to single ideas and practices. The concept of sacralisation helps us understand how religious actors engage with their religious tradition and participate in constructing it by legitimising its single elements. The sacred is thus understood as constructed by religious actors as that which is of value for them and distinctive of their specific tradition. This concept has been developed from a three-year long ethnographic research in a Christian evangelical church and is illustrated through an analysis of the research data.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM—WHERE DOES IT LEAD?

I respond to the four symposiasts who commented on my recent book Religion Is Not About God (2005)—religious studies scholars Donald Braxton and David Klemm, philosopher William Rottschaefer, and cognitive scientist Leslie Marsh. Various general and specific points relative to the nature of religion and the future of religion are either clarified or defended. Among the issues that receive attention are (1) the status and adequacy of my proposals for religious naturalism: Can it motivate wholeness, and is it finally a form of pantheism? (2) ritual practices, particularly those of Christianity, reinterpreted within the framework of religious naturalism; and (3) the adequacy of any naturalistic position to account for subjective properties of consciousness.     

Orientalism and the Invention of Kashmiri Religion(s)

The sordid research process behind the Lallā-Vākyāni, the first major English translation of poetry attributed to the fourteenth-century saint Lal Ded, reveals strategies employed by George Grierson, Lionel Barnett, and Mukund Ram Shastri to recast Lal Ded and the cultural heritage of Kashmir as exclusively Hindu. Contradicting the earliest depictions of Lal Ded in sixteenth-century Persian hagiographies, the Lallā-Vākyāni was instrumental to the modern invention of Kashmiri ?aiva Hinduism as the true religion and culture of Kashmir completely devoid of any connection—religious, historical, or social—with Islam, simultaneously serving Orientalist agendas and politics of the ?ogrā court.