One of the fantastic and daunting things about a project which seeks to comprehend “religion” in its historical entirety and cultural variety is that it’s impossible to read everything. The field for this kind of project is enormous and is touched upon, in one way or another, by nearly every discipline in the academy. This [...]
Tags:ecological anthropology·economic anthropology·Julian Steward·Native Americans·Plains Indians·ritual variation·Ruth Benedict·vision complex·vision quest
Of all the spoils that come from success in war, perhaps the least appreciated is the ability to write the history. To the victor goes the narrative. When the narrative is not straightforward history but is bound to politico-religious ideology and integral to nation building, the stakes are even higher. I was reminded of this [...]
Tags:Assyrians·Israelites·Jersualem·Jewish history·Judaism·Moses·Mount Gerizim·Samaria·Samaritans·Solomon's Temple·Stefan Schorch·Torah·Tribes of Israel·Yitzhak Magen
Scholars have long been fascinated by the idea that something like the primordial or original religion existed until recently and may in fact be curated by a few people even today. If such “religions” could be identified, scholars hoped they could sketch the historical development or genealogy of religions. For old-time cultural evolutionists this amounted [...]
Tags:Aboriginal·Australian religions·Bushmen·dreaming·Edwin Wilmsen·Emile Durkheim·Max Charlesworth·Mircea Eliade·primitive religion·primordial religion·San
The aptly named Christian Smith, professor of sociology at Notre Dame, has posted an article in First Things claiming that “man” (sorry women) is a religious animal. With a gender correction, the question he poses is: “Are human beings naturally religious?” Setting aside for a moment that the Christian professor at Notre Dame probably has [...]
Tags:Christian Smith·essentializing·human nature·human universals·Man the Religious Animal·Neolithicization·Nietzsche·Notre Dame·Plato·secularization
Glossolalia or “speaking in tongues” is known primarily from charismatic Christian churches. In that setting it has been studied extensively with some remarkable findings. In Tower of Linguistic Babel, I examined one of those studies and noted some curious features of “tongues” or glossas:
They are always derivative of the speakers’ native language. In other words, [...]
Tags:charismatic Christianity·dissociative speech acts·ermeneglossia·glossolalia·linguistics·Pentecostals·Phonation Frustes·shamanic speech·speaking in tongues·supernatural languages·Tower of Babel·xenoglossia
Over at Guernica, Sadakat Kadri has posted the lush prologue to his new book Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World. For those who have never given sharia much thought or have only caricatured ideas about what it is, Heaven [...]
Tags:American jurisprudence·ancestor worship·Catholic justices·Heaven on Earth·Islam·jinns·Justice Scalia·Muslim·mysticism·originalism·Sadakat Kadri·sharia·Sufi·syncretic Islam·US Supreme Court
Over at The Smart Set, Stefany Ann Golberg has posted a nice piece on Henry Steel Olcott, an American civil war colonel and champion of Sinhalese Buddhism. Olcott was a fascinating character who had major impacts on the construction of Sinhalese Buddhism and Western understandings of that construction.
It’s a longish article from which I have [...]
Tags:American Buddhism·Buddhist Catechism·Gananath Obeyesekere·Henry Steel Olcott·Protestant Buddhism·Sinhalese Buddhism·Sri Lanka
At the start of my anthropology of religion course, I ask students to “explain” religion: Why do you think it exists? What do you think it does? The majority will usually give answers along existential lines: “Religion provides purpose and consolation. It gives meaning to life and relieves fear of death.”
These answers aren’t surprising given [...]
Tags:afterlife·Ernest Becker·existential angst·fear of death·immortality·Irvin Yalom·Ivan Ilyich·Leo Tolstoy·meaning of life·mortality·nihilism·purpose of life·Stephen Cave
Over at the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has weighed in with his review of Elaine Pagels’ newest book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelations. In a previous post, I excerpted a lecture in which Pagels discusses the book and its themes. Gopnik’s review is a nice companion.
In keeping with a persistent [...]
Tags:Adam Gopnik·Christian mysticism·early Christianity·Elaine Pagels·Gnostic·Nicene·Revelations
Over the past decade there has been a sea change in the way we assess moral reasoning, judgment, and behavior. The old view, developed and championed largely by introspective philosophers, was that people actually reason about choices before making decisions that have moral or ethical impacts. While some decisions are in fact made this way, [...]
Tags:ethics·evolution of morals·innate morality·intuitive morality·John Rawls·Jonathan Haidt·Kant·moral judgment·moral psychology·moral reasoning·prosociality
