This study bridged the gap in the literature by exploring the overlaps between public financial accountability and religious sentiments. Previous studies have considered accountability in specific religions and religious organisations through the expositions of their application of accounting concepts and procedures. However, the ways in which religious sentiments affect public accountability are rarely researched. Yet, religion and religious sentiments play central roles in the lived experiences of many people and affect their decisions and perceptions. We used (...) the issuance of Sukuk as a way to understanding how religious sentiments can impact public financial accountability. Our analysis of the online commentaries on the media report of the Sukuk issuance relied on the theory of Symbolic Interactionism and an interpretivist research approach that recognises multiple realities and supports exploring people’s lived experiences. Symbolic Interactionism suggests that people create meanings from their interactions with others through symbols, actions and multiple roles in social settings. Our findings showed that the Sukuk issuance elicited conflicting symbolic meanings amongst Netizens that affected their opinions of governments’ efforts to enhance public infrastructure using alternative financing options. We argued that clarity on the intersection between religious sentiment and public financial accountability can lead to deeper understanding on the nature of public accountability. It could also support the design of appropriate accountability frameworks especially in contexts with social fissures capable of undermining public accountability. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a political sociology of religious sentiments by examining how social actors seek to make their religious sentiments legible and authoritative within structures of modern state governance. It argues that a central dimension of religious politics consists of struggles over constituting hegemonic and common sense religious sentiments through drawing on the secular powers of the modern state. This politics entails contestations over how citizens ought to feel, and how the state ought to authorize certain (...) religious sentiments, with respect to socially resonant religious issues and events. Drawing on concrete historical episodes from colonial India and postcolonial Pakistan that allow a problematization of ‘religious sentiments of Muslims' in relation to the controversial religious views of the reformist Ahmadiyya movement, this paper further demonstrates the elasticity of the modern state to accommodate and embed a range of religious sensibilities, affects and emotive responses through legal arguments about public order. (shrink)

This essay analyses the ethical importance and religious implications of ‘the man within’ in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. Not introduced until the second edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, ‘the man within’ appears as the internalization of the impartial spectator. With the invention of the man within, Smith was able to explain how moral agents pursue virtues and behave morally beyond immediate and quotidian concerns with either praises or blames from society. Having complied with the general dictates of the (...) impartial spectator with conscience, humans become morally autonomous individuals whose moral judgements are derived from constant dialogues with the man within in an ethical microcosm within their breasts. The man within possesses a transcendent nature that preempts social judgements. Because of that transcendent nature, Smith also denominated the man within as ‘the substitute of Deity’. This essay also argues that even conscientious and virtuous individuals can be wronged and misjudged by socie... (shrink)

In light of discussions on Russian exceptionalism, this article considers the question of the independence of thought in the Russian Religious Renaissance. After the post-Revolutionary emigration of the intelligentsia, interaction with the scholars of the West – largely within the ecumenical movement – gave rise to an ecumenical theology that was distinct from the theology that preceded it. Consideration of the theology of the Russian diaspora reveals a development of thought and an interaction with the theology of the West. (...) This paper considers the development of the notion of sobornost and Sergius Bulgakov’s theological insight on the eucharistic dogma, hierarchy and the sacraments, and ecumenical theology. The interference of the “Sophia Affair” notwithstanding, and accounting for the heterogenous diaspora landscape, émigré Russian thought reveals an independence distinct from national sentiment. (shrink)

From the beginning of the 19th Century to the present feelings of national identity and religious sentiments have coexisted in a close but ambiguous relationship. For example, national movements in Poland, French-speaking Canada and Ireland have been inextricably linked with the Roman Catholic faith. Pan-Arabism and Zionism could not exist without the underpinnings of Islam and the Jewish faith respectively.On the other hand, these same national movements have frequently been in conflict with the prevailing religious establishment. In many (...) cases, the religious hierarchy has been at odds with nationalist currents.Moreover, often the leaders of nationalist movements were themselve either non-religious or dissenters. However, in order to succeed national movements could not ignore and, indeed, made good use of traditionalreligious feelings.There is a complex relationship between religion and nationalism, and their interplay results in both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary tendencies. (shrink)

This paper discusses the notion of disimagination a translation of the German word Entbildung, which was devised by Meister Eckhart as a reinterpretation of the Neoplatonic categories of abstraction (aphairesis) and negation (apophasis)in connection with Nishitani Keiji's standpoint of emptiness. Nishitani proposes a nonsubjective, nonrepresentational, and nonconceptual type of knowledge to avoid the problem of representation implied in the modern subjective self-consciousness that prevents our access to the reality of things. It is argued that what he calls a knowing of (...) non-knowing can be understood as a transposition of the problematics of aphairesis to a new context, that of the formless form. The ontology of images in the creative process, both cosmic and artistic, is examined from Nishitani's identification of likeness and suchness on the field of emptiness. It is suggested that the resulting denial of the traditional distinction between being and appearance approaches a critique closer to postfoundational metaphysics and, like disimagination, aims at an ascetic movement of self-negation and detachment from words and images that leads, in turn, to a creative and playful use of language free of representation. (shrink)

