January—February, 2012 (Vol. 27, No. 3-4)

Over ten months have passed since Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Sociologist Peter Berger once said that religion legitimates the “marginal situation” that is best represented by death.

This legitimation can be seen individually and collectively, and the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami will definitely be seen as “marginal situations.” Although it did not become major news, various religious organizations in Japan have helped the victims of these natural catastrophes. After the earthquake and tsunami, a few interfaith organizations started to support the victims.

The Faith-based Support for the Earthquake Relief in Japan is one of the groups that started after the earthquake, and it still has a page on the Facebook where people contact each other (www.facebook.com/FBNERJ). The Japan Religion Coordinating for Disaster Relief is another group that also formed after the earthquake to support the victims across different religious beliefs (www.indranet.jp/syuenren/).

Right after the earthquake and tsunami, local shrines and temples were offering shelters for those affected. According to the newspaper Shūkan Asahi (December 30), religious organizations, whether considered “new” or “old,” have attempted to avoid putting their identities as religious organizations and practitioners forward in their relief efforts. One leader from an alliance of new religious movements said that because some people are so sensitive to some religious organizations, they dared not reveal their identity; the important thing was to help the victims.

Some Buddhist monks who opened up their temples right after the disaster accepted and supported those who were affected, regardless of religion. Many other Buddhist monks volunteered to pray for those who lost lives in the disaster by chanting Buddhist sutras, as the practice is a major funerary activity in Japan. Not all the adherents of those religions share the same attitude toward the relief operations:  some individuals are openly revealing their religious affiliations. Some victims reject those individuals with open religious affiliation, and yet as time passes, religious affiliations start losing their importance. It does not have to be actively evangelized, but the interaction of the religious practitioners and the people with a pure intention to help could awaken religious sentiments.

The January 18th Sankei News reports on an alliance between such different religious traditions as Buddhism and Christianity in Miyagi prefecture, one of the major disaster areas. A significant number of people have claimed to see “ghosts” and “monsters,” yet there are no places to talk about this issue. Religious organizations are now helping people regardless of their religious affiliations by offering a helpline. Religious differences are not a major issue when facing such a harsh reality.

This alliance also has a practical aspect, as the organization is more effective in working with the municipal government, because it does not fall into a particular religious tradition. Although their religious affiliations are different, their sincere efforts at alleviating the suffering of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami continue. An afternoon in Miyagi brings people coming to see Buddhist monks at “Café de Monk” to mend their broken hearts. It soon will be the one-year anniversary of the disaster. Religious leaders with diverse backgrounds are now planning an interfaith ceremony to mark the anniversary.

—By Ayako Sairenji, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the New School for Social Research

(http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/120118/trd12011811500005-n1.htm; http://www.chunichi.co.jp/kenmin-fukui/article/kenmin-news/CK2012012402000162.html)

From near extinction, Buddhism has been on a path of renewal in China since the 1980s and has been growing to the extent of now being the religion with most adherents in China—at least 100 million, according to reports by several scholars in an issue of Social Compass on “Social Implications of Buddhist Revival in China” (Dec. 2011).

According to official statistics, there are now more than 20,000 registered Buddhist monasteries in China, possibly with more than 200,000 monks and nuns. Numbers could, however, hide the considerable diversity of Buddhism in China, stresses Sun Yanfei (Columbia University Society of Fellows), ranging from state-recognized institutions to groups having a precarious relationship with the state or outside of institutional Buddhism.

The second type is linked to Buddhist teachers outside China and the third one includes groups mixing Buddhism with popular religion, as well as religious sects with Buddhist references. Due to their links with official institutions in charge of registration of religious groups, recognized Buddhist groups can play an important role either in supporting Buddhist imports or in denying them access. Benefitting from China’s booming economy, the recognized temples have sometimes become quite wealthy, but do not always manage to handle this sudden prosperity judiciously, since the renewal is recent and they lack highly qualified people.

