This book is a broad survey of our 'sacred texts,' both Holy Writ and secular masterpieces, whose canonical status often exempt them from hardnosed, commonsense criticism. A frank look at this literature is necessary and reveals a stunning combination of bias and blindness toward women.

What does a sacred text look like? Are religious books materially different from other books? Does materiality matter? This article deals with three different aspects of material variance attested amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ancient Jewish religious text fragments, of which were found in the Judean Desert. I suggest that the substitution of the ancient Hebrew script by the everyday Aramaic script, also for Torah and other religious texts, was intentional and programmatic: it enabled the broader diffusion of (...) scriptures in Hellenistic and Roman Judea. The preponderant use of parchment for religious texts rather than papyrus may be a marker of identity. The many small scrolls which contained only small parts of specific religious books may have been produced as religious artefacts which express identity in the period when Judaism developed into a religion of the book. (shrink)

The Midewiwin is the traditional religious belief system central to the world view of Ojibwa in Canada and the US. It is a highly complex and rich series of sacred teachings and narratives whose preservation enabled the Ojibwa to withstand severe challenges to their entire social fabric throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It remains an important living and spiritual tradition for many Aboriginal people today. The rituals of the Midewiwin were observed by many 19th century Euro-Americans, most of (...) whom approached these ceremonies with hostility and suspicion. As a result, although there were many accounts of the Midewiwin published in the 19th century, they were often riddled with misinterpretations and inaccuracies. Historian Michael Angel compares the early texts written about the Midewiwin, and identifies major, common misconceptions in these accounts. In his explanation of the historical role played by the Midewiwin, he provides alternative viewpoints and explanations of the significance of the ceremonies, while respecting the sacred and symbolic nature of the Midewiwin rituals, songs, and scrolls. (shrink)

The temple schematics in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), that is, New Jerusalem and Temple Scroll, has often been comparatively examined with the sanctuary structures in the Hebrew Bible (HB) (Ezk 40-48 and Num 2). Typically, in scholarship, the irreconcilable differences between all accounts (regarding the size, shape, name-gate ordering, etc.) is underscored, thus rendering a literary conundrum. This article argues that New Jerusalem and Temple Scroll drew from both Ezekiel 40-48 and Numbers 2 in different ways, purporting the (...) sect(s)'s theologies and ideologies which accords, further, with the life setting of the Qumran communities; the influence of Numbers in the DSS is underscored. These aspects include (1) the eastern orientation of sacred structures and the compound at Khirbet Qumran, (2) the precise locale of the communities at the Dead Sea vis-à-vis Ezekiel 47 and (3) the desert encampment configuration together with its militaristic overtones in Numbers, which corresponds to the DSS sect(s)'s apocalyptic expectations as indicated in the War Scroll. Consequently, the Qumran sect(s) truly saw itself as an alternative priesthood of the forthcoming restored temple of God, even as in the interim they functioned as an alternative sanctuary (4QFlor; 4QMMT; 1QS). The import of Numbers upon the DSS sect(s)'s temple ideologies and priestly theologies is, therefore, equivalent to that of Ezekiel. CONTRIBUTION: This article traces theological themes of temple and priestly ideologies between and among the Qumran literature and Hebrew Scriptures; both the respective library or canon and methodological approach are core to the historical thought's aim and scope of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

