Renewal and Redemption: Spirituality, Law, and Religious Praxis in the Writings of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-504
Author(s):  
Ariel Evan Mayse
Keyword(s):  
Religious Praxis

scholarly journals Crisis and Continuation: The Digital Relocation of Jain Socio-Religious Praxis during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Tine Vekemans
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Praxis ◽  
Online Format ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Selection Of

In early 2020, Jain diaspora communities and organizations that had been painstakingly built over the past decades were faced with the far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and its concomitant restrictions. With the possibility of regular face-to-face contact and participation in recurring events—praying, eating, learning, and meditating together—severely limited in most places, organizations were compelled to make a choice. They either had to suspend their activities, leaving members to organize their religious activities on an individual or household basis, or pursue the continuation of some of their habitual activities in an online format, relying on their members’ motivation and technical skills. This study will explore how many Jain organizations in London took to digital media in its different forms to continue to engage with their members throughout 2020. Looking at a selection of websites and social media channels, it will examine online discourses that reveal the social and mental impact of the pandemic on Jains and the broader community, explore the relocation of activities to the digital realm, and assess participation in these activities. In doing so, this article will open a discussion on the long-term effects of this crisis-induced digital turn in Jain religious praxis, and in socio-cultural life in general.

Confucian Mysticism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judson B. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
The Self ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Mystical Union ◽  
Textual Study ◽  
Religious Praxis ◽  
Contemporary Study ◽  
The One ◽  
Patterns And Processes

Confucian mysticism is a subfield in academic areas of study including Chinese thought, Chinese religions, Confucian studies, and comparative mysticism. Important topics examined in this subfield include, first, a view of the human self that is fundamentally relational, both in an interpersonal sense and because Confucians presuppose various correlations and an integration between, on the one hand, the matter–energy, capacities, processes, and activities comprising the self and, on the other, the elements, forces, patterns, and processes of the world it inhabits. One paradigmatic way Confucians conceptualize the interrelation between the self and the cosmos is their idea and ideal of the “unity of Heaven and humanity.” The Confucian mystical self, provided failings such as unbalanced emotions, selfish desires, and self-centeredness are effectively curtailed, contributes vitally to, because of its profound reverence for life, the generative and life-sustaining process of change that pervades and animates the cosmos. Second, practitioners use various techniques of religious praxis in combination to form multifaceted training regimens aimed at self-cultivation and self-transformation. Examples include a form of meditation called “quiet-sitting,” rituals, textual study, “investigating things,” self-examination and self-monitoring, filial piety, and “reverent attentiveness.” Third, training in these practices can achieve the different mystical aims, experiences, and transformations they seek, all of which relate to the overarching ideal of the unity of Heaven and humanity. These objectives, broadly speaking, include self-understanding, accurately grasping the “principles” of things and affairs, effortless moral virtuosity, “forming one body with all things” (and other types of Confucian mystical union), and exemplifying “sincerity.” Accomplishing them collapses the conventional divide separating several specious dichotomies, such as thought and action, self and other, humankind and nature, internal and external, the subjective and the objective, and moral ought and is. Fourth, the influence that precedent and tradition exert in Confucianism has prompted scholars to devote attention both to notable continuities and to intriguing innovations in comparing ancient mystical ideas, practices, experiences, and aims to later expressions and elaborations of them. At present, much of the scholarship on Confucian mysticism contributes to efforts attempting to provide rich and nuanced analyses of the tradition’s core doctrines, practices, experiences, and ethical and religious aims, by viewing these subjects through the lens of Confucianism’s mystical and spiritual dimensions. Less scholarly attention has been devoted to identifying and explicating the possible contributions that studying Confucian mysticism can make to the scholarship on theories of mysticism and comparative mysticism. Scholars of mysticism have not yet availed themselves of the wealth of data, the possible additional perspectives on contested issues, and the new trajectories for future research that Confucianism offers to these fields. Also, few studies employ the definitions, categories, and theories that have been developed in the contemporary study of mysticism as a methodology for studying Confucian mysticism.

scholarly journals Religious urbanism in Singapore: Competition, commercialism and compromise in the search for space

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando Woods
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Fast Growing ◽  
Religious Praxis

This article explores the recursive relationship between religious praxis and urban environments. It advances the concept of ‘religious urbanism’ to show how urban environments play an active role in shaping the praxis of religion, and how religious groups adopt secular logics in response to the pressures of urban environments. Such logics have given rise to new, more pragmatic forms of spatial reproduction that lead to the desecularisation of space. Desecularisation involves religious groups diminishing the secular properties of space, rather than attempting to achieve any lasting notion of sacredness. Drawing on the restrictive religio-spatial context of Singapore, I demonstrate how fast-growing religious groups are forced to compete, commercialise, and compromise in order to acquire space. Combined, these factors have come to define religious urbanism in Singapore, and highlight the gulf between the planning and praxis of religion in urban environments.

