Academic literature on the topic 'Christian cultural narratives'
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Journal articles on the topic "Christian cultural narratives"
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Classen, Albrecht. "Die Heidin: A Late-Medieval Experiment in Cultural Rapprochement between Christians and Saracens." Medieval Encounters 11, no. 1-2 (2005): 50–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006705775032807.
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AbstractWhereas recent scholarship has primarily focused on the hostile attitudes against the Orient espoused by writers in the European Middle Ages, a number of intriguing narratives also indicate surprising open-minded attitudes. These might reflect utopian fantasies, but they still project noteworthy "tolerant" relationships between Christians and "heathens." This paper examines one of these narratives, the Middle High German Die Heidin (late thirteenth century), where courtly love and 'domestic violence' counterbalance each other, instigating the heathen protagonist to flee with her Christian suitor back to his country because her erstwhile loving husband (heathen) had turned toward brutal behavior. This narrative indicates how little European audiences obviously cared about religious and racial conflicts and subsumed them under the much more fascinating discourse on love.
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Mills, Ian N. "Pagan Readers of Christian Scripture: the Role of Books in Early Autobiographical Conversion Narratives." Vigiliae Christianae 73, no. 5 (October 9, 2019): 481–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700720-12341396.
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Abstract Most scholars agree that “pagans” did not read Christian scripture. This critical consensus, however, places inordinate weight on a decontextualized quotation from Tertullian and neglects a body of evidence to the contrary. In particular, the role of books in early autobiographical conversion narratives suggests that early Christian authors and copyists could sometimes work with a reasonable expectation of pagan readership. Against traditional notions of the restricted appeal and circulation of Christian literature, pagan and Christian sources alike indicate that Christian writings found an audience among philo-barbarian thinkers and that certain Christians promoted their books in pagan circles.
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Sheldrake, Philip. "Constructing Spirituality." Religion & Theology 23, no. 1-2 (2016): 15–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15743012-02301008.
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How we define “spirituality” and also distinguish and describe different traditions of spirituality is not a simple matter of objective observation. All definitions and descriptions are a matter of interpretation which, in turn, involves preferences, assumptions and choices. In that sense, our approaches to spirituality may often be effectively “political” in that they express values and commitments. Sometimes our historical narratives also reflect the interests of dominant groups – whether in a religious institutional, theological or socio-cultural sense. This process may sometimes be conscious but is more often unconscious and uncritical. This essay first of all explores some of the issues surrounding the question of definition in the study and presentation of Christian spirituality in particular. Second, the essay examines how the history of Christian spirituality has been shaped by certain underlying “narratives”. However, following the thought of Paul Ricoeur, narrative and story are not to be rejected in favour of a quest for history as a form of pure factual “truth”. Rather, what is needed is a more conscious understanding of the power of narrative, its importance and the potential released by identifying forgotten or repressed human stories. Third, the essay then asks whether our approaches to, and descriptions of, particular spiritual traditions have masked prior assumptions about their autonomy, purity and their radical discontinuity (or “rupture”) from what went before or what lies alongside them. Two examples are briefly outlined: the supposed Catholic-Protestant spiritual divide and the often unacknowledged impact of another faith (for example, Sufi Islam) on certain Christian spiritual or mystical traditions. Fourth, the regular geographical-cultural biases in the study of Christian spirituality are noted and one response to this among Spanish-speaking Christians of the Americas, known as “traditioning”, is outlined. Finally, the importance of critical self-awareness in how we employ interpretative frameworks is underlined.
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Hogeterp, Albert L. A. "Reading Stephen’s Speech as a Counter-Cultural Discourse on Migration and Dislocation." Open Theology 7, no. 1 (January 1, 2021): 289–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0162.
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Abstract The speech of Stephen in Acts 7:2–53 contains a wealth of references to biblical migration narratives, but their significance for understanding the message of Luke–Acts has been understudied. This is partly due to a recurrent focus on either accusations against Stephen (Acts 6:8–15) or the polemical conclusion of the speech (Acts 7:47–50.51–53). It also partly relates to a teleological interest in early Christian mission narrative. This article reads Stephen’s speech as a counter-cultural discourse on migration and dislocation. It provides a close reading of its biblical story-telling in conjunction with its polemical upshot, and further compares Lucan narrative choices with early Jewish and Jewish Hellenistic literary cycles about patriarchal and Mosaic discourse. It applies a critical lens to the use of ancient narratives of migration and dislocation in discussions about identity, ethnicity, and “othering;” this is of further importance for contemporary identity politics around migration. Through comparing the speech with intra-Jewish dimensions and Graeco-Roman contexts, Stephen emerges as a counter-cultural speaker whose discourse appeals to human–divine intersectionality, specifically regarding the cause of justice for the ill-treated stranger; at the same time, it avoids cultural stereotyping through categories of Hebrews vs Hellenists, Jews vs Christians, Graeco-Roman elite standards vs supposedly “non-European” profiles.
