Religious Claims in Public: Lutheran Resources

Abstract : A cacophony of religious voices seeking to influence public culture, opinion, and policy pervades the public discourse in the United States today. Some publicly‐oriented religious claims are appropriate while others are not. Sorely needed are criteria for making that distinction. This essay asks: What are criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious claims, language, and symbols in deliberation about public policy? What particular gifts do Lutheran traditions bring to shaping those criteria? The essay then draws upon Lutheran theological resources to propose theologically grounded criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious language, claims, and symbols in public discourse.     

Muslim religious oratory on Swedish public service radio

This article analyses religious Morning Services, delivered by eight Muslim speakers, broadcast on Swedish public service radio during 2013 and 2014. Morning Services have been broadcast on Swedish radio since 1930, but only in recent years have non-Christian speakers been invited to contribute. Inviting religious minority speakers is understood as a strategy for incorporating selected representatives of religious minorities into hegemonic practices and discourses. The analysis identifies four shared discourses produced in the material and relates these discourses to hegemonic views regarding legitimate public expressions of religiosity in Sweden. The discourses are: 1) a positive discourse on religious pluralism, 2) a discourse that emphasises practical self-help-like effects of Muslim religious practice, 3) a discourse that articulates religiosity as challenging purported negative aspects of current society, 4) a discourse that raises difficulties which Muslims in Sweden face. The Muslim Morning Services illustrate a complex dialectic, as, on the one hand, they endorse hegemonic values and ideals and thereby contribute to and legitimise the status quo, while, on the other hand, their individual voices, personal narratives, and religious messages signify change through their use of public space which was previously unavailable to Muslims.     

Tradition,morality and community: elaborating Orthodox identity in Putin’s Russia

This paper draws upon a number of official, semi-official and other public texts related to the current views of the Russian Church on social and political issues. Overall, in spite of a variety of opinions and nuances, a certain mainstream becomes apparent, as expressed through this body of texts. The most discussed topics include moral values related to the human body (such as abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technologies and sexuality) and issues such as blasphemy, juvenile courts and new technologies of personal registration for Russian citizens. ‘Traditional morality’ has become the signature discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church which is attempting to construct ‘tradition’ by drawing upon a partly imagined ethos of imperial Russia and the late Soviet Union. Traditional family values are central to the church’s rhetoric. The authors of these texts see a presumed decay of traditional values as the main danger that must be opposed. They usually trace the source of this danger directly to the contemporary West. By contrast, they see Russia as a protective shield against these global influences. Either consciously or involuntarily, they translate their religious language of traditional morality into a political rhetoric of solidarity and patriotism. Such ideological rhetoric has direct political implications and analogies in the agenda of Putin’s regime. This Russian appeal to ‘traditional values’, both religious and political, has recently acquired an extraordinary international relevance.     

Religion and the crisis in Ukraine

This article investigates religious nationalism in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, which has appeared in political and popular rhetoric and has been expressed through violence. From the Tsarist era, Kyiv and Crimea have featured centrally in Russian national mythology as the cradle(s) of Russian Christianity. This nationalist conception of space persisted after political borders changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as has the Russian Orthodox Church's historic jurisdiction in Ukraine. As a result, Russian Orthodox believers retain a special affinity for Kyiv and Crimea, and many Ukrainian citizens have looked to Moscow for matters of faith. Subjects of inquiry include religious nationalism, the baptism of Slavic Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr), Orthodox holy places in Crimea and Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill's Russian World concept, and religious violence in Ukraine and Crimea.     

Islamic practice and state policies towards religion in post-Soviet Russia

ABSTRACT

What has the Russian state policy towards Islam been in the first two decades after the Soviet collapse, and how has it affected Islamic practice in the country? This study explores Russian state policies towards religion from 1990 to 2017 and discusses their impact on Islamic practice in the country. In the 1990s, relations between the Russian state and Islam (state-Islam relations) were accommodationist: the state granted unrestricted access in the Russian public sphere for all Muslim communities and allowed a wide range of Islamic religious practices. State-Islam relations in the 2000s became increasingly regulatory: the state assumed a more active interventionist role in the affairs of the domestic Islamic community in order to control religious practices of certain Muslim factions and to ensure privileged access in the Russian public sphere for state-approved ‘traditional’ religious organisations. This contribution reveals the dynamics of the Russian state’s attitudes towards the largest minority religion in the country in the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet state. It also offers analytical insights on the dynamic nature of state-religion relations in other secular states with religiously diverse populations.     

A Civil Art: The Persuasive Moral Voice of Oscar Romero

When moral or religious teachings have public and political effects, analysis usually focuses on the message, but attention to the manner in which the teachings are communicated is equally important in understanding their power to influence the course of events. Oscar Romero's particular style of moral discourse was remarkably effective for three reasons: First, his moral reasoning resonated with Salvadoran identity. It was intelligible within those reigning assumptions about national history and territory that could actually move a public to action. Second, his moral judgments were timely. Romero sought to discern what was possible for the Salvadoran public at a given moment. Third, Romero had integrity as public figure. He lived in such a way that his life, and especially his death, became an exemplary embodiment of the larger religious narrative that both grounded his ethics and gave meaning to the nation.     

