Daniel Liechty

Sacred Content, Secular Context: A Generative Theory of Religion and Spirituality for Social Work

Although a secular profession, social work practitioners and educators do explore human spirituality, and this is embraced now by the profession as integral to a holistic view of the human being. Social workers in hospice and end-of-life care are on the front line of this shift. Still needed is for the profession to coalesce around a generative theory of religion to inform the discipline. The author proposes that a synthesis of ideas, particularly from anthropologists Ernest Becker and Fredrick Streng, provides a generative theory of religion that advances meaningful interface between diverse religious and spiritual ideations of clients and clinicians alike. This theory of generative death anxiety locates the basic religious urge as response to the human awareness of the ontological condition of mortality, which then becomes expressed existentially in all of its diverse particularities. This approach avoids being overly reductionist, yet does provide categories for clear analysis. It cultivates critical respect for human religiosity and fosters productive and creative incorporation of human spirituality into the practical and pragmatic clinical perspective.

The Gender beyond Sex: Two Distinct Ways of Living in Time.

In our field, we are encouraged to recognize patterns of diversity in relation to such areas as religion, sexuality, age and race. In his long career as a practicing psychiatrist, Robert Pos has noticed a less obvious aspect of diversity, but one which may have extraordinary explanatory power in terms of understanding and interpreting human behavior: the way people conceive and experience themselves living in the flow of time. Pos’s theory posits that individual people have a time orientation that roughly divides into one of two categories. Those Pos designates as Alpha types experience themselves as living in the present. They of course understand past and future as also part of their living experience. But for Alphas, past is mainly conceived of experientially as the ‘no longer present,’ and future as the ‘not yet present.’ In contrast, those Pos designates as Beta types experientially conceive the present as the constantly moving connecting point between the past and future. Pos uses the concept of a ‘time gender’ to describe the ways we experience time, since his research demonstrates that people fall fairly clearly into one category or the other, and that behavioral patterns that follow from each orientation are at least as strongly predicated on one’s time gender as that of sexual gender. The 300 densely written pages of this book explore the implications of Pos’s time gender orientation theory, and support it with primary and secondary research, clinical stories and vignettes, in light of a vast array of other perspectives in the field and possible objections that could be raised against it. Trained in the European style of scholarship, this volume is a ‘weighty tome’ by any estimation, containing much of Pos’s research and pointing toward Pos’s website where even more of the research is presented in detail. Pos does not suggest that the theory of time gender explains everything about human behavior. But he does thoroughly establish his claim that it is one important dimension in the explanation of human behavior—of why people act the way they do. Becoming aware of one’s own time gender, and honing an ability to recognize the time gender orientation of others, can be extremely useful in understanding why certain kinds of conflicts occur between people—why we so often talk right past each other—and how these could be ameliorated. Those working in fields such as management or therapy, as just two examples, could benefit greatly from the realization that they often put a great amount of futile effort into trying to ‘convert’ to their own time gender orientation their clients or those they manage. If Pos is correct that our time gender orientation is permanently set very young, it makes no sense to try change or reorient anyone’s sense of time flow. (Time gender may even be genetic. Pos’s analysis of his patients over the

Touching Mortality, Touching Strength: Clinical Work with Dying Patients

This paper outlines some of the special stresses that must be shouldered by clinicians—physicians, nurses, chaplains, social workers, pastoral staff, and others—whose work focuses on dying and extremely vulnerable patients. The utility of a theory of generative death anxiety as a framework for interpreting the nature of these special stresses is suggested. Three common ‘burnout’ reactions are examined. The paper concludes that positive acceptance of personal mortality may help clinicians avoid burnout and lead to better therapeutic practice. This framework for interpreting therapeutic practice demonstrates the integral role spirituality plays in work with this particular patient group.

Technology, Consciousness, and the Transitional Symbolic Self: Implications for Social Work Education

A growing body of literature is focused on hypertechnology in curriculum and culture. This article contributes to that literature. Taking the perspective of social work education that human reality emerges from the interaction of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural forces, the reader is invited to consider the possibility that in this generation of students we may be experiencing an historic shift in consciousness and a genuine intellectual rift between the generations. If, as is suggested by important segments of the literature, styles of symbolic self-consciousness are formed and contoured by evolving communications technology, we might expect that a reading-based style of symbolic self-consciousness will differ significantly from a style of self-consciousness formed by the rapid dissemination of visual images. This hypothesis suggests that we are currently in a transitional state, as we shift from one style of consciousness to another. Some implications for teaching in this time of transition...

Can We Survive Our Origins? Readings in Rene Girard’s Theory of Violence and the Sacred, edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Paul Gifford, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015, xliii + 343 pp. ISBN 978-61186-149-5, US

