Embracing complexity: the post-secular pilgrimage of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

This article deals with the phenomenon of pilgrimage as a personal transformative process; an exploration of spiritual space rather than a journey undertaken to a physical place. The analysis focuses on the life story and authorship of the novelist and playwright Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (b. 1960). Schmitt began his career as an academic philosopher specialised in enlightenment rationality. A mystical experience in the deserts of Sahara, however, opened his eyes to the spiritual dimensions of reality and encouraged him to redirect his professional strivings from academic writing to fiction. Today, Schmitt has reached a world-wide audience with his plays and novels on interreligious dialogue, especially the series of five short novellas called Le cycle d’Invisible. These narratives all deal with inter-religious encounters in a complex and compassionate way as Schmitt is particularly concerned with preserving the mystery of the situations he describes. The atheist conviction of his previous life has thus given way to an agnostic and mystically inspired world view focusing on diversity, divinity and inexplicability: “I am obsessed with complexity”, as he puts it himself. The presentation is based on ethnographic material, and key themes to be addressed include pilgrimage as a spiritual journey, interreligious encounters and mystical experiences

Aboagora - Between Arts and Sciences

The editorial note presents the journal and the current issue. The purpose of this e-journal is to contribute to the plurality of voices in the academic discussion on religion. Approaching Religion aims at offering an accessible, open and explorative forum for scholarly debate on timely issues and concepts related to the study of religion and culture. In order to fulfil the goals of availability and visibility, we have created our journal as an online, open access publication, supported by the internationally compatible Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. Approaching Religion is primarily a publication channel for articles presented at seminars and conferences arranged by the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History in Åbo, Finland. The journal addresses an international readership and our aim is to present articles of highest academic standard that approach the field of religion from a broad, theoretically and methodologically diverse perspective

Response to Melissa Raphael

A response to Melissa Raphael’s article ‘The creation of beauty by its destruction: the idoloclastic aesthetic in modern and contemporary Jewish art’. Key themes discussed include the notion of human beings as created in the image of God, Levinas’s understanding of the face and its ethical demand as well as the contemporary issue of the commodification of the human face in digital media

Artists in dialogue: Creative approaches to interreligious encounters

This article explores the forms and functions of contemporary interreligious dialogue by focusing on artists who are active in this field. They represent different art forms and different religious positions: with their roots in Judaism, Christianity and Islam they have opted for a variety of positions, ranging from traditional adherence to renunciation of a personal religious engagement, or a fascination for new forms of religiosity. The aim is to critically examine interreligious dialogue and to provide an alternative perspective on the topic, based on both theoretical and empirical analyses. The article seeks an understanding of how persons engaging in creative forms of dialogue formulate a dialogic worldview in a religiously plural and post-secular context and what motivates them to engage in dialogue. Traditional normative theories of interreligious dialogue are hence called into question. Critical attention is brought to the narrow focus on dialogue as a purely intellectual quest for making the religious other, as a coherent theological and historical entity, intelligible. A contrasting view of dialogue as a question of interpersonal ethics is introduced, inspired primarily by the philosophy of Buber. Also the works of Habermas, Gadamer, Levinas, Løgstrup, Wittgenstein and Gaita are central to the research.Ruth Illman is a senior researcher at the Donner Institute in Åbo and Docent in comparative religion, Åbo Akademi University. Website:http://web.abo.fi/instut/di/english/ruth.htm

Creativity, Community, Change: Functions of and motives for singing niggunim

Jewish musical practices stemming from Kabbalah and Hasidic mystical traditions are currently the object of growing attention among a variety of different Jewish communities in Europe and North America, as well as in non-Jewish spiritual circles. This article focuses on contemporary practices of niggunim – the (mostly) wordless melodies with roots in Hasidic Jewish traditions, sung, chanted and sometimes danced in preparation for, or as a form of, ardent prayer. The practice is seen as an example of the expressive, engaging, emotional and embodied forms of prayer that currently attract many Jews of different institutional attachments. As niggunim travel into new contexts, they are reframed and reconsidered in order to meet the needs and expectations of contemporary religious communities, characterised by a liberal and egalitarian, global and transformative religiosity. The article seeks to explore the different functions niggunim are put to today and the motives which drive different people to engage in the practice. The analysis is based on ethno-graphic material in the form of in-depth interviews conducted among progressive Jews in the London area. As a conclusion, the article suggests an approach to contemporary niggunim practices that incorporates perspectives from both literature and ethnography in order to deepen the understanding of the motives for and functions of singing niggunim today

Aboagora 2013: The Human Machine

The editorial introduces the articles of the issue, all pertaining to the arts and sciences event, Aboagora, which gathered artists, academics and a wide range of interested listeners together to discuss the relationship between technology and the human being in Turku/Åbo in August, 2013. Aboagora is arranged as a joint venture between Turku Music Festival and scholars from the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University and the Donner Institute

Love, responsibility, otherness: Finnish church leaders and interreligious dialogue

In this article, the author will focus on the subject matter addressed in this appeal, i.e. peace and dialogue. The aim is to analyse how these Christian leaders view the role of religions, and especially interreligious dialogue, in creating and promoting peace. The author will begin by presenting the Peace Appeal and the interviews which form the empirical material upon which the research is based. The author will then concentrate on five issues which emerge from the analysis of this material as being especially important: the question of peace, love and reconciliation in a religious perspective; the question of otherness in interfaith dialogue; the relationship between dialogue and mission; the question of God’s presence in other religions; and personal responsibility and action. Emphasis is placed on presenting and analysing the empirical material, but the topics are also tied to a theoretical framework based on current thoughts within moral philosophy and the dialogue philosophy of Martin Buber. The discussion is, in conclusion, summarised with the help of the three notions which form the topic of this article: love, responsibility and otherness

Finding beauty, goodness and truth in an ugly world: A personal theological and aesthetic account

Review of Kimberly Vrudny's Beauty’s Vineyard: A Theological Aesthetic of Anguish and Anticipation (Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2016)

Initiating dialogue

The editorial note presents the journal and the current issue. The purpose of this newly inaugurated e-journal is to contribute to the plurality of voices in the academic discussion on religion Approaching Religion aims at offering an accessible, open and explorative forum for scholarly debate on timely issues and concepts related to the study of religion and culture. In order to fulfil the goals of availability and visibility, we have created our journal as an online, open access publication, supported by the internationally compatible Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. Approaching Religion is primarily a publication channel for articles presented at scholarly roundtable seminars hosted by the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History in Åbo, Finland. The journal addresses an international readership and our aim is to present articles of highest academic standard that approach the field of religion from a broad, theoretically and methodologically diverse perspective

Orthodox Christianity and gender through a religion-as-lived perspective

Book review of Kupari, Helena, and Elina Vuola (eds.), 2020. Orthodox Christianity and Gender. Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice.Routledge Studies in Religion (London & New York: Routledge). Open access publication: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203701188: 214 pp