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Perkins, Judith. "Fictive Scheintod and Christian Resurrection." Religion and Theology 13, no. 3-4 (2006): 396–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157430106779024671.
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AbstractIn his chapter titled 'Resurrection' in Fiction as History, Glen Bowersock examines examples of 'apparent death' (Scheintod) in Graeco-Roman narrative fictions. He concludes his analysis by questioning 'whether the extraordinary growth in fictional writing, and its characteristic and concomitant fascination with resurrection' might be 'some kind of reflection of the remarkable stories that were coming out of Palestine in the middle of the first century A.D.' In this essay I will offer that rather than seeing a relation of influence between fictive prose narratives and Christian discourse (especially Christian bodily resurrection discourse) of the early centuries C.E., these sets of texts should be recognised as different manifestations of an attempt to address the same problem, that of negotiating notions of cultural identity in the matrix of early Roman imperialism. That these texts share similar motifs and themes – gruesome and graphic descriptions of torture, dismemberment, cannibalism and death – results not necessarily from influence, but that they converge around the same problem, drawing from a common cultural environment in the same historical context.
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Dube, Zorodzai. "Healing the female body." STJ | Stellenbosch Theological Journal 6, no. 1 (August 28, 2020): 11–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2020.v6n1.a01.
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Using narrative, reader-response and social feminist approaches, the study takes a discourse analysis of looking into representations of female bodies within the Jewish-Christian healthcare and Greek Hippocratic healthcare and how such surface in the representation of female bodies in Mark’s healing stories. The study finishes by looking into comparable biases found in some African communities. The gospel of Mark contains some of the early Christian memory concerning Jesus as folk healer and this study selects narratives in the gospel of Mark whereby Jesus dealt with illness pertaining female patients. Instead of dealing with all narratives whereby Jesus healed a female patient, the focus will be on the story concerning the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and the story concerning the haemorrhaging woman. The underlying question is – what were the socio-cultural ideas concerning the female body and how do such ideas surface in the healing stories? The study hypothesises that, besides being stories that reveal Jesus’ Christological powers or power as folk healer, the healing stories are site to investigate social cultural frameworks concerning illness and gender.
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Kiperwasser, Reuven. "What Is Hidden in the Small Box? Narratives of Late Antique Roman Palestine in Dialogue." AJS Review 45, no. 1 (April 2021): 76–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0364009420000422.
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This study is a comparative reading of two distinct narrative traditions with remarkably similar features of plot and content. The first tradition is from the Palestinian midrash Kohelet Rabbah, datable to the fifth to sixth centuries. The second is from John Moschos's Spiritual Meadow (Pratum spirituale), which is very close to Kohelet Rabbah in time and place. Although quite similar, the two narratives differ in certain respects. Pioneers of modern Judaic studies such as Samuel Krauss and Louis Ginzberg had been interested in the question of the relationships between early Christian authors and the rabbis; however, the relationships between John Moschos and Palestinian rabbinic writings have never been systematically treated (aside from one enlightening study by Hillel Newman). Here, in this case study, I ask comparative questions: Did Kohelet Rabbah borrow the tradition from Christian lore; or was the church author impressed by the teachings of Kohelet Rabbah? Alternatively, perhaps, might both have learned the shared story from a common continuum of local narrative tradition? Beyond these questions about literary dependence, I seek to understand the shared narrative in its cultural context.
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Grieve, Patricia E. "Conversion in Early Modern Western Mediterranean Accounts of Captivity: Identity, Audience, and Narrative Conventions." Journal of Arabic Literature 47, no. 1-2 (July 11, 2016): 91–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341319.
