Religions, Volume 15, Issue 1 (January 2024) – 140 articles

This paper examines the depiction of Jewish and Christian merchants in the medieval English Host miracle play, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. This play is a critical illustration of religious racialization, effectively demonstrating the perpetuation of anti-Jewish stereotypes and legitimizing violence. Positioned within a broader scholarly debate, particularly in relation to Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness, the play portrays Jews as allegorical figures that validate Christian theological constructs. This paper delves into the representation and linguistic depiction of Jewish characters in the play, emphasizing their systematic dehumanization and instrumentalization in Christian narratives. A significant focus is placed on the coerced conversion of Jewish characters, which forces them into the archetype of the “Wandering Jew”, thereby highlighting motifs of symbolic aggression and unending diaspora. This paper also confronts contemporary scholarly perspectives that view the play as challenging religious boundaries, positing that such interpretations overlook the ingrained racialization and marginalization of Jewish identity during the European Middle Ages. It argues that the play’s transient disruption of power dynamics ultimately reinforces prevailing social hierarchies, thereby solidifying deep-seated anti-Jewish sentiments. Full article

In the early twenty-first century, the humanities are facing attacks on their value. At the same time, colleges and universities in the United States are pressured to retain students as funding models have shifted and become more dependent on tuition dollars, at least in public institutions of higher education. The two go hand in hand because, in this environment, faculty members need to justify what they teach as being relevant to their students, and research has shown that students are more likely to thrive and strive when they see themselves in the curriculum. This is particularly true at Hispanic-Serving and Minority-Serving Institutions. This essay is based on the following question: how do we help students recognize that hagiological texts are relevant to them in a modern world in order to meet both aims? It provides the Life of Anskar as a case study to show that when hagiology is read and analyzed in the classroom in accordance with principles of culturally relevant pedagogy, through comparison and the co-creation of knowledge, the texts provide a way for students to better understand themselves, their world, and the possibility for social justice; in other words, they, the students, matter. Full article

This paper reveals the interweaving of three traditions—Christian, Manchu, and Han Chinese—in the work of an unduly neglected figure in early modern China, Aisin-Gioro Depei 愛新覺羅·德沛 (1688–1752), who was a Manchu prince, neo-Confucian philosopher, and likely, a hidden Christian. The analysis demonstrates that Depei developed a particular syncretic philosophy based on the rational theology that he learned from the works of a significant Jesuit missionary, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649, 艾儒略), notably Aleni’s Xingxue cushu 性學觕述 (A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature). Using resources from Christian and Confucian traditions, Depei puts forward an approach, which marks the continuation of the cross-cultural interpretation movement launched by the missionaries since the late Ming. Full article

Does philosophy of religion, specifically, have anything to contribute to the cultural debate about the modern crisis of meaning, and particularly to attempts at retrieving a sense of enchantment beyond human construction? Suggesting a methodological rapprochement between philosophy of religion and phenomenology, I explore a recent popular attempt to reenchant the world through a retrieval of the sacred: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (2011) by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Using their work as a foil, I discuss the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics in the experience of the sacred, specifically the possibility of a pluralism that is nonetheless realist; the necessity of social embeddedness and pedagogy in the constitution of sacred meaning; and finally, the problem of moral discrimination within this sphere. Through this critical discussion a constructive argument emerges: philosophy of religion done in a phenomenological mode has resources to address these difficult issues, and thus to explore experiences of the sacred in ways that are metaphysically sophisticated, attentive to historical tradition and pedagogy in the constitution of meaning, as well as to the need of communal moral deliberation in the sphere of the sacred. Full article

