Civil Religion and the Invention of Tradition: The Festival of Saint Ansano in Siena

Every December, in the Italian city of Siena, the civil and religious authorities celebrate the festival of Saint Ansano, an early Christian martyr who became one of the city's first patron saints. Although based upon long-established rituals for the liturgical feast of Saint Ansano, the contemporary celebration of this festival was ‘invented’ as recently as 1968 and represents a striking example of the ‘invention of tradition’ in a contemporary ‘civil religion’. The article examines the origins of the modern and contemporary festival of Saint Ansano, tracing its history and significance for Sienese civil religion from the late 1960s until 2003—the year in which the 1700th anniversary of Ansano's martyrdom was celebrated in Siena. The article concludes by reflecting on the significance of this festival both for the concept of ‘the invention of tradition’ and for the nature of ‘civil religion’ in contemporary Siena.     

The significance of English antinomianism for Anna Trapnel

Abstract

This article intends to show the significance of English antinomianism for the initial transition of Anna Trapnel (d.1660) to radical religion. Tormented by her lack of assurance of salvation and her fearfulness about rightly keeping the moral law, Trapnel was drawn to antinomianism through the preaching of John Simpson. His stress on ‘free grace’ was the only thing able to lift her from suicidal depression. Most studies on Trapnel tend to downplay or ignore entirely the significance of antinomian theology in her formative years. The study intends to fill the gap in research by analysing the theological underpinnings of antinomianism, outlining Trapnel's own religious struggle, and her eventual ‘freedom from bondage’ through Simpson's influence. Highlighting the significance of antinomian thought for Trapnel's early years, as well as its status as the catalyst for her initiation into radical religion, the article provides fresh background material from which to understand her later role as a famous visionary.     

Religion and Mestrovic's postemotional society: The manufacturing of religious emotion

Work on the social theory of emotion has been growing in the last decade, but few have considered how these studies relate to the field of religion. This article is a detailed critical examination of the work of the Croatian‐American sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic and his idea of ‘postemotionalism’. It is an exploration of the implications of his work for understanding contemporary manifestations of religion. It first unfolds the context of Mestrovic's work on postemotionalism and then explores the development and meaning of the term. It follows a series of tensions in the concept between spontaneous and produced emotion and seeks to show how postemotionalism fails to consider adequately religious history, which has continually involved the process of repackaging ‘past emotions’. Despite these difficulties, Mestrovic's idea of postemotionalism is seen to provide not only a way to rethink emotion and rationality in religion, but a way of re-conceptualising so-called ‘individual’ religious emotion as part of wider political constructions developed through late capitalistic markets and the technology of mass media. Mestrovic's lack of concern with religion is considered, and the work of the French sociologist of religion Danie` le Hervieu-Le ger on ‘chain memory’ is introduced as a way of illuminating questions of religious tradition, memory and emotion in Mestrovic's work. The final section of the paper considers the ‘revivalist’ developments of Celtic Spirituality as an example of the micro-politics of postemotional religion.     

IS THERE A TENSION IN WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION?

This paper responds to Severin Schroeder's recent charge that Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion contains an ‘unresolved tension’ between three propositions, namely: (1) ‘As a hypothesis, God's existence (&c) is extremely implausible’; (2) ‘Christian faith is not unreasonable’; and (3) ‘Christian faith does involve belief in God's existence (&c)’. I argue as follows: that the first of these propositions has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking on religion; that the second is ill‐phrased and should be re‐worded as the proposition that ‘Christian faith is neither unreasonable nor reasonable’; and that the third proposition (contrary to what Schroeder seems to assume) tells us nothing about the nature of the objects of religious belief. It follows from my argument that Schroeder has not exposed a tension in Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion. I end with some positive remarks about Wittgenstein's method.     