Teachings from abroad is making inroads, including through regular media channels due to the more dynamic environment that exists today in China. Some of them are welcomed by local officials when they bring foreign capital for rebuilding temples or establishing centers, boosting local economies. But the absence of full legal status limits their growth. Syncretist sects tend to be opposed both by the Buddhist establishment and the government. In case of popular religion, this can encourage a process of Buddhification that is sometimes superficial, but allows temples linked to popular religious practices to come under the aegis of state-sanctioned religion through adopting Buddhist externals (such as Buddha statues and services), although it leads to a dilution of their identity.

Research by Gareth Fisher (Syracuse University) shows how lay Buddhist believers in Beijing are attempting to transform museified temples in the Chinese capital into zones of living religiosity: they challenge admission fees to these tourist spots on the ground that they are believers and participate in religious activities inside tourist temples. Ji Zhe (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris) suggests that there is also an attitude of adjustment to the new interest for Buddhism in the form of a summer camp for young people organized by the Bailin Temple (Hebei Province). Traditional rituals are important, if only for the legitimacy of Buddhist temples, but Buddhist festivals, based on the lunar calendar, no longer overlap with the calendar followed by modern Chinese people.

Targeting urban educated youth, the temple has launched summer camps since 1993 for socializing young people into Buddhist practices, presenting them as adjustable to the life environment of contemporary people. The camps are not meant for already active Buddhist believers and there are few requirements: many have little knowledge of Buddhist practices and come because they are curious to learn more about Buddhism. A conversion ritual takes place on the fifth day for those who want to become Buddhists, but a significant percentage does not choose to take that step. Other monasteries have started to organize such camps, seen as a valuable approach for reconciling Buddhism with youth.

Finally, Alison Denton Jones (Harvard University) pays attention to the phenomenon of ethnic Han Chinese adopting Tibetan Buddhism as part of a “proliferation of old, new, and hybrid ways of practicing Buddhism.” There are both cases of Han Chinese converting to Tibetan Buddhism and of Chinese Buddhists incorporating Tibetan practices. There had already been such trends in earlier decades, but this was repressed by the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), along with other religious practices. Due to the politicization of the Tibetan issue, the state is uncomfortable with Han Chinese adopting Tibetan Buddhism.

Where there are few Tibetan Buddhist temples, lamas from Tibetan areas come as itinerant teachers. The fact that established Han Buddhist temples are not well prepared to serve lay populations in urban areas leaves niches in the Buddhist market: Tibetan teachers are able to provide a systematic introduction to Buddhist doctrine as well as a teacher-disciple relationship. Tibetan lamas act as “spiritual entrepreneurs” for spreading the dharma, or specifically Tibetan teachings, not forgetting an economic motivation in some cases. Believers following Tibetan Buddhism perceive it as more powerful and efficacious—which is helped by Tibet’s exoticism. They also feel that Tibetan monks abide by higher standards than their Han Buddhist counterparts. Moreover, they consider Tibetan Buddhism as authentic, systematic and rational.

(Social Compass, L2.08.13, Place Montesquieu, 1348 Louvain la Neuve, Belgium; published by SAGE Publications, http://scp.sagepub.com)

The Chinese government is primarily concerned with the potential political and organizational power of religion even more than with the content of religious teachings, states Kristin Kupfer (University of Freiburg, Germany), an expert on contemporary Chinese religion and society, who spent several years in China and in 2009 completed a doctoral thesis on the Emergence and Development of Spiritual-Religious Groups in the Peoples Republic of China after 1978.

In an interview with the magazine of the Swiss Bible Society, Die Bibel Aktuell (4th quarter 2011), Kupfer states that consumerism is today a major trend in China, and this creates no concern for the government, since people attempting to improve their wealth have no time left for political activities; however, more and more people are also asking themselves questions about the meaning of life. The official churches do not differ very much from mainline Christian churches in Europe, explains Kupfer: they have Bible studies and social activities, and the average believers are not young people.

The unregistered house churches are quite similar to free evangelical churches in Europe, with younger participants and a wide range of activities. Concern appears with Chinese authorities in those cases when churches turn to political topics, attract intellectuals or grow large, with a strong organizational strength.In the milieu of dissidents and activists, a number of Christians can be found. Some Christian lawyers, journalists and teachers also engage in public life and publish Christian texts—especially on the Internet, since it is more difficult to have them published in periodicals.

