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Journal articles on the topic 'Christian converts from Shinto'
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1
Oberg, Andrew. "The Sacred Disguised: An Instance of the Double Use of Space by Japan’s Hidden Christians." Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 13, no. 2 (August 1, 2021): 214–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/ress-2021-0022.
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Abstract Christianity arrived on the island of Shikoku, Japan, from the neighboring island of Kyushu in the mid-sixteenth century, an event commemorated by a signboard and gravesite where some of the early converts to the faith were buried. The sancti"ed area exhibits what might be expected of Hidden Christian spatiality: a quasi-Buddhist nature, syncretistic Shinto elements, and o#ertory tools; each of which would be quite out of place in any other “Christian” context. What may the sacrality of this ground have entailed? What signi"cance did its objects contain for those who created them and visited them? Moreover, how “ecumenical” could worship there have been if one half (the Christian) was for political reasons forcibly kept hidden while the other half (Buddhist/Shinto) was open? These are the questions we pursue, although our conclusions can perhaps do no more than indicate a direction.
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Mugambi, J. N. K. "Missionary Presence in Interreligious Encounters and Relationships." Studies in World Christianity 19, no. 2 (August 2013): 162–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/swc.2013.0050.
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This paper explores the notion of personal missionary presence as the determining factor in interreligious encounters and relationships. The attitude and conduct of a missionary in relationship with potential and actual converts greatly influences their response to that missionary's teachings. In turn, the converts’ overall understanding (or misunderstanding) of the missionary's faith is shaped by the conduct of the missionary. To illustrate this proposition, the article discusses the vocation of Max Warren (1904–77), one of the most influential British missiologists of the twentieth century. Warren, a son of British missionaries, was brought up for the first eight years of his life in India, where his parents lived in the service of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). He studied at Cambridge University and later served as a missionary under the CMS in Nigeria (1927–8). After many years as Vicar in Winchester and Cambridge, he was appointed General Secretary of the CMS (1942–63). These two decades were a period of great transition when the British Empire was dismantled, with former colonies and protectorates becoming sovereign nations. The Church of England was closely linked with the British Empire, and it was difficult for British missionaries to distance themselves from it. Warren struggled with the challenge of proclaiming the Christian faith while keeping a ‘critical distance’ from the Empire he served. He initiated the ‘Christian Presence’ series of books published by the SCM Press between 1959 and 1966, focusing on African Religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Secularism and Shinto. The books were authored by Europeans and intended for European readership. This paper concludes that effective dialogue across religious and cultural traditions is possible only when the parties involved have mutual respect and reciprocal treatment between each other. Such conditions have not prevailed, owing to Western missionary patronage and condescension towards peoples of other faiths and cultures.
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Daniels, David D. "Future of North American Pentecostalism." Pneuma 42, no. 3-4 (December 9, 2020): 395–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700747-bja10024.
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Abstract This essay proposes first to chart the future of the pentecostal-charismatic movement in North America in terms of demographers’ projection of the movement’s numerical growth and other factors. Demographic growth is related to the continual arrival, in the near future, of pentecostal-charismatic Christians, other Christians, and potential converts to North America by way of diasporas mostly associated with the Global South. Second, within North America, these diasporas will continue to form transnational pentecostal-charismatic denominations with their international headquarters located in a country of the Global South. Related to these diasporas will be the further development of multiracial denominations led by American and Canadian citizens in North America. Third, the presence of transnational and multiracial denominations could prompt a reconfiguration of the movement, reshaping the religious infrastructure, racial politics, and post-secular engagement of the pentecostal-charismatic movement in North America. These demographic shifts offer the movement an opportunity to re-engage racial politics away from White supremacy with a critical use of the Racial Reconciliation Manifesto of the 1990s. Such a re-engagement could offer a sector within the pentecostal-charismatic movement a way to exit its alliance with the Christian Right, to participate with pentecostal-charismatic Christians of color in reconstituting the movement on the basis of the gospel rather than race, and to partner with secularists in generating post-secular sensibilities animated by post-racist practices that cultivate amicable civic relationships.
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Ryu, Dae Young. "Horace H. Underwood and the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea." Theology Today 79, no. 2 (June 17, 2022): 184–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00405736221091919.
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For the western missionaries the Shinto shrine rites controversy in colonial Korea was a theological crucible. As the Japanese government began forcing mission schools to attend the Shinto shrine ceremonies, American missionaries from the Presbyterian Church in the USA were divided between “fundamentalists” and “liberals” fighting a fierce theological battle over the nature of and participation in the Shinto shrine rites. Horace H. Underwood, President of Chosen Christian College in Seoul, was a leader of the “liberal minority” party. The “fundamentalist majority” held that the Shinto shrine ceremonies were religious acts and hence bowing during a Shinto ceremony violated the First Commandment. Underwood was uncomfortable with many religious elements in the Shinto rituals, but nevertheless believed that mere attendance and a bow did not constitute either participation in the ritual or worship of the enshrined beings. He thought that the conservative leaders were dictating other people's conscience.
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Yisraeli, Yosi. "From Christian Polemic to a Jewish-Converso Dialogue." Medieval Encounters 24, no. 1-3 (May 29, 2018): 160–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340020.
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Abstract This article presents a new reading of the polemical strategies and arguments embodied in the “anti-Jewish” tractate by the converted bishop of Burgos, Pablo de Santa María (c.1352–1435), the Scrutinium scripturarum (c.1432). It suggests the Scrutinium reflected a unique polemical dynamic that emerged between converts and Jews following the mass conversions of 1391 and the early fifteenth century, regarding the spiritual assimilation of converts to their new faith. Grappling with the new challenges faced by converts, the Scrutinium articulated a Christian approach toward rabbinic traditions and Jewish skepticism that differed dramatically from the scholastic–polemical traditions that were employed at the disputation of Tortosa. Its introduction of rabbinic esotericism provided its Latin-reading audience new historical and theological grounds for the integration of rabbinic authority within Christian scholarship and history. In doing so, it embodied what could be considered a distinct “converso voice,” which challenged the customary religious boundaries between Judaism and Christianity.
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Afrianti, Muflikhatun. "DEWI IZANAMI DAN DEWA IZANAGI DALAM AGAMA SHINTO JEPANG (STUDI SEMIOTIK DALAM FILM NORAGAMI ARAGOTO)." RELIGI JURNAL STUDI AGAMA-AGAMA 14, no. 2 (January 7, 2019): 169. http://dx.doi.org/10.14421/rejusta.2018.1402-02.
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This study examines the mythology of Izanami Goddess and Izanagi God in Japanese Shinto religion and representations of Izanami Goddess and Izanagi God in the film Noragami Aragoto Adachitoka’s creation directed by Kotaro Tamura. This study is important because the story of Izanami Goddess and Izanagi God has never been adopted in modern scientific literature even though it has been listed in several anime in Japan. The research data was collected through documentation on the Kojiki and Nihonsoki books as well as capturing scenes of Noragami Aragoto films. Then analyzed using Christian Metz's language cinematography theory and Rudolf Otto's sacred theory. The results showed that firstly, based on the phenomenological perspective and sacrity from Rudolf Otto, Izanami Goddess and Izanagi God in Japanese Shinto mythology were the ancestors of the Mother and Father of the Gods and divine beings and played an active role in the creation of islands in Japan along with its contents. Secondly, in the Noragami Aragoto film, the perspective of cinematographic language Christian Metz, Izanami Goddess and Izanagi God are represented as mysteries of Father and Mother of Ebisu God (Hiruko) and Yaboku God (Awashima or Aha) with backgrounds that are very different from each other.Key Words: mythology, Shinto, Izanami, Izanagi, cinematographic language, and sacred.
