S. Sremac

Addiction and Spiritual Transformation. An Empirical Study on Narratives of Recovering Addicts’ Conversion Testimonies in Dutch and Serbian Contexts

The article examines how recovering drug addicts employ testimonies of conversion and addiction to develop and sustain personal identity and create meaning from varied experiences in life. Drawing on 31 autobiographies of recovering drug addicts we analyze conversion and addiction testimonies in two European contexts (Serbia and the Netherlands, including a sample of immigrants). The analysis shows how existing frames of reference and self-understanding are undermined and/or developed. We first describe the substance abuse in participants’ addiction trajectory. Next, we outline the religious aspects and the primary conception of recovering addicts’ conversions as an example of spiritual transformation and narrative change. Moreover, participants select and creatively adapt cultural practices in their testimonies. In many of these examples (mostly in the migrant sample) converts clearly employ elements from their personal and family histories, their ethnic and religious heritages, and their larger cultural and historical context to create a meaningful conversion narrative.

Faith, hope and love: A narrative theological analysis of recovering drug addicts’ conversion testimonies

Abstract This article is a theological reflection upon recovering drug addicts’ conversion testimonies. The three theological virtues faith, hope, and love serve as a basis for a theological analysis of testimonies of spiritual transformation. Emil Brunner’s idea of temporal experience characterized by the triad of the past, present, and future is discussed in the light of these three theological virtues. An interconnectedness of three dimensions of time and its influence on a convert’s personal identity is explored showing how faith, hope, and love serve as the time-markers demonstrating the importance of past, present, and future in the participants’ accounts. It is argued that Brunner’s ideas are applicable to the practical-theological analysis of conversion testimonies of recovering substance users. His three temporal modalities help understanding of recovering users’ spiritual transformation.

Conversion and the Real : The (Im)Possibility of Testimonial Representation

Although the spiritual vibration of conversion can be felt (by the curious outsider) through what conversion performers say in their testimonial discourse, what transforms the convert ‘on stage’ into a ‘new being’ and what is ‘the real’ (le réel) in conversion performance remain unclear. An important question in this connection is, What is ‘real’ in a conversion representation, both with respect to the convert’s interaction with the audience and to the construction of social reality? Following Lacan’s tripartite register of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, in this essay I argue that through testimonial discourse converts construct social reality as an answer to the impossibility of ‘the real’ in their performative discursive practice. In the first part, I question the constructed nature of testimonial representations—as well as some academic knowledge production that has governed conversion research in the last few decades—and how these representations encourage ‘outsiders’ to read the narrative repertoire as a negation or mirroring ‘the real’ of the conversion experience. In the second part, I apply Roland Barthes’ analytic reflections on photography to conversion research, especially the notions of the studium (the common ground of cultural meanings) and the punctum (a personal experience that inspires private meaning). This brings me to a number of theorists (mostly never used in the field of religious conversion)—Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Slavoj Žižek—who are important to the perspective that is developed in this essay.

For the Sake of the Nations: Media, homosexuality and religio-sexual nationalisms in the Post-Yugoslav Space

During the last decade, the public perception of religion and (homo)sexuality has undergone fundamental change in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The rights and liberties of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual (LGBT) people are still marginalized in the societies of the post-Yugoslav space. 1 The ethnic construct, specifically ethno-nationalism, as the attendant ideology of the states newly established after the breakup of Yugoslavia, is inherently based on principles of exclusion. 2 The vacancies in its cultural and social semantic are performatively filled with rhetorical claims and constructs in order to establish “universality” (Butler 2000: 35). LGBT issues are included in this, and radical separation is sought for them. For this to be achieved, however, they must be recognized as a troublesome factor in relation to the ideal of all that is ideal in the false universality and substantiality of ethno-nationalism. Thus the practice resorted to is one of translating opposing concepts into one’s own terms using Žižek’s (2000: 103) syntagm of “false disidentification” for the purposes of hegemonistic policy. In doing so, the supposedly radically ‘Other’ and different is integrated into one’s own symbolic network and order of things with the use of oppressorimposed designations, which have ontological force since they give rise to subordination. This performativity, as Butler notes (2006: xv), is never an individual act; rather it is a ritual repetition which achieves its impact by way of naturalization in the context of the body, which has a temporal aspect and cultural support.

