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

Bogdan, Carl Henrik George

Gothenborg University, Sweden

Challenging the Morals of Western Society: The Use of Ritualised Sex in Contemporary Occultism(14G)

Occultist spirituality is, to a certain extent, characterized by antinomian traits which often challenge the morals and ethics of Western society. One of these traits is the use of ritualized sex which today is often referred to as "Sex Magick" or "Western Tantra". In this paper the historical roots of the use of ritualized sex in contemporary occultism will be discussed, with special focus on the teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964). Furthermore, the questions to what extent the Western ritualized use of sex is influenced by Buddhist and Hindu tantra, and how and when tantra entered the scene of western occultism, will be addressed. Finally, it will be discussed how the use of ritualized sex can be interpreted as a form of religious antinomism, that is, as a way to challenge the accepted norms of society. By contextualising ritualized sex I intend to address the problematic issue of the relationship of occultist spirituality with religious change in modern Western society.

Organized panel, English
Bongmba, Elias

African Churches in Houston(01T)

This paper explores the growth of African Churches in Houston, Texas, arguing that the development of these churches is linked to the increasing diasporization of Africa and the need to articulate a complex identity which is Christian, global, yet undeniably African. I draw from on-going contacts with African churches in Houston to demonstrate the outworking of this identity formation in Africa's new religions in America.

Organized panel
Bongmba, Elias

(02L)

Roundtable session

Borgeaud, Philippe

University of Geneva, Switzerland

The Ancient Practices of Comparison as Topic for the History of Religions(17C)

The ancient worlds should be taken as laboratories for the study of conflicts related to religious identities and cultural contacts. To take just one example, there are certain texts - written in Greek, but drawing on non-Greek sources, most notably certain Egyptian writings and also the Hebrew Torah - which enable us to observe the Greeks and the non-Greeks observing each other, more in mutual reaction than in dialogue. Research conducted on Moses provides a particularly clear example of this process. Moses appears in texts very diversely culturally constituted, which patterns of coexistence, exchange, conflict, transformation or rejection. This paper presents one aspect of a research project on "Moses between Athens and Jerusalem", in which the presenter is involved together with Th. Roemer and Y. Volokhine.

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Borgeaud, Philippe

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Conflict and Peace in Ancient History(17C)

*chairperson

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Borysenko, Olesia

G.S.Skovoroda Philosophy Institute NAS Ukraine, Ukraine

The Conflict of Ethnic and Religious Identities: Ukraine and Japan(04T)

The aim of the paper is to compare two types of ethnical and religious identities coexistence. The countries which were took for the research (Ukraine and Japan) represent extreme examples of cohesion between ethnic and religious factor. Ukraine is multicultural country, which had not been a state for a long period (actually, till the end of XX century). It is a "boundary country" which has a great experience of religious pluralism because of existence of a huge number of religious traditions on its territory. All this assisted to the forming of a certain type of religiosity and a great experience of toleration. Japan is an Island country. It has strong and stable government and religious traditions. It always was opened for the foreign adoption but unsusceptible to any attempt of inner transformation. The author investigates two types of forming national identities and the role of religious factor in this process.

Organized panel, English
Boutchich, Brahim El Kadiri

Moulay Ismail University of Meknes, Morocco

Peace And Coexistence Between Muslims And Christians In North Africa In The Middle Ages(14C)

The main issue in this paper is to defend the idea that Muslims and Christians in North Africa have lived side by side peacefully in spite of wars between them. The paper is divided into three sections. The first aims at shedding light on the factors behind the arrival of Christians and their settling in North Africa, especially economic and military factors. The second section deals with Muslims' tolerance and acceptance of Christians living in North Africa. The third section deals with the impact of the co-existence between Muslims and Christians in North Africa and the production of a common civilization, especially in some social and cultural fields.

Organized panel, French
Boutchich, Brahim El Kadiri

Moulay Ismail University of Meknes, Morocco

Religion, Conflict and Peace(14C)

*chairperson

Organized panel, French
Boztemur, Recep

Middle East Technical University, Ankara

Religious Diversity, Multiculturalism, and American Secularism: A Debate on Religious Pluralism in Contemporary American Society(13O)

The Fulbright Program for "Religious Pluralism and Its Public Presence in the US" aims to discuss religious diversity and the development of mutual understanding among religions in the US with the participation of the scholars of religion of various nationalities and religious denominations. The basic teaching of the Program is to examine how religious pluralism works in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society and how it was internalized by various American communities. This paper deals with the social and economic conditions that make religious pluralism work in American society and analyzes the social roots of American religiosity. However, the study also aims to discuss the use of popular religious feelings by "neo-religio" movements. It will conclude with a debate about American understandings of secularism and the state's policies toward various belief systems with reference to Islam in the United States.

