Search Results (758)

This article aims to investigate the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Italy in alleviating the stress of acculturation, facilitating the socio-cultural integration of Romanian immigrants, and valorizing the Romanian cultural, traditional, and identity heritage. The study has a qualitative character and uses semi-structured interviews conducted in ten Romanian Orthodox parishes in Italy, examining how the involvement of immigrants in church activities shapes their belonging and integration in the local community. The research emphasizes, in addition to the specific worship activities of the church, the social and cultural activities that support Romanian immigrants and especially those in need. The research results indicate that Romanian Orthodox churches have the role of creating social ties and facilitating active civic participation. The church thus becomes a provider of refuge and respectability and an important agent of integration. Beyond the religious aspect, the Orthodox churches in Italy have provided Romanian immigrants with symbolic resources to enable positive self-identification, places and opportunities to interact with other Romanians, as well as essential services for integration into the labour market and Italian society. Full article

The figure of the witch (bruxa) has been historically and contextually diverse, often shaped by gendered perceptions. With the rise of the feminist movement and Contemporary Paganism, the term ‘witch’ transformed into a powerful symbol of resistance and empowerment for women. It became a tool for women to challenge social expectations and assert their agency, embodying a subversive stance that promotes personal strength and social critique. Drawing on ethnographic research with Portuguese women who identify as both ‘pagan’ and bruxas, this article explores how embracing this identity is an everyday act of resistance, following the framework of anthropologist James C. Scott. Furthermore, the article argues that this affirmation is also transreligious, as proposed by anthropologists Eugenia Roussou and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, since it encompasses spiritual, religious, political, and socio-environmental dimensions that intertwine in women’s daily lives and identity formation. Both approaches highlight how women within contemporary pagan circles reinterpret and reshape traditional elements—using spiritual and political processes to confront structural challenges. The term ‘bruxa’ is a form of empowerment and resistance that blurs the boundaries between the spiritual and the political, providing ways to understand and cope with their anxieties, amid ongoing socioenvironmental crises. Full article

This article offers a descriptive analysis of a specific form (uṣūl) of prophetic eulogy (ṣalawāt) as vocally performed within Sufi orders such as the Rifāʿiyya, Qādiriyya, and Jarrahiyya of today’s Türkiye. It combines a music–theoretical and music–sociological as well as ritual–theoretical perspective to examine how the structured performance of these chants functions both as a spiritual practice and as a means of social formation. Drawing on this dual perspective, the article analyses the underlying musical structures and elements of the ṣalawāt chant, such as melody, rhythm, harmony, modal frameworks, and dynamics. By examining how these formal aspects shape the aesthetic experience, emotional resonance, and theological significance of the eulogy, the study aims to highlight its performative and affective potential within Sufi devotional practice. Within the ritual framework of Sufi orders (ṭarīqa), this rhythmic and collective performance acts as a practice of tazkiya an-nafs (self-purification), cultivating attentiveness, moral refinement, and communal belonging through synchronized voice, breath, and bodily presence. The repeated invocation of the Prophet Muḥammad, venerated as the perfect human (al-insān al-kāmil), thus becomes a means of fostering inner transformation and spiritual proximity. In this way, ṣalawāt chanting mediates religious meaning not only through text but through embodied experience and performative devotion. Full article

This article examines how national identity is constructed through religious representations in the poetry of Nikoloz Baratashvili, one of the leading figures of 19th-century Georgian Romanticism. Through a text-centered analysis of four key poems, it explores how a religious memory woven around motifs of sacred silence, divine absence, and sacrificial imagery is transformed into a poetic narrative within a postcolonial context. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, and post-Soviet Georgian thinkers, the study interprets Baratashvili’s poetry as an expression of an existential national narrative. It argues that the poet’s poetics articulate both individual and collective trauma and that the nation is reimagined as a metaphysical community. In this regard, the study offers an interdisciplinary contribution focused on how the Georgian national genealogy is constructed poetically, the role of Orthodox cultural symbolism, and the impact of colonial modernity. Full article

