Reconsidering religion and fandom: Christian fan works in My Little Pony fandom

Studies of religion and fandom have tended to explore the extent to which fan cultures might be seen as forms of surrogate religion. This article suggests that a more detailed examination of the way in which believers use their faith within their individual fandoms would offer more interesting insights into both contemporary religious practice and fandom. Conducting a case study of ‘Brony’ fandom (adult fandom of cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), this article explores the ways in which Christian fans use fan fiction and art to promote religious literacy, explore theological issues and engage in evangelism and exegesis. Fan knowledge is used as a way to quickly impart and explore complex religious concepts in a manner which utilises the shared culture of fandom. This should not be seen as a symptom of ‘mediatisation’ but as part of a complex synthesis of faith and popular culture.     

Spirituality,the opiate of scholars of religion?

This review discusses Craig Martin’s approach to religious individualism and more widely the ways in which social scientists can make sense of individuals’ identities, beliefs and practice, as these seem more volatile and eclectic than ever. In particular, it is interested in the ‘critical’ study of religion developed in Capitalizing Religion. This review underscores the convergence between this book and other recent works regarding epistemological weaknesses affecting the contemporary study of religion (and in particular the ‘paradigm of spirituality’). It discusses Martin’s original contributions – in particular, a critical analysis of the ideological origins and biases underlying the categorisation of freely chosen spirituality vs. coercive religion. Finally, this review tries to further Capitalizing Religion’s argument by drawing on my own empirical work on the popularisation of meditation, yoga and kabbalah, sharing Martin’s critical approach and interest for the ways in which social structure and cultural norms affect individuals’ religious life.     

Generations of Catholics in Eastern Africa: A Practice‐Centered Analysis of Religious Change

This article considers how well Martin Riesebrodt's practice‐centered theory of religion addresses religious change among Catholics in eastern Africa. Two arguments are advanced using a generational change scheme. First, Riesebrodt's focus on religious practices assists in understanding many changes that African Catholics and their communities have experienced over time. It acknowledges believers’ perspectives and the impact of missionaries, and it generates comparative insights across different cases. However, Riesebrodt's approach has limitations when developing a comparative perspective on historical transformation in these communities. Therefore, his focus on the objective meaning of interventionist religious practices needs supplementing: (1) capturing religious change within a given religion requires attention both to practices and their subjective appropriation by believers, and (2) in the forging of collective identities, theological reflection by elites helped connect Catholic practices to preexisting worldviews and Catholic practices marked generational change by distinguishing Catholics from other African Christians.     

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

This article argues that the power of religion to shape experience presupposes the mobilization of religious identity through social opposition. This thesis is developed through a critique of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. The article first examines Lindbeck's thesis that religion shapes experience in light of Talal Asad's critique of Geertz's concept of religion. It argues that in order to understand how ‘religion’ shapes experience we must look outside the immanent sphere of cultural‐religious meaning that Lindbeck, following Geertz, identifies with ‘religion’. Religious authority ultimately derives from the recognition of a social group. Next, looking at the nature of doctrine in light of Kathryn Tanner's thesis that Christian identity is essentially relational, it argues that church doctrines function to mobilize group identity through social opposition. In this respect they resemble the mobilizing slogans of political discourse more than, as Lindbeck's theory proposes, the grammatical rules governing Wittgensteinian language games.     

Religion and development ethics in global perspective: a case study of a foreign Christian NGO in China

ABSTRACT

Much academic writing on religion and development tends to focus on the values, beliefs, and modes of operation of religious organizations to examine whether religion contributes ethically to development. A problem with such an approach is its disregard of the contested and evolving nature of religious participation in development in broader national and global contexts. What constitutes ethical religious contribution to development? How can we study the question sociologically? To answer these two questions, I develop Roland Robertson’s notion of the global field to present a framework for analyzing the dynamic interaction between religion and development ethics. In terms of methodological contribution, the framework proposed here prompts us dynamically to contextualize the issue of religious development ethics with reference to four components that make up the global field: the religious agent, the national society, the global civil society, and the global discourse on wellbeing and development. This means that, from an analytical perspective, what is proper or ethical in religious development ethics should not be construed in absolute terms, but in terms of degree and variation. I demonstrate the usefulness of such a contextual approach by drawing on research on ‘GMV’ (pseudonym for an international Christian medical professional services group actively engaged in community development) in China and examining the relationship between religious NGOs, the party-state, and evolving discursive practice of development in the country.     

