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Absent Objects and the Study of Material Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Sara M Patterson, Quincy D Newell
This article explores how absent objects continue to work on religious communities using two case studies: the gold plates from which Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon, and the first 116 manuscript pages of that translation. Neither of these objects are available to believers now, but they played and continue to play an outsized role in the early history of the Mormon tradition, but
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Power Circuits: Asymmetries of Global Christianity Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Candace Lukasik, Jason Bruner
This article examines the idea of global Christianity in scholarship and the postcolonial and present imperial conditions that underlie it. Through an analysis of the fields of World Christianity and the anthropology of Christianity, it considers how Western Christian histories and power dynamics have impacted Christian traditions of the Global South and seriously considers the pervasive logics of
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Sect, Sectarian, Sectarianism: The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of an Analytical Category in the Study of Western Religions Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Yonatan Moss
This article charts the changing uses of the interconnected terms sect, sectarian, sectarianist, and sectarianism in the academic study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Following a review of the term sect’s early roots in Greco-Roman antiquity and its distinctly Christian transformation, three main steps are analyzed in the genealogy of the category in modern scholarship: (1) deployments by Weber
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Above the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Otherworldly Perspective and a New Racial Order Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Christopher White, Matthew W Hughey
Though W. E. B. Du Bois was critical of traditional religion, he understood the power of religious orientations to the world, including religious attitudes of faith and hope. Although many scholars have commented on Du Bois’s secular faith, few have understood the secular, scientific sources that he used to develop it. In this article, we examine how Du Bois built a post-Christian otherworldly perspective
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Empire, Mission, and Messianism: Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding of the Relation between Judaism and Christianity Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Daniel M Herskowitz
This study contributes to contemporary discussions about the entanglement, cross-fertilization, and co-implicatedness of religion and empire by adding a voice from the still underexamined field of Jewish thought. It claims that the European imperial project is inherent to the vision of Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations, and global redemption offered in Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, and
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The Vagueness of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Andrew C Dole
A concept is vague if it admits of borderline cases—cases in which it is not clear whether the concept applies. Thus vague concepts are concepts without sharp boundaries. I argue that religion is vague, and I draw conclusions from this claim for both framing up conceptions of religion and studying it. One result will be to undermine arguments to the effect that any account of religion that does not
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Journeys to and among the Margins: Transnational Religio-Racial Identity on American Christian Palestinian Solidarity Tours Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Roger Baumann, Sara A Williams
This article examines the intersection of racial and religious identity among progressive US Christians in the context of transnational travel. We approach our analysis through a comparative ethnographic study of two majority-Black and two majority-white Christian Palestinian solidarity tours, representing mainline, evangelical, and historically Black Protestant progressive theological traditions.
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The Theological Significance of the History of Science: John Templeton and the Promotion of Science and Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Peter N Jordan
This article examines the rationale behind philanthropist John Templeton’s investment in the field of science and religion. His support stems in part from the conviction that historical developments in science are finally leading us to the right understanding of God’s relationship to the created order. The older, mechanical picture of nature that science purportedly gave us implies that God is distant
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Pyrrho’s Buddha on Duḥkha and the Liberation from Views Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-02-10 Jonathan C Gold
This article presents a rereading of Buddhist scriptures from the Pāli Nikāyas in the light of Christopher Beckwith’s 2015 theory that Pyrrho professed early Buddhist ideas. This changes, above all, how we read one of the central terms in Buddhism, dukkha/duḥkha (usually “suffering,” now “unreliable” or “precarious”). I argue that many scriptures make better sense with Pyrrho’s reading and, moreover
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God’s Magical Womb: Pregnancy, Power, and the Feminized Divine in Jewish Ritual Texts Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Marla Segol
This article explores the ritual functions of medical and mythical embryologies in Jewish ritual texts from late antiquity to the present. Together these sources tell three stories that show the development of participatory models of ritual efficacy. The first is the integration of medical embryologies into Jewish ritual practice. The second is that of a growing collaboration between human and divine
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Blue Black Ecstasy: Ellen Gallagher’s Watery Ecstatic, Oceanic Feeling, and Mysticism in the Flesh Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Justine M Bakker
Since 2001, visual artist Ellen Gallagher has been working on “Watery Ecstatic,” an ongoing, expansive project that depicts real and imaginary underwater life through drawings, films, reliefs, and paintings. Thus far, this series—indeed, Gallagher’s oeuvre—has not been studied by scholars of religion. Arguing that the series provokes an extended conversation about mysticism, (para)religion, and constructions