Religion and partisanship remain deeply intertwined in contemporary American politics, especially in public debates on religious expression in state institutions. This study examined whether religious identity and behavior continue to influence public attitudes independently of party affiliation in a highly polarized environment. Drawing on the latest 2023–2024 Pew Religious Landscape Study, the analysis examined support for teacher-led Christian prayer in public schools—a constitutionally contentious issue—through survey-weighted logistic regression models. The models included key religious predictors—tradition, born-again identity, and church attendance—alongside controls for political ideology and party identification. While Republican partisanship is the single strongest predictor of support, religious identity retains a significant and independent effect. Evangelical Protestants, as well as highly observant individuals across traditions, consistently show greater support for school prayer than their less religious or differently affiliated co-partisans. These residual effects point to the persistence of religious subcultures within each party coalition. By identifying such within-party variation, this study contributes to broader debates on the evolving boundaries of secular governance and the complex interplay between religion and partisan identity. Full article

This study examines the strategic deployment of religion as a political tool in contemporary Turkey through a comparative analysis of two ideologically distinct Islamic movements: the Gülen movement (Hizmet) and the movement of Adnan Oktar. Despite their divergent theological premises and organizational structures, both movements articulate religious worldviews that diverge significantly from dominant Islamist narratives—particularly in their surprisingly affirmative positions toward Israel. Rather than treating religion as a fixed doctrinal corpus, this article conceptualizes it as a flexible repertoire shaped by political context and rhetorical need. In this light, Israel emerges not as a diplomatic partner but as a symbolic site through which broader ideological positions are negotiated. The contrast between the two movements sheds light on how religious language can serve as both a boundary marker and a strategic resource in the articulation of identity, authority, and ideological distinctiveness. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of how Islamic movements in Turkey—often perceived as monolithic in their opposition to Zionism—can, under certain conditions, reframe religion to support non-hostile, and even sympathetic, positions. It offers a framework for analyzing the political uses of religion without overlooking theological nuance or disregarding intra-Islamic plurality. Full article

This study examines the intersection of artificial intelligence-driven personal branding strategies and female entrepreneurship within Indonesia’s unique hijabi startup ecosystem. Through a mixed-methods approach combining sentiment analysis of 2847 social media posts, in-depth interviews with 35 hijabi entrepreneurs, and machine learning analysis of branding patterns, this research reveals how AI technologies can be leveraged to create culturally sensitive personal branding frameworks for Muslim female entrepreneurs. The findings demonstrate that successful hijabi entrepreneurs employ distinct AI-enhanced communication strategies that balance religious identity, professional credibility, and market positioning. The study introduces the “Halal Personal Branding Framework,” a novel theoretical model that integrates Islamic values with contemporary digital marketing practices. Results indicate that AI-driven personal branding increases startup funding success rates by 34% and market reach by 58% among hijabi entrepreneurs when culturally appropriate algorithms are employed. This research contributes to entrepreneurship communication theory while providing practical guidelines for developing inclusive AI systems that respect religious and cultural diversity in the digital economy. Full article

Some of Spain’s greatest humanists—Juan Luis Vives, Antonio de Nebrija, Juan de Ávila, Luis de León, and Benito Arias Montano—were from a converso background. Recent scholarship suggests that two of the three most influential religious movements in sixteenth-century Spain—Juan de Ávila’s evangelical movement and Teresa of Ávila’s Barefoot Carmelites—were founded by conversos and presented converso membership, whose winds of religious innovation to tame Christian Orthodoxy and Counter-Reformation Spanish society, through the influence of Italian Humanism and reform, prioritized spiritual practice, social toleration, and religious concord. Indeed, Santa Teresa de Ávila, a major innovator within the Spanish Church, was herself from a converso family with Jewish ancestry. She became a key female theologist who transcended as an identity marker of the Spanish Baroque, conceived as quintessential of the Spanish Golden Age. Coopted in different periods, she “reappeared” in the 1930s as Patron of the Sección Femenina de la Falange y de las JONS, the women’s branch of the new radical right, turning into a role model of femininity for highly conservative religious women. Consecrated as “Santa de la Raza”, she became the undisputable womanized icon of the so-called “Spanish Crusade”, the slogan which General F. Franco implemented, with the approval of the Spanish Catholic Church, to re-cast in a pseudo-theological narrative the rebellion against the Spanish Second Republic in July 1936. This article examines different appropriations of the figure of Teresa de Ávila as a pillar of “Hispanidad”, in the last centuries within the changing sociopolitical contexts and theological debates in which this instrumentalization appeared. By highlighting the plasticity of this converso figure, the article suggests possible lines of research regarding the Jewish origins of some national icons in Spain. Full article