Faith in community and communities of faith? government rhetoric and religious identity in Urban Britain

This paper examines the concept of community and the discourse around it in the context of the religious diversity in urban areas in England. Sociology has a long history of working with, deconstructing, and at times rejecting the usefulness of the term ‘community’ and many scholars have in the context of postmodernity preferred to talk about processes of identity formation and networking. Constructions of identity in which faith affiliation plays a salient role are probably becoming more common and more politically significant. However, an integrated theory of the relationship between religion, community, ethnicity, and identity remains to be developed and this paper attempts some tentative first steps.

In their search for ‘feel good’ terminology, politicians in democracies such as the UK have often turned to the language of community and continue to do so. Faced with the task of managing local conflicts and delivering services which are responsive to the demands of users, contemporary governments have increasingly adopted communitarian positions and the language of social capital. In recent years in the UK, religion has moved up the political agenda and an official discourse and policy initiatives structured around the notion of ‘faith communities’ have emerged.

The New Labour government has indeed put its faith in community and sought to co‐opt communities of faith into its ‘project’. However, it is far from clear that there is a coherent understanding of the notion of faith community or of the two words that make up the phrase. One may question whether the government discourse resonates with the understandings of community and identity in the major faith traditions found in the contemporary city. An examination of some of the official discourse set alongside the changing and conflicting identities of some ‘faith communities’ in London and other British cities suggests that the British State's current simplistic approach to engaging with religious diversity is an inadequate basis for policy development.     

Conceptual Constructs and Social Classes: A Review of Capitalizing Religion

Capitalizing Religion is a good addition to the growing number of works in the last decade that examine the intertwinings of religion, spirituality, and capitalism in the neoliberal present. Through an examination of scholarly discourses on modern religion and contemporary fiction and spirituality manuals, Martin demonstrates how, within the consumer capitalist present, the ideologies of individualism, consumption, quietism, and productivity shape conversations, habits, relationships, and fantasies. Martin tells us that the goal of social theory should be to account for how individuals and their choices are propelled by the material, historical, and structural forces that constitute them. He is a writer who has long been particularly attentive to the fact that “religion” is not some particular entity that exists “out there” that can be examined, but rather a bounded construct whose definition – through processes of inclusion and exclusion – performs works of distinction that benefit some interests, groups, and individuals to the detriment of others. Capitalizing Religion reminds us that the choices that many sociologists of religion make in dividing social formations into categories such as “religious,” “spiritual,” “institutional,” “individual,” or “paranormal” don’t just describe the world, but rather attempt to constitute it through taxonomies that are anything but natural and given.     

VIOLATIONS OF PAROLE: LANGUAGE,RELIGION, AND POWER AMONG THE MODERN UDASI MOVEMENT AND THE SGPC

This article explores a subaltern framework to examine language, religion, and power among contemporary Sikh movements, such as the Udasis, that oppose the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC). From the late nineteenth century, the Punjab environment progressively communalized as religious groups competed internally and externally to win supporters and define outsiders. Emblematic of these processes in Sikhism are those affirming ties to Hinduism, such as the Udasis, and those seeking a separate religious identity, such as the Tat Khalsa Singh Sabha. This paper begins with an overview of constructions of Hinduism and Sikhism in the colonial period. Next, the theory of parole is developed to trace the relationships among language, religion, and power transacted through speech. Finally, the SGPC's portrayals of the Udasis and modern Udasi responses are presented. The Udasis exemplify how certain sects fell outside of epi-colonial religious demarcations in the Punjab that progressed toward a single Sikh identity. As a theory linking language and power, parole surpasses the classification of religious groups as ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ to uncover histories where communities define Self and Other.     

Humanities,Social Sciences and Islamic Studies

Three avenues in Islamic studies are distinguished. The humanities study the languages, texts and history of Islam as a civilisation and religion. The main difficulty confronting them is to understand properly the texts studied. Anthropology, sociology and political science constitute the main contribution of the social sciences. Here the main difficulty lies in explaining religious data correctly within their context. In religious studies, the third avenue, the main problem is to interpret correctly the way in which Muslim communities and persons have understood their cultural tradition and the religious elements which belong to it. Focusing on the people's intentions which make Islam a religion rather than a social system or ideology enables Islam to be understood from the perspective of religious studies.     

