{"title":"Hare Krishna in the Czech Republic after Thirty Years: Success or Failure?","authors":"Dušan Lužný","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10073","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The study tries to evaluate the development of the Hare Krishna Movement (ISKCON) in the Czech Republic. It points out that after a period of great openness and the emergence of non-traditional religious groups after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the spread of this movement gradually stagnated. After a period of “anti-cult” attacks, the movement did become part of the standard religious scene, although its attractiveness decreased. Based on two models (the model of religious success and the concept of religious memory), the study shows the limits to the wider success of the movement. However, given the widespread secularization and the prevailing “religious apathy” of Czech society, the Hare Krishna Movement’s impact in Czech society can be considered a limited success.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75511634","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":"Complications in Defining the Presence of Tenrikyō in Europe While Discussing Its “Community”","authors":"M. Brady","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10069","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses a central issue linked to research conducted on an eclectic conglomeration of people connected in various ways to the principal European site of the Japanese new religion of Tenrikyō. Although the center itself is in a Parisian suburb and the majority of its key actors are Japanese, the people connected to this center and its associated social world span beyond the Paris region and include various nationalities, countries of residence, and even religious identities. Moreover, the people connected to this center and the presence of the Tenrikyō religion in Europe are largely one and the same, but not entirely. A question commonly posed to the researcher by “outsiders” is how many Tenrikyō “members” there are in Paris, France, and/or Europe, and if they are Japanese or the nationality of the local country (French, German, etc.) The complexities of answering such questions are the focus of this discussion.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84416503","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":"Deities and Categories","authors":"M. Glouberman","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10068","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Implicit in the Hebrew Bible is the proposition that Western philosophy’s world- rationalising resources are short a category. This is the category of ones – non-general individuals whose identity is secure apart from such wider wholes as they are/might be associated with. Since the Bible’s thinkers classify men and women as ones, their view would therefore be that Western philosophy cannot deal effectively with the human condition. This is the ultimate meaning of the injunction to each of us not to accept the other gods (who do not belong to the category) before God (who does). In these pages, I set out and defend the Bible’s implied critique of Western philosophy. By examining the positions of several leading philosophers of our time, I explain why philosophical analysis of the specific sort that traces back to God-less Greece is, as the Bible maintains, out of synchrony with human reality.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88427617","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":"Supreme Mathematics","authors":"Martin A. M. Gansinger","doi":"10.30965/23642807-10020020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-10020020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This contribution aims to explore the historical predecessors of the Five Percenter model of self-realization, as popularized by Hip Hop artists such as Supreme Team, Rakim Allah, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sunz of Man. As compared to frequent considerations of the phenomenon as a creative mythological background for a socio-political struggle, Five Percenter teachings shall be discussed as contemporary interpretations of historical models of self-realization in various philosophical, religious, and esoteric systems. By putting the coded system of the tenfold Supreme Mathematics as one of its core teachings in context with the Pythagorean Tetractys, an arrangement of ten points in four lines, the commonalities between the sequence and concepts attributed to the respective numbers will be demonstrated.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81986002","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":"Origins and Development of Buddhism in Poland","authors":"P. Czarnecki","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10067","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000According to the data provided in 2016 by the Polish Main Department of Statistics (Główny Urząd Statystyczny), the Buddhist Diamond Way Association of Karma Kagyu Lineage was one of ten most popular religions in Poland with more than 8200 adherents. Currently there are 19 officially registered Buddhist religious groups in Poland with ca. 14000 members, and what is noteworthy, this number increases in time, against the general declining trend, that can be observed in the majority of Polish religious groups. The article will show how Buddhism (which till the end of the 1960s. was practically unknown in Poland) became one of the most significant religious traditions in this country. It will present its constant development in the difficult times of anti-religious communist regime and in free Poland after 1989. It will also give an overview of various Buddhist traditions, that are active in Poland nowadays.