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Formal Pūjās and Stavan Repertoires

M. Whitney Kelting

in Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen, Mandal Singing, and the Negotiations of Jain Devotion

While daily puja is a locus for ritual improvization, the formal pujas are where ritual orthopraxy is circumscribed by shared understandings of the mandal's expertise and authority in the realm of ... More

While daily puja is a locus for ritual improvization, the formal pujas are where ritual orthopraxy is circumscribed by shared understandings of the mandal's expertise and authority in the realm of Jain worship. The particular performances of the hymns in the various contexts within the formal pujas articulate the ways the singing collective women interpret both the hymns and the purpose of the formal pujas. Performance choices arise out of the content of the hymn, the context (or fit) of the hymn within the performance, and the desire to make critiques of a particular conflict. When singing collective women perform the formal pujas, they reestablish themselves as the puja experts, and explicitly name themselves as the knowers of formal puja hymn and worship repertoires.Less

Expertise, Prestige, and Authority

M. Whitney Kelting

in Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen, Mandal Singing, and the Negotiations of Jain Devotion

Both expertise and prestige are sources for authority in Jain religious contexts. Most religious expertise inheres with the laywomen who teach and monitor the orthopraxy and orthodoxy of children, ... More

Both expertise and prestige are sources for authority in Jain religious contexts. Most religious expertise inheres with the laywomen who teach and monitor the orthopraxy and orthodoxy of children, while the bulk of religious prestige is located in male dominated practices. Jain laywomen negotiate their positions as authorities in public, all‐women contexts, where their expertise is evaluated and where prestige practices have been introduced to make the program grander. They also jockey for positions of authority in mixed‐ gender contexts dominated by male participation, centering on prestige practices that challenge women's expertise‐based authority. These negotiations occur particularly in large‐scale public liturgical performance and devotional singing sessions. The introduction of religious professionals, auctions, and amplification illuminates the struggle defined by complex tensions between gender and class identities for authority in Jain ritual contexts.Less

The Grammar Of Practice

Judith Lieu

in Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World

Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus provides a framework for understanding the nexus of practice and belief in early Judaism and how a shared set of practices and world-view can encompass multiple ... More

Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus provides a framework for understanding the nexus of practice and belief in early Judaism and how a shared set of practices and world-view can encompass multiple interpretations. From this perspective, we can explore how self-understandings in so-called early Christian writings both overlap with each other and with Jewish patterns and differentiate themselves from them. A language of mutuality was particularly important in Christian writings, which often emphasize practice more than belief. Although these distinguish themselves from Jews and ‘pagans’, many of their values were shared in common, and perhaps lived out in cooperation more than conflict.Less

Distant Musings on a Crucial Colony, 1882–1888

Michael Laffan

in The Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past

This chapter looks at Snouck Hurgronje's interventions in the field in Holland, his criticisms of the juridical and missiological attacks on the orthopraxy of Islam in the Indies, and his alliance ... More

This chapter looks at Snouck Hurgronje's interventions in the field in Holland, his criticisms of the juridical and missiological attacks on the orthopraxy of Islam in the Indies, and his alliance with those whom he deemed to have a more scholarly interpretation of Islam, and whose views he therefore promoted as beneficial to public well-being within a still Netherlandic Indies. In particular, the chapter will consider the distaste of Snouck and his allies for the varieties of populist mysticism that rival—and rather less juridically concerned—Muslim teachers could turn to their own purposes. Trained in the field of religious studies, Snouck had a decided aversion to legalistic scholarship that prioritized text over context. He urged instead that the observations of his academic and churchmen forebears should be twinned to a more professionally developed Orientalism, such as would more effectively service an empire contending with Islam as its primary threat.Less

All Roads Lead to Rome

Manlio Graziano

in Holy Wars and Holy Alliance: The Return of Religion to the Global Political Stage

This chapter explains why the Catholic Church was able to recover after the crisis of the 1960s and consequently can lead the "holy alliance".

Student Narratives: Personal Transformations and Reorientations

Usha Sanyal

in Scholars of Faith: South Asian Muslim Women and the Embodiment of Religious Knowledge

In Chapter 9 I focus on the students of Al-Huda classes, both onsite and online. Most of the students who spoke to me were young adults—some married with children, some college students, and some ... More

In Chapter 9 I focus on the students of Al-Huda classes, both onsite and online. Most of the students who spoke to me were young adults—some married with children, some college students, and some professionals. Whether living in North America, Europe, or South Asia, they were drawn to Al-Huda for a variety of reasons, and all of them reported deriving strength from deepening their engagement with the Qur’an. Bilingual in English and a South Asian language, they were educated middle-class women discovering the Qur’an through Al-Huda classes. All of them had chosen to live a more orthoprax lifestyle in accordance with what they learned in the Al-Huda classes. But in order to succeed, I argue, they had to get their families’ support. They had to do da‘wa. In this chapter, I examine their life stories in light of the concepts of ‘precarity’ and gendered Islamophobia as articulated by Attiya Ahmad and Jasmin Zine, respectively.Less

