Sacralisation – the role of individual actors in legitimising religion

The article makes a contribution to the study of religion by developing the analytical concept of sacralisation as the process whereby individual religious actors and groups construct religious tradition by attributing value to single ideas and practices. The concept of sacralisation helps us understand how religious actors engage with their religious tradition and participate in constructing it by legitimising its single elements. The sacred is thus understood as constructed by religious actors as that which is of value for them and distinctive of their specific tradition. This concept has been developed from a three-year long ethnographic research in a Christian evangelical church and is illustrated through an analysis of the research data.     

Ethical selfhood and the status of the secular: Muslim identity in Mumbai

As part of a larger project, this essay contributes to the current anthropological rethinking of categories such as ‘religion’, ‘secularism’ and ‘politics’ in relation to social processes and subjects: a series of ventures that are related, in the Indian context, to modernity and liberal conceptions of statehood, sovereignty and personhood. In discussing everyday phenomena such as piety and religious authority, gender and childraising, and political and professional pursuits in Mumbai, I demonstrate that the ostensibly ‘religious’ domain of Islam is not necessarily the only, or even primary, basis for achieving a self-consciously ethical selfhood for even those who identify as observant and devout Muslims. I argue that the religious domain of Islam in this context is defined as such and intersected by discourses and practices of the self as a political and economic agent defined largely in terms of political modernity.     

Teaching the Devout Student: Faith and Scholarship in the Classroom

Increasing numbers of college students enrolling in religion courses in recent years are looking to develop their religious faith or spirituality, while professors of religion want students to use and appreciate scholarly tools to study religion from an academic perspective. Some scholars argue that it is not possible to satisfy both goals in the classroom, while authors in this journal have given suggestions on how to bridge the gap between faith and scholarship. I argue that such authors are correct and that, in my experience, historical‐critical methods can help devout students understand the original texts in their own religion better, comprehend why changes in interpretation have occurred over time, and appreciate the values in religions other than their own. Not all devout students are comfortable with an academic study of religion, but many can attain a more mature faith by such an approach.     

What do we want? Critical psychotherapy and counselling! When do we want it? Now,now, now! A critical review of a critical issue

This review offers a critical commentary on the contributions to this issue. It outlines four aspects to a critical approach and uses them to read horizontally across all five papers.     

Statisticism in personality psychologists’ use of trait constructs: What is it? How was it contracted? Is there a cure?

‘Statisticism’ is meant to characterize a way of thinking in psychology that invests virtually boundless trust in the aptness of statistical concepts and methods to reveal the ‘lawfulness’ of human psychological functioning and behavior. In the article, I discuss how statisticism came to infect the thinking of mainstream 20th century personality investigators and how – if at all – the discipline might be cured. Unfortunately, mainstream thinking within the sub-discipline of personality psychology has long sanctioned an understanding of the statistical findings issuing from studies of individual differences in personality traits that is faithful to neither of the so-called ‘frequentist’ or ‘subjectivist’ traditions. Instead, such findings are widely regarded as a scientifically acceptable warrant for claims to knowledge about objective states of affairs existing for individuals within the samples one has studied. I suggest that the prospects for eradicating dubious fruits of this form of statisticism will hinge importantly on (a) the ability of theoretically and philosophically-oriented psychologists to re-instill within the discipline a healthy respect for the power of conceptual analysis more generally, and, following this, (b) concern within the discipline for the fact that the deep and abiding conceptual problem described above in fact does exist.     

基督教传统对美国政治、社会的认知及影响

基督教传统从北美大陆殖民地时期开始就一直主导着这一地区的政治倾向和社会发展,在确立了政教分离的建国原则后,这一传统在影响美国政治与社会发展的进程中,也在不断适应着变化的时代。本文以美国历史为主线,分析了不同历史时期基督教传统对政治体制、社会变迁等问题作出的认知与判断,并简述其对美国政治领域和社会领域的影响。     

What is The Red Book for analytical psychology?

Abstract: The Red Book enters the field of analytical psychology belatedly, yet presents itself as a foundational text. In this paper, I try to estimate how it will affect the field and to reflect on how it can be used by contemporary readers and clinicians. Jung's own works remain the baseline for theorizing and teaching the fundamental perspectives of analytical psychology, and yet the field has grown far beyond his own contributions. Is this late inheritance of central value or only of peripheral interest for the field? It can be used in various ways and certainly shows many interesting features that link it to Jung's later works, but does it detract or does it add? And if it adds, what does it add? In The Red Book, Jung is speaking to us from the grave. What is he saying? In this paper, I explore how it can be used as an inspirational text for keeping alive the spirit of the ancestors in the field and for linking the present to the deep past.     

继承与断裂:布迪厄的哲学思想渊源

本文梳理了布迪厄与法国认识论传统结构主义与现象学的关系。作者指出,巴什拉对认识论的断裂、客观地构建对象、关系主义以及理论研究与经验研究的统一等的强调;结构主义对于关系性思维、能指与所指之间的任意性、无意识结构的论述;阿尔都塞的意识形态理论;梅洛-庞蒂的知觉现象学;萨特的干预哲学;海德格尔的时间理论等等,对布迪厄哲学理论的形成具有重要意义。文末叙述了布迪厄对海德格尔纯粹哲学的社会批判。     

Standards for Health Care Chaplaincy in Europe: Questions from an Orthodox Perspective

The Standards' ecumenical implications are critically assessedin view of the risks which their cross-denominational or cross-faithcooperation implications on the one hand, and, on the otherhand, their secular commitments to mutual learning, non-proselytizing,professionalism, and efficiency assessment might carry for chaplains'properly spiritual orientation. The problem posed by the ambiguityof language is raised as a warning that concepts like humandignity have a profoundly different meaning in secular and Christiancontexts. Invoking such concepts can be seriously misleading.     

Averintsev’s Archipelago: Towards Understanding the Era of Post-Atheism

Drawing on MacIntyre’s encyclopaedia–genealogy–tradition typology of the humanities, the author describes Averintsev’s project as bringing together the elements of encyclopaedia and tradition. The article identifies three forms of isolationism which are evident not only in ‘post-atheistic’ societies but more widely, and comments on Averintev’s treatment of these.