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In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries captivity narratives written by Spanish and English captives abounded. There is a smaller corpus of such texts by Muslim captives in Spain and England, and by some travelers from the Ottoman Empire who observed their fellow Muslims in captivity. A comparative analysis illuminatingly reveals similar usage of narrative conventions, especially of hagiography and pious romances, as well as the theoretical stance of “resistance literature” taken on by many writers. I consider accounts written as truthful, historical texts alongside fictional ones, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ “The Captive’s Tale,” from Don Quixote, Part I. Writers both celebrated monolithic categories such as Protestant, Catholic, Spanish, English, and Muslim, and challenged them for differing ideological reasons. Writers constructed heroic narratives of their own travails and endurance. In the case of English narratives, didacticism plays an important role. In one case, that of John Rawlins, the account reads like Christian theology: to keep in mind, no matter how grim the situation of captivity may be, one’s identity as an Englishman. Raḍwān al-Janawī used his letters about Muslims in captivity in Portuguese-occupied Africa, in which he points out the vigorous efforts of Christian rulers to secure the liberty of their own people, to criticize Muslim rulers who, in his opinion, exerted far too little energy in rescuing their brothers and sisters from captivity. Ultimately, this essay explores the fictionality of truthful narratives and the truth in fictional ones, and the ways in which people from different cultures identified their own identities, especially against those of “the enemy.”
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O'Donnell, Marcus. "‘Bring it on’: The Apocalypse of George W. Bush." Media International Australia 113, no. 1 (November 2004): 10–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0411300104.
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This article examines a number of cinematic, literary and journalistic texts in the context of what filmmaker Tom Tykwer calls the ‘aesthetic memory’ of September 11. In particular, it explores the way these narratives relate to deeply embedded Western cultural myths of the apocalyptic. The apocalyptic language of American Christian fundamentalism and the heroic narratives of Hollywood film are explored as twin influences on a powerful civil religion dubbed ‘The Captain America complex’ by Jewett and Lawrence (2003a).
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Bauer, Christian. "Heimat im Offenen?" International Journal of Practical Theology 23, no. 1 (February 28, 2019): 78–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijpt-2018-0031.
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Abstract This Habilitation lecture discusses the present rise of right-wing populism as a theological problem. It uses the term „Heimat“ („home“ or „home country“) to explore the social context of this populism. This exploration leads to a discussion of the underlying cultural meta-narratives which serve a sense of shared identity. In a practical theological perspective, the discourse on „Heimat“ may be understood in terms of narrative encounters. Finding a home in an open world is possible – and the Christian faith offers bountiful theological resources for this.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Christian cultural narratives"
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Slaven, Craig D. "Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives of (Ec)centric Religion in the Works of Faulkner, O’Connor, and Hurston." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/31.
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This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct of an idealized past helped galvanize Southern evangelicalism into a religion that more readily accommodated racial hegemony in the present. The following three chapters examine Faulkner’s Light in August, O’Connor’s Wise Blood, and Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Moses, Man of the Mountain. I find that each of these novels embeds traces of forgotten religious dissidence. The modern nostalgia for a purer old-time religion, my readings suggest, says less about the history of religion in the South than it does about New-South efforts to merge evangelical and “Southern” values, thereby suppressing any residual opposition between them.
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Niemand, Dominique. ""Bid vir my ma" : a narrative inquiry into the experiences of white Christian Afrikaner females during SADF conscription from 1980 until 1990." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/76748.
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This inquiry provides a narrative on the experiences of white Afrikaner females during
1980 and 1990 in South Africa. The Defence Amendment act of 1967 declared that every
white male is to complete compulsory military service, and between 1960 and 1991 an
estimated 600 000 white South African men were conscripted into the SADF. The
conscription of white males had a profound impact on the experiences of white Afrikaner
females in South Africa. Through a narrative inquiry into a familial archive, I trace an
unknown local history that finds itself situated in the middle of the SADF’s campaign to
a militarised South Africa. I contend that these stories of the ordinary offer up an
opportunity to consider themes of whiteness, gender and memory. The inquiry identifies
the role of Apartheid institutions such as the Dutch Reformed Church and SADF in the
rise of Afrikanerdom and the lives of Afrikaners between 1980 and 1990. After the
compulsory military service for white South African men ended in 1993, it became
apparent to me that the experiences of the Border War were mainly silenced. I therefore
provide a look into the photographs, objects of memory and practices of food making
which speaks to the experiences of white Afrikaner women during 1980 and 1990 through
the exhibit 'Pakkies aan Boetie’ (2019). The inquiry also considers, through the lens of
popular culture, how Afrikaner youth born after 1994 navigate legacies of Apartheid and
conscription.Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2019.