For decades, intensive research on emotion has advanced general theories of culture and cognition. Yet few theories can comfortably accommodate both the regularities and variation empirically manifest in affective phenomena around the world. One recent theoretical model (Gervais & Fessler, 2017) aims to do so. The Attitude-Scenario-Emotion (ASE) model of sentiments specifies an evolved psychological architecture that potentiates regular variation in affective experience and behavior in lived interaction with social, ecological and normative contexts. This model holds that sentiments – functional (...) networks of bookkeeping attitudes and commitment emotions – produce context-dependent universals in salient social-relational experiences, predictably patterning affect concepts. The present research aims to empirically evaluate implications of the ASE model of sentiments using quantitative data from 10 months of fieldwork in Indigenous iTaukei villages on Yasawa Island, Fiji. Study 1 is a series of structured interviews that aim to elicit the full breadth of the Yasawan affect lexicon. In freelists and sentence frames, Yasawans use distinct sets of terms to refer to “feelings about” particular people (attitudes), and “feelings because of” particular events (emotions). Study 2 uses a pile sort task to show that the salient features of Yasawan affective experience are social-relational dimensions of communion and power, while both HCA and MDS reveal distinct social attitudes – “love” (lomani) and “like’ (taleitaki), “respect” (dokai), “contempt” (beci), “hate” (sevaki), and “fear” (rerevaki) – anchoring the conceptual organization of Yasawan emotions. Study 3 uses hypothetical vignettes with a between-subjects attitude manipulation and Likert-style emotion ratings to show that these attitudes differentially moderate emotions across social scenarios; differences are both quantitative and qualitative; each attitude is emotionally pluripotent; and divergent attitudes (e.g., “love” and “hate”) produce the same emotions in starkly different situations – a predicted three-way interaction of attitude x scenario x emotion. These data are broadly consistent with ASE hypotheses; population variation in affective worlds may follow from differential engagement of universal attitude-emotion networks (sentiments) experienced across social, ecological and normative contexts. (shrink)

In ‘Utility of Religion’, Mill argues that a wholly naturalistic religion of humanity would promote individual and social welfare better than supernatural religions like Christianity; in ‘Theism’, however, Mill defends the salutary effects of hope in an afterlife. While commentators have acknowledged this discrepancy, they have not examined the utilitarian value of what Mill terms ‘illusions’. In this essay, I explain Mill's case against the utility of supernatural religious belief and then argue that Mill cannot dismiss the utility of (...) hope in an ultimate justice since it need not pervert the intellect or morality. There are thus utilitarian grounds to support some supernatural illusions, which undermines Mill's defence of an exclusively naturalistic religion. I conclude with the suggestion that while the utility of religious belief leads Mill toward William James's view, they disagree about whether supernatural religious sentiment has any unique, intrinsic force. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rome's Religious History: Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on Their GodsHans-Friedrich MuellerJason P. Davies. Rome's Religious History: Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on Their Gods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. x + 341 pp. Cloth, $85.Did the Romans believe in their gods? This question, Davies argues, has too long dominated scholarship on Roman religion, and his challenging book eschews this question (along with its dichotomous counterpart: skepticism), aiming (...) instead to engage vigorously more recent scholarship on Roman religion. Davies has read Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus Marcellinus with sensitive attention to expressions of general religious sentiment and categories, and he has placed his findings squarely in the context of current historiographical analyses of Roman religion's literary functions. Davies sums up nicely: "What we seek here is the nature of the complex cognitive relationship between historiography and religion" (12). Generally excluded from the conversation are scholars who are deceased and who do not write in English. More rigorously excluded are cross-references to ancient authors beyond Davies' chosen three (although they do creep in from time to time, one will not come to this book for Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus, Suetonius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, et al.). Instead, Davies attempts by well-enunciated and conscious choice to conduct a series of experiments: he reads each of his chosen authors in isolation in order to build a coherent and consistent picture of the religious system of each in close conversation with the last two decades' debates on what Roman religion was really about.Although I shall in due course address my own reservations about his methodology, I would argue that we may applaud Davies for his experimental daring. The progress of knowledge requires room for failures as well as successes. We learn from both, and Davies brings before us three separate experiments: two chapters on Livy and one each on Tacitus and Ammianus. Starting from the premise that for the Romans the gods existed, and that Roman society's basic intellectual framework was "Roman religion" (whatever this may have meant to its many and varied practitioners over the course of the centuries preceding Livy), Davies' fresh readings describe what this religion appears to have entailed for each of his chosen authors. Each of those readings yields an instance or "moment" in the history of the religions of Rome and, as such, is a contribution to "Rome's religious history" (thus fulfilling, to this extent, the promise of the volume's title).After a general introduction outlining this methodology (chap. 1), Davies devotes the next two chapters to Livy (chap. 2: "Livy and the Invention of Roman Religion" and chap. 3: "Gods and Men in Livy"). We find, as we would expect, some discussion of Papirius Cursor, who in 293 B.C.E. arose in the third watch of the night to solicit the requisite impetrative auspicium before engaging the Samnites in battle (Livy 10.40.2). Papirius consulted a keeper of the sacred chickens, who announced a tripudium solistimum, despite the fact that the chickens would not eat (10.40.4). On the basis of this false report, Papirius declares that the auspicium [End Page 313] is excellent (egregium), and he orders the troops to prepare for battle (10.40.5). Papirius' nephew, however, learns from some of the cavalry who had overheard an argument among the pullarii that the pullarius' report was suspect, and he dutifully informs his uncle (10.40.9–10). Livy describes the youth as a "iuuenis ante doctrinam deos spernentem natus" (10.40.10). Papirius subsequently commends the youth but commences battle (ultimately victorious) on the grounds that the report he had requested and received itself constituted the auspicium, regardless of these other circumstances, and that any consequences for mendacity would be borne by the liar (10.40.11). The keepers of the sacred chickens are ordered to the front line, and the guilty pullarius is struck, and mortally wounded, by a javelin (10.40.12–13). This the consul interprets in turn as confirmation of his own interpretation of the auspicium as well as expiation of wrongdoing by the guilty party; the consul's statement to this effect... (shrink)

