bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Yoroi-kizome, Genbuku and taking the tonsure: rites of passage among the Bushi in Feudal Japan
Authors: Blomberg Catharina
Published: August 2018

The earliest written records extant in Japan were compiled during the Nara period (710-781 A.D.). They are the Kojiki, "Record of Ancient Matters", 712 A.D.; the Nihongi or Nihon Shoki, "Chronicle of Japan", 720 A.D.; and the Many ōshū,"Collection of a Myriad Leaves", an anthology of poetry first published in 759 A.D. but also containing material from the Asuka period(ca 500-700 A.D.). Prior to these writings, the only existing evidence of practices which may be defined as rites of passage is archaeological. From the Neolithic Early Jōmon period (4500-3000 B.C.) there are indications of a systematic extraction of teeth among a sizeable proportion of the population, the ratio being about 70 per cent males and 30 per cent females, with considerable regional variations (Blomberg 1990: 243). In its most drastic form this comprised the removal of the canines and incisors of both maxilla and mandible. This kind of mutilation eventually came to include an equally systematic filing down of the maxillary incisors into a fork or trident shape, with examples of both practices in the same individual. From the evidence of burnt clay figurines dating from the Jōmon as well as theYayoi period (ca 250 B.C.—ca 250 A.D.) it appears that some kind of facial adornment existed. Whether this took the form of scarring, tattooing or painting is of course impossible to ascertain, but it may have been another means of indicating individual distinction or social position.
Witch accusations, rapes and burnings in South Africa
Authors: Hamrin-Dahl Tina
Published: August 2018

With new different power systems in Africa, the whole concept of learning, authority and power is affected. To have authority means in many cases to have inherent power which exceeds the power of others. So called wizards,wachawi, in Tanzania have been found guilty of killing their victims and taking parts from the bodies to obtain and secure power.The basic ingredients in the medicines which the wachawi use consists of elements taken from the human body on one hand and parts from animals and trees on the other hand. The parts of the body which are obtainable easily are nails, hair and emission of the body. The shadow of a person is also utilized by taking some of the soil over which the shadow had fallen. Other potent parts such as the sex organs, bone from legs or skin from different parts of the body and the nose or tongue are known to be utilized by the wachawi.
Ritualistics: an overview of research from a religio-psychological perspective
Authors: Holm Nils
Published: August 2018

The study of rites or ritual has a long history. As far back as we can go in the history of religious studies we find analyses of the behavioural dimension of religiosity. It was only towards the end of the 19th century, however, that scholars began to pay more regular attention to rites. This new attitude was linked with an increased tendency to study foreign cultures, often within a discipline that had come to be called anthropology. In theology, and also very much within religious studies in general, greater notice has been given to the cognitive side, that is to say the study of myths and religiophilosophical questions. Gradually, the behavioural dimension and therefore rites have acquired greater significance in religious studies, something which the following presentation will demonstrate.
The question of ritual: a cognitive approach
Authors: Sørensen Jesper
Published: August 2018

Why does ritual continue to be an issue in religious studies and in anthropology? In this paper the author proposes a cognitive approach to rituals, focusing those aspects of rituals that are distinct from other types of actions, together with what cognitive responses these differences provoke. It will be argued that rituals violate basic causal assumptions and by doing so, trigger off cognitive processes in order to ascribe purpose and meaning to the action. In conclusion, this will be related to findings in ethology and evolutionary theory, arguing that ritual as a behavioural category plays an important role in the formation of symbolic thinking.
Ritual orders and ritologiques: a terminological quest for some neglected fields of study
Authors: Stausberg Michael
Published: August 2018

The topic presented in this paper lies at the crossroads between ritual studies and ritual theory. In order to get an idea of the field of study, it may be useful to distinguish between the following general approaches to the study of ritual. To begin with, ritual theory in the strict sense, i.e. with explanatory ambitions etc., tends to focus on RITUAL as such: what IT is, what IT does, how IT works ("functions"), and why IT is as it is.Softer varieties of ritual theory, e.g. approaches that wish to foster a better "understanding" of what goes on when rituals are being performed, may focus on RITUALS in a semi-empirical and semi-theoretical fashion. As a matter of fact, to a large extent ritual "theory" seems to be the result of theoretical reflections on matters of empirical research. Apart from that, we find studies of this and that phenomenon (e.g. time, space, violence, aesthetics, media, etc.) in relation to rituals ("ritual  and time", "ritual and space", etc.). Then, of course, we have a good dose of studies on different "types", "classes", or "groups" of rituals. Most popular, (in the absence of any statistical evidence), are studies of "sacrifice", "rites of passage", and "initiations", with "healing rituals" and "pilgrimages" as ever more successful runner-ups. Correspondingly, there is a number of studies about any variety of any class of rituals among the so-and-so people ("initiation among the NN"). Moreover, there are plenty of books about the rituals of this and that religion or people — in colonial times often published under such titles as "The customs and ceremonies of the NN". Last but not least, there is an overwhelming amount of studies devoted to the presentation or analysis of single rituals.
In God’s name: practising unconditional love to death
Authors: Barker Eileen
Published: August 2018