The continuance of gender culture amid change in Mexican–American immigrant Catholic contexts

The acceptance and implementation of Roman Catholic teachings on marriage, sexuality, and the family vary both at the individual and at the parish level. While overall, there is a dialectical relationship between gender and religion in the way they inform and mold each other, the majority of research has focused on how religion has shaped gender in communities. We use qualitative data from a Latino immigrant Catholic context in the United States to show the opposite movement: how a Mexican–American gender culture of machismo and marianismo shapes the religious culture in the arenas of marriage and religious authority. The process of incorporating immigrant Mexicans into the dominant culture of the United States takes place in part in these religious centers through the interaction and mixture of Latino gender norms with the therapeutic egalitarianism of the white middle class, through the mediation of priests. Through this, we suggest that there are contexts, times, and places where the gender culture of a community shapes the reception and practice of religion.     

Raising Salafī Children in the West

Despite the importance salafīs place on children’s education, this aspect of their discourse has hardly been studied. The present article examines how salafī jurists based in the Arab world, salafī imams based in the West and salafī authors of English-language children’s books conceptualize the norms for raising children, and what they believe should be done specifically to assure the virtuous Islamic upbringing of children in Western societies. Exploring issues ranging from what constitutes proper schooling to whether Muslim children may befriend non-Muslim children and whether it is permissible to celebrate birthdays, play foosball or play with dolls, the article analyses the educational challenges salafī communities in the West face as enclaves that resist both majority secular societies and the majority among Muslim minorities, and presents the nuances, and in some cases contestations, among salafī leaders as to how these challenges should be addressed and prioritized.     

Cosplay in the pulpit and ponies at prayer: Christian faith and lived religion in wider fan culture

ABSTRACT

This article examines the way in which Christian fans of popular media franchises have incorporated their fan identity into a lived religious experience, producing religious fan works such as fan fiction, art, and fan-themed church services. Based around a series of interviews with fans in the United States and the UK, both lay and clergy, it suggests the powerful affective connections forged through fandom, and examines the way in which fandom operates as a shared language to engage the wider fan community with theological ideas. Fans viewed their fandom as an arena through which God communicated and developed personal faith, working through fan texts and fan works to encourage and develop their connection to the divine. This article, therefore, challenges academic positions that see fandom as a secular replacement for religion, or as a form of blasphemous excess.     

Lived religion and the religious field

ABSTRACT

In the study of lived religion, the focus on laypeople as religious agents can result in the simplistic juxtaposition of religion-as-practised by individuals and religion-as-prescribed by institutions. This perspective leads to analyses that over-emphasize agency and overlook the embeddedness of religious persons in intricate power relations that expand beyond the institution(s) closest to them. I propose that Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory, particularly as related to the religious field, offers tools for tackling this issue. While Bourdieu’s work has been criticized for relegating the laity to the status of passive consumers of religious goods, his theorizations can also be employed to produce nuanced micro-level accounts that prioritize laypeople’s practical knowledge of the field and the positions they take within it. Based on my case study of older Finnish women’s normative assessments related to religion, I demonstrate how scholars can investigate the role which their informants’ histories and investments within the religious field play in their religion-as-lived. The women in my study, lifelong members of Orthodox or Lutheran churches, defended their positions in the increasingly individualistic Finnish religious field through an emphasis on childhood socialization as the foundation of ‘proper’ religion.     

Morality,Politics and Mytho-Poetic Discourse in the Oldest System-Programme for German Idealism: The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Rousseauian</Emphasis> Answer to a Contemporary Question

This paper considers the relation between mytho-poetic narrative and practical philosophy in an Idealist/Romantic fragment, usually attributed to Hegel, known as the ‘System-programme’. Like many works of the young Hegel, the text seeks political reform through a reform of religion and suggests that for politics to be truly motivating reason must be embedded in mytho-poetic discourse. This Hegelian ‘reform’ is in the service of a new, sensuous, practical rationality and a motivating political praxis. The paper places these issues in the context of the religious thought of J.J. Rousseau, particularly his religious themes, as presented in The Social Contract. The paper also connects these issues to a political problem identified in recent work by Simon Critchley, the problem of practical or moral motivation. Critchley claims that while citizens of secular, liberal, democratic societies experience the political norms that shape their lives as externally binding, these norms are not internally compelling. Against this he claims that what are motivating are frameworks of belief that call the secular project into question. At least one of Critchley’s solutions to this problem is connected to the sphere of the religious. While accepting the idea that connecting social and political problems to religion can render them motivating, this paper will withhold from endorsing either the solution offered by the young Hegel in the ‘System-programme’ or Critchley’s, and raises doubts also about the Rousseauian response. It argues that these solutions fail to adequately address the problem they face: how to render contemporary political life internally compelling for modern political subjects?     

