Dynamics of Religion

Past and Present. Proceedings of the XXI World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions

Christoph Bochinger, Jörg Rüpke, Christoph Bochinger, Jörg Rüpke

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Edition: 1
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Print ISBN:
  9783110450927
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110451108

Religious ideas, practices, discourses, institutions, and social expressions are in constant flux. This volume addresses the internal and external dynamics, interactions between individuals, religious communities, and local as well as global society. The contributions concentrate on four areas:

1. Contemporary religion in the public sphere: The Tactics of (In)visibility among Religious Communities in Europe; Religion Intersecting De-nationalization and Re-nationalization in Post-Apartheid South Africa;

2. Religious transformations: Forms of Religious Communities in Global Society; Political Contributions of Ancestral Cosmologies and the Decolonization of Religious Beliefs; Esoteric Tradition as Poetic Invention;

3. Focus on the individual: Religion and Life Trajectories of Islamists; Angels, Animals and Religious Change in Antiquity and Today; Gaining Access to the Radically Unfamiliar in Today’s Religion; Religion between Individuals and Collectives;

4. Narrating religion: Entangled Knowledge Cultures and the Creation of Religions in Mongolia and Europe; Global Intellectual History and the Dynamics of Religion; On Representing Judaism.

Abstracts

A Balancing Act: Minority Religious Communities and Processes of Transformation

Panel Chair: Thorsten Wettich

In this panel we want to discuss different kinds of transformation processes in religious (migrant) communities in Switzerland, Germany and Austria with regard to their embedment in the host society. Minority religious communities are more involved in a constant series of “dialectic tensions” (Lincoln/Mamiya 1990, 10–16) than other religious institutions of host societies. The diversification of religious and social engagement turns out to be a balancing act between divergent tendencies of objectivation and alienation, elaboration and effectiveness (O′Dea/Yinger 1961). The gist of the hypothesis is that transformations of religious and social practices must be seen in an overall context including questions of transmission of religious knowledge, generational change, transnationalism, social tensions and discourses of the host society. Our papers deal with reinvention of traditions in Yezidi communities, networks of engaged (Neo‐)Muslims, Korean-Christian ways of glocal engagement, and the formation of mosque communities as spaces of action.

Sabrina Weiß: Glocalization of Korean migrant churches in West Germany At the present time around 30,000 Koreans live in Germany. Since the 1970s, some of them established up to thirty immigrant churches in North-Rhine Westphalia alone. These immigrant churches changed over time into diaspora churches, which no longer serve as sanctuaries for the first generation of Korean migrants. One reason for processes of change was internal diversification due to further immigration of Korean students and businessmen and intergenerational conflicts. A “glocal perspective” is considering the Korean diaspora churches in their social field, stretched out between their place of residence, countries of origin and the globally connected communities as the starting point of analysis. The paper focuses upon three specific glocal religious activities: the exchange of guest preachers, passion for foreign mission and civic engagement, and donation behavior. It concludes by noting that globalization facilitates the growth of glocal networks of religious actors.

Veronika Rückamp: Creating community through action: Mosque associations in Switzerland and Austria

Since the 1970s immigrant Muslims have been establishing places for prayer in Switzerland and Austria. Being provisional in the beginning, these mosques have mainly been frequented by a certain ethnic community not only as a place for prayer but also to create a “home away from home”. Since then some major changes have happened, two of which I want to analyze more closely: a toughening in the public discourse on Muslims, and the transmission from first to second generation immigrants. In this paper I want to ask how mosque associations are responding to these changes through action and what this means for the configuration and institutionalization of mosques in Switzerland and Austria. First insights from the analysis of my qualitative research point to a shift away from immigration related services towards religious services, the tendency to organize and take part in public events, the evolving of de-ethnicized mosques and forms of professionalization.

