A Theological Challenge: Coordinating Biological, Social, and Religious Visions of Humanity

This paper attempts two tasks. First, it sketches how the natural sciences (including especially the biological sciences), the social sciences, and the scientific study of religion can be understood to furnish complementary, consonant perspectives on human beings and human groups. This suggests that it is possible to speak of a modern secular interpretation of humanity (MSIH) to which these perspectives contribute (though not without tensions). MSIH is not a comprehensive interpretation of human beings, if only because it adopts a posture of neutrality with regard to the reality of religious objects and the truth of theological claims about them. MSIH is certainly an impressively forceful interpretation, however, and it needs to be reckoned with by any perspective on human life that seeks to insert its truth claims into the arena of public debate. Second, the paper considers two challenges that MSIH poses to specifically theological interpretations of human beings. On the one hand, in spite of its posture of religious neutrality, MSIH is a key element in a class of wider, seemingly antireligious interpretations of humanity, including especially projectionist and illusionist critiques of religion. It is consonance with MSIH that makes these critiques such formidable competitors for traditional theological interpretations of human beings. On the other hand, and taking the religiously neutral posture of MSIH at face value, theological accounts of humanity that seek to coordinate the insights of MSIH with positive religious visions of human life must find ways to overcome or manage such dissonance as arises. The goal of synthesis is defended as important, and strategies for managing these challenges, especially in light of the pluralism of extant philosophical and theological interpretations of human beings, are advocated

Restoring RLUIPAs Equal Terms Provision

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act\u27s (RLUIPA) equal terms provision prohibits government from implementing a land-use regulation in a manner that treats religious assemblies and institutions less favorably than secular assemblies and institutions. Lower courts have only begun to interpret and apply RLUIPA\u27s equal terms provision, but already they have significantly weakened its protections of religious liberty by giving the provision unnecessarily restrictive interpretations. Not surprisingly, in light of the Supreme Court\u27s invalidation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), the lower courts\u27 restrictive readings seen? driven by concerns that a broader interpretation would exceed Congress\u27s Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power. Yet the lower courts\u27 concerns about the constitutionality of a broader interpretation are misplaced, and their restrictive readings of the equal terms provision severely weaken RLUIPA\u27s protections of religious liberty. This Note argues that a textual interpretation of the provision, which would strictly prohibit unequal treatment of religious assemblies and institutions as compared to secular assemblies and institutions, falls within Congress\u27s prophylactic power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, a textual interpretation is more consistent with Congress\u27s intent to broadly protect religious liberty

[Review of] Howard L. Harrod. Renewing the World

Howard Harrod\u27s work provides an interpretation of the religious and moral world of the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne and Blackfeet tribes of the Northwestern Plains. Well aware that the material he is utilizing represents interpretations by early ethnographers, he transcends this hermeneutical problem to provide an idealized reconstruction of this world guided by the theories of Schutz and Geertz and the work of Joseph Brown

Christianity of Conscience: Religion Over Politics in the Williams-Cotton Debate

This research project examines Roger Williams’s representation of the relationship between church and state as demonstrated in his controversy with the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, specifically in his pamphlet war with Boston minister John Cotton. Maintaining an emphasis on primary research, the essay explores Williams’s and Cotton’s writings on church-state relations and seeks to provide contextual analysis in light of religious, social, economic, and political influences. In addition, this essay briefly discusses well-known historiographical interpretations of Williams’ position and of his significance to American religious and political thought, seeking to establish a synthesis of the evidence surrounding the debate and a clearer understanding of relevant historiography in order to demonstrate the unarguably Christian motivations for Williams’s advocacy of Separatism

Methods and Varieties of Guidance According to Imām Māturīdī

Māturīdī, one of the prominent Kalām scholar, is mostly considered to have played a significant role in the construction of a sustainable religious approach today. This recognition originates from his joint reference to intellect and divine inspiration with regard to issues in Kalām in addition to his contributions to the Sunni way of thinking. His balanced use of the intellect and divine inspiration in his solutions for issues of Hidāyat increased his popularity. In the Muslim world, just as in any other community, perception of reality or guidance not as a process but as outright values of their community causes such problems as religious fanaticism and advocacy for sole truth. To solve such problems, a sound understanding of guidance in Muslim communities should be constructed in the light of scientific and social realities. In this respect, determining unique and comprehensive interpretations of Māturīdī of the issue will be of great help for establishing a peaceful religious understanding for the common future of humanity. In the center of Māturīdī’s interpretations of guidance lies his approach to guidance with respect to its methods and varieties. Besides presenting the definitions of these methods and varieties, the current study analyzes Māturīdī’s interpretations of how these methods and varieties interact

