Religions, Volume 16, Issue 1

It is understandable if readers of this Special Issue of Religions ask the following: “Why this topic [...]

Creating a conceptual unity is an important starting point for understanding a subject. It is more difficult to find a common definition if the concept in question is ‘religion, religiosity, secularism’, which can vary according to the fi...

This article explores the historical and contemporary evolution of turbat al-ḥusayn, the sacred soil of Karbala, as a central element in shaping Shīʿī identity and ritual practices. From the early Islamic centuries, turbat al-...

This study investigates how religious rhetoric and popular mobilisation contributed to the preservation and propagation of Daoist traditions at the mountain Maoshan 茅山 from late Qing to Republican China (1864–1937), focusing parti...

In recent years, civic space has been deteriorating in many countries in Southeast Asia, and there is an urgent need for a more proactive and mindful civic agency to foster a humane society. Drawing inspiration from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concep...

This paper will delineate Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (EBB) allusions to Hebrew in her writing, both personal and public, and her ambivalent attitude towards the Hebrew language and how it is related to her views on poetry and religious identi...

Research into the unio mystica has revealed what seems to be an area of “real discussion” between scholars of different traditions of mysticism, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although this research serves as a pr...

After his questionable re-election in 2018, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros (NMM) began a campaign to attract the attention of evangelical leaders, apostles, prophets, pastors, and church members to secure their votes for the 2024 ca...

Origen’s theology is fundamentally rooted in the question of whether he upheld the pre-existence of the soul or focused more on the soul’s superiority over the body and its perfection. While inheriting many ideas from Plato, Origen adapte...

Several statements in Paul’s letters have led scholars to conclude that Paul was not Law-observant and that he was at best indifferent, if not antagonistic, to Jewish Law-observance. This article challenges these views by situating supposedly &...

By leveraging 20 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 and 2024 with parish priests and laypeople with an office in the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone (Italy), this paper explores the enduring legacy of the pandemic in terms of digital engageme...

This study examines the identity and characteristics of modern Korean Buddhist education through an analysis of the religious studies lecture notes of a student from the Buddhist Central Seminary (Pulgyo Chungang Hangnim, 佛敎中...

The neglected correlation between willing and believing has prevented an understanding of the acting function of consciousness and the meaning of truth in Blondel’s philosophy of action, leading to its immanentist interpretation. To the extent...

An unknown aspect of Josep Lluís Sert (Barcelona, 1902–1983) is his deep engagement with Christian spirituality, particularly following his American exile. This perspective is beautifully reflected in his religious-themed projects, among...

This article discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Idomeneo: Re di Creta (1781, to a text by Giambattista Varesco) as a Christian parable in the historical context of its genesis. Mozart’s Idomeneo is based on a short episode in Fran&...

The growing importance of the influence of the media on the Catholic faithful calls for an answer to the question of to what extent the church’s activity in initiating messages of faith is subordinated to the logic and pragmatics of the media,...

This research, situated in the geographical and historical context of the Tangut and East Java, uncovers a significant aspect of the evolution of Buddhist art styles. A thangka of the goddess Vajravārāhī found in Khara Khoto, dated to...

This paper adopts a post-comparative approach to explore the concept of harmony in the Zhuangzi, moving beyond traditional comparative frameworks. It examines how Zhuangzian harmony offers a solution to the potential risks of domination that harmony...

By analyzing the musical works of Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, this study examines the theological expressions of secular Jews in the diaspora who retain elements of belief. Drawing on contemporary theories of lived religion and post-secular spiritu...

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to depict, in its main elements, the conception of a Protestant “deconstructive theology”, and, secondly, to present the prophetic aspect of Eastern Christian Orthodox theology in comparison wi...

The notion of impurity is identified in numerous belief systems, ranging from certain religions to nationalisms. Understanding its nature and functioning beyond its concrete objects is therefore a fundamental anthropological question. This work is gr...

This article offers a theological reflection on the leadership discourse of four senior evangelical leaders in the Church of England. The justification for a discourse-led approach within the discipline of practical theology is that discourse is itse...

This article aims to offer Yi Kwangsu’s The Heartless (Mujŏng, 1917), the first modern Korean novel, as an emblem of hybrid religiosity in colonial modernity that sheds light on an ambivalent alterity in the problem of hell in non-Western...

The emergence of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Ghana has historically been characterized by a perceived schism between faith and science. This schism was particularly evident in some Ghanaian Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs), where t...

The discourse on understanding and implementing sustainable development has so far focused primarily on the external aspects, neglecting the internal dimension of people. The main purpose of our paper is to contribute to addressing this research gap....