The primary aim of this study was to determine the relation between the religiosity of individuals in emerging adulthood and the way they perceive the religiosity of their parents. In the literature, there are conflicting accounts concerning this relationship. In order to determine the nature of this relation among young Poles, 215 students (154 female, 56 male, 5 other) aged 19–27 were surveyed. It was tested whether parental attitudes, closeness to parents, and parents’ religiosity are predictors of the students’ religiosity. The results of this study indicate that there is a strong correlation between the students’ level of religiosity and their mothers’ assessment of religiosity, and a moderate correlation with their fathers’ assessment of religiosity. As the correlation analysis shows, there is a positive association between the religiosity of people in the emerging adulthood period and the protective attitude on the part of the mother and the sense of closeness to the father. There is an interaction between the attitude of acceptance on the part of the mother and the religiousness of the mother in predicting the religiousness of the students. Full article

Choral music and the sacred have been intertwined since the Middle Ages. With the increasing secularisation of society, it is notable that the sacred choral canon continues to expand and attract audiences in religious and secular spaces, underlining the enduring importance of tradition and the human desire to search for something beyond our existence. The practice of setting sacred texts to music abounds in the work of contemporary composers, continuing the historic tradition into the present day via a wide range of compositional and stylistic approaches. In his sacred works, Irish composer Eoghan Desmond achieves a sound that fuses the past and present, exhibiting both the visceral and meditative aspects associated with the texts that he sets. This article focuses on the composer’s choral work Nothing in Vain (2021), a setting of John Henry Newman’s ‘A Meditation on Trust in God’. Through critical score analysis, I highlight Desmond’s ability to reflect Newman’s devotion to God and to evoke a sense of the spiritual through his formal organisation and application of harmonic, rhythmic, and textural techniques, drawing on influences from the Renaissance tradition, the contemporary style of ambient music, and the work of well-known composer James MacMillan. Desmond’s synthesis of ancient and contemporary compositional practices invites all listeners to engage in this musical meditation and contemplate the message of the spiritual text. Full article

The maritime route connecting the Chinese continent and the Japanese archipelago facilitated a significant exchange of commercial goods and sociocultural knowledge throughout the Southern Song dynasty. Within this context, Japanese pilgrim monks traveling along this route acted as key conduits for the transmission of Buddhist teachings. Their journeys profoundly influenced the establishment and development of new Buddhist monasteries in Japan. Focusing on biographical accounts that portray the experiences of these pilgrim monks during their twelfth- and thirteenth-century sea voyages, this paper aims to explore how these accounts drew on intertextual links with existing Buddhist records to fulfill the compilers’ intentions. Specifically, this paper examines the structure and sources of biographical accounts detailing miraculous encounters between pilgrim monks and Buddhist deities during perilous situations at sea. By interpreting the role of these deities in the corpus of Buddhist literature and within Japanese Buddhist monasteries founded by pilgrim monks, this paper argues that the increasing emphasis on pilgrim monks’ attainment of divine protection in their biographical records suggests a growing concern for reinforcing the authority of their dharma lineages. Moreover, the composition and reception of these miraculous accounts reflected the changing religious needs and reshaped strategies for promoting specific Buddhist sects in subsequent periods. Full article

In medieval bestiaries, knowledge about animals and their behavior is regularly given a Christian moral interpretation. This article explores the use of imagery related to the bestiary tradition in three Hebrew books made around the year 1300, focusing especially on the richly decorated Rothschild Pentateuch (Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 116). These Hebrew books signal how bestiary knowledge and its visual expression could be adapted to enrich the experience of medieval Jewish reader-viewers, adding to our understanding of Jewish-Christian interactions in medieval Europe. Full article