The social commitment of Christians has been developing too. As long as there are no missionary activities, the state may even support social projects. Kupfer reports having seen crosses hanging on the walls of some hospitals and a small chapel in a nursing home: this depends very much on local circumstances and officials. Registered churches also suffer from state control. Thus, they would not be opposed to a more liberal religious policy for fear of competition from dynamic groups.

But they are afraid of fundamentalist groups with aggressive missionary approaches. Some extreme cases (including kidnappings and murders) in a few groups have reinforced such fears, although Kupfer notes that such isolated cases have also been used by the Chinese government for labeling house churches as dangerous cults (heretical teachings in Chinese) that they felt were growing too much, and thus banning them.

(Die Bibel Aktuell, Schweizerische Bibelgesellschaft, Spitalstrasse 12, 2501 Biel, Switzerland, www.die-bibel.ch)

Zionist circles are expressing concerns that a growing number of evangelicals who were formerly committed to supporting Israel have been “changing sides” recently.

Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein, both working at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, claim that evangelical and conservative Christians—deemed to be “Israel’s most important allies”—are increasingly targeted “for conversion from Christian Zionism to Christian Palestinianism” (The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, Dec. 2011).

They mention the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference (CATC), a pro-Palestinian initiative aimed at evangelicals—with some success, according to the authors. The 2012 CATC conference is said to include names of people who used to be supporters of Israel. The president of the World Evangelical Alliance is also reported to be one of the scheduled speakers.

The authors claim that this is also linked to a trend to a theological switch toward another understanding of the place of the Jews and of the land of Israel. One could add that these trends are probably also linked to wider changes in the perception of the state of Israel and Zionism in Western public opinion.

(The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, Jerusalem Post Building, P.O. Box 81, Romema, Jerusalem 91000, Israel)

Charisma magazine (January) reports on “12 global hotspots” of Christian mission and growth that includes countries not usually associated with evangelical or charismatic Christianity.

Although much of the information is based on self-reporting by missionaries and church planters, the overview does at least show where charismatics see new centers of influence emerging. While China has long been identified as Christianity’s new powerhouse, the article reports that charismatic renewal has “identified state-sponsored churches.” In India, “indigenous church-planting” is occurring, while in Iran, believers are “finding increased openness to the gospel,” despite government crack-downs on church gatherings.

In Brazil, economic expansion is being accompanied by a “Christian awakening,” particularly as Presbyterian, Baptist and Nazarene groups have adopted Pentecostal practices (although RW reported relatively stagnant growth among Pentecostals in the November/December issue). The magazine reports on large church-planting efforts in Ethiopia and Romania, where many of the Pentecostals are “leaving old traditions and embracing a more relevant, charismatic faith,” as well as sending missionaries to the Middle East.

Singapore is becoming a “strategic base for both missionary sending and funding.” In such Muslim-dominant countries as Pakistan, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, the article reports new receptivity to Christianity.

(Charisma, 600 Rhinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32746)

Political science has awakened “from a long, secular slumber” and started to grapple with the question of religion in politics and conflict, giving rise to competing political science approaches on these questions. This has a direct impact on suggestions about ways to solve conflicts with a religious dimension, writes Sabina A. Stein (Center for Security Studies, Zurich) in an article published in Politorbis (Issue 52, 2011), a journal published by the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs.

According to Stein, three theoretical perspectives on religion and conflict can be identified: primordialism, instrumentalism and social constructivism. Primordialism sees differences in religious traditions and beliefs as a key cause of conflict. Samuel Huntington has been the most prominent proponent of such views, seeing religion as central in the constitution of individual and collective identity. Threats to religious frameworks can thus provoke violent reactions. Current conflicts are seen as a resurgence of ancient hatreds.

Instrumentalism considers that the causes of conflict are material. Religion is instrumentalized by elites in order to mobilize support: it is the “opium of the warriors.” Religion is a tool for creating identity and for absolutizing conflict, thus rendering violence morally justifiable. Religion thus serves a legitimating function. Social constructivism admits that religion can play an important role in constituting identities, but insists on the fact that social actors are never defined by a unique identity. Similarly, religious cognitive structures can be manipulated by power-hungry elites as a tool of legitimation; but they cannot just be used according to one’s whims.

