Monday 15 – 13:30-15:00
Session 1 – Aud. Westermarck C101 – Chair: Ville Husgafvel
Reet Hiiemäe – Department of Folkloristics, Estonian Literary Museum
Hop-on hop-off spirituality: from consumerism and entertainment to learning
In contemporary spirituality-related behavior in Estonia (as well as in a number of other regions), a phenomenon can be observed that I call hop-on hop-off spirituality. This means testing and tasting of various forms of contemporary spirituality (via courses, lectures, books, etc.) out of curiosity or for fun or just because a friend said that this or that teaching has changed their life. Such experimenting can sometimes result in deeper spiritual involvement or change in worldview but often doesn’t bring along anything that could be defined as deeper spiritual or religious commitment or belonging. Based on interviews and written life-history narratives from Estonia from the period of 1990s to 2020s, I will analyze how such “non-serious” participation can be still seen as a process of learning that influences one’s values, meaning-making, coping models and lifestyle.
Marcus Moberg & Tommy Ramstedt – Åbo Akademi University
Teaching Mindfulness in Church: The Case of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
During the past couple of decades, several well-being oriented practices mainly associated with the so-called holistic milieu have gradually started to become adopted within “mainline” Christian church settings. This has led to the development and gradual establishment of distinctively “Christian” versions of meditation techniques such as mindfulness and yoga. This paper focuses on recent, and currently still ongoing, efforts towards the adoption of mindfulness within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. These efforts contain a strong educational component, the main purpose of which is to educate church members and personnel in the practice of mindfulness and, by extension, to argue for its suitability as a supplement to conventional practices of Christian edification and pastoral care. The paper is based on an analysis of Christian mindfulness guidelines and instructions produced by various actors within the church during roughly the past decade.
Katarina Plank, Helene Egnell & Linnea Lundgren – Karlstad University, Sweden.
The new ritual specialists of the Swedish folk church – lived religion, new spiritual practices and theological legitimacy
Since the 1970s spiritual practices labelled as ”New Age” have become more widespread and lately practices with a focus on ”body-mind techniques” have especially been given more space within the Church of Sweden. Some of these practices are highly contested by other Christians on theological basis.
The presentation will highlight practices that traditionally have not been found within the Lutheran Church and how these are integrated in its activities. The presentation will focus on the new ritual specialists that are teaching meditation, yoga, qi gong and other new spiritual practices. Are these new communities of learning? What is being taught? Who are these teachers?
The presentation will draw on both quantitative and qualitative data from the ongoing research project New Faces of the Folk Church, that takes on the quest to investigate everyday spiritual activities laypeople engage in within ecclesial institutions.
Session 2 – Aud. Voltaire M127 – Chair: Helena Kupari
Joanna Krotofil – Jagiellonian University, Dagmara Mętel – Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski University & Dorota Wójciak – Jagiellonian University
Learning to navigate the alliance between the Catholic ideal of a mother and the ideology of intensive mothering – the experiences of women attending a Catholic mother and child group
This paper focusses on a group for mothers with young children functioning in a local Catholic parish in southern Poland as a religious community of learning. Based on the analysis of data from two years of participant observation and interviews with members of the group, we describe how two distinctive sets of ideas about appropriate child rising, one rooted in the religion and another broadly corresponding to the intensive mothering ideology, reinforce each other in the experiences of group members and analyse how young mothers learn and navigate them. The ability of Catholic mothers to operate at the intersection of these demands challenges the binary opposition between religion and modernity, as irreconcilable. Our findings contribute to the debate on secularisation and marginalization of religion, as they demonstrate that religiously shaped ideas and discourses have the potential to enter the spheres of functioning seemingly dominated by secular ideologies and be modified and reinforced by the latter in everyday life of religious individuals.
Tiina Mahlamäki – University of Turku
Learning to knit
Knitting has been an indispensable skill (for women) in the past to make clothes and accessories for protection against the cold. Knitting was learned at home or at school. Today, most of the clothes are factory-made, so handicrafts have become a voluntary way of spending free time. But knitting can be much more than a hobby. For many western women (sometimes men too), knitting can be a form of self-expression, a peaceful moment in the midst of stressful everyday life, time for one’s own self, a form of meditation. Knitting can also be seen as spiritual practice (religious practice as well, but that’s another story). Based on several studies, knitting or learning to knit has been found to support coping with exhaustion, stress and traumatic experiences. This is a familiar idea for many women, who (re)start knitting, for example, while recovering from depression. One recent example is Michelle Obama, who in her recent work describes how she coped pandemic and depression by learning to knit. Knitting is a democratic hobby: it can be practiced by almost anyone and almost anywhere. But in order to learn to knit, a person still needs to have a certain, capable and functional body. In my paper, I look at knitting as a skill to be learned – in which it is possible to develop almost indefinitely – and as a spiritual practice, a form of meditation.
