Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (JISASR). Vol. 1, Issue 1, (2014)https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18662024-03-29T13:08:01Z2024-03-29T13:08:01Z81Editorial [vol. 1]Kapalό, James A.Shanneik, Yafahttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18732023-04-04T12:37:12Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Editorial [vol. 1]
dc.contributor.author: Kapalό, James A.; Shanneik, Yafa
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZEvangelicals, Islamists and the globalisation of apocalyptic discourseGribben, Crawfordhttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18722023-04-04T12:37:13Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Evangelicals, Islamists and the globalisation of apocalyptic discourse
dc.contributor.author: Gribben, Crawford
dc.description.abstract: After 9/11, it has become increasingly obvious that strongly held religious convictions about the end of the world cannot be dismissed as the predictable consequences of deprivation, as several generations of social scientists once claimed. Instead, it has become clear that these kinds of ideas, having a life of their own, may establish discourses which may have extraordinary capacity to cross nations, cultures and even religions, encouraging passive withdrawal from the political world as well as inspiring vicious and sometimes violent attempts at its subjugation, underwriting the ‘war on terror’ as well as inspiring some of those intent on the destruction of the United States. This article describes one of Ireland’s most successful intellectual exports – a very specific system of thinking about the end of the world known as ‘dispensational premillennialism.’ And the article will move from county Wicklow in the early nineteenth century, through the troubled decades of American modernity, to arrive, perhaps unexpectedly, in the company of the soldiers of radical jihad. The article will describe the globalisation of a discourse which was developed among the most privileged classes of early nineteenth-century Ireland to explain and justify their attempt to withdraw from the world, and which has more recently been used to explain and justify sometimes violent political interventions by both prominent Western politicians and some of the most marginalised and desperate inhabitants of our broken twenty-first century.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZHidden land and changing landscape: Narratives about Mount Khangchendzonga among the Lepcha and the LhopoScheid, Claire S.https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18682023-04-04T12:37:14Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Hidden land and changing landscape: Narratives about Mount Khangchendzonga among the Lepcha and the Lhopo
dc.contributor.author: Scheid, Claire S.
dc.description.abstract: This article explores contemporary ‘hidden land’ narrative constructs of Máyel Lyáng and Beyul Dremojong in Sikkim, India, as conceived by the Lepcha and the Lhopo, two ‘scheduled tribes’. Lepcha and Lhopo narratives about these hidden lands in Mount Khangchendzonga inform us about their contemporary and historical, indigenous and Buddhist contexts and the interactions between these contexts. Lhopo perspectives on the hidden Beyul Dremojong echo classical Tibetan Buddhist ‘revealed treasure’ guidebooks and exist within the complex and reciprocal relationship between the Lhopo and the land they inhabit; development initiatives are understood to have caused illness and death in the Lhopo community of Tashiding, often referred to as the geographical ‘center’ of Beyul Dremojong. Contemporary Lepcha comprehensions of Máyel Lyáng, described in oral narratives within an ethnic community whose cosmology is intimately connected with Mount Khangchendzonga, today show some influence of Lhopo interpretations of Beyul Dremojong and the treasure texts; they also reflect Lepcha fears about cultural dispersion. Present-day narratives about both hidden lands reference notable political events in modern Sikkimese history (encounters with the British; the Chinese occupation of Tibet).