The Varieties of Religious Experience is not a theological treatise but an inquiry into a ubiquitous feature of the human condition and thus of human nature itself. Its author makes this clear at the outset, claiming competence as a psychologist and promising no more, therefore, than an examination of those “religious propensities of man” which James takes to be “at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution.” The “at least” is clearly (...) ironical for James will argue throughout the work that this aspect of one’s mental constitution is generative of thoughts, sentiments and actions at once new, different, original, and of the greatest consequence. As an enduring feature of our mental constitution, the religious contents are under no special burden of vindication or verification for they are vindicated and verified precisely by their ubiquity and efficacy. This “radical empiricist,” true to the authentic ism, accepts no philosophical a priori that would pass judgment on just which experiences are to count and which are to be rendered otiose. Just in case there are religious thoughts and sentiments widely experienced, abidingly efficacious, central to actually lived lives, it is not for the psychologist to await some “metaphysical” license before including them among subjects of interest. In this independence of inquiry, this openness to realities set before us as indubitable facts of mental life, James records what Louis Dupré discovers in an entire generation of American philosophers. (shrink)

This article investigates whether there are differences in religious and spiritual (R/S) beliefs, attitudes, practices, training, and self-assessed competence between counselors and psychologists in Canada. Researchers surveyed 307 mental health professionals in Canada with two standardized measures (the Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments Scale and the Duke University Religion Index) and various other questions corresponding to variables investigated or alluded to in past research. We hypothesized that, compared with psychologists, counselors would (a) have stronger personal R/S beliefs, (...) (b) demonstrate more positive attitudes about the appropriateness of using R/S techniques with clients, (c) utilize R/S techniques more in sessions, (d) possess more positive attitudes toward training in this area, and (e) have higher self-assessed competence for working with R/S clients. These hypotheses were generally supported except for the last one: there were no significant differences found between counselors and psychologists in self-assessed competence in working with R/S clients. We compare our findings to those of extant research, particularly the study by Plumb who examined counselors in Canada. On the basis of our findings, we advocate for more systematic cultivation of R/S competence in programs for both counselors and psychologists in Canada. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce is regarded as the founding father of pragmatism and a key figure in the development of American philosophy, yet his practical philosophy remains under-acknowledged and misinterpreted. In this book, Richard Atkins argues that Peirce did in fact have developed and systematic views on ethics, on religion, and on how to live, and that these views are both plausible and relevant. Drawing on a controversial lecture that Peirce delivered in 1898 and related works, he examines Peirce's theories of (...) sentiment and instinct, his defence of the rational acceptability of religious belief, his analysis of self-controlled action, and his pragmatic account of practical ethics, showing how he developed his views and how they interact with those of his great contemporary William James. This study will be essential for scholars of Peirce and for those interested in American philosophy, pragmatism, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of action, and ethics. (shrink)