Indeed, religions contain resources that can be used for various purposes, promoting either conflict or peace. Religious beliefs do not “inherently push adherents toward violent conflict.” Identities are not fixed and can be transformed through the interpretation of religious doctrines.Stein insists that people involved in peace promotion in those contexts where religions play a role should be aware that a theoretical lens shapes our understanding of specific situations.

Various articles in the issue elaborate on lessons from specific cases (from contemporary Islam to the Branch Davidians in Waco) in order to understand the dynamics of religion, conflict and tools for transforming religious-political conflicts. These tools include innovative approaches such as arts-based approaches to conflict resolution (Michelle LeBaron, University of British Columbia). Bob Roberts, pastor of NorthWood Church (Keller, Texas) explains his work for connecting Evangelical Christians and Conservative Muslims, which he understands as “multi-faith” and not “interfaith” work.

But at least in its more academic expressions in the United States, much of political science continues to largely ignore religion, despite the fact of religious influence in politics, according to Steven Kettell of the University of Warwick. In an article in PS: Political Science and Politics (Vol. 45, No. 1), the official journal of the American Political Science Association, Kettell studied the importance of religion in the 20 highest ranking journals in political science and found that just 1.34 percent of them deal either directly or tangentially with religious themes; this figure is far lower than the proportion of articles dealing with more mainstream political science concerns, such as democracy and conflict. Those articles that involve religion usually are focused on a narrower range of issues, such as violence and Islam, and U.S. politics.

In contrast to a field such as sociology, political science fares poorly; Kettell compared the top 20 sociology journals with the top political science publications and found that in the case of the former, religion receives “primary” attention at the rate of two-and-a-half times higher than the latter. Although the total number of political science articles on religion has increased since 2000, the overall proportion of such articles has increased by just a quarter of one percent. Kettell concludes that political science’s origins, emerging during the creation of an “increasingly secular system of territorially sovereign states of the 17th century that has encouraged the discipline’s blind spot on religion.”

(Politorbis, Dept. of Foreign Affairs, Bernastrasse 28, 3003 Bern, Switzerland; PS: Political Science and Politics, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036)

The Jewish day school movement associated with Conservative Judaism has shown a steep decline, paralleling the membership losses suffered by the Conservative movement as a whole, reports Forward.com (January 27).

The website reports that the schools, known as the Schechter Day School Network, were long considered the “crown jewel of the Conservative movement.” But since the late 1990s, the schools have experienced a 35 percent drop in enrollment, according to an analysis by Forward. The number of Schechter schools has shrunk to 43—down from 63 in 1998.

Most of the remaining schools are discarding the Schechter label and their denominational identity and have become non-denominational community day schools. One day school specialist said there is a “feedback relationship” between a denomination and its sponsoring schools.

(The Chronicle Review, 1255 23rd St., N.W., Washington, DC 20037)

Reforms enacted in the training and formation of American Catholic priests, some of which took place 20 years ago, may be responsible for the sharp decline in child abuse cases in the last decade, according to an article in the Jesuit America magazine (January 2–9).

The most reliable studies that have been conducted, such as the in-depth survey conducted by John Jay College, found that most cases of abuse occurred between 1960 and 1985, after which the numbers dropped substantially and remained low (although most of the abuse cases were reported after 1995).

Sociologist Katarina Schuth finds that church documents about preparation for the priesthood only began to treat celibacy in a serious way in the 1980s, culminating in the fifth edition of the key document “The Program of Priestly Formation” in 2005, which paid extensive attention to celibacy, with instructions of how seminarians should develop a theological rationale for celibate life and cultivate a moral character and conscience through ascetic practices. Paralleling these changes were shifts in seminary formation. Before the mid-1990s, seminarians who might have identified their struggles with celibacy and sexuality did so only under strict confidence with a spiritual director and not with other formation personnel who could have acted on the information. By the mid-1990s, the confidential nature of spiritual direction was balanced by each student also being provided with a formation advisor.

