atheismwith its child-bearing and household chores by rejecting marriage. Ascetic
women also reject their social status by wearing coarse clothing and refus-
ing all power of sexual attraction by means of their clothing, downcast
gaze, and eating habits that make their bodies less feminine in appearance.
These types of extreme behavior are practiced by some in all Christian
denominations, but the larger Roman Catholic Church also builds ascetic
practices into its faith for everyone, with the observation of fasting during
Lent and refraining from eating meat on Friday.
Asceticism possesses a close relationship to culture. According to
Harpham, asceticism forms the ground of culture, which allows for com-
munication within culture. Because self-denial is necessary for a person
to live in a culture, asceticism assists social integration and functioning.
Asceticism still remains ambivalent because it creates polarities between
culture and what is anti-culture or asceticism. By means of self-denial, a
person integrates into a cultural system that makes communication pos-
sible, empowers a person, and equips a person for productive living. Thus
asceticism possesses wider implications beyond religion.
Within the religious sphere, an essential feature of asceticism is its
repetitive nature. By means of performing asceticism, the ascetic
becomes a different person living in a different religious culture.
Moreover, the ascetic creates an alternative culture, which becomes
true for its creators, by means of his/her learned and repeated behavior.
In addition to creating something new, asceticism enables a person to
function within this new culture, gives the ascetic a method of translat-
ing theoretical and strategic concepts into patterns of behavior, trans-
forms perception of the world, and provides the means for newly
discovered knowledge and understanding to be re-incorporated into a
new world.
Further reading: Brown (1988); Bynum (1987); Clark (1986); Cort (2001);
Eliade (1969); Fischer (1979); Harpham (1987); Wimbush and Valantasis
(1995)
ATHEISM
A conviction that there is no God or that the existence of an absolute
divine being cannot be proven. Atheism is distinguished from agnosti-
cism, a profession of uncertainty or suspension of belief about the exis-
tence of God. Atheism is often assumed to be a modern notion, but there
is evidence of it in ancient Jewish religion (Ps. 14.1) and Indian Vedic