Racism is again a burning issue in our country. One may define racism as the conviction that not all humans are equal, but that some are ‘worthier’ than others. Usually those who are regarded as ‘unworthy humans’ are not treated on par with the rest. The ‘othering’ of humans in the Western world did not commence in the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th centuries. It is argued that the roots of racism in the Western world date back to the 1st (...) century CE when the early Christians severed their ties with the Jewish people and their religion, and started humiliating and denigrating them. Traces of this can be found in the New Testament in inter alia John 8:44, Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. The Jewish people and their synagogues were associated with the Devil. However, Paul also contributed to the anti-Judaism sentiments of early Christians. He argued that the gospel superseded the law. This eventually led to the conviction that Christianity superseded Judaism, and that Jews and Judaism ranked lower than Christians and Christianity. These beliefs created fertile soil for the development of racism in the Western world. The article presents a brief overview of the history of Christianity, how it developed, how it became the state religion of the Roman Empire and the dominant religion in the Western world, and how the religious convictions fed into the sociopolitical and economic policies of the Western world. The article delivers a plea for accepting the view that all religions are human constructs and that their adherents need to meet the ‘other’ on an equal footing. The Western world especially needs to look at how Christianity contributed to the way it treated other people during the course of history. (shrink)

This essay presents a systematic reconstruction of the problem of divine providence in Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. I argue that reading Thoughts and Sentiments in this frame allows interpreters to take Cugoano at his word without compromising on the religious and political sophistication of his argument. Cugoano, I show, develops an innovative account of providence’s relationship to slavery by engaging both contemporary apologies for slavery and abolitionist arguments for divine retribution. His theory (...) of providence accounts for slavery as a social inequality as well as the difficulty of making restitution for modern slavery. (shrink)

In Indonesia, violence in the name of religion has occurred many times since the reformation began. The trigger is religious fundamentalism and radicalism that increases and affects intolerant actions, inter-religious conflicts and even terrorism. The Indonesian government has initiated religious moderation through the Ministry of Religion to minimise the negative impacts of excessive religious fanaticism. Christians, who are often victims of many acts of violence, should evaluate the religious practices that have been carried out so (...) far. The mission of Christian evangelism has been a scourge that triggered anti-Christian sentiments, thus giving rise to the stigma of Christianisation. One of the most energetic Christian groups with an evangelistic mission is the Pentecostal group. This article aims to propose constructing the Pentecostal mission, which is rooted in the religious life of the early church as a mission model, through the discourse of their hospitality. The thesis is that hospitality, especially embodied by the early church, expresses a moderate religious way. Therefore, this mission is very suitable to be implemented by Pentecostal groups in Indonesia, which takes a theological locus on the Pentecost narratives in Acts 2.Contribution: This article addresses early church hospitality as a discourse of Pentecostal mission, especially in Indonesia. This article considers that hospitality can be a model for doing church missions in the frame of religious moderation in Indonesia. (shrink)

In theological discourse of sexuality, queer theory has often been regarded as an extension of the project of gay and lesbian liberation, when it actually challenges an organizing value of the entire discourse, because it challenges any ascription of ultimate value to "sex," an imaginative formation of power relations. Rather than appeal to God to authorize the privileged status of sex, queer commentary suggests that theological writers should refuse assertions of the absolute importance of any particular formation of human imagination (...) as a basis of relation between self and God. The goal is to recognize the violence—symbolized and real—that enforces the worth of certain imaginations of intelligibly sexed personal identity and stunts the formation of alternative imaginations of intelligible personal identity. Critical account of this violence as sentimental-homicidal-suicidal opens space to confess a theological discourse of personal identities that is entirely beyond sex. (shrink)

This two-volume masterpiece mirrors its title. The prose is lyrical and lucid, the discussions evince intellectual integrity and rigor, and the author’s voice allows readers to successfully navigate the philosophical, religious, and literary waters of formal academic and religious institutions of middle to late seventeenth-and most of eighteenth-century Britain. Both volumes are chronologically arranged, revealing the actual participants’ inquiries and debates rather than placing them into particular schools or movements. Rivers’s purpose for this structuring is much like D. (...) D. Raphael’s, expressed in British Moralists, 1650-1800, “[to show] how the thought of the British Moralists developed and was modified by their criticism.” While the second volume alone—Shaftesbury to Hume—is the subject of this review, some discussions may be applicable to both, particularly given the overall general influence of religious beliefs upon theological and philosophical ethics documented in this study. (shrink)

Historically, the development of religions occurs according to the law of cyclic wave-like, where the maximal points of the sinusoid are represented by opposite states-markers. Thus, known periods in the history of religions, when dominated by internal or external signs of their development, when victory vulgar religion, in contrast to the elevation of theological revelations, when the teachings of modernity prevail, trying to get rid of orthodoxy anyway. In place of the newest trends in the understanding of God, man, their (...) relationship comes fundamentalism as a decisive trend in their development228. To find absolute modernist or fundamentalist epochs in religiongege, to calculate the duration of each of them, to clearly periodize them difficultly. Both the religions themselves and the society in which they existed quickly "tired" from the severity of the requirements of purity of faith, and from the unrestricted liberalization of religious life, which led to a periodic change in sentiment and orientation, either on fundamentalism, or on the modernization of religions. (shrink)