What happens when our digital sacred spaces become violent and incite trauma or trigger reminders of traumatic experiences? This project will delve into these questions as we begin to think about trauma in digital spaces for the Lesbian-Feminist. For example, we scroll through Facebook and see that an uncle has posted a homophobic article. The logical response to this, the response that our spiritual selves tell us to follow through on, is to delete this person from our Facebook friends. (...) Clicking the delete button is a virtual action, yet a very real and physical manifestation of losing family and friends because of their homophobia or sexism. In digital sacred spaces in particular, there is a tension between self-preservation and engaging so as to educate and bring about understanding. If we cannot even occupy the same digital spaces, how can we ever grow to occupy the same physical spaces? (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between Christian and Jewish Orthodox women with their sacred books from a feminist point of view. While recent socio-economic changes have enabled women from an orthodox religious background to become financially independent and ultimately prosperous, from a religious perspective women’s status has not undergone major transformations. Using the cognitive principle of conceptual blending, I will focus on common aspects in Orthodox Judaism and Christianity related to sacred texts as objects, in order to shed (...) light on the religious understanding of prosperity in the twenty-first century, beyond that of empowerment as financial gain or social status. The importance ascribed to authoritative texts both as images of divinity and sacred objects of veneration is a common trait of Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The gendered perception of the sacred is most prominent in two similar processions. Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday which celebrates the yearly reading cycle of the Torah, is actively celebrated only by men, who are the ones to carry the Torah scrolls. Similarly, the orthodox Good Friday procession involves a cross and the church’s copy of the Scripture together with the Holy Epitaph being carried only by men. The ban on women to carry sacred objects, at least at appointed times, as well as women’s responses in the two communities will be analysed comparatively to establish whether women commonly perceived as prosperous can make steps in order to re-evaluate the theological implications of this restriction. (shrink)

In the words of Charles Peirce from 1901, “man is but a degenerate monkey, with a paranoic talent for self-satisfaction, no matter what scrapes he may get himself into, calling them ‘civilization…’” Peirce’s concept of degenerate monkey draws attention both to our neotenous or prolonged newborn-like nature as “degenerate” in the mathematical sense of a genetic falling away from more mature genomes of other primates, and also to our monkeying around with the long evolutionary narrative of foraging, through the advent (...) of agriculture, settlement, and civilization. -/- Homo sapiens, man the knower, is the way we humans like to distinguish ourselves from the rest of nature. But if we consider ourselves as degenerate monkeys, perhaps homo errans, man the blunderer, would have been a better term, calling attention to our softened instinctive intelligence, in contrast to the “unerring instincts of other races,” as Peirce put it. -/- I take Peirce’s term “degenerate monkey” as not limited to moderns, but applicable to homo sapiens sapiens, anatomically modern humans, generally. Considering humans as degenerate monkeys is a key to understanding human development, in my view, precisely because we need to attune ourselves to the instinctive intelligence of the environment, drawing its intelligence into our dematured, blundering selves through abductive inference, and therein finding our maturity. Without that attunement to the Others, monkey goes mad, monkeying in its mirror of itself, fatally fixated, like Narcissus, and with similar results: planet of the degenerate monkeys, monkeying to mayhem. -/- As Cornelius, the ape archaeologist and historian in The Planet of the Apes stated it, reading from the sacred scrolls: “Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.” Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” . (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: “Red, You're an Evil Cylon” “You Can't Fight Destiny”—or Can You? Manichaean “Sleeper Agents” “A Broken Machine Who Thinks She's Human” Will the Real Boomer Please Stand Up? “We Should Just Go Our Separate Ways” Notes.

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 67 - 93 The talmudic sages granted the legal status of _sefer_ to five texts: the Torah, _tefillin_, the _get_, the _mezuzah_, and the Scroll of Esther. These texts share two features: they have a ritualistic format and use, and they are the only sacred texts that demonstrate _mise en abyme_—the trait of literary self-containing. These two traits turn the rabbinic book into a radical case of “open work”: the _sefer_ consists of (...) both textual signs and the actual body of an empirical reader; its pragmatic level is not bracketed out in favor of the semiotic one. I argue that Deleuze’s reception theory best accounts for the _sefer_. (shrink)

Using an eighth-century copy of the 60-fascicle Flower Ornament Sutra as a case study, this article examines the transformation of a Buddhist scripture into an aesthetic object in early modern Japan. On the 14th day of the second month, 1667, a fire decimated Nigatsudo at Todaiji (Nara prefecture) along with most of the sacred objects within. Clerics salvaged partially burnt scrolls of an eighth-century Flower Ornament Sutra done in silver ink on indigo-dyed paper. The scrolls were restored (...) ten years later, but by the first half of the eighteenth century, part of the set left the temple and began circulating in the art market as collectable calligraphy fragments, later known as the “Nigatsudo burnt sutra” (Nigatsudo yakegyo). This study traces the curious shift in the attribution of Nigatsudo yakegyo’s calligrapher that took place in the eighteenth century to consider how the burn marks impacted the transformation of this scripture from a devotional text into a collectable artefact. I argue that the curious switch in attribution occurred adhering to the popular imagination of the calligraphers, as well as the distinct role certain fragments played within the early-modern calligraphy collecting culture. (shrink)

