Religion and Society

A recente iniciativa do Papa Leão XIV em reabrir o estudo sistemático dos documentos do Concílio Vaticano II, sob o pretexto de resgatar a "estrela polar" da Igreja após 6 (seis) décadas de sua conclusão, traz novamente ao centro do debate teológico a constituição dogmática Dei Verbum. Ao convidar os fiéis ao conhecimento direto das fontes conciliares para além dos intermediários e das interpretações parciais, o Pontífice reabre, ainda que involuntariamente, as feridas não cicatrizadas da gênese histórica desse texto fundamental (...) e das controvérsias que cercam a sua doutrina sobre a Divina Revelação e a inerrância bíblica. Este trabalho propõe-se a realizar um breve e sintético exame crítico do percurso da Dei Verbum, partindo do contraste entre a abordagem catequética contemporânea e os fatos históricos e teológicos que marcaram os bastidores do Concílio entre 1962 e 1965. (shrink)

'A Strange Hatching: Text and Commentary' fuses poetry and commentary, and combines Gnostic cosmology and psychoanalytic theory into a revisionary creation myth centred upon exclusion, repression, and the emergence of human consciousness.

This paper advances a single thesis: that the deepest injury inflicted on the Papuans of western New Guinea is not displacement but dislocation. Displacement removes a people from their place. Dislocation removes their place from the world they are permitted to understand, while leaving their bodies standing inside it. Drawing on the Psycho-Cosmocide framework and on Lani cosmological categories, the paper argues that dislocation proceeds through the manufacture of a counterfeit world, the Neverlands Kingdom: a symbolic and transcendental order assembled (...) from words, maps, names, images, colours, monuments, institutions, and classifications, into which Papuans are invited to relocate their belonging even as the material, ancestral, and cosmological foundations of their actual world are appropriated. It names the aesthetic apparatus that makes this relocation desirable rather than resisted, the Chromatic Veil, and traces the interior transformation it produces: a person who cannot feel homeless because he has been handed a counterfeit home. It distinguishes dislocation from displacement, dispossession, assimilation, epistemicide, settler elimination, uprootedness, and solastalgia; confronts Heidegger, Weil, Baudrillard, Fanon, Tuck and Yang, and Albrecht at the points where each approaches the phenomenon and stops; and turns finally to Wonesis as the counter-movement, on the ground that dislocation, unlike deletion, can in principle be reversed. (shrink)

Harari's Humanist Wars of Religion is a sharp, meticulously argued critique of the sweeping historical claims made by bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari. Drawing on primary sources and the intellectual history of humanism, Leslie Allan challenges Harari's portrayal of how three rival "sects" of humanism—evolutionary, socialist and liberal—waged what Harari calls the bloodiest wars of religion in history, giving us Auschwitz, the gulags and rapacious capitalism. The result is a provocative and accessible examination of what humanism really is, how it (...) developed and why getting its history right matters for understanding both modern secular thought and the moral foundations of contemporary society. (shrink)

Most scholarship treats Cohen’s themes — universal ethics, law, monotheism, messianism, sin, atonement — in isolation. My paper does the opposite: it braids them into one continuous argument showing how each domain (ethics → law → monotheism → messianism → repentance) expresses a single “messianic imperative.”.

This paper argues that the concept of God is not a discovery about reality but a product of anthropocentric thinking, psychological inheritance, and the internalization of social authority. Historically, God functioned as an explanatory framework for natural phenomena, morality, justice, and human existence. However, developments in cosmology, evolutionary theory, and critical studies of religion have progressively undermined the necessity of invoking a supreme authority to explain the universe. The paper contends that religious belief persists not because of empirical evidence but (...) because it is embedded within cultural traditions, identity structures, and inherited psychological conditioning. Furthermore, doctrines such as karma, heaven, hell, divine judgment, and sacred morality operate as mechanisms through which authority is internalized and reproduced across generations. The absence of evidence for a governing supernatural authority suggests that morality and meaning originate from human societies rather than divine command. Consequently, humanity faces the challenge of accepting responsibility for its future without reliance on imagined cosmic rulers. (shrink)

