Other Religion Commons^™

Cultural Appropriation Or Religious Syncretism? An Analysis Of The “Tarot Of The Orishas”, Rachel Park

Capstone Showcase

A significant number of practitioners of modern alternative spiritualities adopt rituals, histories, and worldviews from at least one culture that is not their own. The widespread commodification of ideas and values enables the consumption of spiritualities much like the material goods that practitioners may also purchase. The power dynamics between those engaged in cultural appropriation and the group from which they appropriate influence the negative effects of appropriation. The hierarchical power structures of race, class, and colonialism characterize acts of cultural appropriation. Whether an act of borrowing is syncretism or cultural appropriation can often be determined by examining these power …

Visual Displays In Space Station Culture: An Archaeological Analysis, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

We offer an archaeological analysis of the visual display of “space heroes” and Orthodox icons in the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS). This study is the first systematic investigation of material culture at a site in space. The ISS has now been continuously inhabited for 20 years. Here, focusing on the period 2000–2014, we use historic imagery from NASA archives to track the changing presence of 78 different items in a single zone. We also explore how ideas about which items are appropriate for display and where to display them originated in earlier Soviet and Russian …

Jati Kutta: The Street Dog, The Servant, And Me, Lisa Warden Phd

Between the Species

Caste, class, race, and species collide in this narrative nonfiction piece about an injured street dog, his foreign rescuer, and her Dalit housekeeper in Ahmedabad, India.

"Making God's Love Manifest": American Expressions And Productions Of Charisma In Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi's Global Following, Karen Margaret Esche-Eiff

Theses and Dissertations

While situating it in a changing American religious landscape marked by increasing participation in metaphysical religion, this dissertation examines the appeal of contemporary Indian godperson, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma), to Americans. Although replete with portraits of individual Indian spiritual leaders’ charisma, the anthropology of religion literature seldom addresses the processes whereby such figures’ charisma gets produced. Drawing on thirteen months of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2015-2016, this dissertation uses Max Weber’s theory of charisma to answer the following questions: what extraordinary capacity do American devotees attribute to Amma; what is the process whereby they and she co-produce this …

Review Of "One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans And The Beginning Of English New England" By F. J. Bremer, Jordan Landes

Library Staff Works

No abstract provided.

Haneke Avec Foucault: The White Ribbon, Religion, And Violence, Bradley L. Herling

Journal of Religion & Film

This article utilizes Michel Foucault's characterization of the Christian pastorate to examine The White Ribbon (2009), directed by Michael Haneke. Foucault's framework assists us in inspecting the nature of the Protestant community depicted in the film, its systems of discipline, repression, and control, and the bond between these systems and the violence that erupts as the plot unfolds. Reading Haneke avec Foucault thus sheds light on the broader problem of "religious violence," while also drawing out the sometimes submerged but skillful interpretation of religion proposed by these two auteurs.

Matthew Brown Fellowship Brochure, Matthew Brown

Brown, Matthew, 1776-1853

In the early 2000s, the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, Pennsylvania established the Matthew Brown Fellowship. In the words of this informational brochure, the Fellowship is a "college-aged ministry program" that seeks to "increase this church's involvement with its oldest friend, the College, and to extend its ministry...to meet the growing needs throughout the greater Washington Community."

“My Daughter Was Sacrificed By My Mother”: Women’S Involvement In Ritually Motivated Violence And Murder In Contemporary Africa, Chima Agazue

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Ritually motivated crimes are grave crimes that continue to plague contemporary Africa. Occasionally, victims abducted for ritual purposes are discovered and set free. Fresh or decomposing bodies are spotted somewhere, often with missing parts taken by the ritual killers who killed the victims. Some missing persons in the continent are presumed to have been abducted or killed by ritually motivated criminals. Although ritually motivated crimes take different forms, most of them involve brutal acts of violence and murder. The barbaric manner in which these criminals attack or slaughter their victims creates fear and panic. Traditionally, men commit serious crimes involving …

Reconciling Illness Through Devotion: The Medicalization Of Modern Jain Faith Healing Practice Through Bhaktāmara Stotra, Aashi Jain

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are numerous accounts of healing abounded with the Jain narratives which on one side determines bodily wellness by healing the physical body and on the other side directs the path of attaining liberation. The Bhaktāmara Stotra (BhS), “Hymn of the Devoted Gods,” composed in Sanskrit by Ācārya Mānatuṅga, (6th century-11th century) holds great relevance as a hymn of devotion in the Jain tradition. Many modern Jains theorize the faith healing potential of the BhS through the language of medical science. In this research, I argue that diaspora Jains in the US have understood the BhS’s effectiveness as working at …

A Requiem For The Ussr: From Atheism To Secularity, Oksana Nesterenko

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article examines performance and reception of music of sacred tradition in the Soviet Union in the 1970s-80s, with the focus on two works composed in the genre of Catholic Requiem Mass, Alfred Schnittke’s Requiem (1975) and Vyacheslav Artyomov’s Requiem (1988). The article recounts the history of Soviet atheism that, as a result of state’s failure to eradicate religion, evolved into a form of secular modernity, and outlines the music culture in which Schnittke and Artyomov lived. The official reception of the two requiems, which changed dramatically within twelve years, illustrates the state’s changing attitude to religion from atheist, where …

Assimilating To Art-Religion: Jewish Secularity And Edgar Zilsel’S Geniereligion (1918), Abigail Fine

