51 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2024
    1. Bartholomew’s most distinctive effort to “update” the Church is his commitment to environmentalism. In the press, he is sometimes called the Green Patriarch. When, in 1997, he declared that abusing the natural environment was a sin against God, he became the first major religious leader to articulate such a position.
    2. a young man named Mykola Kosytskyy, a Ukrainian linguistics student and a frequent visitor to Athos. He had brought with him this time a group of 40 Ukrainian pilgrims. Kosytskyy talked about the war—the friends he’d lost, the shattered lives, the role of Russian propaganda. I asked him about the Moscow-linked Church that he’d known all his life, and he said something that surprised me: “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church”—meaning the Church of Kirill and Putin—“is the weapon in this war.”All through his childhood, he explained, he had heard priests speaking of Russia in language that mixed the sacred and the secular—“this concept of saint Russia, the saviors of this world.” He went on: “You hear this every Sunday from your priest—that this nation fights against evil, that it’s the third Rome, yes, the new Rome. They truly believe this.” That is why, Kosytskyy said, many Ukrainians have such difficulty detaching themselves from the message, even when they see Kirill speaking of their own national leaders as the anti-Christ. Kosytskyy told me it had taken years for him to separate the truth from the lies. His entire family joined the new Ukrainian Church right after Bartholomew recognized it, in 2018. So have millions of other Ukrainians.

      Example of a church mixing religion with social and political order and resultant problems.

      See also: scholasticism

    3. According to Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a scholar of Orthodoxy who teaches at Northeastern University, in Boston, the new converts tend to be right-wing and Russophile, and some speak freely of their admiration for Putin’s “kingly” role. In the U.S., converts are concentrated in the South and Midwest, and some have become ardent online evangelists for the idea that “Dixie,” with its beleaguered patriarchal traditions, is a natural home for Russian Orthodoxy. Some of them adorn their websites with a mash-up of Confederate nostalgia and icons of Russian saints.

      Many in the southern United States are converting to Orthodox Christianity, a conversion which is tied into patriarchal ideas on the far right.

  2. Mar 2024
    1. science has transformed our understanding of time.
      • It’s not an exaggeration to say that
        • science has transformed our understanding of time.
      • But as well in conjunction with this
        • it has transformed- the concept of who we are.
      • From biology we have learned that
        • there is no such thing as race,
        • we are all fundamentally one species
          • (with contributions from a few other sister species, Denisovans and Neanderthals).
      • And from physics we can say that
        • we are literally the space dust of the cosmos
          • experiencing itself in human form.

      for - language - primacy of - symbolosphere - adjacency - language - science - multi-scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - complexity - social superorganism - major evolutionary transition - worldviews - scientific vs religious - Michael Levin - multi-scale competency architecture

      adjacency - between - deep time - multi-scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - social superorganism - complexity - major evolutionary transition - complexity - adjacency statement - Deep time narrative has potential for unifying polarised worldviews - but citing purely scientific evidence risks excluding and alienating large percentage of people who have a predominantly religious worldview - Language, the symbolosphere is the foundation that has made discourse in both religion and science possible - Due to its fundamental role, starting with language could be even more unifying than beginning with science, - as there are large cultural groups that - do not prioritize the scientific worldview and narrative, but - prefer a religious one.<br /> - Having said that, multi-scale competency architecture, - a concept introduced by Michael Levin - encapsulates the deep time approach in each human being, - which withing Deep Humanity praxis we call "human INTERbeCOMing" to represent our fundamental nature as a process, not a static entity - Each human INTERbeCOMing encapsulates deep time, and is - an embodiment of multiple stages of major evolutionary transitions in deep time - both an individual and multiple collectives - what we can in Deep Humanity praxis the individual / collective gestalt

    1. And so the great American saga,as taught, excludes the very pertinent fact that after the 1630s, less than halfcame to Massachusetts for religious reasons.
  3. Feb 2024
    1. centralizing reforms of Pope Gregory VII calledfor a more professionalized clergy. Church officials should now betrained administrators, versed not only in the scriptures but also inthe principles of accounting and law. A papal decree of 1079 orderedthat cathedrals should establish schools for the training of priests,
  4. Jan 2024
    1. only 11% say they are involved in a religious community.

      for - stats - spiritual but not religious

      stats - spiritual but not religious - Pew research study shows 22% of Americans now identify as spiritual but not religious - Only 11% say that are involved in a religious community

  5. Nov 2023
      • for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, bracketing, applied epoche, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, political polarization, religious polarization, epoche - research application

      • comment

        • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
        • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
        • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
        • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
        • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
        • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
        • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding
      • for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, poltical polarization, religious polarization, hermenneutic, hermeneutical phenomenological method

      • summary

        • a very insightful paper
      • comment

        • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
        • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
        • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
        • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
        • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
        • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
        • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding
    1. On the Function of the Epoche inPhenomenological Interpretations of Religion
      • for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, political polarization, religious polarization

      • comment

        • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
        • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
        • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
        • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
        • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
        • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
        • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding
  6. Aug 2023
    1. Last fall, I spent several days in New York City, during which time I visited a home owned by a group of pacifist Christians that lives from a common purse—meaning the members do not have privately held property but share their property and money. Their simple life and shared finances allow their schedules to be more flexible, making for a thicker immediate community and greater generosity to neighbors, as well as a richer life of prayer and private devotion to God, all supported by a deep commitment to their church.This is, admittedly, an extreme example. But this community was thriving not because it found ways to scale down what it asked of its members but because it found a way to scale up what they provided to one another.

      fascinating example of anti toxic capitalism...

