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The Barelvi movement in South Asian Islam Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Mohammad Waqas Sajjad
The Barelvi movement in South Asia—particularly in Pakistan—has long been regarded as the indigenous Islam of the region. It is equated with Sufism, and highlighted as the peaceful and moderate Islam of the majority of Muslims. In doing so, it is contrasted with competing Sunni traditions such as the Deobandis, as an explicit binary is created between the two. However, the narrative has seen a shift
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New religious movements and science: What now, what next, where to? Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Stefano Bigliardi, Adam J. Chin
This article draws on Stefano Bigliardi's recent Cambridge University Press Element New Religious Movements and Science, which provides an historical and comparative examination of how science is conceptualized within five New Religious Movements. We analyze Bigliardi's methodology and results, and offer multiple suggestions on how scholarship on NRMs and science can be extended and deepened.
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Judaism and climate change Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-03-29 Adrienne Krone
In 2014, The Public Religion Research Institute and the American Academy of Religion released a report called Believers, Sympathizers, & Skeptics: Why Americans Are Conflicted About Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science, which found that a total of 78% of Jewish Americans considered climate change a “crisis” or a “major problem.” (Jones et al., 2014, p. 12). In this article, I argue that
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The need for an historical theology of women deacons in the early church Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Laura Wilson
This article briefly surveys the historical evidence of Byzantine deaconesses and trends in modern research on the order. By drawing attention to the detrimental effects of research bias, the value of an historical theology of deaconesses becomes clear. The diaconate, like all the major orders, evolved throughout the early Christian period reflecting an adaptation to changing circumstances. Historical
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“Teach us to feel proud of all of our identities”: Time and space in an American queer Jewish liturgy Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Elazar Ben‐Lulu
Since the late 1960s, the American Jewish community has worked to find creative ways to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Queer+ (LGBTQ+) people in community practices and Jewish liturgy. The pioneering egalitarian denomination was and remains the Reform Jewish Movement, which promotes and supports gender equality and sexual diversity. This paper proposes a typology of queer Jewish liturgy
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Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Céline Debourse
In cuneiform culture the New Year Festival was an important ritual of kingship. The most fundamental source for the reconstruction of this festival is a small corpus of cuneiform ritual texts that describe the ritual actions and prayers to be performed during the first days of the year. Those texts were written by Babylonian priests during the Persian‐Hellenistic period (484–140 BCE), when Babylonia
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Perspectives on the Japanese new religion Tenrikyō: From global expansion to the development of a distinct “Tenri culture” Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Patrick Sanguineti
Tenrikyō, one of Japan's oldest “new religions,” remains one of the archipelago's most fascinating, yet most understudied religious organizations within English-language scholarship. Since its founding in 1838, the group has undergone multiple radical transformations as it has negotiated its place within Japanese society and the fluctuating place of religion therein. Once a rural group of relative
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Buddhist environmental ethics and climate change Religion Compass Pub Date : 2024-01-01 Daniel Capper
Philosophically, Buddhist ethics would appear to be well-prepared for the climate change age. Buddhists receive encouragement to extend compassion and nonharm throughout a universe that is utterly interconnected across time and space. Such positive extensions result in a strength of the tradition involving some welcome positive treatment of nonhuman animals. However, looking closely in terms of practical
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Whatever happened to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles' guru, and the “TM” movement? Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Dana Sawyer
This article redacts certain sections of the author's recent book on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. Specifically, it offers an updated overview—based on earlier studies—of the TM movement's development and what led to its enormous success, while also providing analysis of the movement using metrics gleaned from the academic study of new religious movements. The
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Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New approaches Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-30 Mo Pareles
This essay traces the far-reaching legend of Maria/Miriam of Bethezuba, sometimes called Mary, Marie, or Marion, a starving Jewish woman who (according to Flavius Josephus's The Jewish War) ate her own baby during the 70 CE Roman Siege of Jerusalem. This episode of maternal infanticide and cannibalism under occupation is the culmination of Biblical curses and prophecies, a complicated reference to
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Analytic theology Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Aaron Brian Davis
Analytic theology is often described as something like the application of analytic philosophy's tools to theological studies, but what this means can be unclear. In this paper, I offer a primer on analytic theology which clarifies this common description of the field. Particularly, following Sarah Coakley, I sketch an account of analytic theology on which it consists of a relation of familial resemblance
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Revisiting scriptures: Unbinding a critical comparative subfield Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Ritchard Newton
“Scriptures” is a term provoking no shortage of anxiety for postmodern scholars. This literature review introduces theorists to a subfield committed to theorizing about that term in critical and comparative terms. Revisiting the contributions of classic and contemporary scholars, readers will learn how the analytical study of scriptures is being unbound from the baggage of the term's Christian provenance
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Entheogens: Psychedelic religion in the United States, part two Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Brad Stoddard