Drawing upon a meticulous delineation of pure consciousness’s fundamental and necessary features—including unstructuredness, maximal simplicity, selflessness, awareness as such, zero-perspective, and the absence of specific phenomenal qualities—this article asserts that a full-fledged experience of pure consciousness is attainable within the psychedelic state. Critically, this psychedelic manifestation is argued to be phenomenologically indistinguishable in its core properties from pure consciousness accessed via meditative practices. Consequently, this finding not only problematizes, but actually directly refutes Metzinger’s thesis, which posits meditation as the sole “best and most natural candidate” for achieving pure consciousness. Moreover, this work champions a soft phenomenological perennialism. This perspective navigates a middle ground between rigid perennialism and radical constructivism, underscoring the identical phenomenological core shared by all pure consciousness experiences, including those induced by psychedelics. This exploration further posits that psychedelic pure consciousness experiences can yield significant epistemic insights into the fundamental nature of consciousness, the self, and reality. Beyond this, a systematic phenomenology of pure consciousness is demonstrated to offer profound contributions to our understanding of certain religious–spiritual concepts such as God. Nonetheless, while acknowledging naturalistic critiques, a significant caveat is issued: extreme caution is warranted regarding religious–spiritual interpretations gleaned from such phenomenologies. Ultimately, the paper underscores the burgeoning importance of a spiritual naturalistic interpretation of pure consciousness. Full article

This article explores the literary significance of the bell as an important image in the poetry of Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), a renowned modern Chinese Buddhist reformer and poet–monk. While the bell has long-held symbolic meaning in Buddhist ritual and Chinese literary traditions, its role in poetry has often been overlooked in favor of material culture studies. This article addresses that discrepancy by examining how Taixu inherited and reinterpreted classical bell imagery to articulate his personal emotions and religious philosophy. Following close analysis of more than sixty of his poems, it argues that Taixu used the bell not merely as a traditional image but also as a vehicle for expressing two core Buddhist concepts: mental purification and transcendence of the mundane. The article also highlights his creative pairing of the bell with other classical Chinese images—such as sunsets, moonlight, mountains, and forests—to form complex imagery groups. Taixu’s skillful execution of this technique exemplifies the considerable literary talent and spiritual insight that enabled him to blend Buddhist doctrine with poetic expression to remarkable effect. Overall, his poetic corpus may be considered as both a continuation and a transformation of classical Chinese poetry traditions, affirming his identity as a modern poet–monk who possessed profound esthetic and philosophical vision. Full article

The social integration of artificial intelligence (AI) poses fundamental challenges to value-driven domains such as education, where the adoption of new technologies raises not merely technical but also deeply rooted ethical and identity-related questions. While dominant technology acceptance models (e.g., TAM and UTAUT) primarily focus on cognitive-rational factors (e.g., perceived usefulness), they often overlook the cultural and value-based elements that fundamentally shape adaptation processes. Addressing this research gap, the present study examines how two hitherto under-researched factors—religiosity and teacher’s sense of calling—influence teachers’ attitudes toward AI and, ultimately, its adoption. The research is based on a survey of 680 Catholic secondary school teachers in Hungary. To analyse the data, we employed structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to examine the mechanisms of influence among religiosity, sense of calling, and AI attitudes. The results indicate that neither religiosity nor a sense of calling exerts a significant direct effect on AI adoption, and their indirect effects are also marginal. Although statistically significant relationships were found—stronger religiosity reduces a supportive evaluation of AI, while a higher sense of calling increases AI-related concerns—their practical significance is negligible. The study’s main conclusion is that successful AI integration, building on teachers’ pragmatic attitudes, is achieved not by neglecting value-based factors, but by developing critical AI literacy that treats technology as a responsible amplifier of pedagogical work. This finding suggests that value-based extensions of technology acceptance models should be approached with caution, as the role of these factors may be more limited than theoretical considerations imply. Full article