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Fenton, Paul B. "From Forced Conversion to Marranism." European Judaism 52, no. 2 (September 1, 2019): 31–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ej.2019.520204.
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This article traces the history of the forced conversion of Jews to Islam in al-Andalus and Morocco from the Middle Ages to modern times. An account is given of the various discriminative measures and even persecution to which Jewish converts were exposed. Indeed, even though they became with time sincere and learned Muslims, just as the Marranos in Christian Spain, the sincerity of their conversion was doubted and they were constantly accused of the negative traits attributed to the Jews. The article also discusses a recently discovered defence of the New Muslims authored by an Islamic scholar of Jewish origin which throws new light on the fate of these converts.
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Shankar, Shobana. "Race, Ethnicity, and Assimilation." Social Sciences and Missions 29, no. 1-2 (2016): 37–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18748945-02901022.
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This article traces the influences of American anthropology and racial discourse on Christian missions and indigenous converts in British Northern Nigeria from the 1920s. While colonial ethnological studies of religious and racial difference had represented non-Muslim Northern Nigerians as inherently different from the Muslim Hausa and Fulani peoples, the American missionary Albert Helser, a student of Franz Boas, applied American theories and practices of racial assimilation to Christian evangelism to renegotiate interreligious and interethnic relations in Northern Nigeria. Helser successfully convinced the British colonial authorities to allow greater mobility and influence of “pagan” converts in Muslim areas, thus fostering more regular and more complicated Christian-Muslim interactions. For their part, Christian Northern Nigerians developed the identity of being modernizers, developed from their narratives of uplift from historical enslavement and oppression at the hands of Muslims. Using new sources, this article shows that a region long assumed to be frozen and reactionary experienced changes similar to those occurring in other parts of Africa. Building on recent studies of religion, empire, and the politics of knowledge, it shows that cultural studies did not remain academic or a matter of colonial knowledge. Northern Nigerians’ religious identity shaped their desire for cultural autonomy and their transformation from converts into missionaries themselves.
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Häde, Wolfgang. "Strengthening the Identity of Converts from Islam in the Face of Verbal Assaults: A Study with the Background of Turkish Society." Mission Studies 34, no. 3 (October 9, 2017): 392–408. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341525.
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Abstract The study focusses on converts from Islam to the Christian faith in Turkey. Converts are confronted with special challenges. Based on Islamic theology and Turkish nationalism most Turks cannot think of positive reasons to choose Christianity. So verbal assaults with social consequences like ostracism, prejudice, suspicion, and very low esteem are very common. The First Letter of Peter provides advice for strengthening new Christians by defining their identity as chosen und loved people of God. Personal caring for converts from Islam is crucial to provide a new “home” in assuring them of their new identity. They have to learn to evaluate accusations honestly, and from a faith-based position, and to integrate their new faith with their old environment. In the context of modern Turkey a fresh look at history can be meaningful: There were Turkish Christians before Islam, and there are still Christian Turkish people today. More important however is a genuine spiritual approach that understands verbal assaults within the framework of God’s history with his people. Converts should find their identity “in Christ”. At the same time, being in Christ must become practical in finding a new family in the local church and seeing themselves as part of the worldwide multinational body of Christ.
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Fisher, Benjamin. "From Boxes and Cabinets to the Bibliotheca: Building the Jewish Library of the Ex-Conversos in Amsterdam, 1620–1665." European Journal of Jewish Studies 13, no. 1 (February 1, 2019): 43–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-11321063.
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Abstract In the early seventeenth century, members of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community assembled a significant collection of Jewish—and especially Sephardi—literature that served as a crucial resource for scholars, religious leaders, and students. This article explores Jewish and Christian models that may have shaped the project of book collecting; it traces the changing perception of book collecting in the community; and it identifies shifts in the cultural profile of the texts being collected. The arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants fleeing war in eastern Europe spurred the collection of new texts, and the blending of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish cultures.
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Tan, Kang-San. "Dual Belonging: A Missiological Critique and Appreciation from an Asian Evangelical Perspective." Mission Studies 27, no. 1 (2010): 24–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157338310x497973.
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AbstractMulti-religious belonging is a phenomenon of individuals who identify themselves as followers of more than one religious tradition. People of faiths may find themselves in dual or multi-religious backgrounds due to inter-religious marriages of parents, exposures to multi-religious traditions or conversions to another faith. In Asia, there is a growing phenomenon of insider movements or devotees of Jesus from other religious traditions such as Islam and Hinduism. Previously, Christian theology has tended to treat non-Christian religions as tight and separate religious systems. Such a treatment is increasingly problematic as it does not reflect the multi-religious realities in Asia where influences and cross fertilization of religious beliefs are daily faith experiences. In particular, there is a need to take into account the experiences and struggles of Christian converts from Asian religions, namely, the converts’ own relationship with their previous faiths.The paper seeks to explore the notion of multi-religious belonging and evaluate whether it is theologically possible for a Christian to follow Christ while retaining some form of identification with one’s previous religion such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Chinese religions. Instead of a total rejection of past faiths, is it possible for a Christian, without falling into syncretism, to belong to more than one religious tradition?Firstly, the paper will evaluate three models of multi-religious belonging. Secondly, after discussing some methodological considerations, we will explore whether dual belonging is syncretistic. Finally, we hope to suggest a critical and missiological appreciation of dual belonging.
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Cockerill, Gareth Lee. "To the Hebrews/To the Muslims: Islamic Pilgrimage as a Key to Interpretation." Missiology: An International Review 22, no. 3 (July 1994): 347–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969402200304.
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Hebrews has a message appropriate for converts from Islam which can be best communicated to them through the idea of religious pilgrimage. The message is appropriate because Muslim converts face pressure to deny their faith similar to the pressure felt by the recipients of Hebrews. Both groups share many religious ideas. The prominence of the hajj in Islam and the use of the pilgrimage motif as a description of the Christian life in Hebrews form a communication bridge. The hajj can be used to explain Hebrews' description of the Christian life and the various rituals which constitute the hajj can help explain the Christology which supports the description.
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Hsia, R. Po-chia. "Elisheva Carlebach. Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. xii, 324 pp." AJS Review 29, no. 2 (November 2005): 388–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0364009405350173.
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Unlike the Sephardim, who accepted the concept of taqiyya and the practice of marranism to cope with forced conversions under Islam, the Ashkenazim, especially the Jewish communities of Germanophone Central Europe, developed an uncompromising rejection of Christian baptism. Instead of marranism and deception under Islam, the Ashkenazim, in the persecutions of the Crusades and after, developed a strong sense of martyrdom and detested baptism, whether forced or voluntary, as ritual and spiritual defilement and pollution. The small number of Jewish converts to Christianity were not so much sinners but apostates (meshummadim or the vertilgten). Given this Ashkenazi tradition, it is not surprising that converts were marginalized in Jewish historiography and scholarship. Nevertheless, as Carlebach argues persuasively in this book, they played a significant role in Jewish–Christian relations in early modern Germany; and given the fact that conversions rose rapidly in the late eighteenth century, it is all the more important to understand the prehistory of Jewish conversion and integration in Germany after Emancipation.
