Flows of Faith (eBook) von Lenore Manderson

This book examines religion as a key driver of cultural flows. It illustrates that religion and religious organization is a political and cultural force in a contemporary globalized world.

Preface.- Chapter 1: Beliefs Beyond Borders and Communities of Faith; Manderson, Lenore; Smith, Wendy; Tomlinson, Matt.- Chapter 2: Religion in the Age of Globalization: Emerging trends, Indonesian examples; Reuter, Thomas A..- Chapter 3: Master Li encounters Jesus:  Christianity and the configurations of Falun Gong; Penny, Benjamin.- Chapter  4: Brahma Kumaris: Purity and the globalization of faith; Ramsay, Tamasin; Smith, Wendy; Manderson, Lenore.- Chapter 5: Secularism, society and symbols of religion: Bosnian Muslim Australians encounter Christmas; Voloder, Leijla.- Chapter 6: Preaching over borders: Constructing publics for Islamic oratory in Indonesia ; Millie, Julian.- Chapter 7: Re-examining ecological aspects of Vrindavan pilgrimage; Nash, Joshua.- Chapter 8: Heterotopia and the Southern Heaven:  Xingyuns antipodean Buddhist mission; Pacey, Scott.- Chapter 9: The gateway to the Fly: Christianity, continuity and spaces of conversion in Papua New Guinea; Dundon, Alison.- Chapter 10: Circulating matters of belief: Engendering Marian movements during the Bougainville Crisis; Hermkens, Anna-Karina.- Chapter 11: The New Testament Church and Mount Zion in Taiwan; Farrelly, Paul.- Chapter 12: Straightening the path from the ends of the earth: The Deep Sea Canoe Movement in Solomon Islands; Timmer, Jaap.- Chapter 13: Passports to eternity:  Whales teeth and transcendence in Fijian Methodism; Tomlinson, Matt.-

Unique local transformations of the practice of established religions in Asia and the Pacific are juxtaposed with the emergence of new religious movements whose incidence is growing across the region.  InFlows of Faith, the contributing authors take as their starting point questions of how religions manifest outside their cultural boundaries and provide the basis for new social identities, political movements and social transformations.

With fresh insights into the globalization of beliefs, their local inflections, and their institutionalization, the authors explore how old and new religions work in different settings, and how their reception and membership challenge orthodox understandings of religion and culture.

The chapters set in Asia, the Pacific, Australia, and the US illustrate the contrasts and commonalities of these belief systems, and their allegiances and networks in the region and beyond. They include new religious movements Falun Gong, Brahma Kumaris, the Hare Krishna movement, based in East and South Asia with outreach posts in Australia and the U.S.  and established old religions Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam that are revitalized and recreated in different settings and places.

Flows of Faith describes the transnational reaches of faith.  Religious practices and their local manifestations track the movement of peoples, through mission outreach, flight, migration, and pilgrimage. In each new setting, religions are shaped by and in turn shape political and cultural forces, proving that they are resilient and generative, originary and distinctive.

The volume is a major contribution, providing readers with a fresh and creative approach into the living experience of religious communities in a contemporary globalised world.

Lenore Mandersonis an inaugural ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Monash University. She has conducted research in anthropology, social history and public health in Australia, South East and East Asia, and Africa, and has a broad interest in social inclusion, inequality,  health, illness and wellbeing, and the social and political-economic factors that shape the human condition. She is co-editor ofChronic Conditions, Fluid States (2010) and author, among other works, ofSurface Tensions (2011).

Wendy Smithis Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute, and Senior Lecturer, Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. She has conducted extensive research in both Malaysia and Japan, and has research interests in cross-cultural management, employee relations in Asia, Japanese management transfer, international business, social protection in Malaysia, globalized religious organizations, managing religious diversity in the workplace, and  Islamic work ethics.

Matt Tomlinsonis a lecturer in anthropology at Monash University. He is the author ofIn Gods Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity(University of California Press, 2009) and co-editor ofThe Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity(Berghahn, 2006).