In 1933 Frederic Kenyon was one of the first to note the early Christian addiction to codex books. As later scholars confirmed, Christian communities reproduced their sacred literature in a way that differed from the largely scrolled Greco-Roman as well as Jewish bibliographic cultures of the first centuries of the Common Era. Book historians and scholars of biblical literature alike have developed a range of competing theories in order to better understand this peculiarity. By evaluating their claims, a number (...) of clarifications can be made in order to demonstrate the codex's sensitivity to Jewish scribal practices as well as its capacity to include a cosmopolitan diversity of texts. Through these clarifications the codex book form itself can provide vital interpretative insights into early biblical literature and the longer history of the book today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE VINE AND BRANCHES DISCOURSE: THE GOSPEL'S PSYCHOLOGICAL APOCALYPSE Gil Bailie Florilegio Institute Man is after something that cannot be possessed.... Man cannot "have" being, though he absolutely needs it for living. (Roel Kaptein) The anthropological reading of biblical literature which Girard's mimetic theory makes possible sheds new light on many otherwise inscrutable texts. Prominent among these, due to its centrality as well as its elusiveness, is the prologue (...) to the Gospel ofJohn. For the author of this gospel, the "Word" who was "in the beginning," was "the light" without which humanity remained in darkness—whether it be the darkness ofpre-human existence or the moral and mythic darkness of the sacred violence that accompanied hominization. Girard's work helps us realize that humanity generated its own crude forms of illumination precisely by periodically expelling this light. (A vivid symbolic expression ofthis is the reference to the "lanterns, torches, and weapons" with which the Roman cohort arrested Jesus later in John's Gospel.) The Johannine Prologue conveys its message in an elusively universal yet specifiable idiom: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what Gil Bailie121 was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who did accept him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or ofthe will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (1 : 9-13) The ontological theme of these verses deserves attention. If, as Raymond Brown has observed, these verses constitute a "description of the history of salvation in hymnic form," they also contain an anthropological summary of the two, and only two, ontologizing circumstances: the identification, respectively, with the victimizing crowd and with the victim. However occluded the illuminating Logos might have been prior to revelation ofthe Cross, the Johannine prologue tells us that it was present from the beginning. How? The most pertinent scriptural clue seems to be the reference to Christ in the Book of Revelation as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the innocent One whose victimization finally broke open the seals on the scroll of human iniquity and, in the process, unfettered that iniquity from its ancient restraints. One of the great values of Girard's work is that it makes anthropologically explicit what is poetically implicit in these scriptural innuendoes, namely, the link between the Crucified One and all victims slain "from the foundation of the world." Inasmuch as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" was what made the old humanity possible and, in Christ, what brought the new humanity into being, the third verse of the prologue of John's Gospel becomes anthropologically intelligible: All things came into being through him, not one thing had its being except through him. (1:3) Here the explicit claim that all things came to be through him needs to be read in light of the verses that follow in the prologue, but which I have quoted above. Doing so, we are led to consider the radical difference between the crude and fallacious ontology the ancient sacrificial system was able to underwrite by causing its beneficiaries to identify with the victimizing crowd and the ontological renewal born of an identification with the innocent victim—referred to in the New Testament as a dying with Christ and ritualized in baptism. With equal subtlety, this verse alludes as well to the ineradicable homology between these two forms of 122Vine andBranches ontological sustenance. "All culture is sacrificial," writes Eric Gans, adding: Culture covers a lot of ground, from bear-baiting to attending a performance of Saint Matthew's Passion, but whether we savagely revel in the victim's sufferings or identify with them in the depths of our soul, culture is the founded on them. And so is the being of those involved in these two fundamental forms of identification. Corresponding to the moral difference between the ritual experiences to which Gans refers is an ontological difference... (shrink)