Identity,politics, and the future(s) of religion in the UK: the case of the religion questions in the 2001 decennial census1>

With the publication of the results of the United Kingdom's decennial Census questions on religion it is important to situate this data within the wider social and religious contexts that led to the inclusion of these questions in the Census. This includes engagement with some of the issues likely to affect both the data itself and the uses to which it might be put. The varied forms of the questions on religion as asked in different parts of the UK are outlined within the context of a discussion of the scholarly taxonomy of religions. The questions are also explored in the light of the interplay between the varied categories of religions and the official ‘recognition’ implied by their use within the Census. Finally, the place of religious statistics within the ‘politics of identity’ as well as their potential contribution to the development of a communalist ‘identity politics’ are critically explored.     

Heidegger's Gods

The notorious difficulty of Heidegger's post‐Second World War discussions of ‘the gods’, along with scholarly disagreement about the import of those discussions, renders that body of work an unlikely place to look for a substantive theory of religion. The thesis of this article is that, contrary to these appearances, Heidegger's later works do contain clues for developing such a theory. Heidegger's concerns about the category of ‘religion’ are addressed, and two recent attempts to ‘de‐mythologize’ Heidegger's ‘gods’ are examined and criticized. The paper concludes by outlining four substantial contributions that Heidegger's later work makes to a phenomenological account of religion.     

Religion as Anthropomorphism: A New Theory that Invites Definitional and Epistemic Scrutiny

This essay will focus briefly on (1) a definitional and (2) an epistemic analysis of Stewart Guthrie's cultural-anthropological theory of anthropomorphism in his bookFaces in the Clouds. In Part I of the essay, I will examine specific definitional claims about religion that Guthrie advances in chapter 1 (‘The Need for a Theory’) and chapter 3 (‘The Origin of Anthropomorphism’). In Part II, crucial statements in chapter 6 (‘Anthropomorphism in Philosophy and Science’) and chapter 7 (‘Religion as Anthropomorphism’) raise questions about Guthrie's epistemic assumptions that in philosophy and science the objects referred to as anthropomorphic have critically been known to be errors and have been wisely set aside in the margins of those enterprises, whereas the objects referred to as anthropomorphic in religion have always been at the centre of religion. Guthrie employs five theoretical criteria (of observability, simplicity, generality, fallibility, and probability) to explain why religion always anthropomorphizes. The essay concludes with a formal question about the epistemic status of Guthrie's observability and universality criteria.     

‘Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty’: The Silent Call of Art

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might encourage the spiritual growth of their students. This paper invites reflection on this central question by discussing the role aesthetics might play with particular focus on its relationship to the ‘spiritual senses’, a theme which has been strikingly absent from recent publications on religion and Christian education. Paying particular attention to the work of the contemporary French phenomenologist, Jean‐Louis Chrétien, I shall argue that art invites us to listen to as well as to see the power of beauty. Educators should not ignore this capacity of art to engage the spiritual senses within a contemplative ethos of silence. But I go further than simply pointing to these seminal ideas about Christian formation, by discussing the ‘wound’ that beauty inevitably inflicts. I illustrate this suggestion by referring to Pope Benedict XVI's essay ‘Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful’ and to two visualizations of religion: Delacroix's painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel and Beauvois' film Of Gods and Men.     

Religion,Philosophy and Family Resemblances

Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblances has been adopted by some writers either to explain the use of the word ‘religion’ or to advocate a use in the context of a definition. The purpose of this definition is supposedly to avoid an essentialist definition of religion such as ‘belief in God or gods’ which is seen as too parochially tied to Judaeo-Christian theistic origins of the word, while at the same time guaranteeing a distinctive role for religion as a universally applicable analytical concept. However, if an essentialist definition is not smuggled in for the purpose of maintaining a distinction between the ‘religion’ family and other neighbouring families such as ideologies, worldviews, values or symbolic systems, then the family becomes so indefinite that the word ceases to pick out any distinctive aspect of human culture. And this definitional dilemma in fact reflects the actual use of the word ‘religion’ by the scholarly community. Analysis of ‘religion’ texts shows that the word is used in such a large range of contexts that it is devoid of analytical value. Consequently, there is an obligation on the community of scholars to reconceptualize the wide and valuable range of work which is being carried out in ‘religion’ departments.     