Faced with the twin challenges of globalization and de-globalization, do religions exercise agency in these trends? In other words, do they give shape to them, or are they rather shaped by them? If the influence is reciprocal, how should the process...

This study addresses how religious affective content in digital media influences epistemic authority, social imaginaries, and religious beliefs. It draws on data from 64 in-depth interviews with Generation Y and Generation Z individuals with a higher...

Looking retrospectively at pre-colonial African marriages and sexualities is critical in the urge to transform the contemporary narratives about marriage and sexuality within African Christian spaces. In Africa, marriage and sexuality had cultural, s...

The emergence of the “Three Caverns” 三洞 thought was a critical step in the formation of medieval Daoism. It proposed the first viable approach to integrating emerging Daoist scriptural traditions, enabling the creation of th...

This essay explores the various types of spaces, primarily montane forested areas, where human access was restricted, either conditionally or entirely, during late imperial times. The range of restrictions always included felling trees, but often als...

This article features an interdisciplinary analysis of the aborted Korean apostolate plan (1566–1571) described by the Jesuit missionary Gaspar Vilela (c. 1525–1572) in a letter dated 3 November 1571. This analysis’s foundation rest...

The impact and influence that a religious tradition can have amongst culturally out-group populations can be quite unexpected and can even “boomerang” back home in equally unpredictable ways. This article explores one example of a Chinese...

The growing body of research on children’s understanding of extraordinary minds has demonstrated that children believe in the persistence of mental functioning after death. However, beyond the continuity of mind, the supernatural conception of...

Preachers cannot assume the mere presence of different cultures or diversity means a congregational context is multicultural. Fostering an environment conducive to multiculturalism can be difficult, partly due to the persisting colonial structures. T...

This study explores nature’s role in the spatial development of the local Roman Catholic Church in Kikwit, a mid-size city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Founded as a mission station by Belgian Jesuits in 1912, the local Church has experi...

This study explores how European botanical science, introduced by foreign missionaries, transformed the intellectual and environmental landscape of premodern China. By examining the transnational exchange of scientific ideas, the paper highlights the...

For over two decades, France’s Muslim population has faced a series of legal measures and hostile public narratives aimed at problematizing their faith. Notable examples include the 2004 national ban on “ostentatious religious symbols&rdq...

The phenomenon conceptualized in this paper as political pentecostalism is described as a post-confessional Christian network of religious leaders and megachurches that has transformed the political scene on a global scale in the last decades. This n...

As we were sketching out aims for our Special Issue, we decided to focus on societal crisis and the role that religious communities (and religion more broadly) may play in bridging the conflicts of our age [...]

Few things can potentially divide (and are dividing) Christians like the LGBTIQ+ issue. Conservative churches argue that sexuality forms an integral part of the human being and, hence, that sexual sin falls in a category of its own in any catalogue o...

The history of religions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been closely tied to the classification of Indigenous religions. However, recent scholarship in the field of religion has increasingly drawn on the work of subaltern and...

Mencius’ “Theory of Embodying Virtue 踐形說” is an important theory that combines moral cultivation and physical practice, emphasizing that virtue is externalized and realized through concrete physical actions. Thi...

During the COVID-19 pandemic; it transpired that there were different influences contributing to the people’s (un)willingness to be vaccinated. In our research, we start from the assumption that religiosity may be one of the reasons for such be...

An activity that is widespread but rarely closely examined in studies of pilgrimage is the enumeration of pilgrims (and related visitors) to shrines and their environs. Such “biopolitics of hosting” can play a significant role in mobilisi...

This study stems from a collection of autobiographical narrations collected during a seminar held in February 2018 involving a small group of adults, representing the three major monotheistic religions: Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam. The seminar wa...

Using Hebrews as a test case, we investigate how an author’s participation in his literary network influences his writing habits. Our theoretical framework is that no author writes in a vacuum: all authors recycle stylistic habits from their li...

In this paper, I focus on the analysis of the concept of the mathematicity of the Universe developed by Heller and his colleagues from the Kraków School of Philosophy in Science [KSPS]. For the representatives of this School, the mathematicity...

The canonical limitations on stūpa burial for ordinary monks and prohibitions on non-Buddhist stūpas underwent significant changes in medieval China. A key question emerges when considering how the use of stūpas expanded beyond honorin...

As a contribution to the reflection on whether classic Greek philosophy gave priority either to Necessity and the Fatum or to freedom, this paper endeavors to prove three theses: (1) according to Aristotle, God caused the being of the world by an act...

This article aims to formulate a philosophical problem that is grounded upon the Pan-Abrahamic nature of early Islam, focusing on the implications that this has for understanding the identity of the contemporary Islamic community. This philosophical...