Religion and Society

In 1973, the Taylor family of 222 Longmeanygate on the outskirts of Leyland joined the Saint Pius V Association under the Superiorship of Father Peter Morgan and funded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Mr Derrick Taylor and Mrs Irene Mary Taylor defied their bishop by hosting priests of the Saint Pius V Association at their home called the Leyland Mass Centre from 1974 to 1978 due to their belief that the Tridentine Rite of the Mass was the true Mass and must (...) be celebrated in Latin despite changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council that allowed for the Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular and with the Mass streamlined under Pope Paul VI. However, their actions in the 1970s were preceded by a long series of events that steam from Mr and Mrs Taylor's childhoods which this book details and in many ways celebrates. This short book provides a timeline of the lives of Mr and Mrs Taylor, using illustrations wherever possible to explain and visualise the significant events (some of which were supernatural) that shaped their beliefs. Each of the illustrations included in this work were commissioned by Mr and Mrs Taylor's grandson Cometan and created by British artist David Young who has been explaining the Taylor's story in the form of illustrations over the last five years. This work is a testament to Mr and Mrs Taylor's dedication to the Latin Mass despite the ridicule they faced and using intimate details about their lives helps to explain why they made their decisions and took controversial action at different stages of their lives. (shrink)

Emergent religious groups (ERGs) are an innovative but chronically understudied and misunderstood realm of contemporary religion. This may be due to notorious difficulties encountered when estimating the size of populations involved with emergent religious groups at any given time. The purpose of this article is to estimate the percentage of the U.S. population involved with ERGs over the past 50 years. Findings from three national surveys suggest .2-2.2% of the United States population involved with ERGs regardless of year. ERGs are (...) a viable case for quantitative sociologists of religion, which has hitherto been dominated by qualitative case study, although creativity and further research is needed to verify the findings. (shrink)

The post-pandemic economy in South Africa has exacerbated significant economic challenges, due to increasing unemployment, political corruption, inflation, and rising poverty, which have worsened the struggles of many (see Francis & Webster 2019:789–791; Arndt et al. 2020:16–22; van Papendorp, Packirisamy & Masike 2024:1-4). However, amid this turmoil, Christian megachurches (especially those promoting prosperity theology), have continued to flourish. Prominent South African pastors continue to espouse that financial success is a sign of divine favour, encouraging congregants to tithe faithfully, in exchange (...) for promised wealth (Barron 2022:88-94). Such doctrine aligns with broader religious narratives that intertwine material prosperity with inter alia spiritual blessings. Despite its increasing prevalence in the global South, most scholarly engagements with prosperity theology in South Africa have explored the topic through decolonial Afrocentric theological and ecclesiological lenses; often neglecting the socio-economic impact of whiteness in these post-colonial religious manifestations (Niemandt 2017:204-206; Andrew 2021:13-17; Adamo 2021:1-10; Barron 2022:88-100; Resane 2022:1-9; Khanyile 2023:101-125; Mkhize 2024:1-9). In contrast, this paper therefore adopts a critical religious studies perspective examining how mega-churches vis-à-vis “Big Religion,” through their commercialisation of the Bible, contribute to economic disparities in South Africa. This explores prosperity theology as a problematic religious ideology that reinforces economic inequity through promoting uncritical worldviews. By investigating case studies of influential South African mega-churches, this paper critiques the ways in which religion has become commodified: positioning ‘celebrity pastors’ as both spiritual, political, and financial influences. In addition to how the rise of 'big religion'—defined as the fusion of religion with commercial enterprise—poses significant challenges to extant socio-economic inequalities within the country, as it reinforces the theological legitimisation of wealth accumulation and a monopoly over status functions, at the expense of the working class. -/- . (shrink)

The Compendium of the Life and Genealogy of Cometan is a compilation of years of family history research conducted by Cometan on his maternal and paternal ancestry. The book is formatted as an index of individual family members with key biographical details, photographs and extracts from various sources collected over the years. The book has over 300 pages of life stories of members of the Cottam, Moon, Prescott, Taylor and Warbrick families. The life stories include religious conversions, tragic deaths, details (...) of married life, the births of children, burials, poetry, interviews, extracts of newspaper articles, paintings, wartime stories, emigration, illustrations of key events, religious tracts, details of people’s careers, pictures of gravestones and letters. This book embodies an ethnography of the lives of several families in Lancashire using a methodology of family history. (shrink)

