Coping with evil in religion and culture : case studies / edited by Nelly van Doorn-Harder and Lourens Minnema.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Doorn-Harder, Nelly van, 1956-

Minnema, Lourens, 1960-

Series:

Currents of encounter ; v. 35.

Currents of encounter ; v. 35

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Good and evil--Religious aspects--Congresses.

Good and evil.

Good and evil--Religious aspects--Case studies.

Ethics, Comparative--Congresses.

Ethics, Comparative.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The various Christian, Muslim, traditional (African), and secular (Western) ways of imagining and coping with evil collected in this volume have several things in common. The most crucial perhaps and certainly the most striking aspect is the problem of defining the nature or characteristics of evil as such. Some argue that evil has an essence that remains constant, whereas others say its interpretation depends on time and place. However much religious and secular interpretations of evil may have changed, the human search for sense and meaning never ends. Questions of whom to blame and whom to address—God, the devil, fate, bad luck, or humans—remain at the center of our explanations and our strategies to comprehend, define, counter, or process the evil we do and the evil done to us by people, God, nature, or accident. Using approaches from cultural anthropology, religious studies, theology, philosophy, psychology, and history, the contributors to this volume analyze how several religious and secular traditions imagine and cope with evil.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

The Problem of Defining Evil / Nelly van Doorn-Harder and Lourens Minnema

Images of Evil in Popular Ghanaian Christianity / Meyer Birgit

Druids, Deer and “Words of Power”: Coming to Terms with Evil in Medieval Ireland / Jacqueline Borsje

Coping with Wizardry in Zimbabwe in African Initiated Churches (AICs) / Marthinus L. Daneel

The Evil Comes from Outside: Evil within Religion as a Psychosocial Problem among Adolescent Moroccan Girls in the Netherlands / Edien Bartels

Conquering Satan, Demons, Principalities, and Powers: Ghanaian Traditional and Christian Perspectives on Religion, Evil, and Deliverance / J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

A Schema Repertoire Approach to Exorcism: Two Case Studies of Spiritual Warfare / Peter Versteeg and André Droogers

How \'Satanic\' Is Satanism?: A Normative Description / Reender Kranenborg

\'You Follow the Path of the Shaitan; We Try to Follow the Righteous Path\': Negotiating Evil in the Identity Construction of Young Moroccan-Dutch Muslims / Martijn de Koning

Defining Evil to Strengthen Islam: Muhammadiyah Ideologies of Gender and Marriage / Nelly van Doorn-Harder

Beyond Ujamaa: African Religion and Societal Evil / Frans Wijsen

Religion and Evil from the Perspective of Mimetic Theory / André Lascaris

Coping with Human Evil: Shakespeare's Sense of Tragic Revenge / Lourens Minnema

The Power and Limits of Stories: On the Questions \'How to Cope with Evil?\' and \'How to Avoid Evil?\' / Edwin Koster

Prayer as a Means of Coping with Evil: Approaches from the Perspective of Lutheran Dogmatics / Christiane Tietz

Coping with Tragedy and Malice / R. Ruard Ganzevoort

General Index

Contributors to this Volume.

Notes:

International conference proceedings.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

94-012-0537-X

1-4356-1547-6

OCLC:

184943932

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401205375 DOI