Journal of the American Academy of Religion - recent issues

Restricting the Scope of the Ethics of Belief: Haack's Alternative to Clifford and James

Christian, R. A. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:07 PDT

In "‘The Ethics of Belief’ Reconsidered," Susan Haack sets about to determine the relation of epistemic to ethical appraisal. She promotes her account as an alternative to the "morally over demanding" position of W. K. Clifford and the "epistemically over permissive" proposal of Wm. James. An "overlap" between epistemic and ethical appraisal obtains, on her view, only when individuals are responsible for holding epistemically unjustified beliefs that result in or directly threaten harm. In my discussion, I explore the terms of Haack's attractive proposal in order to consider its implications for a question she does not consider but that exercised both Clifford and James: that of the ethical permissibility of epistemically unjustified religious belief. Adopting Haack's measured approach, I argue, would serve not only to focus contemporary debate over religious belief, but perhaps also to moderate its tone and to engage concerned believers.

Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Metanarrative

Ferziger, A. S. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:07 PDT

The connection of women with heresy and deviance has a long history within religious traditions throughout the world. The following discussion uncovers a new chapter in this convention, by highlighting the efforts of a prominent rabbinical authority to reject attempts at upgrading the public religious roles available to women. The legal or "halakhic" position that he expounds is not unto itself exceptional. What is sui generis, rather, is his construction for polemical purposes of a "metanarrative of Jewish heresy" in which a historical chain that begins with the Sadducees in ancient times and extends to contemporary Orthodox Jewish feminism is linked through the common complaint of rabbinic discrimination against women. By describing the context from which this teleological understanding emerged and analyzing its characteristics, this study offers a new perspective on the role that feminism is playing in the development of American Orthodox Judaism. More broadly, it serves as a case study for how the rise of feminism within contemporary religious life has engendered original theological responses and strategies not only among its supporters and ideologues, but among the "guardians" of the various religious traditions as well.

Religion, Reductionism, and the Godly Soul: Lubavitch Hasidic Jewishness and the Limits of Classificatory Thought

Goldschmidt, H. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

This essay explores the limits of the classificatory category of religion through an analysis of Lubavitch Hasidic discourses of Jewishness. The Lubavitch Hasidim articulate a distinctive vision of Jewish identity based on what they describe as a uniquely Jewish "godly soul," inherited by all Jews from the biblical patriarchs. The godly soul sits, uncomfortably, on the conceptual boundaries of "race" and "religion," as these reductive categories of social analysis are typically understood. Though it may be classified in such terms, it is better described as a conceptual singularity that resists the mechanisms of classificatory thought. To understand such singular phenomena, I argue, we need to develop a social antireductionism—a mode of analysis that interrogates the categories of the modern social sciences without appealing to a transcendent space beyond the social world.

Everyday Religion and Identity in a Western Manitoban Chinese Community: Christianity, the KMT, Foodways and Related Events

Marshall, A. R. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Immigrating to the Canadian prairies in the late 1870s, a predominantly male Chinese population first settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, then in Brandon and cities, towns, and villages created by new branch lines of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the 1880s. From the earliest time of the province's post-colonial settlement, men could join the Chinese Freemasons (Hongmen/Zhigongtang) whose 1863 headquarters was established in Barkerville, British Columbia, and later the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA) in 1884 in Victoria. By 1910, a Winnipeg Freemasons "lodge" (probably a restaurant) existed that also housed a local branch of the Tongmenghui (Chinese United League). Two years later, it became a secret KMT (Zhongguo Guomindang or Chinese Nationalist League in the West) office and one year after that a rural outpost opened in Brandon. While the men had found comfort in the fellowship provided by Freemasons and CBA membership, in the KMT they had Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) who, like them, came from a southern village and was now living away from China. This essay examines the front and back regions of everyday religiosity that emerged out of KMT involvement and relationships, reverence for Sun Yatsen, and a nominal Christian identity in a Western Manitoban Chinese Community.

The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology

Nicholson, H. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

This paper examines the relationship between the new comparative theology and the theology of religions in light of their common genealogy in the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. Noting that the latter's blindness to its considerable biases was sustained by its oppositional relationship with the exclusionary apologetic theology of the day, the paper argues that the new comparative theology risks repeating the same pattern of self-deception when it dichotomizes its relationship with the theology of religions. At the same time, however, the new comparative theology, by openly acknowledging its theological commitments, strips the comparative method of the aura of "science" which has often functioned ideologically to mask bias. In this way, the new comparative theology exemplifies the recent shift in the understanding of comparison from a method of discovery to a critical method for the testing and revision of the categories through which scholars interpret their data.