El margen práctico con el que se hace la defensa de los cristianos en tiempos de persecución comporta un aspecto significativo del pensamiento de Atenágoras, en el que descansa toda la aprobación para con los seguidores de Cristo. Sin embargo, se carece de estudios reflexivos respecto de una praxis cristiana como argumento apologético en este ateniense, estudios que transitarían desde un enfoque dogmático del cristianismo a uno más operativo. De aquí que, criticar la tradición religiosa de sus contemporáneos, procurar una (...) vida pura y colaborar con la paz del imperio, implican un ideal ético en términos de crítica y de adhesión paradójicas que caracterizan al cristianismo de los primeros siglos. (shrink)

Creatively bringing the songs, prayers, and poetry of Leonard Cohen into conversation with Scripture, this book deeply grounds Cohen's work in the landscape of the biblical imagination, paying special attention to Jesus together with the prophetic and priestly voices of Scripture. What emerges is a compellingly lyrical work of theology that deepens our understanding of both Cohen and biblical faith. Leonard Cohen has undoubtedly been a liturgist for our time, a cantor singing for all those clothed in rags of light, (...) a prophet in the ruins, and a priest who greets us "from the other side of sorrow and despair.". (shrink)

This paper gives a first theoretical formulation to a religious phenomenon which has not received much attention in philosophical discourse so far despite appearing in different highly heterogeneous religions. Vicarious religious ordinance refers to cases in which a living or deceased fully mature human being is knowingly or unknowingly assigned a religious affiliation without their consent or the consent of their dependents. I shall first offer three real-world examples of vicarious religious ordinance from Mormonism, Islam, and Shintoism and then raise (...) some normative concerns. I suggest (i) that vicarious religious ordinance does not fit neatly into current debates about religious epistemology, especially the recent debate on religious disagreement. I argue (ii) that normative questions as to why vicarious religious ordinance elicits indignation in its ‘victims’ is not easily explained through adducing similar examples. This paper aims to motivate further coordinated research on this topic. (shrink)

The 1950s witnessed a debate between Taiwanese New Confucians and liberals about traditional Chinese (especially Confucian) culture and democratic politics. One topic of this debate was the question why traditional Chinese society was unable to develop democratic politics. Inspired by Max Weber's theory of the connection between Protestant ethics and capitalism, the liberalist thinker Zhang Hao put forth the notion of "consciousness of darkness" in answer to this question. He emphasized that the fact that the modern West could generate democratic (...) politics is closely related to the "consciousness of darkness" contained in the Christian tradition. Conversely, the New Confucians Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan, and Tang Junyi affirmed that there is a connection between the theory of the goodness of human nature and democratic politics. Hu Ping, a mainland Chinese scholar, directly refuted Zhang Hao's theory. For Hu, the major reason why Confucianism did not develop a democratic system was not the weakness of its thought but the absence of favorable historical conditions. Finally, I discuss Kant's theory of "democracy" and his moral philosophy in order to justify the position of Hu Ping and the New Confucians. Kant's political philosophy is based on morality but also includes the notion of "consciousness of darkness," which suggests that there is no necessary contradiction between the two. (shrink)

The paper examines how values lose their sacred or protected significance and turn into values as a hobby. Using an excerpt from Arundhati Roy's novel “The God of Small Things”, a trend of transformation of values is outlined, raising questions about the importance of different values – both sacred and secular – for the representatives of these values. In short, the question is related to the value of values: is their practice (affirmation) meaningful in the basic sense of these values, (...) or is this practice mere imitation as a hobby? The article gives several examples that show the versatility of this topic. The case of Qutb’s Islamism highlights the importance of the distinction between private and public: the exclusion of the Islamic religion from the public sphere would result in the religion and its values losing their prominent role. A contrasting direction of change is evident in the woke movement, in which secular ideas transform into quasi-religious beliefs (resacralization of values). Finally, an explanation of this contemporary cultural picture of values becoming a hobby (in the dynamics of private-public relations) is sought in Andreas Reckwitz’s observation that the “general” is being replaced by a “singular” logic. Since the sacred and general meaning of values is abolished, this is where the shift in the understanding of values is most apparent. Because there is no longer a foundation of a sacred myth, individual values become a private matter and have no public meaning. (shrink)

