William J F Keenan
Biographic Data
| ID | 144937 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William J F Keenan |
| GIVEN NAMES | William J F |
| FAMILY NAME | Keenan |
| SIGNATURE | KEENAN W J F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nottingham Trent University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Homonegativity in the Religious Dress History of the Marist Brothers, 1817-1840
This article presents a historical sociological case study of sexual oppression within the early nineteenth-century foundation period of a French Roman Catholic male religious order, the Marist Brothers, founded in 1817. The different sexualities of two rival founder figures, the priests Jean-Claude Courveille and Marcellin Champagnat, the former homosexual, the latter heterosexual, found expression in radically divergent conceptions of the relig…
Materializing Religion
The Sacramental Thought-World of Implicit Religion
For a generation, “implicit religion” has played a seminal role in the study of “secular faith.” This key contribution to research and scholarship on “the everyday sacred” owes an incalculable intellectual debt to the founder of the concept and mainstay of the subject field of implicit religious studies, Edward Bailey (1935-2015). In the light and shade of his recent passing, it is important to set Edward’s “big idea” in its larger context of sig…
A Phoney Holy War
This article provides an ideology-critique of the just-so story of “the spiritual turn,” aiming at the ahistorical and mythopoeic illusions of this contemporary fable as embedded in the fashionable nostrum, “the spiritual revolution.” This faux dramatic expression purports to describe a “turn” away from the external authority of “religion” in favour of self-chosen “spirituality” as the locus of faith commitment in the late modern world. Nine fund…
In Memoriam
Roger Grainger (1934-2015) was a man of many parts; a polymath whose repertoire incorporated diverse fields of scholarship and service, including acting, academia and the Anglican Church. He was a loyal and enthusiastic friend of Implicit Religion and his contributions to the annual Denton Conferences and this Journal were distinguished and distinctive. This short testimonial attests to the presence and power of Roger's singular "voice" on the st…
Monasticism
Granulated Faith-Holding
The contention here is that however firmly faiths are formally promulgated in creeds and public declarations, there exist innumerable “granulated” ways in which they are ‘held’ by groups and individuals. There is little published research work on granulated faith-holding, particularly on informal and implicit calibrations of shared and multi-faith frameworks of conviction and commitment in relation to the structuration of faith traditions. Buildi…
Believing, Belonging, Begatting
A transdisciplinary implicit religion framework is deployed to illuminate the cultic academic milieu of late modern university culture. Applying the three related “real” religion tropes (believing, belonging, begatting), structural and cultural features of subterranean “sapiential faiths” are identified and critiqued, with a view to enhancing reflexive knowledge of the academic form of life and contributing to the enlargement of the conversation …
Recycling Religion
For much of his triple career as heroic cancer survivor, sports champion, and, latterly, fallen idol, Lance Armstrong, a professed atheist, has worn a silver necklace with a cross pendant. Why does he wear this Ur-symbol of Christian religious faith? Speculative answers range from ‘residual superstition’ to ‘fashion jewellery’ and ‘tactical deception’. Here, Armstrong’s own declared beliefs as refracted through his autobiographical accounts are a…
Religions of Modernity
Religions of Modernity
Family Resemblances Twixt Implicit Religion and Post-modernity
This article explores parallels and convergences between implicit religion and post-modernity. The elective affinity between them is considered as a constructive combined “take” on late modern religion, culture and society. The aim is primarily to identify some overlap, some family resemblances, between key post-modern concepts and a number of the central themata of implicit religion, construed as a perspective or point of view on the human socia…
Meaning-Making in an Atheist World
This article explores atheist meaning-making by employing a multidimensional model of meaning operationalized by the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe). When compared to a representative sample of “religionists” ( N = 390) and “nones” ( N = 178), atheists ( N = 102) show lower degrees of meaningfulness, but they do not suffer from crises of meaning more frequently. However, subsequent cluster analysis reveals that heterog…
Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology
Is sociology inherently a mode of secular materialism? Or, are there intellectual resources deep within the sociological tradition, expansively conceived, that offer the sociological imagination a spiritual `post-secular' perspective on society and culture? This article draws out the subterranean theological stream of sociological consciousness and illuminates a `sacramentalist' socio-theology with particular reference to the `iconic vision' of P…
