Scientology and Catholicism Do Mix: A Note on Teaching New Religions in a Catholic Classroom

Abstract. This note from the classroom explores teaching new or alternative religions within the context of a Roman Catholic Liberal Arts College. The essay will specifically focus on a section of a course entitled “Modern Religious Movements” in which students were asked to consider different methodological approaches to the teaching and study of Scientology and the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. This note from the classroom details how this rather unexpected comparison prompted students to reconsider the category cult and argues that encouraging self‐reflexivity in a largely Catholic classroom can become a crucial means for engaging a broader discussion of new religions, cult discourse, and the academic study of religion itself.     

论高山族的原始宗教

高山族与大陆各民族有血肉不可分割的历史关系。高山族原始宗教渊源于古代越人的原始崇拜。祖灵崇拜是高山族原始宗教崇拜之主轴。在高山族宗教信仰多元化的现代变迁中,原始宗教独占鳌头。     

韩国宗教现状简述

本文主要根据调查统计资料,简述韩国宗教现状,企望学者能对当代韩国宗教作更多的了解和更深入的研究.     

试论宗教与哲学的关系

宗教与哲学在内容和形式上是最具普遍性的观念形态,都具有世界观和人生观的性质,同属精神性的文化。从本质上讲,它们都是人对自然、社会和人生的一种认识、领悟和理解,试图解决的往往都是人们最为关注的人生中的根本性问题,如:生与死,祸与福,善与恶,今生与来世,现世与彼岸,世界上各种事物以至世界本身究竟如何形成,个人以至社会历史的命运为何种力量所支配和主宰等等,宗教和哲学都曾对此做出了自己的答案。正是由于关注的问题有着这种一致和重合的关系,宗教和哲学便在人类历史上结下了不解之缘。宗教里有哲学,哲学里也有宗教。宗教常使用哲学思维的方式和哲学的语言来论证其教义、确立其信仰;哲学则常把宗教视为神圣的教义信仰和哲学思考的对象,把它们放在理性审视台前进行考察和批判。     

中西文化中的人性--"中美宗教-哲学‘人性'研讨会"综述

2004年6月14-17日,四川大学道教与宗教文化研究所主办了"中美宗教-哲学‘人性' 研讨会".这次会议共收到17篇论文,其中8篇来自美国各大学,9篇来自国内高校.与会的中美学者们从不同的文化背景、不同的宗教传统以及不同的学术角度就人性问题,进行了富有成效的探讨和对话.这次会议参与者除了宣读自己的论文,中美学者都认真地一对一回应了对方的论文.这些回应给与会者留下了许多值得继续思考的问题.     

从道教善书探三教融合——对《关圣帝君觉世真经》的研究

中国民间普遍信仰关公,不仅得益于历代朝廷的加谥崇奉、话本曲艺的塑造渲染、神迹的显灵传说,同时还得益于佛、道二教对关公这一神祇信仰的拓展。关公被佛教吸收为护法神将,尊为伽蓝菩萨,而在道教中则演绎为惩恶扬善的关圣帝君。     

The Study of Religions in the Third Reich: A Report on Work in Progress

Why was death considered polluting within classical Greek society when Olympian sacrifice was ubiquitous? Outside the polis the Greeks’ view of the uncultivated or improperly cultivated geography and of their own ‘city-less’ past was just the other way around. Here death represented no pollution whatsoever, while Olympian sacrifice was either absent or not properly performed. Death and life had yet to be separated, as had happened in the proper human realm of the Greek polis. Any reintroduction of either natural death or sacrifice into the ‘city of life’ would consequently negate its very structures. Sacrifice differed exactly through the aspect of control. Acts of sacrifice were therefore used to control the onset of natural death. But why would the Greeks sacrifice also in every other possible context? As the essential human characteristic, mortality pertained to all human creations, including the polis. Left to itself, the polis would wither and die. Through Olympian sacrifice, humans dissolved the structures of the city without ever losing control, thereby introducing the unlimited potential as still found in the primordial state of the uncultivated geography. The structures of the polis were recreated through the proper division of the sacrificial victim.     