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1918, Edgar Zilsel—a Marxist-Jewish philosopher who was soon to be exiled from Vienna—published a sociological study that later readers have found prescient of fascism. In Die Geniereligion (“The Religion of Genius”), Zilsel cautioned against the hidden dangers of elevating secular figures to the status of deities. As early as 1912, Zilsel was disturbed by how art-religion shaped music culture: his earliest published essay ruminated on timelessness and canonicity, on striving for heavenly tones while cast down to the earthly squalor of the concert hall. Indeed, in Zilsel’s Vienna, art-religion had come to dominate the music world—biographers made Beethoven a …

Commencement Program 2021 (School Of Behavioral Health And School Of Religion), Loma Linda University

Commencement Programs

CONTENTS

1 | Message from the President

2 | 2021 Events of Commencement

4 | University Administration

5 | Significance of Academic Regalia

6 | University History Highlights

8 | Criteria for Institutional Awards

10 | Loma Linda University Health and Loma Linda University Honorees

23 | The Program, The School Honorees, and The Speaker

25 | Candidates for Degrees

36 | Awards

“Fortunate Art”: Short-Writing And Two Of Its Practitioners In Colonial New England, David Powers

Sermon Studies

Following the publication of Timothie Bright’s Characterie: An Art of shorte, swifte and secrete writing by Character in 1588, a spate of books on shorthand appeared in England. This technology echoed long-forgotten methods which had developed centuries before, while providing fresh techniques for composing and recording spoken speech. From their very beginnings these new systems proved especially applicable to religious purposes, though they also found academic, legal, and governmental applications. Clergy from those centuries left hundreds of “short-writing” manuscripts which are as yet untranscribed.

This article describes the principles behind “short-writing” as exemplified in two major systems in use in …

Mutual Aid As Spiritual Tacit Knowledge Within Doukhobor Epistemology, Rachel L. Neubuhr Torres

University Honors Theses

The relationship between Michael Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge and religion is a topic that is rarely explored. Applying tacit knowledge to the study of religion and spirituality allows us to think about how we connect with the world and how we address the concern of what one feels to be true of their existence, or existential intuition. In the latter half of the 1800s the Russian prince turned anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, wrote extensively on the theory of mutually beneficial cooperation, or mutual aid, as being one of the most important factors of evolution. As Kropotkin began writing his series …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Justice, Human Dignity And The Capabilities Approach: A Moral Assessment On Ghana’S Health Care Delivery System, Paul Eliud Esibu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Life and quality healthcare delivery are central parts of the well-being of the human person. However, despite the political and socio-economic the successes that Ghana has chalked in pre-colonial, colonial and contemporary times, the quality of healthcare delivery in Ghana could be described as sub-standard. In this a context, the Capabilities Approach, “The Theology of the Body” and the Akan indigenous understanding of the human person emerge as an integrated formidable tool to enhancing life and quality healthcare as central part of the human person. This is because “The capabilities approach – in both its comparative and it’s normative version …

Eastern European Orthodox Christian Immigrant Women: A Pilot Study And Needs Assessment, Kimberly A. Babich-Speck

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

The healthcare perceptions of the Eastern European Orthodox Christian immigrant women (EEOCIW) to the United States (U.S.) are under-represented in the literature. Although they appear similar to Americans, their cultural and religious traditions are outside the mainstream American culture. This pilot study and health needs assessment examines the women’s healthcare perceptions of 14 EEOCIW and identifies similarities and differences with 25 U.S. born Orthodox Christian women (USOCW). Between September and November 2020, interviews were conducted with Orthodox Christian immigrant women from Eastern Europe and Orthodox Christian women born in the U.S. Questions covered the perceptions of women’s healthcare, factors influencing …

Beliefs And Their Byproducts: The Impact Of Religiosity And Political Ideology On Attitudes Toward Covid-19, Vaccines, And Climate Change, Philip Goodrich

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Several studies have indicated that an individual’s level of religiosity impacts their views toward science and scientific phenomena. Moreover, research shows that these views can also be impacted by an individual's political affiliation and ideology. In this research paper, I examine the relationship between one’s religiosity and political ideology and their attitude toward the novel corona virus (COVID-19), vaccines, and climate change. Using data from the 2021 Chapman University Survey of American Fears, I find that while religiosity plays a role in one’s attitudes toward these three scientific phenomena, the greatest correlation stems from one’s political ideology. In other words, …

Vaccine Hesitancy, The Covid 19 Pandemic, And Christian Fundamentalism, Nicole Drew

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Over the past few decades, religion has continued to move to the forefront of American politics, with many viewing fundamental Christianity as synonymous with the Republican Party. Donald Trump's presidency has increased this tenfold, with significant figures within American Christianity voicing their support for him and tying him into Biblical prophecies. In the media, this appears to have affected how this demographic views the COVID 19 pandemic. The literature in this area focuses heavily on American Christians' response to mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and other attempts to mitigate the spread of the CoronaVirus; however, research on how this same demographic …

Saga Beyond The Gate: Chapter One, The Coming Of The Gate Ghost, Tristan B. Miller

MSU Graduate Theses

“Saga Beyond the Gate: Chapter One, the Coming of the Gate Ghost” explores performance sculpture used as religious ritual. My work emphasizes ritual, creation myths, relics, physical manifestations of lived religion, and the power of narrative belief. One often turns to religion, science, or spirituality, to seek answers to questions about being a conscious entity, and one’s journey to the end. This saga uses scripts from all three of these schools of thought, placing the world of the Gate Ghost into tangible reality, as a play on a stage. Artefacts represent objects of power and mystery. Characters embody morality tales, …