Religious Authority in Practice: The Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

Nabil Mouline and Ethan S. Rundell

in Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia

This chapter discusses the Islamic principle of promoting virtue and preventing vice. This Islamic principle aimed to promote a society that observed orthopraxy and orthodoxy. This chapter also ... More

This chapter discusses the Islamic principle of promoting virtue and preventing vice. This Islamic principle aimed to promote a society that observed orthopraxy and orthodoxy. This chapter also describes the structures and objectives of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. It highlights the prerogatives of hisba agents, which fall under the support of the prevention of vice. It addresses how these agents promoted virtue.Less

Explaining the Inexplicable

David Berger

in Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference: With a New Introduction

This chapter provides some tentative explanations for Chabad messianism. One of these explanations is the ideal of unity and the avoidance of communal strife. Every practising Jew has heard countless ... More

This chapter provides some tentative explanations for Chabad messianism. One of these explanations is the ideal of unity and the avoidance of communal strife. Every practising Jew has heard countless sermons about the imperative to love one's neighbour, particularly one's Jewish neighbour. While rhetoric about this value cuts across all Orthodox—and Jewish—lines, it is especially compelling for Modern Orthodox Jews who maintain cordial, even formal relations with other denominations and pride themselves on embracing an ideal of tolerance. No Orthodox Jew believes that everyone committed to the Jewish community has the right to serve as an Orthodox rabbi because of the value of unity. The appeal to this principle is relevant only after one has concluded that Lubavitch messianism is essentially within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Since this is precisely what is at issue, the argument begs the question. The chapter then considers the explanations concerning orthopraxy, the balkanization of Orthodoxy, and Orthodox interdependence.Less

Introduction

N. Harry Rothschild and Leslie V. Wallace

in Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the three parts and thirteen chapters that comprise this volume, a series of focused case studies of personages and actions considered “bad” by early ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the three parts and thirteen chapters that comprise this volume, a series of focused case studies of personages and actions considered “bad” by early and medieval Chinese writers. The first part contains four chapters examining distinctive ways in which core Confucian bonds, such as those between parents and children and ruler and minister, were compromised and even severed. Through a colorful collection of ostentatious Eastern Han mourners, deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang Buddhist monks, and inebriated Song literati, the second part explores the elasticity of orthopraxy and heteropraxy in early and medieval China. The final part showcases four distinctive explorations of cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare. Collectively, the volume compels a serious reconsideration of larger questions of what and whom was considered aberrant, arguing that more often than not, definitions were based on personal taste, conflicting systems of values, and political and social expedience.Less

The Spirit of Ritual and the Letter of the Law

James D. Frankel

in Rectifying God's Name: Liu Zhi's Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law

This chapter contains a detailed analysis of the first four chapters of the Tianfang dianli before briefly dealing with the sinicized elements of Islamic praxis in the remaining chapters of Liu Zhi's ... More

This chapter contains a detailed analysis of the first four chapters of the Tianfang dianli before briefly dealing with the sinicized elements of Islamic praxis in the remaining chapters of Liu Zhi's book. In doing so, the chapter examines how Liu Zhi attempted to provide a theoretical substratum for his exposition of Muslim orthopraxy by expressing Islamic orthodoxy in Chinese philosophical terms. Liu Zhi's emphasis on ritual in the Tianfang dianli is a reflection of the importance attached by the Islamic tradition to correct performance of religious rites and observance. Yet in his presentation of Islam, Liu Zhi also consciously correlated his Islamic heritage with the dominant Confucian paradigm, under which all serious intellectual activity was conducted in the cultural milieu of his day.Less

Ritual Change and the Problem of Presence

Marko Geslani

in Rites of the God-King: 'Sānti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism

This chapter forms a concluding reflection on the nature of ritual change, based on the transformation of śānti rituals detailed in the previous chapters, while critically engaging the reception ... More

This chapter forms a concluding reflection on the nature of ritual change, based on the transformation of śānti rituals detailed in the previous chapters, while critically engaging the reception history of Frits Staal’s theory of ritual meaninglessness. Taking a historicized view of ritual structure as illustrative of the workings of orthopraxy, it illuminates the close relation between ritual authority and ritual meaning, engaging an earlier debate between Stanley Tambiah and Maurice Bloch. The second half of the chapter illustrates the constraints of orthopraxy through a discussion of how the ritual history of appeasement imposes constraints on the notion of presence in Hindu and related image-worshipping contexts, in which divine presence must always be concieved in relation to mantra, and thus dependent on priestly work.Less