Organized panel, English
Braun, Willi

University of Alberta, Canada

Modes of Religiosity and Theories of Persuasion(14T)

This paper exposes the theories of persuasion that dominate studies on why people in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean basin affiliated themselves with emerging Christian associations. An account is given of why these theories remain compelling and of why, however, they should be questioned. This leads to an argument for a less logocentric theory of persuasion that draws on the work of an ancient theorist (Gorgias of Leontini) and a modern one (Harvey Whitehouse).

Organized panel, English
Breen, John

University of London, UK

Problems of Periodization in Shinto History: Modern and Contemporary Issues(01Q)

Modern: The saisei itch declaration, the "Shinto Buddhist clarification' edicts, the proclamation that 'shrines are sites for the performance of state ritual' all attest to the Meiji Restoration as pivotal in the history of Shinto. The pivotal nature of these moments is much less apparent, when we shift our gaze from institutional, legal and intellectual issues to that of Shinto in its relationship to the populace. I will argue that an understanding of Shinto's modern relationship to the populace depends on a reappraisal of 'The guidelines for regional administration' of 1906 and the 'Boshin rescript' of 1908. Contemporary: The critical import of Shinto directive of December 1945, which sealed the fate of so-called state Shinto, is not disputed. I will focus on the Jinja Honcho and its dispute with the Meiji jingo to argue that the start of the 21st century marks a new turning point in contemporary Shinto.

Organized panel, English
Brekke, Torkel

Oslo University, Canada

The Ethics of War in South Asia: Some Comparative Notes(06R)

The comparative ethics of war is growing academic field. In this paper, I intend to explore the South Asian ideology of war and warfare in order to find out whether India has produced something comparable to the Christian tradition of just war. It has often been assumed that the Hindu tradition follows its own logic in terms of ethics, a logic summed up in the idea of karmayoga, where all action is transformed into ritual as long as the actor has the right mental state. This assumption seems to make any comparison between Hindu and Christian ideologies impossible. I intend to look at the Hindu ideology of kingship in order to understand the Indian ideas of right authority, which is a basic constituent of the Christian just war. The other main elements of just war, just cause and right intention, must also be explored in order to find out whether the Hindu tradition has taken any interest in questions of jus ad bellum. We will see that there are different strands of the idea of kingship and authority in classical India and that they produce different kinds of legitimation for political action. A divine view of kingship blends with the idea of ritual warfare and karmayoga in the epic literature of India to produce ideas of holy war akin to those found in the Old Testament. In a study of classical Hindu ideas of war the two great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, must have a central position. There are several texts dealing specifically with war and warfare, such as certain chapters of the Kautiliya Arthashastra and the much later Nitisara of Kamandaki. The Jaina author Somadeva is also interesting in a comparative approach to the subject.

Organized panel
Brodeur, Patrice C.

Connecticut College, USA

Conceptualizing the Applied Academic Study of Religions: A Necessary Step to Empower Scholars of Religions to Increase the Common(05K)

Most academic disciplines, from mathematics to ethics, have developed applied sub-fields to address a broad range of concrete social challenges. This paper first summarizes two specific reasons why such development did not emerge in the academic study of religion over the last century and then explores an alternative set of reasons requiring its development now. Using a comparative disciplinary approach, the paper proposes a conceptual framework to address the urgent need for better cooperation between scholars of religions and a variety of social agents who face the multi-sectorial challenges of managing religious pluralism and the increasing eruption of religion-based violence in their respective nation-states. This framework also provides suggestions for empowering scholars of religions to increase their participation in interdisciplinary efforts to increase the common good by becoming individually and collectively more effective social actors in cooperation with a variety of policy makers in such fields as politics, education, law, and health, to name but a few.

Organized panel, English
Bulbulia, Joseph

Victoria University, New Zealand

Rethinking the Concept and Theory of Religion(17K)

*chairperson

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Bulbulia, Joseph

Victoria University, New Zealand

Evolutionary Game Theory and The Biology of Religion(17K)

This paper surveys recent theoretical and experimental research in the evolutionary psychology of religion. This paper (I) uses costly signaling theory to show how the expected utilities that follow from religious conviction may bring significant reproductive advantages to those who live under their spell and (ii) summarizes recent experimental evidence supporting this theory. I consider two common forms of supernatural conviction: motivating beliefs in supernatural powers that police social exchange and motivating beliefs in supernatural powers that heal.

