I am putting here on the blog a slightly revised version of a talk I gave on Long Island in 2011 on the Catholic Church in Sweden seen from the perspective of my own family. When I look at the text I see that the conclusion needs some more work, but I do not have that at present, so I leave it in it its present condition. Perhaps I will come back to it and develop it later, when life calms down (a pious wish perhaps).
A chapter that I removed from my book Ritualization and Human Interiority before publication (2013) has now (2015) been published in India in the journal Anvikshiki (connected to the philosophy and religion department at BHU in Varanasi) as ”The Ritual Person”. At the time, I felt it necessary to deal in some length with the notion of ’person’ as a background for the discussion of interiorization, but decided to cut it out to make the book more focused. I have put the article here in XPS format as the journal is available only in print and not, to my knowledge, to any great extent spread outside of India.
A presentation that I did in 2013 at the Pontificia Università San Tommaso as part of the workshop Scandinavian Theologians Teaching Catholic Theology is now published in a Festschrift (in Swedish) as ”Reflektion över relationen mellan katolsk teologi och religionsvetenskap” [A reflection on the relation between Catholic theology and religious studies] in Den trogne arbetaren i vingården: Festskrift till Bo Claesson, ed. Staffan Olofsson. LIR.skrifter.varia: Göteborg, pages 109–118.
Here is an article that I published 2012 in an Indian journal. A Swedish version was published 2014 in:
SEGL: katolsk årsskrift for religion og samfunn, eds. Ståle Johannes Kristiansen & Peder K. Solberg: 301–310.
Religion as a human phenomenon vs. openness to transcendence
An issue hotly debated within religious studies due to its importance for the discipline’s identity and status, is the choice between, on the one hand, a study of religion as a purely natural phenomenon and, on the other hand, a perspective that not a priori rejects the truth claims of religious traditions concerning supernatural realities. In the following, I will discuss these two approaches and sketch a position of my own.
This is my favorite painting of which I have rather many reproductions. They were made for an exhibition 15 years ago.
I am just adding here some pictures of old paintings though I have to buy a polarization filter to take away the reflections. When I do I will post updated pictures.
Some memories from the trip to India (Pondicherry mainly) in November December 2014.
