Between Religion and Desire: Being Muslim and Gay in Indonesia

Thousands of Indonesian men now identify as both "gay" and "Muslim." How do these men understand the relationship between religion and sexuality? How do these understandings reflect the fact that they live in the nation that is home to more Muslims than any other? In this article, I address questions such as these through an ethnographic study of gay Muslims. I argue that dominant social norms render being gay and being Muslim "ungrammatical" with each other in the public sphere that is crucial to Muslim life in Indonesia. Through examining doctrine, interpretation, and community, I explore how gay Muslim subjectivity takes form in this incommensurability between religion and desire.     

Scientific Creationism: An Exegesis for a Religious Doctrine

An exegesis of the seminal works of Henry M. Morris, Director of the Institute for Creation Research, clearly reveals that scientific creationism is a religious doctrine. It is a necessary dogma of the conservative evangelical's particular form of Christianity, is premised upon a literal interpretation of the Bible, and has as its purpose the defense of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. [scientific creationism, religion, evolution]     

Some Pragmatic Aspects of Navaho Peyotism

Abstract

The Peyote religion has often been characterized as promoting passivity, resignation, and escape into a subjective world of visions as a substitute for the dissatisfying social and economic conditions resulting from white domination. Data gathered on the Navaho reservation are presented which indicate that it is more appropriate to view Peyotism as an active attempt to transform these conditions, an interpretation which more adequately matches the Malinowskian model of magico-religiousphenomena.     

It started with a dream: Paul's dream (Acts 16,9?10) and Aeneas as a biblical example of dreams as intercultural legitimation strategy.

Dreams are often used to promote religion, or to propagate an interpretation of religion, or to bring political ideas to the fore. A dream can be used as an indication of divine help and thus it is a perfect tool for promoting ideas. Dreams figure in religious propaganda in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions (e.g., in Osama bin Laden's tapes). In classical literature, we find many kings, emperors, or generals who had visions or dreams, especially in association with their accession to power. It is the thesis of this article that in the encounter between Jewish (-Christian) cultures and the Hellenistic world dreams were shared as possible means of divine communication. An important example is the dream in Acts 16,9?10, the most Hellenistic dream of the New Testament. This dream is part of a larger unit, Paul's new move from Asia to Europe. I will try to show that the author of Acts combines here the story of Aeneas (e.g., as told by Virgil) and the story of Jesus, an interesting merging of two cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpreting the Bucrania of Çatalhöyük: James Mellaart,Dorothy Cameron,and Beyond

ABSTRACT

The bucranium (bull's head and horns) has been recognized as the most prevalent three-dimensional art form found during the excavations of the Neolithic village of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. James Mellaart interpreted it as the symbol of the son and lover of the Great Mother Goddess, worshipped at Çatalhöyük. Extending this interpretation, Dorothy Cameron, friend and colleague of Mellaart, saw the bucranium as a symbol of life and regeneration—essentially a female symbol, representing the divine power of the human female reproductive system. Using archaeological evidence, and interpretations arising from the current excavations at Çatalhöyük, parallel examples from comparative religion, and supportive data from veterinary images, this paper explicates and challenges these theories, extending them into an alternative interpretation of the symbolism of the bucranium.     

Spiritual Aroma: Religion and Politics

Anthropological studies of religion have been largely concerned with belief, with ritual, and with the general integrative significance of religious institutions for society. But many issues in the power relations of religious affiliation are still not clear. The political implications of religion involve grave practical as well as theoretical problems. Abstractly, religion and politics are often conceived as opposed; concretely, they interact. While religion can be a powerful political instrument, it can also adapt to political ends and generate its own political structures. In contrast to the broadly affirmative role assigned by anthropologists to religion in society is Karl Marx's thesis of religion as political ideology. Reasons for granting some validity to this position but also for questioning its basic assumptions are given. The whole analysis is illustrated by a wide range of examples, from Polynesian ethnography to the history of Christianity and of Islam, and the situation of religion in modem socialist states .     

The anthropology of ontology (religious science?)

Through engagement with a range of recent publications, this article offers a mini‐ethnography of wonder discourses in the anthropology of ontology, leading to a rethink of the concept of religion. It has sometimes been suggested that science and religion are antithetical orientations to the experience of wonder: whereas science seeks to banish wonder by replacing it with knowledge, religion remains open to wonder in the face of the unknowable. With this criterion of difference in view, this article identifies certain trends in the anthropology of ontology that appear to enjoin and pursue open‐ended wonder in ways that might be read as constituting anthropology as religious science. This coincidence of supposed opposites recommends, I conclude, a relational account of religion.     