Historical and Heritage Studies
MSocSci
Unrestricted
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Hunniecutt, Jeni R. "Infidelity and Identity: Cheating, Children, and the Church." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1165.
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When children grow up in a Christian home they learn fidelity is essential in a relationship. The inconsistency of biblical messages and parental infidelity is identity altering for children. In this study I use autoethnography to explore how my parents’ infidelity collided with religious teachings to shape my identity and influence my interpersonal relationships. I also use narrative interviewing to identity the ways my siblings were affected by the same experience and how such discrepancies in our home influenced their identities. The theory of narrative inheritance (Goodall, 2005) serves to be a source of empowerment as well as a contributing factor to definitions of infidelity. Familial roles are illuminated as I explore how my siblings and I negotiated cognitive dissonance that resulted from the conflicting narratives of Christianity and parental infidelity.
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Billingham, John. "Divine authority and covenant community in contemporary culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3d96890d-8111-4922-9809-30c51d75e5b6.
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The question I address is: how might a theology of authority be conceived in the light of questions raised by what is termed 'post-modernity'? Is it possible to articulate a theology of authority coming to the church community 'from God' that avoids an oppressive and alienating heteronomy? The thesis explores the question of authority as of vital importance in the sociological dimension of religion, calling for legitimisation (in light of claims made for itself) and as obligatory in the theological sphere. For this reason the project involves two methodologies (theological and sociological/ethnographic). While this investigation is relevant to all sections of the Christian church, particular attention is paid to Baptist churches in the UK, since they hold a concept in their tradition that I suggest is valuable in answering the question of the thesis, namely that of covenant. Within the Christian tradition there is an inner 'problematic' relating the personal authority of Christ to the forms of institution (church) and text (scripture). I explore this with a brief survey of theological authority as found in the fourfold foundation of scripture, tradition, reason and experience. From this is developed a brief theological and Christological reflection on divine authority and covenant theology as found in Karl Barth and his response to the 'inner problematic'. Within contemporary culture I view authority through the lens of so-called 'postmodernism', identifying four challenges to the notion of 'external authority' (all of which exemplify a move from the external to internal, and objective to subjective approaches to authority). This is further explored by means of qualitative research with one-to-one interviews conducted in a Baptist church in York. This data is reflected upon by means of ethnography and 'judicious narratives', especially in dialogue with material from Guest ('congregational study'), Heelas and Woodhead ('subjectivised-self') and Healy ('theodramatic horizon' and 'practical-prophetic ecclesiology'), providing an intersection between the language of theology and sociology. The concept of church as covenant community is explored in Baptist and (more briefly) Anglican traditions, leading to a constructive proposal that both the inner-church 'problematic' and the 'postmodern' challenge to authority might begin to be resolved with the notion of covenant. It is within this context of relationship, human and divine, that the authoritative and revelatory Word of God, the story that is Christ, is found in community and praxis. Here is a 'triangulating' relationship between authority, story and covenant revealing divine authority in a non-coercive way and relevant to contemporary culture.
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Leshota, Paul Lekholokoe. "A deconstruction of disability discourse amongst Christians in Lesotho." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4842.
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The present research study is a deconstructive collaborative project situated within a postmodern paradigm. The research is premised on a notion that disability has been constructed by societies to reflect their values and norms. Despite various ancient and contemporary worldviews stabilising this normative paradigm, disability has remained a shifting and fleeting concept. For the most part, it has cast the disabled identity in more negative and alienating ways than positive.
The Christian cultural context of Lesotho within which the study is situated has not done any better in terms of portraying people with disabilities. Instead, it has inherited the legacy of the ancient Mediterranean world and further re-read it in the light of the demands of contemporary society on the disabled identity. For instance, people with disabilities are still constructed as „sinners‟, „monsters‟, „add-ons‟, and pathological burdens who cannot by themselves survive the challenges of the contemporary world.