Classical pragmatists, especially William James, have long been known as defenders of the rationality of religious commitment. Recently, however, scholars have begun to appreciate Charles Sanders Peirce's unique contributions to that defense. For instance, Richard Atkins defends Peirce's Sentimental Conservatism as advising us to trust in our instinctual sentiments rather than our reasonings and theories, elucidating an account of the rationality of religious belief in Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." Likewise, Michael Raposa examines Peirce's (...) religious writings and underscores their significance for his philosophical writings in general.1 The aim of this essay is to supplement... (shrink)

This volume brings together leading scholars to examine Darwinian perspectives on morality from widely ranging disciplines: evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. They bring not only varied expertise, but also contrasting judgments about which, and to what extent, differing evolutionary accounts explain morality. They also consider the implications of these explanations for a range of religious and non-religious moral traditions. The book first surveys scientific understandings of morality. Chapters by Joan Silk and Christopher Boehm ask what primatology (...) and anthropology tell us about moral origins. Daniel Batson and Stephen Pinker provide contrasting accounts of how evolution shapes moral psychology, and Jeffrey Schloss assesses a range of biological proposals for morality and altruism. Turning to philosophical issues, Martha Nussbaum argues that recognizing our animal nature does not threaten morality. Stephen Pope and Timothy Jackson explore how Darwinian accounts of moral goodness both enrich and require understandings outside the sciences. Hilary Putnam and Susan Neiman ask whether Darwin is truly useful for helping us to understand what morality actually is and how it functions. The book is a balanced effort to assess the scientific merits and philosophical significance of emerging Darwinian perspectives on morality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 723 tremely incisive judgments on a range of modern writers and tendencies. What is outstandingly useful here is the way Dupuis shows how the most conservative of high Christologies can also he the most open and critically fruitful in engaging with other religions. The final chapters contain a fine exegesis of Vatican II and postconciliar documents regarding the confused and fluid status of interreligious dialogue in relation (...) to evangelization and mission. Dupuis promotes the view of dialogue as mutual evangelization and as essential to the mission of the church, although there is slight ambivalence in his comments that dialogue does not involve explicit proclamation (228). Why not, in some instances? While Dupuis's hook is an excellent statement of an orthodox inclusivist high Christology, there are certain weaknesses within his approach. First, the clash of faiths and the fragmented discontinuities so clearly evident are too easily harmonized in an evolutionary picture of salvation history. Second, his Christology could he more trinitarian and ecclesiocentric. For example, he neglects the apophatic elements of Christianity and its possible relation with traditions like Buddhism, and while he denies any real difference between eastern and western pneumatologies, his own preference for the western tradition could have been more starkly contrasted with some dangers that have entered the debate by those trying to utilize an allegedly more eastern pneumatology. His ecclesiocentric neglect diverts attention from the way in which communities are so deeply shaped by their practice of texts and the consequent difficulties of comparison across different textual world views. Such problems should not however obscure Dupuis' incisive and powerful vision of Christ at the center of all salvation history. University of Bristol Bristol, England GAVIN D'COSTA Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth. By HOWARD A. NETLAND. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991. xii + 323 pp. $17.95 (paper). This hook, written by an assistant professor of religious studies at Tokyo Christian University who is also an Evangelical Free Church missionary in Japan, contains a lucid and coherent argument in defense of Christian exclusivism. Its author values clarity and reasoned argument over sentiment, and has faith in the power of those virtues to solve deep problems, such as those set for Christians by the facts of 724 BOOK REVIEWS religious pluralism. This faith has enabled him to produce a book of considerable power; it has also led him at points to oversimplify exceedingly complex problems. This is scarcely surprising since oversimplification is a perennial temptation for those who value clarity. Netland understands Christian exclusivism to assert at least the following claims: that the "defining beliefs" of Christianity-nowhere listed, but defined formally as that set of beliefs whose acceptance is entailed for any individual just by being an "active Christian in good standing "-are all true; that the defining beliefs of non-Christian religious communities are false where they conflict with those of Christianity ; that salvation is to be had only through hearing and properly responding to the gospel of Jesus Christ; and that evangelization-the active proclamation of the gospel to those who have not yet accepted it-is an unavoidable duty for faithful Christians. Netland further thinks that Christian exclusivism, understood in this way, requires and rests upon a high christology and a strong view of the truth and divine inspiration of the biblical text. None of these positions is uncontroversial, as Netland recognizes, and the cluster of views that he calls Christian exclusivism has long been out of favor in the mainstream of Christian theological thought, both Catholic and Protestant. It carries conviction, indeed, only among evangelical Protestants and small cadres of unreconstructed pre-Vatican II Roman Catholics. Netland thinks Christian exclusivism deserves a wider hearing, and that it should finally be adopted by all Christians as the proper way to think about religious pluralism. He therefore needs to meet the standard objections to the position, and this book is largely an extended attempt to do so. In the first five chapters Netland meets objections which, if successful, would make both Christian and other varieties of religious exclusivism untenable. If the arguments in these chapters are successful they establish only the modal claim that Christian exclusivism is possibly... (shrink)