Risk aversion and religious behaviour: Analysis using a sample of Danish twins

Economics offers an analytical framework to consider human behaviour including religious behaviour. Within the realm of Expected Utility Theory, religious belief and activity could be interpreted as an insurance both for current life events and for afterlife rewards. Based on that framework, we would expect that risk averse individuals would demand a more generous protection plan which they may do by devoting more effort and resources into religious activities such as church attendance and prayer, which seems to be in accordance with previous empirical results. However, a general concern regards the problems of spurious correlations due to underlying omitted or unobservable characteristics shaping both religious activities and risk attitudes. This paper examines empirically the demand for religion by analysing the association between risk attitudes on the one hand, and church attandance and prayer frequency on the other controlling for unobservable variables using survey data of Danish same-sex twin pairs. We verify the correlation between risk preferences and religion found previously by carrying out cross-sectional analyses. We also show that the association between risk attitudes and religious behaviour is driven by the subgroup of individuals who believe in an afterlife. In addition, when re-analysing our results using panel data analyses which cancel out shared factors among twin pairs, we find that the correlation found between risk aversion and religious behaviour is no longer significant indicating that other factors might explain differences in religious behaviour. Caution is needed in the interpretation of our results as the insignificant association between risk aversion and religious behaviour in the panel data analyses potentially might be due to measurement error causing attenuation bias or lack of variation within twin pairs rather than the actual absence of an association.     

How to capture the ‘wow’: R.R. Marett's notion of awe and the study of religion⋆

Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows a marked appraisal of bodily sensations, emotions, and experiences as eminently social and politico‐aesthetic phenomena (rather than reducing them to a matter of mere individual psychology). How to grasp the genesis of shared perceptions and feelings, and even some kind of ‘wow’ effect, in relation to a posited ‘beyond’ has become a central issue for scholars of religion today. Placed against the horizon of the material turn in the study of religion, R.R. Marett's approach to religion as an ‘organic complex of thought, emotion, and behaviour’ and his concept of awe gain renewed topicality. Engaging with Marett's ideas in the context of broader debates about religious experience, in this article (which is based on my 2014 Marett lecture) I call attention to the surplus generated in the interplay of religious things and bodily sensations and explore its role in politics and aesthetics of religious world‐making. My central point is that Marett's work offers valuable resources for an approach to religion that neither takes for granted the existence of a god or transcendental force (as in ontological approaches), nor invests in unmasking it as an illusion (as in critiques of religion as irrational), but instead undertakes a close study of the standardized methods that yield the fabrication of some kind of excess that points to a ‘beyond’ and yet is grounded in the here and now.     

Do ‘we’ ‘do’ God? Linda Woodhead & Rebecca Catto (eds), Religion and change in modern Britain. London: Routledge.

What does it mean to talk of the religion ‘of’ a given country? I reflect on an edited volume dealing with religion in Britain and consider two related themes: the secular considered as ‘absence’ or ‘presence’, and the siting of religion not in conventional denominations or ritual practices but in spaces of encounter between religions, and between the so‐called ‘religious’ and ‘secular’.     

Language,religion and ethno-national identity: the role of knowledge,culture and communication

ABSTRACT

The influence of religion and language on ethno-national identity is well-established. This article explores these concepts as mutually reinforcing aspects of cultural identity and examines their relationship to the formation of world views and causal interpretations shaping often incompatible ethno-national identities and hence conflicts. Especially we focus on the role of oral cultures as primary communication forms as against print-based ones, and how they differ in recording the past and interpreting the present and future. In orality we find a relatively strong influence of traditional religion, mysticism and past references as key informers of identity, whilst print correlates with the declining role of traditional religion and the rise of science as fundamental dimensions of ethno-national identity. We argue that this distinction helps to explain different experiences of ontological security and insecurity linked to ethno-nationalism and religion.     

Biosemiotics and Hominidae history: technicity,animals, and the limitations of human exceptionalism

This article is focused on problematic distinctions of difference among animals in the lineage of great apes. It combines several theoretical perspectives on evolutionary relationships, technological innovation, the development of body parts as tools, and a semiotic interpretation of what André Leroi-Gourhan called technicity. Foundational questions in social theory are developed using biosemiotics, particularly as concerns a materialist understanding of religion and the magical aspects of cultural representation. This, it is argued, provides a framework for theorizing social history in terms of real ecological relations, embodied meaning, and the transference of meaning onto objects. Understood semiotically, the material history of Hominidae, encompassing animals with different kinds of motility, dexterity, and techno-semiotic orientations towards the world, is inclusive and relational rather than exclusively anthropocentric, as is the case for social theory based on the artifice of language and articulations of belief, creativity, and cultural distinction that are thought to be distinctive of the genus Homo.     

Atmospheric resonance: sonic motion and the question of religious mediation

Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo-phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half-things, I propose a different understanding of religious mediation from the one developed in contexts where images, objects, and technical media dominate. Based on research on the recitation of Urdu devotional poetry among Mauritian Muslims, it is suggested that sonic religion does not function as a stable in-between connecting humans and the divine. Instead, it operates through processes of resonant bundling, intertwining different strands of lived experience, including religious traditions.     