Using the ideas of Foucault and Derrida, the study examines ways in which such a notion of disability is not only linguistically unstable but also founded on the binary opposites. The participatory nature of the study brings the important voices of people with disabilities to further destabilise the notion of disability and to deconstruct the dominant disability story. The immersion of this study within the participatory ethics and consciousness of Kotzé and Heshusius respectively, has led to an ambitious proposing of the participatory model of disability. The latter has leanings towards metaphors of the church as communion founded on and nurtured by the theologies of embrace, interdependence, healing and botho. It also resonates with the metaphor of the church as expounded in I Corinthians 12. As members of the body of Christ, no member can suffer without the rest of the body feeling the same. If one member of the body is disabled all the body is disabled. Alienating and marginalising others has no place in such a metaphor of church as communion, since by its own definition, all belong to and participate within it.Practical Theology
D. Th. (Practical Theology with specialisation in Pastoral Therapy)
Books on the topic "Christian cultural narratives"
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Christie, Ian, and Annie Oever, eds. Stories. NL Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789462985841.
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Stories are perceived as central to modern life. Not only in narrative entertainment media, such as television, cinema, theater, but also in social media. Telling/having "a story" is widely deemed essential, in business as well as in social life. Does this mark an intensification of what has always been part of human cultures; or has the realm of "story" expanded to dominate twenty-first century discourse? Addressing stories is an obvious priority for the Key Debates series, and Volume 7, edited by Ian Christie and Annie van den Oever, identifies new phenomena in this field — complex narration, puzzle films, transmedia storytelling — as well as new approaches to understanding these, within narratology and bio-cultural studies. Chapters on such extended television series as Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones and Dickensian explore distinctively new forms of screen storytelling in the digital age. With contributions by Vincent Amiel, Jan Baetens, Dominique Chateau, Ian Christie, John Ellis, Miklós Kiss, Eric de Kuyper, Sandra Laugier, Luke McKernan, José Moure, Roger Odin, Annie van den Oever, Melanie Schiller, Steven Willemsen, Robert Ziegler.
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The inside story: A narrative approach to religious understanding and truth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
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School desegregation in the twenty-first century: The focus must change. Lewiston, N.Y: E. Mellen Press, 1997.
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Wood, W. Jay. Christian Theories of Virtue. Edited by Nancy E. Snow. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199385195.013.44.
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This chapter surveys important points of development in Christian thinking about the virtues. Christians have not been the only champions of virtue for the last two millennia. The centrality of imitating and following Christ to achieve one’s true telos has, however, put a very distinctive stamp on Christian thinking about what qualities of character count as virtues. Moral and theological virtues such as humility, compassion, hope, and love are largely absent from cultural landscapes Christians have shared with other virtue traditions. Even traits named in common with other virtue traditions take on a distinctive Christian form when situated within the Christian narrative. Despite the differences among Christians about how to think about particular virtues, or even whether the virtue tradition is the best way to think about the moral life, they agree that all stand in need of divine aid if they are to achieve Christlikeness.
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1944-, Hock Ronald F., Chance J. Bradley, and Perkins Judith 1944-, eds. Ancient fiction and early Christian narrative. Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1998.
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Cox, Jeffrey. The Dialectics of Empire, Race, and Diocese. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199643011.003.0002.
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The history of global Anglicanism is dominated by two master narratives. In the narrative of post-colonial studies, Anglican expansion is one aspect of the expansion of the British Empire. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) reconfigured imperialism as cultural domination of the non-Western world, and the imposition of Western styles of religion. The contrasting narrative of mission studies focuses on the victory of the ‘indigenous’ over the ‘foreign’ in the spread of Christianity. Heavily influenced by the works of Lamin Sanneh, this narrative regards missionaries as detonators of indigenous Church growth. This chapter suggests a new narrative of global Anglicanism in which the antagonistic binary struggle between the ‘foreign’ and the ‘indigenous’ is replaced with a dialectical narrative of conflict and collaboration. Western and non-Western Christians cooperate in the ‘contact zone’ of mission and diocese to create a new global Anglicanism, one that is neither fully indigenous nor fully foreign, but new.
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Shattuck, Debra A. Conclusion. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252040375.003.0007.
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Baseball did not become gendered as a man’s sport overnight nor did any single group dominate the cultural metanarrative of baseball as it matured from infancy to adolescence during the nineteenth century. Baseball has been used to symbolize “Americanism,” middle-class, Judeo-Christian values, and “manliness.” Though many vied to control the narrative of America’s national pastime, not every group had equal influence on the ultimate character and culture of baseball. By the end of the nineteenth century, men held almost exclusive control of the narrative of “official” baseball, while women controlled a parallel narrative for the baseball-surrogate called “women’s baseball.” This game became the precursor of softball which emerged in its official form during the 1930s.