This paper develops an analogy between durable religious traditions and durable constitutional orders. Both begin with authoritative texts, founding memories, interpretive communities, and legitimacy claims that must persist across historical change. Both face the same Theseus problem: how much can be replaced before continuity becomes fiction? I argue that successful systems do not maximize either rigidity or flexibility. They stratify them. The symbolic keel must remain difficult to replace, while planks, sails, rigging, and navigational instruments must remain repairable through authorized (...) procedures. The paper extends the Ship of Theseus analogy by placing the ship at sea. Societies cannot suspend history while they reconstruct their deepest institutions. They must adapt while maintaining cooperation, identity, law, meaning, and trust. Religions do this through theology, ritual, councils, reform, commentary, and schism-management. Constitutional orders do it through amendment, judicial interpretation, precedent, legislation, federalism, elections, and unwritten norms. AI introduces a new stressor because it compresses change timelines. Labor markets, epistemic trust, surveillance capacity, education, intimacy, political persuasion, moral agency, and institutional authority may be reshaped faster than inherited interpretive mechanisms can respond. The paper proposes formal models for institutional robustness, repair capacity, shock load, safe repair rate, and AI acceleration. It concludes that peaceful adaptation is most likely where institutions can make necessary repairs feel like fidelity to the founding voyage. Tumult is most likely where technological change outruns legitimacy, where every plank is treated as sacred, or where the keel itself becomes negotiable. (shrink)

Can a religion that sorts souls by creed live inside a democracy? Laws can ban segregation and police the workplace; they cannot compel friendship, love or marriage. Behind that boundary, the wall of private intolerance, the only tool with power is speech, and the belief most resistant to speech is the belief that someone is not good enough to be right. This chapter argues that creed-based judgement of persons is the great moral conflation of Chapter 16 projected onto earthly standing. (...) The divine wall is that belief given eternal sanction: a God who separates souls by creed and not by character, with the celestial line then drawn on earth between neighbour and neighbour. The chapter’s claim is conditional on the empathic constitution of morality: if the moral fact is what conduct does to those it affects, then evaluating a person by allegiance rather than by character is orthotic assessment in its most consequential social form, and where post-mortem judgement by creed is projected onto present standing, the result is a discrimination no law can reach. That the projection occurs is an empirical claim, and the chapter stakes it on a test the thesis can fail, the doctrinal gradient: private intolerance, and resistance to interfaith intimacy above all, should track the creedal weight a tradition gives to post-mortem judgement by allegiance. The strongest defence of creed-based evaluation, the witnessing defence — the one intelligent and compassionate believers are most likely to offer, and which accepts the chapter’s own terms — is addressed at length. Three structural transformations are then derived as consequences of the book’s established results: from theocratic to humanistic religiosity, in which moral standing rests on what a person does to others; from absolutist to democratic religiosity, in which the tradition’s claims enter public life as contributions to deep persuasion rather than as authorities exempt from it; and from creed-based to merit-based evaluation of persons. The chapter finds all three already under way inside the traditions — in Volf’s and Borowitz’s theology, in An-Na’im’s and Abou El Fadl’s reform of Islamic jurisprudence, in the Talmudic and Quranic resources they cite — and offers the structural explanation of why those resources point where they do. What remains for religion is substantial: faith in a God of infinite diversity, institutional community, contemplative practice, moral education, the formation of empathy, the experience of the sacred. Only two things are removed, the claim to absolute authority and the evaluative primacy of creed over character. Removing the features the preceding chapters showed structurally incoherent opens space for a theism that keeps what believers value most while dissolving the barriers creed-based judgement erects between communities. The results are graded constructed, staked on the doctrinal gradient; the reform theology of An-Na’im, Volf and Borowitz, with its distinction between a tradition’s foundation and its application, is the position the chapter underwrites. This paper is Chapter 23 of Dyology: On Diversity and Equality by Robin Mains (2026); the book’s final chapter asks the converse question, which conception of God the conditions of democratic peace leave standing. (shrink)

[English] This article examines a central difficulty in the spiritual teaching of liturgy, namely the loss of an integral understanding of the human person. It argues that early modernity fostered a “de-anthropologizing” intellectual culture, in which the anthropological depth of theological reality became increasingly obscured. Drawing on Maurice Festugière’s liturgical critique, the study shows how this fragmentation weakened the relationship between theology, spirituality, and liturgy. It then proposes an ecosystemic theological approach, inspired by the conciliar renewal, which situates liturgy as (...) an integrating principle of theological formation. Finally, it sketches a fundamental liturgical theology of witness, grounded in the dialectic between rite and life and structured by biographical, biblical, and hagiographical forms of testimony, in order to restore the anthropological coherence of theological knowledge and the credibility of Christian experience. -/- — [Français] Cet article examine une difficulté centrale de l’enseignement spirituel de la liturgie, la perte d’une compréhension intégrale de la personne humaine. Il soutient que la modernité naissante a favorisé une culture intellectuelle « désanthropologisante », où la profondeur anthropologique de la réalité théologique se trouve refoulée. À partir de la critique liturgique de Maurice Festugière, l’étude montre comment cette fragmentation affaiblit le lien entre théologie, spiritualité et liturgie. Elle propose ensuite une approche théologique écosystémique, inspirée du renouveau conciliaire, qui situe la liturgie comme principe intégrateur de la formation théologique. Enfin, elle esquisse une théologie liturgique fondamentale du témoignage, fondée sur la dialectique entre rite et vie et structurée par des formes biographiques, bibliques et hagiographiques, afin de restaurer la cohérence anthropologique du savoir théologique et la crédibilité de l’expérience chrétienne. (shrink)