Reply to Kevin Carnahan and Erik A. Anderson

In my response to Kevin Carnahan, I explain the concept of religion that I have been working with in my writings on the place of religious reasons in public political discourse. While acknowledging that religion is often privatized, my concern has been with religion as a way of life. It is religion so understood that raises the most serious issues concerning the role of religion in public discourse. In my response to Erik A. Anderson, I go beyond what I have previously said about the role of religious reasons in public discourse. As an alternative to Rawlsian public reason, I argue that the essence of liberal democracy is that every citizen is to have equal political voice. I go on to consider what it is to exercise one’s equal political voice as a moral engagement.     

Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed

Under communism, the Russian religious landscape consisted mainly of two competitors—a severely repressed Russian Orthodox Church and a heavily promoted atheist alternative to religion called "scientific atheism." Under these circumstances, one might expect the rapid spread of religious disbelief, but the intensity of the atheist campaign originated from official mandate and not popular appeal. In turn, scientific atheism never inspired the Russian population and grew increasingly uninspired as Soviet officials created a monopoly "church" of scientific atheism in hopes of replacing persistent religious beliefs and practices. This article is dedicated to explaining why Communists could not successfully convert the masses to atheism. The findings provide evidence that systems of belief require more than simply the power of promotion and coercion to become accepted.     

Patriotism,Orthodox religion and education: empirical findings from contemporary Russia

In recent years, an objective of some Russian Orthodox activists and Church leaders has been the introduction of religious education in state schools which was established in Russia in 2012, following a 2009 Presidential Directive. Today, however, there are two different strands in religious education. On the one hand, there is the state’s emphasis on the bonds between Orthodox Christianity and Russian history, culture and identity. Based on this so-called culturological understanding of religion, the Russian state hopes to use Orthodoxy in nation- and institution-building and in the strengthening of patriotism. On the other hand, while the culturological language is also used in the Church’s official discourse, in practice there are many attempts by Orthodox clergymen and activists to use religious education for the purposes of evangelisation.     

PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Reports from a Dialogue Including Christian,Judaic, Islamic,and Feminist Viewpoints

Torture continues to be a pressing political issue in North America, yet religious scholarly reflection on the ethics of torture remains all but sidelined in public discourse for a variety of complex reasons. These reasons are explored—and critiqued—in this collection of reflections by Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and feminist religious ethicists. These scholars find that historical amnesia, forced if not twisted readings of classical texts and contemporary human rights instruments, and sociological factors are but a few of the factors challenging contemporary religious ethical discourse on torture.     

HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Philip Hefner identifies three settings in which to assess the future of science and religion: the academy, the public sphere, and the faith community. This essay argues that the discourse of science and religion could improve its standing within the secular academy in America by shifting the focus from theology to history. In the public sphere, the science‐and‐religion discourse could play an important role of promoting tolerance and respect toward the religious Other. For a given faith community (for example, Judaism) the discourse of science and religion can ensure future intellectual depth by virtue of study and ongoing interpretation. The essay challenges the suggestion to adopt irony as a desirable posture for science‐and‐religion discourse.     

History, Community Milieu, and Christian-Muslim Differentials in Contraceptive Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the globalization discourse, Christianity and Islam are often construed as representing two traditions that are conflicted and incompatible. This study engages the "clash of civilizations" discourse by examining Muslim-Christian differentials in the use of modern contraception in Nigeria, where Christians have a much higher contraceptive prevalence, and Tanzania, where Muslims are somewhat more likely to use contraception. Employing data from six nationally representative surveys conducted in the two countries between 1990 and 2004 and multilevel logistic regression, we find that the effects of religion remain strong but operate largely through the community religious milieu. Contraceptive use tends to be highest in religiously mixed areas, but the "optimal" religious makeup differs between the two nations, reflecting the historically shaped configurations of their religious expressions and politics.     

Islam,secularism and danger: a reconsideration of the link between religiosity,radicalism and rebellion in Central Asia

In equating political Islam with radicalism and rebellion against the state, security analysts make a number of assumptions about the religious, the secular and security. Within the Central Asian context, the discursive fusing of religiosity with radicalism produces a bogeyman in which national and foreign governments, although offering quite different countermeasures, have found a common enemy. This securitisation of Islam distorts our understanding of these movements whose approach is seldom ‘radical’ in form. We identify six claims which are axiomatic to both international and national secularist security discourses with respect to Islam in the region. We then demonstrate that popular Muslim discourse and political practice – in the findings of an original survey and ethnographic research in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – provide a more complex picture than that found in elite discourses. While the six propositions can be refuted in objective terms, they remain relevant to how the problem is subjectively produced and reproduced in elite discourse and practice. As particular secularist claims about Islam, they inform national and international policies towards religious freedom and Islamic movements across Central Asia. Many of these themes appear in weaker and ambiguous forms in popular discourse and continue to limit Muslim political participation.     