Thorsten Wettich: (Re‐)Invention of tradition: Negotiating Yezidi theology in the German diaspora

In the 1990s, German historian of religion, Gernot Wießner, instrumental in the asylum seeking-process of thousands of Yezidis originating from the Eastern Anatolian provinces of the Turkish Republic, spoke of the “need of a consistent theology” that Yezidis would have to develop after their arrival in Germany. The emerging diaspora allowed for religious freedom for the first time in the Yezidi history and caused both a reformulation and a negotiation of the divergent strains of oral tradition that shaped religious knowledge production in the past. The paper investigates the reinvention of Yezidi tradition by focusing on four factors: (1) the ongoing literalization of Yezidi theology; (2) an increasing move towards the usage of new media; (3) new strains in religious pedagogy; and (4) the role of the newly founded religious associations and their specialists in Germany.

Karin Mykytjuk-Hitz: Networks of engaged (neo‐)Muslims in Germany

In the past ten years the establishment of new forms of Muslim associations can be observed in Germany. The pioneers of these new networks, the Neo-Muslims, are active in social, civic and political fields as for example environmental protection and sustainability, social and charitable work, intercultural training programs, media representation and others. They aim to improve the life situation of not just other Muslims (as usually mosque associations do), but of society as a whole. Therefore they are involved in Muslim and non-Muslim structures and concerns at the same time. This balancing act of the engaged (neo‐)Muslims is one aspect of the transformation process among young Muslims who are socialized in Germany. The (neo‐)Muslims and their networks provide diverse civic potential for the whole society, which can be specified in the fields of public discourse, demographic change, social ethics and theology, migrant history, politics and organizational fields.

A Study-of-Religions Approach to Textbook Research

Panel Chair: Jenny Berglund

This panel presents different study-of-religions approaches to textbook research related to education about religion in Norway, Italy, England and Japan. The papers relate to the study of different aspects of textbooks for religious education, including the way that the representation of religions is influenced by the general framework for religious education or by religious concepts about the use of images. Furthermore, more general issues relating to textbook-research related methodology are raised.

Satoko Fujiwara: A critical reflection on the “communitarian turn” in Religious Education

It was in 2007 that the UK government issued a guidance which made it a duty for schools to promote “community cohesion.” Since then, RE in England has been directed to contribute to the new duty more explicitly, and teaching materials with reference to the term have started to be published. This shift can be called “communitarian” (à la Sandel and Taylor) or “post-secular” (à la Habermas). It has concurred with the “religion in the public sphere” discussions within the study of religion as well as with the development of citizenship education. This paper examines the benefits and dangers of this shift, which is not confessional but normative nonetheless. Examples will be taken from RE textbooks in England to show how the representations and applications of religion(s) have changed. They will be compared with Japanese textbooks, which have established a virtual “civil religion” (à la Bellah), as I have argued elsewhere.

Sissel Undheim: Aniconism and images in Norwegian RE-textbooks: representations and historical change

The paper will investigate representations and interpretations of aniconism in Norwegian RE-textbooks in the period from 1997 to 2014. By studying changes in visual representation of Islam and Judaism in two “generations” of textbooks, namely those published in connection with the Norwegian curriculum revisions of 1997 and 2008, the paper will discuss different interpretations of Islamic aniconism as it is expressed in textbooks from the four major Norwegian publishers. The analytical approach will rely on critical and cultural perspectives from the academic study of religion, in addition to theories on multimodality and media. Both the cartoon controversy of 2005 as well as the increasing religious plurality that is to be found in Norwegian society and classrooms will be among the factors considered in order to explain the palpable changes that are found in the material.

Maria Chiara Giorda: Religion and school textbooks: methodological assessment and empirical examples

Textbook controversies involving religion are part of a larger cultural debate; they reflect to a large extent the social, cultural and political imaginaries that are dominant in a particular national context in a given moment in time. This endeavor requires a sound theoretical and methodological reflection. Up until now, the different efforts to scrutinize the representation of religions in school textbooks have followed numerous, sometimes divergent, paths. The aim of this paper is to offer a critical tour d’horizon of the methods currently employed in this field in order to discuss their strengths and their weaknesses and foster a debate between different approaches. Despite the fact it’s often (unjustly) considered to be a quite boring subject, the focus on methodology should offer a thread permitting to bound and organize different texts of different subjects (not only RE, but also literature, philosophy, history…) and dealing with different religious traditions. The goal is to elaborate a schedule of analysis to collect data, based on qualitative analytical techniques, content and didactic analysis, aiming at a general model for Religious Studies-based analyses of textbooks.