Despite a decade of diversity policy plans, a wave of student rallies has ignited debates across western European university campuses. We observe these debates from a situated call for anti-racism in Belgian higher education institutions, and critically reflect on the gap between diversity policy discourse and calls for anti-racism. The students’ initiatives make a plea for racial literacy in the curriculum, to foster a critical awareness on how racial hierarchies have been educated through curricula and institutional processes. Students rethink race (...) as a matter to be (un)learned. This pedagogical question, on racial literacy in the curriculum, is a response to diversity policies often silent about race and institutionalised racisms. Students request a fundamental appeal of knowledgeability in relation to race; diversity policy mostly envisions working on (racial) representation, as doing anti-racist work. This article argues how racial literacy might offer productive ways to bridge the disparities between students’ calls for anti-racism and the institutional (depoliticised) vocabulary of diversity. We implement Stuart Hall’s critical race theory and Jacques Rancière’s subjectification as key concepts to study and theorise these calls for anti-racism as a racial literacy project. This project can be built around engagement as educational concept. We coin possibilities to deploy education as a forum of engagement and dialogue where global asymmetries such as race, gender and citizenship can be critically addressed. (shrink)

The author's primary aim is to help readers discover what is distinctive in Confucius & to learn what he can teach us.

According to a view widely held among philosophers of science, the notion of cause has no legitimate role to play in mature theories of physics. In this paper I investigate the role of what physicists themselves identify as causal principles in the derivation of dispersion relations. I argue that this case study constitutes a counterexample to the popular view and that causal principles can function as genuine factual constraints. 1. Introduction2. Causality and Dispersion Relations3. Norton's Skepticism4. Conclusion.

Blackford, Russell I will examine some implications for bioethical debate - and more broadly, for political and cultural controversy - if we take to heart the work of American psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his collaborators.

This article examines the role of stories in ecological activism. It first situates stories inside object ecologies, encompassing relationships of reliance, care, and maintenance of things. It suggests that ecologies of this sort work as an extended mind where our cognition takes place and meaning is apprehended, so that what we can think of is always a function of what we have “at hand.” The article then considers how these ecologies are impacted by discourses on climate change and peak oil, (...) which stress the impossibility to keep ordering our lives through the same entanglements that have supported them so far. A dissonance arises between the sort of demands and dependencies we are still subject to on a daily basis and the anticipation that those demands and dependencies shall not be able to endure. Stories of transition, which tread a middle ground between denial and collapse hysteria, dissipate this tension. In so doing, they contribute to the growing of alternative sacred forms, working as attractors that constitute groups as moral collectives. These forms are woven through alternative entanglements of objects, bodies, and other stories, providing determinate implication for action, from the indeterminacy of the unknowns of climate change and peak oil. (shrink)

No writer or public intellectual of our era has been as sensitive to the role of faith in the lives of ordinary Americans as Robert Coles. Though not religious in the conventional sense, Coles is unparalleled in his astute understanding and respect for the relationship between secular life and sacredness, which cuts across his large body of work. Drawing inspiration from figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Simone Weil, Coles’s extensive writings explore the tug of war between faith and (...) doubt. As Coles himself admits, the “back-and-forthness between faith and doubt is the story of my life.” These thirty-one thought-provoking essays are drawn from Coles’s weekly column in the Catholic publication _America_. In them, he turns his inquisitive lens on a range of subjects and issues, from writers and painters to his recent reading and film viewing, contemporary events and lingering controversies, recollections of past and present mentors, events of his own daily life, and ordinary encounters with students, patients, neighbors, and friends. Addressing moral questions openly and honestly with a rare combination of rectitude and authorial modesty, these essays position Coles as a preeminent, durable, and trusted voice in the continuing national conversation over religion, civic life, and moral purpose. (shrink)

