Religions, Volume 14, Issue 6

This article aims to highlight the privileged status granted by Christianity to the Virgin Mary when considering her the Queen of Heaven. From the very early centuries of our era, this sublime title was assigned to the Virgin Mary, for her condition...

Fushi (服食), a method for treating diseases and nourishing life to achieve longevity, is highly valued and widely used in traditional Taoism. Regarding whether Quanzhen Taoism, a new form of Taoism founded in the Jin Dynasty (1115–...

In their different languages, codes of expression, practices and worldviews, art and religion share a reflexive intention to symbolize the chaos, suffering and ambivalence of the real. In particular, the aesthetic programme of Christianity has sought...

Through a case study of images generated by Swedish artist Steph Maj Swanson using an AI text-to-image (T2I) model, this article explores the strategy of negative weight prompting in T2I models as a phenomenon of apophasis. Apophasis is a linguistic...

Between 2019 and 2021, volunteers of a local Protestant congregation in Amsterdam, professional artists, and (other) local residents organised the interactive exhibit A(t) home in the Staats. In this project, community art and diaconia joined forces...

A review of the contemporary Australian church reveals a spiritual malaise in which passive learning has become the main staple for many church members or attendees. This sense is heightened by demographic trends over the last fifty years that reflec...

The religious nature of Joseph Beuys’ works was ignored or intentionally avoided by mainstream criticism since his artistic practice was ridiculed for its potential spirituality. It is argued that Beuys’ works are work meditations on the...

This paper provides an interpretation of the enigmatic concept of ‘happy life’ in the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. It departs from a recognition of the ambivalence in Agamben’s use of sacred and profane terminology that informs th...

In this article, we apply and assess the concept of transreligiosity in the study of formally educated and licensed psychologists and psychotherapists in Finland who integrate mindfulness practices in their professional toolkit. Our analytical focus...

Religion/Spirituality (R/S) has been associated with mental health. Although most Filipinos are Christian, little research has been done on how R/S affects their mental health. To address this research gap, an open-ended questionnaire was conducted o...

This article uses the Book of Job as a starting point for guidelines on how to help people traumatized by various crises find purpose and meaning in life without imposition of pre-judged solutions. Using a loose analogy between a theological discussi...

While most traditional works on the life of Prophet Muḥammad focus on how his ostensible teachings and actions can be used as a template for human conduct, the thirteenth-century Sufi thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī...

The paper takes its departure point from a seemingly innocuous idiom that common English parlance uses to describe a person who has lost possession of their rational mind: “not all there.” Interrogating the locality that this deictic &ldq...

Indigenous religious leaders can be the most trusted organic helping agents within vulnerable communities, but often lack orientation to the language and paradigms of the mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) professionals responding to thei...

As the world is becoming more globalised, intercultural competence development within higher education is at a crossroads between the competing aims of neoliberal and cultural social imaginaries. On the one end, the global market demands graduates th...

In this article, we design a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, showing its positioning within the growing field of “contemporary spiritualities”, their premodern, esoteric and theosophical roots and Catholicism. Our main claim is th...

The paper examines how Hindu nationalist social service organizations, specifically the Deseeya Seva Bharathi (DSB), reconfigured the religious conception of ‘Seva’ to advance the project of constructing a Hindu social identity during the...

The Four Heavenly Kings, Sida Tianwang 四大天王, are the guardians of the four quarters of the world in Buddhism. They are among the most frequently represented protective deities in Buddhist art across different traditions. I...

This study investigated how observing the ritualisation of objects can influence children’s encoding and defence of supernatural beliefs. Specifically, we investigated if ritualising objects leads children to believe those objects might be magi...

The ancient city of Jericho, located at the archaeological site of Tell es-Sultan west of the Jordan River and adjacent to the Ein es-Sultan spring on the edge of modern Jericho, has often been associated with the biblical city of Jericho and the sto...

The great chemist Robert Boyle was also a serious student of the Bible and Christian theology, both of which profoundly influenced his natural philosophy. Christian beliefs and moral attitudes motivated him to extend human dominion over the creation...

This essay offers a Latin American perspective of theological ethics developed from the preferential option for the poor, marked by dialogue and encounter with the poor in their reality. Considering the theological diversity of the region, the author...

Previous research has investigated the prevalence and impact of secondary traumatic stress (STS) among those working as helping professionals. However, limited studies have provided clear and coherent information about STS among clergy, pastors, and...

This paper is a continuation of an earlier study published by the current author dedicated to the virtually unexplored tantric Buddhist scholar of the phyi dar period, *Jñānākara (11th century), through the textual analysis of his ma...

Augustine of Hippo’s early works distinguish between the earthly human person, driven by worldly desires, and the reborn person, oriented towards heaven. Later, in his monumental De ciuitate Dei (On the City of God), Augustine expands on this d...

