Search Results (67)

This article examines an epigraphic strategy deployed by the Ming court (1368–1644) in the aftermath of the 1556 Jiajing earthquake. Focusing on two stelae from Shanxi, one dedicated to the Jiao-Long Spirit and the other to Empress Nüwa, it proposes “epigraphic layering” to describe the purposeful division of roles between a stele’s faces. Each stele’s front carries an authoritative imperial proclamation admonishing the deity, while the back envoys prayer that appeases the deity and consoles the populace. By splitting imperial command and contrition between the two faces, the Ming court could assert cosmic order while simultaneously expressing penitence during the crisis. This dual-voice inscription technique was a creative adaptation of established ritual epigraphy to extraordinary circumstances. The study sheds new light on late imperial Chinese ritual practice, epigraphic communication, and state–temple relations, demonstrating how this dual-voice strategy helped navigate tensions between imperial authority and local faith. Full article

Coming from the “end of the world”, from the south of the planet, Pope Francis first challenged global consciousness with his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, then turned the attention of the Church and people of good will to the Amazon region. The convening of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region was an initiative deeply attuned to the climate crisis, one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Faithful to the Second Vatican Council and the spirituality of liberation, Francis invites the whole world to admire and recognize the Amazon region as a sacred mystery as well as to heed the voices of its poor communities, precisely those whose resistance has preserved the rainforest. Using an exploratory bibliographical methodology, this article aims to contribute to the reflection on how 21st-century Liberation Theology might address challenges, with an emphasis on the ecological crisis central to Pope Francis’s magisterium, particularly articulated in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia: To the People of God and to All Persons of Good Will. As a result, we tried to demonstrate that Francis, in Querida Amazonia, proposes that a Church with an Amazonian face, located in the heart of Latin America, without forgetting the feminine protagonism, should be an inspiration for integral conversion on the planet. Full article

John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies has often been interpreted as a lament for the decline of institutional Christianity in twentieth-century America. Instead, in this essay, it is argued that the novel dramatizes the metamorphosis of the sacred across four generations of the Wilmot family. Based on Updike’s conviction that divine presence endures beyond the walls of the church and through literary and cultural analysis grounded in sociological theory, the narrative shows that what appears to be the retreat of institutional religion is in fact a return to its primal ground in private faith. From Clarence’s crisis of belief to Teddy’s communal–private devotion, Essie’s narcissistic yet spiritualized stardom, and Clark’s restless searching, the novel traces diverse expressions of private religion in modern life. Film, above all, emerges as the communicative form that replaces the authority once vested in institutional churches, becoming the most pervasive medium through which transcendence is imagined and experienced. Far from depicting religion’s disappearance, Updike presents its reconfiguration into subtler and more pervasive forms of grace. In doing so, In the Beauty of the Lilies becomes a literary meditation on how religious meaning persists, adapts, and finds new representatives in a modern, media-saturated world. Full article

This study examines the influence of religious socialization on the crises of faith among Turkish youth in Türkiye. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 20 participants, it adopts a process-oriented approach, conceptualizing a crisis of faith not merely as an abrupt disruption but as a gradual process shaped by the complex and sometimes conflicting dynamics within religious socialization. Young individuals are not simply passive agents in the traditionally one-way transmission of faith; instead, they become more autonomous and dynamic as they encounter negative attitudes and behaviors, often leading to a crisis of faith. The analysis highlights the roles of authoritarian parenting, perceived inconsistencies in religious teachings, peer and social media influence, and gender inequalities within patriarchal contexts. The findings suggest that while religious socialization provides an initial framework for faith, it also poses challenges that prompt Turkish youth to re-evaluate or distance themselves critically from traditional religion. Full article