Many books explain why global warming is a problem; this book shows what must be done. It addresses central themes of climate change in straightforward terms, laying out the actions that need to be taken to slow global warming and adapt to the near and long-term future that we have created for ourselves. -/- Collecting knowledge, personal stories, and practical insights from experts across a dozen specialties, this volume shows how we can adapt to climate change in order to protect (...) the most vulnerable among us. Grappling with a complex range of topics, including risk, migration, and societal inequality, the authors take a constructive approach that balances realism with actionable solutions. They look back across human history for lessons that still matter today, particularly the importance of building a supportive and committed community to nourish hope. Without losing sight of the scale of the challenge, the volume chronicles the opportunities to mitigate environmental impacts and to leverage the challenge as impetus for broader transformations of society. -/- Written in an accessible, non-technical style, _Climate Change: What Must Be Done?_ is a must-read for students, policymakers, and environmentally conscious individuals who want to know how to make a difference. (shrink)

This article provides a rigorous re-examination of women's religious authority in Islam through a focused inquiry into the permissibility and implications of appointing women as jurists (muftiyyāt) in Pakistan. Deploying contemporary feminist hermeneutics alongside classical and modern Islamic Jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), it argues that the historical marginalization of women from formal law-making is a contingent socio-political construction rather than a theologically mandated prohibition. By exposing the patriarchal epistemologies embedded within Pakistan's religious and juridical institutions, the article reconceptualizes ijtihād as a (...) Qurʾānically grounded practice oriented toward justice, equity, and compassion. It contends that the systematic inclusion of women's interpretive voices constitutes not only a doctrinally defensible development in Islamic legal thought, but also an ethical imperative for realizing gender justice, human dignity, and accountable moral agency in contemporary Pakistan. Recognizing women as authoritative interpreters of Islamic Law thus emerges as both a normative requirement and a practical catalyst for jurisprudential renewal and reform. (shrink)

This postscript reflects on two special issues that interrogate religious and legal justifications of domination and argues that questions of sovereignty remain constitutive for the field of Indigenous studies today. In contrast to proliferating carve‑outs such as food, energy, gaming, or cannabis sovereignty, the authors contend that such adjectival sovereignties concede excessive ground to settler colonial frameworks premised on tribal recognition, regulation, and permission. They assert that Indigenous nations are sovereign nations rather than administratively defined “tribes,” and that sovereignty must (...) be conceptualized as a lived, ongoing practice rather than a delegated or derivative status. Accordingly, the postscript calls for an understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as grounded in land, language, traditional governance, and the territorial integrity of Mother Earth. Moving beyond a sole focus on dismantling the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, it advances a vision of healing grounded in a return to precolonial lifeways, the revitalization of intergenerational knowledge, and the fulfillment of Indigenous responsibilities to all living beings. Reconnection to community and homelands is framed not as a source of shame for those separated by boarding schools and regimes of domination, but as a generative process of individual and collective healing. (shrink)

With death bots, AI-enabled digital representations of deceased individuals can be created. While religions have long played a central role in death and mourning practices, this domain is increasingly being taken over by companies and commercial enterprises. In this article, I aim to reintroduce the perspective of religions, specifically that of Christian ethics, into the emerging discourse on death tech. I ask how a Christian ethical perspective might approach death technology, whether such technology is compatible with Christianity, whether it is (...) meaningful, what challenges it presents, and how it can be responsibly shaped. The article introduces three key ethical lenses from the standpoint of Christian ethics: (a) Anthropology and Relationality, (b) Vulnerability and Deception, and (c) Justice: Humans and Earth. Here, in addition to necessary critique, I also explore constructive ways in which technology can be beneficial for religious communities. I conclude with a perspective of hope (Jürgen Moltmann)—a hope grounded in the present. (shrink)