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B-Side Spirituality: An Empathetic Theory of Religion and Ethnographic Data About Spiritual (but Not Religious) Belonging Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Lucas Johnston
According to some cognitive and neuroscientific theories, religion is not an evolved adaptation but rather an artifact, one that may lead to adaptive behaviors. Here I relate (a) an empathetic theory of religion with (b) a functional theory of musicality to clarify religion’s adaptive features. This theory contributes to previous research by explaining the link between spirituality and music and makes
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Dancing on a Flaming World: Du Bois’s Religiously Inflected Poetry and Creative Fiction Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Mark Cladis
In religious studies, W. E. B Du Bois is familiar as a sociologist of religion and as a Black intellectual and activist. He is less known as a poet and speculative fiction author and certainly not at all as a Romantic author. I present Du Bois as a radical Romantic poet and speculative fiction author who employs religious forms and motifs to reveal and combat anti-Black racism among other forms of
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Responsibility without Choice: Harare’s Baptist Christians and Normative Freedom Amidst Uncertainty Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Leanne Williams Green
Baptists living in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, engage with a long-standing debate in Christian theology and beyond: that of the relation between moral responsibility and human freedom. The presumption has often been that to be held morally responsible, a person must be free to choose and to act. The views of Harare’s Baptists directly challenge this understanding, with important outcomes for their
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“To Seek a Nobler Inheritance”: The Namasudra-Baptist Exchange of Early Twentieth-Century Bengal Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-11-12 Dwaipayan Sen
This article presents a study of the dynamics that evolved between Dalits and Baptist missionaries in eastern India during the early years of the twentieth century. Drawing on hitherto unexamined Baptist publications, it attempts to discern what was at stake in their engagements through a close analysis of the exchanges that ensued between the two parties that, despite their extended unfolding, nonetheless
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Insulting Religion: Penal Secularism and the Government of Feeling Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-11-12 J Barton Scott
This article revisits the Indian Penal Code’s restrictions on religious offense, especially Section 295A, with particular attention to nineteenth-century debates about secularizing the English common law of blasphemy. Building on scholarship that takes the histories of British and Indian secularisms as constitutively intertwined, I suggest that these entangled legal secularisms are best studied within
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Networks of Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Sampradaya, Princely States and Company Rule Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-11-12 Shruti Patel
This article reconsiders a religious institution in India during the early colonial era as a manifestation of regional influence, or a non-statist public force. Founded by Sahajanand Swami, the Hindu devotional (bhakti) community known as the Swaminarayan Sampradaya expanded in the area that is today Gujarat in western India. The community arose as a source of popular influence in a region that lacked
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How Organizational Leaders Negotiate Religious Differences: Frameworks of Mandate and Interpersonal Care Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Carolina P Seigler, Wendy Cadge
The religious composition of the United States is rapidly shifting. As institutions and their stakeholders negotiate the needs of an increasingly diverse public, leaders of national chaplaincy organizations offer insight into how actors can effectively understand and engage matters of religious pluralism. This article identifies two distinct institutional frameworks (“mandate” and “interpersonal care”)
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The Thigh of Its Mother: The Fetus and the Subordinated Subject in the Babylonian Talmud Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Sara Ronis
Modern discussions of abortion in Jewish thought often invoke the Talmudic phrase “ubar yerekh imo,” the fetus is the thigh of its mother. This article examines the ten instances in which the phrase first appears in the Babylonian Talmud. I demonstrate that the rabbis of Late Antique Sasanian Babylonia deploy the phrase in two specific contexts: discussions of the sanctification, criminalization, or
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Contested Sacredness: The Struggle for Bears Ears Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Brennan Keegan
Southern Utah and the Four Corners region is home to five Tribal nations, united by shared experiences of settler colonialism and a tie to the landscapes of Bears Ears National Monument. After years of Tribal advocacy to protect the site, President Obama designated the monument under the Antiquities Act in December 2016. A year later, President Trump reduced the 1.35-million-acre national monument
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Feeling with the Land: Llakichina and the Emotional Life of Relatedness in Amazonian Kichwa Thinking Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-07-06 Tod D Swanson, Jarrad Reddekop
This article explores how traditional Kichwa people in the Ecuadorian Amazon experience and practice emotional life. In particular, we focus on the centrality accorded to acts intended to elicit compassion in others (llakichina) and on the role these acts play in holding communities together. We argue that the importance given to the eliciting of compassion is tied to the Kichwa construal of the self
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Performing Symmetry in Andean Weather Forecasting: The Practice of Cabañuelas, Beyond Divination and Suffering Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-06-29 Jorge Legoas P.
