The article is a contribution to a cross-cultural theory of grief. It examines the relationship between individual/family continuing bonds with the dead and cultural narratives that legitimize political power. The dead are collective representations (Dirkheim) that mediate the larger culture to individuals and to smaller communities and that reinforce social solidarity and identity. The political question is which collective--family, community, church, party, nation--owns the dead and controls the rituals by which bonds with the dead are maintained or relinquished? The article discusses one historical condition: times of rapid change in power arrangements. Bonds with the dead have a power in individual, family, or tribal life that can threaten the narrative that legitimizes the new political power holders. Ancestor rituals that support identity as a family or tribal member are surpressed and replaced by allegiance to collective representations of the new political order. Two historical examples are given: China under Chairman Mao and the Wahhabi reform in Arabic Islam.

No abstract

Goss acknowledges the value of pair-bonded relationships to the Christian community but wants to explore the ethical and theological space for envisioning Christians whose erotic lives fall outside monogamous relationships. He takes seriously Elizabeth Stuart’s suggestion that the restoration of an eschatological paradigm for rethinking queer sexual relationships. Goss claims that Christ becomes the paradigm for multi-partnered relationships in spiritual encounters within religious communities and perhaps a means for rethinking non-monogamous relationships.

This article is a contribution to the cross-cultural study of grief. The Bardo-thodol (sometimes translated the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and the ritual associated with it provides a way to understand how Buddhism in Tibetan culture manages the issues associated with what is called grief in Western psychology. The resolution of grief in the survivors is intertwined with the journey to rebirth of the deceased. The present article describes (a) the progression of the deceased, (b) the rituals by which survivors separate from the physical incarnation of the deceased, (c) how, by channeling the feelings of grief to support the progress of the deceased, grief is brought to a positive resolution, and (d) the continuing bond survivors maintain with the dead even though the dead has moved on to the next life.

No abstract