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Forey, A. J. "Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries)." Traditio 68 (2013): 153–231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0362152900001653.
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The early expansion of Islam led in time to widespread conversions of Christians in conquered territories. In the later eleventh century, however, western Christendom was in turn launching offensives against Islam on several fronts. Territorial gains were made in various Mediterranean regions and, although by the end of the thirteenth century the Holy Land had been lost again, Sicily remained in Christian hands, and in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Iberian peninsula only Granada remained under Muslim control: the whole peninsula was under Christian rule before the end of the fifteenth century. This expansion was accompanied, especially in the thirteenth century, by attempts to convert Muslims and other non-Christians. Yet in the period from the late eleventh until the later fifteenth century some western Christians converted to Islam. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the situations that prompted the adoption of Islam, and the reasons for such conversions, although the evidence is usually insufficient to indicate exactly why a particular Christian became a Muslim: the preconceived ideas voiced in western sources about forced conversions can be misleading and, although a crude distinction might be made between conversions from conviction and those based on worldly considerations, motives did not necessarily always fit neatly into just one of these two categories. But obviously not all converts would have had an equal understanding of the nature of Islamic beliefs and practices. The response of western ecclesiastical and secular authorities to renegades will also be considered. Further conversions of Christian peoples who had already for centuries been living under Muslim rule will not be examined, but only the adoption of Islam by those whose origins lay in western Christian countries or who were normally resident in these, and by westerners whose lands were newly conquered by Muslim powers after the eleventh century; and the focus will be mainly, though not exclusively, on the crusader states and the Iberian peninsula.
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Gonçalves, Ana Teresa Marques. "The notion of true faith in the poetic work of Prudentius: an analysis of the poem Apotheosis." Heródoto: Revista do Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre a Antiguidade Clássica e suas Conexões Afro-asiáticas 2, no. 2 (March 23, 2018): 446–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.34024/herodoto.2017.v2.1108.
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At a time when one was seeking to consolidate Christian principles, prompting converts to have their own social practices, differentiated from those exercised by Gentiles, Prudentius offers a work called Apotheosis, in which he advocates a uniqueness of identity for Christians, which would make them identify the errors of beliefs indicated as heretical. Presenting poetically the major departures in faith, the author seeks to provide a notion of true faith in which converts could begin to develop the right paths for those who wished to follow Christianity and obtain an eternal life after death. It is a proselytising work, which sought to provide exercise canons for the Christian faith for those already converted and for Gentiles in the process of conversion.
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Andersen, Peter Birkelund. "Stammereligioner: konversion til kristendom og hinduisme i Indien. Illustreret med eksempler fra santal- og bodostammerne i kolonitiden i Indien." Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, no. 63 (November 20, 2015): 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/rt.v0i63.22550.
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Based on case studies of conversion among the Santals and Bodos in Central India and Assam from 1867 to the 1930s it is argued that the European Christian missionaries to the tribal peoples overstated the importance of baptism and did not fully understand the rationality which the converts addressed their situation through. During the colonial period the converts to Christianity were far more open to mobility between different religious groups and far more elective between local and Christian religious traditions. These facts query the post-colonial resentment of the acts of the Protestant Christian missions during the colonial period as well as the larger approach to the colonial period in the school of ‘post-colonial studies’. In both cases due to the fact that the Indians living during the colonial period are denied the rationality they acted within.
A note has been added post-release in the end of the article on the request of the author.
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Slagle, Amy. "In the Eye of the Beholder: Perspectives on Intermarriage Conversion in Orthodox Christian Parishes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 20, no. 2 (2010): 233–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2010.20.2.233.
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AbstractBased on ethnographic research conducted in Pittsburgh, this article examines the experiences of American-born intermarriage converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. Long characterized as a variety of Christianity fundamentally ethnic in its orientation and insular in its relationships to American religious and cultural mainstreams, Eastern Orthodoxy has attracted increasing numbers of American-born converts over the last thirty years. While the motives and perspectives of more overtly theologically driven conversions have garnered attention, intermarriage conversions are often dismissed as the natural outcomes of entering into marriage and family life. Significantly, intermarriage converts frequently stress their decisions to enter the Orthodox church as autonomously made apart from external influences.By gauging the ways intermarriage converts are depicted in parish life as well as the motives and perspectives they themselves convey in interviews, I argue that the language and assumptions of the American spiritual marketplace profoundly influence Orthodox Christian understandings of family and religion today. Personal choice and individualism rather than the expectations of traditionally ascribed identities have come to be highly valued and valorized means of counting Orthodox identity in the United States. Yet, the prevalence of marketplace values does not diminish the emotional and social impacts of family and community for intermarriage converts. Rather, I observed a general elevation in the importance of both and a frequent substantiation of their roles as the transmitters of shared values among these individuals. Thus, this article provides a case study of how individual and familial concerns further religious choice-making.
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Campbell, Douglas A. "Beyond the Torah at Antioch: The Probable Locus for Paul's Radical Transition." Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 4, no. 2 (2014): 187–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/26371778.
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The fragments of epistolary evidence we possess, principally in Galatians, suggest the perhaps surprising biographical judgment that Paul did not abandon a torah-based ethic for his converts from paganism immediately after his call near Damascus. Moreover, recent “Lutheran” criticisms of this biographical judgment lack cogency. Paul seems to have abandoned a torah-based ethic for his converts from paganism, as Acts 11:26 suggests, only after encountering this radical Christian praxis in Syrian Antioch, and hence after his first visit as an apostle to Jerusalem and two to three years after his call.
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Campbell, Douglas A. "Beyond the Torah at Antioch: The Probable Locus for Paul's Radical Transition." Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 4, no. 2 (2014): 187–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/jstudpaullett.4.2.0187.
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The fragments of epistolary evidence we possess, principally in Galatians, suggest the perhaps surprising biographical judgment that Paul did not abandon a torah-based ethic for his converts from paganism immediately after his call near Damascus. Moreover, recent “Lutheran” criticisms of this biographical judgment lack cogency. Paul seems to have abandoned a torah-based ethic for his converts from paganism, as Acts 11:26 suggests, only after encountering this radical Christian praxis in Syrian Antioch, and hence after his first visit as an apostle to Jerusalem and two to three years after his call.
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Abdusshomad, Alwazir. "Podcast dalam Chanel Youtube Hidayatullah Tv Menjadi Sumber Pengajaran, Sumber Belajar dan sebagai Persiapan Contributor Mualaf." PALAPA 10, no. 2 (November 1, 2022): 304–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.36088/palapa.v10i2.2000.
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This study aims to determine the relevance of Podcasts in the Hidayatullah TV Youtube Chanel as a source of teaching, learning resources and as a preparation for converts to converts. The research used is qualitative with primary sources in the form of 3 (three) Video Podcasts on Chanel Hidayatullah TV, namely (1) Video with the title "The Blind Genius Child of a Hindu Figure Finally Converts to Islam, (2) Video with the Title Lamongan! Her husband is a fanatical Christian, prays because his wife is not tired of praying, and (3) a pastor in Ponorogo, his family converted to Islam”. Secondary sources are in the form of scientific journals, books, Youtube videos, articles, and online news. From the results of the study, it was found that the Hidayatullah Tv Youtube Podcast could be a teaching resource, a learning resource and as a preparation for converts to converts before appearing in the podcast.
