Study Guide - Readings

Study Guide: Religious Texts, Concepts, and Social Critique

I. Foundational Texts and Authors

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II. Core Theological and Philosophical Concepts

A. Julian of Norwich: The Nature of Divine Love

• The 16 Shewings: These revelations covered a range of subjects, including:

    1. Christ's precious crowning with thorns (comprehending the Trinity, Incarnation, and unity between God and man’s soul).

    2. The changing of color of Christ's fair face (token of His dearworthy Passion).

    3. God's sovereign action and governance ("God doeth and worketh all-thing that is done").

    4. The scourging of Christ's body and plenteous shedding of blood.

    5. The overcoming of the Fiend by Christ’s Passion.

    6. The worshipful thanking by God for His blessed servants.

    7. The feeling of weal and woe, showing believers are kept securely in love.

    8. The last pains of Christ and His cruel dying.

    9. The pleasing/joy in the Blissful Trinity by Christ's hard Passion.

    10. Our Lord Jesus showing His blissful heart cloven in two, rejoicing.

    11. An high ghostly Shewing of His dearworthy Mother.

    12. That our Lord is most worthy Being.

    13. The deeds God has done, assuring, "all shall be well".

    14. That our Lord is the Ground of our Prayer (requiring rightful prayer and steadfast trust).

    15. Sudden deliverance from pain and woe into endless joy.

    16. The Blissful Trinity dwelling in our soul and protecting us.

• The Trinity and Motherhood: The Trinity is described as our Maker and Keeper. God is understood in three properties: Fatherhood (Might/Being), Motherhood (Wisdom/Reforming), and Lordhood (Love/Rewarding). Jesus Christ is described as our Very Mother in nature (by making) and in grace (by taking our nature).

• Suffering and Sin: The author desired three gifts: mind of Christ's Passion, bodily sickness (to be purged), and three wounds (contrition, kind compassion, steadfast longing). God revealed that "Sin is no deed," having no substance, and is known only by the pain it causes. God assured the author, "I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well".

• Prayer and Trust: God is the Ground of our beseeching. Prayer is a right understanding of the coming fullness of joy, combined with longing and sure trust. Prayer units the soul to God, acting as a witness that the soul wills as God wills.

B. Cone: The Cross, Lynching, and Paradox

• The Paradox: The cross is the quintessential symbol of Christian faith, while the lynching tree (1880–1940) is the quintessential symbol of black oppression. The cross is a paradoxical symbol because it inverts values, asserting hope comes via defeat.

• The Lynching Era: Lynching was a public spectacle, often announced in advance, that attracted crowds (up to twenty thousand people) as a ritual celebration of white supremacy, meant to terrorize the black community.

• White Supremacy: Lynching was justified by the religious belief that America was a white nation called by God to witness the superiority of "white over black". The cross was seen by African Americans as manifesting God's loving and liberating presence in black suffering.

• Resistance: Black people found hope and affirmed their humanity in resistance through the blues (as cultural defiance and existential affirmation of joy) and Christian religion (with the cross as foundation for faith and spiritual power).

C. Ecowomanism

• Interconnectedness: Ecowomanism promotes themes of interconnectedness, wholeness, and environmental health. It argues for earth ethics based on the understanding that human, nature, and spiritual realms are connected.

• Critique: The perspective critiques systems of patriarchy and domination (such as the biblical interpretation of "dominion over the earth").

• Shared Oppression: The approach draws parallels between the exploitation of African slave women's bodies (e.g., breeding, violent use) and the destruction of the earth (e.g., strip-mining). The defilement of a Black woman's body is named as sin, which correlates with the sin of dishonoring the environment.

• African Cosmology: Ecowomanist principles are supported by African American religious thought and indigenous African cosmologies that view the earth as a "living being," embodying the spirit of divinity, and mandate respect for nature.

