Religion and Emotion: Approaches and Interpretations

by John Corrigan (Editor)

Over the past decade the academic study of emotion has developed very substantially across a number of disciplines, including religious studies. This anthology is the first collection of recent papers addressing the topic of religion and emotion. The selected pieces-each a foundational essay in this rapidly evolving field-examine attitudes toward and expressions of emotion in a wide range of religious traditions and periods. Among the themes considered are the relation of emotion to moral or religious norms, the role of emotion in faith, religious emotion as a performance of feeling in ritual contexts, and the relation of emotion to religious language. Specific topics examined range from filial emotions and filial values in medieval Korean Buddhism to weeping and spirituality in 16th-century Jewish mysticism. This volume is designed to provide an introduction to recent work in the field and should appeal to both scholars and students of comparative religion, anthropology, and
psychology.

Genres: Religion

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

John Corrigan is the Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and Professor of History at Florida State University. He is author or editor of several books, including The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

An odd concept, this. It is hard to think of religion as being outside emotion. And too many of the articles inhabit that rarified academic environment of rumination on the theories of other writers. Still, there is much of interest here, especially about the use of emotion by religion. JaHyun Kim Haboush investigates the way in which popular literature taught daughters how to sacrifice themselves for their parents (although one is unaccustomed to the notion that filial piety is an emotion). Catherine Peyroux examines the rage expressed, according to a saint's life, by a royal daughter whose engagement was being announced (she preferred to become a nun, the bride of Christ). Elliot R. Wolfson concentrates on the role of weeping in the spiritual development of medieval Jewish mystics (although he has convinces me that the seemingly endless abstractions of the Kabbalists may not in fact be worth the effort to understand them). Catherine E. Hardman examines the ways in which the Lohurung of Nepal find the cause of their tribulations in the anger of their ancestors, and how they seek to calm the angry spirits. Still, many of the writers have to construct winding paths to justify the central concept of the book, although fortunately none of them are as baroque as the Kabbalists.

[Justinian]

2007-10 - Religion And Emotion: Approaches And Interpretations John Corrigan (Editor) 386 pages. 2004 paperback edition.

This book is a collection of essays whose content revolve directly or indirectly around the topic of emotion within religious experience. Because it contains essays from various contributors there is as great a variety in the method of presenting the material as there is in the material itself. This book has a little something for almost everyone.

The essay on pietistic weeping during Spain’s Golden Age was wonderful. It provided a lot of fodder on which to ruminate. The Spanish emotional response to the iconoclasm which swept through the Netherlands and Germany as a result of Protestant backlash proved most interesting. It also explains the lack of religious art in the Netherlands before this iconoclasm. I think many Orthodox Christian readers would be deeply touched at the raw emotional response and attachment of the Spanish to the icons. Perhaps when trying to explain icons to modern Americans we would do well to review much of the Spanish material as it speaks more from the heart than the head. While St. John of Damascus is wonderful he often is not the best approach for a modern audience. It was a deeply moving essay in all respects.

Another essay on preaching and emotive responses very much seemed to be akin to what I have noticed today, or rather what seems to me to be lacking in sermons today. A sermon which moves people to feelings was the ideal. Sadly we have few sermons which do much more then try and persuade our head and then more likely try to beat us over the head rather then engage and persuade.

The essay on the three religious sects of the same God at the same religious site in Northern India proved to be very interesting. It was interesting in the ways that each group attempted to connect, but in very different matters. Each had their ritual with which to connect but the degree of the ritual and the degree of ascetic effort and how they were viewed was fascinating. It also offered an explanation of Indian familial structure in a way which noteworthy, especially in terms of the mother to child bond and relationship.

The Jewish mystical essay in which the human eye and its teary secretions is a metaphor or actual substitute for the male penis and its seminal secretions was certainly not what they talked about at seminary. It is in the Kabala tradition and I will never view certain texts of the OT in quite the same again.

An essay on Nepalese concepts of shame and response was good as was the very interesting essay on tribal initiation rights in Papua New Guinea and the deliberate use of terror to produce hardened memory responses and foster group identity. There was a lot in the mechanics and responses which to me reflected on the Christian sense of death and rebirth both in Baptism and through Confession.

Emotion as a challenge to a social hierarchy came about in studies of Sufis, the struggle for dominance in Korea between Confucianism and Buddhism, and most interestingly in the laments of rural Greek women.

I should say that I have been fascinated with this notion of the heart versus the head in religion. Actions produce results, though not always the expected result if the cultural context is modified. This book serves as an excellent introduction in small doses to the theory and discussion of emotion within the human religious experience. I highly recommend it if for no other essay then the one Weeping in Spain’s Golden Age.