Search Results (508)

How did a school of Daoist internal alchemy flourish in the Ming and Qing dynasties without formal ordination, institutional affiliation, or a lineage of disciples? This paper challenges the conventional paradigms of Daoist transmission by examining the case of Lu Xixing 陸西星 (1520–1606), the founder of the Eastern Lineage (Dongpai 東派). Drawing on newly unearthed sources, including local gazetteers, Lu’s poetry collection Kouyin manlu 鷇音漫錄, a long-hidden manuscript Sanzang zhenquan 三藏真詮, and original fieldwork materials, this paper reveals that Lu’s multifaceted interactions with the local gentry class fostered what I term “gentry alchemy”. This gentry alchemy provided an alternative “covert” pathway for the transmission of the Eastern Lineage, operating outside formal Daoist institutions through patronage networks. The paper examines three mechanisms of gentry support: funding publications, engaging in intellectual exchanges, and providing access to elite political networks. It then analyzes motivations behind gentry patronage, including state religious policy, the perceived orthodoxy of Lu’s spirit-written revelations, and his innovative visualization of alchemical theory. The paper argues that gentry alchemy emerged from the demographic pressures that drove disenfranchised literati to convert scholarly capital into religious authority. This configuration was characterized by four features: Confucian-Daoist synthesis, the Neo-Confucian schematization and demystification of alchemical knowledge, promotion of dual cultivation (xingming shuangxiu 性命雙修), and the substitution of revelatory authority grounded in spirit-writing for the institutional authority of master-disciple lineages. Finally, the paper elaborates on the functions of gentry alchemy, showing how it offered literati both spiritual refuge and political capital, marked elite status, and shaped local society through temple construction and village lectures. The Eastern Lineage thus exemplifies a mode of alchemical transmission embedded not in monastic institutions but in the textual and social fabric of gentry life. This case illuminates both the spiritual world of Ming literati and the structural transformations of Chinese religion in late imperial China. Full article

Given the lack of research on the intersection of media and religion outside the U.S. and in South Korea, this study analyzed how two mainstream daily newspapers have depicted Christianity and compared their tones and frames toward this religion and megachurches in Korea. News stories on three major religions—Protestantism, Buddhism, and Catholicism—were identified and collected from the newspapers’ online archives. Overall, 302 out of 895 articles were focused on Christianity. Quantitative content analysis was utilized with a manual holistic approach. One of the major findings is that Chosun Ilbo, a conservative-leaning publication, described Protestantism in a more positive manner than Kyunghyang Shinmun, a liberal-leaning newspaper. Another finding is that there has been a shift in religion news coverage between 2011 and 2022 in terms of frames applied. Frames such as political power and corrupt were used more often in 2011, whereas the social work frame was employed more frequently in 2022, when covering Protestantism. The findings offer critical implications for journalists, religious communities, and the public by identifying journalistic practices that potentially fuel audience polarization. This exploratory study serves as a foundational step in advancing scholarly discourse on the media–religion interface in South Korea. Full article

Background: The role of religion and faith-based organisations in public health is increasingly examined through the framework of religious health assets (RHAs), defined as resources located in or held by religious entities that may be mobilised for health and development. Within this framework, church health assets (CHAs) are conceptualised as congregationally specific expressions of RHAs, namely, the tangible and intangible resources recognised within local church settings and interpreted by church leaders as relevant to adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH). Despite growing interest, there remains limited empirical work examining how such assets are perceived in relation to young people’s sexual and reproductive health, particularly from an emic perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. Aim: This study explored how pastors in South Africa’s Vaal Triangle perceive church assets relevant to AYSRH. Methods: The article presents findings from a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with eleven purposively selected pastors from Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging, and Sasolburg. Data were collected between August 2019 and February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 restrictions that later altered face-to-face engagement in South Africa. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis informed by interpretive description, employing iterative coding, constant comparison, memoing, and a clearly defined audit trail. Results: The findings identified ten perceived CHAs, comprising five tangible assets, interaction spaces, community resources, normative teaching materials, networks and partnerships, and financial resources—and five intangible assets—reputation, voice on sexuality, mission and vision, a ready audience, and embodied messages. Across these themes, pastors predominantly framed AYSRH in moral and pedagogical terms, emphasising abstinence, guidance, and restoration, rather than a broader continuum encompassing information, prevention, care, rights, and service access. Conclusions: The study concludes that pastors perceive churches to possess substantial AYSRH-related assets; however, the analysis reflects perceptions rather than demonstrated implementation or measurable impact. The findings highlight both potential and limitation, indicating that the same assets may function as facilitators or barriers depending on their interpretation and application. The study contributes a pastor-centred, emic account of CHAs within a South African context and underscores the need for future multi-stakeholder research to assess how faith-sensitive AYSRH interventions operate in practice. Full article

