Papers by Loren D Lybarger
The Journal of Religion, 2000
* I would like to thank the following individuals for reading and commenting on drafts of this ar... more * I would like to thank the following individuals for reading and commenting on drafts of this article: Joel L. Kraemer, who provided invaluable insight and the inspiration to publish this article; Sidney H. Griffith; Frank E. Reynolds; Kate A. Lingley; Paul R. Powers; Denise Spellberg; Brooke E. Olson; Gesine Miller; and David M. Neuhaus. I especially extend my gratitude to the Journal of Religion's anonymous reviewers, whose detailed critiques have vastly improved my analysis and presentation. Finally, I wish to thank Mary R. Abowd for ...
The Journal of Religion, 2015
The Muslim World, 2014
Drawing on dozens of in-depth life-history interviews and extensive participant observation in mo... more Drawing on dozens of in-depth life-history interviews and extensive participant observation in mosques and community centers, this article probes the interaction of religion and nationalism in the formation of individual identities within the Palestinian immigrant community in Chicago, Illinois since the late 1980s. The analysis focuses on three individuals who represent distinct approaches to negotiating the relationship of religion and nation. The first approach is context-adaptive, responding and accommodating to the diverging moral assumptions that underlie the ethos of religious and secular spaces. The second approach entails a transition from secular-nationalism to a type of Islamic nationalism or even Islamic secularism. The third approach resists both forms of nationalism, seeking a transcendent Islam in which ethnicity and nation recede within a new religious humanism. The core argument throughout is that processes of religious return, often analyzed in relation to transnational trends, take diverse and indeterminate forms. This fact results from the shaping effects of a range of “secular” factors — gender, generation, class, family dynamics, intercommunal interactions, traumatic events — which register within the specific local settings of ordinary life.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2015
This article explores the limits of the debate surrounding Robert A. Orsi's call for a “t... more This article explores the limits of the debate surrounding Robert A. Orsi's call for a “third way” in scholar-practitioner encounters in religious studies research. It argues that the debate has reached an impasse and that, as Joel Robbins suggests, an alternative approach might exist within theology—particularly, theological discussions of how the Christian is to relate to the non-Christian other. The article tests this notion by probing the writings of A. Kenneth Cragg, an Anglican theologian and Islamic Studies specialist who proposed the possibility of expanding the Christian canon within the context of interfaith encounters. The article concludes that although religious studies remains, as a field, unprepared to countenance the kind of hybridization toward which Cragg's conception of the interfaith situation leads, his notion of “bi-scripturalism” has the potential nevertheless of opening up new questions for religious studies scholars concerned with alterity.
The European Legacy, 2015
The European Legacy, 2014
The Journal of Religion, 2000
* I would like to thank the following individuals for reading and commenting on drafts of this ar... more * I would like to thank the following individuals for reading and commenting on drafts of this article: Joel L. Kraemer, who provided invaluable insight and the inspiration to publish this article; Sidney H. Griffith; Frank E. Reynolds; Kate A. Lingley; Paul R. Powers; Denise Spellberg; Brooke E. Olson; Gesine Miller; and David M. Neuhaus. I especially extend my gratitude to the Journal of Religion's anonymous reviewers, whose detailed critiques have vastly improved my analysis and presentation. Finally, I wish to thank Mary R. Abowd for ...
The Journal of Religion, 2000
Social Compass, 2005
The first Intifada (1987–1993) split Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into two... more The first Intifada (1987–1993) split Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into two camps, one secular-nationalist, the other Islamist. The author examines the new identities that formed as a result of this split in a Bethlehem-area refugee camp. Drawing on the concepts of event as structurally transforming process, socio-political milieu, and Mannheimian generation units, he shows how the first Intifada gave rise to a generational dialectic that in turn produced new religio-political orientations. He concludes by ...
Perspectives on Politics, 2008
ABSTRACT -
Journal of American Ethnic History, 2012
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2012
No single paradigm or debate currently orients the social scientific study of religion. Because o... more No single paradigm or debate currently orients the social scientific study of religion. Because of this, those engaged in the multidisciplinary study of religion find that a public conversation is often difficult. In this article and the Forum it introduces, we explore Martin Riesebrodt's recently published book, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Responding to the inadequacies of secularization paradigms, rational choice models, and postmodern criticism, Riesebrodt proposes an approach that ideal-typically reconstructs the subjective ...
PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN, 1999
Numen-international Review for The History of Religions, 2008
Abstract: This paper explores how death and burial narratives—particularly those associated with ... more Abstract: This paper explores how death and burial narratives—particularly those associated with Adam, the paradigmatic first human being, in the Islamic religious literature known as qisas al-anbiyā (" stories of the [Biblical] prophets")—relate to the discursive processes through which religious communities articulate lines of inclusion and exclusion in the formation of their collective identities. In conversation with Katherine Verdery (The Political Lives of Dead Bodies), who examines reburials of political figures in Eastern Europe ...
Journal of The American Academy of Religion, 2007
Abstract This article documents changes in Palestinian Christian identities during the Oslo Peace... more Abstract This article documents changes in Palestinian Christian identities during the Oslo Peace Process, 1993–2000. Drawing on a year of formal fieldwork in 1999–2000, and five years of experience living in the Occupied Territories during the first intifada (1987–1993), the author uses diaries, field notes, and life history interviews with activists from across the political spectrum to identify diverging interpretations of what it means to be both a Palestinian and a Christian in the face of unrelenting Israeli occupation, sharp ...
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Papers by Loren D Lybarger
Lybarger personally witnessed the tragic days of the first intifada, the subsequent Oslo Peace Process and its failures, and the new escalation of violence with the second intifada in 2000. He rejects the simplistic notion that Palestinians inevitably fall into one of two camps: pragmatists who are willing to accept territorial compromise, and extremists who reject compromise in favor of armed struggle. Listening carefully to Palestinians themselves, he reveals that the conflicts evident among the Islamists and secular nationalists are mirrored by the internal struggles and divided loyalties of individual Palestinians.
Identity and Religion in Palestine is the first book of its kind in English to capture so faithfully the rich diversity of voices from this troubled part of the world. Lybarger provides vital insights into the complex social dynamics through which Islamism has reshaped what it means to be Palestinian.