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Brewitt-Taylor, Sam. Christian Radicalism and the Hope of Transcending ‘Religion’. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198827009.003.0005.
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This chapter outlines the radical Anglican contribution to the ‘secularization’ metanarrative, which suddenly achieved cultural dominance in British discussion in the early 1960s. During the early Cold War, it had been widely assumed that ‘religious decline’ was a regressive phenomenon, fatally detrimental to human freedom, as apparently exemplified by the Soviet Union. From the late 1950s, however, Anglican radicals drew on Christian eschatology to propagate a radically alternative vision, which interpreted recent declines in ‘religion’ as evidence of humanity’s permanent transition into an unprecedented new ‘secular age’. Once this interpretation had achieved wide circulation in the British media, it broke free from its theological origins, entering both British conventional wisdom and conventional sociology. From the early 1960s, the secularization narrative was increasingly widely enacted in British culture, as more and more people imagined themselves and their society as being unprecedentedly and permanently non-religious.
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Roy, Olivier. Is Europe Christian? Translated by Cynthia Schoch. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190099930.001.0001.
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As Europe wrangles over questions of national identity, nativism, and immigration, this book interrogates the place of Christianity, foundation of Western identity. Do secularism and Islam really pose threats to the continent's ‘Christian values’? What will be the fate of Christianity in Europe? Rather than repeating the familiar narrative of decline, the book challenges the significance of secularized Western nations' reduction of Christianity to a purely cultural force relegated to issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and equal marriage. It illustrates that, globally, quite the opposite has occurred: Christianity is now universalized and detached from national identity. Not only has it taken hold in the Global South, generally in a more socially conservative form than in the West, but it has also ‘returned’ to Europe, following immigration from former colonies. Despite attempts within Europe to nationalize or even racialize it, Christianity's future is global, non-European, and immigrant, as the continent's Churches well know. The book represents a persuasive and novel vision of religion's place in national life today.
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Barnes, SJ, Michael. Waiting on Grace. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198842194.001.0001.
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Whereas much theology of religions regards ‘the other’ as a problem to be solved, this book begins with a Church called to witness to its faith in a multicultural world by practising a generous yet risky hospitality. A theology of dialogue takes its rise from the Christian experience of being-in-dialogue. Taking its rise from the biblical narrative of encounter, call, and response, such a theology cannot be fully understood without reference to the matrix of faith that Christians share in complex ways with the Jewish people. The contemporary experience of the Shoah, the dominating religious event of the twentieth century, has complexified that relationship and left an indelible mark on the religious sensibility of both Jews and Christians. Engaging with a range of thinkers, from Heschel, Levinas, and Edith Stein who were all deeply affected by the Shoah, to Metz, Panikkar, and Rowan Williams, who are always pressing the limits of what can and cannot be said with integrity about the self-revealing Word of God, this book shows how Judaism is a necessary, if not sufficient, source of Christian self-understanding. What is commended by this foundational engagement is a hope-filled ‘waiting on grace’ made possible by virtues of empathy and patience. A theology of dialogue focuses not on metaphysical abstractions but on biblical forms of thought about God’s presence to human beings which Christians share with Jews and, under the continuing guidance of the Spirit of Christ, learn to adapt to a whole range of contested cultural and political contexts.
Book chapters on the topic "Christian cultural narratives"
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McAllister, Susan Fleming. "Cross-Cultural Dress in Victorian British Missionary Narratives: Dressing for Eternity." In Historicizing Christian Encounters with the Other, 122–34. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1998. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14421-1_9.
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Leopard, Joseph R. "In Search of a Redeemed and Redeeming Epistemology for Cross-Cultural Educational Research: A Biblical Narrative Perspective on Straussian Grounded Theory." In Innovating Christian Education Research, 103–23. Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8856-3_8.
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"Pity vs. Forgiveness in Pagan and Judaeo-Christian Narratives." In Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel, 305–14. De Gruyter, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781501503986-023.
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Skolnick, Jenifer A., and Emmanuel Alvarado. "Neoliberalism and the Negotiation of the American Dream in Contemporary Latina Narratives." In A Post-Neoliberal Era in Latin America?, 221–42. Policy Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529200997.003.0011.