Organized panel, English
Burger, MK Maya

University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Karma Yoga Versus Rajayoga: Conflicts on the Way to Peace(11U)

Mircea Eliade studied yoga in the city of Calcutta, the heart of encounter during British rule. He was a disciple of the philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta, who made popular the study of Pastanjali yoga and included modern psychology in his approach. Preceding these eminent scholars was another interpreter of yoga in Calcutta, Vivekananda, who established a hierarchy among the different yoga, putting rajayoga in the first place, as the theosophists did before him. If samadhI that yogis aim at is a form of peace, how do they deal with the ongoing conflicts that characterise the different paths of yoga, especially the conflict between action and meditation? What new solutions have been brought into this problem by modern scholars and practitioners of yoga? In what sense has the situation of encounter with modernity raised new questions to that basically old philosophical and practical problem? What are the conflicting options leading to this goal? Is it still a goal? From the point of view of the history of religions, I will particularly point out the options presented by contemporary yogis (tradition of T. Krishnamacharya) that result from the ongoing process of exchange between Western and Indian ways of resolving the conflicts. Why is samadhi no longer the declared goal?

Organized panel, English
Calzadilla, Jorge Ramirez

Center for Psychological and Sociological Research, Cuba

The So-Called NRM: the Breaking up of Solidarity and the Religious Protest; Aggression against the Latin American and Caribbean Identity(15F)

Nowadays, in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are various religious trends which differ from traditional forms. They have been called new religious movements by some scholars, while others have referred to them as sects. In some cases, they are considered "destructive". Politically, they range from the promotion of socially evasive and uncommitted positions to the opposite. This would imply the need to specify to what extent they have an impact on cultural identity. There are enough elements to state that neoliberal globalization has had a significant impact on the religious field in general, with diverse and contradictory effects. This phenomenon brings about the decomposition of collective identities which then induces recomposition and the search for alternatives beyond the social world.

Organized panel, English
Carrasco, David

Harvard University, USA

Mexican Apparitions in the Contact Zone: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Altepetl/Hill of Sustenance(01F)

This illustrated lecture will discuss the sacred 'orientatio' for Mexican religiosity expressed in the relationship between places and apparitions associated with La Virgen de Guadalupe at the Tepeyac. A new decipherment of a 'ritual map' of center and periphery dynamics encoded in the "Nican Mopohua", the Nahuatl text of Guadalupe's apparitions, will be offered. The recent controversy between those who argue this tradition is a 'pious invention of Spanish priests' and those who see the Guadalupe documents as reflecting a 'deeper river of Mexican devotion' will be discussed.

Organized panel, English
Carrasco, David

Harvard University, USA

The Images of Quetzalcoatl in the Spanish Conquest of Mexico(15R)

This illustrated presentation will explore the intense controversy surrounding the question of whether indigenous peoples or the Spaniards invented/applied the myth of Quetzalcoatl's return to the Spaniards and Cortes. The paper, drawing on the hermeneutics of recovery and suspicion in the fields of religious studies will summarize the positions of Miguel Leon Portilla, H.B. Nicholson, James Lockhart, Inga Clendinnen, David Carrasco and others. It will also explore the relation of the Quetzalcoatl myth to the Aztec linguistic and religious 'game of arrival'.

Organized panel, English
Carreon, Emilie Ana

Universidad Autónoma de México, Mexico

Contrary Views: Deployment of Body Parts(03I)

In this paper I focus on explaining one aspect of the acculturation process—public manifestations of corporal violence related to punishment, the death penalty and the exhibition of body parts—as seen primarily in maps of towns included in the Relaciones Geograficas of the sixteenth century, where the boundary between the place of punishment and the place of sacrifice, began to blur. It is my belief that the study of this aspect of colonial society will aid in explaining the process by which native sacrificial practices have been misread, when the divergent concepts of punishment and torture of either group are disregarded.

Organized panel, English
Carreon, Emilie Ana

Universidad Autónoma de México, Mexico

The Human Body Exposed: Contrasting Views on remains of the Dead(03I)

Various systems of ideas and practices according to which people live and die, reflect aspects concerning worldviews. The customs of conquering peoples who arrived and settled tested the conquered groups' capacity to absorb and understand an influx of impressions resulting from the exposure to new and unknown practices. Certain customs, such as those related to funerary and punitive experiences, had to be calibrated into the workings of indigenous thought and culture, where the manipulation and exposition of body parts possessed a different purpose and/or meaning.