Dark Teens and Born-again Martyrs: Captivity Narratives after Columbine

Pike, S. M. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

In Columbine and its legacy, two streams of American discourse about threatening young people and captivity by evil forces converged: Protestant evangelical captivity narratives dating from the colonial period and discourse about troubled youth that has its origins in the mid-nineteenth century. Tales about threatening youth convey the extent to which young people do important work for their cultures, especially when they are used to shore up the bounds of normality against the threat of deviance. Captivity narratives provided powerful impetus for change after Columbine, just as they did for Protestants in seventeenth-century New England and for nineteenth-century nativist movements. After Columbine, tales of adolescents captured by darkness contributed to a growing evangelical youth movement, effected legislation concerning the separation of church and state, impacted public school dress codes and behavior policies, and in general shaped Americans' thinking about teenage deviance and normality.

Empire's Allure: Babylon and the Exception to Law in Two Conservative Discourses

Runions, E. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Reference to Babylon and Babel in theonomist and neoconserative discourse is instructive in thinking about how the Bible and processes of biblical interpretation might condition U.S. citizens to accept the inconsistencies of empire and its recourse to the state of exception, in which leaders suspend the law in order to save democracy. Despite significant philosophical and religious differences, these conservative discourses are strikingly similar in allegorizing the Babel story to motivate resistance to a universalizing secular humanism and its laws (which are called Babylonian). Though suspicious of political unities like empires, and in favor of decentralization and individualism that can go beyond the law, these discourses insist that resistance is in the name of a unified truth, often presented in strongly imperialist terms. Slippages between unity and multiplicity in these allusions to Babylon—partially produced by a mélange of pre- and post-Enlightenment values—are found to be homologous with the structure of the exception and with a common canonical mode of biblical interpretation. When these dynamics are read alongside Carl Schmitt's genealogy of the exception in Political Theology, a clear picture emerges of the scripturalized structure of exception to law in U.S. liberal democracy.

Of Love and How

Hart, K. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition. By Douglas S. Duckworth

Burchardi, A. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism. Edited by Jacqueline I. Stone and Mariko Namba Walter

Hur, N.-l. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China. By Thomas David Dubois

Kang, X. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. By Susannah Heschel

Madigan, K. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Faith in Schools? Autonomy, Citizenship, and Religious Education in the Liberal State. By Ian MacMullen

Stoker, V. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. By Margaret A. Farley

Yeager, D. M. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:04:08 PDT

Sufis on Parade: The Performance of Black, African, and Muslim Identities

Abdullah, Z. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

For over twenty years, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than viewing religion as a subset of ethnicity, this study shows how African Murids interrogate the meanings of religion, race and ethnicity as intersecting constructs. National flags from Senegal, Islamic chants, and banners advocating Black solidarity all indicate a negotiation of terms. Clothes worn during the parade act as symbols and afford them another opportunity to work out these borderlands, especially in contradistinction to African American converts who follow a slightly different course. This article examines how their religious procession creates a Murid cosmopolitanism, allowing them a space in which to reconcile multiple belongings.

Grasping at Ontological Straws: Overcoming Reductionism in the Advaita Vedanta--Neuroscience Dialogue

Kaplan, S. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Contemporary neuropsychology reveals that the parietal lobe contains neurons that are specifically attuned to the act of grasping and this act may be fundamental to the establishment of the phenomenal boundaries between subject and object. Furthermore, alterations to this process, such as the hypoactivation of this region during meditation or the hyperactivation associated with schizophrenia, may eliminate or confuse, respectively, the phenomenal boundaries between subject and object. Traversing disciplines, the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism traces some of its key terms for subject and object to the verbal root grah, to grasp. The subject is literally the grasper. Furthermore, the practice of asparsa yoga, the yoga of no-touch, is aimed at stopping, hypoactivating, the grasping process in order to transcend all subject–object boundaries. This paper will argue that while we have not uncovered an identity of thought, we have uncovered a confluence of ideas between these two disciplines. We will see that this confluence of ideas has not pitted the believer against the critic—not forced us into the great reductionism debate that has dominated so much of the interchange between religious studies and the sciences. This case study will illuminate some of the methodological ways around this reductionism battle and also the boundaries of both disciplines for the intellectual benefit of each.