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Kanol, Eylem, and Ines Michalowski. "Investigating Attitudes toward Those Who Leave Religion among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Believers." Religions 13, no. 8 (July 26, 2022): 682. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel13080682.
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This study investigates the determinants of negative attitudes toward individuals who leave their religion, i.e., converts and apostates, among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim believers. Drawing on the literature from the study of religion and prejudice, we identify and test the explanatory power of three dimensions of religiosity: religious practice, religious fundamentalism, and religious knowledge, while an alternative hypothesis focuses on the role of education. Our data is derived from a cross-sectional survey fielded among more than 8000 Christian, Jewish, or Muslim respondents in 7 countries. Using ordinary least squares regression analyses, we find that, across the three religious groups, both religious practice and religious fundamentalism are strongly associated with negative feelings toward converts and apostates. Although the effect of religious knowledge is negligible, educational attainment significantly predicts lower levels of unfavorable attitudes. We conclude by discussing some notable differences between the three religious groups and between the countries in which these groups and individuals are located.
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Palombo, Cecilia. "The View from the Monasteries: Taxes, Muslims and Converts in the “Pseudepigrapha” from Middle Egypt." Medieval Encounters 25, no. 4 (September 3, 2019): 297–344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340048.
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Abstract This paper analyzes a group of homilies composed in Middle Egypt around the early ninth century CE by monastic leaders who had to cope with unsettling changes in local politics and society. The corpus deals with issues of taxation, economic distress and conversion to Islam in subtle and indirect ways, showing the inside perspective of Christian leaders on developments on which we are informed primarily from documentary papyri and historical works. It highlights the view of a certain segment of Egyptian Christianity on Islam and ongoing processes of Islamization, adding to the better-known literary sources from the area of Alexandria, and revealing the existence of internal tensions within the monastic world.
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Giostra, Alessandro. "Stanley Jaki: Science and Faith in a Realist Perspective." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 74, no. 1 (March 2022): 59–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.56315/pscf3-22giostra.
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STANLEY JAKI: Science and Faith in a Realist Perspective by Alessandro Giostra. Rome, Italy: IF Press, 2019. 144 pages. Paperback; $24.24. ISBN: 9788867881857. *The subject of this short introduction--Father Stanley L. Jaki (1924–2009), a giant in the world of science and religion--is more important than this book's contents, a collection of conference papers and articles published between 2015 and 2019. *Readers of this journal should recognize Jaki, a Benedictine priest with doctorates in theology and physics, 1975–1976 Gifford lecturer, 1987 Templeton Prize winner, and professor at Seton Hall University, for his prolific, valuable work in the history of the relations between theology and science. He sharply contrasted Christian and non-Christian/scientific cosmologies and unfortunately, often slipped into polemics and apologetics. The title of Stacy Trasanco's 2014 examination of his work, Science Was Born of Christianity, captures Jaki's key thesis. Science in non-Christian cultures was, in Jaki's (in)famous and frequent characterizations, "stillborn" and a "failure" (e.g., see Giostra, pp. 99, 113). Incidentally, Giostra seems unaware that various Protestant scholars shared Jaki's key thesis and arguments. *The Introduction begins with a quotation from Jaki that so-called conflicts between science and religion "must be seen against objective reality, which alone has the power to unmask illusions." Jaki continued, "There may be clashes between science and religion, or rather between some religionists and some scientists, but no irresolvable fundamental conflict" (p. 15). *This raises two other crucial aspects of Jaki's approach: his realist epistemology and his claim that, properly understood, science and Christian theology cannot be in conflict. Why? Because what Jaki opposed was not science itself--which he saw as specific knowledge of the physical world that was quantifiable and mathematically expressible--but ideologies that were attached to science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that is, materialism, naturalism, reductionism, positivism, pantheism, and atheism. *For Jaki, the real problem for Christian approaches to the natural world was the scientism which dismissed theology, especially Catholicism, as superstition, dogmatism, and delusion. Jaki followed the groundbreaking work of Pierre Duhem in arguing that the impetus theory of the fourteenth-century philosopher John Buridan was the first sign of the principle of inertia, the first law of Newtonian physics. One of the foundational shifts in the birth of a new "revolutionary" science in the Christian West was a post-Aristotelian understanding of bodies in motion (both uniform and uniformly accelerating: see chapter three for more details). *The first chapter is a bio- and bibliographical essay by an admiring Antonio Colombo that traces and situates Jaki the historian as a man of both science and faith. Chapter two lays out Jaki's critical realism and theses about the history of science and theology, in contrast to scientisms past and present that claim scientific reason as the sole trustworthy route to legitimate knowledge. The roles played by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the Christology of the pre-existent Logos in Jaki's cosmological thinking are also outlined. *Many readers will be most interested in the third chapter which surveys Jaki's writing about the notorious case of Galileo, condemned by the church in 1633 for defending Copernicus. Jaki detected scientific and theological errors in the positions of both Galileo and the church. For instance, Galileo did not provide proof of the motion of the earth around the sun. Nor did the church understand errors in Aristotelian science. Galileo was right, however, in arguing that the Bible's purpose was not to convey scientific knowledge; while the church's rejection of heliocentric cosmology was correct, given the dearth of convincing evidence for it. *Chapter four is of wider interest than its title, "The Errors of Hegelian Idealism," might suggest. Jaki's belief that only Christian theology could give birth to the exact sciences is reviewed, along with his rejection of conflict and concord models of faith and science. His critiques of Hegelian and Marxist views of the world are thoughtfully discussed. *Jaki was unrelentingly hostile to all types of pantheism, and Plato was the most influential purveyor of that erroneous philosophy. Chapter five outlines Jaki's objections to Platonism, as well as to Plotinus's view of the universe as an emanation from an utterly transcendent One, and to Giordano Bruno's neo-Platonic animism and Hermeticism. *Jaki's interpretation of medieval Islamic cosmologists is the subject of the fifth chapter, in which the Qur'an, Averroes, and Avicenna are examined and found wanting. Monotheism by itself could not lead to science. Incorrect theology blinded those without an understanding of the world as God's creation or of Christ as Word and Savior from seeing scientific truth. This chapter is curious in several respects. On page 98, Giostra equates Christ as the only begotten Son with Jesus as the only "emanation from the Father." Emanationism is a Gnostic, Manichaean, and neo-Platonic concept; it is not, to my knowledge, part of orthodox Catholic Trinitarian discourse. On pages 101–2, the presence of astrology in the Qur'an disqualifies it as an ancestor of modern science. But astrology then was not yet divorced from astronomy. Astrological/astronomical imagery and terminology were integral to ancient cosmologies and apocalypses, including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim ones. Lastly, pages 104–5 feature quotations in untranslated Latin. *Chapter seven is a review of the 2016 edition of Jaki's Science and Creation; this is one more example of content repeated elsewhere in the book. "Benedict XVI and the limits of scientific learning" is the eighth and final chapter. The former pope is presented as a Jaki-like thinker in his views of science and faith. Strangely, Benedict does not cite Jaki; this absense weakens Giostra's case somewhat. *Jaki--whose faith was shaped by the eminent French theologian and historian of medieval thought, Etienne Gilson--was a diehard Roman Catholic, wary of Protestant thought, defender of priestly celibacy and of the ineligibility of women for ordination. On the other hand, his study of both Duhem and Gilson probably sensitized Jaki to ideological claims made by scientists. *As a historian of science, Jaki was meticulous and comprehensive in his research with primary documents. His interpretations of historical texts were as confident and swaggering as his critiques of scientists and scientism were withering. Among Jaki's more interesting and helpful contributions to scholarship are his translations and annotations of such important primary texts as Johann Heinrich Lambert's Cosmological Letters (1976), Immanuel Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1981), and Bruno's The Ash Wednesday Supper (1984). *Personally, I have found much of value in