Editor's Introduction

Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion

Book Review| August 01 2021 Review: Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement, edited by Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement. Edited by Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube. SUNY Press, 2020. xi + 471 pages. $95.00 cloth; $34.95 paper; ebook available. Phillip Charles Lucas Phillip Charles Lucas Stetson University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2021) 25 (1): 129–131. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2021.25.1.129 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Phillip Charles Lucas; Review: Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement, edited by Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube. Nova Religio 1 August 2021; 25 (1): 129–131. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2021.25.1.129 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentNova Religio Search The history of Theosophy reveals a current of esoteric thought and organization that continually transgressed geographical and religious boundaries in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Theosophy also contravened analytical categories such as religion, science, politics, and the arts. This edited volume in SUNY Press's Western Esoteric Traditions series uncovers local histories throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe in which these breaches occurred. At the same time, it demonstrates the surprisingly widespread influence the Theosophical movement had across significant dimensions of human culture during the period of its greatest popularity (1875–1935). Editors Julian Strube and Hans Martin Krämer argue that the Theosophical Society has been largely overlooked by global historians as a key agent in historical debates about categories such as religion and science and East and West, as well as in studies of colonialism and transnational flows of knowledge. The activities of the Theosophists and their... You do not currently have access to this content.

Drawing on oral histories, ethnomusicology, and numerous postcolonial theories, Daniel Ramírez has produced a study that offers fresh interpretations to Latino/a religious studies and American religious history. In Migrating Faith the author asserts that studies of Pentecostalism in the Americas, and of Latino/a Pentecostalism more specifically, tend to focus on worshippers' corporeality and embodiment. While he lauds such a focus, or what he prefers to call an “optic” of empowerment via embodied worship and release, Ramírez sets out to uncover and explore yet another source that has been unheard by scholars: the centrality of music for Latino/a Pentecostals (p. xiv). He argues that the transgressive and empowering aspects of the hymns lent feelings of hope and opportunity for Latino/as from the time of the Azusa Street revivals of 1906 to the latter decades of the twentieth century. Ramírez sets out to understand the complex reasons for the rapid rise of Pentecostalism for men, women, and children of Mexican descent in the twentieth century and determines that the congregations served as “migration trampolines and alternative transnational public squares, erected in the face and wake of xenophobia” (p. 134). Moreover, Pentecostal congregations presented “exciting sonic spheres” (ibid.). Ramírez's focus on ethnomusicological aspects and analysis of Pentecostalism among Latinos/as is the primary way to understand “Pentecostalism's bricolage, creativity, and emotive core, as well as its overflow into Catholic and mainline Protestant spheres” (p. 16). As he notes, “the dynamic globalized marketplace of contemporary Christian worship” can attain a greater degree of clarity when we examine Latino/a Pentecostal songs and their transmission in other religious spheres (p. 17). Pentecostal hymnodies in the early twentieth century, the author notes, also “redeemed the fiesta of Mexican and Latino culture” (p. 178). These Pentecostals

The paper offers critical reflections on the project of redefining the principles of religious and cultural studies proposed by Wouter Hanegraaff as part of his project of discovery of Western esotericism. The ideas of Hanegraaff’s most recent book “Hermetic Spirituality and Historical Imagination: Alternative States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity” are taken as a starting point. It is shown that this work has incorporated all the basic concepts developed by him since the beginning of academic career: the construction of academic knowledge; the problem of the marginalization of some forms of knowledge due to the fashion for others; altered states of consciousness; the great polemical narrative of monotheism; religious experience; gnosis; opposition to classical hermeneutics and postmodern deconstruction. A detailed outline of the new vision of hermeticism proposed by Hanegraaff is given. It is shown that Hanegraaff’s research does not create the picture of ancient hermeticism, but is a projection of fashions of the late twentieth century in religious studies. A detailed critique of the concept of altered states of consciousness and the related modern category of gnosis is given, its theoretical and empirical doubtfulness is highlighted. At the same time, the project of applying the category of altered states of consciousness to the religion of the ancient Greeks in Julia Ustinova’s monograph, on which Hanegraaff relies heavily, is being critically examined. The ahistoricity and tendentiousness of Hanegraaff’s reconstruction of spiritual experience have been highlighted. The idea of distinguishing three components in Western culture: religion, science and gnosis has been criticized.

The system of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan has conducted many extensive studies on historical sources, which mainly serve the study, analysis and delivery of ancient written sources, masterpiece and other types of manuscripts for the future generation. The "Сollection of Oriental manuscripts" (“Sharq qo’lyozmalari to’plami”) created as a result of fundamental research, is of particular importance in the study of such natural sciences as ethnography, historiography, source studies, religious studies, linguistics, cultural studies and medicine, pharmacology and geodesy.\n\nThis article thoroughly analyzes the scientific and historical significance of this catalogue, as well as the analysis of historical works of domestic scientists. The theme is revealed directly in the works of local historiographers in XIX-beginning of XX centuries of the social and economic life of Kokand Khanate. The Kokand Khanate at that time had a special position within the Central Asian khanates, so even during the Russian invasion, this territory required special strategic preparation.\n\nIn the article, the author tried to analyze the works covering the transformation of the Kokand khanate into a colony of Russians, as well as the unsuccessful fights. Among them are "Tarikhi Jadidayi Toshkand" by Muhammad Salih Toshkandi, "Tarikhi Jahonnamoyi" by Avaz Muhammad Attor Khuqandi, "Ansob us-salotin va tavorikh ul-xavoqin" by Mirza Alim ibn Mirza Rahim Mushrif Toshkandi, and "Tarikhi Aziziy" by Muhammad Aziz ibn Margilani.

The emergence of the academic study of Esotericism was closely linked to both Religious Studies and Sociology. In the 1970s sociologists Colin Campbell, Marcello Truzzi, Edward A. Tiryakian, and Patricia A. Hartman, with historian of religion Mircea Eliade, wrote pioneering studies on occult and esoteric subjects. These initially marginal works gained traction in the study of new religious movements (NRMs) and of non-religious subcultures. The study of Western Esotericism proper is dated to the publication of Antoine Faivre’s Access to Western Esotericism (1994); in the three decades since, the field has expanded, developed, and fissured. This article argues that the same process of rejection of universalist typologies and text-based studies (which were popular in the mid to late twentieth century) to focus on lived experience can be mapped in both Religious Studies and Esotericism Studies. This shift established deconstructive relativism as the dominant mode in both Esotericism Studies and (to a lesser extent) Religious Studies. Current methodological frameworks have changed of late, with the postmodern trends of previous decades giving way to a retheorized realism, albeit one aware of researcher positionality and contested access to knowledge.

2 SHOFAR FROM TEMPLE TO TORAH: RABBINIC JUDAISM IN LIGHT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS by Lawrence H. Schiffman Lawrence H. Schiffman is Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. He is also a member of the University's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Skirball Department. In 1992/3 he will be a Fellow at the Annenberg Institute in Philadelphia where he will be part of a research team working on the unpublished scrolls. His most recent book is From Text to Tradition, A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Ktav, 1991). The study of Judaism in Late Antiquity has developed rapidly in this century. Spurred on by more general developments in the field of Religious Studies, as well as by the rise of the State of Israel where Judaic Studies in all areas plays so important a role, major steps have been taken in the production of textual editions, archaeological research, manuscript studies, and philology, and in tracing the history of the primary documents, the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrashim. Yet, in our view, there are fundamental questions left to be investigated and answered. Here we hope to indicate the directions in which our research has led, and to explain the methodological presuppositions of this research. Let us pause to clarify the issues involved. The basic questions to be asked of Judaism in the Second Temple and Talmudic periods relate to the "crossroads," that turn of the eras which is familiar to us but which went virtually unnoticed in texts of that time. It was in this period that the Templecentered Judaism of the First and Second Commonwealth periods gave way to the Torah-centered Rabbinic tradition. It was in this period that Judaism turned so assiduously to the cultivation of extra-biblical traditions which, in Volume 10, No.2 Winter 1992 3 Pharisaic Judaism, were known as "traditions of the fathers." These constituted the forerunner of that vast corpus of traditions later to be redacted into the Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmuds.1 It was in this period that Messianic tendencies and yearnings would lead many Jews into the Great Revolt against Rome in 66-73 C.E., the Diaspora revolt of c. 115-117, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135. It is this set of transitions which must be the primary point of departure for our research. We can ask how the variegated Judaism of the Second Temple period eventually would yield the consensus which developed around Rabbinic Judaism by the onset of the Middle Ages. What were the processes and developments that led to this consensus? How did the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures lead ultimately, on the one hand, to the Rabbinic tradition and, on the other, to the new Christian community with its distinctive religious traditions? . It is no accident that this turning point was neglected for so long by scholars of Rabbinic Judaism. The modern, scientific study of Judaism in Late Antiquity began with the onset of the Wissenschaft des ludentums in the nineteenth century. Scholars at that time, like their counterparts who worked on the history of Christianity, were only slowly uncovering evidence of the variegated texture of Second Temple Judaism. Judaic scholars dealing with this period were primarily Rabbinic scholars for whom the tasks of the day were otherwise. Rabbinic manuscripts were still to be catalogued and studied, critical editions were to be made and new texts (especially from the Cairo Genizah) published, and the methodologies of the fields of History and Religious Studies were still to be brought to bear, primarily in the twentieth century. When the Dead Sea Scrolls began to emerge from 1947 on, it became immediately clear that this find would enrich the study of Judaism in Antiquity . Yet, because of the prevalent definitions of the academic fields involved and a variety of other factors, this impact was minimized. Rabbinic scholars, by and large, continued to limit their corpus, or better, canon, to the traditional Rabbinic writings, while the new scrolls were left to...

Editors' Introduction

Christopher Blythe’s name may sound familiar to readers with an interest in Latter-day history. Currently a Willes Research Associate at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship and co-editor of the Journal of Mormon History, he has published extensively on Joseph Smith and early Mormon history as well as co-editing two volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers. With an interest in religious studies, history, and folklore/anthropology, he is a member of the new generation of Latter-day historians who employ interdisciplinary approaches and methods in their work to arrive at a more nuanced and contextualized analysis. It is in this fashion that Blythe investigates the history of apocalyptic visions that have characterized Mormonism since its inception.Chapter 1 takes the reader back to the days of Joseph Smith and surveys the visions the prophet and some of his contemporaries in the church experienced. Acknowledging the highly apocalyptic nature of the religions born on American soil in the course of the Second Great Awakening, Blythe takes pains to explain with precision the specific ways in this tradition evolved within Mormon doctrine and found its way to the laity. He masterfully illustrates the constant interplay that started to take shape between the church leadership and official doctrine, on the one hand, and the laity, with their own interpretations and experiences, often folkloric in nature, on the other. Chapter 2 discusses how the assassination of the prophet and his brother in 1884 allowed for the integration of the theme of martyrdom into the master narrative of the LDS Church, paving the way for further elements to enter the vernacular narrative, such as various pronouncements ranging from praying to cursing and the idea of the Lamanites being “the battle axe of the Lord” (91).Chapter 3 maps the meaningful ways in which the geographical imagination filtered into the narrative of the prophecies of the Second Coming and restoration. Local animosities that Mormons had experienced as persecution forced their exodus to the West to establish their own kingdom and state there. This outlook framed their experiences within the biblical narratives, contributing to the emergence of a powerful sense of group identity that informed Thomas O’Dea and Harold Bloom’s comparisons of this quintessentially American religious community to a nation. The Mormons’ separatist endeavors, along with the responses of the U.S. government, are analyzed in chapter 4—from the denial of statehood to the Western territories populated by the Saints in 1850, through the Utah War of 1857–1858, the Civil War, and the struggle over polygamy, to Utah’s admission as a state in 1896. Blythe surveys the translation of these experiences into apocalyptic thoughts and narratives, which ranged from the concept of Mormons fighting a holy war to visions of the plagues that captured the imagination of the laity in particular.Chapter 5 investigates the changes in the tone and content of apocalyptic doctrine and rhetoric throughout the twentieth century. These changes led to the harmonization of Mormon relations with the federal government, the realization of the need for national unity and loyalty in the course of two world wars, the Depression, and the Cold War era. They catered to a new positioning, often characterized as the Americanization of the Latter-day apocalypses, which was grounded in the vision of the United States as the redeemer nation for the world amidst all the international changes, tragedies, and catastrophes of the twentieth century. This sense of exceptionalism boosted further efforts in the globalization efforts of the Church, discussed in chapter 6, along with the “persistence of charismatic apocalyptic trajectories” (218) that prevail even today.What is probably Blythe’s most admirable achievement with this volume is his ability to provide a fascinating, easily accessible, but still truly academic, thoroughly researched, and meticulously presented cultural and social history of the Latter-day Saints in the United States, structured around the theme of the apocalypse. His enthusiasm shines through his discussion of church doctrine, policy, and rhetoric, rounding out—or at times opposing—myths, beliefs, and understandings among the laity. He skillfully outlines how the tension-filled relationship between Mormons and the federal government have shifted, while much of the anticipation has remained, although with different content. Meanwhile, Blythe’s readings of some of the vernacular prophecies and actions also point to pertinent issues often overlooked, such as differences in positions of class, gender, or race. By including Mormon temples, their architecture and symbolism or aspects of cultural geography in the discussion, he further demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of his work. I wholeheartedly recommend Terrible Revolution to readers interested in Mormonism and apocalyptic thought in American cultural history.

In the Netherlands there is an active community of Africanist scholars, numbering about 200 to 250. They work mainly in universities and other research institutes, but also in increasing numbers for government ministries (notably of Foreign Affairs and Development Co-operation), NGOs, and other aid organisations. Fields in which Africanists are strong are history, anthropology and geography, and to a lesser extent development sociology, medical science, law, comparative politics and religious studies. The following survey is necessarily a selective one.African Studies in the Netherlands can pride itself on a long history only if we include the many travellers, traders and missionaries active in African regions before the twentieth century. The scholarly study of the continent seriously started a few decades later than in other European countries: after the Second World War, when an Africa Institute was founded (in 1946, see below) and the first special professorial chair in African ethnology was instituted at Leiden University.

The article analyzes the etiology of experiences of spiritual voices and visions typical for Christian mysticism. The problem of one-sidedness of judgments in this question, which formed a confrontation between the positions of psychiatric and theological reflection by the XX century, is raised. It is shown that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for religious studies, overcoming the initially given positions of predetermining the ontological status of experiences. The approach is aimed at finding an explanation of the natural mechanisms of thinking underlying such experiences. The research shows that in the absence of psychopathological factors, due to the polymorphism of thinking, the internal speech experienced in a situation of failure as given by the Other can serve as such a single basis for both types of experiences. However, these remarks on the etiology of spiritual visions and voices show that it is questionable whether a single universally applicable theory is possible outside the analysis of a particular personal experience. They point to the need for methodological caution in religious studies and perform hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis of the human lifeworld.

Teologie i religionistika jsou vědy spojené s problematikou poznání a interpretace náboženského fenoménu. 1Původně napjatý vztah mezi oběma vědními disciplínami se již v průběhu 20.století posunul do podoby spolupráce.Teologie jako věda humanitní a religionistika jako věda na pomezí humanitních a společenských věd však dostaly zcela nový impulz k promýšlení vzájemného vztahu, a to v podobě nové metody výzkumu vycházející z přírodních věd.Souhrnně jsou tyto nové vědy označovány jako neurovědy a neuroteologie je jednou z nich.Velkou popularitu získaly neurovědy ve druhé polovině 20.století, kdy byly různé podoby neurověd využívány především ve výzkumu biologických a psychických funkcí lidského života.Americký prezident George Bush i proto vyhlásil 90.léta 20.století za dekádu mozku. 2 S rozvojem techniky a postupnou racionalizací skenerů snímajících funkce lidského mozku se prosadily neurovědy mimo jiné také ve výzkumu náboženského jevu

This thesis opens a new interdisciplinary frontier between religion and theatre studies to illuminate what has been seen as the religious or spiritual nature of Jerzy Grotowski’s theatrical work. The thesis corrects the lacunae in both theatre studies and New Age studies by examining the interaction between the two in Grotowski’s work. It argues that through an embodied, materialist approach to religion, developed in the work of Foucault and Vasquez, and a critical reading of the concepts of the New Age, a new understanding of Grotowski and religion can be developed. The central thesis argument is that by following discussions of the embodied and materialist understanding of religion and the New Age it is possible to show how Grotowski’s work articulated spiritual experience within the body; achieving a removal of spirituality from ecclesial authorities and relocating spiritual experience within the body of the performer. The thesis maps the specific dynamics of the relation between the body and the spiritual in ways which previous research on Grotowski has failed to do. It also shows how Grotowski became, in part, a spiritual teacher through his directing work, and contributed to an embodied spirituality of the New Age. The thesis begins with a brief historical mapping of religion and the theatre, not least to contextualize the interdisciplinary discrepancy in studies of Grotowski. It then unfolds a two-pronged analysis of Grotowski’s theatre work from the perspective of studies of religion, embodiment and the New Age. In Part One, I apply the critical thinking of French poststructuralism, linked in particular to the work of Michel Foucault, to Grotowski’s work. This shows how body and spirit are united in Grotowski’s thinking, and facilitates a new opening to the embodied spirituality of the New Age. Part Two then seeks to achieve a repositioning of theatre studies in a new dialogue with religious studies by looking at the later phases of Grotowski’s work through the lens of the New Age movement; detailing specific dynamics of the New Age that are at present not coherently appreciated in Grotowski’s theatre work. This section begins by critically assessing the concept of New Age and maps the active interface between the final four phases of Grotowski’s theatre work and the New Age through four frames: initially through the work of religious studies historian Steven Sutcliffe; then through the combined work of religious studies sociologists Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead; through the work of religious studies esotericist Wouter Hanegraaff; and finally through a lens that explores the embodied spiritual work of G.I. Gurdjieff and the numerous similarities between his work and Grotowski’s. The thesis establishes six key facets of the New Age as they have appeared in Grotowski’s work: a primacy of focus on the self, interests in yoga, ritual, shamanism, channeling and the presence of the ancestors. Such a correlation between the New Age and Grotowski occurs because of the redefinitions of the body and spirit, and the importance of the body as it has been renegotiated in religious scholarship on poststructuralism and the body; through a renegotiation that occurs through the New Age movement; and through the work of religious studies sociologist Manuel Vasquez’s reconstruction of a holistic form of embodied materiality in religion. This inclusion of the body in the context of spiritual experience provides the location through which Grotowski’s theatre work can be framed as spiritual. This thesis provides a new perspective on Grotowski’s work for theatre scholarship, exploring one of its heroes in the light of religious movements of the late twentieth century, and corrects a key lacuna within the field of modern scholarship on religious studies. Grotowski and his work have never been effectively recognized as playing a major part within the New Age movement or new explorations of spirituality. This omission is evident both in terms of the effect that the burgeoning New Age movement has had on his work, as well as in the legacy his work has left on the New Age itself. This study provides a fresh perspective for modern religious studies scholars, identifying a new forum within which to explore the effect of the New Age movement, as well as by expanding the remit of its pioneering New Age leaders. The thesis overall demonstrates how thinking about Grotowski’s work and legacy can be enriched through a new dialogue between religion and theatre studies, and how the centrality of the body becomes the key for understanding this relationship.

At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the landscape of religions and the dynamics of beliefs are reshaped by several movements. On one side, a ‘return of magic’ in contemporary societies and the rise of a modern witchcraft, and in parallel, and on another side, the rise and expansion of forms of ‘spirituality’. These two movements, both featuring in a specific manner the new face of the sacred, are often considered isolated from each other by social sciences and humanities, and religious studies, they, however, significantly crossover. As a result, modern witchcraft is turning more ‘spiritual’, whereas spirituality is – to a certain extent – becoming more ‘witchy’. With reference to the empirical examples of the emerging movements Magic for resistance and Witches 2.0, this article aims at demonstrating that the issue of politics and empowerment facilitate the cross-fertilization of the two movements in the context of high digitization.

Here I offer thoughts on what the recent history of the academic study of religion might reveal about its current state, and why we need to continually renew attention to our collective, and ideally, contested, vision for the academy. I frame this reflection in relation to two scholars of religion, Donald Wiebe and Michel Desjardins, who in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries shaped the Canadian and American academic conversation about this field of study. I approach their work in this area not as discrete faits accompli, but as examples of iterative self-construction in the history of the field. Attention should continually be paid to what kind of religious studies we do, and what we study when we study religion; part of that account is of the we, specifically of our relationality, in our entitlements and obligations. I am increasingly persuaded that the key nexus of focus for our attention is not (or is no longer) primarily in the question of the humanistic versus the social-scientific study of religion. Thinking through what we do over against what we think we ought to be doing will involve a less oppositional, more relational accounting of and accounting for who we think we are and what we think we owe one another.