Download or read book Syncretism in Religion written by Anita Maria Leopold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long a fascinating but problematic category of religious studies, "syncretism" is an elastic term that describes a wide range of practices characterized by the mixing or overlap of traditions. Syncretism in Religion offers the student a broad selection of essays, both classical contributions to the study of syncretism and new essays commissioned especially for this volume. Some important selections appear here in English for the first time. Also included is a list of references for further reading.
Download or read book Syncretism in Religion written by Anita Maria Leopold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syncretism - the fusion of different beliefs into one religious system - has long been controversial in scholarship. It is widely held that religion, culture and ethnicity are pure entities that may become mixed in encounter and lead to impure, hybrid forms. 'Syncretism in Religion' presents a selection of essays committed to solving the problems of syncretism. The essays reflect the full breadth of religious traditions that could be called syncretistic. An overview of the historical background of syncretism is given, alongside classical readings from the history of religion, definitions of syncretism in relation to theories of power, and an assessment of the future of the subject. This volume brings together the work of authors who have made significant contributions in the field, some appearing for the first time in English. It will be of interest to any student or scholar of religion, philosophy or anthropology concerned with the dynamics of cultural contact and change.
Download or read book In Praise of Mixed Religion written by William H. Harrison and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When asked "What religion do you follow?" the typical answer is to name a specific group, or to respond "None." An increasing number of people, however, are intentionally combining elements from various religious heritages, demonstrating that religions do not have firm boundaries, nor are they purely distinct. In Praise of Mixed Religion discusses the concept of syncretism, the term for the mixing of religious perspectives. The religious studies discipline has traditionally distinguished between two responses to syncretism: a subjective view, which treats syncretism as morally reprehensible, and an objective view, which treats it as a morally neutral phenomenon. William Harrison adopts a third perspective, the advocacy view, which claims that mixing religions is a good and necessary process. He cites countless examples - such as Islam's transformative encounter with Greek thought - from both history and recent years to show how religious traditions have gained theological and practical wisdom by borrowing key ideas, beliefs, and practices from outside their own movements. By encouraging syncretism, In Praise of Mixed Religion contests the hard boundaries between religious worldviews and presents a dramatic alternative for thinking and talking about religion.
Download or read book An Overview of Syncretism written by Edited by Paul F. Kisak and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-11 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, while blending practices of various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths. Syncretism also occurs commonly in expressions of arts and culture (known as eclecticism) as well as politics (syncretic politics). Overt syncretism in folk belief may show cultural acceptance of an alien or previous tradition, but the "other" cult may survive or infiltrate without authorized syncresis nevertheless. For example, some Conversos developed a sort of cult for martyr-victims of the Spanish Inquisition, thus incorporating elements of Catholicism while resisting it. Some religious movements have embraced overt syncretism, such as the case of melding Shinto beliefs into Buddhism or the amalgamation of Germanic and Celtic pagan views into Christianity during its spread into Gaul, the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. Indian influences are seen in the practice of Shi'i Islam in Trinidad. Others have strongly rejected it as devaluing and compromising precious and genuine distinctions; examples of this include post-Exile Second Temple Judaism, Islam, and most of Protestant Christianity. Syncretism tends to facilitate coexistence and unity between otherwise different cultures and worldviews (intercultural competence), a factor that has recommended it to rulers of multi-ethnic realms. Conversely, the rejection of syncretism, usually in the name of "piety" and "orthodoxy," may help to generate, bolster or authenticate a sense of uncompromised cultural unity in a well-defined minority or majority. This book is designed to be a state of the art, superb academic reference work and provide an overview of the topic and give the reader a structured knowledge to familiarize yourself with the topic at the most affordable price possible. The accuracy and knowledge is of an international viewpoint as the edited articles represent the inputs of many knowledgeable individuals and some of the most current knowledge on the topic, based on the date of publication.
Download or read book Syncretism Anti Syncretism written by Rosalind Shaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syncretism - the synthesis of different religious - is a contentious word. Some regard it as a pejorative term, referring to local versions of notionally standard `world religions' which are deemed `inauthentic' because saturated with indigenous content. Syncretic versions of Christianity do not conform to `official' (read `European') models. In other contexts however, the syncretic amalgamation of religions may be validated as a mode of resistance to colonial hegemony, a sign of cultural survival, or as a means of authorising political dominance in a multicultural state. In Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism the contributors explore the issues of agency and power which are integral to the very process of syncretism and to the competing discourses surrounding the term.