Jaki's The Relevance of Physics (1966); Brain, Mind and Computers (1969); The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox (1969); The Milky Way (1972); Planets and Planetarians (1978); The Road of Science and the Ways to God (1978); Cosmos and Creator (1980); Genesis 1 through the Ages (1998); The Savior of Science (2000); Giordano Bruno: A Martyr of Science? (2000); Galileo Lessons (2001); Questions on Science and Religion (2004); The Mirage of Conflict between Science and Religion (2009); and the second enlarged edition of his 1974 book, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (2016). *Jaki also published studies of figures whose life and work most impressed him personally. These include three books (1984, 1988, 1991) on the Catholic physicist and historian of cosmology, Pierre Duhem, author of the ten-volume Système du Monde, and studies of English converts to Catholicism, John Henry, Cardinal Newman (2001, 2004, 2007) and G. K. Chesterton (1986, new ed., 2001). *Among Jaki's books not mentioned by Giostra but of interest to readers of this journal are The Origin of Science and the Science of its Origin (1979), Angels, Apes, and Men (1988), and Miracles and Physics (2004). For a complete Jaki bibliography, see http://www.sljaki.com/. *No translator is identified in the book under review; my guess is that Giostra, an Italian, was writing in English. Although generally clear and correct, the book contains enough small errors and infelicities to suggest that the services of a professional translator were not used. Not counting blank, title, and contents pages, this book has but 128 pages, including lots of block quotations. *For those unfamiliar with Jaki's work and not too interested in detailed studies in the history and philosophy of science and religion, this introduction is a decent start--and perhaps an end point as well. I strongly encourage curious readers to consult Jaki's own books, including his intellectual autobiography A Mind's Matter (2002). For other scholarly English-language perspectives on his work, see Paul Haffner, Creation and Scientific Creativity: A Study in the Thought of S. L. Jaki (2nd ed., 2009); Science and Orthodoxy [special issue of the Saint Austin Review on Jaki], vol. 14, no. 3 (2014); and Paul Carr and Paul Arveson, eds., Stanley Jaki Foundation International Congress 2015 (2020). *Reviewed by Paul Fayter, a retired pastor and historian of Victorian science and theology, who lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
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Ekechi, Felix K. "The Medical Factor in Christian Conversion in Africa: Observations from Southeastern Nigeria." Missiology: An International Review 21, no. 3 (July 1993): 289–309. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969302100302.
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This article discusses missionary recruitment strategies from the perspective of missionary medical work in southeastern Nigeria. In other words, it examines missionary use of medical services as the bait to catch converts. Furthermore, the essay discusses the link between disease, missionary medicine, and Christian conversion. Attention is given to the role of culture in the conversion process, as well as to the impact of missionary and colonial medical services on African health care systems. The study is based largely on archival mission sources, including Catholic and Protestant archival materials collected from missionary societies in England, France, Rome, and Nigeria. Finally, it looks at the Catholic and Protestant struggle for dominance via the provision of medical services, and the persistence of traditional African health care systems despite missionary and colonial iconoclastic tendencies.
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Rubin, Dominic. "Muslim–Christian Conversion in Modern Russia and the Idea of Russia as a Eurasian Islamo-Christian Space." Journal of Muslims in Europe 8, no. 1 (February 6, 2019): 60–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22117954-12341386.
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Abstract This article examines conversion between Islam and Russian Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia. The author tests the idea that Russia historically constituted an Islamo-Christian Eurasian space, and that this reality has now been revived in the hermeneutic self-perception of government rhetoric as well as in the self-understanding of converts from both religious communities. He concludes that this “hermeneutic space” is real (though not exclusive), and is expressed both in the syncretistic practice of individuals and within communities. However, instead of seeing the Eurasian space as essentialist, the author gives “Eurasianism” a philosophical reconstruction, viewing it as an inter-subjective mental hermeneutic that nonetheless has reality and causality in shaping individual and collective religious identity in Russia today.
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Regev, Eyal. "Early Christianity in Light of New Religious Movements." Numen 63, no. 5-6 (October 14, 2016): 483–510. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341435.
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Comparing early Christian groups with modern new religious movements (nrms) and cults enables us to identify and analyze indicative social and religious attributes that defined the self-identity of the early Christians (as reflected in the letters of Paul, Acts, and the Gospel of John), made them stand out as different, and, ultimately, led to their rejection by outside society.The devotion to Jesus as Christ and the inclusion of Gentiles among these early Christian groups were novel features that, by definition, created a new religious movement rejected by both Jews and Romans. The intense recruitment of converts by early Christians, also a characteristic ofnrms, was seen as a direct threat by their contemporaries. Early Christian groups lacked social separation from mainstream society, strong demands on their members along with sanctions against deviant ones, and systematic organization — all characteristics which are particular to certain cults, such as Scientology in its early years and the Sōka Gakkai. Taken together, these three social features demonstrate that early Christianity was not a segregated sect but, rather, a cult that aimed to penetrate mainstream society, gain legitimacy, and recruit converts.
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Utterback, Kristine T. "“Conversi” Revert: Voluntary and Forced Return to Judaism in the Early Fourteenth Century." Church History 64, no. 1 (March 1995): 16–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3168654.
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Forced to choose between conversion and death, many medieval Jews chose to be baptized as Christians. While not all Jews in Western Europe faced such stark choices, during the fourteenth century pressure increased on the Jewish minority to join the Christian majority. Economic, social, and political barriers to Jews often made conversion a necessity or at least an advantage, exerting a degree of coercion even without brute force. Once baptized these new Christians, called conversi, were required to abandon their Jewish practices entirely. But what kind of life actually awaited these converts? In the abstract, the converts had clear options: they could either remain Christians or return to judaism. Reality would surely reveal a range of possibilities, however, as these conversi tried to live out their conversion or to reject it without running afoul of the authorities. While the dominant Christian culture undoubtedly exerted pressure to convert, Jews did not necessarily sit idly by while their people approached the baptismal font. Some conversi felt contrary pressure to take up Judaism again. In the most extreme cases, conversi who reverted to Judaism faced death as well. This paper examines forces exerted on Jewish converts to Christianity to return to Judaism, using examples from France and northern Spain in the first half of the fourteenth century.
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Doss, M. Christhu. "Indian Christians and The Making of Composite Culture in South India." South Asia Research 38, no. 3 (September 28, 2018): 247–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0262728018798982.
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While North India erupted in rebellion in 1857, South India was experiencing a range of cross-cultural contests between missionary Christianity and local converts, who protested against Indian culture being dismissed as a work of the devil. Converts in the emerging Christian communities, particularly in South India, made efforts to retain their indigenous cultural ethos as part of their lived experience. Early attempts to balance Indian identity with Christian beliefs and practices were later replicated in a second anti-hegemonic movement by claims of Indian Christians for respectful inclusion into the new composite nation of postcolonial India. This article brings out how these two processes of asserting hybridity and equity developed. The initial impact of hegemonising Christianity created a chasm between missionaries and converts, which especially the latter addressed constructively. After 1857, emboldened British hegemonic and missionary activities sparked further divisive identity politics, feeding fresh rebellious ambitions that needed to be pacified to maintain the empire. As more culturally conscious Indian Christians realised that missionary Christianity was antithetical to their lived experiences as part of an emerging Indian nation, they used educational strategies to strengthen the formation of India’s composite culture, so that India’s Christians could now (re)assert their rightful place within the postcolonial nationalist framework, despite contentions from majoritarian forces.