Organized panel, * Session Abstract, English
Casadio, Giovanni

University of Salerno, Italy

Dionysus' Image in the Post-Modern Age(13T)

After a critical survey of classical research on ancient religion based on a cross-cultural anthropological approach, I present evidence to assess the empirical productivity and explanatory value of the theory of modes of religiosity proposed by H. Whitehouse, the most recent anthropological model proposed in the field of religious studies. The case in point concerns the cult of Dionysus, with focus on the imagistic message encoded in and conveyed by the impressive fresco in the Pompeian Villa dei Misteri.

Organized panel, English
Casarella, Peter

The Challenge of Dialogue According to the Letter to John of Segovia of Nicholas of Cusa(05N)

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Celador, Oscar

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

EU, Human Rights, and Religious Minorities(06W)

In this discussion of Muslim and human rights in Europe, I am going to examine three areas: religious freedom and democracy, religious freedom and diversity, and religion and minorities. In my analysis of the status of Muslims in Europe, I will approach the regulations of the European Union as an independent entity different from those of the member States, and the local regulations of its member States. At the moment, the European Union does not have a Constitution, a Supreme or a Constitutional court. Then, there is no particular political provision for religious freedom at the European Union level. In other words, there is no European Union policy regarding human rights. As a consequence of this frame, each individual State has its own policy in regard to human rights, and this policy used to depend on the historical roots of each country. We, therefore, have fifteen different conceptions of human rights and of religious freedom and neutrality working at the same time in the former EU States.

Organized panel, English
Chan, Kim-kwong

Hong Kong Christian Council, China

Missiological Implications of Chinese Christianity in a Globalized Context(01B)

As China enters into the World Trade Organization, its political-economic influence is being felt globally. Concurrently, Chinese Christian community is one of the fastest growing Christian communities in contemporary Christendom, with conservative estimate of more than 35 millions. Will China's influence in global religious affairs resembles similar trends like its economic matters? This paper examines the possible missiological implications on the increasing number of global Chinese migrants, of whom many are Christians, to the shaping of global Christianity.

Organized panel, English
Chan, Kim-kwong

Hong Kong Christian Council, China

A New Messiah - The Eastern Lightening Sect(15D)

One of the most controversial religious sects in the current Mainland Chinese religious landscape is the Church of Almighty God, commonly known as the Eastern Lightening Sect. Extensive reports exist on the damaging effects of this group on other Christian communities—Protestant and Catholic alike. This group is one of the most secretive sects in China. Although the Chinese authorities have outlawed it, this sect keeps expanding even beyond the border of China into Hong Kong, USA, Canada and Europe. This paper attempts to analyze the few original documents and materials this sect has produced during the past 10 years.

Organized panel
Chen, Miin-Ling

Cathoric Fujin University, Taiwan

The problem of Entmythologisierung in Pure-Land Buddhism: the Comparative Perspective of Honen and Shinran(07J)

In the history of Buddhism, the controversy between Pure-Land as a directional concept (dualism) and Pure-Land as a concept based on the subject mind (monism) has never ceased. Rebirth in the Pure-Land and the question of future-life intention are the central issues of the Pure-Land school. By comparing Honen and Shinran, this paper aims at clarifying how traditional Pure-Land Buddhism can overcome the difficulty of dualism without losing its own position.

Organized panel, Japanese
Cheng, Kwi-Hsia

Shuchiin University, Japan

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion(07K)

It's life pattern, we've predestined to be born and acquainted with accumulation of right and wrong and to be mutually dependent, to grow old and die. In Buddhism's method, has teaching two ways "The satya" to solve a problem [ co-dependent, nonself-character, sunyata ] to get the life peaceful and successful. The method of this study uses personal meditation and through [ body, mouth, mind ] to make the [ ki ] "Chi" correcting in One's body and home to get attempt smoothly, to reach to the abundant. It's according with longer time to stay in one's home and business area to get an increased the Chi's smooth environment. This subject issued by improvement Sciences of the "Chi" by [ Harmony of the Chi produce ] to get the peace return back to the environment and that already had about 40 years ago, at America and Europe all over.

Organized panel, Japanese
Chi, Youngim

Cheju National University, Korea

The Tradition and Change of Korea's National Memorial Cemetery(08S)

Today, every major city in the world has cemeteries and monuments to honor heroes of the past including memorial buildings and statues. For example, there are Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, the Tomb of the Unknowns beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Westminster Abbey in London, and National Memorial Cemetery in Korea that was built after the Korean War. Smith, a historian, argues that it is nothing new to mark the dead, and that the rediscovery and reconstruction of history might be possible but its creation never happens. According to such modernist as Hobsbawm and Anderson, however, the Tomb of the Unknowns and monuments were created in modern times. The objective of this presentation is to shed light on the creation of new things and the continuity between Korea's National Memorial Cemetery and the past, based on the discussion above.

Organized panel, Japanese