This paper analyzes a practice known as Cabañuelas—an Indigenous way of anticipating the next year’s rainfall by interpreting a series of signs in the current year. The knowledge and gestures associated with this practice have traditionally been understood according to the classical division between pragmatic techniques and magic rituals, an approach that I set aside in favor of considering Cabañuelas
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Prayer and Buddhism? The Supreme Offering Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Stephen F Teiser
How can comparative categories be used with vigorous attention to historical context and cultural variation? My example is the concept of prayer applied to various forms of premodern Buddhism. After analyzing past attempts to square theocentric notions with Buddhism, I propose a more circumspect mode of comparison. Adopting a performative approach to the study of religious language, I stipulate prayer
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From Satanic Minister to Holy Model: The Sacralization of the Medieval Jongleur Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Kathryn Dickason
Few figures in the medieval West were as religiously ambivalent as the medieval jongleur, a broad French term for a popular entertainer. Ecclesiastical authorities typically critiqued jongleurs, aligning them with avarice, folly, and prostitution. However, by the thirteenth century, the jongleur emerged as a more complex figure. Far from being a disciple of the devil, the jongleur could imitate the
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Animal Deities, Domestication, and the Purpose of Control in Contemporary Singaporean Mediumship Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Stuart Earle Strange
This article considers how to study the meanings of control in religious life and multispecies relations. In it, I examine how contemporary Singaporean deity mediums, who describe themselves as subject to an absolute form of control while possessed, interpret what this control should be like. By treating mediums’ self-described subordination as analogous to that of domestic animals’ relations to humans
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“The Evil Spirits Are Always Trying to Bring You Down”: Righteousness and Spirit Harassment Among Latter-day Saints in Northern Utah Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Erin E Stiles
This article explores contemporary Latter-day Saint conceptions of evil in northern Utah through considering both the lived experiences of spirits and the didactic tales of spirits that are a rich part of local folklore. Latter-day Saints are visited by both benevolent and malevolent spirits. These encounters with spirits are connected with local conceptions of “righteousness,” a moral framework that
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Engendering Slave Religion: Methodology Beyond the Invisible Institution Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh
This article argues for a deprioritization of religious tradition in favor of practice-centered approaches to the study of religion among enslaved people in the United States as a means of rendering the African Atlantic and gendered dimensions more legible. In the wake of W.E.B. Du Bois’s famous argument for “the preacher, the music, and the frenzy” as the constitutive elements of African American
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Understanding Religious-Organizational Marketization: The Case of the United States Mainline Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Marcus Moberg
Past decades have witnessed an accelerating proliferation of managerial and market-associated discourses and imperatives across the traditional religious-organizational field. Based on theoretical perspectives on marketization, this article outlines a general analytical framework by which to approach, empirically investigate, and understand processes of organizational marketization as they unfold in
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Life Outside: Pentecostalism, Poverty, and Excess in Haiti Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Lenny J Lowe
Based on ethnographic research with a community of independent Pentecostals known in Haiti as “The Heavenly Army,” this article examines the practices and perspectives of these self-proclaimed spiritual warriors against the backdrop of their extreme material poverty. As articulated by Claudette the prophetess, her constant concern about afflicting spirits is specific to her life conditions, a way of
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Ambivalences of Modernity in Contemporary Turkish Sufism: Cemalnur Sargut’s Affective Qur’an Community Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-04-11 Tehseen Thaver
This article engages the thought, career, and public activities of the prominent contemporary female Sufi master in Turkey, Cemalnur Sargut of the Rifaʿi order, to explore the negotiation and transformation of Sufi authority in the Turkish public sphere, permeated by the shadows of modern secular power. By examining the multiple platforms through which Cemalnur disseminates her teachings and the hermeneutic
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Costly Commitments “Under His Eye”: Reconceptualizing the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-02-21 Maciej Potz
Costly signaling theory of religion has been proposed to explain the evolutionary adaptiveness of religion in general and, specifically, its prosocial effects, including the relative longevity of religious communes vis-à-vis their secular counterparts. This article focuses on two crucial aspects of this relationship: the features and functions of signals and the mechanism through which signaling translates
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Lost Daughters: Affective Framings of Women Embracing Islam Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-02-14 Nella van den Brandt
This article draws upon and contributes to current discussions in the study of conversion, Muslims in Europe, and gender and emotion by taking media productions as an ethnographic starting point for analyzing the subject position of women who converted to Islam. In contemporary Western European contexts, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam evokes various affective responses, including bewilderment
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Care Work Is Not Conditional: Contingent Labor and “Vocation” in Theological and Religious Studies Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2023-01-25 SueJeanne Koh, Franklin Tanner Capps
