Browsing by Subject "religion"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    The book of all books
    (2012) Reisenberger, Azila Talit
    Lecture series presented by Dr Azila Talit Reisenberger, Head of Hebrew, School of Languages and Literature, University of Cape Town. The Bible is one of the most widely-read and influential pieces of literature in the world, but many people are surprisingly unaware of the long history of the component books that make up the central text of both Judaism and Christianity. These audio lectures will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn more about the history of the Bible and the vast cultural and religious meanings of this collection of books.
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    Psychology and religion in the search for personal wholeness
    (2012) Maree, Johann
    These presentations examine the relationship between psychology and religion by exploring the roles they play in helping people grow towards personal wholeness. These lecture slides will be of interest to students who attended this lecture series or other persons who wish to know more about this topic.
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    Recharged and ready: a week-level diary study exploring an integrated model of weekend recovery, incorporating circadian and boundary perspectives, and their relationship with weekly performance
    (2025) Schroeder, Callum; Bagraim, Jeffrey
    The ability to effectively recover from work-related stressors during weekends is increasingly recognised as vital for the well-being and performance of employees. Given their theoretical alignment with recovery, this study extends an integrated model of weekend recovery by incorporating a boundary perspective (i.e., psychological reattachment to work) and a circadian perspective (i.e., sleep characteristics), offering a more comprehensive understanding of how these components interact with employees' recovery and ultimately influence their weekly job performance. In addition, positioning the weekend as the recovery context provided the opportunity to examine the impact of culture, religion, and spirituality on recovery, particularly as they relate to activities performed during leisure time. Using a longitudinal research design with repeated measures, quantitative data was collected from employees (N = 88) across various companies in South Africa over the course of three weeks before and after weekends. Multilevel model results, primarily at the person level (n = 57), indicated that low-duty activities positively predicted weekend recovery experiences (including psychological detachment, relaxation, and mastery experiences), with physical activities and cultural activities being the most conducive to the recovery experiences. Conversely, high-duty activities were not found to be significant negative predictors of weekend recovery experiences. It was also found that religious and spiritual activities, while not conducive to overall recovery experiences, were positively predictive of psychological detachment from work. Interestingly, inspection of the results for sleep quality and weekend catch-up sleep revealed that sleep quality positively predicted weekend recovery experiences only when high-duty and low-duty activities were removed from the model. Weekend catch-up sleep was not found to be a significant predictor of weekend recovery experiences among the current sample. Week-level findings (n = 102) indicated that weekend recovery experiences positively predicted the state of being recovered on Monday; however, they did not promote psychological reattachment. Nevertheless, it was found that psychological reattachment to work on Monday was found to be the most beneficial recovery-related outcome for optimal weekly job performance (i.e., task performance and work engagement), as opposed to the state of being recovered, which solely promoted employees' task performance for the remainder of the workweek. Ultimately, the relevant implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are presented.
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    Religion and politics: the legal regulation of religious organisations in Uganda — 2016 - present
    (2024) Kaggwa, Catherine Bulya; Shaikh, Sa'diyya; Ukah, Asonzeh
    With increased visibility and social activism of religious actors and organisations in many post colonial African states, the legal governance of religious organisations has come into tension with citizenship rights and freedoms. This is the case in Uganda in recent years, where the state government at the federal level has proposed the National Religion and Faith Organizations (RFO) Policy. This policy was first proposed in 2016 and the policy document was revised in 2019. It purports to maintain the authority of the State over religious organisations while ensuring to observe the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms pertaining to religious beliefs, associations, practices, and belongings. This research aimed to understand the literature around the relationship between religion and politics in Uganda, between 1986 and present as well as the reactions for and against the RFO policy. Using data generated through telephone interviews, government documents, public forums, social media posts and comments, newspaper articles, periodicals, and news network interviews, from 2016 till the present, this study argued for a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of the complex and complicated process of the public governance of religious organisations in post-colonial African states such as Uganda. The reactions and arguments for and against the RFO policy indicate the need for the regulation of religious organisations in Uganda is based on socio-political dynamics and pressures which shape the way religious and political leaders and organizations interact in the society, how policies are implemented and the overall direction of the society concerning national development.