God and Governance: Development,State Capacity,and the Regulation of Religion

In this article, we propose a new approach to an old question: How does development affect religion‐state relations? We argue that because development increases states’ ability to effectively formulate and implement policy, it will be associated with greater state regulation of religion. This stands in contrast to predominant theories that examine development's negative impact on individual religiosity while largely overlooking the impact that development may have on state institutions. We test our theory using data drawn from over 160 countries, and demonstrate that the effect of economic development on state regulation of religion is consistently positive, substantively significant, and robust to alternative measurements and the inclusion of a broad range of controls. Statistical analysis also demonstrates that the correlation between development and state regulation of religion is primarily a result of economic development's impact on state capacity, rather than social dislocation or improved coordination by religious communities. Incorporating state capacity recasts the study of religious regulation—and suggests that economic growth is unlikely to take religion off the political agenda.     

Theorising 'Talk' about 'Religious Pluralism' and 'Religious Harmony' in Singapore

This article aims to make sense of the discourse on 'religious pluralism' and 'religious harmony' in Singapore. My choice of the 'Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act' , passed in 1990, to launch this inquiry is by no means accidental or random. I argue that in addition to an empirical domain, it is a central analytical tool that has provided an occasion for the articulation of a range of taken-for-granted statements about 'religion', 'religious pluralism', and 'religious harmony' in Singapore. I map out how the religious scene is discussed by various parties. The inevitability of Singapore's multi-religiosity, the fragility of religious harmony, and the need for constant vigilance are dominant strands. The article addresses these related areas: a brief historical contextualisation of religion in secular Singapore is followed by a condensed narrative of the conditions and deliberations leading to the Act. Further, the discourse on religious harmony from the early 1990s is juxtaposed to present concerns about religion and religious encounters in Singapore. The intention for this is two-fold: to see if there have been any major shifts in such 'talk, and to use the empirical material to call for the re-conceptualisation of categories/notions, such as 'religious pluralism' and 'religious harmony'.     

‘My Husband is My Key to Paradise.’ Attitudes of Muslims in Indonesia and Norway to Spousal Roles and Wife-Beating

This article explores the influence of religious factors and values held by local societies, when Muslims develop their personal attitudes and perceived religious norms regarding spousal roles and wife-beating. It is based on qualitative interviews with 59 Muslims in Indonesia (N?=?35) and Norway (N?=?24). In addition, relevant Indonesian and Norwegian Muslim literature and web pages are examined. According to most Indonesian respondents, Islamic norms prescribe male leadership and allow the husband to beat a disobedient wife. This was regarded as crucial for the wife’s destiny after death. According to most Norwegian respondents, Islamic norms promote gender equality and oppose wife-beating. The sharp contrast between the perceived religious norms of Indonesian and Norwegian respondents may be caused by dissimilar cultural values in the two countries – values that influenced personal attitudes and thus the horizon of understanding where religion and authoritative text were interpreted. The reasoning of the respondents also sheds light on the importance of specific sacred texts when religious norms were developed individually. From a psychological point of view, the implementation of the egalitarian attitudes represented by numerous respondents may have positive effects for Muslim women living in patriarchal societies.     

A social identification approach to the effects of religious disclosures in business communication

This research expands on prior research into the effects of religious disclosures on interpersonal attraction by drawing from social identification theory to explain attributions stemming from religious disclosures in professionals’ e-mail signature blocks. Participants (N = 268) were randomly exposed to one of three experimental conditions (a Christian, Islamic, or secular quotation in a signature block) and completed measures of social identification and perceptions of professionalism. Results indicate that, contrary to prior research, merely disclosing one’s religion does not increase attributions; rather, attributions of a sender’s professionalism are positively derived from the receiver’s social identification with the sender’s religion. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to social identity theory, as well as for professional practice in developing signature blocks as a means of self-presentation.     

Exegesis,Postmodernism, and Auschwitz 1

Based on material consisting of interviews, we ask how this material sheds light on religion's performance regarding moral competence. Four questions structure the study: Firstly, how do informants articulate moral insights and reasons for actions, practices or personal ideals in religious terms? Secondly, how do they articulate and express religious beliefs in moral terms? Thirdly we discuss theoretically how these ways of articulating moral insights in religious terms, and vice versa, can be linked to the notion of moral competence, and as a possible indication of “religion's performance outside itself”. Finally, we ask how the connection between religion and moral competence identified through the discussion in the third point can be further interpreted in light of the informants’ perceptions of religious contexts and communities where they locate themselves and with which they identify. This provides a more nuanced understanding of how contextual embeddedness conditions moral competence, and the potential performance of religion in that respect.