In this article the author considers some of the ways in which those with religious authority might exercise their power by persuading believers to perform actions that they (the believers) would not have dreamed of performing had not justifications been presented to them in the name of religion. There are, of course, reasons other than religion – love and money, to take but two obvious examples – that lead people to do things that they would not otherwise have done, but religion would seem to add that extra something (for good or evil) that can inspire people to believe and act with an added fervour, an extra commitment, and an extra disregard for other consider­ations. If we really believe that it is God who wants us to do something then we are more likely to do it (or at least feel more guilty if we do not do it) than if George or Tony or even our guru asks us to do it – unless we believe that our guru is God, or is the only one with a direct hotline to Him (or Her). We may even be prepared (in both the active and the passive senses of the word) to kill ourselves and others for what we have come to believe is ‘the cause’, as happened in a situation described in this article.
Power play: ritual rivalry and targeted tradition in Glastonbury
Authors: Bowman Marion
Published: August 2018

Glastonbury, a small town in the south-west of England, is considered significant by a wide variety of spiritual seekers, including Christians of various denominations, pagans, Druids, Goddess devotees, self-styled ‘New Agers’, Buddhists, Sufis, earth energies researchers, healers and ­others who feel that they have in some way been ‘called’ or ‘drawn’ to the town. Although, for the most part, groups and individuals of very different reli­gious persuasion co-exist comparatively peacefully and a largely laissez-faire attitude to pluralism has developed in the town, increasingly some rivalries and differences in worldview are being played out publicly in ‘traditional’ forms such as processions, rituals and calendar customs. While such traditional religious means are used on occasion to express concord rather than conflict, proclaiming and reclaiming are very much part of the ethos of ritual and processional activity in Glastonbury at present, with pageantry and calendar customs regarded as valuable tools in establishing presence and priority in both overt and subtle ways. The extent to which rival claims to territorial and spiritual supremacy are being played out in the (re)creation of rituals and other forms of public display are examined here briefly through two sets of case studies which feature vernacular religious forms being used in relation to contemporary spir­­ituality. The first set involves the Christian Glastonbury Pilgrimage processions and their pagan counterpart the Goddess in the Cart Procession; the second involves the Glastonbury Thorn Ceremony and the Chalice Well Winter Solstice Celebration. The focus here is on the comparative and tactical aspects of these events.
Tension as taboo: Albania’s self-image as a haven of religious tolerance
Authors: Endresen Cecilie
Published: August 2018

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Warriors of Buddhism: Buddhism and violence as seen from a Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhist perspective
Authors: Gillberg Christina
Published: August 2018

Buddhism is considered by many today as the non-violent religion par excellence. The concept of ahimsa (non-violence) coupled with the notion of pratityasamutpada (i.e. that everything is casually interconnected, with the implication that pain inflicted upon others is therefore really done to oneself and thus to be avoided) seems to be one of the main arguments for promoting Buddhism as an excellent method for promoting world peace. However this non-violent, serene picture of Buddhism is not the only picture. Buddhists on occasion speak of a need to use violence, and employ it. Buddhists kill. Sometimes they also kill each other. The history as well as the present of Buddhist Asia is bloodstained. How do Buddhists justify approving of and using violence? How do they legitimise their pro-violent utterances and actions when such actions ought to result in excommunication? What are they saying? There are several answers to this, some of which are presented in this article, with the primary focus on Buddhist Tibet.
Negotiating reproduction: religion, gender and sexuality in political conflicts
Authors: Kanckos Lise
Published: August 2018

In this article the author discusses the role of ethics and religion in the context of the current political debate on assisted reproduction in Finland. There is reason to ask why the issues of family structures, gender roles and sexuality cause conflict situations in politics and society. How should we understand the nature of political conflicts concerning family, gender and sexuality? For a proper understanding of these conflicts, we need a nuanced analysis of the role of ethics and religion in political debates in a secular European culture. In this article the author focuses on two examples drawn from Finnish discussions of assisted reproduction. The first example comes from recent parliamentary discussion of assisted reproduction, and the second example from how the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland has reflected on the same issue.
Religion, values and knowledge-power in contemporary secular spaces: the case of an English medical centre
Authors: Knott Kim
Published: August 2018