This paper begins by bringing love and hate into tension via the ideal that you ought to love your enemy. The trouble with loving your enemy is that they may seem to merit hate instead, especially in cases of serious injustice. I develop this simple thought into a challenge for loving your enemy: that you cannot be required to do what makes no sense to you. This challenge is not adequately met by extant explanations for why you ought to love (...) your enemy within the Christian tradition and its heirs, which tend to give reasons that are either insufficient or else instrumentalize love. The second half of the paper presents a solution with a very different shape to the challenge. I argue that love may still be fitting even when your enemy fails to merit love, notwithstanding the contemporary orthodoxy about fittingness. What makes it fitting to love your enemy depends on the fact (if it is one) that you yourself have received unmerited love. You may thereby have reason to exclude the issue of merit from consideration; what is more, you have reason to love out of gratitude for the unmerited love that you yourself received. (shrink)

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events, no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the internet, say. In addition (...) to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into more clear focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices. (shrink)

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. (...) Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

A review of Tsvi Bisk's 2024 work Cosmodeism: A Worldview for the Space-Age: How an Evolutionary Cosmos is Creating God featured in the Journal of Astronist Studies and reviewed by Cometan.

The 2024 Global Religious Recognition Report is a compilation of the most recent available data on recognition and registration impacting conditions of religious freedom throughout the world. Each page of the 259-page report is dedicated to each sovereign state and dependent or disputed territory, including an overview of the constitutional structure, secularity and recognition and registration policies and practices. Detailed explanations of registration policy have been gathered from the Office of International Religious Freedom's International Religious Freedom Report in addition to (...) other credible sources. The RoRB classification for each country and territory has been updated in accordance with the criteria set out in the Spectrum of Religious Recognition (SRR) which was included towards the front of this year's report. This year's report includes an abridged version of Dr Monica Gyimah's article (the full article can be found in Journal of Astronist Studies Volume 1 Issue 1) that highlights recognition and registration issues specifically impacting indigenous religious communities. (shrink)

De heilige maand ramadan en het Suikerfeest vormen een tijd van bezinning op het islamitische geloof en staan in het teken van de hervertelling van religieuze verhalen. Iedere religie kent zulke momenten van religieuze reflectie. Die zijn bijzonder en betekenisvol. Maar helaas wordt de nadruk nog steeds vaak gelegd op bewijs voor het bestaan van God en de waarheid van religieuze overtuigingen.

Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), the progenitor of so-called Russian Cosmism, is an eccentric figure without parallel in the domain of modern thought. His intellectual vision, elaborated across a number of essays and the sprawling unpublished magnum opus written from the 1870s to the 1890s, The Question of Fraternity, attempted a novel theorization of the trajectory, meaning, and telos of the human species through the fulcrum of resurrection. The speculative dimension of Fedorov's cosmist project has garnered the most sustained theoretical interest, but (...) this speculative dimension develops out of a determinate critical diagnosis of the fundamental operations of Western modernity. Reconstructing the elements that make up the diagnostic tendency of Fedorov's project, and then recentering his project around them, allows for the speculative and cosmic elements of his thought to be properly understood. As a result, his project is revealed to be a thinking and acting out of an intimacy with death and with the earth, a thinking and acting grounded in a delegitimating refusal of the colonial, biopolitical, and capitalist foundations of modernity. Only with the delineation of the critical as the internal drive for the cosmically speculative is Fedorov's difference from dominant modes of eco- and geo-constructivist thought sufficiently retained. Our essay pursues this line of thinking to show the decisive significance of Fedorov's critical project, incubated on the margins of Western modernity, for two dominant lines of critical theory—those associated most closely with the names of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. It does so by reconstructing Fedorov's refusal of the modern biopolitical paradigm, his expansion of the analytics of expropriation, his ambitious reconfiguration of the cartographical imaginary of collective life around the cemetery and the commune, and finally his speculative rewriting of the liturgy as the material enactment of the common task. (shrink)