Common Narratives in Discourses on National Identity in Russia and Japan

This article discusses some common narratives found in discourses on national identity in Russia and Japan, and their temporal transformations reflecting the needs of a nation as it becomes a colonial empire. National identity discourse is examined from the viewpoint of national antagonism arising from an external threat. Russian and Japanese intellectuals, with their vastly different historical and cultural heritage, have dwelled upon similar issues pertaining to modernization of the state and adoption or rejection of foreign ideas and ways of life. There are several themes in Russian and Japanese discourses on national identity that share a significant overlap, particularly themes of national uniqueness and a ‘special path’, deterministic worldviews, imperial cosmopolitanism/messianism and criticism of ‘Western’ philosophical systems and concepts. This article elucidates the shared aspects of these narratives and philosophical inquiries in Russia and Japan and puts them into a historical context.     

The celebration of civil Israeli religion in Italy

In this article, the attitudes of the Italian Jewish diaspora towards Israel, seen as a symbolic homeland, are analyzed. This analysis is based on the theoretical discourse on diaspora. Attitudes are explored through the participation of Italian Jews in the celebration of Yom ha'atzma'ut. Given the significance of Israel's Independence Day in the sequence of the three‐day civil religious commemoration in Israel – which constitutes a sort of national narrative – the entire sequence is also considered in the analysis of the Italian diaspora.     

Religion and the body in medical research

Religious discussion of human organs and tissues has concentrated largely on donation for therapeutic purposes. The retrieval and use of human tissue samples in diagnostic, research, and education contexts have, by contrast, received very little direct theological attention. Initially undertaken at the behest of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, this essay seeks to explore the theological and religious questions embedded in nontherapeutic use of human tissue. It finds that the "donation paradigm" typically invoked in religious discourse to justify uses of the body for therapeutic reasons is inadequate in the context of nontherapeutic research, while the "resource paradigm" implicit in scientific discourse presumes a reductionist account of the body that runs contrary to important religious values about embodiment. The essay proposes a "contribution paradigm" that provides a religious perspective within which research on human tissue can be both justified and limited.     

Religious Reasons and Public Healthcare Deliberations

This paper critically explores the path of some of the controversiesover public reason and religion through four distinct steps.The first part of this article considers the engagement of JohnFinnis and Robert P. George with John Rawls over the natureof public reason. The second part moves to the question of religionby looking at the engagement of Nicholas Wolterstorff with Rawls,Robert Audi, and others. Here the question turns specificallyto religious reasons, and their permissible use by citizensin public debate and discourse. The third part engages JürgenHabermas's argument that while citizens must be free to makereligious arguments, still, there is an obligation of translation,and a motivational constraint on lawmakers. The final sectionargues that even though Habermas's proposal fails, neverthelesshe recognizes a key difficulty for religious citizens in contemporaryliberal polities. Restoration of a full role for religiouslygrounded justificatory reasons in public debate is one partof an adequate solution to this problem, but a second plankmust be added to the solution: recognition that religious reasonscan enter into public deliberation not just as first-order justificationsof particular policies, but as second-order reasons, to be consideredby any polity that respects its religious citizens and, morebroadly, the good of religion.     

The ethical catastrophe of contemporary Russia and its foresights in Russian thought

This paper examines the changing ethical consciousness in Russia since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and discusses how this change was reflected in Russian religious philosophy. This process can be characterized by a series of sudden and violent replacements of contradictory ethical models, which, by disorientating the public consciousness, led to the atrophy of the ethical instinct. The last two models in the series correspond to the “anti-ethics” of the 1990s and the “non-ethics” of the third Millennium. The latter model (“non-ethics”) corresponds to the current absence of individual ethical positions and the willingness to adopt any position prescribed by the state. A review of philosophical reflection on this process shows that Russian religious thought did not foresee such an ethical catastrophe. Indeed, although Vladimir Solovyov presented an alarming eschatological foresight of the future, and despite the fact that the collection Landmarks, written in 1907, firmly identified the intelligentsia as a highly destructive agent promoting their own alternative ethics, the optimistic philosophical model nonetheless prevailed. According to this optimistic model, the period of disasters and catastrophes will be followed by a new spiritual reawakening.     

The changing dynamics of religious authority on Pakistani religious television

This paper analyses the production, ownership and control of Pakistani religious talk shows, which have emerged as a popular genre of religious programming, subsequent to the liberalisation of Pakistani media in 2002. Much scholarship has implicated the nexus between Islam and televisual media in enabling the fragmentation of religious authority, by altering ‘lay’ engagements with Islam and thereby eliciting wider participation in religious discourse. In contrast, this paper focuses on the changing terms of asserting religious authority in the newly liberalised media context. Based on an analysis of the innovative formats and modes of editorial control characterising contemporary religious shows, I posit the significance of religious talk shows in both altering the nature of scholarly participation in religious public debate, and subjecting featured scholars to non-scholarly interests and agendas. I argue that the latter two insights into the nature of religious authority on television are only accessible from a production-based perspective, which is crucial for evaluating the wider implications of broadcast media for religious authority.