Alternative Salvations: Engaging the Sacred and the Secular

Description

By considering transformative ideas and experiences which are explicitly articulated or implicitly structured in languages of religion and spirituality, Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these broad categories. Part one draws on contemporary salvation narratives showing how current cultural forms, social practices and secular discourses are influenced by, or are interpreted through, the lens of religious and theological accounts of salvation. Examples include twelve step recovery programs, drug culture, and public policy surrounding HIV-AIDs in Kenya. Although outside traditional religious contexts, the contributors show ways in which they are not free from religious symbolism. Part two explores alternative accounts of salvation rooted in religious traditions. Established orthodoxies are confronted by contemporary critical questions, for example about gender, the status of animals, and the political dimensions of salvation. By contributing new perspectives and unique case studies, Alternative Salvations provides a deliberate challenge to easy binaries which often underpin contemporary and traditional discourses of salvation. Tags: Religion, Juvenile Nonfiction, Social Science, Christianity, Theology, Sociology of Religion, Spirituality, General Title Page Copyright Page Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Why Salvation? ‘Alternative’ to What? Problematizing the Sacred and the Secular Listening to Ordinary lived Experience An Invitation to the Reader Part 1 Contemporary Salvation Narratives Chapter 1 Only We Can Save Ourselves: An Atheist’s ‘Salvation’ Pieces of Salvation: A Building-Block Approach The Building Blocks of Salvation Horizontal and Vertical Transcendence: A Framework for Religious Studies Secular ‘Salvation’: Beliefs in Action Eschatology: The End is Near, or is it? Chapter 2 Reflections on the Language of Salvation in Twelve-Step Recovery Context: Twelve-Step Mutual Aid Naming, Shaming and Claiming Contemporary Twelve-Step Language ‘Beyond my wildest dreams’ – The Language of Transformation On the Personal ‘negotiation’ of Higher-Power Language Keys to the Kingdom? Chapter 3 Public Policy Dialogue as a Salvation Practice for Women and Youth Living with HIV in Kenya Developing Public Policy Dialogue Public Policy Dialogue as Salvation Practice Chapter 4 Dieting for Salvation: Becoming God by Weighing Less? Listening to Women’s Stories Salvation Through Weight Loss The Body in Exile: Salvation as Escape from Fat6 Purging the Body of Time: Salvation as Escape from the Female Becoming God by Weighing Less Conclusion: Attending to Time and Earthing Hope in Bodies Chapter 5 Spontaneous transcendent and transformative experiences in everyday life Defining and Discussing Transcendence Transformation The Data5 Discussion Salvation, Spirituality and TEs Chapter 6 Timothy Leary and Alternative Salvation The Psychedelic Experience Jail Notes, The Politics of Ecstasy and Your Brain is God Design for Dying Chapter 7 Religious Doctrines in Group Discussions on Ideas of Afterlife: What Do You Think Comes after Death?1 Introduction: The Adaptation of Religious Doctrines in Contemporary Images of Afterlife Preliminary Remarks on Erlösung Research Question and Methodology Adaptation of Christian Doctrines on Salvation Atheistic Ideas of Afterlife Conclusion Chapter 8 Salvation, Death and Nature as Grace Conceptual Changes Meaning and Salvation in Religious Studies Superplausibility Hope and Reciprocity Merit and Reciprocity The Shift in Awareness Stanner and Douglas Mormonism: Salvation in Two Modes Secularization, Spirituality and Salvation National Health Service, Spirituality and Salvation Woodland Burial Conclusion Part 2 Re-reading Traditions Chapter 9 Whose Salvation? A Very Particular Christian Question Introduction: Locating ‘alternative salvations’ Shrinking the Generic to the Local Salvation in Christ: That Persistent Christian Question Universal Salvation in Christ? Renewed Contemporary Debate Conclusion Chapter 10 ‘Unlock Paradise with your own Blood’: Martyrdom and Salvation in Islam and Christianity Martyrdom and Salvation in Islam Martyrdom and Salvation in Early Christianity Conclusion Chapter 11 Christian Salvations in a Multi-faith World: Challenging the Cult of Normalcy Introduction Intersectionality: A Methodological Approach Disability and Normalcy Salvation as Normalization Dominant Model of Salvation Informing Christian Engagements with People of Other Faiths Salvation as Normalization of People of Other Faiths A Need for Alternative Salvations Salvation as Healing A Deaf Reading of Mark 7:31-37 Salvation as Healing and Christian Engagements with People of Other Faiths Conclusion Chapter 12 Gendered Constructions of Salvation: Overcoming the Binaries Introduction Identifying the Problems Valuing the Material and Mutable An Embodied Eschatology Conclusion Chapter 13 Animals and Universal Redemption: All Dogs Go to Heaven Aquinas Genesis Isaiah Revelation Romans Colossians Ephesians Animal Redemption Chapter 14 Teaching Practical Theology for Flourishing Introducing the Classroom for Flourishing Salvation, Transformation or Flourishing in Theological Anthropology and Pedagogy Towards a Pedagogy of Flourishing in Practical Theology Challenges in the Classroom for Flourishing Chapter 15 A Muslim Conflict over Universal Salvation Ibn Taymiyya’s Case for Universal Salvation Ibn al-Qayyim’s Arguments for Universal Salvation Al-Subkī’s Opposition to Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya Ibn Qayyim’s Affirmation of Eternal Chastisement for Unbelievers Epilogue Chapter 16 Signs of Salvation: Insecurity, Risk and the End of the World in Late Modernity World Risk Society Rapture Culture Prophecy in the News Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 16 References Index