The Nature of Mysticism

As a definitive work of the Society of Friends, the Journal of George Fox has set the tone and tenor for the Society\u27s understanding of one\u27s experience of God or the ultimately Real. Various interpretations of Fox have been offered, but a consistent theme in all interpretations has been Fox\u27s emphasis on the necessity of an experimental or experiential understanding of one\u27s encounter with God. A result of this consistent emphasis has been a trend Fox started himself: since one\u27s experience of God is the touchstone of religious faith, the role or importance of religious texts, religious communities and religious doctrines must play a secondary role in one\u27s apprehension of the ultimately Real. Because Fox emphasized the primacy of the Spirit, or the light of Christ within, over any other religious authority the interpretive tendency has often treated his work as a call for radical individualism in religious experience. But this is simply not the case

Studies in Mysticism and Mystical Experience in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The paper highlights the key perspectives on mysticism typical for Soviet and Post-Soviet religious studies. Recognizing the vagueness of the ”mystical’, Soviet scholars interpreted it as a belief in ”communication’ with ”supernatural powers’. Furthermore, ”mysticism’ was thought of as a multicomponent entity composed of mystical experiences, mystical beliefs, and ”mysticism’ as a ”false ideology’. Such an understanding resulted from their epistemological settings, i.e. the reflection theory of dialectical materialism. In this light, mystical experiences and beliefs were distorted ”reflections’ of objective reality in the human mind caused by factors both of an individual and a social nature. This understanding still defines the academic interpretations of the ”mystical’ in Russia today

Gaia, God, and the Internet - revisited. The History of Evolution and the Utopia of Community in Media Society

The question of religious content in the media has occupied many scholars studying the relationship between media and religion. However, the study of recent religious thought offers a promising perspective for the analysis of the cultural perceptions of various media technologies. After the Internet spread in the middle of the 1990s, a variety of religious or spiritual interpretations of the new medium emerged. The far- reaching ideas see the Internet as the first step of the realisation of a divine entity consisting of the collective human mind. In this vision, the emergence of the Internet is considered to be part of a teleological evolutionary model. Essential for the religious and evolutionary construction of the Internet is an incorporation of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s model of evolution – especially the idea of the noosphere, and its adoption in media theory by Marshall McLuhan. The connections of these ideas to James Lovelock’s Gaia theory illustrate the notion of the Internet as an organic entity. The article outlines the processes of the reception of religious and evolutionary ideas which led to the recent interpretations of the Internet as a divine sphere

Quest for the Legitimizing Jesus Deployment of a Contested Symbol by a Non-traditional Religious Movement

There have always been alternative interpretations of Jesus throughout Christian history. The meaning of such a symbol is never static. However, a general theological consensus had maintained an essentially hegemonic position throughout much of the Christianized world for most of the centuries of the Common Era. Jesus as an authoritative religious symbol has been destabilized by modern scholarship. Popular books and movies that explore and experiment with variant interpretations have proliferated in recent years. This contested but still powerful symbol is reinterpreted and employed by many groups, including a non-Christian religious movement based in Salt Lake City. Even though this group does not employ the traditional meanings associated with Jesus, by constructing alternative interpretations they distinguish their identity boundaries with reference to the dominant culture, create plausibility for a different worldview, and lend legitimacy to their movement.College of Arts and Sciencesmonographi

Rain dances in the dry season: overcoming the religious congruence fallacy

Religious congruence refers to consistency among an individual’s religious beliefs and attitudes, consistency between religious ideas and behavior, and religious ideas, identities, or schemas that are chronically salient and accessible to individuals across contexts and situations. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research establish that religious congruence is rare, but much thinking about religion presumes that it is common. The religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence. I illustrate the ubiquity of religious incongruence, show how the religious congruence fallacy distorts thinking about religion, and outline an approach to help overcome the fallacy