In contemporary and premodern discourse alike, the concept of striving (jihād) has frequently been reduced to fighting (qitāl), producing a persistent semantic and normative conflation. This study argues that such an identification constitutes a categorical mistake that obscures the Qur’anic conceptual architecture. Through a text-centered, semantic, and context-sensitive analysis, it shows that striving (jihād) is constructed in the Qur’an as a comprehensive normative framework of moral, intellectual, and social struggle, whereas fighting (qitāl) is presented as a conditional and strictly limited (...) act, permitted only under specific circumstances and regulated by explicit ethical constraints. The Qur’anic usage of both terms is examined through their distinct semantic fields and discursive functions, demonstrating that the former cannot be collapsed into the latter without distorting the text’s normative priorities. Classical Islamic thinkers such as Ghazali and Ibn Rushd are engaged as part of a critical dialogue, not as decisive authorities, to illuminate how ethical intention, proportionality, and moral agency were historically conceptualized. It is concluded that reducing striving (jihād) to fighting (qitāl) impoverishes the Qur’anic moral horizon and reverses the intended relationship between ethical ends and contingent means, and that conceptual clarity requires reaffirming the Qur’an’s distinction between normative struggle and conditional warfare. (shrink)

When Margaret Robinson converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1886, her decision reshaped the lives of her husband and nine children. This article reconstructs the Robinsons’ conversion, their staggered three-year emigration from Lancashire to Utah, and the challenges they encountered upon arrival, drawing on a previously unpublished family account by Robinson’s granddaughter. Particular attention is given to the family’s reliance on missionaries and the fraught relationship with Isaac J. Riddle, whose simultaneous reputation as a devoted (...) missionary and exploiter of immigrant children highlights the moral complexity of late-nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint settlement. The article further situates the Robinsons’ account within broader patterns of Latter-day Saint migration by comparing it to the much earlier emigration of the Moon family in 1840. This comparison underscores shifting doctrines of “the gathering” and illuminates the strengths and limitations of how family memory frames narratives of sacrifice, betrayal, and faith across generations. (shrink)

Emergent religious groups (frequently referred to as new religious movements) are constantly changing over time, and it is often difficult for academics to follow the many shifts of the tide. One such major change currently underway is a bitter schism within the Unification movement, which has received consistent scholarly attention in the past. Up until this point, though, there has been little academic work focusing exclusively on the ongoing split, and the various organizational reasons as to why it has occurred. (...) Through historical content, qualitative interview, and participant observation analysis of the contemporary Unification movement, we rectify this omission. Findings such as niche mechanics suggest that religious organization ecology is a relevant theory to understand schism in religious organizations and could help reintroduce structure and comparison to cultural studies of religion. Recently spotlighted in Religion Watch, see the links below. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement, which was led by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, through the lens of Gandhian pluralist spirituality. This spirituality is anchored in the objective of truth realization through nonviolent social service. The chapter investigates the relationship of the five ethical essentials in the Hindu–Jain tradition to their application in Gandhi’s attempt to realize Ruskin and Tolstoy’s socialist ideals in real-life settings. It also explores the concept of laicization inherent in (...) the truth-realization ideal as an antidote to the problem of corruption in India. The Aam Aadmi Party implemented this concept to make Delhi corruption-free. Finally, the chapter observes that this pluralistic secular spirituality is not antithetical to the concept of secular spirituality in the Bible. -/- . (shrink)

To defend religion is to invite confusion from every direction. To some, the term signals a retreat from reason, an apology for superstition, or a refusal to accept the hard-won insights of modern science. For others, defense suggests a rallying cry, an attempt to restore authority, reassert dogma, or protect inherited belief from scrutiny. I will do neither. I will not argue whether religious doctrines are true, miracles occurred, or sacred texts should govern public life. I will begin instead from (...) a simpler observation. Religion is criticized for something it was never primarily meant to be. (shrink)

Arendt’s and Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, when reconstructed via a critical dialogue, can provide much-needed insight into applying religious truth claims to politics. Arendt emphasizes the role of plural voices for free politics. For her, a solution to the spread of misinformation is to establish and maintain a robust public sphere. For Bonhoeffer, this method is limited and incomplete. He argues that Christians must see the world as a space of solidarity among the oppressed, and a Christ-reality that resists both theocratic legalism (...) and vulgar voluntarism must guide their actions. However, Arendt’s sharp judgment of the dangers of a modern society suggests that even a modest version of religious practice cannot remain intact in the face of modern socioeconomic forces. Through a novel interpretation of their political theologies, this article investigates a way for religion to be a conscientious voice in politics yet eschew becoming a tyrannical force itself. (shrink)

The article explores the provocative parallels and decisive divergences between Jacob Frank, the eighteenth‑century Jewish antinomian leader, and the Marquis de Sade, the notorious French libertine. Drawing on Shmuel Feiner’s comparison of Frank as a “Jewish version” of Sade, the essay situates both figures within a broader libertine counter‑world that operated on the margins of European society and sought to scandalize established religious and moral norms.

