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Silence appears frequently in discourses of the Holocaust – as a metaphorical absence, a warning against forgetting, or simply the only appropriate response. But powerful though these meanings are, they often underplay the ambiguity of silence's signifying power. This article addresses the liminality of silence through an analysis of its richly textured role in the memorial soundscapes of Berlin. Beyond an aural version of erasure, unspeakability, or the space for reflection upon it, I argue that these silent spaces must always be heard as part of their surrounding urban environment, refracting wider spatial practices and dis/order. When conventions are reversed – when the present is silent – the past can resound in surprising and provocative ways, collapsing spatial and temporal borders and escaping the ritualized boundaries of formal commemoration. This is explored through four different memorial situations: the disturbing resonances within the Holocaust Memorial; the transgressive processes of a collective silent walk; Gleis 17 railway memorial's opening up of heterotopic 'gaps' in time; and sounded/silent history in the work of singer Tania Alon. Each of these examples, in different ways, frames a slippage between urban sound and memorial silence, creating a parallel symbolic space that the past and the present can inhabit simultaneously. In its unpredictable fluidity, silence becomes a mobile and subversive force, producing an imaginative space that is ambiguous, affective and deeply meaningful. A closer attention to these different practices of listening disrupts a top-down, strategic discourse of silence as conventionally emblematic of reflection and distance. The contemporary urban soundscape that slips through the silent cracks problematizes the narrative hegemony of memorial itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines some of the ways in which the post-Tridentine Catholic Church harnessed music's reiterative and suggestive powers to promulgate its message. In particular music could stimulate memory and, in Christian Doctrine classes for the young, singing was used widely to sweeten the pill and to aid the memorizing of items like the Creed, Pater noster, and Ave Maria. Singing laude spirituali in Italian could impart more subtle devotional knowledge. In later life members of lay confraternities sang hymns, canticles, psalms, and Marian antiphons in Latin, as well as laude spirituali. All of this meant that people from all classes in society became familiar with the official texts and chants of the Church and, as a consequence, were susceptible to indoctrination, while being encouraged to memorize the tenets of their faith through music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages the work of Robert Yelle in his textSemiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. The author examines in particular his theorizing of the indexical sign function and its capacity to ‘enflesh’ the symbol. In the Peircean and Saussurean frames the symbol is an abstraction, a concept, and removed from the experiential. However, with the deployment of the indexical sign, as Yelle argues, the symbol is enfleshed and made experiential. Yelle's development of Peircean semiotics should prove to be very productive in the study of systems of belief and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TV show Battlestar Galactica (BSG) may be read as the melding of two polities infused with two different religious systems into one. Drawing on Theodore Schatzki, I argue that this process may best be analysed in terms of the religious practices which they come to perform together. BSG presents a story to the viewer of how a religious practice community that allows differences of creeds and rituals may be realised. With reference to the works of Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin, I argue that the key precondition for this to happen is the avoidance of what Voegelin calls political theology. Differences in creed, doctrine, and specific religious practices may exist side by side as long as certain practices associated with the sacred—in the case of BSG, primarily practices that have to do with burying and remembering the dead—are shared. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Covenant is a central, comprehensive and dynamic reality in Old and New Testament. Covenants are personal, reconciliatory and missionary. They reflect the intention of God to elect and preserve, judge, reconcile and extend: in Israel, in Jesus Christ, on behalf of the world. An appropriate extension of covenant is both possible and desirable for the Anglican Communion family of churches and is consistent with scripture's plain sense. The Rule of Faith locates the life of the Church in relation to the dual witness of Prophet and Apostle. The Rule understands the comprehensive witness of scripture to be grounded in the character of the Triune God. It therefore rejects setting scripture against itself; making false identification with single historical moments only; or conceiving of scripture as a network of competing claims, beyond which the Church has its life and exercises its choices. The Rule grounds scripture in the life of God himself and in his Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a formal and thematic analysis of the book "Coming Through Slaughter," by Michael Ondaatje which is inspired by Julia Kristeva's notions of the semiotic and the symbolic, with respect to language, music and subjectivity. It has illustrated that Kristeva's notions of the semiotic and the symbolic adds to the already substantial pile of Ondaatje-criticism. It also discusses several passages found in the book in which the author points out that although the normative dimension of language is disrupted, the symbolic is nevertheless maintained. It is then concluded that although the characters finally lose the symbolic function, the novel ensures the dialogue between the semiotic and the symbolic.

There is one world we live in. Its geographical and spatial boundaries tell us this. We see it on maps, we see it on television, and we see it when we walk out of the door. Children, adults, and people of all races and creeds live in this one world. The world we live in is viewed differently by these many individuals. Some see it as hostile, some see it as peaceful, and some go about their daily business and do not see it at all. This is the seen world. The one we can see with our eyes. The seen world is not the only one that exists, however, because there is also another world behind our eyes. When we close our eyes, it is in there. We have an imagination to tell us what it could be like, we have thoughts to tell us what we want it to be like, and we have dreams to tell us what we want it to be. Where is this unseen world? We carry it around with us every nanosecond of every day that we are alive. While we live in the seen world, the unseen world is alive in us. What could the unseen world be like for substance users? This is the topic of the current article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the possible link between anthropology and literature. Posit that the symbolic dimension is fundamental in the creation of social reality; Use of a spatial metaphor to navigate and chart the topography of value in the west; Definition of culture.

For Wole Soyinka, the term "outrage", used as a partial titular definition of a collection of essays published in 1988, may also conveniently serve as a norm of evaluating three of his dramas: A Play of Giants, Requiem for a Futurologist, and The Scourge of the Hyacinths. Outrage, in its dictionary as well as connotative senses, suggests a variety of attitudes and assumptions. In A Play of Giants, the emphasis is on political belief. In Requiem for a Futurologist, the outrage dimension becomes cultural creeds. And in The Scourge of the Hyacinths, the outrage focus shifts to contempt of the rights of man and misuse of traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction in presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the depictions of the Trinity, the significance of creedal concepts in understanding Trinity, and worship and the presence of the Holy Spirit.