Contrary to a widespread thesis about the non-cognitive character of religious beliefs, I argue that it is beneficial to highlight and not marginalize the place of religion in the epistemic sphere. At least some religious beliefs (especially theism) can be qualified as true or false. Holding them as true is usually based on the evidence which is not widely accepted. This, however, does not entail that these beliefs are not true. If they are true, then holding them to be true should be seen as rational, despite of the fact, that the supporting evidence does not seem to be strong in the light of current epistemic standards of justification. It does not mean, however, that such beliefs can be hold with the highest assertion if they evoke serious doubts. Changes in religious doctrines and religious pluralism do not constitute a sufficient reason for excluding religion from the epistemic sphere, as a similar situation concerns many academic disciplines, such as philosophy, or psychology.
This work attempts to reconstruct the culture that contributed to the philosophical way of thinking. My goal is to extract two important factors: religion carrying individual experience and the importance of certain ideas which are present in that culture. Sources of philosophical thinking can be found in the structure of polis. Only on its basis could the idea of the wise man and citizen as well as religion-oriented individual experience be raised. Greek polis paves the way for a new style of thinking by creating the conditions for its citizens to follow the ideal, regardless of the position they occupy in society. Sustainability, which should be a feature of a good citizen, is also the essence of society. Highly positioned wisdom as moral reflection tinged with religiosity allows thinking according to the laws of logos. Finally, the experience offered by the mystery cults leads to the transformation of their own existence and the emergence of a way of recognition of reality different than before. Undeniably, all the elements related to structure policies with its ideals contribute to the emergence of a new way of thinking in the form of philosophy. One could say that the philosophical objectivity is preceded by the subjectivity and rationality of its roots dating back to irrationality.
The names of stations in the Way of the Cross may be used as titles of pictures and sculptures, each corresponding to a particular event in the Passion of Christ, or as titles of meditations. The article focuses on the second meaning, but the trends of the development of both kinds of names are similar. The study is based on material consisting of about 200 texts of the service that have been published from the beginning of the 20th century to the present (2020). The purpose of the article is to describe the changes that have taken place in the 20th century, a period of particularly turbulent changes in religious discourse. The article deals with the function, syntactic structure and features of style, such as the use of archaic or colloquial vocabulary. These properties are considered in connection with social and cultural changes. At the beginning of the analyzed period, it was customary to use relatively long titles, which informed the participant or reader about a particular event using expressive and evaluative lexis. Those titles gradually gave way to short, schematic names. Since the Second Vatican Council, titles of a new type have appeared. Their purpose is to attract the attention of the recipient. They are based on a riddle, a contrast, allusions, etc. Therefore, the recipient derives satisfaction from deciphering the puzzle or finding the source of the quote or allusion. These phenomena are known from research on the language of press or fiction, but they can also be linked to current trends in the so-called new evangelization.
In analyzing selected aspects of the debate over offending religious feelings, the author discusses Saby Mahmood’s argument that religiousness in public discourses of the Western world is basically perceived as a speculative phenomenon concerning the sphere of abstract beliefs. It is assumed therefore that the harm that can be produced by the publication of a blasphemous illustration is lesser and less palpable than in the case of hate speech directed toward a race or sexual orientation. The author’s analysis, which is undertaken from a Durkheim perspective, shows that, for example, the caricaturized presentation of a religious symbol constitutes not so much an act of undermining the abstract image as—in the affective perspective of the religious—an act violating the sense of ontological security of a given moral community which that symbol represents. At the same time, the Durkheim perspective facilitates an understanding of why religious symbolic resources can be ambivalently used in processes of legitimating social actions, beginning with constructive forms of civil public religions to extreme fundamentalist movements making use of violence and the discourses of political extremism.
The article shows, on the example of the accounts of the journey of John James Blunt and Auguste de Forbin, how the folk religiosity of Sicilians, especially patron saints, was perceived. The analysis of the texts showed that the newcomers who come into contact with the Sicilian culture notice that patron saints are a very characteristic phenomenon for this area and play an important role in social and political life.