Although various points of Hume's canonical works hint at a critique of religious affect, his most explicit attack on such sentiments occurs in a letter of June 30th 1743 to his friend William Mure. In this letter Hume sets out an objection to all affective attitudes that are putatively directed toward God, and maintains that the Deity is not in fact the ‘natural object’ of any human passion. I examine this claim and canvass three possible interpretations of Hume's challenge (...) to religious affect, according to which Hume is, alternatively, (i) asserting the impropriety of all religious affect, (ii) denying that our affective states can secure reference to the divine, or (iii) rejecting the psychological possibility of affective states that take God as their object. Hume's argument may be best understood, I suggest, as a combination of all three criticisms. I close with an examination of Hume's diagnosis of the self-deceit involved in putative cases of religious feeling, and connect the argument of his letter to the similar analyses in Essays, Moral and Political and the Natural History of Religion. (shrink)

This article evaluates the political implications of Thomas Hobbes’s extensive treatment of religion by taking up the motif of the Eucharist (and accompanying doctrine of transubstantiation) in Leviathan. Hobbes holds out transubstantiation as an exemplar of absurdity and an historical outgrowth of Christianity’s inauspicious meeting with pagan practices. At the same time, Leviathan contains allusions to eucharistic imagery in its narration of the generation of the “Mortal God,” the commonwealth, as the incorporation of a civil body. These conflicting sentiments are (...) illustrative of a wider tension running through Hobbes’s thought. Although Hobbes’s repudiation of superstition is well-known, it stands in stark contrast to Leviathan’s treatment of Christianity as an exemplar of “true” religion. The varied allusions to eucharistic doctrine illustrate how proper use might be made of a persistent “natural religiosity.” Both in its consonance with reason and its political logic, Christianity remains a politically constructive expression of “power invisible.”. (shrink)

This paper provides an account on how to understand “emotional depth” and applies it to the particular case of religious experiences. After motivating the topic (section 1), I turn to classical and contemporary approaches to “emotional depth”. I divide these accounts into two main groups depending on whether they interpret depth as a constitutive or a momentary feature of the affective experience. I argue that despite their descriptive power, none of the existing accounts adequately captures the depth of affective (...) religious experiences (section 2). Next, I present and critically assess Kurt Stavenhagen’s neglected account of the depth of religious feelings. In particular, I explore his concept of “specific depth”. In my reading, this notion conveys the momentary structure of a feeling (section 3). I then proceed to develop my own account according to which emotional depth is a phenomenal quality which depends on the intentional structure of a feeling. In particular, I argue that the feature of depth is explainable in terms of the specific ways in which a feeling is directed toward an object (directedness) and evaluatively presents it (evaluative presentation). Drawing on this idea, I examine three varieties of affective intentionality and distinguish between emotions, sentiments, and moods (section 4). I then apply my model to explain the depth of affective religious experiences (section 5). The main findings are summarized in the conclusion (section 6). (shrink)

This chapter offers a description of what all classical and contemporary pragmatists have in common and in virtue of which we call them pragmatists. It also describes the ways in which classical and contemporary pragmatists differ on important epistemological issues, such as knowledge and truth. After then examining and rejecting longstanding criticisms of pragmatism, this chapter compares pragmatists on the questions of atheism, theism, and the status of religious sentiment without belief in the personal God of the omni‐predicates. (...) Peirce offered an argument (he called it a Neglected Argument) for belief in God. William James felt strongly that religious belief was well worth taking seriously as a positive moral force in the world, but in the end he was quite reluctant to accept the personal God of the omni‐predicates. Unlike Bertrand Russell, however, he did not believe that all religion was harmful and basically irrational. Dewey was a hard‐core materialist and hence an unabashed atheist. In the end, it seems fair to say that with regard to the existence of the traditional personal God of the omni‐predicates, there is no uniquely clear and generally accepted position among pragmatists in general. (shrink)