Download or read book SCM Core Text Religious Syncretism written by Eric Maroney and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even a quick scan of today's headlines makes clear that the growth of fundamentalist versions of Islam is having a vast impact on our world. For Americans the rise of Christian fundamentalism, especially the Evangelical movement, is also socially and politically shaping the country, as debates about abortion, stem cell research and other important issues are often driven by fundamentalist notions. In profound ways, orthodox versions of Judaism have altered the fabric of Middle Eastern politics through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially regarding settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, making peace there all the more difficult, and further destabilizing an already unstable region. The rise of fundamentalism in the three monotheistic faiths is fully examined in this textbook. It is not about fundamentalism however, it is about its opposite trend: religious syncretism. Syncretism describes the phenomenon of one religion borrowing elements from another, and it is part of religion that fundamentalists will seldom acknowledge. This textbook explores Judaism, Christianity and Islam, using compelling examples of how syncretism works and looks, to show how these three religions have adopted customs and conceptions of other religions, most often acquiring practices from pagan predecessors and neighbours. The book shows how these three faiths - despite how modern media would have us believe - have been willing, at various times and places, to borrow.
Download or read book Philosophical and Theological Responses to Syncretism written by Mika Vähäkangas and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism: Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion by Patrik Fridlund and Mika Vähäkangas (eds.) starts from the observation that there is a substantial gap between religions’ self-understanding and the empirical results of religious studies concerning religious blending. Even in theology of religion, one often portrays religions as if they were entities fundamentally separate from each other. The aims of this book are to elaborate theologically the consequences of syncretism to Christian faith and of syncretism to philosophy. By creating a critical interchange between theological, philosophical and empirical approaches to religion, this book challenges the conventional views of purity of religions prevailing in theology and philosophy as well as proposes theological and philosophical ways forward. Contributors are: Jonas Adelin, Stephen Bevans, Gavin d’Costa, Patrik Fridlund, Lotta Gammelin, Elizabeth Harris, Jerker Karlsson, Paul Linjamaa, Kang-San Tan, Mika Vähäkangas.
Download or read book Reinventing Religions written by Sidney M. Greenfield and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once a central concept in anthropology, syncretism has recently re-emerged as a valuable tool for understanding the complex dynamics of ethnicity, postcolonialism, and transnationalism. Building on a century-long tradition of scholarship, this important book formulates a broader view of the mixing and interpenetration of religious beliefs and practices, primarily from Africa and Europe, highlighting the ways in which religions and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic have been assimilated and innovatively changed. Divided into four sections, the book focuses on religious syncretism in Brazil, Jamaica, and other parts of the Caribbean and West Africa. Greenfield and Droogers have brought together an array of outstanding international scholars whose rich and varied essays on specific geographical locales and customs comprise an innovative and comprehensive view of the transference of religious traditions and their continuity and reformulation on two continents.
Download or read book Syncretism and Christian Tradition written by Ross Kane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syncretism has been a part of Christianity from its very beginning, when early Christians expressed Jesus' Aramaic teachings in the Greek language. Defined as the phenomena of religious mixture, syncretism carries a range of connotations. In Christian theology, use of syncretism shifted from a compliment during the Reformation to an outright insult in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The term has a history of being used as a neutral descriptor, a pejorative marker, and even a celebration of indigenous agency. Its differing uses indicate the challenges of interpreting religious mixture, challenges which today relate primarily to race and revelation. Despite its pervasiveness across religious traditions, syncretism is poorly understood and often misconceived. Ross Kane argues that the history of syncretism's use accentuates wider interpretive problems, drawing attention to attempts by Christian theologians to protect the category of divine revelation from perceived human interference. Kane shows how the fields of religious studies and theology have approached syncretism with a racialized imagination still suffering the legacies of European colonialism. Syncretism and Christian Tradition examines how the concept of race figures into dominant religious traditions associated with imperialism, and reveals how syncretism can act a vital means of the Holy Spirit's continuing revelation of Jesus.
Download or read book Muslims and Christians in the Bulgarian Rhodopes written by Magdalena Lubanska and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book by Magdalena Lubanska examines the role of religious syncretism in the social and religious life of Muslim-Christian communities in the Western Rhodopes. The author is interested mainly in the origins and motivations of various beliefs and behaviors which at first sight may appear to be syncretic. She looks at syncretism in the context of anti-syncretic tendencies, particularly pronounced among the Muslim neophytes and young members of the Muslim religious elite, who are not interested in the local forms of post-ottoman Islam (“Adat Islam”), preferring instead a “pure” form of religion, a class of fundamentalist religious movements rooted in orthodox Islam and seeking to remain faithful to mainstream Islamic thought and tradition (“Salafi Islam”). Lubanska findings offer an insight into the fact that although certain actions may appear syncretic in nature, their underlying intentions are often not in fact motivated by syncretic tendencies. This is the first study to look at syncretism in Bulgaria from this perspective.