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 of a dichotomy between Scripture and Liturgy, as well as between the Word and the Sacrament. This dichotomy, however, is absent from the patristic thought, which perceives the unity and complementarity between Scripture and Liturgy, owing to their shared belonging to the one life of the Church—broadly defined as Tradition—and to the way they are understood and experienced as interconnected modes through which the singular Mystery of Jesus Christ is communicated to the faithful. The present study aims to demonstrate this unity by drawing on a substantial body of patristic writings, highlighting the fact that the life of the Church is one and is lived both as the rule of faith and the rule of prayer, and that through it, one and the same Christ communicates Himself to the faithful both through the Word and through the Holy Sacraments. For the Church Fathers, the Christian faith is not an abstract doctrine about Christ, but a real and personal encounter and communion with Him in the life of the Church. This patristic approach may offer a starting point for contemporary Christianity in addressing the current liturgical crisis and in rethinking and renewing future ecumenical dialogue. Such renewal presupposes a movement beyond secular formalism and nominalism, which have fostered excessive conceptualization and an antithetical view of Scripture and Liturgy, Word and Sacrament. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only triggered a global health crisis but also profoundly disrupted the psychological well-being of older adults, leading to heightened levels of burnout, uncertainty, and anxiety about the future. During times of crisis, intrinsic religious motivation may offer a spiritual grounding that fosters hope, a critical internal resource in sustaining emotional balance. This study investigates the mediating role of hope in the relationship between intrinsic religious motivation, pandemic-related burnout, and future anxiety among Turkish older adults. A total of 427 participants (M_age = 66.98, SD = 7.23) were recruited using a cross-sectional design. Participants completed validated measures of intrinsic religiosity, dispositional hope, pandemic burnout, and future anxiety. Structural equation modeling revealed that intrinsic religious motivation positively predicted hope and negatively predicted both burnout and future anxiety. Moreover, hope significantly mediated the relationship between intrinsic religious motivation and both outcome variables. These findings suggest that religious meaning-making may enhance psychological resilience by promoting hope, thereby mitigating the mental health burden during large-scale crises. The study enhances understanding of culturally embedded support mechanisms and highlights the role of faith-based inner resources, such as intrinsic religious motivation and hope, in fostering resilience among older adults during uncertainty and crisis. Full article

Many pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers are isolated and under-connected to communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their social change work, helping them to ground their organizing in their faith lives. There is a crisis of leadership development and training. This paper argues for a rethinking of leadership development as grounded in conceptions of relational power, value-based organizing, and deep solidarity. Leaders, it is often said, are those who have followers. This definition takes for granted models of leadership that were first developed in the 1940s in Alinsky-style networks and adapted in the 1980s and 1990s in the neo-Alinskyite movement. This article extends this approach to home in on what leadership development amounts to in broad-based community organizing so as to help congregations and faith leaders see how community organizing can be an enactment and expression of their faith lives. Organizing strategies of leadership development can sit at the heart of congregational development. Developing leaders is about transformative critical reflection on premises of meaning schema. Leadership development is connected to leaders developing in the sense of exploring new ways of seeing the world and acting on them. By refocusing the organizing strategy of leadership development around relational power and deep solidarity, pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers can build stronger institutions. Full article

From the Christian heartland of Europe emerged the techno-scientific culture borne from the Enlightenment movement. Prior to this cultural outlook that severed culture from its foundational roots in religion, it was the case that religion was not only a crucial agent in the shaping of culture, but in many ways, the heart of culture. With secular rationality and its underscoring of the techno-scientific mindset, a growing privatization of religion has become the acceptable ethos of contemporary Western culture. Secularism, largely understood in terms of a naked public sphere, is increasingly perceived to be the only form of rationality that can guarantee societal cohesion and the democratic spirit. But as Ratzinger pointed out in his 1993 Hong Kong Address to the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops Conferences of Asia, this Western understanding of culture that is governed by a hermeneutic of suspicion towards religion, and which seeks to replace the heart of culture with autonomous reason a la Kant, ends up leaving culture in a winter land of existential frostiness. By depriving culture of its roots in the transcendental dimensions of human experience, much of the wisdom and riches that have been accumulated in the pre-techno-scientific cultures—regarding fundamental questions such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What happens when I die?”, “Does life make sense?”, “Do I have a destiny?” and more—are now left to the manufactured logic of the techno-scientific with its anthropological reductionism that fails to offer the big picture of the cultural outlook that did not construe the scientific and the technological as antithetical to religion. This essay seeks to unpack the arguments Ratzinger made in this Address at Hong Kong, with the hope that this theological exegesis of the Hong Kong lecture could once again offer an invitation to the world of the techno-scientific, the world of secular rationality, to open up to the world of faith, so that together, the breadth and depth of the human culture would once again flourish in its greatness. Full article