Pride parades and/or prayer processions: Contested public space in Serbia#Belgrade Pride 2014

In post-Yugoslav countries, national identity seems to be increasingly defined by theformulation of a traditional discourse on sexuality and gender, culminating in a growing interference of religious institutions with national debates and policies on LGBTrights. In this paper we aim to gain more insight into the discursive effects of such sexual nationalist discourse by exploring responses of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the 2014 Belgrade Pride parade. Drawing from theories on religious and sexual nationalism and queer geography, we will argue that while the Serbian Orthodox discourse on homosexuality is becoming more secular, this secularization of public speech is compensated by a strategy of reclaiming the streets of Belgrade through politically charged public religious ritual. As the church is in this way making its anti-LGBT attitude physical and visible, Serbian citizens are increasingly requested to agree to Church teachings on sexuality and gender as a prerequisite for religious participation, resulting in an increasing divide between those “within” and “without” the community of Orthodox Serbs.

Lived Religion and Lived (In)Tolerance

Once long ago G.K. Chesterton boldly declared: “Tolerance (or what he generally termed ‘impartiality’) is the virtue of the man without convictions.” In a similar manner he described modern tolerance as a tyranny (Chesterton 1908). Contemporary theorists use similar discourse in describing tolerance. Building on Marcuse’s notion of “repressive tolerance,” Žižek (2008) sees tolerance as an ideological category and “post-political ersatz.” Other theorists argue that our modern society has gone “beyond toleration” (Stepan and Taylor 2014). Habermas (2003, p. 3), for example, considers tolerance as a foundation of liberal political culture. It seems that liberal and secular democracies need more than ever a serious reconsideration of the concept and everyday practice of tolerance as a response to the new models of intolerance, social exclusion, and religious violence. A critical discourse on toleration and tolerance seems to have a particular weight in the context of political secularism and religion. There has been an acceleration of interest in the relationship between religion, (in)tolerance and politics in modern societies. Numerous cases of contemporary debates in our multicultural and multireligious societies are perceived as problems of intolerance—the present waves of Islamophobia, anti-migration sentiments, religiously inspired terrorism, blasphemy and free speech debates, various forms of religious and ethnic nationalism, racist and discriminatory behavior towards minorities, conflicts about religion and sexual diversity—these are just some of them. The question of tolerance and religion addresses some of the most challenging and persistent features of peaceful and equal coexistence in the world “risk society.”

Masculinity, Spirituality, and Male Wartime Sexual Trauma

This chapter examines the relationships between male wartime sexual trauma, masculinity, and posttraumatic spirituality. To understand the occurrence and aftermath of wartime sexual trauma, the authors suggest that we have to look at the cultural and religious meanings attributed to gender, sexuality, and violence. This research focuses on male victims in order to understand how masculinities may be involved in the process. Four forces in the heuristic model are identified: cultural gender messages, traumatization messages, coping messages, and religious messages. The outcome of this force-field is different for men and women. This chapter therefore explores the following: (1) the relationship between trauma and male wartime sexual trauma and its impact on psychological well-being; (2) the roles of cultural (and often also religious) gender norms in sexual traumatization, and (3) the connections between masculinity and posttraumatic growth and spirituality.

Trauma, Substance Dependence and Religious Coping : A Narrative Spiritual Appraisal in Faith-Based Recovery Programs

The purpose of this article is to understand how people with substance dependence problems employ testimonies of spiritual transformation to develop, cope and sustain a sense of personal identity and create meaning from conflicting (traumatic) life experiences. The quest to undo the struggling with substance dependence is seen as a spiritual attempt to reconfigure the person’s ‘spoiled identity’. Drawing on 31 autobiographies of people who recovered from substance dependence problems I analyzed their conversion testimonies in two European contexts (Serbia and the Netherlands, including a sample of immigrants). It draws on the observation that substance dependence often (though certainly not always) develops in response to life crises or trauma and identity confusion, while spiritual transformation, including religious conversion, can foster recovery. The study focuses specifically of the role of testimony in reconstructing a viable narrative of the self, accounting for trauma, substance dependence experience, and conversion and embedding in different social, cultural, and spiritual contexts. Finally, suggestions for the helping professions and care providers of substance dependence service will be offered.

