Articles
 Justice for All
 Church in Decline
 Striking Similarity
 The Efficacy of Prayer
 Are You Ready for Change?
 A Question of Vocation
 The Challenge of Change
 Elul 24
 Elul 23
 Elul 22

Series [All]
 Administration
 Elul 5777 (9)
 Exploring Translation Theories (25)
 Live Like You Give a Damn
 Memory and Identity
 The Creative Word (19)
 The Cross-Cultural Process (7)
 The Old Testament is Dying
 The Oral Gospel Tradition (4)
 We the People (8)

Archive

Friday, 8 January 2016

Religious Collective Memory

On Collective Memory (Heritage of Sociology),
Maurice Halbwachs, University of Chicago Press, 1991

Maurice Halbwachs, who built on the work of Emile Durkheim to develop the idea of collective or social memory, asserts that Christianity is built upon Judaism's collective memory, using and re-interpreting its vocabulary and Scriptures; its repetition to create history and truth as well as providing both context and continuity. Unlike other groups,

the memory of religious groups claims to be fixed once and for all. (pg 92)

Christianity assimilated the Judaism that had preceded it and continues to adapt its memories to respond to the needs of each 'present' as it occurs. The rites and rituals of the church, the texts and interpretations, repeated on a daily, weekly and annual basis, build and shape the collective memory, while adapting to the now;

it does not preserve the past, but reconstructs it with the aid of material traces, rites, texts and traditions left behind by that past and ... with the present. (pg 119)

Posted By Jonathan, 9:04am Comment Comments: 0