Spatial Dimension of Religious Experience
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A Comparative Study of the Metaphysical Basis of Ancient Iran-China Political Approach
International Journal of Political Science ISSN: 2228-6217 Vol.3, No 7, Summer 2013, (pp.29-38) A Comparative Study of the Metaphysical Basis of Ancient Iran-China Political Approach Dal Seung yu* Department of Iranian Studies Hankuk University Received: 5 Sep 2015 ; Accepted: 15 June 2016 Abstract: Considering the cosmology with mythological form of consciousness era as the primary base of metaphysical form and the basis of development toward an integrated cosmology, political ideas has been placed in an organic link with a metaphysical system in the ancient Persians as well as Chinese political thought. Based on considerable similarities among cosmological systems in civilizations e.g. the Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Persian nations a comparison of the metaphysical base of the ancient civilizations’ political ideas could be an in- teresting subject in the field of political thought. This article has a brief comparative glance at the metaphysical basis of the political thought in the Persian as well as Chinese cosmology. The research questions include: 1- In the two ancient civilizations – Persia and China – how was political thought related to their metaphysical bases. And; 2- In comparison, how could the relation conceptualized? This study enables us to understand the nature of political thought in the first days of human civilization. Keywords: Cosmology; Metaphysical system; Cosmic equilibrium; Belief in resurrection; Sal- vation religion; Cosmological monotheism; Cosmological dualism. Introduction metaphysics. Since ancient political -
Religious Perspectives on Human Suffering: Implications for Medicine and Bioethics
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship Postprint This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in [Journal of Religion and Health] following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [Fitzpatrick SJ, Kerridge IH, Jordens CFC, Zoloth L, Tollefsen C, Tsomo KL, Jensen MP, Sachedina A, Sarma D. Religious perspectives on human suffering: Implications for medicine and bioethics. Journal of Religion and Health 2016; 55:159–173] is available online at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-015-0014-9 Please cite as: Fitzpatrick SJ, Kerridge IH, Jordens CFC, Zoloth L, Tollefsen C, Tsomo KL, Jensen MP, Sachedina A, Sarma D. Religious perspectives on human suffering: Implications for medicine and bioethics. Journal of Religion and Health 2016; 55:159–173. Religious perspectives on human suffering: Implications for medicine and bioethics Scott J FitzpatrickA,B, Ian H KerridgeB, Christopher F C JordensB , Laurie ZolothC, Christopher TollefsenD, Karma Lekshe TsomoE, Michael P JensenF, Abdulaziz SachedinaG, Deepak SarmaH (2015/16) ACentre for Rural and Remote Mental Health, University of Newcastle, Orange, Australia; BCentre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (VELiM), University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; CCentre for Bioethics, Science and Society, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA; DDepartment of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Colombia, South Carolina, USA USA; EDepartment of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, California, USA; FMoore Theological College, Sydney, Australia; GAli Vural Ak Centre for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA; HReligious Studies, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. -
Introduction: the Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology
Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology 1 Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim Introduction: The Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology HIS ISSUE OF DÆDALUS brings together for the first time diverse perspectives from the world’s religious traditions T regarding attitudes toward nature with reflections from the fields of science, public policy, and ethics. The scholars of religion in this volume identify symbolic, scriptural, and ethical dimensions within particular religions in their relations with the natural world. They examine these dimensions both historically and in response to contemporary environmental problems. Our Dædalus planning conference in October of 1999 fo- cused on climate change as a planetary environmental con- cern.1 As Bill McKibben alerted us more than a decade ago, global warming may well be signaling “the end of nature” as we have come to know it.2 It may prove to be one of our most challenging issues in the century ahead, certainly one that will need the involvement of the world’s religions in addressing its causes and alleviating its symptoms. The State of the World 2000 report cites climate change (along with population) as the critical challenge of the new century. It notes that in solving this problem, “all of society’s institutions—from organized re- ligion to corporations—have a role to play.”3 That religions have a role to play along with other institutions and academic disciplines is also the premise of this issue of Dædalus. The call for the involvement of religion begins with the lead essays by a scientist, a policy expert, and an ethicist. -
