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Abstract
The English writer John Michell (1933–2009) occupied a significant position within British alternative religion. Michell’s manifold books revolve around his life-long aim to re-enchant the English landscape and launch a new golden age. Michell was a devoted Traditionalist and is widely considered the founding father of the vast field of British Earth Mysteries. Associated groups embrace speculative theories of the earth, claiming the existence of telluric (dragon) energies. As Michell’s impact on such groups is widely acknowledged, within the context of Earth Mysteries, this article centers on cerealogy and the Dragon Environmental Network as examples in exploring Michell’s discursive and enduring influence.
Abstract
In feminist research on religion, women and gender, the concepts of “lived religion” as well as “agency as doing religion” take a prominent place. Both include an intersubjective and mostly partial perspective. However, against the background of current developments concerning a global religious right, the paper argues for the inclusion of a critical perspective through the methodology of a double critique that includes both an analysis of power relations that marginalize women in religious groups and an analysis of women’s reproduction of gendered as well as racialized power relations. This argument is embedded in the complexity of post-secular feminist research including research on women, gender and religion, feminist critiques of secularism (and of anti-Muslim discourses), feminist, queer and trans theologies, and research on the religious right and their anti-feminist politics. The paper suggests to take feminist theologies and feminist spiritualities/religious practices as reference point for such an analysis.
Abstract
In this article, I return to Giorgio Agamben’s intervention on the pandemic to reflect on one of his claims, namely the mundanity of the Roman Catholic Church. Agamben comes to this conclusion after reporting about the passive response of the Church to the state-of-emergency legislation and the “barbaric” conditions of social relationships that followed. These conditions, and not the conspiracy theories on the invention of an epidemic to extend forms of social control, are the primary focus of Agamben’s concern. I confine Agamben’s critique of the Church with a stipulation concerning the extrincist character of the Church’s reaction to the recent epidemic crisis. I argue that, due to the extrincist character of that reaction, the temporal power of the state has proven itself necessary to the defeat of the pandemic, but the spiritual power of the Church has manifested itself as superfluous.
Abstract
The Chinese, both in China and in an international migration setting, are commonly regarded as the world’s most secular population. However, the relationship between Chinese people and Chinese Popular Religion is nuanced and survey data, more often than not, do not account for the plethora of religious activities Chinese people engage in despite simultaneously self-identifying as secular. This paper examines the supposed secularity of Chinese immigrant families living in Edinburgh. It asserts that although self-identifying as secular, these families engage in undeniable religious activity and possess religious beliefs. Crucially, there is a marked difference between the beliefs pertaining to secularity of the parents and their children, with the former being adamant in their secularity and the latter being more willing to acknowledge the complicated relationship between religion and the secular.
Abstract
The study tries to evaluate the development of the Hare Krishna Movement (ISKCON) in the Czech Republic. It points out that after a period of great openness and the emergence of non-traditional religious groups after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the spread of this movement gradually stagnated. After a period of “anti-cult” attacks, the movement did become part of the standard religious scene, although its attractiveness decreased. Based on two models (the model of religious success and the concept of religious memory), the study shows the limits to the wider success of the movement. However, given the widespread secularization and the prevailing “religious apathy” of Czech society, the Hare Krishna Movement’s impact in Czech society can be considered a limited success.
Abstract
This paper addresses a central issue linked to research conducted on an eclectic conglomeration of people connected in various ways to the principal European site of the Japanese new religion of Tenrikyō. Although the center itself is in a Parisian suburb and the majority of its key actors are Japanese, the people connected to this center and its associated social world span beyond the Paris region and include various nationalities, countries of residence, and even religious identities. Moreover, the people connected to this center and the presence of the Tenrikyō religion in Europe are largely one and the same, but not entirely. A question commonly posed to the researcher by “outsiders” is how many Tenrikyō “members” there are in Paris, France, and/or Europe, and if they are Japanese or the nationality of the local country (French, German, etc.) The complexities of answering such questions are the focus of this discussion.
Abstract
Implicit in the Hebrew Bible is the proposition that Western philosophy’s world- rationalising resources are short a category. This is the category of ones – non-general individuals whose identity is secure apart from such wider wholes as they are/might be associated with. Since the Bible’s thinkers classify men and women as ones, their view would therefore be that Western philosophy cannot deal effectively with the human condition. This is the ultimate meaning of the injunction to each of us not to accept the other gods (who do not belong to the category) before God (who does). In these pages, I set out and defend the Bible’s implied critique of Western philosophy. By examining the positions of several leading philosophers of our time, I explain why philosophical analysis of the specific sort that traces back to God-less Greece is, as the Bible maintains, out of synchrony with human reality.
Abstract
According to the data provided in 2016 by the Polish Main Department of Statistics (Główny Urząd Statystyczny), the Buddhist Diamond Way Association of Karma Kagyu Lineage was one of ten most popular religions in Poland with more than 8200 adherents. Currently there are 19 officially registered Buddhist religious groups in Poland with ca. 14000 members, and what is noteworthy, this number increases in time, against the general declining trend, that can be observed in the majority of Polish religious groups. The article will show how Buddhism (which till the end of the 1960s. was practically unknown in Poland) became one of the most significant religious traditions in this country. It will present its constant development in the difficult times of anti-religious communist regime and in free Poland after 1989. It will also give an overview of various Buddhist traditions, that are active in Poland nowadays.
Abstract
This contribution aims to explore the historical predecessors of the Five Percenter model of self-realization, as popularized by Hip Hop artists such as Supreme Team, Rakim Allah, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sunz of Man. As compared to frequent considerations of the phenomenon as a creative mythological background for a socio-political struggle, Five Percenter teachings shall be discussed as contemporary interpretations of historical models of self-realization in various philosophical, religious, and esoteric systems. By putting the coded system of the tenfold Supreme Mathematics as one of its core teachings in context with the Pythagorean Tetractys, an arrangement of ten points in four lines, the commonalities between the sequence and concepts attributed to the respective numbers will be demonstrated.
Abstract
As a Vietnamese autochthonous religion, Cao Ðài was first meant to address Vietnamese people, who received the mission to spread out humanistic and salvationist messages all over the world. Cao Ðài expanded overseas, with few hundreds of them settled in France. Firstly, I will clarify the profile of few French sympathisers in colonial and postcolonial times. Secondly, I will examine ethnographic data collected in the two main Caodai temples of Vitry-sur-Seine and Alfortville from 1996 onwards. This extended fieldwork gave me the possibility to follow the membership logics, the different challenges and obstacles they face in terms of conversion and community life in the French context of religious freedom. The organization (or not) of spirit-medium séances, and the tactics of some Caodai missionaries will reveal some of the tensions between the pastoral and missionary dynamics of Cao Ðài in France.