Religions in Europe

The breakdown of European society is changing rapidly, particularly in the field of religion. Culture is of vital importance to the presence of religion in all nations. Religions also have exerted a certain degree of political power, thus influencing the economy and other related spheres of life.The different religions in Europe exhibit a variety of attitudes towards religious pluralism. The religious differences between Western and Eastern Europe depend mainly on issues of national identity related to religious adherence.This essay provides an overview of religion and politics, or Church and state, in Europe. It will conclude with some reflections about possible future developments within religious traditions in Europe. New religious communities and religious organisations are reaching different parts of Europe, sometimes very far from their place of origin. Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism) is the most widespread religion in contemporary Europe. Catholic religion is well diffused in Europe, but there are substantial differences in belief, behaviour and practice within different Catholic communities. There are various branches of Orthodoxy in Europe, such as the distinct autocephalous churches. In general Orthodox religion is closely aligned with national culture. Islam is also present in Western countries, and its impact is evident.     

The Study of Religions in the Third Reich: A Report on Work in Progress

Translator's Note. Possible connections between the study of religions and European fascism, if not indeed Nazism, have sparked considerable discussion and debate in the English-speaking world. Consider the celebrated cases of Mircea Eliade and Georges Dumézil.By contrast, the work of German scholars of religion during the NS period has been relatively little studied. Still, there have been exceptions. Burkhard Gladigow of Tübingen has published ‘Naturwissenschaftliche Modellvorstellungen in der Religionswissenschaft in der Zeit zwischen den Weltkriegen’.¹Recently, the study of religions during the Third Reich has become the subject of an ongoing seminar at Philipps-Universität Marburg. To date, one student has declared his intentions to write a thesis on the topic. Rainer Flasche, who convenes the seminar, has also worked on the topic extensively. The following essay is a preliminary indication of his results.Flasche, born in Hannover in 1942, studied theology, philosophy, German, and the history of religions in Marburg. He has taught history of religions there since 1971, making his habilitation in 1975. His best known work isDie Religionswissenschaft Joachim Wachs(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978).Readers may wish especially to note what emerges as the central principle of Nazi religio-historical hermeneutics: that only those who belong to a race (gender? class?) can understand it. Thus, only Germans can understand Germanic religion. The essay may also shed some light on the study of religions in Germany after the war. A reviewer of a recent book by Isaiah Berlin has noted how Berlin's lasting confidence in the liberal tradition perhaps derives from the usefulness of that tradition in Eastern Europe, where Berlin spent his formative years. In post-war Germany, the study of religions has emphasized a positivism that remains close to the sources and shuns explicit theorizing, an emphasis in which Flasche clearly concurs. The usefulness of this strategy should not be overlooked. It allowed German scholars of the NS period, but also later under communist rule in the Democratic Republic and to some extent within the confines of state-run theology programs in the Federal Republic, to work independently of and even oppose a sanctioned ideology. The strategy was not to champion competing theories but to oppose ideological claims with ‘facts’. This stance contrasts sharply with the theoretical richness that characterized German thought about religions before 1933, but—once burned, twice cautious.A note on terminology. The development of the nation-state took markedly different courses in the German and English speaking worlds. As a result, the wordVolkand the adjectivevölkischhave no entirely satisfactory English equivalents. The connotations of ‘nation’ are too limited, because the GermanVolkwas an ideal that transcended not only the principalities that dominated German political life from 1648 to 1866 but also the remnants of German glory that remained after World War I and even the extensive empire administered by Prussia from 1866 to 1918. Therefore, I have translatedVolkas ‘people’. But English ‘popular’ has quite a different sense fromVölkisch, so forvölkischI have used the adjective ‘national’ instead. Readers should keep in mind the direct verbal link between the two in the original.     

A Note on Harmony

In the proof-theoretic semantics approach to meaning, harmony, requiring a balance between introduction-rules (I-rules) and elimination rules (E-rules) within a meaning conferring natural-deduction proof-system, is a central notion. In this paper, we consider two notions of harmony that were proposed in the literature: 1. GE-harmony, requiring a certain form of the E-rules, given the form of the I-rules. 2. Local intrinsic harmony: imposes the existence of certain transformations of derivations, known as reduction and expansion. We propose a construction of the E-rules (in GE-form) from given I-rules, and prove that the constructed rules satisfy also local intrinsic harmony. The construction is based on a classification of I-rules, and constitute an implementation to Gentzen’s (and Pawitz’) remark, that E-rules can be “read off” I-rules.