The aim of this article is to examine the way in which knowledge-power is exercised in contemporary controversies in healthcare, and what this flexing of discursive muscles shows about the nature of secularity and its relationship to religion. The discussion is focused on two controversial issues at the heart of general medical practice in the UK: the doctor–­patient relationship and complementary and alternative medicine. As will become clear, participation in these debates is not restricted to doctors alone, but increasingly to government departments, professional medical and scientific bodies, therapists beyond the medical mainstream, and patients themselves. What is interesting for scholars of religion is the way in which the debates (which are not confined only to discourse, but are also reflected in physical and social spaces) reveal deep-seated but dynamic values. The debates themselves, and many of the values and opinions expressed in association with them, are ostensibly ‘secular’, but, as we shall see, ‘religion’ has an interesting place within them. It variously enters the scene as a crit­ical tool, the butt of jokes, the enemy or a potentially fruitful partner (particularly in its nascent guise as ‘spirituality’). The author suggests that there are two important outcomes of this examination: first, the opening up of a secular organisation and exposure of the heterogeneity of value and knowledge positions within it, and, secondly, the recognition that methodological tools from within the study of religions (in this case a spatial analysis for locating religion) can be put to use in such an examination, in pursuit of a fuller understanding of secularity.
"What shall I do? The more I kill the greater becomes their number!": the suppression of Anabaptism in early sixteenth century
Authors: Kottelin-Longley Margot
Published: August 2018

The Anabaptist movement was a ‘common man’s reform movement’ in Luther’s Europe. The Anabaptists wanted to reform the church according to New Testament guidelines more radically than either Luther or Zwingli were ready to do. For example, they baptised adults instead of infants, because they had observed that only adults were baptised in the Gospels, including the baptism of Jesus. In reformation Europe any adults baptised by these reformers would have already received baptism as infants. It was this practise of re-baptising members of the Catholic Church that gave them the name ‘Anabaptists’. ‘Re-baptism’ was a heresy deserving death, and to classify these radical reformers thus made them legally subject to execution. In this article the author first explains what she means by the ‘Anabaptist movement’. This includes an introduction to early Swiss Anabaptism and to the way in which it was speedily persecuted by the religious authorities. This persecution caused flight and that in turn caused the movement to spread. As the number of Anabaptists increased to thousands, so did the persecution by torture and death. Stories of some Anabaptist martyrs are recounted during the course of this article. The author also looks at the various justifications for the burning of heretics, as well as at the corresponding theological understanding by those who were burned.
Religion in the Yugoslav conflicts: post-war perspectives
Authors: Moe Christian
Published: August 2018

The wars that dissolved Yugoslavia – were they religious wars? Why are conflicts increasingly coded as religious, rather than as, for example, social or ethnic? What constitutes a ‘religious’ or ‘holy’ war. This article attempts an inventory of important cat­egories and hypotheses generated in the relevant literature so far, with a few critical notes along the way. The author considers the role assigned to religion in structural, cultural, and actor-oriented explanations of the Yugoslav wars. Structural and cultural explanations downplay the role of human agency and, hence, of moral responsibility; actor-oriented approaches focus on it.
Radical Israeli settlers: ultimate concerns, political goals and violence
Authors: Peste Jonathan
Published: August 2018

The focus of this article is the radical and activist parts of the wider Israeli settler community on the West Bank. This Radical Israeli Settler Movement should not be confused with the general settler community in the West Bank, even if the more radical groups often recruit their members from the general settler community. The Radical Israeli Settler Movement today includes groups such as Kach, The Committee for Safety on the Roads and The Jewish Legion. The purpose of this article is to analyse some instances of violence in the radical Israeli settler movement and to identify recurring features and processes in this violence. It will be argued that these features and processes are important factors in understanding why certain movements use violence. It will also be argued that future comparative studies are needed, which include other contexts where similar radical movements have become violent, in order to develop a general theory of ethno-religious movements using political violence.
Social conflict and sacrificial rhetoric: Luther’s discursive intervention and the religious division of labor
Authors: Roberts Christopher
Published: August 2018

‘Sacrifice’ is a religious term whose use extends far beyond the church door. People from all walks of life speak of ‘sacrifice’ when they want to evoke an irreducible conflict in the relations between self, family, and society. In America, hardly a speech goes by without political leaders insisting upon the necessity and virtue of sacrifice, but rarely will they clarify who is sacrificing what, and to whom. Indeed, this is not only an American phenomenon, as a number of recent texts examining ‘sacrifice’ as a term in various national discourses have shown. Such a political and economic deployment of a religious figure demands interpretation, for not only does the rhetoric of sacrifice span the globe, it constitutes a problem with a long genealogy. As a key moment in the Western segment of this genealogy, this article examines the way that Luther’s exegetical work rhetoricalized sacrifice, and, in doing so, constructed a new discursive position, the pastor as anti-sophist, or parrhesiast, in the religious division of labor.
Rudolf Steiner as a religious authority
Authors: Ahlbäck Tore
Published: August 2018

