Aemma
06-11-2010, 08:53 PM
Seeing the Future: Can Religion Evolve and Survive in a Changing World?
By Peter Savastano
[Peter Savastano is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. An anthropologist of religion, his areas of expertise are the intersection/clash of religion, sexuality and gender; devotional and contemplative life in the Roman Catholic tradition; and the future of religion and interreligiosity. He is presently the Co-Chair of the Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion and has published articles in journals such as Theology and Sexuality and Transformations and chapters in various anthologies including Gay Religion.]
One of the last books the Catholic mystic, social activist, poet, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton read just before his tragic death in Bangkok, Thailand on December 10, 1968, was Final Integration in the Adult Personality (1965, E.J. Brill). Written by the Iranian-born psychologist A. Reza Arasteh, the central premise of the book is that in order for a person to reach final integration of the adult personality, she or he must grow beyond their native culture and religious tradition.
In a subsequent book published twelve years after Merton’s death, Growth to Selfhood (1980, Routledge), Arasteh further develops this central idea making the paradoxical argument: that the means by which one outgrows or moves beyond the limiting worldview of one’s native religious tradition is through the practice of the religious tradition itself.
Two questions I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last number of years is what form, structure, and expression the phenomenon we call “religion” will take in the future (that is, if “religion” is then still labeled as such); or, conversely, is there a future for religion (specifically formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it) in a rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world?
Source (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/1684/seeing_the_future%3A_can_religion_evolve_and_survi ve_in_a_changing_world)
By Peter Savastano
[Peter Savastano is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. An anthropologist of religion, his areas of expertise are the intersection/clash of religion, sexuality and gender; devotional and contemplative life in the Roman Catholic tradition; and the future of religion and interreligiosity. He is presently the Co-Chair of the Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion and has published articles in journals such as Theology and Sexuality and Transformations and chapters in various anthologies including Gay Religion.]
One of the last books the Catholic mystic, social activist, poet, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton read just before his tragic death in Bangkok, Thailand on December 10, 1968, was Final Integration in the Adult Personality (1965, E.J. Brill). Written by the Iranian-born psychologist A. Reza Arasteh, the central premise of the book is that in order for a person to reach final integration of the adult personality, she or he must grow beyond their native culture and religious tradition.
In a subsequent book published twelve years after Merton’s death, Growth to Selfhood (1980, Routledge), Arasteh further develops this central idea making the paradoxical argument: that the means by which one outgrows or moves beyond the limiting worldview of one’s native religious tradition is through the practice of the religious tradition itself.
Two questions I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last number of years is what form, structure, and expression the phenomenon we call “religion” will take in the future (that is, if “religion” is then still labeled as such); or, conversely, is there a future for religion (specifically formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it) in a rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world?
Source (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/1684/seeing_the_future%3A_can_religion_evolve_and_survi ve_in_a_changing_world)