scholarly journals Amway as Neoliberal Religious Tradition

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 703
Author(s):  
Michael Laminack
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Critical Theology ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Evangelicalism ◽  
Prime Case

Why do people desire their own continued oppression under neoliberalism? This essay seeks an answer to this confounding question through analysis of the Amway organization, an American multi-level-marketing (MLM) company that rose to a multi-billion dollar value in the 1980s and 90s. My argument is that Amway serves as a prime case study for the relation between neoliberalism and religious practices––people desire their continued oppression under neoliberalism in part because neoliberalism bears meaning at the level of culture and religion. What sets Amway apart from other MLMs, and makes Amway a prime case study for neoliberalism and religious practices, is its amalgamation of neoliberal ideology with ideas and trends from American evangelicalism, to the extent that it serves as a kind of neoliberal religious tradition. As this amalgamation demonstrates, people may defend neoliberalism with a similar fervor as defending cultural or religious traditions. The conclusion explores the possibility of a decolonial American evangelicalism, which would seek options for broadening the horizons of American evangelicalism beyond the relationship to neoliberalism and the possibility of a critical theology robust enough to thoughtfully critique neoliberalism. In pursuit of this thesis, the essay utilizes a theoretical framework guided by the contributions of scholars including Wendy Brown, Walter Benjamin, Olivier Roy, Walter Mignolo, and Carl Raschke in order to analyze Amway through the lens of contemporary political theories of neoliberalism.

Buying with You, Selling with You, Praying with You

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Social Views ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter presents a second case study showing another concrete example of the issues to which probabilism was applied. Like the previous chapter, this chapter puts the theoretical and theological discussions on probabilism into the concrete social, economic, and cultural reality of the post-Reformation Catholic Church. This chapter explores the relationship between Catholic theology and money lending by examining the key role that probabilism played in helping theologians to maintain the traditional Catholic ban on usury while at the same time engaging with the burgeoning money-market economy and with other religious traditions with different doctrinal and social views on money, such as Judaism.

scholarly journals RELASI MITOS, DAN AGAMA SEBAGAI MEDIA PENINGKATAN EKONOMI PRODUKTIF DALAM TRADISI “TEBOKAN” DI DESA KALIPUTU KOTA KUDUS

INFERENSI ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Saifuddin Saifuddin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Behaviors ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

“Tebokan” was the history of jenang production processes that was visualizedon cultural carnival. It was one of the place where the relationship of religious traditions and the myth of local society became a new spirit to increase the economy of the community. This research was based on interpretative perspective to religious behaviors such as done by Clifford Geertz. Therefore this research used qualitative method. This study found the cultural illustrations where the relationship of myth, religious tradition, and the social structure was able to activate spirit of productivity in the Kaliputu Society as a central of jenang Production in Kudus. Both of these systems of meaning were able to present three important spirits, those areinnovative, identity affirmation, and work ethic. 

Total Devotion: Dismantling Religious Practices and Training Devotion in 2 Kings 22-23

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-338
Author(s):  
Laura Feldt
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Active Process ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
And Training

Abstract The demise and disappearance of religions are processes rarely analysed or theorised in depth in the study of religions. This article engages the discussion of how religious traditions disappear by focusing on religious demise as an active process and suggests that this can also teach us about religious persistence. Using memory and emotion perspectives, I focus on processes of religious change in Judaism in the Persian-Hellenistic era by analysing a case study from the Hebrew Bible that involves an active dismantling of previous religious practices and their replacement with a new programme for religious devotion: the narrative of 2 Kgs 22-23. I argue that the new total devotion programme involves the active erasure of previous religious practices as a key part of the new identity. On the basis of the analyses, I discuss religious changes in Second Temple Judaism and suggest a novel reframing of some of the key changes in terms of memory, media, and emotions.

RELIGION AND ETHNICITY: COMMUNITY FORMATION IN THE BRITISH ALEVI COMMUNITY

Numen ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Geaves
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Eastern Turkey ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe article explores the Alevi community, a little-studied Muslim-influenced heterogeneous religious tradition whose roots are in Eastern Turkey, and provides recent fieldwork of the Alevi presence in London which has appeared through migration since the 1980s. This community development is compared with the older Alevi community in Istanbul. The intention is to use the high number of Alevis who live in diaspora communities to analyse the relationship between religion and ethnicity. The author argues, that even though the Alevi revival that has manifested since the 1990s and in which Alevi youth participate visibly, appears to be cultural rather than religious, closer examination of Alevi religious traditions indicates that the forms taken by the revival have their roots in traditional Alevi spiritual beliefs and practices in which values of tolerance, heterodoxy, freedom and justice prevail. The article concludes that although Alevi youth appear to be diverging significantly from their Sunni Muslim counterparts in their respective identity quests, religion plays a significant role for both although the manifestations of revival are almost diametrically opposed. This can be explained by the different manifestations of belief and practice in each community.

scholarly journals Preaching as Internal Interreligious Dialogue: A Harvard Case Study

Homiletic ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Malmström ◽  
David Schnasa Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the overlapping space between an internal conception of interreligious dialogue and models of conversational preaching and homiletical theology which embrace mutual critical-correlational theological method. At the heart of the paper is a close reading of a sermon focusing on John 5:31–47—preaching much influenced by interreligious hermeneutics. The analysis shows how preaching effectively may address some fundamental principles of interreligious dialogue, for example by offering space for open-minded, respectful, and attentive listening and learning from the religious other, or by encouraging curiosity as well as deep reflection on Christian gospel in the light of gospel resonant of voices from other religious traditions. In the concluding discussion, the implications of this research for the rhetoric of conversational preaching practice are highlighted, and further homiletical-theological reflection on the relationship between preaching and interreligious dialogue is encouraged, not only because it is possible but because it is desirable for Christian preaching and homiletics in particular.

scholarly journals Cities, nations and divine service: identifying Spanish merchants in late medieval Bruges

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-187
Author(s):  
ANDREW BROWN
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Religious Rhetoric ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Foreign Merchants

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between ‘national identity’, the urban environment and its religious practices. As a gateway city, where locals met foreigners to an unusual degree, late medieval Bruges provides a useful case-study. The focus is on the processes that shaped expressions of identity. These often involved religious rhetoric and practices. Foreign merchants, such as the Biscayans and Castilians, were grouped into ‘nations’, and identified with their homelands, especially in their chapels; but why and how they did so was not the result simply of patriotism or a sense of otherness, but of urban and strategic agendas, their own and those of native citizens.

Kämpfe um Bergbau und die Möglichkeiten demokratischer Transformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (189) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Dietz
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Mining Project ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Relationship

The article explores the political effects of popular consultations as a means of direct democracy in struggles over mining. Building on concepts from participatory and materialist democracy theory, it shows the transformative potentials of processes of direct democracy towards democratization and emancipation under, and beyond, capitalist and liberal democratic conditions. Empirically the analysis is based on a case study on the protests against the La Colosa gold mining project in Colombia. The analysis reveals that although processes of direct democracy in conflicts over mining cannot transform existing class inequalities and social power relations fundamentally, they can nevertheless alter elements thereof. These are for example the relationship between local and national governments, changes of the political agenda of mining and the opening of new spaces for political participation, where previously there were none. It is here where it’s emancipatory potential can be found.

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