Religions, Volume 9, Issue 2

Historically, theologies of atonement have neglected the Holy Spirit. Luke provides us with an important canonical voice for addressing this neglect. Luke locates Christ’s salvific work within his mission to baptize all flesh in the Holy Spirit and f...

Religious texts in the Jewish tradition uphold a notion of work as an existential need. It follows that work is of no religious significance in itself. Torah study has traditionally put it at the top of the hierarchy of Jewish values. The approach mo...

Eating disorders are some of the most severe and destructive of all psychological conditions. They are associated with restricted capacities in cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual development. This paper provides an examination of the pract...

This paper reviews the historical development of the modern discourse of “Orientalism” and the emergence of material culture as a self-reflexive theoretical transition in the West. Further, it investigates new types of Orientalism in the study of rel...

The life and work of the Welsh evangelist George Jeffreys resulted in the planting of two denominations in the UK between 1915 and 1962, when he died. The Elim churches continue to this day to be one of the larger classical Pentecostal denominations...

The Marian writings of the Roman poet Vittoria Colonna (1490/92–1547), the Venetian polemicist Lucrezia Marinella (1579–1653),¹ and the Florentine educator Eleonora Montalvo (1602–1659) present an accessible model of the Virgin Mary in the early mode...

This essay seeks to illuminate the problematics, methods, and dynamics of comparison by interrogating how certain analytical categories in the study of religion, such as scripture and the body, can be fruitfully reimagined through a comparative analy...

This article sets out to problematise the notion that late nineteenth and early twentieth century Vaiṣṇava anti-sahajiyā polemics can be taken as a definitive index of colonial wrought rupture within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. It proceeds by (1) drawing att...

This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during Worl...

In the wake of Caroline Walker Bynum’s essential studies on the crucial role food played in the lives of medieval religious women, significant attention has been given to the connection between premodern women’s spiritual practices and eating practic...

Marilyn Adams rightly pointed out that there are many kinds of evil, some of which are horrendous. I claim that one species of horrendous evil is what I call horrendous-difference disabilities. I distinguish two subspecies of horrendous-difference di...

This paper is the product of in-depth interviews with 20 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ) people who identify, or formerly identified, as members of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches. Interviewees typic...

This paper looks into the definition of Setswana proverb: Moseka phofu ya gaabo ga a tshabe go swa lentswe (One must fight impatiently for what rightly belongs to him or her). The proverb is used to express the African thought of transparent dialogue...

This study examines the extent to which confessional identities in Lebanon are responsible for shaping individual views toward their government. Specifically, I investigate disparities between religious groups in their perceptions of democracy and de...

This research paper was presented at the Third International Spirituality in Healthcare Conference 2017—‘Creating Space for Spirituality in Healthcare’ at Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin. 22 June 2017. The number of older people livi...

This essay discusses Gerard Manley Hopkin’s notions of inscape and instress, examining their early expressions during Hopkins’s time as a student at and recent alumnus of Balliol College, Oxford, their subsequent development amid Hopkins’s career as...

Sermons come in a variety of forms. For Harriet Powers, an African American artist and former slave who lived from 1837–1910, sermons took the form of quilts. Unlike most quilts crafted during her lifetime, Powers’ quilts told biblical stories, recou...

This paper sheds light on the treatment of the ‘problem of evil’ and human suffering from an Islamic perspective. I begin by providing an overview of the term ‘evil’ in the Qur’an to highlight its multidimensional meaning and to demonstrate the overa...

For both Emerson and Thoreau, ocular attentiveness was a crucial means of at least disposing the soul toward experiencing moments of otherwise unpredictable, ecstatic encounter with the divine soul of Nature. But the eye alone was not the sole sensor...

This article distills theoretical arguments that I advance in Foreigners and Their Food, arguments relevant to a wide range of religious studies scholars. In addition, it makes the case for comparison as a method that sheds light not only on specific...

This article applies the comparative methodology proposed by Oliver Freiberger to a case study on Christian-Muslim relations at a shared sacred site in Antakya (formerly Antioch), which belongs to Hatay, the southernmost city of Turkey. Specifically,...

In this paper I develop a new theodicy--Mystical Body Theodicy. This theodicy draws on the Christian doctrine of the mystical body of Christ to argue that some evil can be defeated by a set of three goods connected with increasing the unity of humani...

Oliver Freiberger has done us the great service of drawing our attention to how comparativists do their comparative work. Issues of method—the “methodical aspects”—of course matter greatly in the actual doing of comparison, even if the scholar is not...

I consider the two venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show th...

This essay argues that comparison as a method of study within religious studies is best thought of in two terms: conversation and craft. As a conversation, comparison has its own history, which has included several major shifts. At present, comparati...

Previous studies have found that religion and spirituality (R/S) are related to less suicidal ideation (SI), fewer suicide attempts and fewer suicide deaths and that an absence of social support is associated with SI, suicide attempts, and suicide de...

While comparison has been the subject of much theoretical debate in the study of religion, it has rarely been discussed in methodological terms. A large number of comparative studies have been produced in the course of the discipline’s history, but t...

The relationship between religious communities and states in the former Yugoslavia is burdened with socialist heritage, but also with conflicts that ensued after the downfall of the socialist regimes. Although the majority of these countries are defi...

Multi-Faith Spaces (MFSs) are a relatively recent invention that has quickly gained in significance. On the one hand, they offer a convenient solution for satisfying the needs of people with diverse beliefs in the institutional context of hospitals,...

Whilst healthcare professions are already considered one of the most stressful occupations, workplaces are becoming busier, and the potential for workplace absenteeism and burnout has intensified. There is growing evidence that the mind–body practice...

This paper explores the role of a specific religious actor, namely Christian churches, in the nexus of religion and genocide in Rwanda. Four factors are identified that point to the churches’ complicity in creating and sustaining the conditions in wh...

Previous spirituality studies have mostly been conducted in a Western context (Moberg 2002; Koenig et al. 2012). However, an increasing number of studies are originating from Middle Eastern countries (Koenig et al. 2012). There is a need to review th...