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Matsuda, Kōichirō. "Does Conscience Have to be Free? A Multiple Crossroads of Religious, Political, and Diplomatic Arguments: 1868-1874." Mirai. Estudios Japoneses 3 (July 6, 2019): 35–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/mira.64981.
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This article will focus on the conundrum of building the political legitimacy while institutionalizing religious freedom which the newly established goisshin 御一新 government confronted. Liberation of "evil sects", which not only meant Christianity but also other religious sects such as fujufuse-ha of Nichiren school, was an issue which the Meiji state wanted to dodge. Western states demanded the lifting of the ban on Christianity but Japanese political leaders were vigilant against the idea. Reluctantly the Meiji state lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873 but they had started the institutionalization of Shinto as the state religion in advance. The government officials viewed that Christian faith and churches in Western countries were devised to prevent public mind from dissolution. They strived to establish an alternative version of religious authority in Japan instead of introducing the principle of conscientious freedom. However, on the other hand, a new generation of intellectuals raised the protection of the individual right of religious freedom as an urgent issue.
I will analyze the diplomatic negotiations between the Western countries and the Meiji government officials, reports on the Western religious and educational systems in the Iwakura Mission records, voices of Buddhist and Shinto groups, and publications by leading intellectuals such as Nakamura Masao and Katō Hiroyuki so as to build a picture of how the concept of conscientious liberty was treated in such entangled contexts.
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Chan, Chung-Yan Joyce. "Commands from Heaven: Matteo Ricci's Christianity in the Eyes of Míng Confucian Officials." Missiology: An International Review 31, no. 3 (July 2003): 269–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182960303100302.
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Much scholarship on Father Matteo Ricci has been focused on the Jesuit missiological approach of accommodation. This essay investigates how the Chinese scholar officials in the Ming Dynasty perceived Ricci's presentation of the Christianity. The first section of the article deals with the sociopolitical context of Ricci's work. The second section discusses Ricci's presentation of the Christian message. Finally, the third section—through the writings of two key Chinese converts, Xú Guangqi and Yáng Tíngyún—looks at why Christianity won over Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism) as the religion of choice for the Confucian scholars.
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Muhamad Dika Pransah, Aam Nur Komariah, Agus Suherman, and Imam Tabroni. "Religious Guidance for Muallaf in Rawa Mekar Village." Indonesian Journal of Applied and Industrial Sciences (ESA) 1, no. 1 (January 13, 2023): 15–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.55927/esa.v1i1.2571.
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Religious conversion or so-called religious conversion sometimes often occurs in the layers of society arising from dissatisfaction with the existing reality so that they move from the old religion to the new religion. A person who has just embraced Islam or converts to Islam generally experiences several problems and it requires guidance from the community so that there is a sense of calm and comfort when converts mingle in society. With good guidance, it is hoped that it can increase faith and be true in carrying out Islamic law according to the terms and pillars that apply. This study aims to see the development of converts in exploring Islamic teachings and provide appropriate guidance according to the psychology of the object of research. The method we use in this study is a descriptive qualitative method by interviewing informants, observing the environment where he lives, and collecting documentation when the object of the research was still a Protestant Christian and when he converted to Islam. We took a sample of one of the two who were converts to Islam. The result we got was that the object we studied became converts to Islam because there was no coercion but because of a strong impulse because they were touched by hearing the call to prayer and having an Islamic environment.
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Chandra Sekhar, Chakali. "In Search of a Touchable Body: Christian Mission and Dalit Conversions." Religions 10, no. 12 (November 21, 2019): 644. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10120644.
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This paper significantly wishes to unpack the social and cultural impact of the mass religious conversion movements in Rayalaseema society with specific reference to Dalits during the period 1850 to 1880. This paper will use the archival material such as missionary records, magazines, pamphlets, and books written by missionaries; further, it will also utilize oral interviews collected from the field. The mass conversion movements established a relationship between Dalits and missionaries and brought them together. In their efforts to create a new Christian community of Dalit converts, missionaries had interacted with Dalits, shared meal with them, stayed with them and transformed forbidden and “polluted” ghettos into social spaces. The present paper argues that the practices of the missionaries were liberating and humanizing for Dalits. It will examine how these practices led to unintended consequences. It needs to be remembered that the missionaries’ aim was not to abolish caste but to develop Christianity. How did the missionaries contribute to social interaction and build a spirit of solidarity among the Dalit converts? Based on specific situations, incidents, and examples recorded in the missionary archives and oral interviews, the article observes that community conversion movements destabilized the caste structure and brought significant changes in the social life of Dalits in colonial Rayalaseema.
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Slagle, Amy A. "A View from the Pew: Lay Orthodox Christian Perspectives on American Religious Diversity*." Russian History 40, no. 2 (2013): 201–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763316-04002004.
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This study offers an analysis of how Orthodox Christians in America today grapple on a daily basis with the pluralism of the American religious landscape. Based on interviews conducted with converts and “cradle Orthodox” in the Greek, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Russian, and American (Orthodox Church in America) Churches, Slagle constructs an image of the imagined and actual worldviews of Orthodox practitioners in Southwest Pennsylvania and Northern Ohio—a region of the US with dense and well-establish Orthodox communities. Slagle finds a range of exclusivist and inclusivist attitudes among the Orthodox she interviewed—some practitioners seeing in Orthodoxy the lone true faith, while others situating the church in a larger, pluralistic environment. This study offers a close-up view of how Orthodox Americans view themselves and their larger religious contexts, and how the Church’s teachings, culture, liturgical life, and history inform and shape these widely varying views.
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Masfa, Gabriel. "Tracking the Statistical Center of Global Seventh-day Adventism, from 1863 to the Present." International Bulletin of Mission Research 46, no. 4 (August 18, 2022): 574–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23969393221102418.
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The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Christian denomination with roots in the Millerites’ experience in North America in the nineteenth century. From its inception until the 1960s, Seventh-day Adventism was concentrated in North America, with growing but scant membership in other parts of the world. Between the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1990s, however, there were dramatic and unprecedented changes in the trajectory of Seventh-day Adventism. Thousands of converts were coming from the Global South: Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This article briefly describes the movement of the statistical center of global Adventism from 1863 to the present.
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Anderson, Christian J. "Beyond Interiority in Christian Conversion: Proximity to Jesus as Patron among Muslim-background “Isai” in Bangladesh." Exchange 51, no. 1 (June 8, 2022): 22–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1572543x-20221617.