The text explores the educational activities of French Roman Catholic missions in the nineteenth century, as they evolved from serving local Catholic needs to becoming crucial assets in advancing France’s religious–cultural influences and the Holy See’s efforts to unify Eastern Christian Churches under Rome. Focused on the Mission d’Orient, initiated during Pius IX’s papacy, this study delves into the Assumptionists’ educational activities in the Ottoman Empire (1863–1914), which aimed to inculturate the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire, achieve union with Rome, and build a bridge of knowledge between the Ottoman Orient and Europe. Employing a transnational historical approach, this research utilizes primary sources from the Holy See and the Assumptionist Order, examining religious and educational interactions with Ottoman millets. This article argues that Assumptionist institutions succeeded in inculturation and acted as bridges for cultural exchange. The context includes the French protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, the protégé system, and the Capitulations of 1740, demonstrating the Holy See’s use of political and religious alliances. The Assumptionists, influential in advancing the Holy See’s interests, are studied regarding their engagement in France and the Orient. Despite valuable insights from existing research, this article seeks to fill gaps by using Assumptionists as a case study, exploring the specific impacts of their education on various religious groups within the context of France’s religious–cultural imperialism. Full article

Revelations, visions and their interpretations create in themselves authority. In early Jewish Aramaic tradition, however, this is increased by the role of writing. Enoch receives revelations of the secrets of heaven from heavenly tablets by the Holy Watchers. The Fallen Watchers teach the earthly women magic and sorcery from tablets stolen from the heaven. Scribalism in Second Temple period Judaism and Enoch is becoming more and more researched. As is known, Enoch has a Mesopotamian scholarly tradition behind it, which saw the movement of the celestial bodies as a heavenly writing, the transmission of the will of the gods. Enochic scribes had a good familiarity with the Mesopotamian scribal tradition that took place in the sanctuaries from the Persian period onwards and whose purpose was to record astronomical observations, write diaries, prepare astronomical tables and produce almanacs recording events. Scholarly texts were considered as “secret” or “exclusive” knowledge. The omen list Enūma Anu Enlil, based on a 360-day calendar, was the pinnacle of the scribal tradition and the basis of Mesopotamian astral magic. The Mesopotamian revelatory form in Enoch serves to assert the authority of a calendrical system of its own, the 364-day year and the Holy Watchers and other angelic beings who govern it. The scribal form of revelation is known in Daniel 7 (also in Aramaic), in which the books opened in heaven contain a revelation about the fate of the fourth empire. The book-revelation of cyclic and linear time is present together in the book of Jubilees, whose chronology is based on the 364-day year, and in which Enoch keeps a record of earthly events on heavenly tablets. Full article

Based on observations and in-depth interviews with Catholic Religious Education teachers in Italy, this sociological study tackles “spirituality” as a register of legitimization in their professional settings. Compared with more established topics of “religious culture”, the motives of “spirituality” appear as a lesser category of justification in teachers’ discourse in two significant aspects: teaching about “spirituality” as a necessary component of human experience, and talking about their own relationship to “spirituality” as proof of sincere commitment and/or professionalism. Thus, in the context of teachers’ labor, “spirituality” constitutes an ambivalent category that can serve the purposes of Catholic institutions as well as forms of criticism of authority. Full article

This article explores the introduction and influence of Western art in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, focusing on the role of the Jesuits—especially Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), one of the founders of Catholic missionary work in China—and the most famous and influential Western figure in China’s art history, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766). The Jesuits recognized art’s potential in their missionary efforts. The article examines the varied responses of Chinese literati to Western art theories in the 17th and 18th centuries, and how Jesuit-introduced artistic concepts were assimilated within different Chinese contexts. It also investigates how Western art merged into Chinese culture, noting the linguistic integration of concepts like chiaroscuro. In Ricci’s time, Western art intrigued the Chinese, but deep acceptance and conceptual transformation were limited. The assimilation of Western techniques was not as widespread as expected. In the 18th century, due to restrictions on Christianity, the religious role of painting diminished. Castiglione’s hybrid style, though influential in the Qing court, faced challenges in gaining cultural acceptance from the Han literati, leading to more criticism than in Ricci’s era. Despite these challenges and varying receptions, the contributions of Ricci and Castiglione to the Sino–Western art exchange are significant, reflecting the complex interplay of art, religion, and cultural dynamics across these periods. Full article

The Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687) resulted from Jesuit research into Chinese classical texts. Upon its publication, the work conformed to the Jesuits’ accommodationist policy, facing challenges over its orthodoxy from both China and the West. The Latin translation and commentary on Analects 2.16 mirror these challenges and the Jesuit rebuttal. Compared to earlier translations, this version adheres more closely to traditional Chinese exegesis and participates actively in historical debates over orthodoxy. The annotations also delineate the heterodox teachings of the Yang (楊), Mo (墨), Daoist, and Buddhist schools, juxtaposing them with Confucianism, which they portray as a natural law to be perfected. The inclusion of these four heterodoxies introduces a novel aspect to Christian heresiology, while the portrayal of Confucianism assimilates it into the Christian orthodox framework. This article contends that the translation and commentary exemplify the Jesuits’ efforts to establish orthodoxy within both Chinese and Western contexts. Full article

When Paul, in Phil 4:2, “pleads” with Euodia and Syntyche to “agree with one another in the Lord”, he is both commending them for their priestly role as gospel workers among his group of converts and at the same time calling them back to a single-minded focus on gospel mission. Throughout the letter, the apostle has forged a link between gospel mission and cultic imagery, depicting himself and his gospel co-workers as priestly agents accomplishing sacrificial service. Thus, when he comes to this climactic exhortation at the letter’s close, he deploys this imagery as a way both to commend and correct these female leaders within the Philippian community of Christ-believers. Full article

The dynamic relationship that exists between a religious rite and its territory is interpreted and analysed by religious anthropology as a form of protection, offered by the sacred to the place in which it resides. According to this interpretation, passage through the territory of what is reputed to be sacred or even its very presence as a sanctuary, drives evil away and is believed to perform a generally stable protective function. Within such a dynamic, the rite that actually creates this sacred passage, i.e., the procession of relics, lays the foundations for an analysis of the two specific variables that are, in actual fact, intwined: on the one side is the rite, and on the other, the territory. Such a relationship appears all the more problematic due to the progressive rationalisation of the religious dimension, extensively dealt with by Max Weber (Weber 1920) and accepted by contemporary sociology on religion, as it is now a supernatural phenomenon that is only considered to have a representational dimension. The internal secularization at the festival of Saint Rosalia happened in 2023, with the landing of the triumphal cart in New York. The rite moves to another new territory and transforms it. The cart of Saint Rosalia, preserved in the Columbus Citizens Foundation in New York, represents the identity of Sicilian immigrants but also a new form of ritualization on a new territory through an “ancient” ritual. When the sacred is located within the institutional dimension of a salvation religion presided over by an institution, it appears separate from any purely mechanical (and therefore magical) dimension, while the territory becomes a variable in which a multiplicity of factors are contained. These factors not only give importance to the very aspects of the ritual itself, boosting its civil and secular parts, but also to the religious programme, which undergoes unexpected transformations introduced by the presiding institution. The main object of this analysis is, therefore, to establish an interactive path whereby, on the one hand, the territory, through its various cultural components (both secular and religious), shapes the religious rite and how it places restrictions on those protective functions, while on the other, how the rite places its own constraints on the cultural transformations that take place in the fabric of society. Full article