By the mid-2000s, a separate “human formation” program was incorporated in seminaries, which included extensive instruction on celibacy, admission processes paid closer attention to matters involving life-long celibacy, and the Vatican initiated visitation to seminaries in 2005–06. There are anecdotal signs that these changes have helped lower the abuse rate, according to Schuth. The few seminaries that already introduced some of these innovations in the 1960s, such as instruction in celibacy, showed a lower rate of abuse among their graduates. As these few early programs have mushroomed, the accusations of abuse have likewise dropped—from 975 accusations in 1985–89 to 73 in 2004–08.

(America, 106 W. 56th St., New York, NY 10019-3803)

Graphic novels are the latest form of popular culture and media where mysticism and the paranormal are given free reign, writes Jeffrey J. Kripal in the Chronicle of Higher Education Review (December 16).

Kripal, who authored the recent book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics and the Paranormal (University of Chicago Press), writes that there is a long list of comic book writers and artists ranging from Jack Kirby of the 1970s to Alan Moore and Grant Morrison (inspirers of the X-Men movies) today who were deeply involved in occult and paranormal activities. In his research, Kripal found that many contemporary popular artists and writers report mystical and paranormal experiences, “and they just as commonly identify those events as the source of their creative powers.”

Kripal argues that sci-fi novels and films, superhero comics and now graphic novels often function as the “media of deeply meaningful paranormal experiences,” because such phenomena have continually been excluded since the mid-20th century from academic and religious life. “The rise of behaviorism, Marxist materialism, social constructivism, computer modeling of the brain, and contemporary neuroscience all have helped to expel the categories of the psychic and the paranormal from academe, along with notions of soul, spirit and now mind itself as legitimate subjects of research worthy of financial support,” he adds.

Religious institutions have likewise rejected paranormal experiences as conflicting with doctrinal and institutional life, even though these encounters have functioned as “religious building blocks.” Thus, popular culture and esoteric communities have been the two remaining places where “paranormal events are free to speak and spark … [escaping] rational and religious censors.”

(The Chronicle Review, 1255 23rd St., N.W., Washington, DC 20037)

From the mid-1950s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) went through a phase of re-emphasizing its distinctiveness in relation to wider American culture, but during the Hinckley era, starting in 1995, the pendulum of church culture has swung somewhat toward assimilation, writes Armand L. Mauss in an essay published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Winter 2011).

Mauss reflects about developments in Mormonism that occurred in the nearly two decades since he published his book The Angel and the Beehive (University of Illinois Press, 1994). At the grassroots, little may have seemed to change. But LDS leadership has been partly softening the tone on a number of topics, including some distinctive Mormon doctrines that are controversial in the eyes of other Christians, such as “heavenly parents, the eternal progression of God from a mortal state and the potential human destiny of godhood.”

While there is a desire to reshape the image of Mormons, these are not merely statements for public consumption: a look at recent church manuals shows that some traditional LDS teachings “have been eliminated or seriously watered down.”In relation to scholarship, independent scholars not employed by the church “have lately enjoyed a tacit acceptance by leaders.” There is more openness toward dealing with controversial issues and generous access to church archives is given to these scholars.

In the same way, the Department of Public Affairs of the LDS Church had been quite proactive toward the media and willing to deal with questions and criticisms. Quite remarkable has also been the embrace of social media and the encouragement to faithfully engage in discussions on church teachings; Mauss also observes the absence of efforts to discipline individual dissenting bloggers.

Church leaders are obviously aware that it is not possible to keep full control of the way the church is discussed. According to Mauss, the processes that can be observed over a long time span seem to be “two steps toward assimilation and only one back toward retrenchment;” in the long term, the result should be a well-assimilated community—remembering that the growth of a movement sometimes means, from a sociological angle, finding an optimal level of tension. Mauss ends by wondering what other course corrections might be around the corner and what the consequences will also be not just for the LDS faithful in the United States, but for Mormons around the world.

(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, P.O. Box 58423, Salt Lake City, UT 84158)