Pilgrimage growth in the modern world: Meanings and implications

This article examines the contemporary growth of pilgrimages. Examples are provided from variety of traditions and parts of the world, from Japan to Europe, with particular attention paid to the Shikoku and Santiago de Compostela pilgrimages that have experienced extensive growth in recent years. It also draws attention to the growing number of new pilgrimage sites that are not associated with any specific religious traditions or that have ‘New Age’ associations. While some of the factors accounting for this growth involve continuities from past eras, there are also specifically modern factors. Also considered in this article is how some modern pilgrims appear to repudiate organised religion even while visiting sites normally associated with established religious traditions. Rather than implying some form of religious revival, contemporary pilgrimage growth may, then, be seen as evidence of an increasing turn away from religion as an organised entity.     

Implicit stereotypes and women’s math performance: How implicit gender-math stereotypes influence women’s susceptibility to stereotype threat

This experiment examined the effects of implicit gender-math stereotyping and implicit gender and math identification on women’s math performance under stereotype threat and reduced threat conditions. Results showed that of the three, only implicit gender-math stereotyping moderated stereotype threat effects on women’s math performance: women who showed less implicit math-gender stereotyping showed the largest performance difference across experimental conditions. These results suggest that women’s implicit associations between gender and math interact with situational cues to influence their math performance: women who implicitly associate women more than men with mathematics were most benefited by reduction of stereotype salience during testing.     

Peace, scholarship and disciplinary limits: Postcolonial problems and potential in the study of religion

Through its explorations of the work of peace in Sri Lanka, Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka offers both a reconceptualization of democracy and a critique of certain academic disciplines as antithetical to peace and opposition to colonialism. This article considers his criticisms of history and anthropology in order to ask whether, in his terms, it would be possible to have a postcolonial, postempiricist analysis of religion. An exploration of the problems that the study of religion, specifically the category of religion and production of religious authority, pose for Ismail's criteria of postcolonial scholarship points toward the limitations of academic disciplinarity.     

Abiding by Sri Lanka Qadri Ismail's way

Qadri Ismail's book, Abiding by Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place, and Postcoloniality (2005) suggests that literary theory might help Sri Lankans re-imagine the colonial social categories and histories that underwrite their long-running conflict. Ismail also argues that the social sciences (particularly anthropology) and history fail Sri Lanka. They fail either because, like anthropology, their colonial origins render them epistemologically unable to ‘abide by’ Sri Lanka (or to see its politics as political); or because, like history, their embrace of an empiricist belief in an objectively real history betrays them into reconfirming nationalism. My article will argue that while the first part of Ismail's thesis is fascinating and useful (if a bit lacking in practical details), his claim that anthropology and history writing as such must be ‘de-authorized’ is too broad. It concludes by arguing for a cease-fire in Sri Lanka.     

New Testament studies in the 20th century

Considered diachronically, NT studies in the twentieth century is a story of vigorous scholarship. Especially after World War II, there is increasing diversification in approach and in the makeup of scholars, with a noticeable shift of centre to English-speaking settings (especially North America), and greater involvement of Roman Catholic, Evangelical, and Jewish scholars, a growing prominence of women, and a proliferation of approaches.     

Mizuko kuyō in the abortion cultural wars: The rhetorical appropriation of Japanese Buddhism by non-Buddhist Americans

Mizuko kuyō, the popular Japanese Buddhist memorial service for aborted fetuses, has been increasingly appropriated by both sides of the contentious American abortion debate. In the wake of exposure to the idea of mizuko kuyō, both pro-life and pro-choice Buddhist appropriators resort to discussions of the ritual because they feel it helps them strengthen the weaknesses of their own sides and undermine the positions of their opponents. Pro-life Americans use mizuko kuyō to prove that they care about women, not just fetuses, and that their convictions do not arise simply out of private religious feelings but objective psychological and medical facts. Pro-choice Americans, on the other hand, use mizuko kuyō to demonstrate that they care about families and children, not just women, and that they are sensitive not only to the secular but also the religious aspects of life and abortion. In the process, pro-life Christians, who seem to be primarily motivated by their exclusivist and authoritarian Biblical convictions, turn for support to a non-theistic religion they otherwise oppose; pro-choice feminists, who seem to have chiefly secular reasons for supporting abortion rights, turn for support to a supernatural entity and his retinue of angry fetal ghosts.     

Richard Rorty and the pragmatic turn in the study of religion

Recent interest in the pragmatic tradition draws much of its impetus from the work of Richard Rorty and his critics. This paper argues that Rorty's late interest in religion derives from his abiding interests in American liberalism and not specifically from his Pragmatism. Students of religion, however, have much to learn from the pragmatic tradition and over the last 25 years work by Wayne Proudfoot, Jeffrey Stout, and others has been important in establishing a pluralist approach to the study of religion that avoids the pitfalls of foundationalism, essentialism, and dogmatism in understanding religion and religious phenomena. The continued pursuit of this approach, the essay concludes, will help students of religion avoid unnecessary worries about theories and methods.