For all the important theological and practical diversity which emerged during the sixteenth century and later, a diversity whose legacies are still present in the forms of divided Christian bodies to this day, a uniquely medieval fascination with th...

In this paper, we shall examine some major religious roles for women in West Bengal, India, and the challenges they must face. Among the Santals, an Adivasi group, religious women must avoid being called witches, for women’s power is seen as da...

This article examines the emergent leadership of two female gurus in South Asia who have declared their status as Śaṅkarācāryās (i.e., heads of monastic institutions) based on revelatory experiences. They have done this in o...

My recent research on an early female bhakti saint brought to the fore differences between her perspective as represented in poetry attributed to her and her medieval biographer’s representation of her concerns. Through that study, the widespre...

Although many Hindu communities today foreground women as religious authorities, some lineages officially recognize only men as gurus and renouncers. If official models of religious authority are gendered masculine, what space do women have to embody...

This paper seeks to analyze the recent phenomenon of the development of a Matri Sena (literally, an ‘Army of Holy Women’) among the Matua sect of West Bengal, India. Historically known to have suffered caste-based untouchability and force...

Paul’s expression “in the heavenlies” provides an intriguing showcase of the power dynamics of the divine–human relationship (e.g., 1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). While scholars have identified the theme of union with Christ as an...

The main aim of this article is to unravel the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on Catholic education at the Catholic University of Zimbabwe (CUZ), Bulawayo campus. The research, qualitative in nature, has been guided by the importance of Cathol...

The Crescent and the Cross as religious symbols are beyond the mere signification of religious affiliations. They are symbols on which over two hundred years of wars were sustained and are indicative of the religious dichotomy between modern Christia...

It is a commonplace sentiment that the church in Europe is declining [...]

This essay examines the ways in which pre-modern Muslim jurists adapted their legal methods to accommodate the complexity of the act of listening to music. I classify those methods from the least to the most inclusive of underlying notions of moral v...

Dignified liturgies (weiyi 威儀), one of the fundamental concepts in the Taoist scriptures, shows the overall image of Taoism displayed at the altar of the retreat (zhai 齋) and offering (jiao 醮) rituals. By examining the wei...

After the Reformation, many monasteries in Scandinavia were provided new purposes or maintained parts of their former functions, serving as everything from hospitals to city halls. In Iceland, however, this did not happen; the monasteries were abando...

For many in the West, paternalism manifest as state interference carries a pejorative connotation, as it is often taken to entail unjustified restrictions on autonomy and self-determination and frequently believed to precipitate bureaucracy, corrupti...

This paper tackles the dominant views of Augustine’s notion of ‘love’ in South Korea which have been described as the puritan pathos of distance from civic commonality. A complete guide to the reception and transmission of Augustine...

The Longmen Xizhu Xinzong 龍門西竺心宗 was a Taoist sect that was active during the Qing Dynasty. The sect reportedly originated in India and has long been renowned for its Xizhu Doufa 西竺斗Ė...

The sanctions for prohibited behavior in Vinaya texts are based on the precepts. It is, however, in the padabhājaniya (commentaries on the prātimokṣa) and the vinītaka (case-law sections) that these sanctions are further develope...

The COVID-19 crisis truly challenged social interaction, the use of space and objects, as well as our sense of purpose and meaning in life. In this context, religious communities faced sudden interruption of their usual activities, lack of access to...

Modern scholars often understand 1 Cor 15:29 as a clear reference to the baptism of living individuals as proxies for the departed. Yet before or at the time of 1 Corinthians, there appears to be no evidence for this practice or a similar one. A reas...

Throughout the pages of the Daodejing, Laozi reveals a complex conception of justice. Understanding it demands that we strictly distinguish the four central notions around which it is structured: the Constant Dao, the Dao of Humans, the Dao of Heaven...

Secularism and the public management of religious diversity have gone hand in hand in public and academic debates in recent decades. Meanwhile, many of the elements related to secularism and the presence of religions in western societies have been co...

This article uses the frameworks provided by Max Weber’s comprehensive theory to offer insights into why a growing sector of young people residing in Bogota now identifies as either atheist or agnostic. This research attempts to understand why...

Scientific consensus points to human activity as the primary cause of global warming triggering climate change. Mitigations include technology-assisted interventions and education of human agents, such as changing the human mindset and behavior, to a...

Ineffability is a long-time partner of the philosophy of religion and mysticism. Through apophatic conceptions of the divine, it can act to guarantee the transcendence of the divine, elevate it to something beyond our conceptions. It has also held th...

It has been nearly 200 years since the Daodejing and Daoist thought was first introduced to Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Although the study of Daoist philosophy and Laozi in Russia started relatively late, the Daodejing has been the...