My paper traces the turbulent life of Jacob Frank (1726–1791) — a figure who oscillates between messianic pretender, radical heretic, political opportunist, and manipulative cult leader — and situates him as the final, fevered mutation of the Sabbatean heresy.

This book investigates the importance of spirituality in moral life. The author claims that modern secular morality suffers from a lack of spirituality and argues that a solution to this problem can be found in tradition. -/- Over several centuries, a process of secularization has loosened both the hold and the appeal of religion in the West. Morality did not dissipate, as many feared it would. This book is motivated by the idea that, nevertheless, something important was lost along the (...) way. Arguing that a lack of spirituality has weakened secular moral life, the author seeks to identify an alternative source of spirituality that is not divine or supernatural. To this end, she considers three perspectives that offer potential sources of secular spirituality: Aristotelian humanism, which emphasizes nature; existentialist humanism, which emphasizes freedom and choice; and Confucian humanism, which emphasizes rituals. The author ultimately defends the view that traditions are intrinsically good as creations that elevate human nature through their customs, practices, and institutions. Further, she argues that the initiation into tradition is necessary to bring a person into the “space of reasons,” which encompasses both moral and non-moral values. In consequence, traditions are appropriate objects of existential gratitude, which some theists hold to be the foundation of religious experience. Thus, it is possible to infuse secular moral life with spirituality by reawakening a love for the traditions in which it is already embedded. (shrink)

The various scandals have already been reported many times regarding the World Council of Churches and the supposed influx of interreligious dialogue.

All atheists think that the central claims of religion are false, but not all atheists think that religion is useless. Some believe that, despite its falsehood, religious language and rituals are pragmatically valuable because they lead to goods worth getting. However, it is not easy for an atheist to engage in religion to obtain these goods because they can feel intellectually or morally insincere in saying and doing things they consider false or faulty. Religious fictionalism aims to address this by (...) claiming that atheists can take part as they would in a fictional game of make-believe, and as they do so knowingly, they do so sincerely. We examine religious fictionalism from a Wittgensteinian perspective, which holds religious language as not in the business of asserting factual beliefs and religious rituals as not methods for achieving things. This leads to two challenges that indicate prima facie incompatibility between Wittgenstein and religious fictionalism: religious fictionalists are usually presented as atheists who think religious beliefs are false and are motivated to participate in religion because they believe it remains useful. We conclude with some responses to each challenge, showing that hermeneutic fictionalism is the most promising form of fictionalism from a Wittgensteinian view. (shrink)

Religious Ideas in Liberal Democratic States adds new context to the ongoing debate over the scope of religious freedom, drawing from a variety of perspectives to discuss the meaning of religion itself within a democratic state. This book argues that categorizing religion as a solely private affair is too narrow an interpretation and questions whether ideas like freedom, human dignity, and equality can be truly actualized in a neutral and secular state. The contributors explore the impact of religion, acknowledged or (...) not, on legislation, human rights, and group rights through legal, historical, and sociological lenses--back cover. (shrink)

This study explores the lived dimensions of Mahdist belief—specifically the expectation of Imam Mahdi—across diverse contemporary Muslim contexts. Rather than focusing on theological doctrine or classical eschatology, this paper investigates how Mahdist ideas are embodied, narrated, and mobilized in everyday religious life, political discourse, and grassroots movements. Drawing from case studies in both majority-Muslim and minority-Muslim societies, including Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, and diasporic communities in the West, the research analyzes rituals, sermons, digital content, and community practices that give Mahdism a (...) concrete social presence. The study employs a multidisciplinary framework combining religious ethnography, sociology of religion, and political anthropology. In doing so, it highlights how Mahdist eschatology is not a passive waiting for salvation but an active repertoire shaping identity, resistance, and moral order. The article argues that Mahdist belief functions as a moral compass and source of agency, especially in times of social crisis and perceived injustice. By focusing on the lived and social life of messianism, this paper contributes to broader debates on religious activism, eschatological time, and the political futures imagined within contemporary Islam. (shrink)

During the New Imperialism (1884–1920) period, an attitude pervaded the Western mindset that non-Christian religions were inferior and unsophisticated. At the heart of the colonialist view was ‘the white man’s burden’ of civilising primitive societies, including converting Indigenous peoples to Christianity. This aim escalated into a conscious effort among colonial powers to exert dominance over their subjects by othering and stereotyping non-Christians by presenting their religions through the prism of exoticism and orientalism. This article explores how colonialism accelerated modern recognition (...) and registration issues for religious communities and continues to influence state-religion relations today, including how governments restrict religious freedom. (shrink)