Understanding and addressing religion among people with mental illness

This article reviews recent advances in the domain of psychiatry and religion that highlight the double‐edged capacity of religion to enhance or damage health and well‐being, particularly among psychiatric patients. A large body of research challenges stereotyped views of religion as merely a defense or passive way of coping, and indicates that many people look to religion as a vital resource which serves a variety of adaptive functions, such as self‐regulation, attachment, emotional comfort, meaning, and spirituality. There is, however, a darker side to religious life. Researchers and theorists have identified and begun to study problematic aspects of religiousness, including religiously‐based violence and religious struggles within oneself, with others, and with the divine. Religious problems can be understood as a by‐product of psychiatric illness (secondary), a source of psychiatric illness (primary), or both (complex). This growing body of knowledge underscores the need to attend more fully to the potentially constructive and destructive roles of religion in psychiatric diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. In fact, initial evaluative studies of the impact of spiritually integrated treatments among a range of psychiatric populations have shown promising results. The article concludes with a set of recommendations to advance future research and practice, including the need for additional psychiatric studies of people from diverse cultures and religious traditions.     

‘Are we all secular/ized yet?’: reflections on David Goldberg’s ‘Are we all post-racial yet?’

ABSTRACT

This paper expands upon some of Goldberg’s initial reflections regarding the new type of ‘subject’ that is at the heart of post-raciality. A particular attention is paid to the connection with religion, as many of the current conflicts in Europe have been articulated through the grammar of secularism and religion, especially in relationship to Islam. This observation invites us to consider how this ‘racialization of religion’ figures as a reminder of the central role of this politico-theological question in the demarcation of who counts as a proper (political) subject, and how the current debates about Islam figure as a reminder of that.     

Genetic structure of the Ards Peninsula,Northern Ireland: evidence from civil registers of marriage 1840-1911

This paper uses marital migration data transcribed from the Civil Registers of Marriage 1840-1911 to estimate kinship from migration matrices and isonymy in the Ards Peninsula, Northern Ireland. The distribution of religious denominations (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic) varies systematically throughout the region, with up to 77% Roman Catholic in the south and 81% Presbyterian in the north. Portavogie, a fishing village on the east coast, is exclusively Protestant, with a population 93% Presbyterian. Comparison of migration and isonymy with geographical distance by multidimensional scaling and the MATFIT procedure show Portavogie to be an outlier, more distantly related to other areas than its geographical position would predict. We suggest that this discrepancy is due to settlement history and occupational and religious isolation. Mantel tests show that marital migration is significantly related to geographical distance (rMG = 0.4257), as is the distribution of religious denominations (rRG = 0.5548) through settlement history. Migration is dependent on religion (rMR = 0.3674), and isonymy is dependent on migration (rIM= 0.2531) but not on geography or religion. With Portavogie omitted from the analysis, the dependence of migration on geography and on religion increases (rMG = 0.5583, rMR = 0.5646), as does the correlation between religion and geography (rRG = 0.7213). The dependence of isonymy on migration increases (rIM = 0.5103), and significant correlations between isonymy and religion (rIR = 0.4135) and isonymy and geography (rIG = 0.4660) appear. We argue that a full explanation of population structure requires geographical distance, settlement history, and the influence of religion and occupation to be taken into account.     

The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity

ABSTRACT  In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called "absorption," which may be involved in contemporary Christian evangelical prayer practice (and in the practices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for "absorption." Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture-and-cognition school.     

Embodied Temporalities in Global Pentecostal Conversion

The body is one of the most discussed topics in current studies of religion and society. Pentecostalism displays a remarkable sensorial and experiential form of religion and is therefore a most interesting domain to study the intersection of religion and embodiment. To avoid the pitfall of taking the feeling body for granted as a prime phenomenological reality, this thematic issue elaborates on the explicit strategies through which the religious body is formed in different societies. The dynamics of becoming and remaining a religious convert are displayed through a focus on the three specific interrelated issues of time, spirits and the subject.     

The Effect of Religion on Candidate Preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican Presidential Primaries

Thanks to the work of politics and religion scholars, we now know a lot about the relationship between religion and voting in American presidential general elections. However, we know less about the influence of religion on individual vote choice in presidential primaries. This article fills that gap by exploring the relationship between religion and candidate preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries. Using pre-Super Tuesday surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, I find that the Republican candidate who most explicitly appealed to religious voters (Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012) was the preferred candidate of Republican respondents who attended religious services at the highest levels, and that as attendance increased, so did the likelihood of preferring that candidate. I also find that identification as a born again Christian mattered to candidate preference. Specifically, born again Christians were more likely than non-born again Christians to prefer Huckabee to Mitt Romney, John McCain and Ron Paul in 2008, and Santorum to Romney in 2012. Although ideology was not the primary subject of this article, I find that ideology was also a statistically significant predictor of Republican candidate preference in both 2008 and 2012. This robust finding reinforces scholars’ prior work on the importance of ideology in explaining presidential primary vote choice. The overall findings of the paper provide evidence that religion variables can add to our understanding of why voters prefer one candidate over another in presidential primaries.     

Spreading order: religion, cooperative niche construction, and risky coordination problems

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction.