{"title":"Corpses and the Protestant cult of the dead","authors":"E. R. Seeman","doi":"10.1558/bar.18103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.18103","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars of the body and religion readily acknowledge that corpses have agency. ‘The work of the dead,’ as Thomas Laqueur puts it, includes everything from sacralizing the landscape to creating imagined communities. Scholars have been less successful, however, in documenting the continuing relations between ordinary Protestants and their departed loved ones. In their focus on cemetery designers and political leaders, historians have overlooked the spiritual journals – mostly by women – that document relations between the living and dead. This article argues that corpses were central to such relations, even for mainstream Protestants whose ministers insisted otherwise. This argument challenges the way most scholars think of Protestantism. Rather than considering it as a religion of internal beliefs and creeds, I emphasize the material and tactile foundations of Protestant belief. And rather than seeing a religion dedicated to maintaining the Reformation’s divide between the living and dead, I put relations with the dead at the heart of lived Protestantism.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132341864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The faces of death","authors":"Jeffrey E. Smith","doi":"10.1558/bar.18301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.18301","url":null,"abstract":"The Rural Cemetery Movement ushered in a new way of thinking about cemeteries in American society after 1831. As these cemeteries became civic assets, they were widely visited by people and became a mediated space for articulating and expanding collective memory. The gravestones and monuments in these cemeteries erected in the second half of the nineteenth century combined increasingly secular messages and memory in a sacrosanct setting, thus blurring the lines in cemeteries between the secular and the sacred.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123959745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thresholds of touch","authors":"Wesley N. Barker","doi":"10.1558/BAR.17861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/BAR.17861","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference as a pre-discursive, irreducible difference that is the possibility of desire and the condition of relation to the world. Couching Irigaray’s bodily language within her linguistic psychoanalytic and ethical frameworks for critiquing metaphysics, this article revisits the question of ‘body’ in Irigaray’s work in relation to the pre-discursive ‘materiality’ of sexual difference. By holding Irigaray’s theory of sexual difference together with her critique of metaphysics, the author asserts that beyond the language of immanence and transcendence, the materiality of Irigaray’s pre-discursive sexual difference constitutes the ‘stuff’ of radical alterity.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129161995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima By N. E. van Deusen (2018)","authors":"Joana Serrado","doi":"10.1558/bar.19601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.19601","url":null,"abstract":"Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima By N. E. van Deusen (2018) Durham and London: Duke University Press, viii + 272pp.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"205 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123251155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Erotic desire as a woman’s way of knowing the divine","authors":"Haruka Umetsu Cho","doi":"10.1558/bar.17910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.17910","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a Japanese novel written by Arishima Takeo, A Certain Woman (first published in Japanese in 1919), in order to explore women’s ways of knowing, focusing on the body and erotic desire as a locus where the human–God relationship is embodied. This novel shows a way of knowing the Divine beyond language and the sanitized notion of love, describing the life of a modern Japanese Christian woman who refuses both Japanese colonial woman-hood and Christian (Victorian) sexual ethics. Depicting the divine presence in the protagonist’s promiscuous and stigmatized body, Arishima asks theological questions about the role of eros and violence in the pursuit of God, and seeks radically free God and humans who may go beyond any existing boundaries.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131080153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ascetical Theology By R. A. Cadenhead (2018)","authors":"Sara Misgen","doi":"10.1558/bar.19364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.19364","url":null,"abstract":"The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ascetical Theology By R. A. Cadenhead (2018) Oakland: University of California Press, xii + 267pp.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126483820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Confucianism and the Philosophy of Well-Being By R. Kim (2020)","authors":"Ori Tavor","doi":"10.1558/bar.20302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.20302","url":null,"abstract":"Confucianism and the Philosophy of Well-Being By R. Kim (2020) New York: Routledge, ix + 119pp.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131590872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Words on fire","authors":"Ailie Posillico","doi":"10.1558/BAR.17839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/BAR.17839","url":null,"abstract":"With a focus on the archives of Gemma Galgani (1878–1903), lay Italian Catholic mystic, stigmatic, and first saint of the twentieth century, the current article highlights the ways in which Gemma cultivated relationships with the hierarchy, specifically through writing, which challenged the ‘traditional,’ clerically approved models of late nineteenth-century Catholic sanctity. With attention to Gemma’s writing, a saint who has otherwise been portrayed by her hagiographer as fitting neatly into the strictures of Italian Catholicism of her time, we see rhetoric that contests the assumption that submission is a necessary component of ‘piety.’ Attending to Gemma’s letters sent to her spiritual advisor, the current study underscores the ways in which we may understand Gemma as more than the quiet, humble, and wounded body for which she has been canonized. Gemma as author, as writing body, as I will show, weaves for herself an alternative system of agency that co-exists with – while at the same time reimagines – the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"212 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114572465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Touching, crafting, knowing","authors":"Amy Whitehead","doi":"10.1558/BAR.36491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/BAR.36491","url":null,"abstract":"Based on a small ethnographic study at the shrine of the Virgin of Alcala in Andalusia, Spain, this article asserts that 'touch' is not only an intrinsic part of religion, but the principal facilitating medium through which the performances, expressions and relationships with the Virgin, take place. The article uses the relational discourses of animism and the fetish to critically explore the dynamics of touch, focusing primarily on the ways in which powerful religious statues such as the Virgin are creatively forged from raw materials, the gendered ways in which her statue-body is ritually touched, cared for and maintained, and the potentiality of her personhood. Personhood, it is argued, emerges co-creatively between 'persons' (artefact persons and human persons) during moments of active relating that involve touch. It is concluded that 'to fetish' is both to apprehend beloved religious statues with the senses and to be invited into creative religious, relational engagements with so called religious objects. 'To touch' is 'to fetish'. ","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126250202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Seeing’ my Beloved","authors":"O. Takhar","doi":"10.1558/BAR.36489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/BAR.36489","url":null,"abstract":"The discussion in this chapter focuses on the concept of darśan from a Sikh perspective by analysing teachings from the Guru Granth Sahib on the subject of 'seeing' the Divine. Sikhi (Sikh teachings) emphasises the Ultimate Divine as formless and experienced through the senses. Indeed, Sikhi refers to this experience as blissful union with one's Beloved. This chapter explores Sahaj, mystical union with the Divine, through an analysis of teachings around darśan in Sikh teachings. Time and time again, the teachings of the Guru Granth Sahib allude to the bestowing of Nadar as the opportunity to transcend one's consciousness from being manmukh (worldly/self-orientated) to gurmukh (attuned to the Divine). To become gurmukh is the concept of an awakened mind; according to Sikhi, a gurmukh is one who has 'seen' the formless Divine, one who has 'heard' the anahad sabad (the unstruck melody), which suggests a heightening of the senses, an awakening of the man/buddhi. ","PeriodicalId":247531,"journal":{"name":"Body and Religion","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130965064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}