2025 December - 122 articles
In traditional China, when confronting real-world problems, people might invite masters to perform rites of residential fengshui rectification for a healthy and prosperous life. However, no concrete cases have previously emerged to demonstrate what e...
The aim of this paper is to canvass the possibility of what a sociological study of the Purāṇas might be. That is, whether this be the view(s) of society presented in the Purāṇas or the social conditions which may have produced...
This article examines the theory of miracles formulated by the distinguished Shī’ī-Mu’tazilī theologian, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (965–1044 CE), specifically to contextualize his controversial doctrine of...
This article presents the issue of the Roman procedural rule testis unus testis nullus in the canonical sources regulating ordinary proceedings. The rule on witnesses found its place in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, and was later repeated in the 1983 C...
“After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up” (Acts 15:16 NRSV). This verse, quoting Amos 9:11, is part of James’ speech to the Jerusal...
For millennia, theologians and philosophers debated whether extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) exists in the universe. Some theologians concluded God enjoys creating so much he would not stop at one planet. Others argue God limits his miracles t...
This study explored the question, “How are seminary students’ formation experiences shaped over their first year in seminary?” Research questions and goals were formulated through a collaborative practical theology approach with sem...
The study of the relationships among religion, spirituality and medicine is an important and expanding field of study, especially in the light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which stressed the need to support health care professionals, patients and...
In the mid to late Tang Dynasty, the compilation and reproduction of the tripiṭaka (Tripitaka) was directly intervened and controlled by the authorities, surpassing its own religious function and becoming an important political expression form...
This article explores the use of borrowed chants and melodies to create and affirm sanctity in late medieval martyr saints’ liturgies, with a focus on Jan Hus, St Adalbert, and St Demetrius within the Bohemian and Hungarian liturgical tradition...
The intellectual legacy of the Baṣrān Muʿtazila has had a profound and lasting impact on the development of discussions on Qurʾānic inimitability. Numerous writings have been composed by Baṣrān Muʿtazila on t...
Spirituality is increasingly recognized as a vital aspect of human experience across the lifespan, contributing to positive development, well-being, resilience, and strength, and uniquely facilitating posttraumatic growth (PTG) [...]
Previous studies have shown that religion and spirituality can provide resources to cope with aging and impact the well-being of older adults. However, whether religiosity and well-being are linked depends on how they are measured. Moreover, the size...
This article focuses on the religious processes in Russia over the last fifteen years. The author has two objectives: on the one hand, to describe processes that can be called the second stage of the “religious revival” in contemporary Ru...
Pope Francis articulated the dynamic of an Ecclesiae in exitu, translated as Church that “goes forth”, in the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis Gaudium (Pope Francis 2017, no [...]
This paper explores the function of miracles in classical and modern Islamic theology, focusing particularly on Fethullah Gülen’s interpretation and its relevance to contemporary discussions on revelation, rationality, and science. Traditi...
In the history of Turkish-Islamic culture, every stage of human life—from birth to death—has been ritualized with profound symbolic and spiritual meanings. Turkish religious music has functioned as a fundamental element in these transitio...
This essay examines a ninth-century collection of excerpts from Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars compiled by Heiric of Auxerre (841–c.880), a monk, when he was a student of Abbot Lupus of Ferrières (c.805–c.862). Heiric later...
While extant research has centered religious microaggressions in therapeutic contexts, there has been little research on non-religious populations in psychotherapy, although evidence suggests the presence of negative therapeutic encounters for this m...
In this essay I argue that there are necessarily true synthetic a priori moral propositions whose truth does not depend on the existence of God. To make my case, I appeal to an analogy with arithmetic truths such as 2 + 2 = 4 whose truth does not dep...
John Cassian’s writings reveal an extensive education. In his works, he reflects on his own education, such as a case of mnemotechnical distraction, and also provides education for his readers. But it is also clear that he employs his own rheto...
Violence against women remains one of the most persistent social problems in Türkiye, often reinforced by patriarchal interpretations of religion and cultural traditions. This study investigates the role of religious institutions and values-base...
Recent scholarship has studied the extensive transformation of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) over the past two decades as embodying a form of religious populism that mobilizes civilizational antagonisms. Based on a directe...
In this article, I argue that the climate crisis is a symptom of dissonant eco-subjects and relations that are, in part, produced by Abrahamic religious/spiritual traditions—traditions that function as apparatuses of the ontological rift betwee...
As emotion becomes increasingly digitized, there is a growing risk that computational systems may overreach, shaping or managing affect in ways that undermine human autonomy. This study builds a cross-cultural dialog between Daoist affective philosop...
This paper seeks to study the religious persecution faced by Indian Christians. To address the topic, the researcher interviewed 30 members of the Indian Christian community living in Canada. The participants were asked questions about their familiar...