Download or read book Syncretism and Christian Tradition written by Ross Kane and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Studying the history of syncretism's use indicates wider interpretative problems in religious studies and theology regarding race and revelation. It also indicates the importance of seeing "tradition" as adaptive and amalgamating rather than static. In theology and religious studies alike, discourses of syncretism are positioned within racialized perceptions which construct a center and periphery based upon white European knowledge. In Christian theology more specifically, syncretism's use also shows ways that theologians try to protect the category of divine revelation from human interference, leading to interpretative problems that sidestep material history"--
Download or read book The Politics of Religion in Indonesia written by Michel Picard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-05-13 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indonesia is a remarkable case study for religious politics. While not being a theocratic country, it is not secular either, with the Indonesian state officially defining what constitutes religion, and every citizen needing to be affiliated to one of them. This book focuses on Java and Bali, and the interesting comparison of two neighbouring societies shaped by two different religions - Islam and Hinduism. The book examines the appropriation by the peoples of Java and Bali of the idea of religion, through a dialogic process of indigenization of universalist religions and universalization of indigenous religions. It looks at the tension that exists between proponents of local world-views and indigenous belief systems, and those who deny those local traditions as qualifying as a religion. This tension plays a leading part in the construction of an Indonesian religious identity recognized by the state. The book is of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asia, religious studies and the anthropology and sociology of religion.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion written by Michael Stausberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Download or read book Beyond Conversion and Syncretism written by avid, and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The globalization of Christianity, its spread and appeal to peoples of non- European origin, is by now a well-known phenomenon. Scholars increasingly realize the importance of natives rather than foreign missionaries in the process of evangelization. This volume contributes to the understanding of this process through case studies of encounters with Christianity from the perspectives of the indigenous peoples who converted. More importantly, by exploring overarching, general terms such as conversion and syncretism and by showing the variety of strategies and processes that actually take place, these studies lead to a more nuanced understanding of cross-cultural religious interactions in general—from acceptance to resistance—thus enriching the vocabulary of religious interaction. The contributors tackle these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—history, anthropology, religious studies—and present a broad geographical spread of cases from China, Vietnam, Australia, India, South and West Africa, North and Central America, and the Caribbean.
Download or read book In Search of Shiva written by Haroon Khalid and published by Rupa Publications. This book was released on 2015 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hidden within the rising tide of Islamic puritanism and extremism in Pakistan there is another world of Islamic religiosity which does not look towards the Middle East for its religious identity but is instead rooted in the cultural beliefs of South Asia. Comprising traditions that have their roots in the antiquity of the Indus Valley Civilization, it finds expression in shrines of phallic offerings, sacred animals and sacred trees. In the backdrop of economic development and rising extremism, these shrines exist as an anomaly and are increasingly at risk of being eroded. Growing connectivity between rural and urban areas further threatens the distinctiveness of these shrines and religious traditions. In Search of Shiva documents these religious traditions and studies how they have survived over the years and are now adapting to the increasingly rigid religious climate in Pakistan.
Download or read book Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East written by Kehl-Bodrogi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with Islamic sects in the Near East such as the Alevis (Turkey), Druzes (Libanon), Alawis (Syria), Ahl-i Haqq (Iran, Iraq) and Shabak (Iraq), which have in common a syncretistic system of belief with a strong Shi'ite influence, as well as secrecy and endogamy. The contributions in this volume focus on the present situation of these communities, their relation to mainstream Islam, their involvement in national and ethnic politics, aspects of faith and rituals, the relevance of sacred texts, modes of religious and social transformation, and the recent revival of Alevism. In view of the new visibility of these formerly "hidden" sects and their increasing social and political importance, this volume provides important information for all scholars interested in the religious and political situation of the region.
Download or read book Christianizing Egypt written by David Frankfurter and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a culture become Christian, especially one that is heir to such ancient traditions and spectacular monuments as Egypt? This book offers a new model for envisioning the process of Christianization by looking at the construction of Christianity in the various social and creative worlds active in Egyptian culture during late antiquity. As David Frankfurter shows, members of these different social and creative worlds came to create different forms of Christianity according to their specific interests, their traditional idioms, and their sense of what the religion could offer. Reintroducing the term “syncretism” for the inevitable and continuous process by which a religion is acculturated, the book addresses the various formations of Egyptian Christianity that developed in the domestic sphere, the worlds of holy men and saints’ shrines, the work of craftsmen and artisans, the culture of monastic scribes, and the reimagination of the landscape itself, through processions, architecture, and the potent remains of the past. Drawing on sermons and magical texts, saints’ lives and figurines, letters and amulets, and comparisons with Christianization elsewhere in the Roman empire and beyond, Christianizing Egypt reconceives religious change—from the “conversion” of hearts and minds to the selective incorporation and application of strategies for protection, authority, and efficacy, and for imagining the environment.
