Cross-Religious Encounters in East Asian Thought: Transcendence, Practice, and Shared Intellectual Horizons

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Religions, titled “Cross-Religious Encounters in East Asian Thought: Transcendence, Practice, and Shared Intellectual Horizons.” This Special Issue seeks to advance scholarly discussions on how religious traditions in East Asia—particularly Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—have historically interacted, overlapped, and mutually transformed one another beyond rigid doctrinal boundaries.

In recent decades, scholars of religion and philosophy have increasingly questioned the applicability of modern, Western-derived categories such as “religion,” “philosophy,” and “ethics” to premodern East Asian intellectual traditions. At the same time, there has been growing interest in cross-traditional and comparative approaches that highlight shared vocabularies of transcendence, moral cultivation, and cosmological order. Concepts such as Heaven (天), Dao (道), and Shangdi (上帝), as well as practices of self-cultivation and moral discipline, often functioned as common yet contested frameworks across different traditions in China, Korea, and Japan. These dynamics invite renewed examination from historical, comparative, and theoretical perspectives.

This Special Issue aims to examine cross-religious encounters in East Asian thought by focusing on how religious boundaries themselves were historically negotiated, redefined, and at times blurred. Rather than presupposing fixed and isolated traditions, the Issue foregrounds moments of interaction, appropriation, and reinterpretation that shaped East Asian intellectual and religious landscapes. In doing so, it aligns closely with the scope of Religions, which encourages interdisciplinary and comparative research on religious ideas, practices, and conceptual frameworks across cultures and historical periods.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Historical transformations of concepts of transcendence such as Heaven, Dao, and Shangdi across traditions;
• Cross-traditional practices of self-cultivation, moral discipline, and lived religiosity;
• Confucian–Buddhist–Daoist interactions in China, Korea, and Japan;
• The formation and reinterpretation of religious and philosophical vocabularies in East Asia;
• Critical reassessments of modern categories such as “religion,” “philosophy,” and “ethics” in East Asian contexts;
• Comparative and transregional approaches to East Asian religious and intellectual history.

We hope that this Special Issue will stimulate new research that rethinks East Asian religious traditions not as isolated systems but as dynamically interconnected fields of thought and practice, thereby contributing to broader theoretical debates in religious studies and intellectual history.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms. Amity Zhang (amity.zhang@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Byeongdae Bae
Prof. Dr. Minseok Kwak
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• East Asian thought
• cross-religious encounters
• transcendence
• self-cultivation
• Confucianism
• Buddhism
• Daoism
• comparative and cross-religious studies
• intellectual history