Ἅγιος Λόγος, Divine Word

Lauren Mayes — 2024-05-28

This paper addresses scholarly understanding of Jewish Identity Construction in the 1st c. CE. The Ancient Mediterranean was a deeply interconnected world that witnessed broad interaction between all groups subsumed under the Roman Empire, from Egyptian to Jewish to Greek. This paper examines Jewish identity in the first century and community responses to ancient antisemitism by using a historical-critical and comparative methodology to consider the works of Josephus, Paul the Apostle, and Philo of Alexandria in conversation with each other and with Rome. Two works from Philo and Paul are considered with the explicit presupposition that their thought is dynamic over time, and the works are analyzed chronologically. Josephus provides a more ‘secular’ background against which to triangular Philo and Paul’s works. This research demonstrates that first century Jews respond to the cultural influence of imperial Rome by constructing their Jewish identity as innately philosophical, especially when pitching that identity to gentile audiences. Whether as a way to combat the rising antisemitism or differentiate themselves within a competitive landscape of self-authorized religious experts, the conclusions of this research advocate for an inclusive picture of first century thinkers, religious, philosophical, or otherwise.

Late Modern Esoteric Christianities

Zane Johnson — 2024-05-28

“Esoteric Christianity” is a term that has been used to describe a range of practices, philosophies, movements, and organizations that espouse a sui generis “inner” tradition within or alongside the stream of historic Christianity. The term has arisen in different religious contexts in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, from Theosophy (Besant 1914) and continental esoteric traditions (Tomberg [1980] 2002) to more recent attempts to locate the origins of esoteric Christianity in the early church (Amis 1995). Richard Smoley has recently attempted to collate these disparate streams of Christian esotericism in his influential Inner Christianity (2002), which continues to be cited widely by proponents of alternative Christianities. While these writers are interested in making authoritative claims about the existence of an alternative or submerged stream of Christianity (at varying degrees of divergence from the historic or “exoteric” Christian churches), which emphasizes higher teachings and inner experience of the divine over and against creedal orthodoxy and assent to doctrine, I am interested in this paper primarily in esoteric Christianity as a discursive phenomenon of late 20^th and 21^st century American religious culture. Specifically, I am interested in the search for the esoteric as a phenomenon of modernity that reflects concerns about secularization and religious pluralism, drawing on identified themes of 20^th century American religion such as primitivism, individualism, and the therapeutic nature of religion. Finally, I am interested in the ways that this term is embodied and naturalized in by religious practitioners, both individually and in community. In this paper, I will analyze the trends of late modern esoteric Christianities. attempting to characterize some of the emergent practices and identities that fall under this umbrella, what I have roughly termed the “liturgical-contemplative,” “New Age revelation,” and “ecclesial neo-Gnostic” groupings.

The Inner Vehicle

Elizabeth Hale — 2024-05-28

T.M. Luhrmann has demonstrated the role of mental imagery practices which allow evangelical Christians in the Vineyard Church to hear and interact with God through their physical senses combined with focused mental concentration. The online community of tulpamancers employs similar practices to develop a kind of imaginary friend within their mind, known as a tulpa. This paper compares the psychological processes in question, arguing that both evangelical Christians in the Vineyard Church and tulpamancers use similar imaginal techniques foster the experience of contact with a non-human other (God in the case of evangelical Christians and tulpas in the case of tulpamancers). It also explores how Christian tulpamancers reconcile their prayer practices with the tulpa-creation process and how they differentiate between interactions with their tulpas on one hand and God on the other.

Heterobinary-Panopticism

David Kemp — 2024-05-28

Queerness is a present vision of a liberative future. By using a critical-genealogical approach informed by grassroots LGBTQ+ perspectives to explore how disciplinary power operates in and through contemporary queer materiality as a regulatory process of identity formation, different underlying power dynamics across society can be revealed along with ways normative constructions of subjectivity reinforce and reproduce dominant ideologies and structures such as Christian sexual ethics, the colonial gaze, capitalism, and 'safe' LGBTQ+ bodies. Queerness then provides a praxis-oriented framework to subvert these operations of power, contributing to justice throughout individual, social, and religious arenas.

Dangerous Ramifications of Recent Ghar Wapsi Efforts

Kevin Grane — 2024-05-28

The political theology of Hindu nationalism seeks not just political indoctrination but has also expressed itself religiously through reconversion practices, principally knows as Ghar Wapsi. Ghar Wapsi is a growing practice proselytizing the message of Indian identity as inexorably associated with a Hindu element. After first exploring the association between Ghar Wapsi and Hindu Nationalism historically, this paper explores the harmful methods of Hindu nationalists intended to mediate the process of reconversion. These efforts are geographically pointed along religio-cultural divisions and economic class. Violence has been used with growing frequency in conjunction with threats of land seizure, business foreclosure, and withholding of food rations. Given the ever-escalating unethical methods of inciting reconversion among Indians, there is a very real concern of Hinduphobia denoting a macro-oriented stereotyping of Hinduism in general at the behest of acts committed by Hindu nationalists specifically.

“Decolonizing Reality”

Alfredo Garcia Garza — 2024-05-28

This article complicates Gloria Anzaldúa’s claim of being a chamana—shamaness—who heals colonialism’s wounds by decolonizing reality. Her shamanic experiences have been taken as paradigmatic among scholars, from different fields, since the publication of her generative book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), as well as the culmination of her life’s work, Light in the Dark/Luz En Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (2015). Yet, divine election, a cross-cultural element present in the shamanic initiation of ancient and contemporary magico-religious healers in México, is absent from the shamanic initiatory process she describes. I argue that Anzaldúa’s “decolonial” process of shamanic initiation is better understood, not as being derived from Mexican spiritual traditions, but as part of the neo-nagual legacy of the “fake shaman” Carlos Castañeda. The symbolic, cultural, political, and spiritual borders between what is and isn’t colonial are, in the end, far more complex than what Anzaldúa represented in her writings.

NEXT

Ἅγιος Λόγος, Divine Word

Late Modern Esoteric Christianities

The Inner Vehicle

Heterobinary-Panopticism

Dangerous Ramifications of Recent Ghar Wapsi Efforts

“Decolonizing Reality”