Illumine, Vol. 07, No. 1 (2008)
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Item Praying with the hand you are dealt: Revisiting social class in the study of religion(Illumine, 2008) Stewart, AdamAlmost since the very inception of sociology as a discipline, it was widely assumed that social class determined an individual’s religious beliefs, practices, and affiliation. In the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this assumption has been criticized as being overly reductionist by those advocating the role of human agency in the determination of religious subjectivity. This resulted in class being largely ignored within the academic study of religion. In this paper I argue that social class should be revisited as an important category of inquiry within the study of religion. I argue that by applying Sean McCloud’s recent theory of “socially habituated subjectivity” to the relationship between religion and class, it is possible to admit the important connection that exists between certain religious groups and social classes, while not falling prey to the reductionistic theories of the past.Item Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum: Protofeminism, piety, or transcendence?(Illumine, 2008) Braun, ConnieAemilia Lanyer continues to be a controversial figure in the early modern tradition. Lanyer was not an aristocrat; her connections to the court included a sexual liaison with Queen Elizabeth’s cousin and her dedication in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) was to women of nobility. Written in the conventions of religious poetry, her work is a defense of Eve in the voice of Pilate’s wife. At times the voices of the speaker and the poet appear to be intertwined in a subversion of the misogynist view of Eve’s actions, contesting contemporary patriarchal egemony. However, it is also arguable that despite her less than “virtuous” background and in the face of her possible financialor feminist ambitions, the Christian influences evident in her poetry suggest that Lanyer was a spiritually motivated woman whose work offers a hermeneutic for authentic Christian spirituality.Item Making it real: The narrative (re)construction of a pilgrimage centre in Bosnia-Herzegovina(Illumine, 2008) Després, SébastienIn the Balkans, language, culture, ethnicity, nationalism, and religion are inextricably interconnected, and religious factionalism plays a central role in the continuing tensions between Croats and Serbs. So intense is this fusion of the secular and the sacred in the former Yugoslavia that little more than a decade ago, it contributed to the construction of ideologies of “ethnic cleansing” which led to a civil war. An arena of competition and struggle between different groups attempting to win control of a crucial cultural resource, Franciscan-influenced Medjugorje is unquestionably the region’s most potent and important symbol of Croatian identity. Presently the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in the world because of the daily Marian apparitions that have been reported since 1981, the landscape of this small parish is not a neutral geography; it has been recontextualized by the individuals who present the territory and its peoples to outsiders. A key method for claiming possession of territory and for buttressing collective identity, this sharing of “identity-stories” takes on an almost unlimited number of forms: grand narratives, histories, memoirs, songs, the visual arts, language, architecture, and geographies. These cultural texts help to create political subjects and political commitments and are appropriated and more fully narrativized by various groups in order to support specific, diff ering political agendas. This paper is an exploration of the narratives presently told to Canadian pilgrims in the context of this pilgrimage and their intended impact, with a special focus on the narratives surrounding the first days of the apparitions.Item Notes on editorial board members(Illumine, 2008) Gorman, Hilary; Sou, Derek; Walker, MadelineItem Illumine: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2008)(Illumine, 2008)This is the full issue of Illumine, Vol. 7, No.1 (2008).Item Notes on contributors(Illumine, 2008) Braun, Connie; Watanabe, Ami; Stewart, Adam; Després, SébastienItem Introduction(Illumine, 2008) Walker, MadelineItem Hildegard of Bingen as a Holy Healer: Healing the patient, restoring the world(Illumine, 2008) Watanabe, AmiBy examining the five letters exchanged between Hildegard of Bingen and two monks concerning a demon-possessed woman, this article explores the ways in which twelft h-century ecclesiastics understood and treated demonic possession. A close examination of the letters reveals that demonic possession was considered as a communal illness that threatened not only an individual’s well-being but also the spiritual integrity of the community. The identification of demonic possession as a communal disease explains why an ecclesiastic had to write to implore the help of Hildegard, who was known to her contemporaries as both a saint and a healer. Medieval understanding of demonic possession required a specific kind of cure: miraculous healing performed by a saint. This healing was culturally constructed in a way to restore the spiritual well-being of the community that medieval subjects imagined demonic possession disrupted.