Foundations of Belief
An Abiding Engagement: Prayer, Power, and Politics in Pentecostal Spirituality in Africa
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Akintunde Akinade
African Christianity has engendered many creative paradigms in theology, liturgy, and mission studies. In the twenty-first century, African Christianity continues to experience exponential growth, renewal, and transformation. Pentecostal congregations have radically reshaped the Christian faith in Africa. Through intentional and active engagement in the public square, pentecostal churches in Africa have established creative connections between prayer and politics. This paper examines the power of prayer in pentecostal spirituality. I argue that the discourse on prayer in African Christianity is located in the intersection of actuality and possibility. This process can described as the quintessential crossroad of hope and promise, human brokenness, and redemption. This juxtaposition indicates the perennial paradoxical nature of the Christian faith. This paper critically interrogates the complex linkages between spirituality and politics from the vantage point of pentecostalism in Africa. I will grapple with these connections from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The Map of Life: Quaker Religious Practice in the Early American Republic
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janet Moore Lindman
From the Buddhist Eight-fold Path to the Native American Red Road, spiritual practice as a well-trod track through life has been a dominant trope among several faith traditions. As a metaphorical construct, the path framed the spiritual identity of the Religious Society of Friends in the early American Republic. Both as a symbol and allegory, life as a journey has a long history in Christianity. The Bible as well as the medieval literature and art of Europe abound with this image. Instead of physically traveling to a holy site like Catholics, however, Protestants journeyed inward in their minds and hearts to affirm and experience faith. This was evident in the faith practice of Quakers, who envisioned their piety as an active, daily undertaking. Friends followed a series of meandering pathways, in which they advanced or retreated repeatedly before reaching their journey’s end. George Dilwyn, an American Quaker, portrayed this religious trek in an image entitled “The Map of Various Paths,” which outlined the possible routes a Friend might follow during their lifetime. Analysis of this material artifact will demonstrate the ways in which American Quakers visualized spirituality. Study of this image is particularly important for religious history because it provides striking evidence of Friends’ spiritual path that--as inward, silent and atomized--is not always readily discernible.
Dostoevsky and the Icon: Faith beyond Reason
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrea Serra
For Dostoevsky, reason represent a twentieth part of the human essence and reducing a human being to the sole dimension of reason have the same meaning of considering him as a number. In his Notebook, a little bit before die, we can read: "my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt." Dostoevsky was tormented by doubt - in a letter to his friend Fonvizina (1854) he called himself "child of unbelief." However, it was precisely the incompleteness of reason compared to the divine infinity that made him produce an authentic faith. What I would like to show in my speech is precisely this relationship (faith and reason) in the Fyodor Dostoevsky's thought. Citing authors such as Paul Evdokimov, Hans Küng, Father Pavel Florensky etc. I would like to analyze this relationship in the light of the "symbol," the orthodox icon, which in Dostoevsky's novels presents itself as a painting (Holbein, Lorrain) and which contains in itself that mystery (apophatic thought) that, since the age of seventeen, our author discovered as a main characteristic of human being: man is a mystery.