The aim of this article is to clarify what Rudolf Steiner’s followers thought of him at the time of his demise. How can we explain the rapid spread of the Anthroposophical Society in Europe and the United States during the inter-war period? Can it be explained by referring to Rudolf Steiner’s own authority? What kind of authority did he possess? Did the members of the Anthroposophical Society regard him as a divine being, a prophet, or an ordinary religious teacher? The material for this article consists of a selection of the obitu­aries published in the anthroposophical press after Rudolf Steiner’s death on 30 March 1925. Needless to say, obituaries are usually tendentious, and therefore controversial as source material. For the purpose of the present article, however, this kind of material is suitable, since the aim here is to study the tendency itself. The restraint that followers might be assumed to practice in publishing their opinion on Steiner in commonly available writings is minimised in the type of material chosen here. The primary interest is to find out whether his followers portray Steiner as a human being, or as a divine, or semi-divine being.
Research on esotericism in Scandinavia
Authors: Bogdan Henrik , Hammer Olav
Published: August 2018

The title of this paper can be understood in two senses. In the sense of ‘research on esotericism carried out by Scandinavian scholars’, the field is blossoming. Several dozen individuals, at various points in their academic careers, are pursuing research on some aspect of Western esotericism however the concept is defined. In the other conceivable sense, ‘research on Scandinavian esotericism’, the availability of academic studies is generally more limited. The purpose of the present article is to survey the state of the art of this research field, especially pertaining to esotericism in Sweden (the country we are most familiar with), and to provide a rough map of the Scandinavian-language literature, especially for the benefit of non-Scandinavian readers.
Post-secular esotericism? Some reflections on the transformation of esotericism
Authors: Granholm Kennet
Published: August 2018

In the last fifteen years the study of Western esotericism has become an academic discipline in its own right. The vast majority of research conducted within the field is focused on older, historical developments, with recent expressions of esotericism receiving far less attention. This has a bearing on the conceptual and methodological tools used in the field as well. The dominant definition of Western esotericism developed by Antoine Faivre might not be entirely suitable when looking at its contemporary expressions. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries Western societies have undergone major processes of transform­ation, resulting in what many sociologists variously term late modern­ity, liquid modernity, post-modernity, high modernity (and so forth). Naturally, these transformations affect esoteric spiritualities as well. In this article the author discusses late modern societal transformation and relates this to Western esotericism.
Freemasonry and its social position in Finland
Authors: Holm Nils
Published: August 2018

Freemasonry, with its roots in the seventeenth century, has had to suffer insults and some­times even attacks from society. In this article the author looks more closely at Free­masonry in Finland, where it first appeared in the mid-eighteenth century, in the light of the suspicion and negative treatment it had to suffer. The deprecatory attitude of individuals and various social organisations towards Freemasonry varied over time, but there was often an underlying suspicion among the general public. This was expressed in the form of legends and folk tales of a more or less dramatic nature.
Kabbalah in Sweden
Authors: Karlsson Thomas
Published: August 2018

This article examines the history of Kabbalah in Sweden. The reader is presented with an overall view to Kabbalah in Sweden: first, the Johannes Bureus and the Nordic Kabbalah, Kabbalah after Bureus, Kabbalistic literature, and last, Kabbalah in Sweden today. When the Kabbalah reached Sweden it was mainly the non-Jewish Kabbalah that gained influence, even if its Jewish roots were acknowledged. Johannes Bureus unites, in a similar fashion as do the Christian Kabbalists in continental Europe, Christian motifs with the symbolic world of the Kabbalah. Bureus, however, adds runes, ancient Norse gods and Gothic ideas in his own unique manner. The Kabbalah invites speculation and the search for correspondences which has caused the Kabbalah in Sweden to be united with a number of other traditions. Bureus combined the Kabbalah with runes and Gothicism; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can find the Kabbalah in Freemasonry and Esoteric societies, while the Kabbalah in the twentieth century and onwards has been associated with New Age, Parapsychology and Indian Mysticism. Apart from Bureus, most Kabbalists in Sweden have followed the trends that flourished in the rest of the world. Bureus was the first to create a specifically Swedish interpretation of the Kabbalah.
A second Christian Rosencreuz? Jacob Böhme’s disciple Balthasar Walther (1558- c. 1630) and the Kabbalah. With a bibliography of Walther’s printed works
Authors: Penman Leigh
Published: August 2018