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This chapter will examine the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades among Latinos in the US. Over the past thirty years the US has experienced notable reductions in social safety-net coverage, in the context of successive waves of neoliberal economic reforms. This has left members of the Latino and Black community particularly vulnerable to economic cycles and downturns. Within this context, this chapter analyzes the nexus between neoliberal political discourse, potent cultural narratives found within American Christianity and public support for social protection policies. In particular, the chapter addresses the way in which Christian themes, such as the Catholic social teaching, the mainline Protestant social gospel, the American adaptation of liberation theology, and the evangelical ethos of self-reliance and independence, interact with the formation of public attitudes towards greater or lesser support for social safety-net policies among American Latinos. Additionally, the present chapter will also bring to the foreground the role of Christianity among US Latinos in the creation of an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition since moral or social value issues are often bundled along with opposition to social protection policies in the two-party American political system. Lastly, the present work will propose a broad framework through which to interpret our findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within Latino American Christianity.
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Bean, Lydia. "Two Canadian Churches: Civil Religion in Exile." In The Politics of Evangelical Identity. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691161303.003.0005.
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This chapter compares two American churches—Northtown Baptist and Lifeway Assembly of God—with two similar congregations just across the border in Canada: Highpoint Baptist and Grace Assembly of God. Both Canadian churches constructed their subcultural identity in ways that sounded similar to the two American churches. Like their American counterparts, Canadian evangelicals identified themselves as defenders of their nation's embattled Christian heritage and emphasized shared moral stances on abortion and sexuality. However, Canadian evangelicals used Christian nationalism in more broadly civic and nonpartisan ways: to draw strong subcultural boundaries, but also to express solidarity with Canadians across cultural, religious, and partisan divides. Because Canadian evangelicals drew on different narratives of Christian nationalism, they also talked differently about poverty and the welfare state in church contexts.
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Fishbane, Eitan P. "The Zoharic Frame-tale in Context." In The Art of Mystical Narrative, 336–407. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199948635.003.0007.
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Situates zoharic narrative literature in its historical and comparative contexts, examining works of Jewish and non-Jewish frametale narratives from this time and place. Through consideration of works by Avraham Ibn Ezra, Yosef Ibn Zabara, Yehudah Al Ḥarizi, Yiẓḥaq Ibn Sahula, Juan Ruiz, and Alfonso X, among others, this chapter demonstrates the vivid ways in which zoharic storytelling ought to be understood as part of a broader cultural phenomenon. Structures, themes, and commonalities studied include: the dynamic of anagnorisis and the wandering quest for wisdom; the extensive use of esoteric speech (the language of secrets, hiddenness, and revelation) in the context of frame-tale narration; the construction of the passionate master-disciple relationship; and the dramatic yearning for Holy Mary and Shekhinah (among kabbalists and Christian writers, respectively) when spiritual seekers are lost on the road and fear for their safety.
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Spencer, Jane. "Making an Ass of Yourself in Narrative." In Writing About Animals in the Age of Revolution, 39–73. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198857518.003.0002.
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Through close readings of literary asses in Sterne, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Clare, this chapter argues that the development of sympathetic animal representation is marked by an ambivalence emblematized by the figure of the donkey. The chapter outlines the donkey’s ambiguous cultural status, discussing narratives from two different traditions: the Judeo-Christian tradition in which the meek ass is revered for its lowliness, and the classical tradition in which it is scorned. The biblical story of Balaam’s ass, in which the ass speaks against her master’s cruelty, is interpreted literally in the eighteenth century as teaching compassion to animals. In Apuleius’ ancient novel The Golden Ass the narrator, transformed into an ass, is a low, lustful, stupid beast. Both narratives influence the eighteenth-century donkey representations discussed here. The writers’ tonal complexities are traced to the fear that to sympathize with animals is to be transformed, like Apuleius’ narrator, into an ass.
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Georgieva, Albena, and Vihra Baeva. "The Worship of Mary in the Region of Asenovgrad (Central Southern Bulgaria): Sites, Rituals and Narratives." In Traces of the Virgin Mary in Post-Communist Europe. Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, VEDA, Publishing House of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.31577/2019.9788022417822.250-282.