Dressed to Impress
Our dress is our identity. In dress, we live, move and have our social being. This book shows how the dressed body is central to the construction of a recognizable identity and provides accessible accounts of the particular dress 'ways' associated with a considerable variety of lifestyles. Churchgoers, ballerinas, Muslim schoolgirls, glamour models, 'vampires', monks and country gents all fashion a social self through dress. These cultures all ha…
Twenty-First-Century Monasticism and Religious Life
The sociological signs are that the twenty-first century will witness the dissolution of the hegemony of the classical paradigm of monasticism as a total institution. In its place will emerge flexible, eclectic, deregulated modes of postmodern religious lifestyles. Building on a sociology and theology of monasticism and an account of its historic transformative capacities, this article sketches the lineaments of a market-model of pomo-monastic li…
Subalterns of technopoly
Of Mammon Clothed Divinely
This article addresses the cultural commodification of the dress sign of the sacred body from contexts of `God' to its recontextualization within contexts of consumer capitalism or `Mammon'. The concept of religious dress `commodification' is employed heuristically to help make sociological sense of the seepage of dress sacra from religious contexts of origin to secular contexts of use. While other readings of the late modern career of the religi…
Death figures in religious life
The aim of this paper is to draw together key components of the death culture of a religious order, The Marist Brothers Institute, that spans the modern era, such that it is possible to perceive, from evidence internal to the tradition, adaptive transformations in its career. Drawing on extracts from Marist archive documents, stages in the development of the Marist death tradition, from beginnings in early 19th-century traditional Marian piety, t…
Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology
Is sociology inherently a mode of secular materialism? Or, are there intellectual resources deep within the sociological tradition, expansively conceived, that offer the sociological imagination a spiritual `post-secular' perspective on society and culture? This article draws out the subterranean theological stream of sociological consciousness and illuminates a `sacramentalist' socio-theology with particular reference to the `iconic vision' of P…
Twenty-First-Century Monasticism and Religious Life
The sociological signs are that the twenty-first century will witness the dissolution of the hegemony of the classical paradigm of monasticism as a total institution. In its place will emerge flexible, eclectic, deregulated modes of postmodern religious lifestyles. Building on a sociology and theology of monasticism and an account of its historic transformative capacities, this article sketches the lineaments of a market-model of pomo-monastic li…
Of Mammon Clothed Divinely
This article addresses the cultural commodification of the dress sign of the sacred body from contexts of `God' to its recontextualization within contexts of consumer capitalism or `Mammon'. The concept of religious dress `commodification' is employed heuristically to help make sociological sense of the seepage of dress sacra from religious contexts of origin to secular contexts of use. While other readings of the late modern career of the religi…
Death figures in religious life
The aim of this paper is to draw together key components of the death culture of a religious order, The Marist Brothers Institute, that spans the modern era, such that it is possible to perceive, from evidence internal to the tradition, adaptive transformations in its career. Drawing on extracts from Marist archive documents, stages in the development of the Marist death tradition, from beginnings in early 19th-century traditional Marian piety, t…
Of Mammon Clothed Divinely
This article addresses the cultural commodification of the dress sign of the sacred body from contexts of `God' to its recontextualization within contexts of consumer capitalism or `Mammon'. The concept of religious dress `commodification' is employed heuristically to help make sociological sense of the seepage of dress sacra from religious contexts of origin to secular contexts of use. While other readings of the late modern career of the religi…
Subalterns of technopoly
Dressed to Impress
Our dress is our identity. In dress, we live, move and have our social being. This book shows how the dressed body is central to the construction of a recognizable identity and provides accessible accounts of the particular dress 'ways' associated with a considerable variety of lifestyles. Churchgoers, ballerinas, Muslim schoolgirls, glamour models, 'vampires', monks and country gents all fashion a social self through dress. These cultures all ha…
Twenty-First-Century Monasticism and Religious Life
The sociological signs are that the twenty-first century will witness the dissolution of the hegemony of the classical paradigm of monasticism as a total institution. In its place will emerge flexible, eclectic, deregulated modes of postmodern religious lifestyles. Building on a sociology and theology of monasticism and an account of its historic transformative capacities, this article sketches the lineaments of a market-model of pomo-monastic li…
Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology
Is sociology inherently a mode of secular materialism? Or, are there intellectual resources deep within the sociological tradition, expansively conceived, that offer the sociological imagination a spiritual `post-secular' perspective on society and culture? This article draws out the subterranean theological stream of sociological consciousness and illuminates a `sacramentalist' socio-theology with particular reference to the `iconic vision' of P…
Meaning-Making in an Atheist World
This article explores atheist meaning-making by employing a multidimensional model of meaning operationalized by the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe). When compared to a representative sample of “religionists” ( N = 390) and “nones” ( N = 178), atheists ( N = 102) show lower degrees of meaningfulness, but they do not suffer from crises of meaning more frequently. However, subsequent cluster analysis reveals that heterog…
Family Resemblances Twixt Implicit Religion and Post-modernity
This article explores parallels and convergences between implicit religion and post-modernity. The elective affinity between them is considered as a constructive combined “take” on late modern religion, culture and society. The aim is primarily to identify some overlap, some family resemblances, between key post-modern concepts and a number of the central themata of implicit religion, construed as a perspective or point of view on the human socia…
Religions of Modernity
Religions of Modernity
Believing, Belonging, Begatting
A transdisciplinary implicit religion framework is deployed to illuminate the cultic academic milieu of late modern university culture. Applying the three related “real” religion tropes (believing, belonging, begatting), structural and cultural features of subterranean “sapiential faiths” are identified and critiqued, with a view to enhancing reflexive knowledge of the academic form of life and contributing to the enlargement of the conversation …
Recycling Religion
For much of his triple career as heroic cancer survivor, sports champion, and, latterly, fallen idol, Lance Armstrong, a professed atheist, has worn a silver necklace with a cross pendant. Why does he wear this Ur-symbol of Christian religious faith? Speculative answers range from ‘residual superstition’ to ‘fashion jewellery’ and ‘tactical deception’. Here, Armstrong’s own declared beliefs as refracted through his autobiographical accounts are a…
Monasticism
Granulated Faith-Holding
The contention here is that however firmly faiths are formally promulgated in creeds and public declarations, there exist innumerable “granulated” ways in which they are ‘held’ by groups and individuals. There is little published research work on granulated faith-holding, particularly on informal and implicit calibrations of shared and multi-faith frameworks of conviction and commitment in relation to the structuration of faith traditions. Buildi…
The Sacramental Thought-World of Implicit Religion
For a generation, “implicit religion” has played a seminal role in the study of “secular faith.” This key contribution to research and scholarship on “the everyday sacred” owes an incalculable intellectual debt to the founder of the concept and mainstay of the subject field of implicit religious studies, Edward Bailey (1935-2015). In the light and shade of his recent passing, it is important to set Edward’s “big idea” in its larger context of sig…
A Phoney Holy War
This article provides an ideology-critique of the just-so story of “the spiritual turn,” aiming at the ahistorical and mythopoeic illusions of this contemporary fable as embedded in the fashionable nostrum, “the spiritual revolution.” This faux dramatic expression purports to describe a “turn” away from the external authority of “religion” in favour of self-chosen “spirituality” as the locus of faith commitment in the late modern world. Nine fund…
In Memoriam
Roger Grainger (1934-2015) was a man of many parts; a polymath whose repertoire incorporated diverse fields of scholarship and service, including acting, academia and the Anglican Church. He was a loyal and enthusiastic friend of Implicit Religion and his contributions to the annual Denton Conferences and this Journal were distinguished and distinctive. This short testimonial attests to the presence and power of Roger's singular "voice" on the st…
Materializing Religion
Homonegativity in the Religious Dress History of the Marist Brothers, 1817-1840
This article presents a historical sociological case study of sexual oppression within the early nineteenth-century foundation period of a French Roman Catholic male religious order, the Marist Brothers, founded in 1817. The different sexualities of two rival founder figures, the priests Jean-Claude Courveille and Marcellin Champagnat, the former homosexual, the latter heterosexual, found expression in radically divergent conceptions of the relig…
Sociology (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (11 works) · Theology (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Faith (6 works)