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Religions, Volume 16, Issue 8

2025 August - 142 articles

Cover Story: John Marco Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) makes the audacious claim that Christianity began as a sacred mushroom cult.  This book, ridiculed by scholars when it was published, has a newfound popularity.  Some of the book’s adherents appeal to Allegro’s status as a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls to give his mushroom cult thesis legitimacy.  This article examines his scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls and why his reputation in that field today is at best mixed.  It is argued that Allegro’s Sacred Mushroom is a product of conspiratorial ideation and that the dramatic rise in belief in conspiracy theories in contemporary culture is more important for understanding Allegro’s popularity than the quality of his scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls. View this paper
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Articles (142)

  • Article
  • Open Access
1,864 Views
14 Pages

21 August 2025

Alongside historical narratives, there exists, in Old Kalmyk literature, a lesser-known corpus of travel writing that documents pilgrimages to major religious and political centers such as China, Tibet, and Mongolia. One notable and extant example of...

(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,971 Views
18 Pages

21 August 2025

The reason I chose this particular theme is because I considered that Plotinus’ One cannot fully satisfy the demand for an ultimate principle. This becomes evident when we study the Areopagite and even more so Damascius, whose notion of the ult...

  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
10,151 Views
21 Pages

21 August 2025

This study responds to the increasing call for thoughtful theological and ethical engagement with Artificial Intelligence (AI) by examining the role of personal theological reflection using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) content in Cathol...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spirituality in Action: Perspectives on New Evangelization)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,101 Views
20 Pages

21 August 2025

Some of Spain’s greatest humanists—Juan Luis Vives, Antonio de Nebrija, Juan de Ávila, Luis de León, and Benito Arias Montano—were from a converso background. Recent scholarship suggests that two of the three most infl...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6,572 Views
13 Pages

20 August 2025

The framing of the Hebrew Bible in the Mesopotamian–Babylonian landscape is evident in two of its central themes. First, Abraham, the forefather of the Hebrews, is presented as a native of Ur in south Mesopotamia, whence he left for Harran and...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible and Ancient Mesopotamia)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,899 Views
15 Pages

20 August 2025

The modern debate on the maqāṣid has become very diverse and includes numerous suggestions on how the maqāṣid are supposed to reform Muslim (legal) thought. For an illustration of this diversity, the approaches of two very diffe...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,642 Views
18 Pages

20 August 2025

Drawing upon a meticulous delineation of pure consciousness’s fundamental and necessary features—including unstructuredness, maximal simplicity, selflessness, awareness as such, zero-perspective, and the absence of specific phenomenal qua...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Psychedelics and Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
3,918 Views
34 Pages

20 August 2025

The Reformed Church in Hungary is a Reformed Protestant church in terms of its confession of faith, in which both adjectives, Reformed and Protestant, are emphasized. From this formulation follows the critique and firm rejection of a form of organiza...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ecclesiology in Context: Exploring the Historical, Cultural, and Theological Dimensions of the Church)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,015 Views
23 Pages

20 August 2025

The translations of the Sanskrit term “ojas (apahṛ)” in various Chinese versions of the Bhaiṣajyaguru Sūtra are as follows: The Guanding Sūtra (Sūtra on Abhiṣeka) avoided translating “ojas” ind...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Languages and Buddhist Texts: Translation, Transmission, and Interpretation Across Traditions)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,318 Views
21 Pages

19 August 2025

Linn Tonstad’s paper, ‘(Un)wise Theologians’, identifies a theological approach that puts pressure on its ability to handle its materiality sufficiently in a number of ways. However, following the trajectory of Tonstad’s disco...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature, Functions and Contexts of Christian Doctrine)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
3,059 Views
19 Pages

19 August 2025

This article explores the literary significance of the bell as an important image in the poetry of Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), a renowned modern Chinese Buddhist reformer and poet–monk. While the bell has long-held symbolic meanin...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts, Spirituality, and Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,172 Views
20 Pages