In this article, I explore the power and purpose of a public theology of menopause. I approach this both by focusing on menopause as a pivotal transition in the lives of women (and others who menstruate), and recognising how profoundly menopause intersects with all our lives, the life of the planet, and the relationships between us all. This is, therefore, a public theology of menopause in the broad sense of a practiced faith that looks both inward and outward, to family, community, friend and stranger, online and offline, and that takes account of forces such as globalisation and capitalism and what this implies for our position and action. As an approach to a public theology of menopause, I propose inter-theological and interdisciplinary connections with peri/menopause and survey a range of areas foundational to the lived experience such as nature and medicine; control and power; disorientation and rage; and the centrality of culture, community and ritual. I draw on global sources and an awareness of our embeddedness in a globalised, capitalist world in ecological crisis to support a public-facing theology of menopause characterised by a concern for dignity, connection and justice. Full article

The Samoan general election of 2021 provoked an unprecedented constitutional crisis. It represented yet one more symptom in a shaking of the foundations—not just in politics but within the very nature of Samoan society. The nation’s past stability had resided in the cultural virtue of respect, which permeated its key pillars—the church, law and fa’a Samoa (the customary Samoan way of life). There had been several tremors prior to the election. These had involved court cases involving the church where the Congregational Christian Church Samoa was shown to be in the wrong. These tremors and the more substantial shaking brought about by the constitutional crisis pose several awkward questions as regards the way in which the Christian faith and the Samoan cultural way of life–fa’a Samoa—are commonly regarded as more than complimentary. They also call into question the church’s default practice of silence in the face of public issues. Is it now time to nurture and encourage the public role of the faifeau (minister) for the sake of the common good in a time of significant change? In the absence of a prophetic theology, the tremors and shaking of the foundations signify the necessity of taking some further steps in the development of a local public theology. Full article

The abrupt juxtaposition of Miriam’s death and the subsequent water crisis in Num 20:1–2 invites deeper reflection on the narrative and theological significance of her role in Israel’s wilderness journey. While the biblical text provides a succinct account, the immediate onset of thirst among the Israelites suggests a profound connection between her presence and divine sustenance. This article explores the literary and theological dimensions of Miriam’s role, arguing that her death disrupts the delicate balance of Israel’s survival in the desert. Through the exegetical analysis of Num 20:1–2, this study examines the syntactical continuity that binds Miriam’s passing with the ensuing crisis. It revisits her leadership in Num 12, where her challenge to Moses highlights the complexity of wilderness leadership. Furthermore, the article engages with rabbinic interpretations that identify Miriam as Israel’s well, emphasizing the theological implications of her absence. By synthesizing biblical narrative, linguistic analysis, and Jewish exegetical traditions, this study argues that Miriam’s presence embodies Israel’s dependence on divine provision. Her death, and the drying up of water that follows, expose the fragility of both leadership and faith in the wilderness. In doing so, the article underscores how—while somehow building on the biblical text—rabbinic interpretations portray Miriam as a pivotal mediator of divine grace, whose absence precipitates a crisis of both thirst and identity. Full article

