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Abstract
In this article, I explore how Islam is configured in two creative universes that have recently affected the cultural and political scene in Norway. I compare the enactment in Oslo (2019) of Disgraced by the American playwright Ayad Akhtar to parts of the artistic project Heisann Montebello (2015–2017) by the Norwegian rap duo Karpe. In both fictional universes, references to Islam, Muslims, xenophobia, racism, terror, and politics of integration are paramount. It is therefore significant that major cultural institutions in Norway such as The National Theater, the music hall Oslo Spektrum, the National Library, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Network (NRK) stage these works. Overall, my main argument is that both productions speak to wider audiences in a multireligious and multiethnic setting, demonstrating that Muslims and different configurations of Islam have become an integrated part of Norwegian cultural life.
Abstract
From the late 1980s, foreign—primarily American—missionaries started to travel to Ukraine in large numbers. This article is concerned with the impact of American Baptist missionaries and how their influence was perceived locally in 2016, the time of my fieldwork. When I set out to conduct my fieldwork research among Baptist believers in Lviv, I was surprised that local believers denied the impact of foreign missionaries on their communities and worship style. Moreover, many local Baptist churchgoers I met claimed they had never encountered an American missionary and insisted that foreign missionaries had not played any significant role in the development and transformation of Ukrainian Baptism. In this article, I present the data from the fieldwork and analyze the Ukrainian Baptists’ reasons for minimizing the influence through the perspective of religioscapes, and glocalization as the dialectic process between homogeneity and heterogeneity.
Abstract
In several European countries, Slovakia included, Islamophobia has been shaped by the challenges faced by Europe (an influx of refugees, terrorism, rise of the far right) since circa 2015. Anti-Muslim narratives have penetrated politics as well as the media and are shared by a significant part of the Slovak population. This article aims at contributing to the existing research on Islamophobia in Slovakia through an exploratory case study focusing on a different perspective, Muslims themselves. The main objective of the research is to identify the magnitude and character of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims in Slovakia since 2015. Data were gathered using an online survey. The findings revealed not only the extent but also the most common features of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims, including the type of incidents, the places of their occurrence, and the nexus between Islamophobic incidents and origin of respondents (Slovak or foreign), external manifestation of their faith, and sex.
Abstract
This article aims to clarify the attitude of the Italian Northern League (Lega Nord) toward the Catholic Church and Catholic faith, since its creation in 1991. The article examines the evolution of the party from the merger of the northern regionalist parties under the leadership of Umberto Bossi (1991–2012) until its current form and its reengineering by its new leader, Matteo Salvini, as a national(ist) League (Lega) aiming to win votes and mandates all over Italy and to become the dominant party of the Italian right. Be it under Bossi or Salvini, the Lega Nord/Lega has always opposed both the humanist teaching of the Catholic Church and mainstream Catholic social organizations, while pretending to defend the “Catholic identity” of the “North,” before turning to the entire country. Under Salvini’s leadership, the Lega joined forces with some rightist Catholic groups prone to complain about Pope Francis’s deemed treason of the Catholic identity, and so reinforced its conservative orientation. As I will show in this article, in the medium term, the enduring success of the Lega Nord/Lega illustrates the decline of mainstream Catholicism in Italy.
Abstract
This article sets out to demonstrate how some Russian Orthodox imaginaries bear a family resemblance to populism. These imaginaries have a distinctive ideological anchor. The influential religious figures who convey them lay claim to a legacy of political thought that can be traced back to a specific form of narodnichestvo, which is Slavophile and associated with aspirations for monarchy. This investigation of populism among Russian Orthodox Christians is structured in three parts. The article begins with a presentation of an ideological repertoire that emphasizes the centrality of the idea of “the people.” Drawing on interviews and material collected over several years in different regions of Russia, particularly Yekaterinburg, the article then looks at the rebellion of Christians who feel marginalized or consider that the Russian Orthodox Church does not have enough influence in Russia. Finally, it explores how “the people” has become central to religious practice itself.
Abstract
The English writer John Michell (1933–2009) occupied a significant position within British alternative religion. Michell’s manifold books revolve around his life-long aim to re-enchant the English landscape and launch a new golden age. Michell was a devoted Traditionalist and is widely considered the founding father of the vast field of British Earth Mysteries. Associated groups embrace speculative theories of the earth, claiming the existence of telluric (dragon) energies. As Michell’s impact on such groups is widely acknowledged, within the context of Earth Mysteries, this article centers on cerealogy and the Dragon Environmental Network as examples in exploring Michell’s discursive and enduring influence.
Abstract
In feminist research on religion, women and gender, the concepts of “lived religion” as well as “agency as doing religion” take a prominent place. Both include an intersubjective and mostly partial perspective. However, against the background of current developments concerning a global religious right, the paper argues for the inclusion of a critical perspective through the methodology of a double critique that includes both an analysis of power relations that marginalize women in religious groups and an analysis of women’s reproduction of gendered as well as racialized power relations. This argument is embedded in the complexity of post-secular feminist research including research on women, gender and religion, feminist critiques of secularism (and of anti-Muslim discourses), feminist, queer and trans theologies, and research on the religious right and their anti-feminist politics. The paper suggests to take feminist theologies and feminist spiritualities/religious practices as reference point for such an analysis.
Abstract
The authors should be congratulated for writing about ‘critical religion’. Whatever else critical religion might or might not be, nothing could be more important than a critical inquiry into the categories that powerfully organise our knowledge and our institutions, including our universities. By publishing in a major journal, the JAAR, they bring into the mainstream significant topics that are habitually marginalised. They raise many valid points for public debate. Their article, however, is marred by reification and contradiction. To squeeze their generalisations into one journal article, the authors set up Russell McCutcheon, Craig Martin and Timothy Fitzgerald as the core of an imaginary school, and then when they stumble on a possible disagreement between us, they accuse us of inconsistency. Speaking for myself, I explain why I have habitually used the term ‘critical religion’ to refer to my own work, and why I have recently considered abandoning it. I point out that the authors never properly discuss the genesis of the discourse on the non-religious secular, which is fundamental to any serious attempt to understand ‘critical religion’. They ignore my work on India and Japan. They nowhere discuss a central core of my own position, that religion is a member of a configuration of empty categories, including politics, nature, economy, and nation, a signalling system that is the source of hegemonic power and the illusions of enlightenment modernity. However, these shortcomings should not deter us from taking forward their work as a positive opportunity.