Editorial: minding the (explanatory) gap

‘I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran’, says the robust and bluff believer, Francis Bacon, as the studio manager reaches to switch off the sound on his Elizabethan cultural perceptions, ‘than that this universal frame is without a mind... God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it...’. ‘It is true’, he goes on, ‘that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion’. Bacon assumes that the atheist rejects ‘religion’, not just belief in God: no middle term is readily available to him. There is a lingering nuance that ‘atheism’ is ‘shallow’ in its rejection of ‘religion’, which we can register, and even deploy, without thereby endorsing theism: can now insist that the rejection of theism is not yet atheism. Or can we? This is familiar enough stuff for Buddhists, who seem typically in their ‘non-theism’ to represent an agnosticism of indifference rather than of perplexity. But we need to recall why it might seem contentious, and revisiting the scene of religious perplexity can be salutary, since religious dialogue is not apologetic opposition but imaginativeengagement.     

The Pope,the gays and the Dutch: Dutch secular responses to Pope Benedict XVI when homosexuality seems at stake

This article provides a critical discourse analysis of Dutch perceptions of, and responses to, papal utterances that were perceived to be (primarily) about homosexuality. It looks not only at secular conceptions of religion, in which the Pope’s views on homosexuality are taken as exemplary of the irrationality and libido dominandi of religion, but also at certain postsecular uses of religion to rebuke the Pope. It explains Pope Benedict’s (perceived) obsession with homosexuality by locating it in the context of a Vatican discourse against ‘gender ideology’, whereas it explains the Dutch media’s preoccupation with homosexuality by explaining that the papal pronouncements are seen as a threat to the international role of the Netherlands as a moral guide and, more precisely, a threat to what the Dutch see as their moral ‘export product’: ‘gay marriage’.     

Taking liberties and making liberty: religious bounding and political violence in Sri Lanka

This paper argues that the relationship between religion and violent politics is best understood through a focus on religious practice. The case study of the Tamil Catholic Church within Sri Lanka's civil war is presented against a backdrop of Buddhist monk participation in violent insurgency decades earlier. The discrete cases evidence a common preoccupation with management of physical borders and discursive boundaries as actors seek to reproduce themselves and their work as legitimately ‘religious’. Despite relying on remaining ‘pure’ from the dirty political realm, in practice religion is bound to social action and reproduced through the violent circumstances it engages.     

Big Gods in review: introducing Ara Norenzayan and his critics

This essay introduces a review symposium on Ara Norenzayan's book Big Gods (2013). The essay reviews Norenzayan's earlier publications on religion, sums up the main points of criticism that have been put forward by the contributors, and raises some concerns about the questions to be asked about ‘religion.’     

Daniel Dubuisson,The Western Construction of Religion

In The Western Construction of Religion Daniel Dubuisson argues that the concept of ‘religion’ is too historically and culturally contingent to serve as the basis for a comparative discipline. The concept is indigenous to Western culture and is inherently theological and phenomenological. He argues for a constructionist view of the discipline and proposes the concept ‘cosmographic formations' as a replacement for ‘religion’. Religious phenomena should be taken as discursive constructions that link embodied individuals to the social, cultural and cosmic orders. The following reviews evaluate Dubuisson's arguments, relating them to broader currents in the theory of religion. Daniel Dubuisson responds to each of the reviews.     

‘At home in the uncanny’: Freud's account of das Unheimliche in the context of his theory of religious belief

This paper serves as an exploration of Freud's comment that one of the functions of religious belief is to make humanity feel ‘at home in the uncanny’ (heimisch im Unheimlichen). The first section examines the context of Freud's comment within The Future of an Illusion. Attention is then shifted to Freud's essay on ‘The ‘‘Uncanny’’’, and to his conclusion that the ‘uncanny’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. A number of interpretations of the ‘at home’ remark are discussed, and it is suggested that religion might fruitfully be viewed as an attempt to come to terms with humanity's ‘transcendental homelessness’.     