Cth 821 Course Title: African Traditional Religious Mythology and Cosmology
NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COURSE CODE: CTH 821 COURSE TITLE: AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY 1 Course Code: CTH 821 Course Title: African Traditional Religious Mythology and Cosmology Course Developer: Rev. Fr. Dr. Michael .N. Ushe Department of Christian Theology School of Arts and Social Sciences National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos Course Writer: Rev. Fr. Dr. Michael .N. Ushe Department of Christian Theology School of Arts and Social Sciences National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos Programme Leader: Rev. Fr. Dr. Michael .N. Ushe Department of Christian Theology School of Arts and Social Sciences National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos Course Title: CTH 821 AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY COURSE DEVELOPER/WRITER: Rev. Fr. Dr. Ushe .N. Michael 2 National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos COURSE MODERATOR: Rev. Fr. Dr. Mike Okoronkwo National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos PROGRAMME LEADER: Rev. Fr. Dr. Ushe .N. Michael National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos CONTENTS PAGE Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………… …...i What you will learn in this course…………………………………………………………….…i-ii 3 Course Aims………………………………………………………..……………………………..ii Course objectives……………………………………………………………………………...iii-iii Working Through this course…………………………………………………………………….iii Course materials…………………………………………………………………………..……iv-v Study Units………………………………………………………………………………………..v Set Textbooks…………………………………………………………………………………….vi Assignment File…………………………………………………………………………………..vi -
Gods and Myths: Creation of the World
01/12/2016 Gods and Myths: Creation of the World 1 01/12/2016 Ancient Cosmology ‐ What was the shape of the Universe imaged by those ancient peoples to whom all modern knowledge of geography and astronomy was inacessible ? ‐ How did they conceive the form of the cosmos which accommodated not only the known face of the earth and the visible heavenly bodies, but also those other worlds ie. the realms of the dead, both blessed and damned, and the countries inhabited by gods and demons ? • In some cosmologies space inseparable from time : ‐ no account of the shape of the universe would make sense unless we know how it came to be so in the first place ‐ in other words, the cosmologies go along with creation myths ie. the creation of the universe is an essential feature of cosmology ‐ uniquely, this lead the Jewish (biblical and rabbinical) sources to the solution of a notion of linear time ‐ by contrast: • China: notion of creation not of prime importance • Greeks: not so interested in beginnings • Jains: uninterested in beginnings • India: time scales as vast as space, leading to the notion of cyclical time • Norse/Greeks/Chines: also cyclical time notion • 2 01/12/2016 Religious Cosmology ‐ A Way of explaining the Origin, History and Evolution of the Cosmos or Universe on the Religious Mythology of a specific tradition. ‐ Religious cosmologies usually include an act or process of creation by a creator deity or pantheon Creation Myth ‐ A symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first became to inhabit it. -
Chinese Religion and the Challenge of Modernity in Malaysia and Singapore: Syncretism, Hybridisation and Transfi Guration1
Asian Journal of Social Science 37 (2009) 107–137 www.brill.nl/ajss Chinese Religion and the Challenge of Modernity in Malaysia and Singapore: Syncretism, Hybridisation and Transfi guration1 Daniel P.S. Goh National University of Singapore Abstract Th e past fi fty years have seen continuing anthropological interest in the changes in religious beliefs and practices among the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore under conditions of rapid modernisation. Anthropologists have used the syncretic model to explain these changes, arguing that practitioners of Chinese “folk” religion have adapted to urbanisation, capitalist growth, nation-state formation, and literacy to preserve their spiritualist worldview, but the religion has also experienced “rationalisation” in response to the challenge of modernity. Th is article proposes an alternative approach that questions the dichotomous imagination of spiritualist Chinese reli- gion and rationalist modernity assumed by the syncretic model. Using ethnographic, archival and secondary materials, I discuss two processes of change — the transfi guration of forms brought about by