"信仰群体维度":奥特论教会与社会的互动

本文以著名神学家奥特的"群体信仰维度"所涉定的内涵,即信仰行动或通过信仰与个人相遇、交流而产生的群体的视角,思考、分析教会作为社会团体,如何更好地积极地服务社群,并寻求以上帝是爱为指向的社会互动。中国教会与社会,正共同经历着和谐社会道德体系的建构,直面社会转型期间种种结构性缺失,教会与社会相互关系也必然与人的善美趋向及社会道德秩序相关。文章认为,在中国社会中,教会要甘心情愿服侍众人,并且以耶稣关怀人的方式的基督教特质出发,肯定人的价值,并与社会真正和睦、和谐相处。     

天命信仰与诸神崇拜——咸阳碑碣文献的个案研究

天命信仰与诸神崇拜是中国人精神信仰系统中两种重要的信仰形态,在不同的历史阶段扮演着不同的角色。本文从咸阳碑碣文献入手,探讨两种信仰形态的嬗变过程。商周到明清的三千多年间,天命观念逐渐演变成天命信仰,成为广大民众主要的信仰方式。明清以来,诸神崇拜逐渐替代了天命信仰,成为民众生活中较具完整意义上的宗教信仰方式。     

一部深入探索道德信仰重建之道的学术力作--评《道德信仰论》

信仰的失落 ,无论在当代世界 ,还是在当代中国 ,似乎已成为一个不争的事实 ,已经引起社会各界的广泛关注。西方不少学者试图通过重新唤起人们的宗教情绪来重建信仰 ,一些人更因此而陷入邪教的痴迷。显然 ,这都不是中国特色社会主义社会所需要的信仰 ,更与马克思主义的原则立场背道而驰。重建正确而高尚的信仰 ,是社会主义精神文明建设的重大问题 ,也是伦理学研究者责无旁贷的理论使命。任建东同志新近出版的学术专著《道德信仰论》(宗教文化出版社 2 0 0 4年版 ) ,通过回应现时代道德信仰的各种问题以及深入探索道德信仰的重建之道 ,成为一…     

从碑刻看清水江流域苗族、侗族招龙谢土的生态意蕴

清水江流域涉及招龙谢土的碑刻,弥补传统文献和民族调查的不足,为我们了解民间宗教中的生态认识提供了第一手资料。招龙谢土是村寨集体针对多种破坏地脉龙神情形进行"公罚"的禳灾行为,是龙脉崇拜下的风水观念体现,反映出清水江流域苗族、侗族对居住环境的乡土认知模式和对村寨灾难的传统应对方式,蕴含着以下三方面的生态意蕴:一是龙脉信仰和禁忌蕴含人地和谐的生态理念;二是对集体神圣利益侵犯的"公罚"行为,体现人神相应的生态管理制度;三是招龙谢土中人人自觉培护龙脉的植树造林是环境认知在日常生活世界中转化为生态伦理的具体实践。     

“双重脱嵌”与新移民个体意义体系的建构——社会流动视角下的青年多元信仰实践北大核心CSSCI

本文讨论的核心问题是在社会流动的过程中,多元信仰对新移民个体意义体系建构的作用。我们通过研究发现,流动中的新移民可能面临着"双重脱嵌"的境遇,这种悬置的状态会给他们带来归属的困境,在主流话语体系无法满足其意义需求时,包括占卜术在内的多元信仰为个体应对融入困境提供了新的精神支持,也成为新一代重建文化信仰体系的尝试。这又与兴起于北美的"新世代运动"遥相呼应,成为当代世界宗教与信仰版图的重要组成部分。     

“双重脱嵌”与新移民个体意义体系的建构——社会流动视角下的青年多元信仰实践

本文讨论的核心问题是在社会流动的过程中,多元信仰对新移民个体意义体系建构的作用。我们通过研究发现,流动中的新移民可能面临着"双重脱嵌"的境遇,这种悬置的状态会给他们带来归属的困境,在主流话语体系无法满足其意义需求时,包括占卜术在内的多元信仰为个体应对融入困境提供了新的精神支持,也成为新一代重建文化信仰体系的尝试。这又与兴起于北美的"新世代运动"遥相呼应,成为当代世界宗教与信仰版图的重要组成部分。     

从《美代璃之森》看日本的民间信仰

信仰就是对某种主张、主义、宗教或某人极其相信和崇拜,并拿来作为行为指南和榜样,是贯穿在人的世界观之中的一种意识规范.日本的民间信仰,或称"基层信仰"是一种非宗教信仰.是以日本固有的"八百万神众"为对象的神祗信仰,代表了依赖祈愿占卜、信仰奇迹咒术等具有地域性、民间性的观念领域,与日本民族的思维方式、价值观、伦理意识密切相关.     

