Interrituality as a New Approach for Studying Interreligious Relations and Ritual Dynamics at Shared Pilgrimage Sites in Hatay (original) (raw)

Infrastructures of Interrituality and the Aesthetics of Saint Veneration Rituals among Othodox Christians and Arab Alawites in Hatay

Palgrave Handbook for Anthropological Ritual Studies, edited by Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern, 345–371. London and New York: Palgrave, 2021

By focusing on practices that contribute to maintaining interreligious relations from behind the scenes, I aim to identify how these rituals constitute assemblages that implicate one another through the different webs of social relations. Considering that the initial gestures and movements of devotion are constitutive for the performance of saint veneration rituals as they index a specific mode of submission, I argue that the aesthetics of sensory perception in such rituals of submission to sacred objects are more than the entry point for the social interactions with the saint. They effectively organize social relations with coreligionists, which are implicated when devotees perform their acts of devotion in the public sphere of a shared sacred site. I focus on those forms of sensory perception that relate to the kinesthesis, proprioception, or touch of the devotees and are made visible through the ritual postures, gestures, and movements in acts of submission that allow devotees to access the material and spiritual resources of these sanctuaries. I take sacred objects as indexes of the saint’s agency that serve as interfaces in the devotee’s interaction with the saint. This approach allows me to conceive the assemblages of sacred objects as spatial infrastructures, as distinct from the personal infrastructures in which various aesthetics of sensory perception become apparent in the performance of saint veneration rituals. It, thus, provides the necessary key for understanding the ways in which devotees organize and navigate their interreligious relations at shared sacred sites.

INTRODUCTION: EXPLORING THE PHENOMENON OF INTERRELIGIOUS RITUAL PARTICIPATION, in Ritual Participation and Interreligious Dialogue: Boundaries, Transgressions and Innovations, Bloomsbury, 2015 (ed. Marianne Moyaert & Joris Geldhof), 1-16.

Living in the midst of religious plurality, we are challenged to build relationships and understandings with believers of other faith traditions. Such encounters may take various forms, ranging from Jews, Christians, and Muslims meeting in Scriptural reasoning groups to grassroots initiatives revolving around interfaith peacebuilding; from religious leaders trying to establish diplomatic relations between their communities to spiritual interfaith encounters between Buddhist and Christian monks; from theological dialogues exploring complex doctrinal questions to the dialogue of life focused on building local communion across religious believers. As more and more people experience religious diversity fi rsthand and are touched by the vividness of other religious traditions and by the spiritual and moral wisdom of the " other, " they also increasingly ask if they can celebrate religiously with believers belonging to other religious traditions. Both in the United States and in Europe, especially, we cannot but note the increasing impetus for shared ritual activity. Th e (r)evolution from monologue to dialogue seems to be continued in the domain of rituality. Many people feel that interriting is an important facet of taking dialogue to a deeper, more aff ective, and experiential level.

The Infrastructure of Shared Pilgrimage Sites in Hatay, Turkey: Interreligious Dynamics of Saint Veneration in the Northern Levant

Levantine Entanglements Local Dynamics of Globalization in a Contested Region, edited by Terje Stordalen and Øystein S. LaBianca, 444–524. London and New York: Equinox, 2021

Historically, the cult for St. George transformed and became adapted into Islamic traditions of Hz. Hızır. Based on cultural anthropological field work in the Turkish region of Antakya (ancient Antioch), Kreinath is able to demonstrate that elements of Islamic cult for Hızır, Jewish lore of Elijah, and Christian cult for St. George are currently all integrated into what he calls a shared infrastructure of pilgrimage and festivals in the region, resulting in a practice that is remarkably inter-religious (when seen from the outside). By way of his anthropological inquiry Kreinath is able to identify local popular sub-current traditions that informs the practices at these sites—sometimes in recognized opposition to the more orthodox religious views promoted by local religious elites. The materials included in this study offer a rare opportunity to see the current local effects of an ancient cultural paradigm and networks of pilgrimage that first emerged in late Antiquity.

Ritual as a Means of Intercultural Communication

2020

Rituals of different peoples of the contemporary world are presented in the article, perceived as a universal means of intercultural communication. The authors review some secular rituals of North America and religious ones of the Russian Caspian region. The coming-of-age ceremony of the North American Indian Apache community is submitted as a particular fulfillment of the contemporaneity's interethnic communications. The Apache's rite of passage attracts not only members of the Native American tribe but also the plethora of travelers worldwide. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the rituals in their function of integrating people of a particular ethnic culture and representatives of the others, participating in a ritual as spectators. The authors underline the humanistic and communicative traits of the rituals.

Inappropriate Behavior? On the Ritual Core of Religion and its Challenges to Interreligious Hospitality, in Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 27 (2014): 1-21.

In our age of dialogue and encounter between religions, Christians ask if they can celebrate and pray with believers belonging to other religious traditions. Both in the United States and in Europe, especially, this is a new but rapidly growing phenomenon. We cannot but note the increasing impetus for acts of interreligious prayer, multifaith celebrations, and ritual participation. As more and more Christians experience religious diversity from nearby and are touched by the vividness of other religious traditions as well as by their spiritual and moral wisdom, and as more and more people engage in dialogical encounters, they also increasingly seek to explore the possibilities of interreligious ritual participation. In the past, entering the sacred space of another religious community was simply not done, whereas today ritual participation is becoming commonplace. However, ritual participation is a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. Whilst often experienced as moving, perhaps even insightful, ritual participation may also confront believers with the question whether their participation is, religiously speaking, appropriate. This can result in a certain discomfort. What exactly is at stake and how we may understand comfort remains theoretically underdeveloped in the scholarly literature. In this article, I will shed some light on the ambiguity of ritual participation (it both attracts and causes uneasiness) by focusing on the specific nature of rituals.