2021 March - 80 articles
This article makes the case that Vīraśaivism emerged in direct textual continuity with the tantric traditions of the Śaiva Age. In academic practice up through the present day, the study of Śaivism, through Sanskrit sources, and bhakti Hinduism, thro...
In this article, I study in depth the first vita of the Franciscan Tertiary abbess Juana de la Cruz (Vida y fin de la bienaventurada virgen sancta Juana de la Cruz, written c. 1534), examining it as a chronicle that narrativizes the origins and refor...
This article explores transformations in the worship of popular goddess Mazu as a result of (religious) tourism. In particular, it focuses on the role of transnational tourism in the invention of tradition, folklorization, and commodification of the...
This paper is an inquiry into a contemporary heavy metal band from Sweden called Ghost. Ghost released its first studio album in 2010 and, while there is some discussion as to what their genre is exactly, they immediately became a rising star in the...
This article brings to light several examples of the hagiographic plays staged in Italy during the 1950s and early 1960s in parishes, schools, and oratories. The article begins with a brief introduction to the continued tradition of staging the lives...
In non-pandemic times adults with profound memory loss (PML) are isolated by virtue of the effects of their decline. The marginalization of this cohort has been greatly exacerbated by the present pandemic. Individuals and their caretakers are not see...
Each individual constructs his own private worldview using elements from established worldview traditions. The biographical character of this formation makes this the individual’s “Unique Worldview Construction” (UWC). The purpose of this theoretical...
This article attempts to reframe the traditional account of the problem of evil for God’s existence. The philosophical debates about the problem of evil for the existence of God within the traditional framework do not exhaust the available options fo...
It is generally perceived that Malays—who are predominantly Muslims—are comparable with the notion of politeness, aligned with moral axioms, and behave in ways copiously guided by religion. Casual sex and other forms of sexual “deviance” are typicall...
In this article, we trace the syncretic origins and development of the new religious movement centered on the Mexican folk saint of death, Santa Muerte. We explore how she was born of the syncretic association of the Spanish Catholic Grim Reapress an...
This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast...
Societies are undergoing an intensive process of transformation, and the role that religion plays in guiding such rapid changes remains underexplored. In recent decades, postmodern discourse has hindered the attractiveness of involvement in religious...
Artificial intelligence innovations, such as chatbots and specialized education suggestion tools, provide potential interactive and on-demand pedagogical engagement between non-Christians and Christians with Christianity. However, there is little emp...
Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the related restrictive measures, many of our (daily) rituals have changed [...]
As is also the case in other parts of the world, Salafi interpretations of Islam appear to be on the rise in Sweden, especially among young people turning to Islam. One of the most active and visible missionising Salafi organisations in Sweden is cal...
By contextualizing the ways gestures are used and interpreted in tantric practice and philosophy, this paper explores the cultural and cognitive domains of corporeal expression. Initiating the conversation with descriptions of basic dance gestures an...
As black holes gravitationally draw matter toward their event horizons, a high proportion of this matter is converted into energy. Radiation from this conversion process is deadly for advanced life. The apparent incompatibility of black holes with ad...
Mainstream works on refugees and religion have underlined the value that religion provides to émigrés [...]
This article explores the way the character Athelstan serves as a narrative focal point in the popular television series Vikings. Using this series as its main case study, it addresses the question of the ways in which the character functions as a sy...
This article outlines the missionary methods of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, his interaction with Nahua communities in central Mexico, and the production of a text called the Florentine Codex. This article argues that the philosophical probl...
The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), or in everyday notion, sexual dissatisfaction, among Malay women remains high, denoting that there are several influences shaping their experience of sex within marriage. This qualitative study ident...
Some of the earliest references to ritual lamentation or keening in the early Irish sources are found in the penitential handbooks dated to around the seventh and eighth centuries. In previous scholarship, these passages have commonly been interprete...
The Norwegian National Day (17 May, also referred to as Constitution Day) stands out as one of the most popular National Day celebrations in Europe. According to surveys, around seven out of every 10 Norwegians take part in a public celebration durin...
The scholarship on the history of Protestant missions to Puerto Rico after the Spanish American War of 1898 emphasizes the Americanizing tendencies of the missionaries in the construction of the new Puerto Rican. There is no doubt that the main missi...
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a faith scale for young children. Data were collected from 424 young children, who had not yet entered elementary school, with their parents rating their faith level. Sixty-five preliminary questio...