"Born Again Is a Sexual Term": Demons, STDs, and God's Healing Sperm

DeRogatis, A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

In this article I examine the intersection between sexuality and spirit-filled bodies in American Evangelicalism. I am interested in investigating two issues: the sexual body as a site of spiritual battle and the use of popular science, especially the domain of genetics, as material evidence for this spiritual warfare. Specifically, I trace the increasingly spiritualized framing of marital intercourse in evangelical literature. To follow this trajectory, I highlight the spiritualized dangers of transgressive sexuality as well as the sexualizing of spirituality in evangelical sex manuals and deliverance manuals. This article centers around one text, Holy Sex: God's Purpose and Plan for Our Sexuality, whose authors' contend that sexually transmitted diseases are, in fact, demons lodged in genetic material that can be transferred through body fluids and bloodlines. The assertions about biology and demonic affliction made throughout the book are extreme and would be rejected by most readers of mainstream evangelical sex manuals. I argue that this book, though marginal, is not an irrelevant text. It reflects deep-seated anxieties about sexual bodies, spiritual concerns, and disease. Idiosyncratic though it may seem, Holy Sex taps into wider uncertainties about the spiritual vulnerability of the physical body found in contemporary evangelical literature.

The Guru's Weapons

Murphy, A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

This article presents the biography of a set of objects held to be powerful within Sikh traditions, with a focus on how these objects operate within a field determined by colonial and post-colonial formations of value and meaning, in relation to pre-colonial forms of the same. The article describes cultural production that articulates the sphere of the religious, highlighting how different frames of knowledge—pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial—interact in the articulation of this sphere. As such, I address an ongoing debate in the historiography of South Asia regarding the relative influence of colonialism in South Asia that has significant potential impact on our understanding of South Asian religions like the Sikh tradition.

Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy? Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks in Late Antique Egypt

Schroeder, C. T. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

A famous instruction about children in monasteries reads: "Do not bring young boys here. Four churches in Scetis are deserted because of boys." Taken from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, this apophthegm exposes the presence of homoeroticism and anxieties about the homoerotic, especially erotic encounters with children, in early Christian ascetic communities. This essay examines the construction of male sexuality in early Egyptian monasticism, focusing on the Sayings and the rules of the monastic leader Shenoute of Atripe It argues that the masculine ascetic ideal builds upon certain classical ideals of masculinity, especially the control of the passions, but purports to eschew classical models of eroticism in which the adolescent male represents the ideal sexual partner. However, these sources are designed to be recited or retold as edifying texts; despite their overt disavowal of sexual contact between men and boys, their retelling and rereading keeps homoeroticism and the representation of boys as sexually desirable objects alive in the ascetic imagination.

Language, Orthodoxy, and Performances of Authority in Vietnamese Buddhism

Soucy, A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Men and women in Vietnam engage in Buddhist practice in very specific ways and have widely different understandings of what their practices achieve. The Buddhist pagoda in Vietnam is generally seen as a feminine space, borne out by the fact that between 80% and 90% of participants are old women. Nonetheless, there are some old men who become prominent participants, but only after renegotiating the significance of Buddhist practice in ways that are more compatible with their masculine identities. This paper focuses on the performative aspects of masculine participation in the Buddhist field that are intended to gain greater status and authority. A secondary aim of the paper is to relate this particular ethnographic example to the larger field of Religious Studies. The concentration on texts, as authoritative voices in religious traditions, ignores the performative aspect of their creation. It suggests that, while they are performances that often hold greater currency, they should nonetheless be understood as only one sort of performance among many.

Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaom Synthesis in Silla Korea. By Richard McBride

Baker, D. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics. Edited by Jennifer Heath

Droeber, J. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances. By Andrea Smith

Johnson, G. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America. By Molly McGarry

Kittelstrom, A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China. By Charlene E. Makley

Schrempf, M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Challenging the Secular State: The Islamization of Law in Modern Indonesia. By Arskal Salim

Scott, R. M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Democracy's Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan. By Richard Madsen

Zhiru, — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

The Modern and the Secular in the West: An Outsider's View

Chakrabarty, D. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Assessing Theories of Religion: A Forum on Thomas A. Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion

Taves, A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Crossing, Dwelling, and A Wandering Jew

Hughes, A. W. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Spatial Theory and Spatial Methodology, Their Relationship and Application: A Transatlantic Engagement

Knott, K. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

No Universalizing Deductive-Nomological Explanations, Please; We're Irish: A Response to Thomas A. Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling

Curtis, F. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

The Limits of the Hydrodynamics of Religion

Vasquez, M. A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

Crabs, Crustaceans, Crabiness, and Outrage: A Response

Tweed, T. A. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:30 PDT

2008 Presidential Address: Walking on the Rim Bones of Nothingness: Scholarship and Activism

Townes, E. M. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Jesus Freak and the Junkyard Prophet: The School Assembly as Evangelical Revival