mediation in new cultural fl ows, and the hybridisation of meanings brought about by contact between diff erent cultural systems — in the cases of the Confucianist reform movement, spirit mediumship, Dejiao associations, state-sponsored Chingay parades, reform Taoism, and Charismatic Christianity. Th ese represent both changes internal to Chinese religion and those that extend beyond to reanimate modernity in Malaysia and Singapore. I argue that existential anxiety connects both processes as the consequence of hybridisation and the driving force for transfi guration. Keywords hybridity, modernity, syncretism, Chinese religion, Singapore, Malaysia Th e Question of Syncretic Chinese Religion Syncretic popular religion in Oriental societies has long intrigued Western scholars because of its striking diff erence with the theological religions of sacred books. -
Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and Its Feminist Implications
Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its Feminist Implications PER FAXNELD Stockholm University Abstract H. P. Blavatsky’s influential The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundation texts of Theosophy, contains chapters propagating an unembarrassed Satanism. Theosophical sympathy for the Devil also extended to the name of their journal Lucifer, and discussions conducted in it. To Blavatsky, Satan is a cultural hero akin to Pro- metheus. According to her reinterpretation of the Christian myth of the Fall in Genesis 3, Satan in the shape of the serpent brings gnosis and liberates mankind. The present article situates these ideas in a wider nineteenth-century context, where some poets and socialist thinkers held similar ideas and a counter-hegemonic reading of the Fall had far-reaching feminist implications. Additionally, influences on Blavatsky from French occultism and research on Gnosticism are discussed, and the instrumental value of Satanist shock tactics is con- sidered. The article concludes that esoteric ideas cannot be viewed in isolation from politics and the world at large. Rather, they should be analyzed both as part of a religious cosmology and as having strategic polemical and didactic functions related to political debates, or, at the very least, carrying potential entailments for the latter. Keywords: Theosophy, Blavatsky, Satanism, Feminism, Socialism, Ro- manticism. In September 1875, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) co-founded the Theosophical society in New York City. Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), lawyer and journalist, was elected its first president. Blavatsky, however, became the chief ideologist, drawing authority from the com- munications concerning esoteric matters she claimed to receive from the mysterious ‘Mahatmas’ (or ‘Masters’). -
Elements of Iberian and Pre-Columbian Religious Cosmology in Central Meso-America
International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 3(1), pp. 22-39, January 2011 Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/ijsa ISSN 2006- 988x ©2011 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Elements of Iberian and pre-columbian religious cosmology in central Meso-America G. V. Loewen Department of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan, 1437 College Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0W6 Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Accepted 26 November, 2010 In order to argue that contemporary performances of religious roles and theater in Middle America in fact are continuous replays of the original trauma of contact and its rehabilitation, and thus act as immanent conduits of the period of conquest and subjugation, the past sixty years of relevant anthropological texts are analyzed as discursive statements. These disciplinary archives rely on much older historical records and narratives, some of which contain ostensibly pre-Columbian accounts or descriptions. As well, anthropologists, and archaeologists with this regional specialization were interviewed concerning their understandings of culture change and conquest, and their observations regarding ethno-analogy and the interpretation of archaeological data and historical narrative. This project relies on a creative combination of sociology and anthropology to tease out the relationships amongst scientific discourse, historical narrative, and ethnographic observation. The problem that historicism renders what has been as what can only be both fragment and figment is judged to be partially assuaged by the performative interaction amongst non-Western pre-contact elements of cosmological beliefs and Western religious models of time, divinity, nature and the universe. Key words: Cosmology, Meso-America, time, contact, conquest, Iberian. INTRODUCTION The problem that culture faces in the face of its own The task of represencing history in Middle America history is to come to know it anew. -
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