鬼之仙途:道教视阈中的观念演进

在中国古代文化中,鬼的观念与死亡紧密联系在一起。道教以不死为信仰的旨趣,必然要面对死亡与鬼的基本观念。然而,从观念内涵和历史变迁来看,鬼与死亡之间的关系十分复杂。本文从鬼的观念历史演进入手,将鬼的意涵分梳为陌生的超自然力量和对疾病与死亡的焦虑。以此为基础,分析鬼这一本土观念与道教信仰实践的结合方式,围绕着长生与生活秩序理解道教如何处理在日常生活中普遍存在的鬼的观念及其带来的信仰焦虑。     

对于早期神仙传记中“升仙故事”的“神话-原型批评”研究

本文以神话-原型批评为基本方法,以文本解读为依据,从人物形象、主题和情节的角度,讨论了早期神仙传记《列仙传》、《神仙传》中"升仙故事"与古代信仰、巫术和仪式的关系。作者认为,这类"升仙故事"中主人公的身份、形象、精神气质等方面的基本特征皆来自于古代巫师作为人-神中介的特殊职业及其在巫术活动中的具体行为;同时,"升仙故事"在表达人-仙交流和演变的主题时,以系统性的天象、物质和动物作为象征意象。这些象征意象的运用也可以直接上溯到中国古代的信仰和巫术并表现在古代神话的原型之中;另外,早期神仙传记的"升仙情节"中的具体场景、死亡-成仙观念、特性化的情感和气氛等因素也受到了中国古代信仰和相关的巫术-仪式的重要影响。     

西藏宗教中的"替罪羊"观念及侣贡杰布仪式

本文主要对于流行于西藏民间,而各宗教又都予以吸收的一种类似西方"替罪羊"概念的宗教观念进行系统的讨论,并对与这个观念密切相关的侣贡杰布仪式进行重新考察,认为其虽然生成的时间略晚,但很快就成为藏区的一种具有狂欢节倾向的仪式,显现民间信仰对于系统化宗教拥有较大程度的作用力。     

Shared Traumatic Reality and Boundary Theory: How Mental Health Professionals Cope With the Home/Work Conflict During Continuous Security Threats

ABSTRACT

In a shared traumatic reality, mental health professionals and their clients are exposed to the same communal disaster. Both living and working in the same high-stress community can create a conflict between the professional's work and his or her private life. The author analyzed three focus groups consisting of 30 mental health professionals who worked with traumatized populations in a missile-stricken area in southern Israel. The professionals’ experience was explored through the lens of boundary theory by examining the ways in which they created and maintained boundaries between the different domains of their lives. Findings demonstrated that these professionals presented a continuum of segmentation and integration of the domains as suggested by boundary theory, when both living and working in a highly stressed environment. The discussion deals with possible costs and benefits of the boundary theory continuum.     

In God’s House

Abstract

By naming the ways silence and taboo structure the documentary, In God’s House, the article traces the ways personal narratives are deployed as: (1) a cultural practice to consolidate an “Asian” ethnicity; and as (2) a pedagogical strategy to address the silence of sexual discourse—particularly around LGBTQ issues—in Asian American contexts. As cultural practices, silence and taboo undergird the framework of community—protecting individual honor, securing public face and fortifying webs of relationships that sustain individual and social flourishing. More than a façade for the “inscrutable Asian,” silence illuminates a practice of communal relationality that reconfigures “American” significations of community, sexuality, race and identity.     

Innovative ordinariness and ritual change in a Jerusalem Minyan

In this article, I present an ethnographic analysis of ritual change in the communal prayers of a Jerusalem congregation that promotes gender equality within the framework of Orthodox-oriented halakha. While scholars have examined how ritual change in Jewish communities develops through the reinterpretation and reutilization of religious texts, practices and objects, my fieldwork reveals how change is shaped by people’s habitus – their ways of being in the world. Communal prayers in this congregation exemplify what I call an “innovative ordinariness” of religious change. Members view and experience their communal rituals as “ordinary” due to their perception of their prayer hall as a familiar spatial and auditory environment. This ordinariness facilitates creative and innovative uses of religious practices. The data outlined here are based on field research during which I participated in the congregation’s services and communal activities, and held interviews and informal conversations with members. This case study depicts ways in which members of Israeli Orthodox society apply their cultural toolkit to create religious spaces that accommodate their gender-egalitarian values, beliefs and lifestyles and, at the same time, produce religiosity that is experienced and understood as legitimate. By doing so, I argue, they assign new meanings to traditional Orthodox categories.     

