1. Special Issue: The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, Diversity, New Directions.
2. Julia L. Cassaniti Washington State University, USA.
3. Tanya Marie Luhrmann Stanford University, USA.
摘要
In this paper we suggest that it is important for the anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of religion more generally to develop a comparative phenomenology of spiritual experience. Our method is to distinguish between a named phenomenon without fixed mental or bodily events (phenomena that have specific local terms but are recognized by individuals by a broad and almost indiscriminate range of physical events); bodily affordances (events of the body that happen in social settings but are only identified as religious in those social settings when they afford, or make available, an interpretation that makes sense in that setting); and striking anomalous events. We demonstrate that local cultural practices shift the pattern of spiritual experiences, even those such as sleep paralysis and out-of-body experiences that might be imagined in some ways as culture free, but that the more the spiritual experience is constrained by a specific physiology, the more the frequency of the event will be constrained by an individual’s vulnerability to those experiences. We will call this the “cultural kindling” of spiritual experience.
目次
What We Did: Our Method S335 What We Found: Our Results S336 Named Phenomena without Fixed Mental or Bodily Events: Demons S337 Bodily Affordances: Cataplexy, Adrenaline Surge, Emotional Surge S338 Striking Anomalous Events: Sleep Paralysis S339 Discussion: Cultural Kindling S340 Acknowledgments S342 References Cited S342