In the eighteenth chapter of his commentary on Genesis, entitled Mys­terium Magnum  (completed 1624), the Lusatian theosopher Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) made a startling declaration concerning the reception of the Ten Commandments atop Mount Sinai. According to the account of Exodus, God had commanded Moses to hew two tables of stone upon which He would inscribe the text of the Decalogue for the instruction of His chosen people. This Moses did, ‘and it came to pass... Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony’ (Ex 34:29). Böhme’s account, however, differed significantly. For, according to the cobbler, the text of the new covenant was not recorded on ‘two tables of stone. Already during his lifetime, Böhme had been persecuted on several occasions by Lutheran authorities in his home-town of Görlitz on account of his enthusiastic tendencies. In 1613, following the distribution of manuscript copies of his first work, Aurora, Böhme was forbidden to record or further disseminate his ideas. In 1624, the local pastor Gregor Richter accused him of being the Antichrist.
Editorial note
Authors: Ahlbäck Tore
Published: August 2018

Editorial note of the Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, vol. 21, Postmodern Spirituality, based on papers read at the symposium on Postmodern Spirituality held at Åbo, Finland, on 11–13 June 2008.
Bob Dylan and religion
Authors: Häger Andreas
Published: August 2018

This article, which is located within the field of research on religion and popular culture, is a discussion of the relations of one particular rock artist, Bob Dylan, to religion. Religion can be seen as a recurring topic in Dylan’s work—particularly during a period at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, often referred to as his ‘Christian era’—and also in the discourses around him. This article explores how the topic of religion appears in discourses around Bob Dylan. In this article one particular aspect of the connection between religion and popular culture is looked at: the construction of certain artists or stars as religious figures, and more specifically Bob Dylan as a case. The author does not try to discover whether Dylan is religious or not; or which religion he possibly adheres to. Rather, the author looks at how rock artists and in this case Bob Dylan are ‘constructed’ as religious figures.
Mysticism and spirituality
Authors: Holm Nils
Published: August 2018

How does the popular correspond to the grand terms of the title? Are not mysticism and spirituality something very exclusive, reserved for a few individuals? No they are not, as this presentation of both the author's own studies and the research of others will provide a different picture of these two concepts. Mysticism and spirituality are notions that are very difficult to define. Traditionally mysticism has been regarded as a way to reach the inner dimensions of human life, dimensions where man even achieves unity with the Divine Being. Such traditions have been found in all the major religions, and since the times of William James a hundred years ago, the features of mysticism in various religions have been analysed. Spirituality is a concept that can hold various meanings. It has often been associated with religious traditions where inner life and its growth are emphasized. These include, in particular, various schools, orders and movements that aim at cultivating a deeper spiritual life. In its more recent use, the term spirituality has, to a fairly large extent, been dissociated from religion and has become a notion that seeks to grasp the searching of modern man for ethics and norms in a globalised world, where pollution is accelerating and where stress and entertainment disrupt the inner harmony of people.
Beyond postmodern spirituality: Ken Wilber and the Integral approach
Authors: Jakonen JP
Published: August 2018

The American philosopher Ken Wilber has taken on a sizeable challenge by trying to unsnarl the modern world-knot and its secular worldview. In the course of his almost forty years of predominantly solitary study (he has worked outside academia for the best part of his career) and writing, Wilber has produced a body of work that spans from consciousness studies to sociology and anthropology, to mysticism and to different fields of philosophy, psychology and comparative religion. The main theme running through his writings is the concept of Kosmos, the universe of matter, life, mind and spirit, that he seeks to restore and bring back both to our vocabulary and to our everyday experience of reality. This article examines Ken Wilber's Integral theory.
Postmodern spirituality and the culture of individualism
Authors: Motak Dominika
Published: August 2018

In recent years, the thesis about a fundamental shift in Western religiosity has become increasingly prominent in the scientific study of religion. Many new phenomena of today’s religious scene are seen as the manifestation of a resacralization/re-enchantment of the world, or even of spirituality/a spiritual revolution. The new religious world view that is taking shape presupposes an essential oneness of microcosm and macrocosm and a presence of the divine in man and in the world. The radical distinction between the temporal and supernatural worlds disappears, which seems to herald the advent of a new type of spirituality based on the idea of immanence. This new ‘all-inclusive spirituality’ has many forms of expression and is concerned with ‘the sacredness of life, nature and the universe’ and ‘all pathways that lead to meaning and purpose’. This ‘subjective turn’ means ‘a turn away from life lived in terms of external or “objective” roles, duties and obligations, and a turn towards life lived by reference to one’s own subjective experiences (relational as much as individualistic)’. All the above-mentioned explanatory frameworks to a certain extent employ the concept of individualization.This presentation examines the the concept of individualization as an approach for the understanding of today’s religious scene.
Glocal spirituality for a brave new world
Authors: Geels Antoon
Published: August 2018

