K. M. University, India Christianity in the Land of Santhals: a study of Resistance and Acceptance in Historical Perspective(03U)

Matsuoka, Hideaki

Shukutoku University, Japan

Modernity, Religiosity, and the Issues of the Mind: Japanese Intellectuals(04U)

*chairperson

Organized panel
Matsuoka, Hideaki

Shukutoku University, Japan

Modernity, Religiosity, and the Issues of the Mind: Japanese Intellectuals(04U)

After the 1880s, the modernization of Japanese religions can be seen as a process of psychologization. Several techniques that aimed to develop both body and mind were widely practiced. Buddhism started focusing on psychological aspects in pursuing its raison d'etre, and self-cultivation movements became popular among intellectuals. Simultaneously, Japanese intellectuals tried to define the term Kokoro by adopting Western knowledge, including hypnotism and psychic research. In this trend, however, we should not overlook the influence of the heritage of traditional religions from the pre-modern era. This panel aims to elucidate not only how modern Japanese intellectuals considered the idea of mind (kokoro) under the influence of traditional religions but also religiosity they found in the secular movements such as self-cultivation.

Organized panel, Japanese
Matsuoka, Hideaki

Shukutoku University, Japan

Spirit and Self-Cultivation: On the Acceptance of the Church of World Messianity, a Japanese New Religion in Brazil(14O)

In the forty-eight years since its introduction to Brazil, the Japanese new religion the Church of World Messianity has attracted some 300,000 followers, over ninety-five percent of which are non-ethnic Japanese Brazilians. Messianity is known for its practice of Joey, meaning "purification of the spirit" in Japanese, the foundation of all its activity. By using "experience-near difference" and "experience-distant difference" as analytical concepts, my presentation elucidates why Messianity has crossed the ethnic barrier and come to be accepted in Brazil, and tries to locate Messianity in the Brazilian religious arena.

Organized panel, English
Matsushima, Kobo

Tokyu Gakugei University, Japan

Religiosity in Christian School Students(04P)

The purpose of this study was to develop a religiosity scale for junior and senior high school students (1881 students) in Japanese Christian schools and to investigate the features of religiosity. Christian school students were divided into four groups: (1) Christians who have Christians in the family, (2) Christians who have no Christians in the family, (3) Non-Christians who have Christians in the family, (4) and Non-Christians who have no Christians in the family. The differences in religiosity in these groups were examined. In addition, (4) Non-Christians who have no Christians in the family were sorted in gender difference and each grade, an the effects of religious education in the Christian schools were examined. In this presentation, I would like to report the developmental features and educational effects of religiosity of Christian school students in Japan.

Organized panel, English
Mayer, Jean-François

Religioscope/ University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Conflicts of Proselytism - An Overview and Comparative Assessment(04H)

All over the world, missionary activities have aroused reactions. In some cases, opposition is nothing new and deserves an examination incorporating an historical perspective. Attention needs also to be paid to strategies deployed against proselytization, which sometimes lead to the development of "counter-missions". Finally, it is worth examining what are the common features of those reactions to missionary activities across religions and cultures. Those will be some of the issues examined in this comparative paper. The conclusion will attempt to assess how far such tensions might have wider consequences.

Symposium, English
Mayster, Oleksandr Gregory

Ukrainian State University of Water Management and NRA, Ukraine

Growth of Religiosity in Ukraine: Natural Expression of Religious Feelings or Influence of Economic Factor?(16E)

In the last decade, sociological surveys show a constant increase of the level of religiosity in Ukraine. On the other hand, after the collapse of the former USSR, the average income per person had considerably decreased. In order to develop the issue I shall analyze results of the last survey's concentration on the level of religiosity and examine the most important measurable dimensions of religiosity for the Ukrainian people. My next point will be analyses of the current economic standing of Ukrainian people and its possible correlation with dimension of religiosity. For this purpose I shall use an indexes of the 5 largest regions, measuring religiosity and economic prosperity in each of them, and try to reach conclusions. My hypothesis is that the higher the level of religiosity, the poorer the economic standing of the population, and vise versa (the higher the economic standing, the lower the level of religiosity). I also stress that the economic factor is not the only indicator of such flourishing religious commitment in Ukraine; there will be a look at some other features. Detailed analyses will be presented in the paper.