Preeminent psychoanalyst Mortimer Ostow believes that early childhood emotional attachments form the cognitive underpinnings of spiritual experience and religious motivation. His hypothesis, which is verifiable, relies on psychological and neurobiological evidence but is respectful of the human need for spiritual value. Ostow begins by classifying the three parts of the spiritual experience: awe, Spirituality proper, and mysticism. After he pinpoints the psychological origins of these feelings in infancy, he discusses the foundations of religious sentiment and practice and (...) the brain processes associated with spiritual experience. He then focuses on spirituality's relationship to mood regulation, and the role of negative spirituality in fostering religious fundamentalism and demonic possession. Ostow concludes with an analysis of an essay by the psychoanalyst Donald M. Marcus, who recounts his own spiritual experience during a Native American-style "vision quest" in the woods. Marcus's account demonstrates the constructive potential of spirituality and the way in which spirituality retrieves and recapitulates feelings of attachment to the mother. Persuasively and brilliantly argued, _Spirit, Mind, and Brain_ brings the disciplines of religion, behavorial neuroscience, and philosophy to bear on a groundbreaking new method for understanding religious ritual and belief. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza was at once the father of the Enlightenment and the last sad guardian of the medieval world. In his brilliant synthesis of geometrical method, religious sentiment, and secular science, he attempted to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch, and to present a vision of humanity as simultaneously bound by necessity and eternally free. Roger Scruton presents a clear and systematic analysis of Spinoza's thought, and shows its relevance to today's intellectual preoccupations.

ABSTRACTThis article compares different historical accounts of early Christianity written by François Guizot, Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël and shows that they played a significant role in the construction of their ideas about religious tolerance and political liberty in ancient and modern states. In his 1812 translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Guizot used his editorial footnotes to oppose Gibbon’s sceptical representation of the early Church and to assert that the development of Christianity had (...) been crucial in condemning slavery, establishing religious toleration and fostering individual liberty. Benjamin Constant also opposed Gibbon’s representation of early Church history but he argued in his posthumously published Du polythéisme romain that the key achievement of the early Christians had been to revive the idea of individual religious sentiment against the anti-individualist Roman state. As Guizot developed his historical research in the 1820s he rejected this view and came to see the early Christians as demonstrating the inherently social nature of all religious practice. Some of these ideas were anticipated by Madame de Staël in De la littérature, but all three thinkers sought to reintegrate religion into their ideas of modern liberty in ways that merit greater attention. (shrink)

Edmund Burke was an Irish-born British statesman and political philosopher who is best known as the father of modern conservatism. Developed in response to the French Revolution, Burke's conservatism aims to preserve and promote the existing (or traditional) institutions of society, including the rule of law, property, the family, and religion. Burke himself sought to defend these things, as embodied in the British Constitution, against the revolutionary spirit sparked in France. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke develops (...) the idea of society as an inheritance that must be conserved before it can be improved upon. In this piece, we examine Burke’s arguments, which draw on tradition, observable cause and effect, and a mix of moral and religious sentiments. Contrary to expectations, Burke insists that the principles of conservation and change are not opposed. (shrink)

Western academic theology do not succeed in accounting for the identity and faith culture of African Pentecostals for at least two reasons. In the first place, because as part of the Pentecostal movement it grew from the holiness, divine healing and revivalist movement that went back to Pietism and emphasised a holistic effective spirituality, and secondly, because it links with the holistic tradition of African traditional religions and worldview that share some aspects of the Old Testament realist way of thinking. (...) African Pentecostalism needs another language to describe its unique way of doing theology in direct conjunction with spirituality. It is argued that the language of the time-honoured practice of mysticism is suitable for explaining its spirituality. Theology and spirituality should mutually inform and constitute each other, as emphasised in mystical theology, for Pentecostal theology to be a valid reflection and meditation on the experience of consciousness of the involvement of God. African Pentecostals will benefit by learning from this ancient tradition by using concepts of mystical theology to find words to state the unsayable. The article closes by asking what the language of mysticism would entail for Pentecostals. Several aspects that define Pentecostal spirituality demonstrate their relation with mystical theology, such as a separate experience of sanctification, an acknowledgement of affections in expressing religious sentiments, a different way of interpreting and participating in reality, ecstatic speech and a continual emphasis on a personal, experiential encounter with the Spirit of God. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a reflection on the idea of religiousness or religious sentiment in Benjamin Constant de Rebecque and the importance of this in free societies. For the author, the religious sentiment avoids the evils of selfishness and individualism and, at the same time, the dangers of political despotism and religious. In this sense, religion is seen as necessary to free societies. However, it must be separated from the priestly factions. (...) Constant presents a strategy of fusing a perspective of Enlightenment - with the concepts of progress and civilization - with aspects of the thought of Edmund Burke who advocated a more local interest. Thus, the "Greeks" - an "ideal type" avant la lettre - are presented with real people in history, which can help to think of our civilization. An "intermediate political principle", avoiding the excesses of philosophical abstraction. (shrink)

