Body pedagogics and the religious habitus: A new direction for the sociological study of religion

Sociological theory has been central to the modern study of religion. In the face of the global resurgence of religious phenomena, however, and the challenge this has presented for the assumptions that characterised much twentieth century sociology, there is a need for new theoretical models to make sense of religion today. This paper contributes to this task by building upon Durkheim's suggestion that religious social facts become fully efficacious only when internalised, and Luhmann's interest in sociological manifestations of ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’, in order to analyse religion as a thoroughly embodied phenomenon that can be understood through the study of religious body pedagogics. Having outlined the key steps involved in the analysis of body pedagogics, we illustrate the utility of this realist framework through an ideal-typical representation of Christianity and Islam and reflect, via a consideration of several objections that could be directed towards it, upon how this approach can deal with the complexities and contingencies of contemporary religion. In conclusion, it is suggested that this systematic body pedagogic focus on embodied commonalities and differences across diverse religious contexts offers a valuable basis upon which to engage critically with religion today.     

Making Space for a Dialogical Notion of Religious Subjects: A Critical Discussion From the Perspective of Postsecularity and Religious Change in the West

In this article I address some topical themes from the ongoing discussion on contemporary religious change in the West and how it poses conceptual challenges to the study of religion. The academic discussion on religious change is vast and my observations are, of course, by necessity limited to my particular interest and argument in this article. On the one hand, I draw on some of the literature that has evolved within and around the concept of postsecularity and, on the other, on more general literature on contemporary religious change. Based on some selected observations, I underline the need to critically rethink how we conceptualize both religion and religious subjects. In my view, current research fosters a greater attentiveness of complexity with regard to religion, but simultaneously it requires us to take seriously a dialogical notion of religious subjects that provides a conceptual account of a subject constituted by being located within and emerging through ongoing social process. This dialogical notion provides a better tool for how current social and cultural reconfigurations of religion are simultaneously played out as a diversity of identities that challenge received categories, such as the religious and the secular.     

Religious history as religious studies

What is the relationship between religious studies and religious history? Academic historical thinking emerged in part to repudiate ecclesiastical traditions of history, making the difference between religious history and histories of religion a question of denominational rivalry more than a difference in sect. Scholars working in the academic study of religion and the academic study of history have increased self-consciousness of this contingency but have not developed an account for the consequence of history as the primary mode for our thinking. As a result, scholars of religion frequently fall silent in the wake of postcolonial critiques of religious subjects, believing their work is adequately buttressed when this history (the history of the relationship between colonial oppression and religious classification) is acknowledged. Yet this is only the beginning of our work. Religious history cannot evade the methodological challenges of religious studies precisely because to identify an object as religious is to begin an inquiry into the subject of religion itself. Using the example of the year 1893, the author seeks to demonstrate how scholars of history might justify their subjects as religious, and how scholars of religion might consider their concept of history.     

Of Means and Ends: Religion and the Search for Significance

This article attempts to depolarize the concepts of means and ends in the psychology of religion. It is argued that everyone uses his or her religion. However, religion can be used in constructive as well as destructive ways. The critical question is not whether religion is lived or used, as Allport suggested, but how religion is used and to what ends. Thinking about religion as means and ends rather than means or ends offers a framework for organizing the richly diverse forms and functions of religious life, spiritual as well as nonspiritual. It provides a way to conceptualize and study the widely used but poorly defined notion of religious orientation. It also offers a way to evaluate the efficacy of religion in living.     

Spaces of the Religious Economy: Negotiating the Regulation of Religious Space in Singapore

Over the past three decades, the theory of religious economy has been established, applied, debated, developed, and rejected. It has proven to be as divisive as any "general theory" of religion should be, and yet its core tenets continue to engage and unite scholars around the world. In response to broader shifts within the sociology of religion, this article reframes religious economy by advancing a spatial approach to its theorization. A spatial approach can help develop new perspectives on the regulation of religion, and the resistant agency of religious groups. With a focus on the "secular monopoly" of Singapore, it demonstrates how the restricted supply of land for religious purposes increases competition between religious groups. To overcome restrictions, religious groups pursue strategies of spatial and organizational boundary crossing. This has led to the closer regulation of space, and highlights the recursive interplay between the regulation and praxis of religion in Singapore.     