Spirituality, as it is presented in this article, can serve as an antidote to an all too disrespectful attitude towards our fellow human beings, towards life in general. Spirituality might unite a greater part of the world in the battle for survival. Our world, Gaia, is threatened, as we all know. Apart from the usual disasters as seemingly never-ending wars and conflicts we now also have to confront global threats such as climate changes, global pollution, and food distribution problems. In such a world everything has to be done in order to promote the fundamental idea that we only have one planet and one humanity.Spirituality addresses such issues. The purpose of this paper is to show that people who express the view that they are ‘spiritual, not religious’, people belonging to what can be called the new spirituality, despite their aversion to institutionalized religion never­theless exhibit elements in their belief-systems that are closely related to the great mystical traditions in world religion. These common denominators are, a good ground for dialogue. When theologians from especially the theistic traditions more often than not search for differences, mystics and representatives for the new spirituality are more inclined to find commonalities. At a time when elements of traditional Christianity such as the belief in a transcendent God show signs of being in decline, there seems to be an increasing interest in the predominant mystical and panentheistic view of God, stating that God is both immanent and transcendent.
The Biswa Ijtema
Authors: Björkman Nina
Published: August 2018

The Tablighi Jama‘at has not, until recently, been the focus of much research, despite its almost 80-year history.This article examines material about the Tablighi Jama‘at in Bangladesh and the Biswa Ijtema in particular. The material consists of academic literature and articles in local newspapers. Tablighi Jama‘at was founded by Mawlana Ilyas in Mewat as a reaction against the decline of Muslim political power in India and the increasing British influence on the subcontinent.The Biswa Ijtema is the annual congregation of the Tablighi Jama‘at, held in the district of Tongi, just outside Dhaka in Bangladesh. The term Biswa Ijtema (or Viswa/Bishwa Ijtema) translates as ‘world congregation’. The Biswa Ijtema works very much as the core of the Tablighi missionary work. Devotees come here to strengthen their faith, and when they leave, go out to spread the message.
Motivation for pilgrimage: using theory to explore motivations
Authors: Blackwell Ruth
Published: August 2018

This article is a discussion of the motivations for pilgrimage and it will draw upon theories of motivation to explore the continuing attraction of pilgrimage in contemporary times. This discussion is located within the field of Event Management. Event Management is a fast growing discipline which focuses on the design, production and management of planned events, such as festivals, celebrations, conferences, fund-raisers and so on. Clearly pilgrimages, as planned events, fit into this definition. In this context, it is essential to recognise the importance of understanding the motives and needs of event customers so that we can plan to help our customers satisfy their motives. Whilst it might seem abhorrent and commercial to talk of pilgrims as customers, pilgrimages and religious sites have become more and more commodified and increasingly are deemed to need professional management. Key theories of motivation will be compared in order to identify the prime motivating factors underpinning people’s decisions to make pilgrimages.
Stepping onto sacred ground: the mazar in Uyghur day-to-day life
Authors: Hällzon Patrick
Published: August 2018

Like most Turkic peoples, the vast majority of the Uyghur people are Muslim and belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. Islam is a contributing factor in Uyghur identity and is manifested in daily life by a number of regulations on food, observation of religious holidays and life cycle celebrations. The point of departure here is to try to describe the ziyara as an integral part of Muslim life in the region. The mazarserves as an important reference point in the day-to-day life of the Uyghur people. Regardless of whether it is a local place of worship or a shrine that attracts pilgrims from a larger geographical area, it is a breathing space where one may escape the hardships of everyday life. At the mazar the people have a saint with whom they can identify and be inspired. The mazar is a venue in which both men and women participate—both as participants and as religious leaders.
Visiting Ground Zero: sacred echoes in secular rites
Authors: Martin Richard
Published: August 2018

For the past several years since September 11, 2001, large numbers of people from across the continent and around the world have visited the site of the devastated World Trade Center in New York. Scholars in religious studies and the social sciences have noticed that there were and continue to be (though less so over time) religious aspects to the observances and performances of visitors to ‘Ground Zero’, as the site of the former World Trade Center almost immediately came to be called. A central argument of this article is that the ongoing stream of visitors to Ground Zero, strictly speaking, does not qualify this phenomenon as a pilgrimage in the traditional religious sense; it is more akin to the growing phenomenon of religious tourism, although it is not exactly that either. Nonetheless the event of 9/11 generated many ritualized activities; the article will also address the pro­cess scholars call ‘ritualization’ and related terms in ritual studies. Although ritualized performances at Ground Zero do not amount to a pilgrimage in the narrow sense that historians of religion mean when they analyse traditional pilgrimages, such as the Hajj to Mecca, or following the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, visiting Ground Zero has taken on both secular and religious elements.
Theology of Karman: merit, death and release in the case of Varanasi, India
Authors: Reenberg Sand Erik
Published: August 2018