This paper examines transformations of Islam in Europe through the lens of the feminisation of religion, drawing on evidence from an Italian context. It asks whether this category—traditionally applied to Christian contexts—can also illuminate gender dynamics within Muslim institutions. Focusing on those Italian mosques where generational change is underway, sustained by the active involvement of second-generation Muslims, it shows that generational change has been accompanied by both a quantitative and a qualitative feminisation: women now outnumber men in several of the associations studied and increasingly occupy public and leadership roles, while also contesting double standards and reinterpreting their participation through religious knowledge and piety. These developments express greater female autonomy and authority, challenging stereotypes of Muslim women’s subordination and echoing aims traditionally associated with secular feminist discourse. Yet, as in the historical Christian case, such transformations unfold within a religious framework, advancing women’s roles through faith-based reinterpretations rather than secular claims to emancipation. These developments point to a form of “feminisation without feminism,” a formulation that signals a theoretical stance: these transformations cannot be fully grasped through secular paradigms of emancipation alone but require attention to the ongoing interplay between religious and secular logics in shaping female agency. The article thus contributes to understanding the plurality of modernities and the post-secular reconfigurations of gender and religion in contemporary Europe. Full article

The viae romanae (Roman roads) were constructed according to precise designs and exceptional engineering techniques, ensuring their strength and durability. They represent an immeasurably important factor in human history. Their impact has been universal, facilitating the movement of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and religions over the centuries. The Via Appia Regina Viarum, built between the end of 4th and 1st centuries BCE, connected Rome to Brundisium, spanning the region of Latium and Apulia. The road initially crossed the coastal plains of the Tyrrhenian Sea (in Latium) before cutting through the reliefs and river valleys of the southern Apennines (in Campania) and finally crossing the regio Apulia et Calabria via Tarentum, to the harbor of Brundisium, along the Adriatic coast. In 2024, the Italian Ministry of Culture proposed the ‘Via Appia Regina Viarum’ for inscription on the Unesco World Heritage List, recognizing its unique and exceptional testimony to Roman civilization. Later that same year, the nomination was accepted, and today, the Via Appia is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List. A significant contribution to this nomination came from the multidisciplinary studies and research conducted along the Via Appia between the ancient cities of Beneventum and Aeclanum in the Campanian Apennine, including: (1) geoarcheological investigation aimed at identifying the ancient path of the road, which was not well documented in the area between Beneventum and Aeclanum; (2) studies focused on cultural and geological heritage along the road and its surrounding landscapes, enhancing the value of the nomination; and (3) the organization of social and cultural events designed to disseminate scientific findings and raise awareness among scientists, students, local and national administrators, local food and wine producers, and the general public. This paper highlights the pivotal role of geoscience at all stages of the project: from preliminary field surveys and mapping of landforms and lithofacies, to targeted field and geophysical surveys, to archaeological excavation and geoarchaeological consideration, and to the dissemination of new data through cultural events. Full article