This article combines computational analysis and historical interpretation to reassess the genre of the Gospel of Mark. Drawing on prototype theory and J. Z. Smith’s comparative method, we model Mark’s linguistic and stylistic profile aga...
The authors examine the emotions contained in 2 Cor 7:5–16. They refer to the nativist approach, in particular to Jaak Panksepp’s theory of primary emotions and Jonathan Haidt’s five foundations of morality. The emotions of Paul, Ti...
Recent Chilean jurisprudence on Indigenous religious freedom has revealed a profound dissonance between the legal categories applied by the courts and the spiritual conceptions of Indigenous peoples. This gap between formal recognition and the effect...
Liu Zhi’s (1664–1734) seminal work The Interpretation of the Five Pillars systematically employs Confucian doctrine to explicate the Five Pillars of Islam. As part of the Ming-Qing cultural movement of “interpreting Islamic scriptur...
This study explores the dynamics of engaged spiritualities within contemporary Buddhist communities in Italy. By employing an ethnographic approach, the research examines how physical space fosters spiritual experiences, facilitates social interactio...
In recent years, a growing number of interpreters propose that the audience in Romans is purely gentile. Problematic for this position is that Jewish persons are greeted by Paul towards the end of the letter in Romans 16:3–16. Respondents appea...
The Yungang Grottoes, carved by imperial commission from the Xianbei 鮮卑 royal family of the Northern Wei Dynasty, represent a pivotal site for understanding Buddhism’s sinicization in China. This study examines the roof ridge deco...
This study critically examines India’s secularism through an interdisciplinary analytical framework that explores the complex intersections of religious dynamics, legal structures, and political contestations. Sites of worship, functioning as s...
This essay examines how Shakespeare’s King Lear and Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia employ fool figures to articulate truths inaccessible through rational discourse. The Fool in King Lear speaks through riddles, songs, and prophecies, revealing un...
This article addresses the most important translation issue in the first philosophic and religious dialogue between Europe and China: is there a Chinese equivalent for the Christian concept of God? We approach the question from the perspective of com...
This study reinterprets Father Rodrigues’s apostasy in Endō Shūsaku’s Silence not as a religious failure, but as a process of Christianity’s “Japanization,” analyzed within the context of postwar Japanese intel...
Both Korea and China have a rich history of Nuo rituals, with those of the Koryŏ Dynasty particularly inheriting the institutional framework established by the Tang Dynasty. However, scholars from both nations have predominantly conducted resear...
This qualitative article is informed by queer theory, and more specifically queer theology, and explores how youth ministers in various denominations care for LGBTQ+ teenagers in their congregations. Seven youth pastors from three major denominationa...
This article explores the Japanese zokushōsai ritual, tracing its Chinese origins and historical development. Zokushō, which means assigned star, refers to the correspondence between an individual’s birth year and one of the seven sta...
The shift away from mission studies to intercultural theology within a number of universities coincides with the emergence of postmodernism. This article explores the extent to which a postmodern outlook pervades intercultural theology and explores w...
This article explores the concept of blood and the Jewish “Blood Community” (Blutgemeinschaft) in Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption. It looks at how this notion is deeply ensconced with literary and philosophic practices connect...
Recent global conflicts have amplified long-standing patterns of religion-related bias and discrimination in the U.S. The continuing war on Gaza has led to bias, hostility, and violence against both Muslims and Jews in the U.S. We present an overview...
The history of women’s education in Portugal predates the implementation of an official system, which was only consistently addressed after 1836 with Passos Manuel’s reform of primary instruction. Long before that, particularly from the E...
The primary goal of my paper is to elaborate a methodology for literary interpretation that points out how a literary narrative prose text interprets its own characters, plots, and existential problems. In this context, one of the main premises of my...
A large part of current sociological studies implicitly or explicitly assumes that religious diversity, non-religion, and secularisation are predominantly a question of European modernity. In a certain sense this assumption is correct, as these pheno...
The name “Kuiji 窺基”, usually attributed to the famous monk Master Ci’en慈恩法師 in the Tang Dynasty, has long been a subject of scholarly debate. Textual and manuscript evidence, however, reveal...
Plainchant has formed a core sacred vocal repertory for Western Christianity for over a millennium, and following a surge of interest in chant as an early music repertory over the twentieth century and beyond, it has accrued particular significance f...
This study examines how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French scholarship constructed the concept of “Taoïsme” and shaped the modern understanding of Daoism. Early European representations, influenced by missionaries and Enlighte...
We argue for the possibility of creating a mutually-meaningful and mutually-consequential collaboration between the Magisteriums of Religion and Science by providing a sample case about how fundamental issues in understanding the ontology of being hu...
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