Organized panel, English
Mayster, Oleksandr Gregory

Ukrainian State University of Water Management and NRA, Ukraine

Religion in the Former Soviet Union(16E)

*chairperson

Organized panel
Mboje, Mjomba

University of Nairobi, Kenya

Eastern African Women: Religious Victims, Economic Entrepreneurs ignored in Global Standards(11F)

In East African countries, as in many other developing countries, people survive on the informal economy. This economy is basically supported by women's commercial activities which provide the family with a consistent income. Women become thus the pillars of the family economy. They work too much and indeed work longer hours than their male counterparts, but their work is always less valued. In fact, if women's work were valued in terms of money, Eastern African women would be amongst the highest paid people in the world. Religiously speaking, this is a reversal of traditional women's roles, where the man is supposed to work hard in order to support his family and the woman is destined to bear children. But what we experience is just the contrary to this, a fact which should cause us to challenge many attitudes resulting from globalization in African contexts.

Organized panel
McCutcheon, Russell T.

University of Alabama, USA

A Response to THE UNDERLYING TERROR:(01C)

The category "religion" and the binary pairs that attend it like sacred/secular, faith/doctrine, Church/State, etc.), deserve as much attention as has been devoted by scholars to the social and political roles played by other pairs, such as pure/impure, raw/cooked, male/female, citizen/foreigner, and now, in the post-September 11 context, freedom fighter/terrorist. As with these pairings, the Church/State and private/public binaries can be understood not to refer to stable and separable zones of human practice, but as part of a classification system that manages a competitive social and political economy by segmenting, ranking, and containing specific forms of behavior and organization, whether as a means to authorize or deauthorize them. When understood to refer to an inner zone of private experience and feeling, the political rhetorics of "religion" and "faith" should be studied as techniques of governance, not as neutrally descriptive names given to pre-existent things existing in the world or in the human heart. As an example of how this is used, the paper draws on several recent examples of the marginalization and containment of active political dissent and opposition by North American media and scholarship. The examples focus on instances where so-called timeless Islamic "principles" and "faith" are understood to be in opposition to a so-called militant forms of Islam, once termed "fundamentalist Islam" but now termed "Islamist."

Symposium, English
McCutcheon, Russell T.

University of Alabama, USA

Swapping Stories, Drawing Boundaries: The Limits of the Insider/Outsider Problem(13K)

Although it has now become routine for scholars of religion to discuss various ways of solving what is known as the insider/outsider problem, few have asked why it is that we understand the conflict between viewpoints to be a problem in need of a solution rather than seeing attempts to mediate such conflicts as liberal, social formative techniques which are themselves deserving of study. This paper explores why the insider/outsider problem is a problem, for whom it is a problem, and the practical implications entailed by trying to overcome the historically situated nature of all human behaviors by questing for a viewpoint with no apparent perspective.

Organized panel, English
McCutcheon, Russell T.

University of Alabama, USA

The Domestication of Dissent: Pundits? Contributions to the War on Terrorism?(16B)

Using as an example the case of recent popular and scholarly representations of Islam that circulate in the North American media, this paper argues that the common essence/manifestation, belief/behavior, faith/tradition, experience/expression, private/public, and religious/political distinctions have proved to be useful devices for those attempting to normalize, and thereby authorize, a particular sort of "Other," one that is compliant with dominant interests in liberal democratic nation-states. By means of these rhetorical distinctions a presumably safe haven is created for non-negotiable difference by lodging it within the privacy of the human heart, all of which is in the service of creating a specific type of unified consensus of public behavior and organization

Organized panel
McCutcheon, Russell T.

University of Alabama, USA

The Study of Religion as Politically Constituted(16B)

Organized panel

McGrath, Paul Devereaux

Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan

Myth and Subjectivity in the Work of Tsushima Yuko(04W)

From her earliest work Tsushima Yuko has been concerned with the dynamics of intersubjectivity. This presentation examines the development of Tsushima's thought on Self and Other from early Choji (1978) (Child of Fortune, 1983) and Danmari ichi (1983) ("The Silent Traders," 1988) to her English essay on the function of narrative voice in Ainu poetry (boundary 2, 1994). Tsushima's work deals with myth in two ways; much of her energy is used to demythologize the oppressive "common sense" which would delimit the subjectivity of her heroines. On the other hand, she uses myth and dream imagery to re-figure the contours of a supra-national, supra-personal subjectivity. I will describe this dynamic subjectivity and connect it with the thought of Paul Ricoeur in Oneself as Another (1992).

Organized panel, English
McGrath, Paul Devereaux

Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan

Religion and Contemporary Japanese Novelists(2)(05W)

*respondent

Organized panel, English
McKenny, Gerald

(06I)

The paper will explore conceptual frameworks for evaluating human enhancement technologies. More specifically, are there any limits in principle (I.e. apart from the consent of subjects, acceptable harm-benefit ratios, and just distribution) to the alteration of human traits? Such limits may come from three sources: 1) a normatively significant distinction between therapy and enhancement, 2) a normative conception of human nature, and 3) conceptions of a good life and of the relation of various capacities and activities to that life. I will argue that the first two attempts fail and that the latter requires a different kind of discourse about bioethics than we currently possess.