Academic Approaches to G. I. Gurdjieff and the “Work”

Panel Chair: Carole Cusack

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949) is often spoken of as one of the three foundational figures of both new religious movements (NRMs) and modern “secularized” esotericism. His teachings have been accorded significant influence on the “New Age”, yet he is far less studied than the two other foundational figures, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), co-founder of Theosophy, and Rudolf Steiner (1851–1925), founder of Anthroposophy. Much of Gurdjieff’s biography is speculative, and his teaching (termed the “Fourth Way”, or the “Work”) is contested in terms of its sources (Christian, Sufi, original stand-alone system) and its proper scholarly classification (religion, spirituality, esotericism). The academic study of the Gurdjieff tradition has been slow to develop, and insider, sui generis accounts still dominate publications about Gurdjieff. This panel considers issues including Gurdjieff’s sources and teaching techniques, the proper scholarly placement of Gurdjieff in Religious Studies, and orthodox and heterodox continuations of the Gurdjieff teaching.

Carole Cusack: Intentional communities in the Gurdjieff teaching

G. I. Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949) claimed that individuals could not advance spiritually but that in a group progress was possible. He founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, first in Tiflis in 1919, and for a second time at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon, south of Paris, in 1922. At the Prieuré Gurdjieff’s pupils pursued tasks as part of a program of spiritual exercises he devised to lead them from false personality to true self, from a multitude of “I”s to a “real I”. These activities included Movements (the “sacred dances”), physical labor, ritualized eating, drinking, and bathing in the Turkish bath, and “inner exercises”. Key pupils of Gurdjieff established similar live-in venues for pursuit of the “Work”: P.D. Ouspensky at Lyne Place, Surrey; J. G. Bennett at Coombe Springs, Surrey; Sophia Ouspensky at Franklin Farms, Mendham, NJ; and others. The Work or the “Fourth Way” did not mandate retreat from everyday life, but was compatible with family and childrearing, and work. This paper uses examples of scholarly literature on intentional communities and social history of other groups attempting the same types of experiments in living contemporaneously, to illuminate a previously-unstudied aspect of the Gurdjieff tradition.

Steven Sutcliffe: Gurdjieff as bricoleur

Several titles have been given to the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (“esoteric Christianity”, heralding the “new age movement”, a stand-alone system called “the Work”). Scholars have qualified their accounts by noting Gurdjieff’s exposure to Theosophy and/or to his background in a patriarchal folk culture. Nevertheless, Gurdjieffian practitioners have tended to stress a complex unity of ideas and structure effectively underpinning a “canon”, the particular fascination and mystique of which is represented as derived from a “quest” for (never fully) fathoming its sources. Gurdjieff’s teaching is thus presented as a largely sui generis “movement” evolving from a complex but self-contained dynamic. Adapting Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, I argue that Gurdjieff is better understood not as launching a new “system”, but as pulling together “a heterogenous repertoire which, even if extensive, is nevertheless limited” and which is based on “elements … collected or retained on the principle that ‘they may always come in handy’” (pp. 17–18). I argue that Gurdjieff’s bricolage is typical of the “western guru”, an authority figure from the mid-twentieth century formed by the intensified cultural hybridity of the modern period, and who is better examined within social and cultural history rather than within “new religions” or “esotericism”.

Michael Pittman: Exploring Gurdjieff’s roots in contemporary Anatolia and the Caucasus

G. I. Gurdjieff (1877?-1949) was born in Gyumri, Armenia and raised in the Caucasus and eastern Asia Minor. As a polyglot and liminal figure, between East and West, his work has had a decisive influence in contemporary culture in diverse areas (philosophy, religion, literature, psychology and ecology). In his semi-autobiographical work, Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff cites the formative influence of traditions present in the Caucasus, including a variety of forms of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Sufism, and the role of the ashok, or bard, in the region. This paper provides a renewed assessment of Gurdjieff’s early explorations of Sufism and Early Christianity in Anatolia and the Caucasus by investigating contemporary contexts, teachers, and teachings. Gurdjieff’s work is based on a range of disciplines, especially inner ones, which might be best described as contemplative. This inner, or contemplative, work continues to be pursued and practiced in contemporary Sufi and, to some extent, Christian settings. Based on interviews and site visits in Turkey and Armenia, this paper will explore the continuing significance of these practices and traditions and seek to understand the ways that these forms remain relevant in shaping the contemporary trends in spirituality, particularly in the U.S. and North America.