The complex interwoven crises of climate disruption and biodiversity loss demand not only rapid technological innovation for sustainable development but also major shifts in consumption and behaviour, implying a need for responses rooted in ethical values and a reorientation of attitudes towards the more-than-human world. In this context, given the global significance of faith communities and institutions as motivators and moral authorities, it is important that faith leaders state the challenges for sustainable development and suggest pathways forward to protect the environment and people that live in it. Building on his landmark encyclical of 2015, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis issued Laudate Deum, an apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, and followed this up with a message to COP 28 for leaders to show leadership in facing up to the climate challenge. We argue that the interventions of Pope Francis point to the crucial importance of an approach to sustainable development that can integrate faith perspectives on social and ecological ethics with the knowledge generated by the natural sciences and by environmental systems science. The interdependence revealed by the emerging scientific understanding of human, animal, and ecosystem life implies the bioethics of care and stewardship, which have the potential to bring people together across religious and disciplinary divides. Unlike other analyses, we argue that it is important to understand how life was created if we are to care for it effectively and sustainably. We also put forward the case for more sustainable land use and the production of more sustainable foods. This article is written from the perspective of the Catholic Church, including its approach to moral theology, but we argue that the implications of the analysis are relevant to all faith communities and religious institutions seeking to promote sustainable development. Full article

This paper explores the possibility of counteracting the crisis of culture and institutions by investing in the identity values of the user-actor within digital spaces built for the purpose. The strategy is applied to the analysis of three Catalan cloisters (Spain), with a focus on the representation of the cloister of Sant Cugat (Barcelona). Heuristic picklocks are found in the semantic richness proposed by Marius Schneider exclusively on the verbal level. The authors interpret the contents and transcribe them into graphic signs and digital denotations of sounds and colors. They organize proprietary ontologies, or syntagmatic lines, to be entrusted to the management of computer algorithms. The syncretic culture that characterized the medieval era allowed the ability to mediate science and faith to be entrusted to the mind of the praying monk alone in every canonical hour. The hypothesis that a careful direction has programmed the ways in which to orient souls to “navigate by sight” urges the authors to find the criteria that advanced statistics imitates to make automatic data processing “Intelligent”. In step with the times and in line with the most recent directions for the Safeguarding of Heritage, the musical, astral, and narrative rhythms feared by Schneider are used to inform representative models, to increase not only the visual perception of the user (XR Extended Reality) but also to solicit new analogies and illuminating associations. The results return a vision of the culture of the time suitable for shortening the distances between present and past, attracting the visitor and, with him, the resources necessary to protect and enhance the spaces of the Romanesque era. The methodology goes beyond the contingent aspect by encouraging the ‘remediation’ of contents with the help of machine learning. Full article

In the modern era, we increasingly encounter threats and challenges caused by climate change, and as a result, “green” thinking has become a necessity in every person’s life. It is believed that environmentally focused thinking can be invigorated with the help of Homo Climaticus, who is defined as a rational person in a climate crisis. However, it must be recognized that to understand the essence of Homo Climaticus, it must be compared with other archetypes. Within the framework of this article, the authors have evaluated the interaction between Homo Climaticus and Homo Religiosus in the context of environmental management. The analysis of these archetypes outlines the synergies and conflicts that arise from the fundamental differences in the worldviews of these archetypes, although both are committed to preserving the environment. Homo Climaticus is fundamentally based on science and data related to environmental management, whereas Homo Religiosus is motivated by faith-based ethics and the moral necessity to protect the world created by God. Recognizing and utilizing the strengths of both these archetypes can create more effective environmental management. Such an interdisciplinary approach indicates that collaboration between scientific and religious communities can provide a comprehensive strategy for addressing global environmental issues. Full article

This essay explores the complexity of faith in our time. The continued belief in religion indicates, at least to some extent, the failure of science to fully demonstrate its absoluteness to a convincing degree for many believers. And, in Kantian terms, the reason for that is because it cannot. This essay will focus on the point at which faith and reason intersect and become neither each other nor themselves but share in an unspoken and unintended complicity of belief in order to negotiate the impossible truth of the matter, which is just that—the true is the impossible. Full article