Benjamin Constant's famous lecture comparing ancient and modern liberty can be better understood if it is read alongside a set of unpublished lectures on ancient religion that he delivered one year earlier. Those lectures suggest that Constant's commitment to modern liberty was based in part on his deep anxieties about religious freedom, and that he valued religious freedom because he thought the "religious sentiment" was an important manifestation of a natural human capacity for self-development. In putting (...) religion and self-development at the heart of his vision, he tried to show that modern liberty could have a positive moral or spiritual purpose beyond merely assuring people freedom from interference in the pursuit of their interests. (shrink)

The idea of a market in human organs has traditionally met with widespread and emphatic rejection from both secular and religious fronts alike. However, as numerous human beings continue to suffer an uncertain fate on transplant waiting lists, voices are beginning to emerge that are willing at least to explore the option of human organ sales. Anyone who argues for such an option must contend, however, with what seem to be largely emotional rejections of the idea. Often it seems (...) that rebuffs offered on a secular ground are rooted in nothing more than vague discomforts. We suspect that these discomforts are often based in religious sentiments that have wound their way into the fabric of secular America. Therefore, in order to contribute further to those voices heard in favor of human organ sales, it is worthwhile to show that from a religious perspective, it is just as possible to affirm the appropriateness of human organ sales as it is from a secular basis. Since Protestantism has historically had a powerful influence in American society it is a proper starting point for such an investigation. (shrink)

The paper discusses erotic desire and the motif of going on pilgrimage in the opening of Geoffrey Chaucer’s General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and in William Shakespeare’s sonnets. What connects most of the texts chosen for consideration in the paper is their diptych-like composition, corresponding to the dual theme of eros and pilgrimage. At the outset, I read the first eighteen lines of Chaucer’s Prologue and demonstrate how the passage attempts to balance and reconcile the eroticism underlying the description (...) of nature at springtime with Christian devotion and the spirit of compunction. I support the view that the passage is the first wing of a diptych-like construction opening the General Prologue. The second part of the paper focuses on the motif of pilgrimage, particularly erotic pilgrimage, in Shakespeare’s sonnets. I observe that most of the sonnets that exploit the conceit of travel to the beloved form lyrical diptychs. Shakespeare reverses the medieval hierarchy of pilgrimage and desire espoused by Chaucer. Both poets explore and use to their own ends the tensions inherent in the juxtaposition of sacred and profane love. Their compositions encode deeper emotional patterns of desire: Chaucer’s narrator channels sexual drives into the route of communal national penance, whereas the Shakespearean persona employs religious sentiments in the service of private erotic infatuations. (shrink)

Is religion a positive reality in your life? If not, have you lost anything by forfeiting this dimension of your humanity? This book compares the theology of Tillich with the psychology of Jung, arguing that they were both concerned with the recovery of a valid religious sense for contemporary culture. _Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion_ explores in detail the diminution of the human spirit through the loss of its contact with its native religious depths, (...) a problem on which both spent much of their working lives and energies. Both Tillich and Jung work with a naturalism that grounds all religion on processes native to the human being. Tillich does this in his efforts to recover that point at which divinity and humanity coincide and from which they differentiate. Jung does this by identifying the archetypal unconscious as the source of all religions now working toward a religious sentiment of more universal sympathy. This book identifies the dependence of both on German mysticism as a common ancestry and concludes with a reflection on how their joint perspective might affect religious education and the relation of religion to science and technology. Throughout the book, John Dourley looks back to the roots of both men's ideas about mediaeval theology and Christian mysticism making it ideal reading for analysts and academics in the fields of Jungian and religious studies. (shrink)

This article considers the ways in which a series of artworks by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze focus on the father’s ethical education of his male children, reading these as a close visualization of the pedagogical theories of Rousseau. Through paintings that contemplate family life, religious sentiment, filial piety, obedience versus disobedience, illness, and death, Greuze’s images of male youth coalesce with the ethics promoted in Rousseau’s novel Emile—stressing in particular the compassion and good conscience that a boy should (...) develop under the guidance of his father to become a man of virtue. In so doing, the artist responds to some of the key historic issues and social beliefs affecting male youth during his era: the necessity of apprenticed boys to leave home; an idealization of country living and farming as the best occupation for the adult male; and an overwhelming concern, widespread during this heightened period of warfare and unrest preceding the French Revolution, that young men go astray when they become soldiers. (shrink)

It is argued here that our future depends on our completing the secularization of society. This means addressing the problem of authoritarian religions that suppress freedom of belief and opinion. We must promote a post-religious humanism to deal with this problem. This is no more than reviving the humanist consensus which all the major religions acknowledged at least till the 1970s. Until then a comparative religion movement sought to construct a world religion but its endeavours have come to nothing. (...) Secularization means that religious sentiments belong to individuals who work them out for themselves. These sentiments are no longer the prerogative of organizations that impose them on individuals. It is for everyone to develop their own creed on humanist principles. This humanist message contributes to a world monoculture which is now being established everywhere and on which the world’s future peace and security depends. (shrink)