A Gospel Amulet for Joannia (P.Oxy. VIII 1151)

AnneMarie Luijendijk

in Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World

This chapter’s careful study of a healing amulet from fifth-century Oxyrynchus, Egypt, upends common assumptions about women and magic, and recapitulates in a single example much of what the other ... More

This chapter’s careful study of a healing amulet from fifth-century Oxyrynchus, Egypt, upends common assumptions about women and magic, and recapitulates in a single example much of what the other studies in this collection find. By reconstructing the social and historical context of this amulet, it illuminates not only the personal difficulties of a single female patient, but more significantly, the likely role of the clergy in the production of this and similar amulets. The chapter’s close analysis of the amulet’s use of scribal practices such as nomina sacra, invocation of local saints, and resemblance to Christian liturgy, indicates that it was most likely produced by clergy at a local shrine. The orthopraxy of the amulet suggests that the owner found nothing incongruent with it and her Christian beliefs, despite the rancorous censorship of amulets by certain bishopsLess

“Keeping Scientology Working”: Features of Systematic Theology

Donald Westbrook

in Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis

This chapter introduces features of Scientology’s systematic theology as developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard established a headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, ... More

This chapter introduces features of Scientology’s systematic theology as developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard established a headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, England. This location became the international base of Scientology until the founding of the Sea Organization in 1967. The Saint Hill period was instrumental in the intellectual development of Scientology. During these years, Hubbard systematized Scientology’s educational methodology (Study Technology), theology of sin (overts and withholds), theology of evil (suppressive persons), and standards of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (“Keeping Scientology Working” or KSW). KSW serves to legitimate Dianetics and Scientology within the church because it self-referentially dictates that Hubbard’s “technologies” provide mental and spiritual benefits only insofar as they are uniformly understood, applied, and perpetuated by others.Less

Right Singing: The Voice of Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

Jeffers Engelhardt

in Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christians and Secular Enchantment in Estonia

This chapter develops the idea of right singing in a religious economy of orthodoxy (correct belief) and orthopraxy (correct practice). Focusing on stylistic differences in worship practices, the ... More

This chapter develops the idea of right singing in a religious economy of orthodoxy (correct belief) and orthopraxy (correct practice). Focusing on stylistic differences in worship practices, the author shows how different understandings of the Orthodox voice, regional identities, and generational and communal experiences shaped right singing. Central to this chapter are comparative ethnographic vignettes and recordings of how the polyeleos, a festal hymn taken from Psalm 135, was sung at different parishes. Choirs gravitated toward styles that were more logogenic (word-centered) or more melogenic (music-centered) depending on singers’ social identities, vocal abilities, religious sensibilities, and understandings of Orthodox rubrics and theology. Right singing was intensely local, and never the same. This chapter also serves as a general introduction to Orthodox theologies of musical practice in the eight-week cycles of liturgical texts and melodic modes known as oktoihh or lauluviisid in Estonian, oktoēchos in Greek, and Oktoikh in Russian.Less

Postscript: Buddhist Authority, Politics, and Violence

Michael Jerryson

in If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence

This postscript examines religious authority that is beyond strictly doctrine and practice. It traces the history of Western scholarship on religion and authority. Drawing from their own religious ... More

This postscript examines religious authority that is beyond strictly doctrine and practice. It traces the history of Western scholarship on religion and authority. Drawing from their own religious background, Western scholars first emphasized orthodoxy (doctrine) as an important religious authority in Buddhism. This was gradually expanded to include orthopraxy (the practice itself). Throughout this development, scholars acknowledged the importance of culture, but never as an equal authoritative axis to orthodoxy and orthopraxy. The postscript argues that the absence of an alternative religious authority, of equal weight, hinders the analysis of Buddhist roles in politics and violence, as well as the study of Buddhism in general.Less

Praying Orthodoxy

Nathan J. Ristuccia

in Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation

Throughout the early Middle Ages, yearly penitential seasons like Rogationtide and Lent provided a context for basic doctrinal instruction—a replacement for the vanishing Patristic catechumenate. Not ... More

Throughout the early Middle Ages, yearly penitential seasons like Rogationtide and Lent provided a context for basic doctrinal instruction—a replacement for the vanishing Patristic catechumenate. Not only was lay participation in such penitential seasons high, but the ritual structure of these holidays meant that verbal instruction and physical practice mirrored each other. Rogationtide developed a special connection with teaching on the Lord’s Prayer. During the early Middle Ages, knowledge of the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer was the proof of someone’s Christianity. The Rogation procession—a ritual that all Christians had to join—mirrored the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer—a text that all Christians were expected to understand. The interdependence of these two popular practices shaped lay experience of their own Christianization. Christian instruction occurred through rituals. The rule of prayer upheld the doctrines of faith.Less