Organized panel, English
Meckenstock, Güenter

Christian-Albrechts-University, Germany

The Significance of Peace in Schleiermacher's Theory of Religion(11Q)

Throughout history, the impact of religion on conflict and peace in various social constellations has to be understood as ambiguous. This is especially true for highly complex and organized monotheistic religious traditions. Since religion is experienced as an encounter with the absolute, it involves personal commitment, along with an impulse for gaining social approval. Such a constellation can subsequently lead to social regulation of truth and morality. Accordingly, the more impact religion has on social, cultural and moral life, the more threatening religion can be to peace. Schleiermacher's theory of religion underscores the inherent prospects for peace within religion. This paper examines how that theory exposes possibilities for peaceful interchange and communication that emerge from the structure of religious experience.

Organized panel, German
Mederos, Aníbal Arguelles

University of Havana, Cuba

C.D. Modupé(14R)

Modupé is a multimedia collection on African origin on the following topics: Cultural identity an religious expressions of African origin Nature and African religions. The religious values of Regla Ocha The values of Abakuá religion Regla Congolese Gender and myth

Organized panel
Mederos, Aníbal Arguelles

University of Havana, Cuba

The Religious Expressions in Cuba: Changes and Perspectives(15F)

The religious expressions of African origin with are practiced in Cuba embrace a series of worships and ritual practices that were introduced by slaves brought from the African continent; under Cuban conditions, they were transformed. This study explains the common characteristics of the belief system of the African-origin religions, their evolution, development, challenges, tendencies, and significance within the religious framework of Cuban society.

Organized panel
Melton, Gordon

University of California, USA

Indigenous Chinese Christian Groups in the West(01B)

This paper concentrates on two new religions, which emerged in the early twentieth century in China and have subsequently become global religious movements, the True Jesus Church, and a second group known variously as the Little Flock, the Assembly Hall churches or the Local Church. Both quickly expanded beyond China, one to Malaysia and one to the United States, as well as spreading throughout China in the 1930s and 1940s. In the last half of the twentieth century, both groups became substantial bodies in Hong Kong and Taiwan and established congregation throughout Southeast Asia. The presence of these two groups along with a spectrum of other Chinese new religions in the West indicates that China should join India and Japan in the consciousness of New Religion scholars as a source of new religious life. By creating an anti-religious environment, China has become a major religious exporting nation in an era of globalization.

Organized panel, English
Melton, Gordon

University of California, USA

The True Buddha School: A Vajrayana Revitalization Movement?(15D)

The True Buddha School, a new Vajrayana Buddhist organization centered on Taiwan, has in the last twenty years become an international organization claiming to be the source of some two million people taking refuge. As a new organization taking an old tradition into new territory, it challenges the definitions we have worked with during the last generation concerning New Religions. Do ethnic-based religious revitalization movements qualify? The answer depends on the context more than any characteristic of the group.

Organized panel
Melton, Gordon

University of California, USA

New Religious Movements in Japan(16P)

*chairperson

Organized panel
Menon, Devaki Kalyani

DePaul University, USA

Women and Hindu Nationalism(04V)

In this paper I will examine how religion is used by women in the movement to endorse the violent politics of Hindu nationalism. Through a close examination of the ideas presented by female religious renouncers in the movement I analyze how Hinduism is used to motivate members of the movement to engage in acts of violence. Drawing on the Bhagavad Gītā, an ancient Hindu text considered sacred by many Hindus, female renouncers argue that it is the sacred duty of all Hindus to participate in violence in defense of dharma defined variously as the moral order of the world or as righteous action. These female renouncers argue, that just as in the Bhagavad Gītā where Lord Krishna suggests that it is Arjuna's duty to fight his kinsman to uphold dharma, today it is the sacred duty of all Hindus to participate in the struggle to establish the moral order of a Hindu nation in India. While these ideas clearly appeal to many men and women in the movement, long term ethnographic fieldwork amongst Hindu nationalist women in the movement revealed that not all those who participate in the movement endorse the violent politics of Hindu nationalism. In this paper I will discuss the myriad responses to Hindu nationalist violence amongst women in the movement. I suggest that while a majority of women in the movement do indeed see violence as necessary to the larger struggle for a Hindu nation, there are some women who endorse the politics of Hindu nationalism while remaining critical of the violent measures engaged in by many activists. I suggest in this paper that these critical voices are significant because they articulate an alternative ethic that challenges the central nationalist constru

