Since Durkheim’s characterization of the sacred and profane as “antagonistic rivals,” the strict dichotomy has been framed in such a way that “being religious” evokes images of a life filled with profound meaning and value, while “being secular” evokes images of a meaningless, self-centered, superficial life, often characterized by materialistic consumerism and the cold, heartless environment of corporate greed. Consequently, to identify as “neither religious nor spiritual” runs the risk of being stigmatized as superficial, untrustworthy, and immoral. Conflicts and confusions (...) encountered in the process of negotiating a nonreligious/nonspiritual identity, caused by the ambiguous nature of religious language, were explored through qualitative interviews with 14 ex-ministers and 1 atheist minister—individuals for whom supernaturalist religion had formed the central core of identity, but who have deconverted and no longer hold supernatural beliefs. The cognitive linguistics approach of Frame Semantics was applied to the process of “oppositional identity work” to examine why certain identity labels are avoided or embraced due to considerations of the cognitive frames evoked by those labels. -/- Through the constant comparative method of grounded theory, a host of useful theoretical concepts emerged from the data. Several impediments to the construction of a “secular but not superficial” identity were identified, and a framework of new theoretical concepts developed to make sense of them: sense disparity, frame disparity, identity misfire, foiled identity, sense conflation, and conflated frames. Several consequences arising from these impediments were explored: (1) consequences of sense conflation and conflated frames for the study of religion; (2) consequences of conflated frames for religious terminology; and (3) consequences of the negation of conflated frames for those who identify as not religious, not spiritual, or not Christian. Additionally, four types of oppositional identity work were identified and analyzed: (1) avoidance identity work, (2) dissonant identity work, (3) adaptive identity work, and (4) alternative identity work. Finally, the concept of conflated frames was applied to suggest a new interpretation of the classic Weberian disenchantment narrative. (shrink)

Religions diversity is an unavoidable and objective fact. We also live within such a fact. The requirement of such a living is to acquire a common understanding of the self and the Other. Such an understanding is relied on rethinking of some significant factors like moral, humanly, cultural and religious commonalities and differences of the self and the Other. There are, theoretically, some questions ahead related to rethinking our living in the world of religious diversity, questions concerning truthiness and salvation, (...) their differences in diverse religious traditions. In fact, paying attention to the religious Other, is projected the problem of our and others’ approaches to truthiness, and that which path of salvation is correct and authentic? Welcoming to the fact of religions diversity, theoretically, recognizing to us the objective necessity of peaceful coexistence, relying on global ethics, and appealing to the logic of dialogue. Theoretical and practical result of paying attention to religions diversity is to recognizing legitimacy of the religious Other, and obligating to its practical and factual involvements, that is welcoming to peace, tolerance and reciprocal participation, and avoiding of exclusivism regarding our religious tradition, and accepting some levels of truthiness and salvation for the religious Other. Theoretical, logical and theological results pertained to our religious tradition can find new horizons for recognizing valuable teachings of our religious tradition, and can reminf us those of our religious beliefs that is needed to reform. In short, religions diversity and seeing it really without our guided presuppositions, is led to openness of our horizons, participating with others regarding spreading peace and global coexistence, common understanding of each other religious traditions, developing global ethics and divine grace among all creatures of God. (shrink)

Hick’s pluralist assumption has remained the most knowable model of religious pluralism in the last few decades. Many have, from the perspectives of various major world religions, questioned his notion that the teachings of all religions are derived from the same Absolute Truth and that salvific-end is one, yet little attention has been paid to the traditions that he graded as unauthentic and non-valuable according to his soteriological and ethical criteriology. The purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the exclusiveness (...) of Hick’s model by describing a tradition called “Chinese Folk Religion” that does not fit into his definition of ‘authentic religion’. As the study suggested, his understanding of the world religious situation is over-generalised and simplified, and his particular criteriology does not treat all traditions fairly or pluralistically. As a response, this thesis proposed a more inclusive theory that also integrates the currently disregarded tradition into the interpretation. (shrink)