Under the dual pressures of urbanization and tourism development, the Historic Centre of Macao, as a World Cultural Heritage site, faces challenges including the inadequate transmission of cultural elements and the excessive commercialisation of tourism development. To systematically identify and safeguard its cultural characteristics, this study introduces the theory of cultural genes, constructing a dual-strand identification model encompassing both tangible and intangible cultural genes. This model integrates architectural function, structure, and ornamentation, alongside indigenous religions, arts, and folklore, thereby achieving a comprehensive extraction of cultural elements. Building upon this foundation, the study employed the AHP-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to quantitatively assess the degree of identification with various cultural elements, integrating perspectives from three distinct groups: tourists, residents, and third-party experts. The findings revealed significant disparities in cultural identification across these groups. For instance, residents demonstrated the highest level of identification with beliefs and folk customs, whilst tourists favoured more tangible aspects such as decorative elements and cuisine, exhibiting generally weaker identification with architectural structures. The findings demonstrate that this study, through the establishment of a systematic framework for identifying cultural genes and a multi-stakeholder evaluation system, has accurately discerned the characteristics of various cultural genes and the public’s level of identification with them. This provides a scientific basis for evidence-based, differentiated, and precise governance of the Historic Centre of Macao, offering significant reference value for the conservation and revitalisation of similar cultural heritage sites. Full article

Religious heritage occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of sacred practice and cultural governance. While existing scholarship often interprets conflicts surrounding religious heritage through value pluralism or sacred–secular opposition, less attention has been paid to how heritagization reshapes religion within regulatory regimes. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews conducted across Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, and Confucian contexts in South Korea, this article examines how religious practitioners and heritage experts conceptualize living religious heritage and negotiate governance structures. The findings demonstrate that stakeholders frequently challenge the binary opposition. Instead, they articulate a relational continuum in which ritual continuity sustains heritage significance and historical depth legitimizes religious practice. Tensions arise primarily from regulatory rigidity, fragmented institutional authority, and procedural exclusion rather than doctrinal incompatibility. Heritage designation emerges as an institutional process that contributes to reconfiguring religious authority, spatial control, and public legitimacy within secular administrative frameworks. By conceptualizing religious heritage governance as a site of negotiated rearticulation rather than value conflict, this study contributes to debates on sacred–secular entanglement, religion and governance, and the institutional reshaping of religion in contemporary societies. Full article

This article examines how algorithmic mediation reshapes social trust and solidarity in the post-secular age. Historically grounded in shared moral horizons shaped by religion, tradition, and communal practices, trust has increasingly been displaced by technocratic governance, market rationality, and algorithmic systems that mediate work, cognition, communication, and political life. Through a critical analysis of contemporary developments—including algorithmic labour management, neurotechnology, large language models, digital public spheres, technological sovereignty, and global AI governance—the article argues that algorithmic mediation intensifies the fragility of trust by instrumentalizing human agency, fragmenting public reason, and concentrating power within opaque technological infrastructures. Against technological determinism and purely procedural approaches to ethics, the article advances a normative framework rooted in solidarity and the common good. Drawing on post-secular perspectives, a retrieval of natural law normativity, and the resources of Catholic Social Teaching, it contends that trust cannot be sustained through efficiency, prediction, or regulation alone. Instead, social trust depends upon relational goods—dignity, responsibility, participation, and truth—that resist reduction to data-driven optimization. Reclaiming solidarity therefore requires re-embedding AI within moral horizons capable of guiding technological development toward integral human flourishing. In this sense, the governance of AI emerges not merely as a technical challenge but as a decisive moral and political task for post-secular societies. Full article