Deuteronomy 23:3, says: “No … Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord”. This verse is motivated by a discriminatory tendency embedded in the ontology of the Deuteronomist. Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:3 was used by Ezra-Nehemiah to discriminate against the “Moabites” during the Second Temple. Such ontology is countered by the author of Ruth in the narrative of Ruth during the Second Temple. This demonstrates an ontological “war” within the Bible itself. The primary contestation lies in whether God is exclusive or inclusive. This development necessitates a hermeneutics of suspicion. In the course of history, the “theology” of Deuteronomy has been used to grossly violate the human dignity of many God-fearing African people and many other people of the South for colonial purposes. To exacerbate the situation, there were persistent attempts from some quarters to universalise such a discriminatory biblical perspective. This would feed into the centre–periphery arrangement, with the centre feeding the periphery with such hermeneutics. For this reason, African scholars are implored to be very vigilant against ardent pressures put on the biblical texts by ontological, epistemological, and contextual biases of interpretations. Accordingly, Andrew Mbuvi identifies African Biblical Hermeneutics perfectly when he says it seeks to undo “the very construct of the ‘centre-periphery’ binary by allowing the possibility of multiple centres”). Kenneth Ngwa, thus, rightly asserts that African Biblical Hermeneutics considers African epistemologies and conditions “to be invaluable and legitimate contexts and resources in biblical interpretation”), drinking from our own wells). In consequence, this paper intends to set a dialogue between Deuteronomy 23:3 and Ruth 4:18–22. This paper aims to examine the understanding of God behind these verses. This paper will then compare the two theologies with the African philosophical concept of God. Harnessing the African concept of Ubuntu, this paper will de-ideologise the two texts and thus will provide a recommendation concerning the two texts. Full article

In recent decades, the concept of ribāṭ and its practice have been the subject of intense debate. Recent summary papers on the eastern Mediterranean, Ifrīqiya, al-Maghrib al-Aqṣà, and al-Andalus, among others, have made it possible to compare different realities that express strong links with their local historical contexts. In this paper, we present the results of a new study that analyses the specific case of Northern Sharq al-Andalus, where the practice and institutionalisation of ribāṭ took shape from the early 9th century. There are three elements that lead us to corroborate this hypothesis: the documented presence of numerous individuals and groups voluntarily involved in the active and passive defence of the furthermost frontier of al-Andalus; the confirmation of a construction programme with homogeneous characteristics aimed at building fortified enclosures along the coast, and, lastly, the founding, in the early 9th century, of the Ribāṭ Kashkī centre at the mouth of the Ebro, a building were these practices would become centralised. In conclusion, we propose a much more complex scenario than that proposed previously, which enables us to characterise local forms of armed spirituality and sacralisation of the land that globally enriches the historical reading of ribāṭ. Full article

Landscapes are socially produced and reproduced spaces. This is easily recognizable for large-scale urban groups with built environments that dominate living places. But it also pertains to all types of societies and cultures, even small-scale hunter–gatherers, once the ontological beliefs structuring landscape perception and use are acknowledged. The foragers of south–central and southern California and the Great Basin illustrate this fact. They maintained a widely shared ontological perspective supported by a fundamental cognitive postulate. This is that supernatural power, the principle causative agent in the universe, was differentially distributed among individuals and places. The distribution of power, revealed by certain geomorphological features and natural events, structured their perceptions of landscape. These perceptions were expressed in ritual and symbolism, including petroglyphs and pictographs as durable manifestations of ceremonies on the landscape. The ontological relationship between power and landscape explains a longstanding question in hunter–gatherer archaeology: Why were rock writing sites created at specific locations? It also explains another equally significant but rarely considered and related problem: Why do some localities have massive quantities of rock writings that dwarf most other sites? The landscape symbolism of and the placement of sites by Native Californian and Great Basin tribes is explained by reference to their shared ontological beliefs, illustrating how they structured their ritual practices and archaeological record. Full article

This paper examines the role of religion in liberal education based on the Christian thinker St. Augustine. In his early work, On Order, Augustine posited that through rational inquiry, as epitomized by rational knowledge learned by the trivium and the quadrivium, one can understand the order of the world and eventually obtain divine truth. However, in On True Religion, he withdraws from this position and instead emphasizes that rational knowledge has three limitations: First, regarding the foundation of knowledge, rational knowledge can inform about what things are, but it fails to explain why things exist in the manner they do. Second, concerning the purpose of knowledge, rational knowledge can elucidate the attributes of things, but it falls short in providing the ultimate goals to which these things aspire. Third, concerning the acquisition of knowledge, rational knowledge seeks extroverted knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is oriented toward external objects without introspecting on the inner self. In light of Augustine’s emphasis on the limitations of rational knowledge, the current study provides two possible interpretations of the relationship between liberal education and religion. One is an active interpretation which posits that, by resolving its limitations, religion can fully replace liberal education. The other is a passive interpretation, which suggests that religion can illuminate the boundaries of liberal education and refresh them, thereby enabling the learner to deeply reflect on knowledge and connect it with their inner self. Full article

