Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other - A History of Religionization

Explores how Christians created, used, and adapted religionized categories of non-Christians through the centuries
 
Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other traces the genealogy of religionization, the various ways Christians throughout history have created a sense of religious normativity while simultaneously producing various categories of non-Christian "otherness." Covering a broad expanse of processes, practices, and socio-political contexts, this innovative volume analyzes the complex intersections of patterns of religionization in different eras while investigating their entanglements with racialization, sexualization, and ethnicization.
 
With a readable and accessible style, Marianne Moyaert offers a nuanced and well-balanced critical analysis of how and why Christianity's otherswere named, categorized, essentialized, and governed by those exemplifying Christian normativity in Western European society. The author takes a longue durée approach -- a long-term perspective on history that extends past human memory and the archaeological record -- that integrates different case studies and a variety of ecclesial, theological, and literary documents. Throughout the text, Moyaert demonstrates how religionization shaped the ways Christians classified people, organized Christian societies, interacted with different Christian and non-Christian groups, and more.
* Surveys the relationship between shifts in Christian normativity and the way non-Christians are imagined
* Helps readers connect the lasting effects of patterns of religionization with their everyday experiences
* Discusses the role of Christian expansion in the differential and unequal treatment of Christianity's others
* Examines legal regulations and disciplinary practices that were established to define the boundaries between Christians and non-Christians
* Incorporates a wide range of scholarly resources, cutting-edge research, and the most recent insights and issues in the field
* Includes textboxes with helpful summaries, illustrations, and commentary in each chapter
 
Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other: A History of Religionization is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses ininterreligious studies, comparative theology, theological approaches to religious diversity, Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations, race and religion, and theorizing religion.
 
"Professor Moyaert is one of the world's best scholars of comparative theology. In this magisterial new work, she helps scholars of religion to better learn how religious images, whether drawn with pictures or words, are crucial to how we understand ourselves and each other." - Amir Hussain, President, American Academy of Religion
 
"Breathtaking in scope and detail, Moyaert offers an original history of the ways Christians have projected distorted images of their religious 'others,' with devastating material consequences. Her illuminating story of the past is a searchlight for our present." - Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Professor of Theology, Fordham University
 
"Christian Imaginations is a superb study of the role that Western political programs play in the historical construction of identity boundaries. Analytically erudite and socially committed, Moyaert's book powerfully interrogates what counts as religion making this text a must-read for anyone interested in interreligious studies." - Santiago Slabodsky, Florence and Robert Kaufman Professor in Jewish Studies, Hofstra University
 
"Raising the historical formation of religious identities to the level of contemporary treatments of gender and racialization, Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other is essential reading for students of religion." - Michelle Voss, Professor of Theology and Past Principal, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto
 
"Crafting a Western European mosaic of religioniza

List of contents

List of Text Boxes xiv
 
Introduction 1
 
1 On the Notion of Religionization 2
 
2 Mechanisms of Religionization 4
 
Naming/Renaming 4
 
Categorization and Classification 5
 
Essentialization 5
 
Governance 6
 
3 The Particular Contribution of This Book 6
 
4 The Risk of Systematization and How I Seek to Avoid It 7
 
5 The Use of the Text Boxes 9
 
6 A Word of Gratitude 10
 
Notes 11
 
References 11
 
Part 1 Religionization in Early Christianity: Christians, Heretics, Jews, and Pagans 13
 