There is burgeoning interest in the field of “Islamic” bioethics within public and professional circles, and both healthcare practitioners and academic scholars deploy their respective expertise in attempts to cohere a discipline of inquiry that addresses the needs of contemporary bioethics stakeholders while using resources from within the Islamic ethico-legal tradition. This manuscript serves as an introduction to the present thematic issue dedicated to Islamic bioethics. Using the collection of papers as a guide the paper outlines several critical questions that (...) a comprehensive and cohesive Islamic bioethical theory must address: (i) What are the relationships between Islamic law (Sharīʿah), moral theology (uṣūl al-Fiqh), and Islamic bioethics? (ii) What is the relationship between an Islamic bioethics and the lived experiences of Muslims? and (iii) What is the relationship between Islamic bioethics and the state? This manuscript, and the papers in this special collection, provides insight into how Islamic bioethicists and Muslim communities are addressing some of these questions, and aims to spur further dialogue around these overaching questions as Islamic bioethics coalesces into a true field of scholarly and practical inquiry. (shrink)

This volume offers a critical analysis of one the most ambitious editorial projects of late Victorian Britain: the edition of the fifty substantial volumes of the Sacred Books of the East. The series was edited and conceptualized by Friedrich Max Müller, a world-famous German-born philologist, orientalist, and religious scholar. Müller and his influential Oxford colleagues secured financial support from the India Office of the British Empire and from Oxford University Press. Arie L. Molendijk documents how the series has become (...) a landmark in the development of the humanities-especially the study of religion and language-in the second half of the nineteenth century. The edition also contributed significantly to the Western perception of the 'religious' or even 'mystic' East, which was textually represented in English translations. The series was a token of the rise of 'big science' and textualized the East, by selecting their 'sacred books' and bringing them under the power of western scholarship. (shrink)

This article presents a first edition of three Mandaic lamellae from the Schøyen Collection, MS 2087/10, 2087/11, and 2087/18, which are the product of the same scribe and probably constituted a single amulet. The language of the amulet differs from that of other Mandaic texts, and demonstrates unknown or rare phonetic and morphological features. In addition, several lexemes that were hitherto unattested in Mandaic have been identified. Some of the amulet’s formulae are familiar from previously published texts, but in several (...) cases the new textual evidence allows us to improve upon their readings. (shrink)

A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan and Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a "mere trifle"--a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland.Death-Devoted Heart explodes (...) this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. Scruton boldly attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries. He also offers keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. His argument touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. Roger Scruton has written an original and provocative account of Wagner's music drama, which blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Debate over the place of Christianity in European politics and society has made an important come-back. The Convention on the Future of Europe’s deliberations over the EU Constitution has thrown into relief the role of religion in defining ‘Europeanness’. In the context of a secularized Europe, Christianity is fighting for its institutional recognition and space in the public sphere. Religion may offer a cultural identity and work both to resist and to accommodate change. However, the Christian mobilization has been challenged (...) by those who defend the secular order. The debate over whether Christianity should be seen as constitutive of European identity has been framed by wider concerns about collective identities and memories in Europe. (shrink)

Historically confined to the disadvantaged ranks of the stratification system, evangelical Christians have increasingly joined the corporate elite, eliciting concern from some and sanguinity from others. Quantitative studies of the effects of religion on executive behavior have thus far shown mixed and inconclusive effects, and those few qualitative analyses that have focused on evangelical business leaders have generally emphasized conflict between religion and business but failed adequately to explore areas of consonance. While evangelical executives do, in fact, experience conflict associated (...) with their professional contexts, this tension arises not because business and religion are inherently opposed, as some have argued, but because evangelical business leaders are made to feel like second-class citizens by members of their own faith communities. Indeed, in cases of apparent conflict between faith and business, evangelical executives insist that it is faith, not business, that must be reconceived. Equipped with an array of strategies for demonstrating that business is a sacred institution and a worthy occupation, evangelical business leaders hope to restore faith in business as they apply their faith in business. In these evangelical executives and their accounts, the "spirit of capitalism," defined by Max Weber as a positive attitude toward both work and wealth, finds ongoing embrace and new expression, with implications for understanding the so-called faith at work movement, evangelicalism, and the role of religion among elites. (shrink)