The ability of religion to both unite and divide us is a central research topic across academic disciplines. There is important research on the conditions of religious pluralism and tolerance, violence and discrimination, yet disciplinary silos and disconnects between the academy and the public remain barriers to progress. To investigate these problems, we convened 56 scholars of religious pluralism and conflict from different national contexts over a two- year period and conducted focus groups around three broad questions: What are the key issues in defining religious pluralism and religious conflict? What are the most salient contexts in which to study religious pluralism and conflict, both geographically and institutionally? What tensions and opportunities are most important for advancing public scholarship on religious pluralism and conflict? We find that (1) religious pluralism is best conceptualized as an active interreligious engagement that honors differences, (2) achieving research clarity and focus requires specific interdisciplinary dialogue and tools, (3) identifying the conditions under which pluralism and conflict thrive demands diverse methods across sub-national, national, and global contexts, and (4) scholars must engage policymakers, religious leaders, and religious communities to advance religious pluralism. This study provides critical parameters for a future public facing research agenda. Full article

Through the process of modernization, Turkish literature transcends aesthetics to reflect sociological and cultural changes. The tensions between the individual and society, tradition and modernity, and religion that emerged with Westernization are particularly reflected in the novel. Religious discourse takes different forms at each historical threshold during the modernization process. During the Tanzimat, Servet-i Fünûn, Milli Edebiyat and Socialist Realist periods, it served as a defensive or critical reference point in the face of debates on modernization and Westernization. With the secular policies of the Republic, its public function transformed, evolving into an arena for cultural and moral debate, and it increased its visibility within the multiparty political structure after 1950. From the 1980s onwards, Islamic discourse became an artistic and ideological force in both the social and literary spheres. This article examines the stages of Islamic discourse in Turkish novels within a historical framework, arguing that religious representations are not merely elements reflecting social change, but also play an active role in the reconstruction of identity formation and narrative aesthetics. The study analyzes the functions of religious elements using a text-centered approach. The findings show that religion is not merely a theme in literary texts, but a living element that transforms alongside society, influences identity formation, and shapes narrative aesthetics. Full article

This study proposes a novel theoretical synthesis, bridging the sociology of lived religion with economic club good theory to explore the high-commitment dynamics in domestic spheres in the analysis of “Amen meals”, a rapidly spreading ritual among Jewish women. Using a qualitative–ethnographic methodology based on 23 participant observations and 53 in-depth interviews with a diverse spectrum of Jewish women in Israel, the research examines the ways this ritual functions as a gendered religious economy. The findings identify emotional stringency as a key mechanism for communal cohesion: unlike traditional religious clubs that filter out free riders through external prohibitions, this economy demands a tariff of emotional exposure and vulnerability, where public tears serve as costly signals of commitment. These enable the participants to gain access to exclusive club goods such as social insurance and spiritual agency. The study concludes that Amen meals challenge the binary between institutional–rational and private–emotional spheres, positioning women’s ritual creativity as a mutual insurance system for risks that formal institutions fail to cover. It reveals the powerful economies operating within the lived religion of women. Full article

In contemporary Muslim societies, digital platforms, algorithmic infrastructures, and networked religious content have fundamentally reshaped not only the circulation of fatwas but also the conditions under which religious authority is constituted, recognized, and contested. This article develops an integrated analytical framework that brings Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) into sustained dialogue with mediatization theory and digital religion scholarship in order to examine how digital mediation reconfigures fatwa authority. Grounded in a qualitative analytical–comparative methodology, the study reconstructs the classical architecture of fatwa authority—rooted in scholarly qualification, isnād-based transmission, contextual discernment, and institutional oversight—and systematically compares it with contemporary digitally mediated environments structured by visibility metrics, platform logics, audience engagement, and algorithmic amplification. It identifies a series of interrelated transformations affecting the epistemic foundations, institutional gatekeeping mechanisms, communicative forms, and normative accountability of fatwa practice. The analysis demonstrates that digital mediation does not merely expand access to religious guidance; it alters the balance between evidentiary reasoning and infrastructural prominence, reshapes the relationship between muftī and mustaftī, and introduces new ambiguities concerning authority, legitimacy, and moral agency—particularly in the context of AI-assisted religious tools. While digital fatwas may enhance accessibility and transnational connectivity, they also risk epistemic fragmentation, erosion of institutional credibility, and the diffusion of accountability. By articulating a Critical Islamic Legal and Media-Theoretical Framework structured around epistemic, institutional, and communicative axes and evaluated through maqāṣid al-sharīʿah, this article offers a systematic model for analyzing digitally mediated Islamic authority. It concludes by outlining jurisprudential and ethical guidelines for integrating digital technologies into the fatwa domain in ways that preserve methodological rigor, moral responsibility, and the integrity of religious guidance. Full article