1 The Creation of Key Religionized Categories in Early Christianity 15
 
1 Religio and Its Counterpart Superstitio 16
 
Religio in Antique Times 17
 
Antiquity and Ethnicity of Religio 17
 
Pax Romana, Pax Deorum 18
 
Superstitio and Religio 19
 
2 Christians as Targets of Religionization 21
 
Christian Apologists and Ethnoreligious Reasoning 23
 
Crafting a Sense of Christian Ethnicity 23
 
Crafting Christian Religio as the Most Ancient 26
 
3 Christians against the Nations: The Distinction between Religio Vera and Falsa 27
 
Religio as True Worship of the True God 27
 
4 Crafting the Jew as Un- Christian 30
 
Jews, Christ- following Jews, and Christians from Gentiles 31
 
Adversus Iudaeos 32Anti- Jewish Typologies 33
 
The Supersessionist Logic 35
 
The Deicide Charge 36
 
5 Making the Figure of the Heretic 38
 
The Notion of Heresy 39
 
Adversus Haereses 40
 
6 Conclusion 43
 
Note 43
 
References 43
 
2 The Coercive Turn: Institutionalizing Religionized Categories 46
 
1 On Heresiology: Epiphanius' Panarion 48
 
The Microscopical 'Ethnographic' Work of Epiphanius 48
 
Epiphanius' Universal Account of History 50
 
2 When Heresiology Intersects with Imperial Law 51
 
3 The Codex Theodosianus and the Criminalization of Heresy 52
 
The Codex Theodosianus: De Haereticis 54
 
Augustine and the Persecution of Heretics 56
 
4 The Constantinian Turn and the Destruction of Paganism? 56
 
The Pagan as a Hermeneutical Figure 57
 
The Codex Theodosianus: De Paganis 59
 
5 Anti- Jewish Rhetoric and the Establishment of Jewish Tradition as Religio Licita 61
 
Anti- Jewish Rhetorics: Chrysostom as a Case in Point 62
 
Augustine's Doctrine of Jewish Witness: A Different Sound 64
 
The Codex Theodosianus and the Jews 66
 
6 Islam Enters the Scene 67
 
Early Christian Interpretations of Islam 67
 
Jews and Ishmaelites and Their Place in Christian Imagination 70
 
Christian Saracen Law 71
 
7 Conclusion 72
 
Notes 73
 
References 73
 
Part 2 Body Politics in the Aftermath of the Gregorian Reform 77
 
An Ongoing Spiritual Drama 78
 
References 79
 
3 Unification, Purification, and Dehumanization 81
 
1 The Time of the Crusades and Dehumanizing Saracens 82
 
The Emergence of Crusading Ideology 82
 
The Saracen as Pagan 84
 
Defiled, Monstrous Black Bodies 86
 
The Danger of Blurring Religious Boundaries 87
 
The Conflation of Jew and Muslim 89
 
2 The Deteriorating Fate of the Jews 91
 
Flashback: The Jews and the Legacy of Antiquity 92
 
The Jews under the Frankish Merovingians and the Carolingians 92
 
The Jew: From Unwilling Witness to Enemy, Child Murderer, and Usurer 93
 
Crusading Ideology and the Jew as Christianity's Internal Enemy 94
 
Jews

About the author

MARIANNE MOYAERT is Professor of Comparative Theology and the Study of Interreligious Relations at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. She specializes in the comparative theology of religions, interreligious hermeneutics, and research into the religio-racialization. She has authored and edited several books including Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality (2011), In Response to the Religious Other: Ricoeur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters (2014), and Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries: Explorations in Interrituality (2019).

Summary

Explores how Christians created, used, and adapted religionized categories of non-Christians through the centuries

Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other traces the genealogy of religionization, the various ways Christians throughout history have created a sense of religious normativity while simultaneously producing various categories of non-Christian "otherness." Covering a broad expanse of processes, practices, and socio-political contexts, this innovative volume analyzes the complex intersections of patterns of religionization in different eras while investigating their entanglements with racialization, sexualization, and ethnicization.

With a readable and accessible style, Marianne Moyaert offers a nuanced and well-balanced critical analysis of how and why Christianity's otherswere named, categorized, essentialized, and governed by those exemplifying Christian normativity in Western European society. The author takes a longue durée approach -- a long-term perspective on history that extends past human memory and the archaeological record -- that integrates different case studies and a variety of ecclesial, theological, and literary documents. Throughout the text, Moyaert demonstrates how religionization shaped the ways Christians classified people, organized Christian societies, interacted with different Christian and non-Christian groups, and more.
* Surveys the relationship between shifts in Christian normativity and the way non-Christians are imagined
* Helps readers connect the lasting effects of patterns of religionization with their everyday experiences
* Discusses the role of Christian expansion in the differential and unequal treatment of Christianity's others
* Examines legal regulations and disciplinary practices that were established to define the boundaries between Christians and non-Christians
* Incorporates a wide range of scholarly resources, cutting-edge research, and the most recent insights and issues in the field
* Includes textboxes with helpful summaries, illustrations, and commentary in each chapter

Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other: A History of Religionization is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses ininterreligious studies, comparative theology, theological approaches to religious diversity, Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations, race and religion, and theorizing religion.

"Professor Moyaert is one of the world's best scholars of comparative theology. In this magisterial new work, she helps scholars of religion to better learn how religious images, whether drawn with pictures or words, are crucial to how we understand ourselves and each other." - Amir Hussain, President, American Academy of Religion

"Breathtaking in scope and detail, Moyaert offers an original history of the ways Christians have projected distorted images of their religious 'others,' with devastating material consequences. Her illuminating story of the past is a searchlight for our present." - Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Professor of Theology, Fordham University

"Christian Imaginations is a superb study of the role that Western political programs play in the historical construction of identity boundaries. Analytically erudite and socially committed, Moyaert's book powerfully interrogates what counts as religion making this text a must-read for anyone interested in interreligious studies." - Santiago Slabodsky, Florence and Robert Kaufman Professor in Jewish Studies, Hofstra University

"Raising the historical formation of religious identities to the level of contemporary treatments of gender and racialization, Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other is essential reading for students of religion." - Michelle Voss, Professor of Theology and Past Principal, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto

"Crafting a Western European mosaic of religionization's turbulent history, Moyaert unveils how religious identities are constructed, hierarchies function, and their relevance for engaging diverse societies today worldwide." - Hans Gustafson, Adjunct Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas

Product details

• Authors: Marianne Moyaert, Marianne (Ku Leuven Moyaert, Moyaert Marianne
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.02.2024
• EAN: 9781119545507
• ISBN: 978-1-119-54550-7
• No. of pages: 368
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Religion, Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft, Religion & Theology, Religion u. Theologie, Religion u. Kultur, Religion & Culture, Religion, Issues & Current Affairs, Religionsfragen u. aktuelle Probleme, Comparative & World Religions