The current struggles that antiracist activists have faced, though uniquely awful, are also part of a larger tapestry of what one might call spiritual and moral exhaustion. This problem has been recognized and many have called for clear practical solutions, including mental health services and intentional rest, for the suffering of those who work to care and advocate. There linger, however, deeper theoretical questions that have not received wide enough attention: What is the nature of the connection between the kind (...) of psychological suffering that affects caring work and oppression? Why does it seem that those who, by many standards, are the most alive to a life of virtue are also the most at risk for experiencing spiritual and moral exhaustion? In what follows, I hope to show that this connection is not mere happenstance but instead an essential feature of what happens when humans attempt to pursue virtue under certain sorts of nonideal conditions, particularly the conditions of injustice and oppression. To make this connection, I will lean heavily on Lisa Tessman’s concept of burdened virtues, that is, character traits that are fitting and reasonable for fighting injustice but that actually undermine a person’s ability to flourish. My small contribution to Tessman’s insightful burdened virtue account is to take it one step further. Many traditional accounts of virtue ethics—arguably all of Western philosophical ethics—have an individualist structure. It is our flourishing as individual humans that virtue is supposed to contribute to, and it is our flourishing as individual humans that these burdened virtues can undermine. In contrast, much of Christian theology posits a radical interconnectedness—we are, after all, one body. It is this insight that opens a communal possibility for hope despite oppressive and unjust powers. For, although the tragedy of the human condition is that doing the right thing can lead to burdened virtues that undermine our individual well-being, our hope rests in realizing that we do not bear our burdens alone. (shrink)

Through an ethnographic and ethnobotanical investigation of Amazonian Shuar gardening practices, I aim to (1) unravel the basic and more complex relationships exhibited by Shuar gardening activities, which involve humans, tubers, and mythical originators and mediators of ecological and biological processes; (2) compare Shuar horticultural practices with those of other Indigenous tropical horticulturalists; and (3) unveil how and to what extent concepts of plant agency shape traditional cultivation systems. My study reveals that the rapid growth and high yield of tubers (...) significantly depend on women’s sophisticated cognitive skills, manifested through specific nurturing methods for cultivated plants and gardening rituals to engage with cosmic and mythical forces. Beyond the embodied practices of tending tubers and the ritual behaviors displayed by women, the agential qualities of plants play a crucial role in shaping the ritual and mytho-cosmological structure underlying gardening activities. Ultimately, biosocial, mythical, cosmic, and ontological connections between biological kingdoms inform growth patterns, fertility, and reproduction within the garden domain. (shrink)

The post-pandemic economy in South Africa has exacerbated significant economic challenges, due to increasing unemployment, political corruption, inflation, and rising poverty, which have worsened the struggles of many (see Francis & Webster 2019:789–791; Arndt et al. 2020:16–22; van Papendorp, Packirisamy & Masike 2024:1-4). However, amid this turmoil, Christian megachurches (especially those promoting prosperity theology), have continued to flourish. Prominent South African pastors continue to espouse that financial success is a sign of divine favour, encouraging congregants to tithe faithfully, in exchange (...) for promised wealth (Barron 2022:88-94). Such doctrine aligns with broader religious narratives that intertwine material prosperity with inter alia spiritual blessings. Despite its increasing prevalence in the global South, most scholarly engagements with prosperity theology in South Africa have explored the topic through decolonial Afrocentric theological and ecclesiological lenses; often neglecting the socio-economic impact of whiteness in these post-colonial religious manifestations (Niemandt 2017:204-206; Andrew 2021:13-17; Adamo 2021:1-10; Barron 2022:88-100; Resane 2022:1-9; Khanyile 2023:101-125; Mkhize 2024:1-9). In contrast, this paper therefore adopts a critical religious studies perspective examining how mega-churches vis-à-vis “Big Religion,” through their commercialisation of the Bible, contribute to economic disparities in South Africa. This explores prosperity theology as a problematic religious ideology that reinforces economic inequity through promoting uncritical worldviews. By investigating case studies of influential South African mega-churches, this paper critiques the ways in which religion has become commodified: positioning ‘celebrity pastors’ as both spiritual, political, and financial influences. In addition to how the rise of 'big religion'—defined as the fusion of religion with commercial enterprise—poses significant challenges to extant socio-economic inequalities within the country, as it reinforces the theological legitimisation of wealth accumulation and a monopoly over status functions, at the expense of the working class. -/- . (shrink)

The Compendium of the Life and Genealogy of Cometan is a compilation of years of family history research conducted by Cometan on his maternal and paternal ancestry. The book is formatted as an index of individual family members with key biographical details, photographs and extracts from various sources collected over the years. The book has over 300 pages of life stories of members of the Cottam, Moon, Prescott, Taylor and Warbrick families. The life stories include religious conversions, tragic deaths, details (...) of married life, the births of children, burials, poetry, interviews, extracts of newspaper articles, paintings, wartime stories, emigration, illustrations of key events, religious tracts, details of people’s careers, pictures of gravestones and letters. This book embodies an ethnography of the lives of several families in Lancashire using a methodology of family history. (shrink)