  7. Apr 2023
    1. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      Is there a better direct quote from Locke for this indirect one?


      Oddly, large portions of the religious right and Republican right are highly subservient to authority while simultaneously espousing the idea of "freedom".

      Apparently the base definition of "freedom" on the right has shifted in large portions of American culture.

  8. Feb 2023
    1. I observe that they take no care of the conversion of their Slaves.

      In New York in 1687, Thomas Dongan reports that people didn't convert their slaves to their own religions.

    1. The Ranters were one of a number of dissenting groups that emerged around the time of the Commonwealth of England (1649–1660). They were largely common people,[1] and the movement was widespread throughout England, though they were not organised and had no leader.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranters

      See also The Antinomian Controversy<br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomian_Controversy

      The Antinomian Controversy, also known as the Free Grace Controversy, was a religious and political conflict in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638.

  9. Oct 2022
  10. heathercoxrichardson.substack.com heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
    1. The real danger of this widening schism…lies in this creating the conditions for a future that looks more like present-day Russia or Iran.

      Or like The Handmaid's Tale.... SF accurately predicts the future yet again.

  11. Sep 2022
    1. Chapter XIX

      The entire chapter is a mix of overlapping sentimentalism and gothic elements in the form of religious enthusiasm: devoted and passionately religious Wieland is convinced by a hallucination that he must sacrifice his wife - and later children - to rid himself of mortal impurities, selfishness, and to prove his faith to God by it. The darkness and the torturous thoughts about death and murdering what's most precious to him are gothic elements. I think the cause - the hallucination itself - as godly as it looks is controversially gothic because it is a coverage of the madness and the horrors that will happen. The emotions are overpouring with grief, hesitation, and the urge to fulfill a "divine duty". The reasoning is far from prudent, although there are episodes where Wieland is torn between his love for his family and God. The inner conflict - although more exaggerated here - reminds me a little of "Contemplations", but unlike in Contemplations, where from the gloomy thoughts we reach peace, Weiland is "dancing with madness" in his inner battle, episodically going back and forth even after the deed is done - at first he's relieved even happy that he was able to obey a divine command and set himself free, but then he breaks down under its weight, and again his hallucinations bring him back to carry on and repeat it with his children too.

  12. Aug 2022
    1. Australia’s Indigenous knowledge systems do not separate the secular and the sacred; both are embedded in the idea of Country as an all encompassing term of the materiality of life, landscape and seascape, as well as the spiritual world of the creation ancestors, and the concept of the Jukurrpa, the eternal law/lore of how to live sustainably in accordance with how the world works, which in turn has shaped human social organisation and kinship systems.
    2. The purpose of this secular knowledge system is not intrinsically about wellbeing, ethics and goodness per se; it is about the search for truth and efficacy—be that for competing ideas about what is good, for the purposes of competitive advantage in commerce or national prestige, or for destructive purposes linked to warfare and security.
    3. The Western knowledge system rests on a strong split between secular and religious knowledge.
  13. Jul 2022
    1. Yet not all of the sciences use (or require) mathematics to the same extent, for example, the lifesciences. There, the descriptive, analytical methods of Aristotle remain important, as does the(somewhat casual) recourse to final causes.

      Is the disappearance of the Aristotelian final cause in modern science part of the reason for the rise of an anti-science perspective for the religious right in 21st century America?

      People would seem to want or need a purpose to underlie their lives or they otherwise seem to be left adrift.

      Why are things the way they are? What are they for?

      Is the question: "why?" really so strong?

  14. Jun 2022
  15. Jan 2022
    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

  16. Sep 2021
    1. Repubs are the American Taliban.

      Perhaps not so funny, but I said this same thing yesterday in regard to the Texas law relating to abortion.

      They just want physical power and control over everyone.

  17. Sep 2020
    1. Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity… you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel but only to be filled full of wrath: God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that ’tis said he will only laugh and mock (Proverbs 1:25-32)…

      This is a very I stress very condensed version of these verses in Proverbs. I grew up Southern Baptist, My granddaddy was a preacher in NC, for 75 years. So I know all about church on Wednesday AND Sunday and whatever other day seemed fitting. I myself broke away from that and creating my own religious freedom by becoming Lutheran.. If you know anything about Lutherans they are pretty closely inlined with Catholicism. So Granddaddy was NOT happy. And I myself may or may not have received a scare tactic sermon... But let me finish proverbs for you the next verse or two from this if you will. After consulting all 3 of my bibles, yes all three different versions; the famous KJV, the NIV, and the NASB, it clearly states: Proverbs 1;33 "But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm". Imagine if he would have finished his sermon with these words.