Current teaching practice for religious education in Hong Kong: implications for ‘learning from religion’

The human development (HD) model for religious education (RE) emphasises how students benefit from studying religion. However, detailed teaching practices for ‘learning from religion’ are not fully understood. In this article, lesson observations, school documents and interview data were collected from two Christian primary schools in Hong Kong (HK) . Two lessons were analysed as paradigmatic examples of the teaching for student development in RE lessons. This study found that the teachers helped their students engage in religion by giving them opportunities to associate religion with their lives through religious and moral-related contents. The use of daily life and religious experiences with discussions was the pedagogical approach for moving RE from just ‘the teaching of religion’. Moreover, various opportunities for student reflections to enhance personal and moral development were observed. Future studies should consider examining the theory of the adopted model and its classroom practice, which can aid understanding regarding the role of RE for student development and its global identity.     

Philosophy of religion, fictionalism, and religious diversity

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept “God”, as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context.     

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.     

GALILEO STILL GOES TO JAIL: CONFLICT MODEL PERSISTENCE WITHIN INTRODUCTORY ANTHROPOLOGY MATERIALS

Historians have long since rejected the dubious assertions of the conflict model, with its narratives of perennial religion versus science combat. Nonetheless, this theory persists in various academic disciplines, and it is still presented to university students as the authoritative historical account of religion–science interactions. Cases of this can be identified within modern anthropology textbooks and reference materials, which often recapitulate claims once made by John W. Draper and Andrew D. White. This article examines 21st‐century introductory anthropology publications, demonstrating how such works perpetuate religion–science myths and the notion that history has been replete with inevitable religion versus science warfare. In particular, this study reveals how such introductory materials propagate discord narratives associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Affiliated with these anecdotes are oversimplified accounts of religious responses to heliocentrism and evolutionary theory, as well as claims that science has invariably led to the usurpation of religious belief and secularization from Galileo onwards.     

Taking Community Seriously: A Theory and Method for a Community-Oriented Psychology of Religion

In contemporary scholarship, the psychology of religion involves the scientific study of religious life. Traditionally, psychologists have pursued a strikingly individualistic approach to their study of the topic, which seems at odds with the emphasis on groups or society in most definitions of religion. What would happen if we took this relational aspect of religion seriously? The paper investigates the question by asking (1) how might the underlying philosophy of science for the field differ if we took a more relational approach to the topic, and (2) how might our altered assumptions affect the scientific study of religion in psychology. The result is a modest proposal for a community-oriented psychology of religion that embraces a greater diversity of methods and a sharper emphasis on goals that will be directly beneficial to the people we study.     

Part IV: Prophecy,Knowledge and Study of Religion

The historical connection between the study of the Bible and the study of religion is examined through Spinoza's application of his anthropomorphic theory of religion to his analysis of biblicalprophecy. Drawing on current epistemological discussion, Spinoza shows in the Ethics how the pervasive anthropomorphism of popular explanations of the world, rooted in imagination, develops into religious systems. This theory informs Spinoza's analysis of biblical prophecy in his Treatise, in which he displaces the philosophical hermeneutic of Maimonides in favor of an historical-critical analysis. The result is a consistency of method—historical, critical, comparative — between his study of the Bible and the study of religion generally.     

Religion in the Psychology of Personality: An Introduction

This article presents an overview of this special issue of the Journal of Personality on religion in the psychology of personality. I begin with a brief historical overview in which I highlight the discrepancy between the vision of early personologists and how religion is handled today within the field of personality. I then consider how contemporary research and theory can profit by incorporating religious and spiritual constructs and processes. As personality psychologists purport to study the whole person, the relative neglect of religiousness in the current literature is a serious omission that precludes a comprehensive understanding of the person.     

Switching tracks in psychotherapy: Parallel paradigms in psychology and religion

Can a practitioner work with patients who frame their concerns in religious terms and are ignorant of or hostile to psychological theory? A “roundhouse” metaphor, predicated upon the assumption that psychology and religion employ models wherein individuals are influenced byagencies that expressintentions in service ofdesigns, is proposed to facilitate movement from psychology to religion and back again. Utilizing the personality theory of C. G. Jung, a case is analyzed to see how well the roundhouse assists in using psychology to address the religious issues of the patient.     