Chapter Title 1 Ritual This page intentionally left blank RITUAL Perspectives and Dimensions CATHERINE BELL 1 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 1997 by Catherine Bell Foreword © 2009 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bell, Catherine M., 1953– Ritual : perspectives and dimensions / Catherine Bell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-973510-5 1. Ritual. 2. Religion. I. Title. BL600.B47 1997 291.3'8—dc20 96-23945 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my mother and in memory of my father The meaning of ritual is deep indeed. He who tries to enter it with the kind of perception that distinguishes hard and white, same and different, will drown there. The meaning of ritual is great indeed. -
A Critical Reflection of Christian Anthropocentrism and Ecological Crisis from a Taoist Perspective: a Contribution to Christian-Taoist Eco-Theology
A Critical Reflection of Christian Anthropocentrism and Ecological Crisis from a Taoist Perspective: A Contribution to Christian-Taoist Eco-Theology by Wu, Tsui-Jung A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham December 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... II NOTES ON USE OF BIBLICAL AND TAOIST TEXTS ...................................................................... III GLOSSARY OF CHINESE TERMS ........................................................................................................ IV CHAPTER -
Marriage and the Family (2015) Michael Sievernich
FAMILY Living Life Together in the Church and the World One World Theology (Volume 10) OWT (Family) Vol.10 - 5.25x8.5 (321pp) 4th FINAL.indd 1 7/13/17 9:11 AM OWT (Family) Vol.10 - 5.25x8.5 (321pp) 4th FINAL.indd 2 7/13/17 9:11 AM FAMILY Living Life Together in the Church and the World 10 Edited by Klaus Krämer and Klaus Vellguth CLARETIAN COMMUNICATIONS FOUNDATION, INC. OWT (Family) Vol.10 - 5.25x8.5 (321pp) 4th FINAL.indd 3 7/13/17 9:11 AM FAMILY Living Life Together in the Church and the World (One World Theology, Volume 10) Copyright © 2017 by Verlag Herder GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau Published by Claretian Communications Foundation, Inc. U.P. P.O. Box 4, Diliman 1101 Quezon City, Philippines Tel.: (02) 921-3984 • Fax: (02) 921-6205 [email protected] www.claretianpublications.ph Claretian Communications Foundation, Inc. (CCFI) is a pastoral endeavor of the Claretian Missionaries in the Philippines that brings the Word of God to people from all walks of life. It aims to promote integral evangelization and renewed spirituality that is geared towards empowerment and total liberation in response to the needs and challenges of the Church today. CCFI is a member of Claret Publishing Group, a consortium of the publishing houses of the Claretian Missionaries all over the world: Bangalore, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Chennai, Colombo, Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Macau, Madrid, Manila, Owerry, São Paolo, Varsaw and Yaoundè. Cover design by Jayson Elvin E. Guevara Layout design by Ma. Myreen Q. Gayos All rights reserved. -
Religion Sashur Henninger-Rener, University of Laverne and the Los Angeles Community College District [email protected]
Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology Edited by Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de González, and Thomas McIlwraith 2017 American Anthropological Association American Anthropological Association 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 Arlington, VA 22201 ISBN: 978–1-931303–55–2 http://www.perspectivesanthro.org This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.americananthro.org/ and our parent organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Please refer to the website for a complete table of contents and more information about the book. Religion Sashur Henninger-Rener, University of LaVerne and the Los Angeles Community College District [email protected] LEARNING OBJECTIVES Humans have always wondered about the meaning of the • Define religion and explain its life, the nature of the universe, and the forces that shape significance in human cultures. our lives. While it is impossible to know for sure how the • Summarize theories developed people who lived thousands of years ago answered these by anthropologists to explain the kinds of questions, there are some clues. Fifty thousand importance of supernatural beliefs in years ago, human communities buried the dead with stone human communities. tools, shells, animal bones, and other objects, a practice that • Identify the four elements of religion suggests they were preparing the deceased for an afterlife, or (cosmology, belief in the supernatural, a world beyond this one. Thirty thousand years ago, artists rules of behavior, and rituals) and entered the Chauvet cave in France and painted dramatic explain how each element contributes scenes of animals on the cave walls along with abstract to religious practices.