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Abstract Though conversion studies have attempted to move beyond models that “privilege interior states and subjectivities” (Rambo and Farhadian 2014), this article argues, first, that such a step forward has proved difficult. Interiority persists within frequent divisions of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in Christian conversion or is only de-emphasized at the cost of marginalizing converts’ theological or spiritual convictions. Retaining an internal-external paradigm is especially problematic in non-western contexts, where converts may have quite differently-ordered configurations of self-understanding. Second, the article demonstrates the potential of suspending this duality, through an analysis of existing studies of Muslim-background “Isai” groups in Bangladesh. Isai conversion, involving a pivot from Muhammad to Jesus, is interpreted within a patron-client scheme in which intimacy is more fundamental than interiority, indicating that devotional “proximity” might be a way to refer to the transformative conversion experience without reverting to an interior-exterior dichotomy.
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REDDING, SEAN. "WOMEN AS DIVINERS AND AS CHRISTIAN CONVERTS IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA, c. 1880–1963." Journal of African History 57, no. 3 (November 2016): 367–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853716000086.
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AbstractThis article argues that rural South African women's importance as spiritual actors in the period from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries stemmed from their ability to embrace hybrid spiritual identities that corresponded closely to the lived reality of African rural life, and that by embracing those identities, women expanded their roles as social healers. Professing a belief in Christianity did not prevent individuals from practicing as diviners, nor did it prevent Christians from consulting diviners to determine the causes of death or misfortune. Similarly, young women who converted to Christianity often maintained close ties to non-Christian families and bridged spiritual lives on the mission stations with life in their families. Over this time period, women became cultural mediators who borrowed, adopted, and combined spiritual beliefs to provide more complete answers to problems faced by rural African families in South Africa.
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Taiwo, Rotimi. "The functions of English in Nigeria from the earliest times to the present day." English Today 25, no. 2 (May 26, 2009): 3–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078409000121.
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ABSTRACTThe use of the English language in Nigeria dates back to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century when British merchants and Christian missionaries settled in the coastal towns called Badagry, near Lagos in the present day South Western Nigeria and Calabar, a town in the present day South Eastern Nigeria. The merchants initially traded in slaves until the slave trade was abolished in 1807, at which time freed slaves of Nigerian origin returned to the country. Many of them, who had been exposed to Western education and Christianity, later served as translators or interpreters for the Christian missionaries. The primary aim of the Christian mission was not to make their converts speak English; rather, it was to make them literate enough to read the bible in their indigenous languages. This must be the reason why Samuel Ajayi Crowder translated the English bible into Yoruba, the major language in South Western Nigeria.With the attainment of independence, English gradually grew to become the major medium for inter-ethnic communication. Like most African nations, the country, after independence, had to grapple with multi-ethnicity and acute multilingualism. In this article, we shall examine the expansion in the functions of English during the post-colonial period.
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Thorbjørnsrud, Berit Synøve. "Who is a convert? New members of the Orthodox Church in Norway." Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 51, no. 1 (June 8, 2015): 71–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.33356/temenos.49447.
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Due to its recent major revival in the post-Soviet period, the Orthodox Church can today be described as a church of new believers. While this seems to be acknowledged at a general level, there is a strong tendency to avoid speaking of new members with an Eastern European background as ‘converts’. Although they have often gone through much greater transformations – from atheism to Orthodoxy – than those with a Western background, who generally seem to have a Christian past, the term convert is generally reserved for the Westerners. ‘It is not our custom to call them converts’, one of the priests in Norway commented. Conversion stories which gain international publicity are generally about Westerners, and even the few academic studies on converts to Orthodoxy have focused solely on those with a Western background.Based on fieldwork among the Orthodox in Norway, I will compare newcomers with a Western background with those with an Eastern European background, and I will argue that convert as an analytical concept may be equally useful in relation to members of both groups. This concept covers, however, a wide range of transformations, and it is thus important to identify precisely what kinds of converts there are among the many new Orthodox believers.
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Warner, Rick. ""Ambivalent Conversions" in Nayarit: Shifting Views of Idolatry." Journal of Early Modern History 6, no. 2 (2002): 168–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006502x00103.
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AbstractThe Jesuit and Franciscan mission periods in New Spain's western province of Nayarit claimed numerous converts to Christianity, principally Cora Indians. Despite the efforts of missionaries and presidial soldiers, the indigenous residents of this rugged mountainous region persisted in clandestine non-Christian religious rituals. The extirpation of this "idolatry" was uneven, and the Coras emerged from the nineteenth century with a uniquely forged ceremonial tradition that fuses Catholic and indigenous practice and belief.
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Okello, Belindah Aluoch, and Dorothy Nyakwaka. "Missionaries’ Rivalry in Kenya and the Establishment of St. Mary’s School Yala." African and Asian Studies 15, no. 4 (December 21, 2016): 372–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15692108-12341082.
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This article discusses the establishment of St. Mary School Yala, a school begun by the Mill Hill Missionaries as an incentive to attract potential African converts to Catholicism. The school was the outcome of fierce rivalry among missionary groups to spread their denominational faith. Provision of formal education became a popular method of enticing potential converts when colonialism took root as Africans then began flocking mission stations in search of this education to survive the colonial economy. Data for this study was collected from the Kenya National Archive, oral interviews, and from published works on missionary activity in their early years of settlement in Kenya. The study has applied Christian Apologetics theory in analysing the missionaries’ conflict which initiated the establishment of St. Mary’s School; and Dahrendorf’s Theory of Social Conflict in examining conflicts between missionaries, Africans and the colonial state which steered the later development of St. Mary’s School.
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MONCHO PASCUAL, Josep. "La filosofía de la coacción en el medievo." Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval 6 (October 1, 1999): 259. http://dx.doi.org/10.21071/refime.v6i.9673.
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Christian philosophical tradition, medieval in a large sense, recieves from greek philosophy a positive valuation of coaction as auxiliary instrument of morality. Saint Augustine reinforces it by his reference to "libido" and to original sin. Saint Thomas consideres "providential" the whole punitive dimension of state. Marsilius of Padova converts coaction into the essence of law. Suarez concieves law as (non democratical) "imposition" of superior's will. The two authors seem defenseless against the modern phenomenon of "power centralization".
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ELAZAR, GIDEON. "Nominalism: Negotiating ethnicity and Christian identity in contemporary Yunnan." Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 05 (May 31, 2019): 1415–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x17000610.
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AbstractThis article deals with the convergence of ethnicity and faith in the context of Christian Yunnan. Contemporary Evangelical missionaries working in Yunnan encourage the preservation of ethnic markers while attempting to create a form of ‘pristine faith’: a religiosity that severely limits the role of ethnicity in the construction of identity, emphasizing instead individualism and globalism—processes that may be beneficial for the Chinese state. My discussion here revolves around the distinction made by many Evangelical Christians in China between ‘true’ faith, based on an individual experience of salvation and rebirth, and ‘nominal’ faith, a traditional understanding of religion as an identity that is acquired at birth. Thus, minority Christians whose ancestors converted en masse prior to the 1949 revolution and retain a distinctly ethnic form of religiosity are often labelled ‘nominal’ by contemporary missionaries and converts. In contrast, the latter represent a faith that stems from personal experience and belongs to a global and transnational community, transcending the narrow limits of ethnic culture.
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Motzki, Harald. "The Role of Non-Arab Converts in the Development of Early Islamic Law." Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 293–317. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1568519991223793.
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AbstractWestern scholarship has attached considerable importance to the role played by scholars of non-Arab descent in the formative period of Islamic law and jurisprudence. This view can be challenged. In a sample taken from a biographical collection of important legal scholars compiled in the fifth/eleventh century, "true" Arabs constituted the majority; three quarters of the non-Arab scholars had an eastern background and came from the regions of the former Sassanian empire; and only a few scholars had clearly Christian or Jewish roots. This result lends no support to the assumption that jurists of non-Arab descent brought solutions from their natal legal systems — Roman, Roman provincial and Jewish law — to early Islamic law.
