ABSTRACT
Religions provide myths, symbols, and narratives that express desires for transcendence, redemption, salvation, liberation, and wholeness, but which also enforce inequalities, oppression, separation, and hierarchies. The relations between profoundly transformative and deeply conservative aspects of any religion play themselves out at the local level, but often with references to values that are perceived as unchanging and divinely ordained (Wiesner-Hanks, 2005: 9, emphasis added).
