Shifting Understanding (Asynchronous - Online Only)
Contested Pilgrimages: How and Why the Underworld God was Replaced by the Fertility Goddess in Sixteenth Century Chinese Taishan? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Meng Chi Hsueh
The study deals with the competition over perceiving and interpreting sacred Taishan (Mount Tai) by different groups. Taishan is one of the most prominent sacred sites and national symbols in China. Since the end of the first century B.C., Taishan had been conceived as the homeland of the dead which governed by the Lord of Taishan. The same mountain God had ever been the only focus of worshiping, as suggested in several screenplays dating to the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Usually a mountain is governed by one major deity without change. However according to the folklore, a competition over the sovereignty of the peak of Taishan took place and eventually the religious popularity of the underworld God was overtaken by the newly-emerged fertility and childbirth Goddess in the sixteenth century. Such phenomenon was especially unusual in a patriarchal society. By embodied mobility and devoted ritual participation, the women's appropriation of the temples and sacred landscape performed the transgression of the ideology of domesticity in Chinese moral standards. Taishan was gifted the meaning of death at first and then replaced by the interpretation of birth-giving. This makes the author wonder how and why the same natural environment got totally contradict meanings in various historical phases. What triggered this dramatic transformation? From the superimposition of the meanings embedded in the landscape, we consider the minds of common people and see how they perceive and imagine the landscape or transform to another mindset in response to the change of collective spiritual needs.
The Perception of Christian Religion in the Austrian Society (19th-century) through and According to two of Stifter's Tales : To What Extent Does Religion Interfere and Influence on Characters' Behaviour? How May God Be Indirectly Depicted? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Paula Quijano
It is fair to say that literary texts are to keep and share all the knowledge throughout history that exists within, even though it is through a story. Likewise, literary texts are key when it comes to understanding the world, as it is and as it was, in other times and cultures, which includes the way of perceiving religion and its explicit or implicit presence. Thus, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on the presence of the Christian religion in the Austrian society (19th-century) through and according to two of Stifter's tales (Die Barmherzigkeit & Der Tod einer Jungfrau) and to analyse its scope: to what extent religion interferes and influences on characters' behaviour and how God may be indirectly depicted.
The Pulpit and the Pen: The Traveling Texts of George Whitefield's 1740 New England Preaching Tour View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lisa Smith
George Whitefield, famous for his preaching tours throughout the eighteenth-century West, owed much of his renown to “traveling texts.” Early in his ministry, the Anglican clergyman penned spiritual journals, autobiographical works, and an avalanche of letters detailing his ministerial exploits, personal spiritual successes and struggles, and plans for the future. Publishers in England and America eagerly awaited these writings, mailed to them from wherever Whitefield was in the world. During a six-week tour of the New England colonies in America in the fall of 1740, Whitefield used letters, journal entries, and contributed newspaper items to communicate the narrative of his preaching tour to not only his own religious community of revival-oriented, evangelical Protestants but also to the rest of the world. These published writings show Whitefield’s tour as remarkably successful in terms of numbers and notably powerful in terms of God’s presence. Whitefield himself appears in the texts as courageous, favored, and spiritually devoted. This paper examines how Whitefield used his “traveling texts” to share and brand his 1740 preaching journey through the New England colonies.
Fondrako: The Oral Text of the Nias Religion and Its Influence on Contemporary Social Life View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sonny Zaluchu
Fondrako is the name of the religious text of the Nias tribe, which was born from the perspective of animism and dynamism. This text is an oral utterance that is then written down and becomes a religious belief and a guide for people to act in everyday life. Even though Christianity has become the majority religion on the island of Nias, the strength and values of the fondrako text are still very strong in influencing the paradigm, mindset, and actions of the Nias people. In practice, fondrako texts and values regulate the social and religious behavior of Nias people more than Christian texts. As a result, Christianity developed within the influence and power of tradition so that mixed teachings were unavoidable. Nias people prefer to refer to traditional values and heritage of tribal religious texts rather than Christian teachings, which often lose out in cultural practice. This study examines how Fondrako has become a non-canonical religious force and impacts social change in contemporary Nias society. To that end, I discuss four critical issues: (a) what is fondrako; (b) the social function of fondrako in social change; (c) fondrako as religious teaching; and (d) the hybridity of fondrako with Christian teachings for contemporary Nias people. The theories that I use in this literature research are various approaches in the sociology of religion.
Collective Belief in Religion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tiffany Zhu
There is mounting evidence, both empirical and theoretical, against the common-sense conception that people hold religious beliefs. However, this discussion has so far focused on individual believers and the cognitive attitudes they hold. In this paper, I suggest the attitude that groups of people collectively hold toward religious propositions is an important phenomenon that warrants its own philosophical discussion. I propose a conception of collective religious belief under the Gilbertian joint commitment framework involving plural subjects. On the Gilbertian account, a group of people may, in her technical terms, jointly commit to believing that p as a body to give rise to the group religious belief that p. This collective belief framework explains some puzzling features of individual religious attitudes that have been noted in the cognitive science of religion and social epistemology literatures. While the cognitive science of religion, among other research programs, aims to uncover the origins of individual believers’ attitudes, the Gilbertian joint commitment account offers the best explanation for how religion functions at a communal level as well as how group beliefs influence individual cognitive attitudes and behavior.