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.     

Why Durkheim really thought that Buddhism was a ‘religion’ (in memoriam Massimo Rosati)

ABSTRACT

In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, and in ‘On the Definition of Religious Phenomena,' Durkheim famously asserted both that Buddhism was a ‘religion' and an ‘atheistic' one at that. Why he did so is a problem long-considered settled. Of two possible answers, one is commonplace, while the other is uncommon and consequential. I shall attempt to explicate Durkheim's uncommon and far- reaching, but overlooked, reasons for declaring atheistic Buddhism a ‘religion.' This essay concurs with Martin Southwold that Durkheim believed – wrongly – that religion was ‘monothetic' class, when, in fact, it was ‘polythetic.' In order to admit Buddhism as a ‘religion,' Durkheim discovered that he had to apply different criteria for defining Buddhism as ‘religion’ than to theistic religions. Buddhism did not radiate dynamogenic force or induce a sense of existential dependence. Buddhism was a religion because it was an agent in making a meaningful life.     

The Wonder and Spirit of Phenomenology and Theology: Rubenstein and Derrida on Heidegger's Formal Distinction of Philosophy from Theology

While Heidegger's earlier phenomenological writings inform much contemporary discourse in the continental philosophy of religion, his 1927 essay on ‘Phenomenology and Theology’ offers a largely uncontested distinction between philosophy and theology on the basis of their possibilities as sciences following ontological difference. This paper reconsiders Heidegger's distinction by invoking spirit and wonder, concepts Jacques Derrida and Mary‐Jane Rubenstein have more recently emphasized as central to thought that is open to that which ruptures metaphysical schemas. I contend Heidegger's use of ontological difference as a formal distinction between philosophy and theology distances us from the wonder, spirit, and truth (alētheia) that undoes the binaries behind which we take shelter. However, I temper this critique with the recognition that Heidegger, Derrida, and Rubenstein equally recognize an inescapable repetition of metaphysical thinking in the philosophy of religion.     

Fake religions,politics and ironic fandom: the Church of the SubGenius,Zontar and American televangelism

This paper challenges recent arguments that the Church of the SubGenius (COSG) is a ‘real’ religious organization, in that it purportedly provides a path to spiritual enlightenment. Besides downplaying the COSG’s comedic aspects, these essentialist approaches have largely ignored its historical development within the American ‘alternative’ underground of the 1980s and early-1990s. Drawing on interviews and the analysis of participatory media, this paper examines the COSG alongside Zontar, a stridently political zine named in honour of a B-movie monster that its founders claimed to worship. It is demonstrated that these interrelated, intentionally ‘fake’ religions emerged in the context of a turbulent American culture war, and confronted a conservative evangelicalism perceived to be a political threat. While the founders of the COSG and Zontar accordingly attacked and satirised politically engaged television preachers such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, their approaches to certain less explicitly political televangelists can be considered examples of ironic fandom, shot through with flashes of genuine admiration. In all of these activities, the founders of these fake faiths participated in a cultural discussion about authentic Christianity in America – playful religious work more indicative of the COSG’s cultural significance than its alleged status as an ‘authentic’ religion.     

‘We don't do God’: A critical retrospective of New Labour's approaches to ‘religion or belief’ and ‘faith’

Given that Tony Blair was once infamously told by an aide that in Britain ‘we don't do God’, the New Labour Government that he led was responsible for developing and implementing a series of policies that brought religion firmly into British political spaces. Adopting two policy approaches, these approaches focused on ‘religion or belief’ and ‘faith’. Alongside the incorporation of ‘religion and belief’ into the broadening equalities framework, New Labour encouraged greater engagement with faith communities initially through urban regeneration before implementing a more faith-specific programme, namely the interfaith framework. Drawing on three research projects, this article retrospectively considers the extent to which these approaches were joined up and whether – and indeed how – they contributed to New Labour's overarching measurements of success: creating a more equal society.