Community,Spiritual Traditions,and Disasters in Chinese Society

Pastoral Psychology - This article posits a deeply contextual and communal therapy as the best path to a victim’s reconstruction of a sense of ‘home.’ The authors take seriously...     

Loss, Healing, and the Power of Place

Human beings have a tendency to transform geographical spaces into dwelling places which assume significance in terms of their social, cultural and personal identities. The authors describe the ways in which this occurs, how it is disrupted by a natural disaster - an Australian bushfire - and how the reciprocal relationship between place and person can contribute to personal and communal healing. The discussion draws on a doctoral thesis conducted by the principal author, and is illuminated by excerpts from narratives provided by those who experienced the bushfire. The discussion is informed by insights from phenomenological geography and ecological philosophy.     

Heidegger,Communal Being,and Politics

There are two critical, but opposite interpretations of Heidegger’s understanding of being as a social ontology. One charges Heidegger with adhering to an anti-social “private irony,” while the other charges him with promoting a “self-canceling” totality. The current essay replies to these two charges with a discussion of Heidegger’s understanding of being as “communal being,” which is implicated both in the early Heidegger’s concept of “being-in-the-world-with-others” and in the later Heidegger’s keyword of Ereignis. It argues that Heidegger’s understanding of being as communal being is neither identical with totalitizing publicness nor the same as voluntaristic egotism. According to Heidegger, both the publicness of das Man and voluntaristic egotism are the real threats to humanity at present. Because of them, we human beings are in danger of being uprooted from the earth upon which we—as communal beings—have already and always dwelled and lived with others from the very beginning of human history.     

“Not Being Counted”: Women's Place and Religious Space in Jewish Orthodox Communities During the COVID-19 Crisis

This article draws on the anthropology of crisis to analyze ways in which communal-religious responses to crisis situations can reveal engrained social and cultural structures, and especially their gendered aspects. We focus on two alternative forms of Jewish communal prayer service that emerged in Orthodox communities in Israel during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: street and balcony minyans. Based on interviews and texts, we explore Orthodox women's experiences of these new religious spaces that entailed the rearrangement of traditional gender and spatial boundaries. We show that while these spaces opened room for new religious experiences for women, they ultimately accentuated their experiences of exclusion. We argue that the destabilization of the physical religious space in these alternative communal prayers reinforced symbolic gender boundaries. Thus, our study not only demonstrates how crises can uncover the deep social grammar of a community, but also how they unearth processes that defy and challenge that grammar.     

Perception of communal motives in couples: Accuracy,bias, and their associations with relationship length

Can romantic partners accurately perceive each other’s communal motives, or are these perceptions biased by their own motivational hopes and fears? This study used data from N = 1,905 partnered participants to examine the extent to which partner perceptions of communal motives correspond to targets’ (accuracy) and perceivers’ (motivational bias) explicit and implicit communal motives. Our results indicate that explicit communal motives and implicit communal approach motives can be (a) accurately inferred and (b) positively bias communal motive perception. Furthermore, there was no evidence for moderation of either accuracy or motivational bias by relationship length. These findings point to the early visibility of both implicit and explicit motives in couples, as well as their persistent biasing effects on partner perception.     

THE CONTRIBUTION OF WORLD JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RIGHTS FOR JEWS IN MOROCCO (1956–1961)

The history of the Jewish community during the early years of Moroccan independence is a story of continuous and constant worries regarding an unclear future—as well as fears of possible impending disaster. During this period, the Jewish community was forced to deal with several critical questions, the answers to which would ultimately determine the future of Moroccan Jewry, as well as the future of individual Jews in the community. While the struggle for independence had been waged without much involvement on the part of the Jewish community, the removal of the yoke of colonialism presented each Moroccan Jew with various options, and the choice to be made between them was a fateful one—whether to seek personal and communal success within a democratic progressive country or to escape from the country out of fear of a possible disaster.