19 August 2025

This essay explores the philosophical core of Susan Taubes’ thought through her diasporic ontology—a philosophy of becoming that does not derive from statics but precedes and reconfigures them. Instead of treating exile as loss or as a de...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rabbinic Thought between Philosophy and Literature)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,162 Views
13 Pages

19 August 2025

The study of the relationship between religion and newspapers embodies a well-established research field. However, relatively few studies focus on interfaith dialogue in the press. Against this backdrop, important questions about the manifestations a...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Governance of Interreligious Dialogue and Freedom of/from Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,593 Views
25 Pages

19 August 2025

The realization of universal peace is a central teaching of the Bahá’í Faith and permeates individual and collective Bahá’í practice. This article explores this teaching through the lens of culture as a constru...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bahá’í Faith: Doctrinal and Historical Explorations—Part 2)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,528 Views
13 Pages

19 August 2025

One of the harder lessons offered by history is that only the first half of the revolution seems worth carrying out. This study examines how, contra Christianity, which spells out the fate of revolution in its entirety, Gnosticism stands as a symbol...

(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,259 Views
26 Pages

Beyond Utility: The Impact of Religiosity and Calling on AI Adoption in Education

  • Mátyás Turós,
  • Ilona Pajtókné Tari,
  • Enikő Szőke-Milinte,
  • Rita Rubovszky and ,
  • Klára Soltész-Várhelyi,
  • Viktor Zsódi and
  • Zoltán Szűts
  • + 2 authors+ 0 author

19 August 2025

The social integration of artificial intelligence (AI) poses fundamental challenges to value-driven domains such as education, where the adoption of new technologies raises not merely technical but also deeply rooted ethical and identity-related ques...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Communities and Artificial Intelligence)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,964 Views
17 Pages

19 August 2025

This paper engages with James Sterba’s arguments from an Islamic theological perspective, particularly drawing on the Mu‘tazilite tradition. It focuses on three central themes: (1) the position of God in the face of horrendous evils, (2)...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,920 Views
18 Pages

18 August 2025

The spiritual has always been an important component in literary expression and religious experience, particularly in the context of cross-cultural exchange. Although Lin Yutang’s literary creation has been well received, the relationship betwe...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spirituality in Action: Perspectives on New Evangelization)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,766 Views
33 Pages

18 August 2025

Tibetan Buddhist ritualists devote immense energy to constructing specialized material items employed during practical rites. These material objects, such as gtor ma (ritual offering cakes), glud (dough effigies), and so forth, serve as conduits betw...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materiality and Private Rituals in Tibetan and Himalayan Cultures)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,411 Views
11 Pages

18 August 2025

This paper starts from the assumption that the human individual and its concomitant, the human body, are conceivably idols of secularism. There is a certain irony, perhaps an irony shared with all idols, that such idolatry is so close to, and yet so...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Theologies of Culture)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
1,917 Views
15 Pages

18 August 2025

In the Kingdom of Hungary, the process of secularization started rather late. After 1867, the country was led by liberal political forces but, despite this, the separation of church and state continued for a long time. Some ecclesiastical dignitaries...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ecclesiology in Context: Exploring the Historical, Cultural, and Theological Dimensions of the Church)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,830 Views
26 Pages

18 August 2025

The article examines how discourses of race and ancestry interact with both everyday life and the Vodun religion in southern Benin. The researcher uses ethnographic methods to illuminate how discourses of race are unfolding within the racially homoge...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Race, Religion, and Nationalism in the 21st Century)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,698 Views
16 Pages

16 August 2025

This study employs social network analysis to illuminate the intricate relationships within Daoist exorcism rituals from the Southern Song to the Yuan dynasty, as documented in two pivotal compilations: Pearls Left Behind from the Sea of Ritual (Faha...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2,031 Views
14 Pages

