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Is a powerful position a guarantee that a religion will continue? Does God take sides in religious power struggles? Can God survive religious exclusivity and diversity? Is God migrating from out there to in here? Is religion sustainable in the long run? In seeking answers to these questions, this book explores the possibilities afforded by playful religion. Religion has playful origins, but this aspect is forgotten as soon as institutional power becomes self-serving insteadof subservient. Power changes the very essence of religion. Virtually all religions are distorted versions of a playful original. Institutionalization is religion's curse, not its blessing. Apparent success hides the failure of religion to be faithful to its original intent. This book helps find the way back from bordering to inclusivity and openness.
The relationship between religion, power and play is a promising theme in the study of religion. This collection of essays contains Andre Droogers most relevant articles on their interconnectedness. Having worked on three continents, researching and lecturing in both anthropology and religious studies, he was able to explore the theme in an interdisciplinary and comparative way. While acknowledging the increasingly political role of religion, the inclusion of play opens surprising and sometimes amusing new perspectives."
Is a powerful position a guarantee that a religion will continue? Does God take sides in religious power struggles? Can God survive religious exclusivity and diversity? Is God migrating from out there to in here? Is religion sustainable in the long run? In seeking answers to these questions, this book explores the possibilities afforded by playful religion. Religion has playful origins, but this aspect is forgotten as soon as institutional power becomes self-serving insteadof subservient. Power changes the very essence of religion. Virtually all religions are distorted versions of a playful original. Institutionalization is religion's curse, not its blessing. Apparent success hides the failure of religion to be faithful to its original intent. This book helps find the way back from bordering to inclusivity and openness.
Playful Religion explores the concept of play as it appears within the rituals and practices of various religions from around the world, such as Latin American Pentecostalism and the African religion of Candomblé. Despite the seriousness of the issues religion generally deals with, this book demonstrates that the idea of play is an essential part of religious life across cultures and throughout history. Making use of case studies that focus on contemporary religious choices, religious syncretism, and the fate of religion in Western Europe, Playful Religion is an in-depth look at the changing and highly imaginative face of global religion.
At a religion's margins a counterpoint can be found for its power center. In a creative manner, relatively free from clerical control, religious virtuosos take new initiatives there. Inspired by their experience with the sacred, they explore their liberty to play with meanings, images and practices. Yet, the eventual success of such an innovation calls for organization and thus for the exercise of power. Accordingly new movements slow down into institutions - till a new virtuoso brings the cycle to a fresh start. Over the last thirty years Andr Droogers has extensively published on the relation between religion, power and play. In this collection of essays the most relevant articles are repr...
With its remarkable ability to adapt to many different cultures, Pentecostalism has become the world’s fastest growing religious movement. More than five hundred million adherents worldwide have reshaped Christianity itself. Yet some fundamental questions in the study of global Pentecostalism, and even in what we call "Pentecostalism," remain largely unaddressed. Bringing together leading scholars in the social sciences, history, and theology, this unique volume explores these questions for this rapidly growing, multidisciplinary field of study. A valuable resource for anyone studying new forms of Christianity, it offers insights and guidance on both theoretical and methodological issues. The first section of the book examines such topics as definitions, essentialism, postcolonialism, gender, conversion, and globalization. The second section features contributions from those working in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. The third section traces the boundaries of theology from the perspectives of pneumatology, ecumenical studies, inter-religious relations, and empirical theology.
Once a central concept in anthropology, syncretism has recently re-emerged as a valuable tool for understanding the complex dynamics of ethnicity, postcolonialism, and transnationalism. Building on a century-long tradition of scholarship, this important book formulates a broader view of the mixing and interpenetration of religious beliefs and practices, primarily from Africa and Europe, highlighting the ways in which religions and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic have been assimilated and innovatively changed. Divided into four sections, the book focuses on religious syncretism in Brazil, Jamaica, and other parts of the Caribbean and West Africa. Greenfield and Droogers have brought together an array of outstanding international scholars whose rich and varied essays on specific geographical locales and customs comprise an innovative and comprehensive view of the transference of religious traditions and their continuity and reformulation on two continents.
No detailed description available for "The Dangerous Journey".