试析1968年美国天主教会内部的"生命权"问题之争

围绕罗马教皇在1968年发布的《人类生命》通谕是否具有合理性问题,美国天主教会内部存在严重分歧,教会上层保守派一方的意见最终占据了主导地位,从而在伦理道德领域确立了美国天主教会延续至今的宗教保守主义立场。教会从此成为反对人工控制生育的中坚力量。其保守立场成为天主教会同其他教派,尤其是新基督教右翼派别的合作基础。     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

宗教信仰对东南亚华人文化适应的影响

宗教信仰是文化适应的一个重要内容 ,同时又对文化适应的其他方面产生重大而深远的影响。研究东南亚华人的文化适应 ,不能不研究他们的宗教信仰。本文分析三种类型的宗教信仰者的文化适应情况 ,他们分别是 :华人穆斯林、华人基督徒、华人传统宗教信仰者。笔者发现 ,三种类型的宗教信仰者 ,其文化适应的方向是大相径庭的 :华人穆斯林文化适应的方向是本土化 ,华人基督徒文化适应的方向是西方化 ,华人传统宗教信仰者文化适应的方向是中华化。东南亚华人如果要保持中华文化 ,保持本民族的文化认同 ,提倡信仰华人传统宗教 ,可能是一个很好的选择。     

Religious transnationalism among Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto: a binary logistic regression analysis

Thanks to pioneering work within anthropology, students of international migration acknowledge that most immigrants do not sever their ties with the homeland, but rather maintain them through a variety of cross‐border relationships. While scholarly work has proliferated, since the early 1990s, over the transnational economic and political activities of immigrants, to date, only few analysts have examined the religious practices with which immigrants sustain memberships in multiple locations. In addition, most available studies on transnational migration has dwelled on qualitative methods, such as participant observation, focus groups discussions and in‐depth interviews with a handful of informants, with little or no inclination towards the quantitative measurement of key variables implicated in the process. The prevalence of ethnographic methods in this area of research has, quite understandably, engendered charges of exaggeration, given the tendency of such techniques ‘to sample on the dependent variable’, to borrow the phrase of Alejandro Portes. Using data collected from a survey among Ghanaian immigrant congregations in Toronto, this study seeks to statistically predict the propensity to engage in transnational religious practices by way of a binary logistic regression analysis. In addition, the study examines how the transnational religious activities of the sampled immigrants relate to, overlap with, and differ from other kinds of transnational practices they pursue.     

我国宗教立法论要

宗教立法是建设社会主义法治国家的必然要求。本文回顾了中国共产党关于宗教立法的基本历程,阐明了在社会主义中国宗教立法应坚持的根本宗旨及基本原则。     

Philosophy and Esotericism

Abstract

Arthur Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines establishes the historical reality of esotericism, or at least the reputation for it, throughout Western and Islamic philosophy until late modernity. But Melzer wants to do much more than that: to establish that there is a whole new world of philosophy to uncover and explore, thus to promote the recovery of “a long lost art of philosophical literacy.” I argue that he fails in this task. Most of the evidence he has for esotericism concerns religious beliefs, and it does not show that a significant portion of the work of important philosophers is to be read esoterically. I offer a detailed analysis of his account of Aristotle's alleged esotericism to give some indication of the weakness of his evidence. I also argue against the Straussian assumption (regarding the dualism of human nature between theory and practice) that stands behind so much of his account of esotericism. I end with a discussion of pedagogical esotericism, contrasting Melzer's Straussian account with my Nietzschean account of what esotericism can contribute to philosophical education.     

Which way to go? Women's walking decisions and Ultra-Orthodox enclaves in Jerusalem

This article explores how material and ideological forms of social exclusion manifest at the borders of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and play out in the walking patterns of surrounding (non-Ultra-Orthodox) populations. It is based on a pilot study that uses a mixed methods design consisting of mental maps and questionnaires to examine how (particularly female) residents living in close proximity to Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods perceive these spaces, experience themselves in relation to the gender norms reproduced there and make wayfinding choices accordingly. This study builds on previous ones that have explored both the contested terrain of Jerusalem's city center and the dynamic relationship between the social and the spatial to include a discussion of how religiosity and cultural politics express themselves in the commonplace, embodied act of the female pedestrian.     

The routes of a plant: ayahuasca and the global networks of Santo Daime

This paper examines the Santo Daime religion, the Amazonian town of Céu do Mapiá which is one of its primary spiritual centres, and Ayahuasca, a key sacrament of the Santo Daime religion. The small village in the Amazon demonstrates the active outreach by a place which functions as a nexus of international and intercontinental flows of substances, bodies and meanings. The power of place is entwined with the story of religious belief and practice, which in turn depends on a tropical vine, Banisteriopsis caapi. In this networking process, we find a confluence of human agency with more-than-human agency, as well as the modalities of religious experience, crossing and dwelling. It is demonstrated that religious networking can be understood in terms of three forms of crossing (terrestrial, corporeal and cosmic) held together by the power of place (Mapiá and other subsidiary spiritual centres). In addition, three aspects of the ‘ayahuasca network’ are treated in depth: religious diffusion and adaptation, interaction with environmental movements and ideologies and contestation with legal structures and processes surrounding international drug traffic and the use of psychoactive substances.     

Shia groups and Iranian religious influence in Azerbaijan: the impact of trans-boundary religious ties on national religious policy

Abstract

The Azerbaijani Government’s struggle against external influence from Iran has played a significant role in consolidating its secular self-identification since independence in 1991. Though strong, direct Iranian influence on Azerbaijani Shia groups belongs to the past, its effects are sustained. This article examines the religious transborder flows from Iran to Azerbaijan and their impact on Azerbaijani domestic religious policy. The analysis includes religion as a factor in the debate about transnationalism and about how transnational actors challenge nation states’ exclusive authority over their territory. The analysis uses data from government documents, newspaper articles, social media, and interviews with politicians and religious actors. As a result, the article shows that the Iranian intervention in Azerbaijan has effectively initiated the building of a more specific Shia identity among a small but growing number of Shia groups. This has led to the reconfiguration both of the religious field and of Azerbaijani political secularism.