Scholars across the academic spectrum have written about the renewed interest in psychedelics that is commonly called the Psychedelic Renaissance (PR). Psychedelic religion is a major component of the PR, as psychedelic churches are growing exponentially and as people who consume and who research psychedelics routinely contend that these substances induce or occasion religious, spiritual, or mystical
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Women's philanthropy and religion: The ladies of the Northampton shoe trade, 1870–1950 Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Kathrina Perry
This paper considers the role in which women played within religious organisations within the 19th and 20th centuries. Using the Northampton Boot and Shoe industry as a focus, it will explore the philanthropic activities carried out by women connected to the industry, and how they were able to support the local churches. The paper also considers the importance of women's history within a local history
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Mathas, toward understanding the public religious, educational, and political ascetic institution in South Asian religions Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Caleb Simmons
The matha is an important yet understudied public religious, political, and educational institution with wide-ranging influence in the formation of the structures and theology of Hinduism and Jainism. Recently, scholars of South Asian religion have turned their attention to understand these institutions and their role in the creation of sectarian identity and theology, as educational and economic centers
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Entheogens: Psychedelic religion in the United States, part one Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Brad Stoddard
Scholars across the academic spectrum have written about the renewed interest in psychedelics that is commonly called the Psychedelic Renaissance (PR). Psychedelic religion is a major component of the PR, as psychedelic churches are growing exponentially and as people who consume and who research psychedelics routinely contend that these substances induce or occasion religious, spiritual, or mystical
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Orthodox Christianity in the United States: A challenge for the study of American religion Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-20 Sarah Riccardi-Swartz
Arguably one of the oldest forms of Christianity, with a global population of more than 260 million adherents, Orthodox Christianity is a major religious system, with networks of believers on almost every continent. However, within the study of American religion, as well as most of the social sciences and humanities (not including theology), Orthodoxy has received minimal research and interest. The
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Rome, Catholicism, and the nation-state in America: Re-centering a debate? Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-19 Susanna De Stradis
The relationship between Catholicism and the nation-state in America has been fraught with tension on multiple levels. This review will distinguish two main analytical perspectives. One focuses on the problem of ethnicity and race formation. The Catholic Church in America has historically been both ethnically fragmented and functioning as a whole non-WASP “other.” Therefore, its relationship with the
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Christianity in (South) Sudan: Historical backgrounds, contemporary contestations, and future directions Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-05-14 Christopher Tounsel
Christianity has played an integral part of Sudanese life through colonialism, postcolonialism, civil wars, and secession. Through it all, writers from a variety of disciplinary and denominational backgrounds have recorded the diverse experiences of Christian individuals and organizations. This essay maps past and present work on Sudanese Christianity, offers assessments of the field, and offers conjecture
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Locating religion in contemporary art Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-04-10 Rina Arya
The place of religion in the context of contemporary art is fraught and complex. This article discusses three prominent ways in which religion is explored in contemporary art: in sociopolitics, in art that transgresses, and in the creation of spaces of contemplation, some of which may be ‘religious’. Each of these ways have in common the exploration of religion primarily in terms of its lived experience
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Emotions in ancient Egypt—An overview Religion Compass Pub Date : 2023-03-12 Sven Eicke
The aim of the article is to present essential aspects of five emotions (joy, fear, love, sadness, anger) on the basis of written sources from ancient Egypt. Through selective analyses of the Egyptian emotion vocabulary, including metaphors and descriptions of physical states and reactions, some elementary concepts will be explained. In addition, it is a concern to point out some of the difficulties
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Salvadoran religious transnationalism Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Lloyd Barba, Ana Vieytez
Among the most widely-cited aspects of Salvadoran life in the United States is the extent to which Salvadorans constitute a transnational community. This transnationalism manifests itself in nearly every aspect of community life, especially religion. In this article we outline four key dimensions of Salvadoran religious transnationalism. First, we note the importance of doctrine regarding evangelism
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Pentecostalism and media in Africa: Theoretical explorations of power and agency of media platforms and their users Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Murtala Ibrahim
This survey paper interrogates four theoretical frameworks often invoked to analyze intersections between media and religion: mediatization, mediation of meaning, mediation of the beyond, and religious social shaping of technology. The paper surveys several research works informed by the aforementioned theories that study Pentecostals' engagement with different forms of media in Africa. This paper
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Orality, gender, and West African Christian spirituality: Exploring women's voices Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Jessie Ini Fubara-Manuel, Sara Fretheim
This article explores orality in the context of West African Christian women's voices, arguing that their oral expressions highlight their lived faith experiences and function as a significant resource within the study of Christianity in Africa. The article first outlines concepts of orality in relation to gender, spirituality, language, and community engagement. We argue that women's oral contributions
