The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2697 page)

(1819–1900)
. Pioneer of
Reform Judaism
. He was born in Bohemia and emigrated to the USA in 1846. From 1854, he was
rabbi
of the Cincinnati congregation of B'nai Jeshuran. He founded the periodical,
The Israelite
, in 1854, organized the 1855
Rabbinical Conference
in Cleveland, and was a key figure in the founding of the
Hebrew
Union College in 1875. He agreed that
Torah
was the source of authority, but only the Decalogue (see
TEN COMMANDMENTS
) was absolutely obligatory—all else was open to interpretation.

 
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(from
wicca
). The belief that human affairs and features of the environment can be ordered, controlled, and changed by skilled practitioners whose powers are usually believed to be innate. Witchcraft is closely associated with
magic
, but its techniques are derived from within or given by a supernatural agent, rather than (as often with magic) learnt. The belief that the agent was the
devil
led to ferocious persecution of witches in medieval Christian Europe. Although witchcraft thus has had, in the past, a strongly negative connotation, it has been reassessed more recently in increasingly positive terms, in two main ways. First, anthropologists have described its positive role in small-scale societies, in healing, reducing hostilities and social tensions, reinforcing social order, supplying plausible meanings to inexplicable events, providing surrogate action in crises (e.g. the
evil
eye). Second, the increasing emancipation of women from the control of men in religions has led to a reevaluation of the role of women as witches (since women have always far outnumbered men as witches), and to the postulation that
‘witchcraft’
represents an unbroken religious tradition which men opposed because it empowered women. This tradition is often known as Wicca (or Wicce, from the Old English, the root of which means
‘to bend’
or
‘shape’
), but it is embedded in a wider neo-Paganism. According to Starhawk, a leader of the recovery of Wicca, ‘Followers of Wicca seek their inspiration in pre-Christian sources, European folklore, and mythology. They consider themselves priests and priestesses of an ancient European shamanistic nature religion that worships a goddess who is related to the ancient Mother Goddess in her three aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone.’

 
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(1889–1951)
. Austrian philosopher. He studied mathematical logic with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge in 1912–13, fought in the Austrian army in the First World War, and wrote his
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(1921; tr. 1922) whilst a prisoner of war in Italy. He gave up philosophy for several years, but resumed work in it in the late 1920s. He returned to Cambridge, and became Professor of Philosophy there in 1939. Apart from a single article, he published nothing further in his own lifetime: his later works were all published posthumously, starting with the
Philosophical Investigations
(1953).
Wittgenstein's later philosophy took a different direction from that of the
Tractatus
, and was critical of it in many respects. But in both cases he was concerned with the relation between language and the world. The
Tractatus
sees meaningful language as ultimately analysable into basic propositions, which picture the world. Since
ethics
, aesthetics, and religious language do not picture anything, they are relegated to the realm of the mystical and inexpressible. In his later work, however, Wittgenstein disclaimed any attempt to give a unitary account of the nature of language. Instead, he saw language as composed of many different
‘language-games’
, a term used to indicate that uses of language are rule-governed and go with activities and practices; he also compared language to a set of tools, each having its own use.
Wittgenstein wrote little about religion as such, though interesting observations about it are scattered throughout his works. In 1938 he gave some lectures on religious belief, in which he presented the distinctiveness of such beliefs as lying in the ways in which they express certain reactions and regulate our lives.
It is Wittgenstein's later philosophy in general, however, that has had more influence on the philosophy of religion and theology than his few writings on religion as such. Whereas the Logical Positivists (who were much influenced by the
Tractatus
, though it can be argued that they misunderstood it) dismissed religious language as meaningless because unverifiable in empirical terms, Wittgenstein's later philosophy seemed to offer a more tolerant approach which would permit the inclusion of religious language amongst meaningful uses of language. For religious language-games are just as much parts of human life as other uses of language, and indeed Wittgenstein includes
‘praying’
in his list of common language-games, in
Philosophical Investigations
§ 23; and there is no superior vantage point from which this, or any, language can be assessed.
If this account is correct, the philosophy of religion and much theology should be concerned more with coming to understand the distinctive nature of religious beliefs and practices, through a perspicuous description and analysis of them, than with shoring them up with intellectual defences. We are, however, left with the questions of what kind of truth religion and theology might have, and how it is discerned.

 
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see
A
MAD
YYA
.

 
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