Search results

Approaching religion under globalization -- Religious others at the door: inclusivism and pluralism as forms of global repositioning -- Glocal environmentalism: unpacking the greening of religion in Japan -- Meditation à la carte: glocal change in Hawaiian Jodo Shinshu -- Global repositionings: Rissho Koseikai, Japan, and the world at large -- Towards an integrated approach: the global repositioning model

Abstract
This article explores the Scuola di Meditazione (School of Meditation) established in Sardinia in 1983, one of the earliest instances in Italy of the use of 'Eastern' techniques by Roman Catholic religious professionals to promote the practice of meditation for lay people. Against the backdrop of ongoing religious diversification in the Italian context, this case study provides an insight on religion under globalization as a complex and multilayered phenomenon. In particular, the formation and activities of the Scuola di Meditazione show to be ingrained in the working of the global cultural network, with both direct and indirect cultural imports from Asia through mediatization, missionization, and mobility; to build upon the broader global repositioning of the Roman Catholic Church towards Asian and other 'world' religions through the adoption of a soft inclusivist approach; and to provide a meaningful framework for glocal practices resulting in the globally-oriented reshaping of individual religious worlds.

"This volume brings together contributions that, from different disciplinary perspectives, highlight certain aspects and problems related to the configuration of the relationship between the religious and the secular in Japan. In the background stands the question of the historical path dependencies that lead to the formation of a specifically Japanese secularity. Based on the assumption that existing epistemic and social structures shape the way in which Western concepts of secularism were appropriated, the individual case studies demonstrate that the culturally specific appropriation of Western regulatory principles such as secularism has created problems that are of political relevance in contemporary Japan"--

Abstract
In the last fifty years there has been an increasing interest in alternative "spiritualities" in the European context, which have crystallised to a significant extent around "Eastern" religious forms. Whereas an important impulse has certainly been given in this respect by Orientalist views, the role played by missionaries in the transmission of Asian religious forms to Europe has been equally important. Still another major factor behind the transmission of "Eastern" religions to Europe is migration, which is becoming more and more relevant with the increasing number of immigrants from Asian countries. Against this general framework, the articles collected in this special issue attempt to shed more light on selected aspects of Asian religions in the European context, with particular attention to institutional, semi-institutional, and more informal practices, still relatively understudied areas (e.g., parts of Eastern Europe), and broad historical developments.