Since 2011, there has been a growing wave of individuals leaving Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and many of them have opted for documented publicity by writing autobiographies narrating their whole journey. This article explores the ideological componen...
This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the...
Both theism and atheism assume that God permits evil. But neither theism nor atheism make this assumption with due attention to what I call, following Wittgenstein, the grammar of the term ‘permission’. When this grammar is examined, it becomes clear...
When the City of the Name of God of Macao marked 400 years of Portuguese administration in 1956, the Catholic community’s participation was marked by a wide range of activities that included liturgical celebrations, public processions and other devot...
Though several powerful explorations of modern evangelical influence in American politics and culture have appeared in recent years (many of which illumine the seeming complications of evangelical influence in the Trump era), there is more work that...
In our paper, we put forward an argument for the existence of God that starts with a description of the goal of science. The fact that science approximates perfect knowledge opens the problem of its status. We proceed to three resolutions of the prob...
In this paper, I investigate the phenomenology of awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism. In this tradition, to awaken is to ‘see your true nature’. In particular, the two aspects of awakening are: (1) seeing that the nature of one’s self or mind is empty...
The essence of the Catholic Church implemented in the modern world is of crucial importance for the understanding its mission towards the state, especially when developing appropriate civil attitudes. One sources of cognition is the historical reflec...
Evidence has shown that interreligious dialogue is one of the paths to build bridges among diverse cultural and religious communities that otherwise would be in conflict. Some literature reflects, from a normative standpoint, on how interreligious di...
The aims of this paper are to analyze the missionary endeavors of the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary in Taiwan, George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901), as described in From Far Formosa: The Islands, Its People and Missions, and to explore how Chris...
Christian congregations and denominations are increasingly struggling with questions of LGBTQ+ inclusion. The questions of hiring ministers who are LGBTQ+ persons, including LGBTQ+ persons in leadership, and conducting LGBTQ+ marriages are just a few...
This paper, based on 355 survey responses from secondary Religious Education (RE) teachers in England (n = 238) and Scotland (n = 117), explores the background of these educators in terms of qualifications, personal (a)theistic belief, and religion....
The four most important King Kong films (1933, 1976, 2005, and 2017) contain religious sentiments that are related to the numinous and mysterious fear of Nature and death that gives meaning to life, and to the institutionalization of society. In this...
Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? (2019) draws attention to the importance of ethical assumptions in ‘logical’ arguments from evil (LAfEs) to the effect that the existence of (certain types) of evil is incompatible with the existence of a Go...
Stephen Darwall has developed an account of moral obligations as grounded in “second-personal reasons,” which was developed in conversation with early modern “theological voluntarists” who were divine command theorists. For Darwall, morality does not...
In this article, I consider how an integration of Dalit theology and Indian Christian history could help Dalit theologians in their efforts to connect more deeply with the lived realities of today’s Dalit Christians. Drawing from the foundational wor...
Understanding Zen views on language and experience from a philosophical hermeneutical point of view means conceiving such an understanding as a merging of horizons. We have to explicate both the modern Western secular horizon and the medieval Japanes...
This paper explores how local, lived religion has creatively linked spiritual insights and popular devotions in ecologically valuable settings helping generate and preserve the rich Spanish biocultural heritage. Focusing on a selection of Sacred Natu...
The theory of conservation of resources (COR) can be used for searching mechanisms which explain spiritual changes caused by trauma. The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between distribution of personal resources and spiritual change...
In this paper, we propose that unreflective use of the term social entrepreneurship may perpetuate the idea that “entrepreneurship” is largely a financial and private reality and that this view of entrepreneurship will eventually trivialize or perhap...
This article examines the liturgical life of the “Underground” Greek Catholic Church through the example of the life of the prominent priest, writer and poet, Roman Bakhtalovskyy, CSsR. After 1946, the Soviet government in Ukraine prohibited the acti...
This article explores a Buddhist text in which numbers set the very stakes for liberation. In 1404, Ngor chen Kun dga’ bzang po (1382–1456), who was to become one of the most esteemed tantric commentators of the Tibetan Sakya tradition, composed his...
During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotlan...
This article is about the way that the notion of religion is understood and used in election manifestos of populist and nationalist right-wing political parties in Germany and the Netherlands between 2002 and 2021. In order to pursue such enquiry, a...
Since the 2000s, Japanese internet media as well as mass media, including magazines, television and newspapers, have promoted the concept of a “power spot” as part of the spirituality movement in the country. This emerging social environment for the...
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