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American Jewish humor Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Jennifer Caplan
This article charts the development of the particular genre generally known as “Jewish humor.” It provides and overview of the topic for those interested in the relationship between American Jews and humor and the phenomenon of Jewish humor. It aligns the history of the genre with the history of Jews in America to demonstrate the ways in which changes in Jewish American social status was reflected
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The material study of American Protestantism Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-12-08 Jamie L. Brummitt
This article traces the history of the material study of American Protestantism from the 1980s to today. In the 1980s, a few scholars of American religions started to incorporate material culture studies into their work. They examined religious images, objects, places, and practices according to new interdisciplinary methods. By the mid-1990s, the material study of American Protestantism exploded and
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Whose techno-utopia? Power, privilege, and the religio-secular frameworks of the contemporary biohacking movement Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Emma Rifai
Committed to providing a form of this-worldly salvation to its largely white, male, and wealthy practitioners, biohacking is a popular “citizen science” movement that applies a life-hacking mentality to the intimate spaces of the body by embracing DIY biology. Exploring the contours of its power and privilege in the United States today, this essay works to historicize the contemporary biohacking movement
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From reciprocity to welfare: Rerum Novarum, Catholicism, and early social security in Latin America Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-08-31 Andrés Biehl, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce
This article explores the role of Catholicism after the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), in shaping early Latin American social security. While social security is often interpreted as the outcome of organized distributional struggles, recent scholarship has begun to pay attention to the religious origins of a variety of social security systems. Building on this “religious turn”, the article reviews
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Contemporary Native American and Indigenous Religions: State of the field Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-08-18 Brennan Keegan
Native American and Indigenous religions are incredibly diverse in practice, belief, material culture, and organization, which shape distinct individual religious experiences and communal identities. The study of Native American and Indigenous religions is not the study of a singular religion or people nor does it refer to a singular methodology. Instead, the study of contemporary Native American religions
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Conspiracy narratives in Russia: A search for identity, religious worldviews, and Russian politics Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-07-14 Stanislav Panin
Conspiracy thinking plays an important role in Russian culture. Contemporary Russian conspiracism inherits elements of the Cold War rhetoric, French anti-Freemasonic literature, ideas of conservative Russian Orthodox thinkers and North American Christian writers. In today's Russia we see two distinct, although interconnected, types of conspiracy narratives—official and popular. Official narratives
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Salafist approaches to violence and terrorism: The Indian case study Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-05-15 Mohammed Sinan Siyech
Contemporary research on Salafism and terrorism often misses out much coming from nations like India where Salafists have an entrenched presence. This article tries to bridge the gap by examining Salafist organisations in India and their approach to violence and terrorism. Relying on fieldwork conducted in three states of India in 2021/2022, primary sources such as videos of various ideologues in Malayalam
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Commentaries from ancient mesopotamia: Texts, genres, and hermeneutics Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-05-13 Uri Gabbay
Akkadian commentaries from ancient Mesopotamia, written on cuneiform tablets dating to the first millennium BCE, deal with various texts and exhibit a variety of hermeneutical techniques and concerns. These commentaries are connected to the process of canonization, and also provide a glimpse into the scholarly environment in which they were produced.
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Translating scholars: Theorizing modern South Asian ‘Ulama’ studies Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-03-28 Ali Altaf Mian
We are witnessing an exciting renaissance in scholarship on modern South Asian Muslim religious scholars (‘ulama’). This article examines how this new scholarship repositions earlier academic conversations in distinctive ways to make several signal moves: (a) centering the political (particularly the theme of sovereignty); (b) complexifying the study of religious authority by attention to textuality
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Dalit religion Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-03-01 P. Sanal Mohan, Joel Lee
A reckoning with the question of Dalit religion is overdue. The religious worlds of that swath of the population of South Asia subject to the structural violence of “untouchability” have long been misapprehended—a consequence, in large part, of classificatory practices of the colonial and postcolonial state—as a kind of unlettered adjunct to Hinduism. This article assembles scholarly findings of recent
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Objects, affects, aesthetics: New materialisms and religious studies Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Sharday Catherine Mosurinjohn
This article provides a picture for religious studies scholars of the overlaps and differences between three recent theories of material religion which concern human perception, perceptible things, and the sometimes imperceptible forces that configure humans and things. The theories of note are: affect studies (an approach to the visceral forces that drive relations between beings); object-oriented
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The contemporary guru field Religion Compass Pub Date : 2022-01-30 Amanda Lucia
The guru field—to implement sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of the concept of “field”—is a term signifying the symbolic sphere of influence, power, and sociality populated by “specialized agents”, that is, in this case: charismatic Hindu religious leaders and their movements. Compounded with the term “contemporary,” the title of this article suggests a distinctive religious field located
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