In matters of twenty-first century public policy, age-old questions surrounding freedom of conscience and both personal and civic liberties remain in perennial tension with the necessary demands for civic conformity, custom, and consensus. These questions were also of critical importance in early eighteenth-century colonial America. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a hotbed of religious, intellectual, and cultural diversity was fomenting considerable conflict in Philadelphia, setting the stage for a vital debate over the nature and parameters of religious liberty and freedom of conscience in the colonies. Within this context of the eighteenth-century religious and cultural landscape of colonial Philadelphia, this article will examine a debate between Jonathan Dickinson and Benjamin Franklin whereby two distinctly different interpretations of religious liberty and freedom of conscience were established. Left to themselves, these two interpretations lead to sharply divergent trajectories. Nonetheless, by considering these two viewpoints in dialogue with one another, the Franklin–Dickinson pamphlet debate can serve as a useful tool for conceptualizing twenty-first century public policy issues related to freedom of conscience: policies that preserve the essential aspects of what constitutes each person’s humanity while simultaneously respecting the broader exigencies for public order and responsible policy in the aggregate. Full article

Contemporary thinking on religion is confronted with the challenge of shifting from a ‘philosophy of religion’ to a ‘philosophy of religious experience’. This challenge, on which the common future of philosophy and theology depends, is not to draw a line between the two, but rather to cross that very line. Crossing the boundary between philosophy and theology, which is what is being discussed here, means transcending its naive geometric understanding in order to take up the old task of thinking in a new way. This is a challenge to both philosophy and theology because it is an existential, or rather an experiential, task. It is about a specific experience and a specific way of life that emerges from it, which must be described in philosophy and at the same time elaborated in theology. This is perhaps the greatest challenge to religious thought. The most representative recent attempts to meet this challenge will be traced below. As we shall see, the best method for both philosophical and theological description of religious experience seems to be phenomenology. The latter allows a free exploration of this experience, while avoiding the trap of falling into the limitations set by either philosophy or theology unduly separated by the boundaries set by a conventional academic rigor. The problem of this article is the quest of exploring religious experience itself: the possibility of such an undertaking, its method, and its future. The considerations presented beneath will lead us to conclude that religious thought, to survive and develop further, needs a specifically understood conversion: its future lies, namely, in converting to experience. Full article

This article examines the use of contemplation in the religious poetry of John Lydgate, a fifteenth-century Benedictine monk and poet from England. While our understanding of Lydgate as a Benedictine poet has gained scholarly momentum, his paraliturgical writings have received less sustained attention. In this article, I argue that Lydgate democratizes the millennium-old monastic practice of lectio and meditatio by introducing a new contemplative mode for lay- and non-Latinate people in the vernacular, which I refer to as a performative lectio domini. This lectio is on an image instead of scripture and takes place within the context of the liturgy. Lydgate offers directions for participation in a liturgical ritual, enabling his readers to fully inhabit the surplus of materiality, somatic movements, and figurative language emanating from the liturgy in order for them to abandon themselves to contemplation in the crux of the rite. By looking at the poem On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est as a case study, I demonstrate how for Lydgate the liturgical kiss becomes a threshold of encounter with Christ through the incarnation. Rather than producing an emotive response, as is often characterized, the liturgical kiss fosters an intellectual illumination and deeper knowledge of Christ crucified. Full article