Mari Metso – University of Eastern Finland
Neo-Buddhist women transforming caste and gender boundaries through studying, learning, and teaching
Among contemporary Indian Neo-Buddhist women studying is a way to strengthen the Buddhist identity, but also an action of taking power and exceeding caste- and gender-based boundaries. Majority of Neo-Buddhist come from a Mahar caste which is, from the orthodox Hindu perspective, considered to be ritually impure and polluting. Therefore, access to religious knowledge and religious practices was denied from Mahar and other unprivileged communities for centuries. According to my research data, Neo-Buddhist women experience religious studying and learning as a restorative and empowering action but also an obligation that arises from the hard work and struggles of past generations. Furthermore, sharing their gained knowledge with others is both an act of honoring the work of the ancestors and an implementation of Buddhism.
For this paper I analyze the data conducted during my fieldwork in Maharashtra among Neo-Buddhist women in autumn 2022. I investigate the act of studying, learning, and teaching in Neo-Buddhist context aiming to identify the ways these actions transform caste and gender boundaries. Additionally, I explore what this means for the religious agency of the women in my study. The theoretical background of the analysis is Sherry B. Ortner´s practice theory combined with Dalit feminist theory.
Session 3 – Aud. Goethe L104 – Chair: Ruth Illman
Hanoch Ben Pazi – Bar- Ilan University
Religion and Spirituality as Sites of Learning
Emmanuel Levinas is well-known as the philosopher of ethics and responsibility: he develops a new philosophical approach which places great significance on the meaning of the face-to-face meeting, as the idea of the other. Implicit in this is the ‘ethical imperative’: ”Thou shalt not kill”, and the responsibility imposed on one in relation to the otherness of the other. The ethical significance of teaching, as an idea but also as a practice, is the way in which the teacher is required to fulfil a responsibility towards others, and towards their students especially, in their role as ‘learners’. An ethical position is required, so that the person can learn to relinquish their ‘narcissism’ in order to learn from fellow students, as well as, from the teacher.
In this lecture, I would like to propose the ethos of learning as the founding element of society, wherein it situates responsibility, partnership and listening, as the most important aspects that constitute society as fraternity. This partnership means that the idea of learning shifts from being an instrumental issue, to a partnership of infinite development in the realm of interpersonal and inter-communal relationships.
Miriam Feldmann Kaye – Bar Ilan University & St Andrews University
Learning as an Idea: ‘Hospitality’ from a Philosophical Perspective
This paper will examine some modern and postmodern theories of the idea of spiritual learning as a process of philosophical awareness, understanding and reflection. The idea of ‘hospitality’ as originally developed by Emmanuel Levinas from a philosophical perspective, relates to understanding those who are different from ourselves through ‘hosting’ their views.
This paper will examine Jacques Derrida’s development and critique of Levinas’ claim, which includes an appreciation the idea of being ‘hospitable’ towards the one who is Other, but also adds layers of inter-communal, inter-cultural and even international perspectives. This lecture will examine in particular the text ‘A-dieu’ written by Derrida and the ways in which he develops the idea of culture, language and translation in light of this philosophical interpretation of ‘hospitality’.
In this lecture I will propose that according to Derrida’s critique, the concept of ‘learning’, from this philosophical perspective, is actually re-defined as effectively a process of inculcating the idea of ‘difference’ between different cultures and groups. Derrida shows how a philosophy of hospitality is limited, given that ‘true’ understanding between individuals, groups and countries is never really possible. I will propose that this theory could be manifested through challenging individuals and communities to be ‘hospitable’ to ideas which are foreign to their own.
Ville Hämäläinen – Tampere University
Dangerous Dialogue: The Teacher, Learner, and Communication in Kierkegaardian Religious Learning
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) makes several remarks on learning’s role in becoming a Christian. Based on three writings—Johannes Climacus’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Anti-Climacus’ Practice in Christianity, and Kierkegaard’s unpublished lectures on communication—this paper seeks to explain Kierkegaardian religious learning. My approach comes in three parts: 1) scrutinizing the key concepts and their vivid use, 2) approaching Kierkegaard’s combination of Christianity and the maieutic, and 3) discussing the potential dangerousness of dialogue in this communicational learning.
Kierkegaard has a critical stance toward teaching as merely academic knowledge-sharing (to which he refers with the Latin verb docere). By contrast, Kierkegaard considers learning as communication (Meddelelse), meaning literally ‘together sharing’. The communication between the teacher (Lærere) and the learner (Lærende) may still fail. As in Socratic maieutic, the teacher awakens the interlocutor’s desire to learn—and become a Christian. Therefore, the dialogical form may prove to be dangerous for delivering the religious truth. I still argue that certain openness separates religious learning from other types of learning.