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Siddiqui, Ataullah. "Portrayal of Christianity and Use of Christian Sources in the Tafsir-i Sanai of Sanaullah Amritsari (d. 1948)." International Journal of Asian Christianity 2, no. 1 (March 29, 2019): 89–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/25424246-00201006.
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This article explores Christian-Muslim relations during the colonial period, with special reference to Sanaullah Amritsari. It highlights how his Quranic exegesis responded to the multi-dimensional challenges of the time with special reference to Christianity. It points out how the Charter Act 1813 opened up India to Christian missionaries, and suggests that the polemical responses provided by Amritsari were influenced by successive aggressive missions of the time. The methods deployed to respond to Islam, particularly by converts from Islam, also left a particular impact on the two communities. Amritsari responds to them in his tafsir but also via other publications. In this exploratory article, some of the issues discussed through such publications are also included as an example of these polemics.
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Rubeiz, Imad. "Protestant Missionaries Perspectives on the Arab Orthodox and Orthodoxy at the Turn of the 20th Century." Chronos 40 (January 6, 2020): 55–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.31377/chr.v40i.638.
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Some centuries after the onset of European missionaries to the East and their competition over winning converts, Protestants started their missionary work at the turn of the nineteenth century in an East which was then under the Ottoman Rule. From Aleppo to Palestine, they eventually promulgated across the entire Near and Middle East, with the purpose of instilling in the population there — both Muslim and Christian — what they believed to be the “true” Christian faith. In fact, their claim revolved around their firm conviction that both Catholics and Orthodox have gone astray in their basic elements of faith, which in turn have always dissuaded the Moslems to accept Christianity as the true religion. From primary protestant sources, this paper will focus on their perspective regarding the “degrading” Orthodox faith, and their “shallow” clerics and “obsolete” established traditions.
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SELAND, TORREY. "πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος: Proselyte Characterizations in 1 Peter?" Bulletin for Biblical Research 11, no. 2 (January 1, 2001): 239–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/26422273.
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Abstract In some diaspora Jewish works, the terms πάροικος and παρεπίδμος belong to the semantic field of "proselyte/proselytism." In 1 Peter, however, they do not indicate that the recipients of the letter are considered former proselytes. The terms function rather as metaphors drawn from the social world of proselytes (source domain), characterizing the social situation of the Petrine Christians (target domain), especially throwing light on the social estrangement of the Christian converts in the Greco-Roman societies of Asia Minor as understood by the author.
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SELAND, TORREY. "πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος: Proselyte Characterizations in 1 Peter?" Bulletin for Biblical Research 11, no. 2 (January 1, 2001): 239–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/26422273.
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Abstract In some diaspora Jewish works, the terms πάροικος and παρεπίδμος belong to the semantic field of "proselyte/proselytism." In 1 Peter, however, they do not indicate that the recipients of the letter are considered former proselytes. The terms function rather as metaphors drawn from the social world of proselytes (source domain), characterizing the social situation of the Petrine Christians (target domain), especially throwing light on the social estrangement of the Christian converts in the Greco-Roman societies of Asia Minor as understood by the author.
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Sharma, Bal Krishna. "Theses from OCMS: Funerary Rites in Nepal: Cremation, Burial and Christian Identity." Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 35, no. 3 (July 2018): 192–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265378818808944.
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This study explores and analyses funerary rite struggles in a nation where Christianity is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and many families have Christian and Hindu, Buddhist and Traditionalist ( kiranti) members, who go through traumatic experiences at the death of their family members. The context of mixed affiliation raises questions of social, psychological and religious identity for Christian converts, which are particularly acute after a death in their family. Using empirical research, this thesis focuses on the question of adaptation and identity in relation to church life, within the familial and social sphere of individual Christians and within the wider society in which they live, particularly with reference to death and disposal. This research has used an applied theology approach to explore and analyse the findings in order to address the issue of funerary rites with which the Nepalese church is struggling. For the need of adaptation, this study seeks to understand the funerary rites of the host culture alongside Jewish-Christian characteristics of adaptation, especially in terms of the Nepalese Evangelical Christian context. It also poses the challenge of finding an identity in a wider cultural and societal milieu. The case studies and interviews have portrayed tripartite relationships and tensions between an individual, family and church or community at the death in a ‘split’ family where a Christian convert’s loyalty to the deceased and the family is tested. Participation and non-participation in the last rites create problems for both the church and the family, and some solution needs to be found. The study has discovered that adaptation of the technique of the funerary rites, rather than of their content, could ease this tension in a ‘split’ family, and enhance a family and community’s reconciliation and solidarity. The mode of disposal, whether burial or cremation, could be used and a theology of cremation be developed in order to provide a theological framework.
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Olsen, William C. "The Empire Strikes Back: Colonial “Discipline” and the Creation of Civil Society in Asante, 1906–1940." History in Africa 30 (2003): 223–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0361541300003235.
Full textAbstract:
During the spring of 1927 a dialog was initiated through correspondence with the District Commissioner of Asante regarding the existence of a witch-finding shrine near the town of Mampong. As in most Asante communities, the people of Mampong had become both business patrons and seekers of the medicines offered through dozens of witch-finding movements that had proliferated throughout the Gold Coast Colony since at least late in the nineteenth century. Many in the British administration, and virtually all the Christian clergy, saw the practice of witch-finding and the presence of the shrines in towns and villages where the churches retained converts as icons of unenlightened behavior and contrary to Christian morals. Since some converts were also patrons of the witch-finding priests, the shrines were also seen as threats to the stability and retention of Christian folds. Europeans brought to Africa a multitude of social practices and ideologies of the person which they tried to impose through various forms of taboo, law, health administration, technology, and education. (Beidelman 1982: Comaroff/Comaroff 1997: Conklin 1997) Yet in the Gold Coast Colony after the annexation of Asante in 1896, no feature of the European colonial presence was more contested than the legal suppression of witch-finding shrines.The opposing sides to the debate had witnessed the same events in Mampong, but regarded the disciplinary measures taken by the colonial officials from extremely contrary points of view. Acting under the direction of the District Commissioner, local British officials were on the lookout for new witch-finding shrines, identified by the British in the archival literature with the European term of “fetish.”
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O’Banion, Patrick J. "“They will know our hearts”: Practicing the Art of Dissimulation on the Islamic Periphery." Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 2 (February 19, 2016): 193–217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342497.
Full textAbstract:
From the early sixteenth century, religious and legal authorities provided Spanish crypto-Muslims with guidelines for practicing taqiyya, the Islamic art of dissimulation. As theory collided with local realities, however, local actors innovated practice in the face of the continued divergence between an internal desire to practice Islam and external pressures to conform to Christianity. This article explores these tensions by analyzing the posthumous endowments of two wealthy Morisco brothers from the Castilian town of Deza who succeeded in convincing both Christian neighbors and the Inquisition of their sincere conversion to Christianity. The town’s Morisco community, however, viewed the brothers’ bequests as secret acts of Islamic charity. Such perceived efforts to enact taqiyya not only eroded Christian confidence that true converts could be discerned from false ones but also threatened to destabilize the Moriscos’ own religious identity and their relationship to both Christianity and Islam.