16 August 2025

In general, the justification for the divine punishment in the Christian cosmos hinges on the notion of free will. Despite doctrinal complexities involving sin, grace, and divine sovereignty, individuals are held morally responsible for choosing evil...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue On the Problem of Hell: Comparative Historical and Philosophical Perspectives)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7,223 Views
16 Pages

16 August 2025

The question of whether a God is needed to justify or ground moral facts is mooted by the fact that true moral facts exist in all possible universes that contain rational agents. This can be demonstrated in three stages. First, it is necessarily the...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,072 Views
15 Pages

16 August 2025

This essay develops a distinct moral argument for the reasonableness of believing in God (conceived as a perfectly good creator) inspired by the pragmatic argument for “the religious hypothesis” advanced by William James in “The Wil...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,292 Views
21 Pages

16 August 2025

The question of the relationship between the Armenian and Byzantine churches has always interested researchers, often becoming a problem of study. Since the chosen problem concerns not only the mentioned churches but was also a fierce problem of the...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Interreligious Dialogue and Conflict)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,739 Views
8 Pages

16 August 2025

This essay explores the question: can we have an objective ethics without God? This question is raised by James Sterba, who argues in the affirmative. As an atheistic ethicist, Sterba is motivated to maintain an objective morality that is not based i...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,888 Views
18 Pages

16 August 2025

As interactions between Eastern and Western religions increase, “interreligious dialogue (IRD)” has become more prevalent. This study investigates the evolving religious landscape of South Korea, shaped by the growing presence of “r...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conflict and Coexistence in Korea)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
1,646 Views
11 Pages

15 August 2025

This study explored the perceptions of early career teachers (ECTs) regarding the teaching of Religious Education in Catholic schools in Western Australia. The study used a constructivist epistemology and an interpretivist theoretical perspective to...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Engaging Religious Plurality within Australian and New Zealand Catholic Schools: Particularity in Dialogue with Diversity)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,244 Views
19 Pages

15 August 2025

Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of religion is crucial for explaining cultural and geopolitical transformations. Based on multi-source religious demographic data, this study analyzes the spatio-temporal dynamics of global Catholicism after...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Catholicism)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,243 Views
17 Pages

A Critique of the Neo-Platonist Theory of Moral Value

  • Kai Michael Büttner and
  • David Benjamin Dolby

15 August 2025

Divine Command Theory holds that what is morally right is what is commanded by God. This view faces a form of the Euthyphro dilemma: either God commands actions because they are right, in which case moral standards are independent of God, or actions...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,472 Views
10 Pages

14 August 2025

This essay defends the position that ethics must be grounded in God, where the notion of ‘God’ is understood as a transcendental source of normativity, though not necessarily a personal being who ‘commands’ moral behavior. The...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Is an Ethics without God Possible?)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1,744 Views
17 Pages

14 August 2025

The primary focus of this article is on the deconstruction of language within the context of glossolalia and the Theatre of the Absurd. Following World War II, the expression of absurdity in the literature and theatre gave rise to the Theatre of the...

(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)
  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
7,340 Views
15 Pages

14 August 2025

This article critically analyses the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)—specifically, the DALL·E system within the ChatGPT-4o environment—for creating visualisations of biblical scenes for teaching purposes. As part...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Communities and Artificial Intelligence)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6,660 Views
15 Pages

14 August 2025

The myth that linked Pentecostal apathy towards public and civil engagement with the contradiction between otherworldliness and this-worldliness is being challenged. This falsity presented as a fact was connected to the idea that Pentecostal eschatol...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Voices in Contemporary and Historical Theology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,883 Views
25 Pages

13 August 2025

This paper examines how early Confucianism reinterpreted sacrificial rites and reconstructed the relationship between humans and spirits through the lens of qing (情, sentiment). Traditional scholarship often views the Confucian reinterpretatio...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Multiple Images and Forms of Classical Confucian and Daoist Ethics for Living)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,571 Views
24 Pages

13 August 2025

This article examines the Christological implications of Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After exploring the biblical significance of the heart, it provides an overview of the development of Sacred Heart devotion in Catholic history....