      I imagine this made life even harder on them economically; being afraid to trade and do business with neighbors who may not be living up to the preacher's standards. Think about all of the trade relationships that may have been severed.

  18. Jun 2020
  19. Apr 2020
  20. Dec 2019
    1. Religious conflict in any form is often far more impervious to pragmatic solutions, and can prove more dangerous than national conflicts.

      This is debatable. National identity and religion are often both entwined in complex historical factors quite like Judaism and the land of Judea. Whereas national identity is more moldable and dynamic when combined with democratic developments like the Arab spring, religious identity would change slower and might be more important to guard for the conservatives (I'm not sure on this, but it's a gut feeling)

      In such a case, conflicts are easier to understand when cast in terms of religious or sub-religious basis but I definitely think a purely religious conflict (an ideal construct) is more likely to find a pragmatic solution, although I doubt if any thing of that sort exists!

  21. May 2019
  22. Apr 2018
    1. Nay if we may openly speak the Truth and as becomes one Man to another; neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan, [59] nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion.158

      I was taken by just how clearly Locke, in the 17th century, speaks in support of religious diversity and a separation between church and state (I highlighted many remarks and passages in this work). This will be a powerful document to allow students to read in conjunction with the first amendment.

    1. You are invited to comment on the research program "Theory and Empiricism of Religious Evolution". Please, register with "Hypothesis" via the person icon above on the right side.

  23. Jan 2018
  24. Nov 2017
    1. It is supposed probable that a building of somewhat more size in the middle of the grounds may be called for in time, in which may be rooms for religious worship

      This central building sounds like it could have been the Rotunda. It's strange that a place for religious worship would be considered at the center of the grounds since Jefferson always put so much emphasis on a university focused on academics rather than religion. It makes sense that there would be a church, but having it in the center when this document directly addresses an absence of religious studies is very contradictory.

      -Wei Guan

  25. Oct 2017
    1. Another significant finding is that efforts of the membersof religious networks—in spite of their relatively closedcharacteristics—in terms of being at the center of a net-work and taking the brokerage role are, contrary to theliterature, highly developed

      This is an important finding that can help researchers better understand how this and similar religious networks operate.

    2. While previousstudies presented that social networks have an influence onreligiousness, they did not respond to the question of howreligious ties structure attitudes and relations in the orga-nizational field

      What this study adds to the existing literature

  26. Sep 2017
    1. This book is not about religion, although I talk about religion. It's about religious tolerance and the fight for human rights; the first battlefront in public discourse about human rights.

      Freedom of religion was the first base upon which other understandings of freedom have been built upon.

    2. This is the story of 16th century Europe, and the political earthquake that was protestantism. The overarching historical narrative unfolds around the lives of fictional characters who might have lived in this historic period.

      Follett's literary reenactment explores the intricacies of the Protestant Reformation through a cast of strategically diverse characters, whose stories span across multiple continents, nations, and cities. Each character is an important harbinger of larger historical trends. Within the masterfully established geo-political reality, each of their decisions serve to gradually reveal their distinct personalities and temperaments, belief systems and ideologies, and cultural identities.

    3. The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else—no matter what the cost.

      Reminiscent of our current geo-political climate. The extended cycles of history.

  27. Apr 2017
    1. There is sure another flood toward, and these FTLN 2669 couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of 193 As You Like It ACT 5. SC. 4 FTLN 2670 very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called FTLN 2671 fools.

      religious reference

  28. Mar 2017
    1. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man.

      Douglass describes how religious liberty seems hollow in the country if the principles of Christianity aren't practiced along with mere preaching. He also uses strong language concerning the Fugitive Slave law as a "declaration of war" against religious liberty. This is an interesting point, as he views the law as hindering his and other Christians' ability to carry out and practice Christianity by helping fugitive slaves. This idea of too much government causing suppression of religion correlates to Thoreau's minimalistic desires of government

  29. Jan 2016
  30. Dec 2015
  31. cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net
    1. Nonconformist−Parsons

      A clergyman who (especially after the Act of Uniformity of 1662) who is separated from the Church of England; another way to say a Protestant Dissenter (OED).

    2. Conventicles

      "An assembly, a meeting; esp. a regular meeting of any society, corporation, body, or order of men" (OED).

    3. French Hugonots

      Image Description Portrait of John Calvin by Hans Holbein the Younger

      The correct spelling of the word is Huguenots. Huguenots were French Protestants and members of the Calvinist communion of France in the 16th and 17th century (OED).

  32. cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net
    1. Bed of Ease

      Reference to a Hymnal written by Christian Isaac Watts (1674-1748) titled "Am I A Soldier of The Cross." (Wikipedia online)

      "Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize And sailed through bloody seas?"(Hymnal.net) Image Description

    2. Tom Bell

      Thomas Bell (fl. 1573–1610) was an English Roman Catholic priest, who later denounced the faith and became an anti-Catholic writer and persecutor.

  33. cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net cityheiress.sfsuenglishdh.net
    1. Conclave of Cardinals

      "The place in which the Cardinals meet in private for the election of a Pope," (OED).