OAKESHOTTIAN MODES AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE EVOLUTION DEBATES

I examine Michael Oakeshott's theory of modes of experience in light of today's evolution debates and argue that in much of our current debate science and religion irrelevantly attack each other or, less commonly but still irrelevantly, seek out support from the other. An analysis of Oakeshott's idea of religion finds links between his early holistic theory of the state, his individualistic account of religious sensibility, and his theory of political, moral, and religious authority. Such analysis shows that a modern individualistic theory of the state need not be barrenly secular and suggests that a religious sensibility need not be translated into an overmastering desire to use state power to pursue moral or spiritual ends in politics. Finally, Oakeshott's vision of a civil conversation, as both a metaphor for Western civilization and as a quasi-ethical ideal, shows us how we might balance the recognition of diverse modal truths, the pursuit of singular religious or philosophic truth, and a free political order.     

Rethinking Selfobject and Self: Implications for Understanding and Studying Religious Matters

Research having to do with psychoanalysis and religion customarily explains a religious experience, expression, or event in terms of psychoanalytic methods and concepts. In marked contrast, this essay pursues a different objective by way of an alternative route, revealing how a theory and model of self opens up to and implies a way of understanding and studying religious matters. It accomplishes this objective through a series of steps: reflecting on how theories and models function and change; illustrating a particular instance of theory change—examining the emergence of Heinz Kohut's self-selfobject model in relation to the subject-object model embedded in classical psychoanalytic theorizing; discussing the warrant for and outlining the contours of a revised way of reading the self-selfobject model; identifying implications of this model, now re-read, for understanding and studying religious matters.     

Locating Religion in the Context of Charitable Food Assistance: An Ethnographic Study of Food Banks in a Finnish City

This article explores how, for whom, and to what extent religion is part of the reality that people enter into as they seek food assistance from a religious organization. Drawing from an ethnographic study of food assistance places in a Finnish city and applying Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a theoretical approach, the article describes the role of religion in the perceived, conceived, and lived space of charitable food provision in a secular Nordic welfare state. The findings show how the role of religion in the context of food assistance is subject to particular contexts and that this role is socially produced in the practices of the food banks, in the goals of the food providers, and in the lived experiences of the food recipients. The findings suggest that charitable food assistance is a social space where divergent readings of space as either religious or secular are potentially contested. The study provides a novel approach to understanding food assistance with its interconnections with religion and poses further questions for policy development, for religious organizations engaged in charitable food provision, and for future research.     

The facts and fictions of religion: make believe on Avatar Forums

Recent scholars of religion have begun to explore the relationship between religion and fiction. Within this context, Johan Huizinga’s theory of religion as make believe or play has received considerable attention. James Cameron’s film Avatar (2009) has inspired behaviour that can be thought of as religious, despite the film’s clear foundations in fiction. Scholarship on fan communities has debated whether such groups can be considered religions. This article develops Huizinga’s account using Kendall Walton’s theory of make believe. Walton’s theory enables the interpretation of fiction into overlapping games of make believe in fan communities. The conversational threads on Avatar Forums show how norms of discourse that preclude disagreement allow the frames of reality and fiction to blur. These norms of discourse provide a means of understanding the process by which media myths can become the basis of fiction-based value structures within the cultic milieu. However, the theory also presents significant problems for theorists of religion in terms of the structure of religious belief and religious experience.     

Religion Generalized and Naturalized

Much of contemporary scholarly opinion rejects the attempt to construct a general theory of religion (that is, its origin, structure, and functions). This view says that particular religious traditions are unique, sui generis , incommensurable, and cannot therefore be generalized. Much of contemporary opinion also rejects the attempt to explain religious phenomena using the categories and concepts of the natural and social sciences. This view says that the phenomena of religion cannot be understood apart from a recognition of "the sacred," or some element of transcendence, implying that religion cannot be naturalized. This article begins to show how the phenomena of religion can be both generalized and naturalized.     

The institutional evolution of religion: innovation and entrepreneurship in ancient Israel

In light of contemporary advances and in an effort to supplement and add to the vibrant discourse surrounding the evolution of religion, a distinctly sociological theory that returns to and pushes forward the insights of Durkheim and Weber is offered. The unit of evolution is the institutional sphere, or the macro-level structural and cultural sphere of religious action, exchange, and communication; and evolution is the process by which religious entrepreneurs are able to secure material and symbolic independence vis-à-vis other strata and, thereby, carve out an autonomous religious institution to reproduce their symbolic, normative, and organizational innovations. To illustrate the way this sociological theory of institutional evolution works, and how it accounts for multi-linear evolutionary paths, while considering contingencies, the evolution of the Ancient Israelite religion from the late 8th century BCE to the end of the Exile in the late 6th century BCE is examined.