The patriarch and the pride: Discourse analysis of the online public response to the Serbian Orthodox Church condemnation of the 2012 gay pride

This chapter tries to understand the complex field of lived religion, nationalism, and sexual (in)tolerance by analyzing the online public responses to the Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Irinej’s comments on the Belgrade Gay Pride Parade 2012. The aim is to identify discourse strategies of commenters on the most visited online multimedia portals in the Serbian language who responded to the news items published on October 3, 2012 concerning Patriarch Irinej’s open letter to the Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, urging him to ban the upcoming Pride Parade. The discursive strategies found in the material are organized in two main categories. Relational strategies (focus on online intolerance) emphasize the direct interaction between speaker and audience, in this case between the Patriarch and the commenters. Argumentative strategies (focus on online lived religion) highlight the content of the interactions. The concept of lived religion will serve here as an analytical and epistemological tool for understanding online religious practice and its perspectives on the politics of intolerance in Serbia. Lived religion is understood as the patterns of meaning, experience, and action of religious and spiritual persons and groups that emerge from and contribute to their relation with (what they consider to be) the sacred. The focus of a lived religion approach is neither on the canonical sources of a religious tradition nor on the doctrinal calibration of religious convictions but on the day-to-day ways in which religion is lived. Religion then is also understood in a broad sense, including the major traditions and denominations as well as post-modern spiritualities, indigenous cultural habits, and civil religion or implicit religion (Ganzevoort and Roeland 2014). More specifically, in this chapter we will not be looking at the theological debates about religious diversity (theologia religionum), nor at those about sexual diversity. Instead we will focus on the ways the debates are played out in public discourse at the societal level. Recent developments in the study of lived religion mostly focus on the importance of lived religion in individual everyday religious/spiritual practices and experiences in specific sociocultural contexts; less effort is spent in grasping the complex subtleties of how religion is lived in virtual spaces. For that reason, there is a clear shortfall in the existing literature in terms of analyzing lived religion in the virtual (online) spaces.

Gays as a weapon of the Antichrist. Religious nationalism, homosexuality and the Antichist on the Russian internet

“Gays as a weapon of the Antichrist”: these words, here in translation, are from Maxim Schevchenko (2013), one of themost prominent Russian journalists and an expert in ethno-cultural and religious policies. These words are just one of many examples of how sexual minorities in Russia are being associated with the notion of the “Antichrist” on RuNet—the term by which in this chapter we refer to the Russian segment of the Internet. The Antichrist did not (as some apocryphal writings suggest) come falling out of the blue. Rather, this apocalyptic figure invokes a long tradition of Russian cultural imagery, where over the centuries he has undergone numerous historical and semantic transformations (Ewertowski 2010).Hewasunderstood as God’s enemy, the false Messiah, the usurper of the tsar’s power (lzhe-tzar), the embodiment of evil forces, and an individual who falsely interprets Christian values. In particular the 17th century and the Raskol1 contributed to the vivid presence of the concept of the Antichrist in Russian cultural cognition. In this period thosewhocame tobeknownas “OldBelievers” interpreted the reformist Patriarch Nikon’s actions, which were supported by tsarist authorities, as the beginning of the Antichrist’s rule (Crummey 1970). Moreover, the Antichrist and his presence in theworldwere an important subject of Russian philosophy of the late 19th century, which was then under the strong influence of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. In their numerous works, authors and philosophers such as Dostoyevsky, Berdyaev, Solovyov, Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, and Leontiev appealed to the concept of the Antichrist as an allegory of immanent evil, present both in the human and the surroundingworld (Korolev 2004, Ewertowski 2010). Since the introduction of Christianity in Russia, the concept of the Antichrist has been used to designate “the other” in many differ-