This section contains notes, reports and summaries from my studies on sources I find interesting. They can be books, chapters, articles or conferences. What is important to remember is that these notes are not my on reflections, they are from others. I will, however, include a brief personal analysis or evaluation or ideas on how a subjct applies to my projects or to other questions that interest me.
Key quote:
Americans must in order to see Religion count religion or show its value…. To them big churches are successful churches…. To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavour. Statistics is their way of showing success or failure in their religion as in their commerce and politics. Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers!…Americans are essentially children of this world; that they serve as teachers of religion…is an anomaly…. Indeed, religion is the last thing average Americans can teach…. Americans are the least religious among all civilized peoples…. Mankind goes down to America to learn how to live the earthly life; but to live the heavenly life, they go to some other people. – Citing Kanzo, p. 162
Van Gelder contrasts what he calls Corporate and Missional church self-understandings. He contextualizes the appearance of what he calls the Corporate Church model as an American development growing from the unique, religiously plural context of the early USA, as distinct from a European “Established Church” (state church/Constantinian) model. He then walks through five stages of its development, and then argues how a Missional Church self-understanding is more theologically and biblically appropriate. Of the three paradigms, the Established and Missional paradigms both build their primary self-understanding on God’s working, though they understand the location of his work differently: established churches see the Church as “the primary horizon of God’s activity in the world” (426) ; the missional church sees the world as the primary place of God’s work, and the role of the Church is to participate in this work (this is the theology of the missio dei or “mission of God”, an academic consensus view which flows from the major theological & ecclesiological developments of the 20th century). The self-understanding of the Corporate church, however,is built on an Modern-era, industrial, organizational paradigm whose self-understanding is primarily a question of a task: the church exists, like other organizations, to accomplish something. (Note: Van Gelder doesn’t seem to notice he’s speaking ideal-typically here; these are doubtless never pure realities).
(Keynote address at the conference Epistemic Injustice and Religious Identities, held at McGill this week)
Panchuk (pesenter) and Hareth (co-author) have two arguments in this paper; a weak one, that theodicy can be gaslighting, and a strong one, that thodicy is always gaslighting. Panchuk is quite convinced of the former, and makes a compelling case for it, but she herself is only marginally convinced of the strong case, though she attempted to argue for a general connection. Both authors identify as survivors of religiously-motivated child abuse, personal experiences which, combined with reading of various theodicies, motivated the paper.
Liquid Modernity is a way of describing contemporary culture, as opposed to the “solid culture” of the past. Previously, the idea of “culture” signified a certain elite or stratification of society; it was used to separate the classes, and to give a model to which “cultured” people would conform – culture meant high culture, it was Beethoven and Mozart, not folk music. The contemporary cultral ethos is, by contrast, one of eclecticism – being “cultured” means selecting from and enjoying cultural artefacts regardless of their source.
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Contemporary times (“High Modernity”) are a time of religious paradoxes: religious institutions are losing influence and membership, but people are as practicing and believing as ever. The modern ideals of rationality, autonomy and differentiation of spheres led people to believe that religion would disappear, but instead it has become individualised.
Aim of the lecture: to give tools to understand the paradoxes of religion in modernity, such as the ebb of religious institutions, but more extremism, etc.
set de note d’étude fr