This paper considers Habermas’s translation proviso, which requires religious concepts to be translated into secular language when in the public sphere. Translation, for Habermas, protects the state from religious interference and elicits essential aspects of pre-rational thought—that is, religious and metaphysical thought, which post-metaphysics cannot generate for itself, e.g., social solidarity. The task undertaken by Habermas’s translation proviso is illustrated through his own work of translation: that of the translation of the biblical image of humanity as created in the image of God into the identical dignity of each human being. To provide context to and to highlight the difficulties involved in Habermas’s translation proviso, consideration is given to the thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI and Alasdair MacIntyre on these themes. What is demonstrated is that Habermas’s translation is, in essence, assimilation and re-appropriation. In practice, it manifests itself as the truncation of Christian metaphysics, in which the divine Logos is replaced by or collapsed into the logos of intersubjective human language. The relational image of humanity as a creature distinct from the Creator, in which human reason is analogous to divine reason, is erased, leaving autonomous human beings, from which human reason emerges out of the discursive communication of the logos of intersubjective human language. The conclusion is that the translation proviso fails in its objective. An alternative to Habermas’s translation proviso, the presupposition proviso, is presented as a more apt approach to addressing the underlying issues involved: facilitating human flourishing in an orderly, free, and just society. Full article

The Bible translated into South Africa’s indigenous languages has a colonial history. For the Vhavenḓa people, the 1936 and 1998 Bible translations are revered as icons that hold a privileged position. However, this paper argues that these two translations should be seen as colonial language tools that do not serve the culture of the Vhavenḓa people. Instead, they can be viewed as weapons against them. These translations distorted the Tshivenḓa language by imposing distorted and foreign concepts of God, thereby rendering the Vhavenḓa people to have been without knowledge of God. Full article

This article examines how religious leaders navigate between tensions involving theological ideals of peace and pragmatic realities during violent conflicts. The findings are based on 75 in-depth interviews with Orthodox, Catholic, and Islamic religious leaders in Bosnia-Herzegovina, conducted between the years 2015 and 2017. The paper introduces the concepts of “theological dissonance” to describe mismatches between principles and actions, and “pastoral optimization” for the strategy of maximizing influence under constraints. Factors influencing engagement in peacebuilding include doctrinal traditions, individual differences, organizational capacity of a religious community, effective control over messaging, and audience receptivity. In terms of practical suggestions, the article proposes several measures that could enhance synergy between religious and nonreligious actors working together in this field, most notably, understanding each other’s scopes and limitations and clarifying what “peace” and “peacebuilding” represent to each partner. Full article

African Pentecostalism remains the fastest growing form of Christianity on the African continent. Scholarship on Zimbabwean Pentecostalism has noted how the emergence of New Pentecostal Movements (NPMs), specifically Prophetic Pentecostalism (PP), has increased this growth. Apart from other attracting factors, such as the Holy Spirit, claims of faith healing, deliverance and prophecy, among others, African Pentecostalism is known for its emphasis on faith as a major anchor of any Pentecostal Christian. Hebrews 11, with its emphasis on faith, is, therefore, a central scripture in this Christian tradition. However, the emergence of NPMs at the height of the Zimbabwean crisis from the year 2008 to the present, has challenged Zimbabwean Pentecostal Christians from their sole dependency on faith. The crisis called for much more than faith could stand on its own. Hence, NPMs responded to this need by infusing indigenous religious practices with biblical ones as a way of strengthening believers through the crisis. Prophetic Pentecostal Movements (PPMs) in Zimbabwe introduced touchable objects such as anointed towels, handkerchiefs, wrist bands, stickers, oils and even condoms. While this appears to be sophisticated syncretism, a critical analysis of the practices shows how steeped they are in the African indigenous religious worldview. This article, therefore, seeks to examine the religious encounters between indigenous African religious practices and Pentecostal practices as practiced in the NPMs in Zimbabwe. The focus of this paper is to establish the resilience of indigenous religious practices within a Christian tradition that claims to have totally broken from the past. It further argues that the fast growth of PPMs depends on the ‘Christianization’ of indigenous religious practices, which are presented to believers as ‘purely biblical’. This is largely a desktop research project in which secondary sources were used as sources of data. Full article

