The main function of the rabbinic courts is divorce, also a purely religious process in Israel.
Although the essence of mysticism is the sense of contact with the transcendent, mysticism in the history of Christianity should not be understood merely in terms of special ecstatic experiences but as part of a religious process lived out within the Christian community.
A left-leaning lawmaker filed a complaint with the elections commission this month asserting that a campaign advertisement depicting a blond Russian woman getting a conversion certificate faxed to her under the wedding canopy — as opposed to going through a substantive religious process as now required — was "racist and presents the immigrant population in a ridiculous light".
It can be a humbling religious process.
More rural respondents emphasised the value of ritual purification (agnihotra or dhoop a Hindu religious process of purifying the atmosphere with smoke from a specially prepared fire) or protection from supernatural influence, although both were among categories with the lowest prominence.
Blaming honourably gay men, striving also to be honourably Catholic, draws a dishonest veil over religious formation processes, and allows the psycho-sexually immature to hide in subterfuges of pathological closets, wounding themselves, and the faith community too.
Following the Reformation gains (the Warsaw Confederation of 1573 was the culmination of the unique in Europe religious toleration processes), the Catholic Church embarked on an ideological counter-offensive and Counter-Reformation claimed many converts from Protestant circles.
"Our religious expulsion process continued, which found her guilty of having committed a dozen transgressions, leading to her being formally expelled.
The lesson seems to be that when the religious and political processes deteriorate, and much-needed dialogue and negotiations disappear, raw violence alone remains to run amok.