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZNorthern Ireland, America and the emerging church movement: Exploring the significance of Peter Rollins and the Ikon collectiveGaniel, GladysMarti, Gerardohttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18702023-04-04T12:37:10Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Northern Ireland, America and the emerging church movement: Exploring the significance of Peter Rollins and the Ikon collective
dc.contributor.author: Ganiel, Gladys; Marti, Gerardo
dc.description.abstract: The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) is a primarily Western religious phenomenon, identifiable by its critical ‘deconstruction’ of ‘modern’ religion. While most prominent in North America, especially the United States, some of the most significant contributors to the ECM ‘conversation’ have been the Belfast-based Ikon Collective and one of its founders, philosopher Peter Rollins. Their rootedness in the unique religious, political and social landscape of Northern Ireland in part explains their position on the ‘margins’ of the ECM, and provides many of the resources for their contributions. Ikon’s development of ‘transformance art’ and its ‘leaderless’ structure raise questions about the institutional viability of the wider ECM. Rollins’ ‘Pyrotheology’ project, grounded in his reading of post-modern philosophy, introduces more radical ideas to the ECM conversation. Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ and ‘marginal’ location provides the ground from which Rollins and Ikon have been able to expose the boundaries of the ECM and raise questions about just how far the ECM may go in its efforts to transform Western Christianity.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZProblems with drawing lines: Theo-geographies of the Catholic parish in IrelandO'Mahony, Eoinhttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18692023-04-04T12:37:08Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Problems with drawing lines: Theo-geographies of the Catholic parish in Ireland
dc.contributor.author: O'Mahony, Eoin
dc.description.abstract: While people in Catholic parishes in Ireland appear keenly aware of parish boundaries, these understandings are more often oral than cartographic. There is no digital map of all of the Catholic parishes in Ireland. However, the institutional Catholic Church insists that no square kilometre can exist outside of a parish boundary. In this paper, I explain a process whereby the Catholic parishes of Ireland were produced digitally. I will outline some of the technical challenges of digitizing such boundaries. In making these maps, it is not only a question of drawing lines but mapping people’s understanding of their locality. Through an example of one part of the digitisation project, I want to talk about how verifying maps with local people often complicates something which may have at first sight seemed simple. The paper ends on a comparison with how other communities of interest are territorialised in Ireland and elsewhere to draw out some broader theoretical and theological issues of concern.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZReligion, the study of religion and other products of transnational and colonial imaginingsTurner, Aliciahttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18712023-03-31T07:15:47Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Religion, the study of religion and other products of transnational and colonial imaginings
dc.contributor.author: Turner, Alicia
dc.description.abstract: The category of ‘religion’ as contemporary scholarship has demonstrated is a fairly recent innovation, dating back only a few hundred years in Western thought, and ‘world religions’ as we think of it and as we teach it is an even more recent category, emerging out of European colonialism. Thus the academic study of religion is both the product and, at times, the agent of colonial modes of knowledge. And yet, it is perhaps because ‘religion’ continues to be invented and reinvented through connections across cultures that investigating the work of religious ideas and practices offers such fruitful possibilities for understanding the work of culture and power. This article investigates religion and the study of religion as a mode of anti-colonial practice, seeking to understand how each have the potential to cross boundaries, build bridges and produce critical insights into assumptions and worldviews too often taken for granted.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZThe ‘Celtic’ dimension of pre-first World War religious discourse in Britain: Wellesley Tudor Pole and the Glastonbury phenomenonMcNamara, Brendanhttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18672023-04-04T12:37:09Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: The ‘Celtic’ dimension of pre-first World War religious discourse in Britain: Wellesley Tudor Pole and the Glastonbury phenomenon
dc.contributor.author: McNamara, Brendan
dc.description.abstract: This article will explore the contribution made to the construction of discourse around religion outside of mainstream Christianity, at the turn of the twentieth century in Britain, by a Celticist movement as represented by Wellesley Tudor Pole (d.1968) and his connection to the Glastonbury phenomenon. I will detail the interconnectedness of individuals and movements occupying this discursive space and their interest in efforts to verify the authenticity of an artefact which Tudor Pole claimed was once in the possession of Jesus. Engagement with Tudor Pole’s quest to prove the provenance of the artefact, and his contention that a pre-Christian culture had existed in Ireland which had extended itself to Glastonbury and Iona creating the foundation for an authentic Western mystical tradition, is presented as one facet of a broader, contemporary discourse on alternative ideas and philosophies. In conclusion, I will juxtapose Tudor Pole’s fascination with Celtic origins and the approach of leading figures in the ‘Celtic Revival’ in Ireland, suggesting intersections and alterity in the construction of their worldview. The paper forms part of a chapter in a thesis under-preparation which examines the construction of discourse on religion outside of mainstream Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular the role played by visiting religious reformers from Asia. The aim is to recover the (mostly forgotten) history of these engagements.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZWelcomeClaffey, Patrickhttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18752023-04-04T12:37:15Z2014-01-01T00:00:00Zdc.title: Welcome
dc.contributor.author: Claffey, Patrick
2014-01-01T00:00:00Z