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ABSTRACT
This article highlights the contemporary relevance of Macmurray’s work for the turn in philosophy of religion towards living religion. The traditional academic focus on belief analyses cognitive dissonance from a distance and misses the experience of being religious. Alternatively, Macmurray emphasized emotion and action over theory and cognition, examining religion as the creation and sustenance of community, over and above doctrinal division and incompatible beliefs. From an understanding of humans as embodied and relational, Macmurray critiques individualism and self-sacrifice for failing to result in other-centred action and the promotion of social justice and equality. Using Macmurray as a springboard, this article considers the new speech acts of digital media and the possibility of community in online religion, finding that the virtual world holds risks as well as advantages for women and other marginalized groups to have a voice and explore diverse religious practices and identities, including reimagining metaphors and symbols to have relevance and meaning in changed social circumstances. In conclusion, this article finds that online communities are significant for the spiritual practice of the religiously affiliated and religious ‘nones’; as such, online religion is relevant to the understanding of living religion aimed at in philosophy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, 9.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid. (italics in the original).
4. Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom, 56.
5. Ibid.
6. Macmurray, Interpreting the Universe, 34–5.
7. Macmurray, Reason and Emotion, 3.
8. Brooks, The Social Animal, 17.
9. Ibid., 17–8.
10. Ibid., 18.
11. Macmurray, Freedom in the Modern World, 142.
12. Ibid., 144 (italics in the original).
13. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought; Goldie, The Emotions.
14. See, for example, Grace Davie, Religion in Britain.
15. See Ager and Ager, Faith, Secularism, and Humanitarian Engagement.
16. Macmurray, Reason and Emotion, 129.
17. Ibid.,134.
18. Macmurray, The Self as Agent, 142.
19. Trevarthen, ‘Proof of Sympathy’.
20. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 49.
21. Ibid., 51.
22. Ibid., 60.
23. Ibid., 24.
24. Ibid., 119.
25. Macmurray, A Challenge to the Churches, 22.
26. Ibid., 23–4.
27. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 150.
28. Macmurray, Conditions of Freedom, 24.
29. Macmurray, A Challenge to the Churches, 23.
30. Ibid., 24.
31. Macmurray, The Structure of Religious Experience, 47.
32. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 162.
33. Ibid., 173–4.
34. See McIntosh, ‘The Possibility of a Gender-Transcendent God’.
35. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 171..
36. Macmurray, Creative Society, 48.
37. Ibid., 57.
38. Ibid., 19.
39. Macmurray, The Philosophy of Jesus, 8.
40. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 71.
41. See McIntosh, ‘The Concept of Sacrifice’.
42. Macmurray, Ye Are My Friends, 4.
43. Woodhead, ‘Religion and Public Life’.
44. Campbell, When Religion Meets new Media, 35, 24.
45. An early distinction between online religion and religion online was set out by Helland, ‘Religion Online/Online Religion’.
46. Woodhead, ‘Practical Theology and Public Life’.
47. Bobkowski and Pearce, ‘Baring their Souls’.
48. Cheong, ‘Twitter of Faith’, 198–200.
49. Aune, ‘Singleness and Secularization’, 60–5.
50. Bagnall, ‘How Does Women’s Usage’, 34–9.
51. See www.i-church.org.
52. Wagner, Godwired, 127, 134.
53. Hutchings, ‘Creating Church Online’, 221.
54. Mahan, ‘Religion and Media’, 22.
55. Helland, ‘Online Religion as Lived Religion’, 6.
56. Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, 24.
57. Ibid., 23 (italics in original).
58. Ibid., 176.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Esther McIntosh
Esther McIntosh is Director of Theology and Religious Studies and Senior Lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Ethics at York St John University, UK. She is a feminist theologian and Macmurray scholar whose interdisciplinary research spans philosophy and theology. She is author of John Macmurray’s Religious Philosophy: What it Means to be a Person (Ashgate, 2011; Routledge, 2016). Her recent publications include ‘Learning to Be Human in a Postliberal Era’, in B. J. Wood, ed., Renewing the Self (Cambridge Scholars, 2017); ‘“I Met God, She’s Black”: Racial, Gender and Sexual Equalities in Public Theology’, in S. Kim and K. Day, eds, A Companion to Public Theology (Brill, 2017); ‘Belonging without Believing: Church as Community in an Age of Digital Media’, International Journal of Public Theology, 9:2 (2015); ‘Why We Need the Arts: John Macmurray on Education and the Emotions’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47:1 (2015), 47–60.