Ebel, J. H. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Christian Wrestling Federation (CWF) and You Can Run But You Cannot Hide (YCR) are two evangelical revivalistic ministries working through popular forms—professional-style wrestling and rock music—to convince young men and women to become Christians. Each group also stages character education assemblies in public schools across the United States. This article describes the activities of these two groups, places each in the broader context of the history of American revivalism, and discusses some of the issues raised by their inclusion in public school curricula. Conservative evangelical discontent with American public education is amply documented, as are attempts by local, state, and national organizations to make more room for Christianity in schools. Revivalist character educators have received almost no attention as part of this "Christianization" effort, yet their work helps frame and answer persistent questions about approaches to moral education, the place of religion in public education, and the much-studied relationship between evangelicalism and popular culture. The history of English and American revivalism, a history in which these ministries partake fully, offers potential answers to these questions—answers that encourage caution on the part of the educators and revivalists who embrace the school assembly as a moral educational venue.

Editor's Introduction: "Roundtable on the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature"

Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

A Response to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Keller, C. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Comments on the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Olupona, J. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

"Why Prince Charles Instead of "Princess Mononoke?" The Absence of Children and Popular Culture in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Pike, S. M. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Back to Religion and Nature

Taylor, B. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

All Work and No Play: Chaos, Incongruity and Differance in The Study of Religion

Roberts, T. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The last two decades have been fascinating and productive ones for theorists of religion. Recent work has offered a remarkably wide range of theoretical perspectives and possibilities that enrich our field even as they plunge us into vigorous theoretical debates. Amidst this contest—even confusion—some basic principles for guiding future work seem to be asserting themselves. Many think that, after a century of confusion and intermingling between theology and the study of religion, scholars of religion are finally in a position to establish the study of religion on properly academic, theoretical foundations. In this story Eliade's antireductionist discourse of the "sacred" becomes the epitome and, it is hoped, the last gasp of religious studies as a quasi-theological discourse. Yet despite their efforts to guide the study of religion away from Eliade, many remain Eliadan insofar as they accept Eliade's "locative" approach to religion. Yet is it really "theology" that is currently limiting the way we "imagine religion," or might it be instead the refusal to think beyond religion's locative function—a refusal very closely linked to the desire for academic respectability in a historicist age? Mark C. Taylor's After God provocatively disturbs the idea that religion is primarily locative and, in doing so, also disturbs the boundaries between the theological and the theoretical, religion and the study of religion. I consider the significance of this virtual map of religion, by reading After God with and against J. Z. Smith's early reflections or experiments with the ideas of chaos, incongruity, and location. I argue that Taylor's book leads us back to paths from which Smith turned in his early work.

Refiguring Religion

Taylor, M. C. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Defining Buddhism(s): A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion). Edited by Karen Derris and Natalie Gummer

Apple, J. B. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Book under Suspicion. Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England. By Kathryn Kerby-Fulton

Bose, M. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, & Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880-1930. By James Opp

Brown, C. G. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan. By Nancy K. Stalker

Chilson, C. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. By Anthea D. Butler

Evans, C. J. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology. By Paul K. Moser

Macdonald, P. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By Joan Breton Connelly

Miles, M. M. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism 20). Edited by Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone

Penkower, L. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus. By Mark A. Chancey

Ruprecht, L. A. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. By Peter Harrison

Bland, K. P. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Oxford Companion of English Literature and Theology. Edited by Andrew W. Hass, David Jasper, and Elisabeth Jay

Kort, W. A. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Ippolito Desideri S.J. Opere e Bibliografia [Subsidia ad Historiam Societatis Iesu 15]. By Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi

Pomplun, T. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Women Shaping Islam: Reading the Quran in Indonesia. By Pieternella van Doorn-Harder

Rinaldo, R. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System. By Nam-lin Hur

Rowe, M. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

After God. By Mark C. Taylor

Caputo, J. D. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty. By Anthony Gill

Hall, M. D. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Mircea Eliade: A Critical Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion). Edited by Bryan S. Rennie * The International Eliade (Issues in the Study of Religion). Edited by Bryan S. Rennie

Jensen, T. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. By Webb Keane

Lofton, K. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Postmodern Ethics. By Jin Y. Park

Magliola, R. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT

Religion and Ecology: A Review Essay on the Field

Jenkins, W. — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:39:34 PDT