Paper
Cultivating Transformative Faith and a New Ecology of Hope
presenters
Ananta Kumar Giri
Nationality: India
Residence: Tamilnadu
Madras Institute of Development Studies
Presence:Face to Face/ On Site
Religion is a multi-dimensional reality and possibility in self, culture, society, Nature, Divine and the world and in this faith plays an important role. Faith is not reproducing blind faith but has a dimension of skepticism which is existential and which makes it open. But understanding and cultivating faith as existential scepticism and reconstruction calls for a a new anthropology of religion and faith beyond religion as just collective consciousness and collective organization as articulated by Emile Durkheim and Clifford Geertz, among others. My paper explores theories and practices of open and non-bound faith with and beyond boundaries based upon anthropological, theological and philosophical works. It relates the practical turn in anthropology to contemporary revitalization of religion by exploring the contours of practical faith and spirituality which is different from the much valorized dynamics of religious fundamentalism. It then explores the dynamics of hope in faith communities as well as in world at large by exploring many-sided links among faith and hope. It explores a new ecology of hope where hope emerges of ecologies of faith and faith inspired actions and meditations touching both immanence and transcendence.
Keywords:
transformative faith, immanence, transcendence, practical spirituality, ecology of mind