Journal of the American Academy of Religion - current issue

Inca of the Blood, Inca of the Soul: Embodiment, Emotion, and Racialization in the Peruvian Mystical Tourist Industry

Hill, M. — 2008-05-07

In the context of the globalizing New Age movement and of the "turismo mistico" (mystical tourism) industry emanating from Peru, white and mestizo New Age practitioners and tourists fashion ideologies emphasizing the spiritual energy which supposedly resides in Quechua bodies, even as they freely appropriate Quechua cosmology and ritual for a hybridized New Age Andean spirituality. This case shows how racialized structural inequalities are expressed and experienced by tourists and New Age movement leaders through particular, essentialist representations of the body and through a common repertoire of emotional responses to inequality, commodification, and privilege. The paper provides an ethnographic account of how racialization may be perpetuated, negotiated, and resisted through religious systems, particularly through the work of constructing ideologies and experiences of the body and of emotional subjectivity.

Religio-Secular Metamorphoses: The Re-Making of Turkish Alevism

Dressler, M. — 2008-05-07

This article analyzes how the socio-religious minority of Turkish Alevis, in the course of the Alevi revival in the last two decades, adopted the language of religion as a means of empowerment in Turkey and Germany. In both cases, formations of Alevi identity in religious terms are encouraged by the specific discourses regarding legitimate formulations of identity. In Turkey, the question of Alevi recognition as a group legitimately different from Sunni Islam is entangled in ideological and material conflicts evolving around competing interpretations of Turkish nationalism, Islam, and laicism. Alevis are compelled to articulate their demands within this ideological framework if they want to advance their cause. In Germany, enunciations of Alevi identity likewise adjust to the local religion discourse, and here often transgress the languages of Islam and Turkish nationalism. Though configured differently, both secular and national contexts encourage Alevis to standardize and objectify Alevism using the language and grammar of religion. This reformulation of Alevism is accompanied by a restructuring of traditional knowledge and practice in secularist terms, distinguishing between religious and secular spaces, languages, and practices.

The God of Abraham and Exceptional States, or The Early Modern Rise of the Whig/Liberal Bible

Sherwood, Y. — 2008-05-07

At a time when considerable attention is being paid to the exceptional, the state of emergency, and the relationship between sovereignty and law, this article uses a late seventeenth-century appeal to the law-suspending God of Abraham in the lawcourts to probe the Christian and theological roots of the sovereign veto/the dispensing power. It attempts to retrieve deep histories that have been missed because seventeenth-century historians do not generally read Giorgio Agamben, while biblical scholars rarely enter the domains of "secular" history and law. The article also explores some of the crucial watersheds that have been passed on the way to modernity. These mean, among other things, that President Bush cannot say, as James II/VII said in 1686, "as the God of Abraham can dispense with his own law, so I, the King/President am able to dispense with the laws that I have made, for all the laws of the constitution are in the gift of the single person of the President/the King"—which is not to say that modern democracies cannot achieve similar effects by different means. A key transition explored in the article is the gradual replacement of the Absolute Monarchical or Patriarchal Bible with the Whig or Liberal Bible: a Bible of fairly recent invention that is non-exceptional and non-arbitrary and defined by its willingness to devolve absolute power to consensus and law. In looking at changing understandings of the political intentions of the Christian God and Bible, this article attempts to go beyond numerous histories of Bible versions and translations into a new analysis of the changing weight of the Bible in public (political, legal) discourse.

De Facto Congregationalism and the Religious Organizations of Post-1965 Immigrants to the United States: A Revised Approach

Cadge, W. — 2008-05-07

Arguments about de facto congregationalism dominate recent research about the religious organizations started and attended by post-1965 immigrants to the United States. These arguments are limited in scholars' failures to consistently define the organizational field, and to recognize variation in what forms organizations take and what processes account for their developments. Due to these limitations, I argue that current conceptions of de facto congregationalism are best conceived of as propositions about what features immigrants' religious organizations might share rather than as assertions about actual similarities. I develop this argument by expanding the existing theoretical approaches and by analyzing the case of Thai Buddhist temples in America. I suggest that immigrants' religious organizations are more organizationally diverse than previously imagined and that the processes through which immigrants adapt their organizations to the American religious context are multidimensional rather than linear, including a phase in which diverse organizational forms exist side by side.