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III. Social Dynamics of Religion and Culture

A. The Hijab/Veil: Narratives of Conflict

• Three Master-Narratives of the Veil's Meaning:

    1. Colonial Narrative: The veil is a symbol of the inferiority of the Islamic Other, used by imperial powers to justify domination and civilizing efforts.

    2. Native Westernizing Elite Narrative: Abandoning the veil signals a commitment to modernity and women's rights, shifting over the 20th century toward full equality.

    3. Islamist Narrative: The veil affirms Islamic purity against Western corruption, embracing modernity and a limited feminism within a divinely ordained patriarchal order.

• US Context: In the US, especially among the younger generation, women often choose to wear the hijab, viewing it as a choice, not an obligation. Their motivations are varied, including giving visibility to Muslimness, affirming identity/community, promoting global justice, and acting as a deeply feminist gesture and courageous defiance against prejudice.

B. Religious Appropriation

• Definition of Appropriation: The act of adopting religious practices without committing to doctrines, ethics, or institutions in a way that exacerbates existing structural injustice (e.g., racism, capitalism, Christian hegemony).

• Exploitation: Borrowing becomes stealing when a privileged or dominant group borrows from a marginalized one, violating group intimacy and undermining group identity. Exploitation can be economic or ideological, such as corrupting practices by extracting them from their original context, or reinforcing Orientalist narratives.

• The Spiritual/Religious Distinction: Insisting that spirituality is distinct from religion eases appropriation because it allows individuals to claim borrowed spiritual practices without "becoming religious" or submitting to institutional authority. This framing often assigns "good religion" to "spirituality" while associating negative attributes (like oppressive authority) with "religion".

• Respite Yoga as Appropriation: This contemporary self-care practice is successful because it was secularized and whitewashed—downplaying devotional and religious aspects (e.g., asceticism, cosmological claims) to make it accessible to Western consumers. This process involves the erasure of yoga's devotional and Indic roots, sometimes leading to unintended results, like the community being vulnerable to alt-right conspiracy theories.

C. Sociological Perspectives on Reality

• World-Building (Berger): Every human society is a world-building enterprise that imposes a meaningful nomos (order) upon experience. This activity is a dialectic process involving externalization, objectivation, and internalization.

• Religion's Role: Religion establishes a sacred cosmos that legitimates the precarious social order by grounding it in ultimate reality. This sacred cosmos serves as the ultimate shield against the terror of anomy (meaninglessness/chaos).

• Plausibility Structures: Socially constructed worlds are inherently precarious and must be maintained. Their continuing reality, whether objective or subjective, depends on a specific social "base" called a plausibility structure. The maintenance of a religious world depends on sustaining the community that makes that world real and plausible.

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IV. Comparative Religious Thought: Judaism and Christianity

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V. Key Spiritual Practices and Concepts

• Rumi/Sufism: Language and music express a longing for the source; words are secondary to the center they resonate from. True change ("The Worm's Waking") happens when one realizes they are not just a part, but the "entire vineyard".

• Buddhism (Thich Nhat Hanh): Emphasizes Interbeing, the idea that phenomena (like a sheet of paper) inter-are, containing everything else (sunshine, cloud, logger). The practice of Vajrayana (esoteric) Buddhism, such as the clear light of death meditation, aims to prepare the mind for the moment of dying by experiencing dissolution and achieving a subtle consciousness free of duality.

• Meditation and Prayer: The pause created by a prayerful and meditative life extends the space between stimulus and response, offering the freedom to choose a thoughtful response rather than a reactive one.

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is a sign of strength and is the only way to heal and be free from the past. It does not mean forgetting the negative thing or allowing wrongdoing, but rather choosing not to develop anger or hatred toward the actor while taking appropriate counteraction to stop the harmful action. Unforgiveness causes stress responses (increased blood pressure and heart rate). The ability to forgive others for severe harm (like murder or maiming) is evidence of a nobility of spirit inherent in all people.