In this article, the focus is on the question as to what motives the pilgrims may have for performing pilgrimage, and, in doing this, the author deals especially with the Hindu tradition, namely with pilgrimage to Varanasi, Banaras or Kāśī, which is often considered the Hindu sacred city par excellence by both Hindus and Westerners alike.The sacred power of Varanasi has three sources: the eternal presence of Śiva from the time of creation, the cremation ghāṭand the presence of the river Gaṅgā. Furthermore, we found that the most characteristic thing about the power of Varanasi is its connection with death and its power to confer on the pilgrim the fruit of complete release from the circle of birth, death, and rebirth, something which is normally the privilege of the adherents of ascetic and other non-worldly systems. This feature is still reflected in the fact that many elderly people come to Varanasi in order to die and get cremated here, and many people from the surrounding areas still take the bodies of their dead relatives to Varanasi for cremation.
The body, religion and sports: through the lenses of postmodern religiosity
Authors: Lindfelt Mikael
Published: August 2018

In is necessary to look more closely at the newly developed understanding of religion and secularization in in the new fluid role it has for many people today, and that religion is seen is part of a need to build up an individual, identity-based narrative. From this perspective it is interesting to note that both the characteristics of postmodern religiosity and the ideology of the modern sports movement point in the same direction: sport can function as a religious sentiment. Both have a seriousness that can be classified as religious, at least in a functional way, towards health, well-being, self-perfection, strength, vitality and beauty—goals which modern society offers as something attainable by all. In the midst of this secularized, this-worldly, immanent and attainable religion stands the notion of the perfect body, the symbol for both control and beauty, for well-being and power of will. The struggle for bodily perfection is, no doubt, an adventurism in itself. While striving at perfection the awareness of imperfection is constantly at hand.
Religious experiments in colonial Calcutta: modern Hinduism and bhakti among the Indian middle class
Authors: Sardella Ferdinando
Published: August 2018

Any discussion of India from the point of view of the West must deal with the problem posed by the colonial past and the ways in which India was colonized, interpreted and constructed to fit into an imperialist agenda. The terms ‘Hinduism’ and ‘religion’, for example, are themselves quite problematic, since they are born of Western and Judeo-Christian thought, and may not reflect the complexity and diversity of Indic traditions well enough. A translation and transmission of terms and concepts from one cultural domain to another is required, but it is bound to be merely tentative and approximate, since a comprehension of the full meaning of words and concepts related to Indic religions presupposes an extensive grounding in the rich religious thought of India. Bhaktisiddhānta lived on the border between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, between the black and the white towns of Calcutta, between India and the West, and between two world wars. His effort to search for and apply bhakti to the social, political and cultural crises of his time is important for grasping the vitality and dynamism of Indic religions in our time. It is also important for appreciating the struggle carried out by a growing Indian and Hindu middle class to bridge the gaps between East and West, and on the basis of indigenous culture produce new ideas for reciprocal co-operation, which in the case of Bhaktisiddhānta were related to the idea and practice of bhakti.
Struggling bodies and body struggles: explorations of body and religion in contemporary Nordic film
Authors: Sjö Sofia
Published: August 2018

This study focuses on representations of the body and religion in Nordic film. The aim is to illustrate the kinds of representations of religion and the body that can be found in contemporary Nordic films, demonstrate how these representations relate to religion, the body and film more generally, and explore what perceptions of and attitudes to the body and religion the representations suggest. The analysis begins with an introduction to religion and film studies, religion in Nordic film and the themes and films chosen for this study. After this a short overview of earlier studies dealing with the body, film, and religion is presented, before delving into the issue of the body and religion in Nordic film. The article is concluded by reflecting on the more over-arching ideas and attitudes that the material can be argued to point to and the possible changes and challenges the films express.
Buddhism and the formation of the religious body: a Foucauldian approach
Authors: Voyce Malcolm
Published: August 2018

Poststructuralist debates around the body have demonstrated how our knowledge of the body is constituted in specific cultural and historical circumstances and in the context of particular relations of power. This article develops this approach to the body in Buddhism and thus attempts to show how the body has been represented within different discourses in Buddhist texts. Implicit in this account is the remedying of the failure in some Buddhist scholarship to recognise different types of bodies (negative and positive) and to show how these aspects of the body, as enumerated by texts, operate together to constitute forms of identities capable of being constituted within different historical moments out of the pressure of new social and material changes. At the same time the body is seen as being capable of self modification in terms of that discourse. The term ‘body’ is used here in the sense that it implies not only a physical aspect (flesh, bones, liquids etc.), but that it is connected to various cognitive and emotional capacities as outlined in the khandhas (see below) explanation of the human constitution. The author's concern in his treatment of the body is to avoid the problems of psychological analysis, as this form of analysis often implies the existence of a psyche or soul along with the ideas of complete individual self-determination.
Editorial note
Authors: Ahlbäck Tore
Published: August 2018

