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Photo by Pauline Lu on Unsplash In a previous article where we detailed Jane Iwamura’s Oriental Monk figure, we touched on her work Virtual Orientalism. We’ll detail her core premise in this article. Essentially, Iwamura describes how Western media has simplified and “made palatable” complex Eastern spiritual religions, practices, and groups into highly idealized and simplified symbols. […]

Photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash The late anthropologist Jill Dubisch popularized purity as a driving theme across religious belief, social boundaries, and gender roles. We’ll explore purity as an inteprlay to the domains that Dubisch presents: pilgrimage, gender, physical, and social. Across these domains, she notes how purity is a requisite to many pilgrims across many

Photo by Rodrigo Curi on Unsplash Binary Oppositions refer to implicit, at-odds facets of the human condition that individuals or society struggles with. Here are a few binary oppositions: Life and DeathOrder and ChaosIndividual Responsibility versus Social Responsibility There is no “in-between” life and death — there is simply life or there is death, and existing in one of these

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash Scholar John Bartkowski addresses Biblical Literalism in his sociological works on religion. Biblical literalism speaks to modern-day individuals and religious groups interpreting the Bible as being literal, inerrant word of God; this means that every single passage is understood to be factually and historically accurate. This contrasts any metaphorical, historical-critical,

Photo by Manyu Varma on Unsplash British social anthropologist Edmund Leach (1910 – 1989) studied and popularized the role of mediation in myths, rituals, and anthropology (plus theology) as a whole, drawing heavily from the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss. His sum conclusion is that myths and rituals are critical tools that societies use to make sense

Photo by lee bernd on Unsplash USC’s Jane Iwamura discusses the “Oriental Monk” figure in her work Virtual Orientalism. Throughout, she explores how Western media idealizes and simplifies Eastern spiritual figures and religion. In this way complex Eastern traditions get reduced into digestible, exoticized versions that are palatable for Western audiences. To Iwamura, the Oriental Monk

Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash French sociologist Émile Durkheim introduced the notion of collective effervescent in his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Collective effervescence is the energy, exuberance, and sense of unity that people feel when participating in communal activities, like rituals, ceremonies, or events. People transcend their personal identities, transgress societal norms,

Photo by Krisna Yuda on Unsplash Jill Dubisch uses the concept of mana in her anthropological studies of religious rituals, though Mana itself is more often associated with Polynesian cultures and works by anthropologists like Mauss and Durkheim. Mana refers to a supernatural power or force that imbues objects, people, or places with spiritual significance. It

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash The hermeneutic circle is a concept in interpretive theory suggesting that understanding a text—especially in a theological context—involves moving back and forth between the parts and the whole. One’s understanding of the parts inform one’s understanding of the whole, and vice versa. For example, scholar John Bartkowski highlights that

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash Scholar John Bartkowski addresses reader prejudice, or reader bias, in the context of biblical interpretation through his research on biblical literalism. He explores how readers bring their own social, theological, and cultural biases into their reading of the Bible, in turn influencing how they interpret scripture. He argues that these