Johanna Petsche: Gurdjieffian overtones in Leon MacLaren’s School of Economic Science

After Gurdjieff died in 1949, Gurdjieff-based groups emerged, including a colorful assortment of fringe groups. These groups were established by individuals who never met Gurdjieff but who, in some way or another, assimilated elements of his teaching into new religio-spiritual systems. One of the most noteworthy yet little understood of these groups is the School of Economic Science (SES), founded by Leon MacLaren (1910 –1994) in London in 1937. The SES was initially inspired by the work of nineteenth-century American economist Henry George. However, in the early 1950s when MacLaren studied with Dr Francis Roles, who was P. D. Ouspensky’s personal physician and one of his earliest pupils, he gradually integrated into SES teachings concepts and practices of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. This paper will examine the substantial influence of the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on the SES, particularly in regards to MacLaren’s emphasis on residential living and working, the significance of the Laws of Three and Seven in his cosmology, and his use of the “natural octave” in his large-scale musical compositions. This paper draws on firsthand accounts, original materials and unpublished music manuscripts thanks to the generosity of a number of members and exmembers of the movement.

The Academic Study of Religion in India Today: Its Particular Challenges

Organizers: Asha Mukherjee, Åke Sander

Ibrahim Khan, Gregory D. Alles: The academic study of religion in India today: its particular challenges

India, the area of origin for Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, is generally considered a very religious country, with a vibrant religious landscape. There is, however, as Joseph O’Connell points out, a striking disparity between the richness of human phenomena in the region that may be deemed religious and the paucity of departments, centers or even programs for academic (as distinguished from confessional) study of religion in Indian universities. This session will discuss reasons for this absence and the challenges faced in contemporary India with respect to institutionalizing departments for the academic study of religion. Why is such study apparently weak? Is the epistemological distinction, made by the University Education Commission (also known as the Radhakrishnan Commission) (1948–1949) and the Kothari Commission (1964–1966), between teaching of religion and teaching about religion untenable institutionally given the socio-political imaginary defining India? Or is the relation between the sacred and secula...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• The Dynamics of Religions and Cultural Evolution: Worshipping Fuxi in Contemporary China
• Religion and Public Space in Contemporary Japan: Re-activation of the Civilization of the Axial Age and the Manifestation of State Shinto and Buddhism
• The Tactics of (In)Visibility among Religious Communities in Contemporary Europe
• Religion Intersecting De-nationalization and Re-nationalization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
• Forms of Religious Communities in Global Society: Tradition, Invention, and Transformation
• Subversive Spirituality: Political Contributions of Ancestral Cosmologies Decolonizing Religious Beliefs
• Religion and the Historical Imagination: Esoteric Tradition as Poetic Invention
• Religion and Life Trajectories: Islamists Against Self and Other
• Angels, Animals and Religious Change in Antiquity and Today
• Gaining Access to the Radically Unfamiliar: Religion in Modern Times
• ‘Cloning Minds’: Religion between Individuals and Collectives
• Of Yellow Teaching and Black Faith: Entangled Knowledge Cultures and the Creation of Religious Traditions
• Global Intellectual History and the Dynamics of Religion
• Narrating, Performing and Feeling a ‘Religion’: On Representations of Judaism
• The President’s Welcome Note to the 2015 Erfurt IAHR World Congress
• The General Secretary’s Welcome Note to the 2015 Erfurt IAHR World Congress
• The Academic Program
• Abstracts
• Congress Committees
• Minutes of the International Committee Meeting
• Minutes of the General Assembly
• Minutes of the Women Scholars Network Meeting
• The Congress Directors’ General Report on the XXI IAHR World Congress
• The Congress Administrator’s Statistical Report
• Endnotes