El margen práctico con el que se hace la defensa de los cristianos en tiempos de persecución comporta un aspecto significativo del pensamiento de Atenágoras, en el que descansa toda la aprobación para con los seguidores de Cristo. Sin embargo, se carece de estudios reflexivos respecto de una praxis cristiana como argumento apologético en este ateniense, estudios que transitarían desde un enfoque dogmático del cristianismo a uno más operativo. De aquí que, criticar la tradición religiosa de sus contemporáneos, procurar una (...) vida pura y colaborar con la paz del imperio, implican un ideal ético en términos de crítica y de adhesión paradójicas que caracterizan al cristianismo de los primeros siglos. (shrink)

Creatively bringing the songs, prayers, and poetry of Leonard Cohen into conversation with Scripture, this book deeply grounds Cohen's work in the landscape of the biblical imagination, paying special attention to Jesus together with the prophetic and priestly voices of Scripture. What emerges is a compellingly lyrical work of theology that deepens our understanding of both Cohen and biblical faith. Leonard Cohen has undoubtedly been a liturgist for our time, a cantor singing for all those clothed in rags of light, (...) a prophet in the ruins, and a priest who greets us "from the other side of sorrow and despair.". (shrink)

This paper gives a first theoretical formulation to a religious phenomenon which has not received much attention in philosophical discourse so far despite appearing in different highly heterogeneous religions. Vicarious religious ordinance refers to cases in which a living or deceased fully mature human being is knowingly or unknowingly assigned a religious affiliation without their consent or the consent of their dependents. I shall first offer three real-world examples of vicarious religious ordinance from Mormonism, Islam, and Shintoism and then raise (...) some normative concerns. I suggest (i) that vicarious religious ordinance does not fit neatly into current debates about religious epistemology, especially the recent debate on religious disagreement. I argue (ii) that normative questions as to why vicarious religious ordinance elicits indignation in its ‘victims’ is not easily explained through adducing similar examples. This paper aims to motivate further coordinated research on this topic. (shrink)

The 1950s witnessed a debate between Taiwanese New Confucians and liberals about traditional Chinese (especially Confucian) culture and democratic politics. One topic of this debate was the question why traditional Chinese society was unable to develop democratic politics. Inspired by Max Weber's theory of the connection between Protestant ethics and capitalism, the liberalist thinker Zhang Hao put forth the notion of "consciousness of darkness" in answer to this question. He emphasized that the fact that the modern West could generate democratic (...) politics is closely related to the "consciousness of darkness" contained in the Christian tradition. Conversely, the New Confucians Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan, and Tang Junyi affirmed that there is a connection between the theory of the goodness of human nature and democratic politics. Hu Ping, a mainland Chinese scholar, directly refuted Zhang Hao's theory. For Hu, the major reason why Confucianism did not develop a democratic system was not the weakness of its thought but the absence of favorable historical conditions. Finally, I discuss Kant's theory of "democracy" and his moral philosophy in order to justify the position of Hu Ping and the New Confucians. Kant's political philosophy is based on morality but also includes the notion of "consciousness of darkness," which suggests that there is no necessary contradiction between the two. (shrink)

The paper examines how values lose their sacred or protected significance and turn into values as a hobby. Using an excerpt from Arundhati Roy's novel “The God of Small Things”, a trend of transformation of values is outlined, raising questions about the importance of different values – both sacred and secular – for the representatives of these values. In short, the question is related to the value of values: is their practice (affirmation) meaningful in the basic sense of these values, (...) or is this practice mere imitation as a hobby? The article gives several examples that show the versatility of this topic. The case of Qutb’s Islamism highlights the importance of the distinction between private and public: the exclusion of the Islamic religion from the public sphere would result in the religion and its values losing their prominent role. A contrasting direction of change is evident in the woke movement, in which secular ideas transform into quasi-religious beliefs (resacralization of values). Finally, an explanation of this contemporary cultural picture of values becoming a hobby (in the dynamics of private-public relations) is sought in Andreas Reckwitz’s observation that the “general” is being replaced by a “singular” logic. Since the sacred and general meaning of values is abolished, this is where the shift in the understanding of values is most apparent. Because there is no longer a foundation of a sacred myth, individual values become a private matter and have no public meaning. (shrink)