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Christology: Christian Writings and the Reflections of Theologians)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,308 Views
22 Pages

13 August 2025

The early encounters between Buddhism and Christianity in China were primarily characterized by mutual exclusivity and competition. By the Republic of China era, both traditions faced mounting pressures—Buddhism under the impact of modernizatio...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Otherness-Reception and Self-Rediscovery in the Dialogue and Comparative Study of Christianity and Buddhism)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
2,934 Views
23 Pages

12 August 2025

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later remarks on religious belief (from around the mid-1930s onwards) have often been and continue to be interpreted in connection with other terms he used in his later philosophy. The most common interpretations argue tha...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Work on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion)
  • Review
  • Open Access
1,797 Views
15 Pages

12 August 2025

Psychology as an empirical science has targeted human cognition for more than a century. Typically, the focus of these investigations was on isolated mental processes, which were studied in individual participants in confined laboratory settings. The...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Consciousness between Science and Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,214 Views
18 Pages

12 August 2025

The evolution of the theory of dependent origination in sectarian Buddhism (部派佛教) follows two logical threads: one is the debate on the ontological nature of dharmas, which drove the shift towards a “non-substantiali...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1,502 Views
18 Pages

12 August 2025

M. O’C. Drury and Norman Malcolm both report that Wittgenstein gave them copies of Samuel Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations, a book that he said he valued highly. Given that Wittgenstein’s commentators have mined the ideas of other...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Work on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
1,407 Views
18 Pages

12 August 2025

Wittgenstein’s philosophy has influenced the philosophy of religion quite considerably. This is hardly due to his rather few remarks on religion. Instead, Wittgenstein’s influence seems to be connected to a certain, without doubt common,...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Work on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3,069 Views
13 Pages

12 August 2025

Federalism is a contemporary principle of constitutional organization, rooted mainly in Western constitutional traditions. It entails a system in which individual constituent states retain limited sovereignty and autonomy, while collectively forming...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
3,431 Views
24 Pages

12 August 2025

In most periods of the Tang Dynasty, central monastic officials were typically appointed from among government officials, while Buddhist monks could only serve as the Three Monastic Superintendents (sangang 三綱) in the Buddhist state mon...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Microcosm Holds Mountains and Seas: The Sinicization of Buddhism in ‘Multi-Layered Contextualization’ from Local to Global History)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,894 Views
20 Pages

12 August 2025

This article offers a theistically conscious biocentric environmental ethic that builds upon the scaffolding of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic with a synthesis of biocentric individualism, deep ecology, and Vaiṣṇava theology. The practic...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Creativity and Participatory Cosmologies: Theological Perspectives on Science, Technology, and the Future of Humanity)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,297 Views
18 Pages

12 August 2025

This article examines the adaptive Sufi praxis of Ken‘ān Rifā‘ī (1867–1950) in early 20th-century Istanbul through the lens of practical theology. Navigating the political, social, and legal transformations of the lat...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Islamic Practical Theology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,798 Views
14 Pages

11 August 2025

The significance of forgetting in the Zhuangzi and its methodological significance for living a good life in particular has long been recognized by Zhuangzian scholars. However, with regard to what is really meant by forgetting, scholars are still fa...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soteriological and Ethical Dimensions of Forgetting in Asian Thought)
  • Article
  • Open Access
982 Views
14 Pages

11 August 2025

This paper explores philosophical issues of personal identity and its connection to forgetting through the famed Tibetan Buddhist thinker Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). Tsongkhapa, in turn, follows the Middle Way (madhyamaka) tradition of Nāg...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soteriological and Ethical Dimensions of Forgetting in Asian Thought)

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Religions - ISSN 2077-1444