Organized panel
Merdjanova, Ina Nestorova

Center for Interreligious Dialogue and Conflict Prevention, Bulgaria

Religious Dimensions of War and Peace in the Balkans after 1989(12S)

The fall of communism has brought about new opportunities and new challenges for religion in post-communist society. Undoubtedly, these challenges have been particularly strong in the Balkans, and especially in the former Yugoslavia. In this paper I focus on the role of religion in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, and more specifically on the ways in which the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Croatian Catholic Church and the Islamic community in Bosnia have been involved in politics. I use this case as an illustrative example of how religious expression has been involved in the processes of war and peace in the Balkans by shaping national identities and policies. Inevitably, as the conflict escalated, religion became even more politicised. While not directly responsible for the crisis, religion, in the form of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Islam, has been involved in it in various ways. The process of religious identity formation on the part of the predominant religions contributed towards the sacralisation of nationality. Religion, however, has a strong potential for tolerance and peaceful coexistence, and not only for conflict and tension. The paper will conclude by outlining the involvement of religious communities in the Balkans in the post-war processes of conflict resolution and peace-building.

Organized panel, English
Mibolos, Dolly L.

University of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines

Spanish Missionaries in The Development of a Philippine Community(14E)

The Philippines is well known for being the only Catholic nation in Asia. This process of community development in the Philippines can be historically traced with the coming of the Spanish Missionaries, namely the Augustinians, Franciscans, and the Dominicans. This paper attempts to show how the Spanish Missionaries arrived in the province of Nueva Vizcaya, in the Northern portion of the Philippines. This research paper is composed of three parts. The first part will discuss the background of Christianization in the Philippines. The second part focuses on the missionaries' interactions with the original settlers of the place, citing the missionaries' accomplishments like Christianization of the natives, founding of towns, improvements in agriculture and construction of roads. The third part is the discussion of the six towns in Nueva Vizcaya where people experienced political, economic and social developments.

Organized panel, English
Mikaelsson, Lisbeth

University of Bergen, Norway

Meeting the Religious Other : Constructions of Key Scenarios in Norwegian Mission(05S)

The paper will focus on how Norwegian missionaries constructed indigenous religions in their writings directed to readers at home. More specifically the paper will discuss certain recurrent key scenarios, showing the character and content of foreign religions in missionaries' view. Specimens of such scenarios are meetings with foreign religious experts like monks, magicians, with doctors or priests, or presentations of miserable women as the main victims of "heathen" cultures. In their textual contexts, the key scenarios fulfill several functions in one stroke: they legitimate the mission project by demonstrating the negative effects on people of non-Christian religions; they draw the lines separating Christianity from other religions, echoing normative patterns that go back to Christian antiquity; they homogenize the non-Christian world by reducing foreign religions to fixed patterns of misery, superstition and demonism; and last but not least, they become elements in personal and institutional identity construction.

Organized panel, English
Miki, Hizuru

Osaka International University, Japan

From Authority to Autonomy -- The Rise in the Religious Intellectual Level of the Common People(16I)

A holy ground of folk religion is located in the suburbs of Osaka, the second largest city in Japan. In the area of Mount Ikoma, many traditional temples and shrines exist alongside more recently founded ones, famous for divine favors such as miraculous salvation from poverty, illness, domestic disorder, and so on. According to a sociological report published in 1985, the total number of visitors to Ikoma at that time numbered about ten million per year. Recently, however, the religious adherents of Mt. Ikoma seem to be increasing in age and diminishing in number. The current research does not suggest that urban dwellers are becoming indifferent to religion but rather, that they are becoming religiously autonomous. They no long rely on authorized dogma and leadership as in the past, but have the intellectual capacity to gather their own religious information and live their religious lives independently. Consequently, they no longer visit the old holy ground.

Organized panel, English
Miles, Christopher John

Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey

Journeying into the Neither-Neither: The 'Death Posture' of Austin Osman Spare and the Establishment of Neo-Shamanic Identity(14G)

The English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare (1888-1956) created a dense and problematic body of work that is unique within the Western occult revival in that it prides itself on its lack of lineage. Spare's texts and accompanying art works are a mixture of practical grimoire, revelatory exhortations, satirical diatribes upon established religion and calm exegesis of his esoteric theory; yet the technique of the 'Death Posture' stands as a central touchstone throughout. The paper will analyze Spare's various presentations of his physical techniques for inducing a state of 'neither-neither' and track their central influence across his body of published work, focusing on the manner in which Spare links the destruction of identity with the cultivation of a matter-of-fact not-caringness. It then goes on to identify similarities between Spare's highly individualistic methodology and long-recorded shamanistic techniques.

Organized panel, English