This article is written for people working in the related fields of theological and religious studies, speaking directly to the issue of contingency as a feminist question of care. It acknowledges how cisgendered women in the academy often bear the bulk of caring for others, but goes further, interrogating how care discourses structurally inform the contingent worker’s material realities. Contingency
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Monks, the State, and Monastic Governance in Contemporary Thailand Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-09-28 Thomas Borchert
The relationship between Buddhism and politics in Theravāda communities has been a subject of regular scholarly investigation since at least the 1970s. However, in much of this scholarship, the primary problem has been to understand how the secular state interacts with religious actors. An assumption exists that the Thai state governs the sangha, and how monks in Theravāda sanghas govern one another
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The Work of Nails: Religion, Mediterranean Antiquity, and Contemporary Black Art Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-08-19 Laura Salah Nasrallah
This article contributes to the study of religion by investigating the ritual significance of the ancient nail, focusing on its material power in piercing curse tablets (defixiones, sing. defixio) in Mediterranean antiquity. It thus brings a humble object and the gestures and labor associated with it more centrally into the study of religion in antiquity. The article also contributes to the study of
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Can Critical Religion Play by Its Own Rules? Why There Must Be More Ways to Be “Critical” in the Study of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Galen Watts, Sharday Mosurinjohn
According to some of the most vocal proponents of Critical Religion (CR), taking CR seriously entails accepting that religion as an analytic category leads to reification and naturalization and is unduly normative, thus critical scholars of religion should abandon it and restrict ourselves to studying discursive battles over the uses of religion. In this article, we build on the case for alternative
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The Buddha’s Busted Finger: Craft, Touch, and Cosmology in Theravada Buddhism Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Anthony Lovenheim Irwin
Abstract This article is about the bodily connection between Theravada Buddhist craftspeople, monks, and laypeople to the objects they create and touch. Textual and contemporary accounts of Buddhist material production emphasize the importance of physical touch in the formal aspects, embodied efficacy, and social salience of Buddhist objects, including Buddha images, brick stupas, and shrines. Here
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Romance and the Male Secular Body: The Case of Algerian Men in France and Québec Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Jennifer A Selby
Abstract This article argues that state and cultural expectations for romance at the time of civil marriage in contemporary France and Québec serve as proxies for liberal sexual values laden in the “secular body.” To date, secularism studies scholars have primarily conceptualized gender in relation to how political-legal regimes aim to render religious and racialized women’s bodies “secular.” The omission
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Curating the Profane: Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Neoclassical Art Historian and First Curator of a Public Profane Museum Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Louis Arthur Ruprecht
Abstract Few contemporary visitors to public art museums consider the religious oddity of most such collections at their inception. From the so-called Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, to the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre, and the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoön Group in the Vatican Museums, classical statuary constituted the heart (if not the soul) of most public art museums in the first
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Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith. By Elesha J. Coffman Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Pamela E Klassen
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Religious Hatred: Prejudice, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism in Global Context. By Paul Hedges Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Ilyse R Morgenstein Fuerst
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People Doing Things: Residual Subject Realism in the Study of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Michael P DeJonge
Abstract This article considers a common theoretical mood within the discipline of religious studies, one that is skeptical about the reality of religion but confident about the reality of people doing things. Analyzing this mood within the context of recent discussions surrounding realism, I argue that this mix of anti-realism with respect to religion and realism with respect to people doing things
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Open Sounds, Hidden Spaces: Listening, Wandering, and Literalism in Sufi Iran Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Seema Golestaneh
Abstract Literalism is often synonymous with the absence of critical thought, a black hole of interpretation where the word offers not inspiration but command. As one group of Iranian Nimatullahi Sufis demonstrated, however, this is not always the case. Based on ethnographic research, this article will demonstrate how these Iranian Sufis utilized literal interpretations of intentional listening (sama)
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“A splendid norm”: Human Plants and the Eugenic Secular, 1906–1926 Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Charles McCrary
Abstract This article analyzes eugenics and the secular in early twentieth-century California through the career of Luther Burbank. Burbank was a famous plant breeder who cultivated a theory of human progress based on his breeding work. For him, humans were part of an always-evolving and immanently spiritual natural world. And it was the task of civilized people to perfect that world, making it more
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Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics. By Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Eberl J.
Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics. By SalzmanTodd A. and LawlerMichael G.. Georgetown University Press, 2021. 240 pages. $69.95 (hardcover), $34.95 (paperback and e-book).
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Erratum to: Reading Relations and the Devil's Irreversible Arts: From Stories on a String to the War at Canudos Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Lebner A.
In the originally published version of this manuscript, there was an error in the “Conclusion” section. The sentence “Grasping this vital concern with relations in the world, as well as the divine and diabolical agencies working through them, should lead us to a fuller understanding of what we could call the sacramental and “mystical”— orientations to the world expressed by the Catholics discussed
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Liturgy and Biblical Interpretation: The Sanctus and the Qedushah Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Wolterstorff N.
Liturgy and Biblical Interpretation: The Sanctus and the Qedushah. By SelvénSebastian. University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. 242 pages. $70.00 (hardcover), $55.99 (e-book).
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Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to LifeStorytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and the Museum of the Bible Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Trollinger W.
Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life. By OberlinKathleen C.. NYU Press, 2020. 280 pages. $89.00 (hardcover), $30.00 (paperback or e-book).
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When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Munson H.
When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism. Edited by RouhanaNadim N. and Shalhoub-KevorkianNadera. Cambridge University Press, 2021. 300 pages. $110.00 (hardcover), $88.00 (e-book).
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Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Hedges P.
Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity. By ThatamanilJohn J.. Fordham University Press, 2020. 320 pages. $105.00 (hardcover), $30.00 (paperback), $29.99 (e-book).
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Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Jansen B.
Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa. By SullivanBrenton. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. 304 pages. $65.00 (cloth), $61.75 (e-book).
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Theory of Women in Religions Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Hayes K.
Theory of Women in Religions. By WessingerCatherine. New York University Press, 2020. 232 pages. $89.00 (hardcover), $22.00 (paperback or e-book).
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The Social Scientific Study of Exorcism in Christianity Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Ferber S.
The Social Scientific Study of Exorcism in Christianity. Edited by GiordanGiuseppe and PossamaiAdam. Springer, 2020. 253 pages. $119.99 (hardcover), $84.99 (paperback), $64.99 (e-book).
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Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Blazer A.
Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream. By Tian-Ren LinTony. The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 218 pages. $95.00 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback), $19.99 (e-book).
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Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Berry M.
Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears. By MigliazzoArlin C.. EerdmansWilliam B., 2020. 359 pages. $29.99 (hardcover).
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Theology and Genealogies of Religious Studies Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer
In its relatively short life, the discipline of religious studies has issued several challenges to theology. The currency of genealogical strategies in the study of religion changes the nature of the disciplinary contest because these strategies challenge both disciplines to account for their normative dimensions. In this article, I show how different scholars and theologians typically negotiate the
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“Thoughts are Things”: Theosophy, Religion, and the History of the Real Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-01-07 Dixon J.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY has a long history of intersections with the academic study of religion. Its “Second Object”—“to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science” (Dixon 2001, 4) —plunged Theosophists into many (often acrimonious) debates with both scholars and believers. Although the Theosophical Society had no dogmas, it developed a version of the “divine wisdom” that
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A Theosophical Discipline: Revisiting the History of Religious Studies Journal of the American Academy of Religion Pub Date : 2022-01-07 Storm J.
IN January 1894, the pioneering psychologist and scholar of religion William James received a curious letter from Cambridge, England. The letter referred to the angelic magic of the famous Elizabethan astrologer John Dee. It suggested that Dee might have had real insights and that James might want to assemble a group of Harvard undergraduates to carry out experiments on crystal gazing.11 James’s correspondent