The Reasons for the Commandments

Nahmanides ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 239-285
Author(s):  
Moshe Halbertal
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Praxis

This chapter analyzes the meaning of halakhah and religious praxis as a signal indicator of the originality, profundity, and influence of a particular mode of thinking in the history of Jewish thought. It looks at Nahmanides's insights into the realm of the Godhead and into the process of emanation from within Absolute Privation. It also explores Nahmanides's ideas about humanity's place in the cosmos and his theories of prophecy and the miraculous. The chapter discusses how Nahmanides invested much energy into supplying reasons for the commandments. It points out Nahmanides's intention to translate his metaphysical and anthropological ideas into a meaningful framework for the performance of the commandments.

scholarly journals Is Gabola a Decolonial Church or Another Trajectory of Freedom of Religion in Post-Colonial South Africa? Rethinking Ethical Issues in Religious Praxis

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bekithemba Dube
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Religious Praxis

In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. I answered two questions, is Gabola church a representation of a decolonial church and could it be a manifestation of trajectories of the postcolonial ill-defined freedom of religion? In responding to these questions, I used decoloniality, a theory whose agenda among many others is geared to usher a future free from oppression, where all can participate in modernity and in postmodernity. Data was generated through participatory action research. The approach enabled us to unearth the theology of Gabola, philosophy and the gap they seek to fill in the religious space. Ten Gabola church members and five church members from a mainline Christian movement participated in this research. The findings indicated that Gabola church presents a new religious movement that is socially inclusive, that seeks to promote social justice and social transformation. On the other hand, the research revealed that the lack of a regulating body for religious movement is the reason for the rise of questionable movements such as Gabola, a serious threat in the praxis of the Christian faith. To this end, I concluded that while freedom of religion is a good idea in line with the decolonial move, there is a need for participative and collaborative regulation of religious movement to eliminate criminal elements that overshadowed the beauty of religion manifested through ‘unthinkable’ ethical irregularities.

scholarly journals Porous Religious Economies and the Problem of Regulating Religious Marketplaces

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Orlando Woods
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Influence ◽  
Religious Influences ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Religious Praxis ◽  
Religious Economies ◽  
Religious Economy

This paper reframes the theory of religious economy by developing an understanding of the effects of transnational religious influence on religious marketplaces. In doing so, it highlights the need to rethink the role of regulation in shaping the ways in which religious marketplaces operate. By reinterpreting regulation as the ability of the state to control the extent to which religious groups are able to access resources, it argues that transnational religious networks can enable access to extraneous resources, which, in turn, can enable religious groups to subvert the regulatory prescriptions of the state. Transnational religious influences therefore highlight the porosity of religious economies and the problem of regulating religious marketplaces. Qualitative data are used to demonstrate how Singapore-based churches create and strengthen transnational religious networks with their counterparts in China. These networks enable religious groups to operate with a degree of independence and to overcome regulatory restrictions on (and other limitations to) religious praxis.

Connectivity and communion: The mobile phone and the Christian religious experience in Nigeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482097018
Author(s):  
Allwell Okechukwu Nwankwo
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
User Groups ◽  
Religious Praxis ◽  
Study Participants

This article explores the integration of the mobile phone into the religious experience of Christians in Nigeria. Based on the results of an online survey and the author’s observation, it argues that the mobile phone has become an actant in the mediatization of religion, creating dependency among some users and transforming religious praxis in palpable ways. Unsurprisingly, perspectives vary on whether and how the phone should be used during worship. Attitudes coalesce around three viewpoints, leading to the emergence of user groups labelled critics, advocates, and dualists. The accounts of study participants give access into the ways some people seek to (re)configure their engagement with religion by inserting the mobile phone as a multifunctional techno-spiritual gadget.

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