Who's Afraid of Reductionism? The Study of Religion in the Age of Cognitive Science

Slingerland, E. — 2008-05-07

This paper aims to defend the application of tools and knowledge drawn from the natural sciences to the study of religion from the common charge that such approaches are overly "reductionistic." I will argue that "reductionism" is ultimately an empty term of abuse—any explanation worthy of being called an explanation involves reductionism of some sort. Drawing upon the work of Charles Taylor, I will try to explain what "good," non-eliminative reductionism—one that recognizes the reality of complex, emergent human-level structures of meaning—might look like. I will also argue that these human-level structures of meaning should not be seen as possessing special ontological status, but rather must be understood as grounded in the lower levels of meaning studied by the natural sciences, instead of hovering magically above them. Practically speaking, this means that scholars of religion need to start taking seriously discoveries about human cognition being provided by neuro- and cognitive scientists, which have a constraining function to play in the formulation of theories in religious studies. Moreover, adopting a "vertically integrated" approach—grounded in a post-dualist, embodied pragmatist perspective—will help the field of religious studies to get beyond the unhelpful, and intellectually paralyzing, social constructivist dogma that continues to inform most of the work in our field.

Reductionism: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Cho, F., Squier, R. K. — 2008-05-07

Reply to Cho and Squier

Slingerland, E. — 2008-05-07

"He Blinded Me With Science": Science Chauvinism in the Study of Religion

Cho, F., Squier, R. K. — 2008-05-07

A number of recent publications in the study of religion address the continuing question about the legitimacy and coherence of the concept of "religion." This essay examines three particular critiques—(1) that "religion" is a Christian theological construct with questionable applications to non-Christian cultures, (2) that "religion" lacks coherence and empirical warrant as an analytical category, and (3) that the study of religion needs to be rendered more scientific through reductive theory and methods. These claims often take the natural sciences as the standard against which the study of religion is found lacking. Given the drastic nature of what these reflections on the study of religion imply or recommend, it is important to investigate whether or not such critiques are warranted. This essay argues that the study of science actually suggests more similarities than differences, and that the history and philosophy of science render the academic study of religion into a comparable "research tradition."

Response to Cho and Squier

Slingerland, E. — 2008-05-07

Reply to Slingerland

Cho, F., Squier, R. K. — 2008-05-07

The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-First Century. By Stephen Ellingson

Ammerman, N. T. — 2008-05-07

Paul and His World: Interpreting the New Testament in its Context. By Helmut Koester

Arnal, W. — 2008-05-07

Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe. By Caroline T. Schroeder

Bruce, S. G. — 2008-05-07

Diaspora in the Countryside: Two Mennonite Communities and Mid-Twentieth Century Rural Disjuncture. By Royden Loewen

Bush, P. — 2008-05-07

Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation. By Leora Batnitzky

Copulsky, J. E. — 2008-05-07

Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages. By Jonathan Elukin

Cuffel, A. — 2008-05-07

The Islamic Challenge. Politics and Religion in Western Europe. By Jytte Klausen

Diagne, S. B. — 2008-05-07

Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism. By Miranda K. Hassett

Douglas, I. T. — 2008-05-07

Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators. By John W. Coakley

Farmer, S. — 2008-05-07

A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart. By Diana Lobel

Grady, J. A. — 2008-05-07

Buddhist Goddesses of India. By Miranda Shaw

Gray, D. B. — 2008-05-07

Religion, Empire and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib. By Bruce Lincoln

Gushee, D. P. — 2008-05-07

Print Culture and the Early Quakers. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. By Kate Peters

Hall, D. D. — 2008-05-07

Memory, Music and Religion: Morocco's Mystical Chanters. By Earle H. Waugh

Harrak, F. — 2008-05-07

Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa. By Paul Christopher Johnson

Hayes, K. E. — 2008-05-07

Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler. Edited by Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville

Jacoby, S. H. — 2008-05-07

The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland. By Genevieve Zubrzycki

Jakelic, S. — 2008-05-07

A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. By Matthew Engelke

Masondo, S. — 2008-05-07

Krishna: A Sourcebook. Edited by Edwin F. Bryant

Pintchman, T. — 2008-05-07

The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Edited by Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed

Satlow, M. L. — 2008-05-07

Sufis and Saints' Bodies. Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam. By Scott Kugle

Seesemann, R. — 2008-05-07

People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States. By Michael O. Emerson

Slade, P. — 2008-05-07

Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. By David Smilde

Vasquez, M. A. — 2008-05-07

A Cognitive Theory of Magic. By Jesper Sorensen

Yelle, R. A. — 2008-05-07