Religions, Volume 16, Issue 7

The Confucian hermeneutic approach to the Yijing 易經 (or Book of Changes) delineates a transition from the pursuit of divinatory meaning to the cultivation of virtue and action. As an integral part of the Yijing’s semantic framewor...

This paper discusses the role of energy and movement in facilitating experiences of well-being from an anthropological perspective that considers energy as a situated form of knowledge. Drawing on fieldwork among Core Energetics (CE) and 5Rhythms (5R...

In this paper, I question what the relationship between psychology and spirit would mean for mental well-being if the ideas of the human being and the notion of spirit are viewed from the perspective of Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology....

Sacrificial rituals provide a critical perspective for examining the fundamental characteristics and evolutionary trajectory of Chinese civilization. The Functionalist and Annales schools, through theoretical frameworks such as “natural necessi...

This paper discusses the Chart of the Taoist Rituals of Lord Lao, or “chart of Lord Lao” for short, a document drawn up, preserved, and utilized by a local Taoist altar in the border region of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces in southeastern C...

Aside from a few passages addressing animals or the environment, Confucian philosophy appears to lack an environmental ethics perspective. Li Zhehou’s (李澤厚) contemporary work in Confucian philosophy continues this lacuna by...

This paper examines a previously unknown anonymous Hebrew letter inserted into a postwar edition of Shem HaGedolim, found in the library of the Jewish University in Budapest. The letter, composed in Győr in 1947, consists almost entirely of pass...

The film Defiance (2008) explores the true story of the Bielski Partisans in the Second World War, led by the brothers Tuvia and Zus Bielski. While the film is in many ways a conventional action-packed war story of resistance to Nazi domination durin...

Religiosity and political conservatism are often hypothesized to be negatively associated with attitudes towards science. Yet, past research has often failed to distinguish between trust in science versus the acceptance of science as a source of trut...

This study investigates the complex relationship between levels of religiosity and attitudes toward secularization among individuals receiving higher religious education in Türkiye. Secularization is defined as the diminishing influence of relig...

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of...

When designing, implementing and assessing public policies, and, in particular, those affecting the public management of religious diversity, it is increasingly common to include ethnographic approaches from the field of social anthropology and the b...

This article considers the dilemma between advocating for a religion-based environmentalism in the Himalayas and recognising that the different cultural traditions in the region make a uniform religious environmentalism difficult to uphold. Conservat...

This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island through a Hindu eco-spiritual framework to explore how ancient cosmological concepts illuminate contemporary environmental crises. Building upon the legend of Bonduki Sadagar and Manasa Devi, Ghosh...

During the 1970s’ military dictatorships in Chile and Brazil, the Catholic Church took the position of moral opposition to the authoritarian regimes, while in Argentina, the Church sided with the dictatorship. In his pathbreaking book utilizing...

Wittgenstein lists prayer as a distinct language-game, but leaves to others the investigation of its character. Formulating it as “conversation with God” is correct but potentially unhelpful, in part because it presupposes that we can und...

Focusing on the Pārijāta Tree on the summit of Mount Sumeru, the centre of Asian cosmology, this study analyses its depictions and images. These include Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, the most notable depictions in the handscrolls...

Expatriates and missionaries in China played a significant role in the development and transformation of Chinese architecture in the Late Qing period. However, a systematic comparison of their discourses and proposals on Chinese architecture has been...

In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the city of Philadelphia could not exclude a Catholic Social Services agency from the city’s foster care system because it would not work with same-sex couples. Acces...

Through an examination of his core doctrinal points, I argue that Shinran’s conception of Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū) should not be so readily dismissed as one that is only salvific in an otherworldly sense, with no relevance to...

This study explores the role of public theology in addressing contemporary societal challenges, emphasizing ethical dialogue in response to secularization, pluralism, technological transformation, and social and environmental issues. It situates past...

This article discusses caste dynamics within the Punjabi diaspora in Italy—the largest in the EU—by focusing on the case of the Ravidassia community and describing its evolving relations with the local Sikh community. Previous research on...

During the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, China underwent a period of broad-based economic and societal transformation. Among the cultural forces at play, the Christian culture has significantly impacted the trajectory of Chinese history. At the...

The Republican era of China witnessed three primary positions regarding Buddhist monastic robe reform. Taixu advocated preserving canonical forms (法服) for ritual garments while adapting regular robes (常服) to contemporary n...

Many contemporaries considered the crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 as a significant moment in Salvation History. This article investigates how the reception of the Roman conquest of the city (70 CE) contributed to such an understanding. The im...

This article explores the themes of repentance and conversion in Augustine’s Notes on Job. Despite its fragmentary and often improvisational character, Augustine’s theological vision in the Notes presents Job as an exemplum of ongoing con...