the case of Heaven’s Gate’ (p. 172). From the little evidence that has survived, it appears a complex confluence of factors led to these dire acts, including ‘their belief system and dualistic cosmology,... the aging of Applewhite, [and] the end of active proselytizing’ (p. 173). In addition, Zeller points to the fact that the group had long expected government aggression à la the Branch Davidians to cause their deaths, thus relieving them of their hated bodies and triggering their journey to the ‘Next Level.’ When this did not occur, they chose to take matters into their own hands in what they ‘understood not as deaths but graduations, cutting aside the decaying matter of Earth so as to free their true selves to journey to the Next Level in the heavens’ (p. 172). This, they believed, was the very opposite of suicide and, within the worldview of Heaven’s Gate, a rational act. Indeed, as Zeller spells out in the rest of the chapter, the group spent nearly three years discussing, debating, and then planning their exit, during which time those who rejected the necessity of death left the group. Even during this time, they continued to try to interest the world in their message, primarily through the use of the then-evolving Internet (it was here that they acquired the name, ‘Heaven’s Gate’). Their electronic interactions with outsiders, however, simply confirmed the correctness of their path. Additionally, the group encountered through the Internet underground theories about a UFO hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, a discovery which Zeller surmises provided a seemingly providential catalyst for the group’s decision to make their final exit. While Zeller is at pains to make clear that he himself ‘does not support suicide, religious or otherwise’ (p. 14), his sensitive and detailed reconstruction of the last years of the group works well to demonstrate how, under the circumstances, suicide could come to be seen as a logical and necessary step to salvation. Benjamin E. Zeller’s Heaven’ Gate: America’s UFO Religion is one of the best investigations of this particular group to date, and it is a welcome addition to the growing literature of UFO religion in general. What’s more, the clarity of Zeller’s writing and his straightforward organization, coupled with the fact that he stops to give brief explanations of basic but key concepts (e.g., brainwashing, charisma, worldview, ‘cultic milieu,’ hermeneutics), make Heaven’s Gate an ideal choice for upper-division undergraduate classes or graduate seminars on NRMs or religion in America. The general reader will also find much that is compelling in Zeller’s narrative, a narrative that – perhaps ironically – seeks to restore the humanity to a religious group long stigmatized because of their extreme desire to transcend the human.

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language (including particular sustained reflection on reciprocity) and models of benefaction, such as brokerage (274). It has to be understood that paying proper attention to charis would require work that would extend beyond the scope of the volume. Also, to be fair to Morgan, both James R. Harrison (Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context, 2003) and Zeba Crook (Reconceptualising Conversion, 2004) have written excellent books on the topic that mirror hers. However, the dearth of charis’s occurrence seems to be glaring. Here, especially, there is direct relevance to Morgan’s discussion on communal relations, divine– human interaction, and ethics. Despite these two brief issues, Morgan’s work is highly recommended. It not only tackles a colossal subject, but also makes sure to nuance those interdisciplinary moments that provide the most fuel to the ongoing discussion. Morgan fills a gap that was much needed; however, her work is also positioned in such a way as to point towards new, detailed analyses that need to be done in order to move beyond the material covered. Thankfully, she is kind enough to gesture towards these avenues of interrogation in her concluding section.

Can we survive our origins? Readings in René Girard’s theory of violence and the sacred, edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Paul Gifford, East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2015, xliii + 343 pp., US

an historical struggle between faith and reason. In this book, Erdozain has powerfully challenged the assumptions of both schools of thought by revealing the religiously rooted motivations of some of the most notoriously (supposedly) anti-Christian authors and the blurred lines between secular and religious thought between the 16th and 19th centuries. Needless to say, this argument has profound implications for contemporary narratives that either lament or celebrate a purported conflict between faith and reason and steady march of secularization.

29.95 (paperback), ISBN 978 61186 149 5

Gitano ethnicity. Two other chapters deal with the Sikhs. Sandra Santos analyses the Sikh community in Barcelona, the area with a greater Sikh presence in general in Spain. Her analysis is focused on the elements rendering visible (in the general context of invisibility of minorities) Sikh religious places of worship. Ester Gallo and Silvia Sai look at Central Italy and, similar to the second part of the chapter by Bertolani and Perocco, they reflect on the complexities of the combination of Punjabi ethnicity and Italianity. The following two chapters return to the Greek case and its peculiarities. Katerina Seraïdari analyzes Catholic communities in the Cyclades, discourses of inclusion and exclusion, and the need for negotiation associated with the presence of Catholics. This reflects the editors’ choice not to limit the book only to the countries of Catholic majority but also to look at Greece and Macedonia. Trine Stauning Willert reviews debates on religious education in public schools in Greece and distinguishes among four different points of view proposed. The book closes with a brief but masterful epilogue in which Ramón Sarró, from his extensive ethnographic experience in Africa, reflects on religious otherness. Some of the religious phenomena studied in the book (e.g., Afro-American, Asian, or African religions) might seem remote (alien, other), since they are not located in Europe. But in fact their presence is a reflection of Sarró’s very words: ‘new religious cartographies of a continent that, only remotely, we can consider as being secular.’ In summary, this book is based on a very good seminal idea and covers a research space very little traveled. The ethnographic approach proposed is solid and full of examples enhancing reflexivity, although sometimes it might seem that the book lacks a more systematic thematic structure and seems to privilege a specific look into the complex phenomenon of religious diversity that perhaps underestimates the explanatory capacity of other approaches. As all good books do, this volume leaves open questions and challenges for further reflections, for example what the editors may have meant by the book’s subtitle: ‘The Best of All Gods.’

God and apple pie: religious myths and visions of America, by Christopher Buck, Kingston, NY, Educator’s International Press, 2015, xiv + 421 pp., US

The “dark turn” evident in Ernest Becker’s final two major works (The Denial of Death and Escape From Evil) is described and explained in terms of its content and possible sources in the author’s work and life from 1971 to 1973. Becker’s mature philosophical anthropology, anthropodicy, and theory of evil are discussed, related to, and contrasted with his previous work and considered in the context of his life experiences, including his terminal illness.

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tions. The author’s close reading of the public documents of the Concerned Women of America exposes its use of chaos rhetoric to mobilize its constituents around anxiety about national security while positing its political agenda as the common-sense solution to the impending decline of American civilization. Those wishing for an in-depth historical or sociological examination of the CWA and its leadership will not be satisfied with this book. To be fair, that is not the author’s aim. Those seeking to think broadly about rhetorical tactics used by political and religious groups to attract and sustain constituents over time will be greatly rewarded by this study. As an added bonus, it provides some thoughtprovoking questions for scholars, myself included, who think, write, and speak about conservative Protestants.