Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, and Identity
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religions Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, and Identity Edited by Douglas J. Davies and Michael J. Thate Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, and Identity Special Issue Editors Douglas J. Davies Michael J. Thate MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Douglas J. Davies Michael J. Thate Durham University, Princeton University UK USA Editorial Office MDPI AG St. Alban-Anlage 66 Basel, Switzerland This edition is a reprint of the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) from 2016–2017 (available at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/religion_individual). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: Author 1; Author 2. Article title. Journal Name Year, Article number, page range. First Edition 2017 ISBN 978-3-03842-466-6 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03842-467-3 (PDF) Photo courtesy of Jeremy Bishop Articles in this volume are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY), which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book taken as a whole is © 2017 MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Table of Contents About the Special Issue Editors ................................................................................................................ v Douglas J. Davies and Michael J. Thate Monstrosities: Religion, Identity and Belief Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(6), 102; doi: 10.3390/rel8060102 ....................................................... 1 Bosco B. Bae Believing Selves and Cognitive Dissonance: Connecting Individual and Society via “Belief” Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 86; doi: 10.3390/rel7070086 ......................................................... 6 Vaughn A. Booker Performing, Representing, and Archiving Belief: Religious Expressions among Jazz Musicians Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(8), 108; doi: 10.3390/rel7080108 ....................................................... 20 Joshua Furnal Abraham Joshua Heschel and Nostra Aetate: Shaping the Catholic Reconsideration of Judaism during Vatican II Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(6), 70; doi: 10.3390/rel7060070 ......................................................... 38 Marika Rose ‘It’s Not the Money but the Love of Money That Is the Root of All Evil’: Social Subjection, Machinic Enslavement and the Limits of Anglican Social Theology Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(8), 103; doi: 10.3390/rel7080103 ....................................................... 50 Erin Johnston The Enlightened Self: Identity and Aspiration in Two Communities of Practice Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 92; doi: 10.3390/rel7070092 ......................................................... 62 Sitna Quiroz The Dilemmas of Monogamy: Pleasure, Discipline and the Pentecostal Moral Self in the Republic of Benin Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(8), 102; doi: 10.3390/rel7080102 ....................................................... 77 Anderson Blanton The Apparatus of Belief: Prayer, Technology, and Ritual Gesture Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(6), 69; doi: 10.3390/rel7060069 ......................................................... 93 George González Towards an Existential Archeology of Capitalist Spirituality Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 85; doi: 10.3390/rel7070085 ......................................................... 107 Alexandra Kaloyanides “Show Us Your God”: Marilla Baker Ingalls and the Power of Religious Objects in Nineteenth-Century Burma Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 81; doi: 10.3390/rel7070081 ......................................................... 129 iii Candi K. Cann Mothers and Spirits: Religious Identity, Alcohol, and Death Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 94; doi: 10.3390/rel7070094 ......................................................... 148 Michael J. Thate Messianic Time and Monetary Value Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(9), 112; doi: 10.3390/rel7090112 ....................................................... 164 Devin Singh Speculating the Subject of Money: Georg Simmel on Human Value Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(7), 80; doi: 10.3390/rel7070080 ......................................................... 182 iv About the Special Issue Editors Douglas J. Davies is both an anthropologist and theologian with theoretical and practical interests. After an initial degree in Anthropology at Durham he engaged in his first research on Mormonism at the Oxford Institute of Social Anthropology under the supervision of the sociologist Bryan Wilson. He then read a theology degree at Durham and shortly afterwards became Lecturer at Nottingham University where he became Professor of Religious Studies before leaving for Durham in 1997. During that period he engaged in further work on Mormonism, as well as in Sikhism and Anglicanism, and in death rites. He also completed his first doctorate there on the issue of meaning and salvation. In Durham, as Professor in the Study of Religion, he helps teach undergraduate modules on the Introduction to the Study of Religion, and Death, Ritual and Belief, and a module for postgraduates on Ritual, Symbolism and Belief in the Anthropology of Religion. Academically speaking, he also holds the degree of D.Litt. from Oxford as well as an Honorary Dr. Theol. from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. In 2009 he was made an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, and in 2017 was elected as a Fellow of The British Academy. A great deal of his general work has sought to relate issues in theology and social (Anthropology and Theology, Berg 2002). He then has several other areas of research interest. Special research in Mormonism has resulted in An Introduction to Mormonism, (CUP 2003) and The Mormon Culture of Salvation, (Ashgate 2000) along with other books, chapters and encyclopaedia entries. He has also been a visiting professor at Brigham Young University in Utah. In terms of death Studies He has edited the Encyclopedia of Cremation, (with Lewis Mates: Ashgate 2005), and also written A Brief History of Death, (Blackwell, 2004), Death, Ritual and Belief, (Revised and expanded edition, Continuum 2002). Extensive empirical research for Reusing Old Graves. (With A. Shaw 1995) has been influential in relation to issues of burial reform in the UK. In terms of Christian church life he has, for example, joint edited ( with Helen Cameron, Philip Richter and Frances Ward) Studying Local Churches: A Handbook, (SCM Press 2005). My Private Passions, (Canterbury Press 2000) was the Archbishop of Wales’s Lent Book for that year. Church and Religion in Rural England. (With C. Watkins and M. Winter 1991) involved a major study of the Church of England. Many other papers and book chapters reflect on numerous aspects of religious life including, for example, some biblical interests in, ‘Purity, Spirit and Reciprocity in the Acts of the Apostles’, in Anthropology and Biblical Studies, (eds) L.J.Lawrence and M.I. Aguilar, Leiden: Deo Publishing. 2004), and ‘Rebounding Vitality: Resurrection and Spirit in Luke -Acts’. The Bible in Human Society. eds. M.D.Carroll, D.Clines and P. Davies. Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Michael J. Thate is a post-doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, Fellow at Faith and Work Initiative; Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion. Prior to coming to Princeton and Tübingen, Thate was a Lecturer of New Testament Interpretation at Yale Divinity School as well as a Post- Doctoral Visiting Research Fellow at Yale where he worked on a kind of comparative sea mythology within Jewish, Greek, and Roman texts along with early Christian configurations of identity with respect to the sea. This research will be published in a forthcoming monograph, “The Godman and the Sea.” His research interests revolve around the formation and reception of discourses, particularly the ways in which the religious, the secular, and the scientific inscribe themselves. His first book, “Remembrance of Things Past?” (Mohr Siebeck), is a social history of Leben-Jesu-Forschung during the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the editor of two projects: one on participation themes in antiquity and Paul (Mohr Siebeck 2015); the other on the philosophical ethics of Albert Schweitzer (Syracuse University Press 2016). His current research is on conceptions of labor and status in antiquity and current post-Marxist theory. Specifically, he will be working on second- through the sixth-century labor manuals in early Christian monasteries, translating them into current political and theoretical discussions relating to Capitalism and labor policy. He received his PhD in Religious Studies and History of New Testament Interpretation from the University of Durham (UK). v religions Editorial Monstrosities: Religion, Identity and Belief Douglas J. Davies 1 and Michael J. Thate 2,* 1 Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, Stockton Rd, Durham, County Durham DH1, UK; [email protected] 2 Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA