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Flirty Fishing in the Children of God: The Sexual Body as a Site of Proselytization and Salvation
No full textThe Children of God [now called The Family] emerged as an apocalyptic new religious movement in the late 1960s. By the late 1970s, the group had engendered a great deal of academic and popular debate due to, among other things, its controversial sexual practices. In this article, I examine one such practice, namely, Flirty Fishing, in which many women in the group used their sexuality in combination with scriptural discussions as a method of proselytization. Utilizing social theories of the body, I explore the ways that many of the women may have adopted strategies that helped them to perceive their bodies and their behaviours in ways that did not threaten their senses of self. I consider both how women were able to endure the physical and emotional aspects of Flirty Fishing, and how they contextualized their behaviour in terms of the group’s general dynamics and belief system. Thus, I explore not only the organizational imposition of certain modes of behaviour on the body, but also individual perceptions of, responses to, and negotiations of them. Importantly, this article applies a theoretical approach to the study of new religious movements that few scholars thus far have explored
Religiosität als demographischer Faktor - Ein unterschätzter Zusammenhang?
No full textIn getrennten Diskursen werden derzeit in Wissenschaften und Gesellschaft zwei Themen immer wieder diskutiert: der demographische Wandel und die „Wiederkehr der Religionen“. Der Artikel zeigt anhand von Daten der ALLBUS-Befragung 2002 - aus denen wir ausgewählt und Schaubilder erstellt haben - auf, dass sich beide Phänomene (und eine Reihe weiterer Fragen) klären lassen, wenn der Zusammenhang zwischen Religiosität und Geburtenverhalten berücksichtigt wird
Steve Bruce: God is Dead: Secularization in the West
No full textIs God really dead, or is he/she just periodically ailing? To understand the background of this question is to know about the transatlantic feud which is being fought over predictions on the future development of religion. While Steve Bruce, professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen, is one of the main protagonists defending the secularization paradigm, he and his party have come under harsh attack by a group of American sociologists who deny the process of secularization, most notably Rodney Stark. In a debate which is not always led in fairness it is a relief to read Bruce\u27s well-balanced, well-informed and clear account of what sociologists since Max Weber have meant by secularization
Leif Nordenstorm: Ômotos Mission på Esperanto. en japansk ny religion i förändring från kiliastisk Maitreyaförväntan till religionsdialog
No full textThe purpose of this work is to explore the nature of the Japanese religion known as Omoto on the basis of its international presentation via the medium of Esperanto. Omoto, meaning "Great Source", can also be written as Oomoto, and this is how it appears in Esperanto publications. The religion probably has the most substantial literature in Esperanto of any East Asian religion, a fact which has often been mentioned, but never really studied, by Japanese and western scholars alike
Nietzsche, Friedrich (Translator: H. L. Mencken): The Antichrist
No full textDuring 1888 Nietzsche worked on six short books. One of them was Der Antichrist, which is now a classic. The book has been translated into English more than once. The translation from 1920 by the American controversialist, journalist and critic of American life, Henry Louis Mencken (1880- 1956), is now available in reprint, with a short introduction by Mencken. - Walter Kaufmann\u27s (1921- 1980) edition from 1954 is, however, still the most reliable english translation
Sagen alle Religionen dasselbe?
No full textThe thesis that all religions say the same cannot be maintained empirically. The article shows that there are differences as concerns the starting positions such as the belief in one life on earth only versus reincarnation, there are differences within each of these positions as well as regards the solutions offered by different religions - e.g. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with regard to salvation in the context of the belief in one life on earth only, or Hinduism and Buddhism and their respective ways of salvation within the context of reincarnation. And finally, there are noticeable differences in the advices for action if it comes to practical applications which go beyond the general statements formulated in the Declaration of Global Ethics which the Parliament of World Religions has adopted in Chicago in 1993
Kent H. Morris: The Historical Development and Contemporary Perspective of the Japanese Urasenke Way of Tea as Practiced in California
No full textThis work provides a study of chanoyu, or tea ceremony, from an anthropological perspective, highlighting in particular its development in Southern California. The work is focused on the Urasenke tradition, which together with the Omotesenke and Mushanokojisenke, constitutes one of the main traditions widely spread both inside and outside Japan. Kent Morris provides the reader with an historical introduction of the way of tea in China and Japan, its arrival in western countries, where the first international chapter of the Urasenke Foundation was established in Hawaii in 1951, two years after its foundation in Japan, and an account of the organisation and structure of the Urasenke tradition. He then describes in detail a typical noontime tea gathering (shōgo chaji) with a study of its symbolism and interpretation
Church and religion in Imperial Russia. A Review of Recent Historiography
No full textThis article is a historiographical survey of substantial critical revisions of church and religious history in Imperial Russia undertaken since 1991. Among the broad range of works presented in this survey, several significant studies challenge a common assumption that the Russian Orthodox Church was a “handmaiden of the state” by arguing that, in the last decades of the ancien régime, the Churchwas not willing to support the Russian state and that the “crisis of the old order” had incorporated the crisis of the church-state relations. In terms of religion per se, it has been established that the dynamics of popular religion in Russia did not parallel the processes of secularization evident in Western Europe. As time progressed, popular piety did not disappear and the rate of religiousobservance, both among males and females, was extraordinary high in absolute numbers and as compared to other countries. From a gendered perspective, some historians have also suggested that religion often functioned as a source of empowerment for women in Imperial Russia, especially for upper-class women, and that monasticism (convents) enjoyed a revival at the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, a significant body of scholarly works analyses religious minorities in Russia (Muslims, Catholics, Old Believers, etc.) and relates ethnic identity to the discourse of religion to conclude that religion was strongest in those communities where it was linked to ethnic or nationalidentity. Suggestions for further research are also incorporated into this study
L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology: An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature
No full textNo New Religious Movement has been a subject of more public interest and of more heated discussions in Germany during the last two decades than Scientology. I first became interested in this debate in the early Eighties, but only in 1996/1997 - after completing a similar project about Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky - I seriously started to search for available material on Hubbard and the movement he founded. Only then I became aware of the rather paradoxical situation in Germany, that there exists a large New Religious Movement (whose status as a religion nevertheless is doubted by some) which is being discussed on German TV almost every week, which forms a topic of forensic debate in many legal proceedings, and which is the one movement treated most extensively in the official report on New Religious Movements published by the German parliament (Endbericht der Enquete-Kommission des Deutschen Bundestages "Sogenannte Sekten und Psychogruppen", 1998) - but nevertheless has almost never been treated on an academic level of research
Beate Löffler: Fremd und Eigen. Christlicher Sakralbau in Japan seit 1853
No full textReview of the book from Beate Löffler