Magdalena Lubańska

This paper presents the findings of ethnographic field research focusing on the worship of the Christ Child as practised by female members of a Fraternity of the Infant Jesus in the main church (kościół farny) in the city of Rzeszów in south-eastern Poland. Based on anthropological analysis of secondary sources and primary data collected through interviews, I try to answer the question of why the women choose to worship God as a Child, and how their choice is connected with their spiritual path. What kind of figures do they embrace as spiritual role models, and why? What is it about the worship of the Child Jesus that they find attractive, and how do they maintain, and contribute to, that form of worship? I will connect these aspects of the worship to women’s strong need for “giving/protecting life” as well as for sensual relationship with the sacred. I treat this need as a self-embraced development strategy combining a fulfilled feminine identity with a religious life as worshippers of Christ

This article focuses on religious healing practices in the monastery of St. Menas in Sofia, Bulgaria which involve the touching of a famous miracle-working icon of a saint. I use the practice as a springboard for discussing the relevance of two anthropological concepts known as “sensualism” (Polish: sensualizm) and “non-differentiation” (Polish: nierozróżnialność) for describing multi-sensory religious imageries of pilgrims. Th e concept of sensualism was fi rst proposed by Stefan Czarnowski and relates to religious practice centred primarily on sensory experience. Non-differentiation as an anthropological concept has been adapted from Gadamer by the Polish anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. The two concepts have been applied to analyses of non-official practices in Catholic religiosity, a fact which poses certain methodological problems when the concepts are applied to Orthodox Christianity. This article relies on the Orthodox theological concept of the icon to propose a revision to our treatment of those two useful concepts.