Editorial note of Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, vol. 24, Post-Secular Religious Practices, based on papers read at the symposium on Post-Secular Practices held at Åbo/Turku, Finland, on 15-17 June 2011.
Making space for the 'post-secular' in religious studies
Authors: Anttonen Veikko
Published: August 2018

Making space for the "post-secular" in religious studies' is based on the words of welcome on 15 June 2011.
Yoga practices as identity capital: preliminary notes from Turku, Finland
Authors: Broo Måns
Published: August 2018

As elsewhere in Finland, different types of yoga practices are popular in the city of Åbo/Turku. But how do practitioners view their own relationship to their practice, and further, what do they feel that they as individuals gain from it? Through in-depth interviews with yoga teachers in the city of Turku, the author examines ways in which individuals, in what could be called a post-secular society, construct a meaningful sense of self and of individual agency. The observations offered in this article represent preliminary notes for a larger work on yoga in Turku, conducted at the ‘Post-Secular Culture and a Changing Religious Landscape’ research project at Åbo Akademi University, devoted to qualitative and ethnographic investigations of the changing religious landscape in Finland.
Healing chants and Singing Hospitals: towards an analysis of the implementation of spiritual practices as therapeutic means
Authors: Grünhagen Céline
Published: August 2018

This article combines two very interesting fields of research: the one concerning issues of health and well-being in ‘post-secular’ religious practices, the other one striving towards a wider recognition and comprehension of the aural or acoustic side of religions and religious practice, respectively. Due to their favourable qualities, singing and chanting are increasingly implemented in therapeutic programmes. The Singing Hospitals is an international network of medical professionals, music therapists, musicologists, neurobiologists and related groups or initiatives. They aim to promote the beneficial effects of singing for health and healing in healthcare settings on an international level. The potential to experience transcendence and to be affirmed in one’s own spirituality as it is ascribed to chanting accords with its beneficial effects on human health. In post-secular societies the human body, mind and psyche are increasingly understood as being interwoven with the world and the cosmos and with other human, non-human and also divine beings.
Contesting spiritual dimensions of health: salutogenic approaches to post-secular quests for quality of life
Authors: Leppäkari Maria
Published: August 2018

This article dwells on three key concepts: spirituality (religion, meaning making), health (being well, wellness) and the contemporary post-secular individ­ual search for significance. Within a classic salutogenic and health promo­tional frame of reference, dimensions of health are usually referred to in terms of the physical, mental, social and spiritual. Following development of the classic­al approaches, cultural, ecological and existential subcategories have been added to the concepts in order to clarify the contents. Scholars in the field of health promotion argue that these dimensions of health and well-being are, in a general way, closely interrelated. This article explores the ways in which spirituality and well-being interact. It is influenced by the author’s previous research in religious studies and current experiences of health promotion work. This article is divided into five sections: salutogenesis and health promotion; quality of life and spirituality; previous research on religion and health; indifference and fundamentalism, and some final remarks.
Pilgrimage as post-secular therapy
Authors: Mikaelsson Lisbeth
Published: August 2018

This article describes the institutionalized pilgrim role and then turns to the therapeutic discourse which is so prominent in the modern pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Both the role and the discourse can be related to the concept of post-secularity, demonstrating that complex cultural fields such as religion and therapy, become intertwined in new ways through modern pilgrimage. This article also shows that churches cooperating in this type of pilgrimage are adapting to the post-secular age, finding a new sort of raison d’être in a multi-religious, international world. Here the author refers to the Church of Norway and its role in Norwegian pilgrimage. The latter is modelled upon the Santiago example.
Post-secular religious practices entering traditional religion
Authors: Pękala Urszula
Published: August 2018

Nowadays we can observe complex interactions between the religious and secular spheres. Several different processes take place simultaneously: the traditionally religious elements function in the secular sphere as if they were part of secular culture; elements of the secular sphere build a specific kind of post-secular religiosity; finally, this post-secular religiosity influences traditional religions. This article focuses on the last stage of these changes. The author's purpose is to describe and interpret the practices we can observe. Because of the complexity of this issue, the analyses are limited to examples taken from the Catholic Church in Germany, where this process seems to be as popular as it is paradoxical. Catholicism realises that the post-secular forms of religiosity are very popular and that many people choose them instead of the traditional Church. It could offer them spirituality based on ages of experience. But instead of making its own spiritual tradition competitive on the spiritual market, Catholicism seems to offer Christianised post-secular goods, or its own traditional elements represented in a secularised form. It seems difficult to predict how it will all end. However, we observe an interesting encounter and interaction between an ‘old’ religion and a new religiosity, which will certainly have impact on further presence of the Church in the society.