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The chapter presents Marian worship in one of its specific local manifestations – the cult to the Virgin in the region of Asenovgrad, Central Southern Bulgaria. The fact that it is the most representative example of the vital and well-developed Marian cult within present-day Bulgaria, as well as authors' long-term fieldwork in the region (started 1996), influenced the choice of Asenovgrad as the focus of their attention. The methodological framework is based on the concept of local religion (Christian 1989: 3), reformulated by the authors into the concepts of local religiosity and local religious culture. The local Marian cult in Asenovgrad region is used as an example of how to understand this local and cultural embeddedness of religiosity, presented via (1) devotional sites and the images belonging to them (in this case, miracle-working icons of the Virgin); (2) local feasts and ritual practices; and (3) local and personal religious narratives. The authors regard places, rituals and narratives as basic elements which complement, influence and support each another, constituting a complex system of local religious culture. Following this pattern, the authors pinpointed for their analysis the three most important places of Marian worship in the region: the Dormition of Mary Monastery of Bachkovo, the Annunciation of Mary Church in Asenovgrad, and the Dormition of Mary Church in Gorni Voden. Besides the contextual information, the authors also focused on a more intimate, individual dimension of Marian worship, exploring the presence of the Virgin in personal narratives about miraculous recoveries, dreams, visions, etc. and delineating the connection between individual experience and cultural background. According to the authors, the local worship of Mary in Asenovgrad region is a brilliant example of the ways in which local religiosity exists and develops in the intersection of universal religion and local traditions, folklore and cultural specificities. On the local level, the general Christian figure of the Virgin acquires characteristic features, associated with her motherly aspect and her quality of a divine patroness and immediate helper in every need. Her intercession is achieved by means of sacred intermediaries that have the power to connect the common devotee with the celestial power: holy places, miracle-working icons, springs and caves. Apart from the well-known Marian feasts, idiosyncratic local holidays are observed, too, and the related ritual actions span from the canonical to the folkloric and ‘magical’. Specific symbols, such as the apple, the water, and the fish, come to the fore as a material representation of Mary's sacred power and assistance. Local and personal narratives add a private, sometimes even intimate aspect to the Marian devotion, binding the universal sacred figure of the Virgin with the history and geography of the local community, as well as with the individual life trajectories of the believers.
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Grau, Marion. "Reconstructing Rituals." In Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity, 159–78. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197598634.003.0008.
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The final chapter pulls together central threads that characterize this pilgrimage network. Pilgrimage gives a particular ritual form to individuals’ quest to seek recovery, healing, meaning, and connection in their lives. The Norwegian pilgrimage network offers various experiences, narratives, and strategies for pilgrims, hosts, locals, and tourists to engage in rediscovering and reinventing history, making meaning, seeking cultural experiences, reclaiming indigenous history and spirituality, and reconstructing spiritual traditions. The figure of St. Olav provides a prism through which contemporary Norwegians can reflect on the ambivalence of the past, as well as critique present practices and narratives of what it means to be Christian, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be Norwegian, and what saintly lives in the context of climate change might look like. Nidaros Cathedral facilitates such engagement as an adaptable space anchoring widely diverse engagements with both heritage and contemporary society. Thus, these and other ritual practices serve to reconstruct heritage critically in a pilgrimage network that is remarkably open for the transformative reconstruction of spiritual practices and narratives in a shifting sacred geography.
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Mosse, David. "“Complexio Oppositorum”?" In Anthropology of Catholicism. University of California Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520288423.003.0010.
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This chapter concerns Roman Catholicism in rural Tamil society as the product of shifting socio-political and institutional conditions. It argues that narratives of ‘Christian modernity’ — deepened and made more sophisticated with recent ventures in this field (Robbins 2004, Keane 2007) — have drawn attention away from settings where Christianity was introduced in ways that facilitated its localization within existing social and representational structures; where rather than disrupting existing socio-political arrangements it provided another means for their reproduction. At the same time, it shows how an over-commitment to the idea of cultural continuity fails to detect the ways in which, over time, participation in the realm of ‘Christian religion’ opened space for types of thought and action beyond traditional roles, and altered modes of signification within indigenous systems that were/are socially transformative. The tension between continuity and rupture in the history of Christianity in south India, and the co-existence of apparently antithetical moral traditions and social spaces— the ‘complex of opposites’—is bound up with five hundred years of fraught and shifting understandings of the categories of ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ themselves.