Situated at the intersection of social history and psychology, this study examines how early Christian communities in Bithynia-Pontus navigated the persecution narrated in Pliny the Younger’s Epistle X 96. Through systematic textual analysis of Latin and Greek sources—triangulated with comparative evidence from Tacitus and corroborating archaeological data—and interpreted through Conservation-of-Resources and Social Identity theoretical frameworks, we reconstruct the repertoire of collective coping strategies mobilised under Roman repression. Our findings show that ritualised dawn assemblies, mutual economic assistance, and a theologically grounded expectation of post-mortem vindication converted external coercion into internal cohesion; these practices neutralised informer threat, sustained group morale, and ultimately expanded Christian networks across Asia Minor. Moreover, Pliny’s ad hoc judicial improvisations reveal the governor’s own bounded rationality, underscoring the reciprocal nature of stress between the persecutor and persecuted. By mapping the dynamic interaction between imperial policy and subaltern agency, the article clarifies why limited, locally triggered violence consolidated rather than extinguished the nascent movement. The analysis contributes a theoretically informed, evidence-based account of religious-minority resilience, enriching both early Christian historiography and broader debates on group survival under systemic duress. Full article

This article explores the papacy as a multifaceted form of cultural heritage, emphasizing the pope not only as a religious leader but also as a living symbol and institutional embodiment of Catholic heritage. Positioned at the intersection of theology, history, and heritage science, the study seeks to bridge the gap between spiritual authority and cultural memory by introducing a novel interpretive category: the pope as a living component of intangible religious heritage. The research combines a comprehensive literature review with an analysis of papal documentation, especially papal constitutions. Special attention is given to public engagement with the papacy, as reflected in internet search trends during significant ecclesiastical events such as papal deaths and conclaves. The results indicate that the pope functions as a living link in the continuity of Catholic identity, with digital indicators revealing peaks of global interest aligned with pivotal moments in Church leadership. The study also defines the roles and functions of the pope as a narrative bearer, initiator, and symbolic custodian of papal cultural heritage. Overall, the findings reinforce the papacy’s dual role as both a theological and sociocultural institution, offering new perspectives for understanding religious leadership as a medium of cultural transmission and public relevance in a digitized world. Full article

The following paper investigates the impact of racial differences on societal and political attitudes among secular individuals in the United States. Using data from the 2014 American Mosaic Project, our analyses focus on the relationships between secularity, race, and comfort with conservative Christian and atheist views, as well as opinions on whether the president should be religious. The results indicate substantial variation in these attitudes across racial groups, with secular non-Whites displaying unique sociopolitical preferences compared with their White counterparts. This challenges the oversimplified view of secularity as a predominantly White, liberal phenomenon, uncovering a more complex interplay between race, secularity, and sociopolitical orientations. These findings contribute to the sociology of religion by highlighting the diverse ways in which secular and religious identities intersect with race in contemporary American society, offering insights valuable for scholars, policymakers, and social activists in an increasingly secular age. Full article

This article examines the process of institutionalisation of Islam in Bosnia and Austria, with a particular focus on the Islamic Community of Bosniaks in the Republic of Austria (IZBA, Islamska zajednica Bošnjaka u Austriji) as an umbrella organisation for Bosnian Muslims in the country. The objective is to ascertain the extent to which this institution succeeded in establishing stable religious organisational structures and how immigration affects the religious–institutional landscape in Austrian society by establishing new networks. In addition, this article examines the challenges in establishing an integrated religious network and hierarchical structure faced by the IZBA, its position within the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ, Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich), and its relations with the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ICBH). A key issue in this context is the appointment of imams, as they have a significant impact on the understanding of Islam among the believers. The activities of mosque congregations, as well as the challenges they face, are also brought into focus. The empirical basis of this article consists of five expert interviews with stakeholders involved in the work of the IZBA. Full article