This article focuses on an extremely urgent problem of today’s Christian dialogue with China, i.e. the culture (and politics) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and asks whether a Christian dialogue with China – which understand herself as an atheist and Communist state, which, however, is a country of many religious traditions, is possible, and if so in what form? What are its prospects and challenges?
The starting point of the article, after some historical remarks, is a kind of heterotopy of the dialogue in Chinese context, involving (III.1.) the historical and political context, then (III.2) its partners, and fnally (III.3) its forms and contents. in this framework, this article is (IV) refection on the challenges, opportunities and prospects of the Christian dialogue with Chinese culture. This refection is not taken here from the standpoint of theology, but is rather a phenomenological description of the status quo. At the end of the article (V) some statements of pope John Paul II with regard to the dialogue of Christianity with Chinese culture are quoted as a kind of summary.
The article states a great asymmetry of partners of the dialogue in China caused by the restrictive religious policy. There are some forms of dialogue which, however, are realized outside of the institutionalized Christianity, i.e. the Christian Churches. The Churches themselves, due to their historical background, are not very interested in or prepared for an inter-religious dialogue.
In the article an attempt is made to analyze the aspects of non-dogmatic spirituality of characters in the prose works of Ukrainian postm odernists (including Yuriy Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuriy Izdryk, Natalia Sniadanko). The theoretical aspects of problem are considered in the context of analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. The following concepts play an important role in the study: religious position, father complex, conflict and some others.
I address the question of Marx’s understanding of the role and function of religion in social life. Marx’s pronouncements on this topic are few and far between. Yet relying on them I undertake to examine the proposal ostensibly made by Marx that it was possible, or even necessary, to purge religious institutions and religious attitudes from social life. I point to a number of inconsistencies and errors that Marx committed in making such proposals.
Pope Francis often speaks about the new evangelization. He notices areas that need a special care of the Church. One of them is the problem of poverty. The Pope encou-rages all the faithful to engage in the transformation of this situation . It can be called a “throwaway culture” and a sign of real poverty of the whole society when people remain indifferent to the cause of the poor. It is one of the negative consequences of the culture of prosperity. The Pope also calls it a “globalisation of indifference” and calls on all people of the three states in the Church to care for those who are poor and abandoned and to act against poverty. In a particular way Francis addresses his appeal to the consecrated persons, encouraging them to contemplate the poor Jesus, to the consecration of their lives through a faithful fulfilment of their vow of poverty and to the apostolate among the poor and the marginalized . By means of such an attitude of men and women religious they would contribute to their own sanctification, to bearing witness to love to the poor before the world and at least partly they will help those in need among whom they live and serve.
Pilgrimages to the Holy Land have been an old tradition in the Russian culture. For believers, places related to the life and passion of Christ have been an important element of history and geography of salvation since the beginnings of Christianity in Ruthenia. The paper is an attempt to present the fi rst pilgrimage of Andrey Muraviev (1806–1874), a religious writer, theologian, poet, playwright, church and state activist, to Palestine as a personal religious experience and its refl ection in a literary work of art. The pilgrimage to the East became a breakthrough moment in Muraviev’s life and resulted in the writing of "A journey to Holy places in 1830" (Путешествие ко Святым местам в 1830 году), which initiated the religious stage of his writings and became a great success. Although the poet did not call his journey a pilgrimage, such was indeed its nature. Visiting places important to the history of salvation, he participated in services and sacramental life of the Church.
The article deals with two issues: (1) the research method of father Georges Florovsky used in his study entitled The Ways of Russian Theology (1937), which is regarded a classic in its genre, and (2) the practice of scientific research conducted with the use of this method. The article is supplemented with Florovsky’s opinions, expressed in letters to his brother Anton, a professor at the Charles University in Prague, concerning the scientific achievements of the authors and scholars whom he met with or whom he came to work with after his departure to the USA (1948). The content of this correspondence has remained hitherto unpublished.
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