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91192909","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":"“I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me”. The Role of Religion and Faith-Based Organizations in Refugee Accommodation","authors":"A. Nagel","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10066","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Support for strangers is deeply anchored in the social ethics of various religious traditions. Based on a qualitative content analysis of interviews with refugees and immigration executives. the article focuses on the role of religion and religious communities in refugee accommodation in Germany between 2011 and 2018. It sheds light on different schemes and measures of support offered by religious communities and explores the significance of religious and cultural differences for processes of accommodation and early integration. The empirical analysis is embedded in conceptual debates on the re-emergence of faith-based service providers in the crisis of the late modern welfare state. The findings suggest that the so called ‘refugee crisis’ has served as an opportunity structure for Christian refugee aid. At the same time, refugee accommodation centres in Germany have responded to an increase of non-Christian refugees (notably: Muslims) by a more restrictive handling of religious freedom.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86999267","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":"Exploring Caodai Networks and Practices in France: From Individual Itineraries to Interlocked Relations","authors":"J. Jammes","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10065","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000As a Vietnamese autochthonous religion, Cao Ðài was first meant to address Vietnamese people, who received the mission to spread out humanistic and salvationist messages all over the world. Cao Ðài expanded overseas, with few hundreds of them settled in France. Firstly, I will clarify the profile of few French sympathisers in colonial and postcolonial times. Secondly, I will examine ethnographic data collected in the two main Caodai temples of Vitry-sur-Seine and Alfortville from 1996 onwards. This extended fieldwork gave me the possibility to follow the membership logics, the different challenges and obstacles they face in terms of conversion and community life in the French context of religious freedom. The organization (or not) of spirit-medium séances, and the tactics of some Caodai missionaries will reveal some of the tensions between the pastoral and missionary dynamics of Cao Ðài in France.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81277788","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":"Mothers and Melancholia: Sacrifice in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling","authors":"Cæcilie Varslev-Pedersen","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10051","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article examines sacrifice in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. I argue that in order to understand the meaning of sacrifice in this work, we have to account for the four poetic images of a weaning mother – often overlooked by commentators – that we find in the section entitled “Attunement”. I show that we can make sense of the images once we situate them within the context of Kierkegaard’s (or his pseudonyms’) broader critique of modernity, autonomous subjectivity, and the loss of premodern forms of authority. On my interpretation, for Kierkegaard, sacrifice entails a rupture of a communal bond; yet his pseudonyms explore both secular and religious ways of responding to such a rupture. Finally I argue that while Fear and Trembling ultimately offers no clear solutions, the story Kierkegaard conveys to us – a story about sacrifice, mourning, and mothering – can inspire us to reflect on the modern condition.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83870958","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":"Law and Sacrifice in Kafka and His Readers","authors":"V. Liska","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10052","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Victims of an uncanny legal system pervade Kafka’s writings. Whether the representation of the law in these works implies a sacrificial logic depends significantly on the meaning assigned to Kafka’s idea of the law. Despite the innumerable interpretations of Kafka’s law-related texts it remains uncertain whether the law in his works is to be understood primarily in juridical, social, and political terms or in metaphysical, theological, and religious ones. This uncertainty, besides eliciting myriad, sometimes contradictory, interpretations, has inspired numerous views, themselves often disparate and conflicting, about the relationship between law and sacrifice in Kafka’s works. The present article explores this relationship and how it has been regarded by some of his most important interpreters.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79034653","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":"Sacrificing Gender: Kierkegaard and the Traumatic Self","authors":"R. Rosfort","doi":"10.30965/23642807-bja10054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10054","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Kierkegaard’s authorship is saturated with gender biases. And yet, the ossified conceptions of gender that we find in Kierkegaard’s writings are destabilized by his ethical ideal of humanity as a radical equality. This paper will examine the argument that the sacrifice of gender plays a vital function in Kierkegaard’s account of human selfhood. Selfhood is not possible without sacrifice. To exist as a human self is to sacrifice one’s own conceptions of the existential differences that make each and every one of us the unique individual that we are. We are gendered beings, and we cannot escape the traumatic ambiguity of intimacy and alienation endemic to our gendered existence. We have to sacrifice our gendered conceptions of being human in light of a demand for a radical equality beyond gender differences. This sacrifice of gender is an ethical demand that we can never fulfill because of our gendered existence.","PeriodicalId":53191,"journal":{"name":"Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85166248","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}