This article examines the communication strategies of religious diplomacy used by Pope Francis in his diplomatic relations with the countries of the Middle East from 2013 to 2025. The study identifies and characterizes key elements of papal communica...

Walter Henry Medhurst’s translation of The Shoo King (尚書/書經) represents the first complete English rendering of this classic Chinese text. However, limited attention has been given to how Medhurst navigated the tensi...

The last stop on the Muslim pilgrimage is the Kaʻba. Like all other holy and religious places, the Kaʻba has survived due to the repairs it has undergone since its construction. However, the Kaʻba has been rebuilt at times when it was destroyed for v...

This article examines how religious freedom is enacted and redefined through everyday practices in pluralistic urban settings. Moving beyond the classical notion of negative liberty as non-interference, it explores the social conditions that enable o...

Descola describes western culture, influenced by the Christian worldview, as “naturalist”. However, semiotic and ethnographic research shows that different perspectives about the relationship between humans and animals coexist with mainst...

This study was carried out to determine if macro-level factors (namely, demographic and ecological factors) influence self-perceived social distance and actual social practice with individuals of different faith communities among tertiary students in...

This article examines the religious practices of descendants of Bosnian migrants in Slovenia, a country that stands out as one of the most secular in Europe. While Bosnia and Herzegovina is known for its complex religious pluralism, where religious i...

This paper explores the perspectives of Master Taixu (太虛, 1890–1947) and Master Hsing Yun (星雲, 1927–2023) on the practice of the Buddhist Five Vehicles (五乘), particularly focusing on the relations...

In his passion, Jesus Christ was a victim of the intentional violent acts of others, which were highly likely to have been traumatic for him and those around him. In the Eucharist, traumatizing acts and events are represented through symbolism, narra...

This study investigates the theological function of the contemporary worship song “The Blessing” by addressing the following guiding research question: in what ways does “The Blessing” function as a form of prophetic declarati...

This study examines the distinctive male leadership—comprising procurators, parish priests, and chaplains—of the beguinage of St. Elizabeth in Valenciennes during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Contrary to the majority of beguin...

The image of the vasa domus Dei, repeated on two occasions in the book of the prophet Daniel (Dan 1:2 and 5:4), enables Jerome to formulate an explicit judgement on pagan culture. Drawing extensively on a well-established repertoire, he highlights in...

The subject of this article is the centuries-old religious heritage of Vilnius. The aim of the article is to analyse this heritage and its reflection in the gaze of tourists. In particular, it focuses on selected Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewis...

Technological advancements keep influencing religious landscapes in unpredictable ways. This implies changes at the level of personal spirituality and also at the level of community building and civic engagement across different denominations. In thi...

Daoist robes in the Ming Dynasty literature underwent a marked transformation from exclusive religious vestments to widespread secular attire. Originally confined to Daoist priests and sacred rites, these garments began to appear in everyday work, en...

The term ziran first appears in the Daodejing, yet its precise meaning and attribution remain ambiguous in this book, sparking ongoing scholarly debate. This paper argues that Laozi’s idea of ziran fundamentally pertains to all things and the c...

Why have thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Zhuang Zi, across different cultures, sought something beyond the self? Whether through God, nature, or abstract ideals, the longing for transcendence has been a recurring theme across philosophical and...

A Sanskrit manuscript of the Prajñāpāramitā or Perfection of Wisdom in eight thousand verses, now in the Cambridge University Library, Add.1643, is one of the most ambitiously designed South Asian manuscripts from the eleventh c...

This study provides a comprehensive philological analysis of ten Old Uyghur manuscript fragments of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra (Lotus Sutra) in the Berlin Turfan Collection, while systematically examining all extant Old Uyghur...

Writing from a Reformed perspective, I intend to develop a concept of the duplex iustitia. I will argue that it is possible to affirm that infused righteousness is the sole formal cause of justification, while holding that imputation is its material...

In Jer 15:19, Yhwh calls the prophet Jeremiah “my mouth”. This unique designation highlights his importance and finds support in several other features: Jeremiah is portrayed as the promised successor to Moses (Jer 1:7, 9), opposes all ot...

Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s Suʼāl al-ʻunf (The Question of Violence) is perhaps the most extensive philosophical-religious critique of violence in Islamic ethics in the last decade. He distinguishes betw...

The relationship between Scripture and the Liturgy remains one of the most extensively debated subjects in theological discourse. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, a divided Christendom witnessed the rise...

This study sought to clarify the role of after-death communication in resilience in grief. The primary research question guiding this study was: In what way do experiences of after-death communication inform the cultivation of gratitude and compassio...