This study delves into the complexities surrounding the determination, interpretation, and application of maqāsid al-sharī‘a within modern Islamic economics and finance. By conducting an extensive review of classical and contemporary literature, this research explores the diverse methods and criteria employed for ascertaining maqāsid. It critically examines the inherent subjectivity involved in categorizing maqāsid, shedding light on the ambiguity in delineating their boundaries. Additionally, the study scrutinizes the unintended consequences of broader utilization of maqāsid, particularly in transactions such as bay‘ al-‘īnah, and evaluates the risks associated with prioritizing maslaha (utility) over textual evidence. The findings underscore the challenges posed by the subjective nature of maqāsid interpretation, illustrating how diverse perspectives can lead to differing conclusions. They emphasize the potential misuse of maqāsid for legitimizing practices contrary to the core principles of sharia. This research underscores the preservation of legislative intent and advocates a cautious approach to integrating maqāsid al-sharī‘a into Islamic economics and finance. The objective is to strike a balance that upholds Islamic principles. It highlights the essential need for collectively establishing standards for both macro and micro maqāsid and their usage in ijtihād, promoting responsible applications within contemporary Islamic finance for informed and ethical solutions. Full article

Balthasar is, first and foremost, a Germanist. His theology is internally related to literature. This article shows how deep this link is, starting from three aspects: the literary coordinates that appear to be integrated in the theological structure of his thought, the theological language that Balthasar discovers in the literature, and the use of some literary instruments to engage with theology. Overall, Balthasar bases this profound and internal use of literature on the harmony/harmonization (Zum-stimmen-bringen/justesse/analogia linguae) he discovers between literary form or style and theological content. This harmony, justesse, or analogia is mediated by the free creativity of the author of the literary text under the power of the Spirit and sustained by the analogia entis and Christological analogia entis. Full article

In Italy, the migratory phenomenon has also had an impact on the school system, becoming an interesting potential field for intercultural and inter-religious encounters. As regards, for instance, the presence of pupils and students and their families of Islamic faith, very frequently, emphasis is placed almost exclusively on specific issues and requests, such as exemption from the teaching of the Catholic religion or specific diet. On the other hand, we rarely discuss how the presence of diverse faiths can create a unique opportunity for mutual knowledge to spread and promote the “culture of encounter”. In fact, engagement with religious others is an unavoidable duty, both pedagogical and civic. Therefore, starting from an analysis of pedagogical-educational aspects of the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, the aim of this article is to outline a rethinking of the concept of intercultural/inter-religious dialogue, above all as a pedagogical challenge and a preventive measure against extremism, within the broad framework of inclusive citizenship. Full article

This article addresses the need for liturgical formation that Pope Francis recently highlighted for the whole Catholic Church in his apostolic letter Desiderio Desideravi. The current American Eucharistic Revival encourages engagement in this. Based on a detailed spiritual–liturgical reading of the Emmaus account (Lk 24:13–35), the article develops guiding principles for liturgical catechesis and considers their practical applications with a particular focus on families. The first principle underscores the connection between liturgy and life, which makes catechesis relevant for daily life, e.g., by including testimonies of parents. A second principle outlines the pivotal importance of symbols and suggests methods to enhance their understanding. Fostering active participation in the liturgy, the third principle, is a practical consequence because the celebration itself forms the participants. Moreover, liturgical catechesis connects explanation and experience, as the mystagogical catecheses of the Church fathers demonstrated. Along with Pope Francis, this article also highlights Sunday as a gift and discusses ways of integrating families in the Sunday Eucharist. Finally, the last principles shed light on the task of the priest as the “catechist of catechists”. This article both explains the biblical basis of these principles and outlines practical ways to implement liturgical catechesis for families in parishes. Full article