The heart of this book is a dramatic love poem, the Rasa Lila, which is the ultimate focal point of one of the most treasured Sanskrit texts of India, the Bhagavata Purana. Judged a literary masterpiece by Indian and Western scholars alike, this work of poetic genius and soaring religious vision is one of the world's greatest sacred love stories and, as Graham Schweig clearly demonstrates, should be regarded as India's Song of Songs. The story presents the supreme deity (...) as the youthful and amorous cowherd, Krishna, who joins his beloved maidens in an enchanting and celebratory "dance of divine love." Schweig introduces this work of exquisite poetry and profound theology to the Western world in the form of a luminous translation and erudite scholarly treatment. His book explores the historical context and literary genre of the work and elucidates the aesthetic and emotional richness of the composition, highlighting poignant details of this drama of divine love. Schweig illuminates the religious dimensions and ethical nuances of the drama, drawing widely from the commentaries and esoteric vision of masters of the Caitanya school of Vaishnavism, a prominent devotional Hindu tradition. Themes such as transcendence of death through love, the yoga of devotion, the contrast between worldly love and passionate love for God, and the dialectical tension between ethical boundaries and boundless love are presented. The final event of the Rasa dance, the author concludes, presents a dynamic symbol of supreme love that provides the basis for a theological vision of genuine religious pluralism. (shrink)

Brief survey of Charles Taylor's earlier books, followed by an extensive review of Taylor's A Secular Age, published 2007 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

In this article, I will show how the notion of ecology of mind developed by Gregory Bateson (1972, 1979; Bateson and Bateson 1987), constitutes a third way, with respect to those two trends that I have here called naturism and realism. I will try to show how Bateson's notion of ecology of mind (that sometimes I will call briefly ecosystemic) is closely linked to notions of epistemology and of the sacred, and how it can highlight potential complementarities between the (...) realist and the naturist tendencies. The discussion will be divided into two parts: from ecology to the sacred, and from the sacred to ecology. (shrink)

Farrell, Marie T Review(s) of: The first thing to do is live: Essays sacred and secular, by Adrian Lyons SJ (Melbourne: David Lovell Publishing, 2013), pp. 136, pb $27.95.

This extensive work explores the changing world of religions, faiths and practices. It discusses a broad range of issues and phenomena that are related to religion, including nature, ethics, secularization, gender and identity. Broadening the context, it studies the interrelation between religion and other fields, including education, business, economics and law. The book presents a vast array of examples to illustrate the changes that have taken place and have led to a new world map of religions. Beginning with an introduction (...) of the concept of the "changing world religion map", the book first focuses on nature, ethics and the environment. It examines humankind's eternal search for the sacred, and discusses the emergence of "green" religion as a theme that cuts across many faiths. Next, the book turns to the theme of the pilgrimage, illustrated by many examples from all parts of the world. In its discussion of the interrelation between religion and education, it looks at the role of missionary movements. It explains the relationship between religion, business, economics and law by means of a discussion of legal and moral frameworks, and the financial and business issues of religious organizations. The next part of the book explores the many "new faces" that are part of the religious landscape and culture of the Global North (Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada) and the Global South (Latin America, Africa and Asia). It does so by looking at specific population movements, diasporas, and the impact of globalization. The volume next turns to secularization as both a phenomenon occurring in the Global religious North, and as an emerging and distinguishing feature in the metropolitan, cosmopolitan and gateway cities and regions in the Global South. The final part of the book explores the changing world of religion in regards to gender and identity issues, the political/religious nexus, and the new worlds associated with the virtual technologies and visual media. (shrink)

Some of the virtues have a very stable place in our understanding of goodness – beneficence and courage are unlikely ever to lose their high standing. But other virtues have something like a life cycle: they move from a marginal status to to a central one, and sometimes they move back again to the margins, or even beyond the domain of virtue altogether. Chastity is one example of this; humility is another. There was a period in which humility wasn’t a (...) virtue at all (see Aristotle on the great-souled man); with the rise of Christianity (blessed are the meek) it became, not a cardinal, but still a central, virtue, though possibly more honoured in the breach than in the observance; now in the post-Christian world it seems, if a virtue at all, a somewhat creepy one. Why is this – what is it about humility that made it so important during the Christian period, and now makes us so ambivalent about it? And is there any way of rescuing it for a secular context, so that we can once again wholeheartedly endorse and admire it as one of the virtues? (shrink)