By analyzing the devotional practices at Qinglong Temple in Chaozhou, this article illuminates a symbolic circuit in Chinese folk religion wherein sincerity is materialized through reverent offerings to secure divine reciprocity. It further explores the ethical logic, symbolic mechanisms, and processes of social construction underlying the pattern. More broadly, the vibrant ritual life at Qinglong Temple demonstrates that far from being a relic of the past, such economies of sincere exchange are a vital and adaptive mechanism through which folk traditions negotiate their place and thrive within the complexities of modern China. The study reveals that Chinese folk religion operates as a dynamic system of practices embedded in everyday rituals, emotional ethics, and social relationships. Its legitimacy arises not from abstract doctrine but from ritual performance, moral expression, and affective interaction. The article elucidates how monetary offerings, when grounded in sincerity, are reinterpreted as symbolic gifts and subsequently transformed into symbolic capital through practices such as temple donations and vow fulfillment. While resisting full assimilation into market rationality, folk religion simultaneously engages official structures to construct a hybrid religious economy that reinforces communal ethics and sustains transcendent relationships through public ritual and collective devotion. Full article

This study examines the dialectic between “navigating secularism” and “lived religion” in the context of modern Jewish Orthodoxy, focusing on the rulings of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995) regarding secular Jews. The research relies on two analytical models: Ravitzky’s theological model, based on the Chazon Ish’s distinction between a “full wagon” and an “empty wagon”; and the phenomenological model of Zohar and Sagi, which examines the halakhic distinction between belonging to the religious collective versus the ethnic collective. Contrary to the consensus of 20th-century halakhic authorities, who applied the category of “captured child” (tinok shenishba) to modern secular Jews, Rabbi Auerbach rejects this categorical expansion and reinstates the traditional halakha: one who publicly desecrates the Sabbath has the status of a gentile in all matters. This normative decision yields far-reaching halakhic implications: prohibition of a secular person’s contact with wine, prohibition of inviting a secular person for festivals, and more. The study identifies an internal tension in Rabbi Auerbach’s rulings: theoretically, he considers whether it might be preferable to die than to live as a gentile, but practically, he permits saving secular Jews on the Sabbath based on extra-halakhic theological reasoning. This tension reflects a conflict between his loyalty to halakhic deontology and his humane character. The study classifies Rabbi Auerbach within the ahistorical approach, which views the halakhic conceptual system as an eternal entity. Nevertheless, the religious public perceives him as a lenient authority toward secular Jews. This gap is explained through Wolfgang Iser’s hermeneutics and the category of “textual indeterminacy”: readers interpret his words through the prism of an expectation for tolerance, based on their perception of his warm personality, thereby creating a subjective textual meaning. Full article

This paper examines the political instrumentalization of Islam under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, highlighting their distinct approaches to consolidating political authority. The concept of Sovereign Islam is introduced to describe how both leaders engaged with Islam, thereby shaping legitimacy, national identity, and state power. Atatürk, in establishing the secular Turkish Republic, sought to place religion under state supervision, viewing it as closely tied to the modernization project. In contrast, Erdoğan has expanded the public role of religion through Islamic and nationalist rhetoric, reintegrating it into political and social life. While their ideological orientations differ significantly, both leaders demonstrate how religion can become intertwined with state authority, influencing political loyalty, public discourse, and institutional structures. This paper suggests that Türkiye’s democratic challenges are better understood not as a consequence of Islam itself but through an analysis of how political actors have engaged with religion in state-building and governance. In doing so, it offers a perspective on the evolving relationship between religion, secularism, and political power in modern Türkiye. Full article