This paper begins by bringing love and hate into tension via the ideal that you ought to love your enemy. The trouble with loving your enemy is that they may seem to merit hate instead, especially in cases of serious injustice. I develop this simple thought into a challenge for loving your enemy: that you cannot be required to do what makes no sense to you. This challenge is not adequately met by extant explanations for why you ought to love (...) your enemy within the Christian tradition and its heirs, which tend to give reasons that are either insufficient or else instrumentalize love. The second half of the paper presents a solution with a very different shape to the challenge. I argue that love may still be fitting even when your enemy fails to merit love, notwithstanding the contemporary orthodoxy about fittingness. What makes it fitting to love your enemy depends on the fact (if it is one) that you yourself have received unmerited love. You may thereby have reason to exclude the issue of merit from consideration; what is more, you have reason to love out of gratitude for the unmerited love that you yourself received. (shrink)

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events, no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the internet, say. In addition (...) to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into more clear focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices. (shrink)

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. (...) Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

A review of Tsvi Bisk's 2024 work Cosmodeism: A Worldview for the Space-Age: How an Evolutionary Cosmos is Creating God featured in the Journal of Astronist Studies and reviewed by Cometan.

The 2024 Global Religious Recognition Report is a compilation of the most recent available data on recognition and registration impacting conditions of religious freedom throughout the world. Each page of the 259-page report is dedicated to each sovereign state and dependent or disputed territory, including an overview of the constitutional structure, secularity and recognition and registration policies and practices. Detailed explanations of registration policy have been gathered from the Office of International Religious Freedom's International Religious Freedom Report in addition to (...) other credible sources. The RoRB classification for each country and territory has been updated in accordance with the criteria set out in the Spectrum of Religious Recognition (SRR) which was included towards the front of this year's report. This year's report includes an abridged version of Dr Monica Gyimah's article (the full article can be found in Journal of Astronist Studies Volume 1 Issue 1) that highlights recognition and registration issues specifically impacting indigenous religious communities. (shrink)

De heilige maand ramadan en het Suikerfeest vormen een tijd van bezinning op het islamitische geloof en staan in het teken van de hervertelling van religieuze verhalen. Iedere religie kent zulke momenten van religieuze reflectie. Die zijn bijzonder en betekenisvol. Maar helaas wordt de nadruk nog steeds vaak gelegd op bewijs voor het bestaan van God en de waarheid van religieuze overtuigingen.

Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), the progenitor of so-called Russian Cosmism, is an eccentric figure without parallel in the domain of modern thought. His intellectual vision, elaborated across a number of essays and the sprawling unpublished magnum opus written from the 1870s to the 1890s, The Question of Fraternity, attempted a novel theorization of the trajectory, meaning, and telos of the human species through the fulcrum of resurrection. The speculative dimension of Fedorov's cosmist project has garnered the most sustained theoretical interest, but (...) this speculative dimension develops out of a determinate critical diagnosis of the fundamental operations of Western modernity. Reconstructing the elements that make up the diagnostic tendency of Fedorov's project, and then recentering his project around them, allows for the speculative and cosmic elements of his thought to be properly understood. As a result, his project is revealed to be a thinking and acting out of an intimacy with death and with the earth, a thinking and acting grounded in a delegitimating refusal of the colonial, biopolitical, and capitalist foundations of modernity. Only with the delineation of the critical as the internal drive for the cosmically speculative is Fedorov's difference from dominant modes of eco- and geo-constructivist thought sufficiently retained. Our essay pursues this line of thinking to show the decisive significance of Fedorov's critical project, incubated on the margins of Western modernity, for two dominant lines of critical theory—those associated most closely with the names of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. It does so by reconstructing Fedorov's refusal of the modern biopolitical paradigm, his expansion of the analytics of expropriation, his ambitious reconfiguration of the cartographical imaginary of collective life around the cemetery and the commune, and finally his speculative rewriting of the liturgy as the material enactment of the common task. (shrink)

This edited volume brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine the relationship between religion and alcohol. -/- It examines the historical, social, ritual, economic, political, and cultural relationship between religion and alcohol across time periods and around the world. Twelve chapters are tied together by two major themes: first, gender identity, and its intersection with religion and alcohol; second, identity construction in religious communities, demonstrating how alcohol can be used as a distinguishing factor for religious, ethnic, and national identity. (...) A key focus of the volume is how alcohol can bridge and divide the point at which the sacred and secular meet. -/- With its interdisciplinary approach and engaging style, this book is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students in religion departments and appeals to scholars of material culture, food, and alcohol. Additionally, the book is of interest to professionals in the alcohol industry, particularly those involved in microbrewing and winemaking, who are interested in understanding the historical and cultural contexts of their craft. (shrink)