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    Searching for transcendence: an exploration of spirituality in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick
    (2025) Nkukwana, Oyisa Amahle; Rijsdijk, Ian-Malcolm
    The objective of this dissertation is to discuss how spirituality is explored in the films Mirror (1975, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) and A Hidden Life (2019, dir. Terrence Malick) through the application of the concept of transcendence. This dissertation approaches transcendence from a spiritual framework (removed from religion and theology) as opposed to the philosophical treatment it tends to receive in other literature. Recent discussions surrounding transcendence in film have been concerned with a films philosophical content, narrative content and aesthetic style and while these have merit, they tend to ignore the unique aspect of cinema that allows one to feel that sensation while viewing. As such, this dissertation identifies mood as the distinctive quality of cinema that allows it to be a medium for transcendence. In order to understand how this may be achieved, I arrive at three conditions of transcendence in film; point of view, the revelation as opposed to opposition and externalising the internal. To illustrate how these conditions function in a film of transcendence, I apply them to Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's film Mirror (1975) as well as American director Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life (2019) as they are known to have spiritual engagement with the medium, albeit approached differently. By analysing Mirror and A Hidden Life, this exploration seeks to highlight transcendence's subjectivity and, paradoxically, its universality. I conclude my exploration by summarizing my findings and proposing that future studies be done to test the validity of these conditions.
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    The political instrumentalization of religion in the South African truth and reconciliation commission
    (2019) Kumordzie, Beatrice; Tayob, Abdulkader
    The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been subject to numerous debates across a wide range of disciplines, including peace and conflict studies, justice and transformation studies, as well as religious studies. In political science, the debates concerning the TRC have mainly revolved around the peace versus justice dichotomy, and more recently - the heated question of whether symbolic measures as opposed to socioeconomic measures can pave the ideal path to justice and reconciliation in post-conflict societies. Arguably, the debates that have dominated the discourse on justice and transformation in South Africa so far has failed to acknowledge and unpack the central role that religion played in the country’s process of transition. My argument is that religion was instrumentalized politically in the TRC, and thereby used to morally justify certain political compromises that were made during the negotiations between the apartheid National Party (NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) in the early 1990s. By political instrumentalization, I am referring to the strategy of using an identity marker, in this case Christianity, to achieve political ends. I propose that that the Mandela administration purposely employed religious elements in the political nation-building-tool of the TRC with the intent to create an atmosphere of “spiritual healing”. This symbolic and inter-personal understanding of justice in turn, it can be argued, came at the expense of retributive and/ or socio-economic justice. The influence of religion within the TRC can be seen most strongly in the identity of the key people involved (the chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and four of the commissioners who were theologians), the overt biblical rhetoric employed both in the hearings and in the final report, as well as in the design of the commission. The constructivist theories in which this paper will frame its understanding of “the religious” suggests any space can become holy through the performance of religious practices. In this regard, I propose that the TRC, while appearing to be a court-like body, became a sacred space through practices including prayers, lighting of candles and singing of hymns.
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    Therianthropes in San rock art
    (2002) Jolly, Pieter
    San paintings of therianthropes, beings that combine human and non-human features, are described and analysed in order to formulate a theory concerning the meaning of these paintings for the people who made and viewed them. The range of therianthrope paintings is described. Four explanations, or theories, concerning the therianthropes are discussed and evaluated in relation to San religious rites and beliefs and the physical forms taken by therianthropes in the art. These explanations or theories focus respectively on animal-masked/costumed shamans, shamans transformed into animals or other creatures while in altered states, the spirits of dead shamans and the human-animal beings of San myths. Physical as well as deeper, structural, conceptual correspondences between these classes of beings in San religious thought indicate that they are all related and relevant to the way in which we should interpret the therianthropes. The kingdoms are artificial constructions designed by human beings in an effort to cope with the tremendous diversity of the living world. They are not rules of nature. (Keeton 1972: 703).