This edited volume brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine the relationship between religion and alcohol. -/- It examines the historical, social, ritual, economic, political, and cultural relationship between religion and alcohol across time periods and around the world. Twelve chapters are tied together by two major themes: first, gender identity, and its intersection with religion and alcohol; second, identity construction in religious communities, demonstrating how alcohol can be used as a distinguishing factor for religious, ethnic, and national identity. (...) A key focus of the volume is how alcohol can bridge and divide the point at which the sacred and secular meet. -/- With its interdisciplinary approach and engaging style, this book is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students in religion departments and appeals to scholars of material culture, food, and alcohol. Additionally, the book is of interest to professionals in the alcohol industry, particularly those involved in microbrewing and winemaking, who are interested in understanding the historical and cultural contexts of their craft. (shrink)

Today, we find ourselves living during the most Religious era in all of human history. If this statement is true, it is also how we can predict the end of the human story.

In this paper, I elucidate the scapegoat construct and its necessary psychological presence within theistic and atheistic variations of the narrative self, as well as the Chinese and Japanese variations of the Buddhist no-self, and enumerate the ritual processes undertaken by these practitioners to create, banish, and sacrifice their respective motifs of applied blame. I attempt to substantiate the inward and outward transcendent manifestations of this construct as the identifying qualities of the Christ figure, and the harmful external manifestations as (...) evidence of the Yahweh figure later in the work. As a sort of Neo-Jungian approach to comparative religion, I guarantee that this work will instantiate significant theoretical value in the mind of the reader, qualified as the transcendent end of my self-sacrifice and banishment of slothfulness necessary for its completion. (shrink)

Many democratic theorists hold that when a decision is collectively made in the right kind of way, in accordance with the right procedure, it is permissible to enforce it. They deny that there are further requirements on the type of reasons that can permissibly be used to justify laws and policies. In this paper, I argue that democratic theorists are mistaken about this. So-called public reason requirements follow from commitments that most of them already hold. Drawing on the democratic ideal (...) of civic equality, I show that it can successfully explain why political decision-making must have the right sort of procedure-independent justification. However, contra standard accounts of public reason, I argue that laws and policies need to be justified with convergence accessible, not shared, reasons. Public reasons are those that are accessible in light of evaluative standards shared by all, or in light of every citizen’s private evaluative standards. Since this will make the set of public reasons wider, it makes the theory more palatable to sceptics while retaining the framework’s justificatory potential. (shrink)

لقد صار من غير الممكن أبدا نفي الضرورة الملحة لدراسة التحولات الاجتماعية والديناميات المجالية التي يعرفها المجتمع المغربي المعاصر. فقد عرف المغرب الظاهرة الكولونيالية، كما انخرط في الحداثة التقنية والتنظيمية، مثلما اندمج في سوق الاقتصاد العالمي، ونظام العولمة بتحدياته المختلفة. كما دخل هذا المجتمع في عصر سمته الأساسية هي الحركية، سواء كانت هذه الحركية أفقية داخل المجال، أو حركية عمودية في السلم الاجتماعي، وفي مختلف مناحي الحياة الاجتماعية والثقافية. -/- وبسبب هذا الوضع، كان على الدراسات الاجتماعية، أن تواكب الواضعة الراهنة (...) للمجتمع، بتكثيف وتجديد مقارباتها، حتى تكون قادرة على فهم وتحليل مختلف الظواهر التي يطفح بها المشهد الاجتماعي المغربي، بمختلف مكوناته ومجالاته المختلفة، سواء في مجال القرى والواحات، أو في مجالات المدن وأحوازها. وإذ نؤكد هذا المعطى الذي لا يمكن أن تغفله العين السوسيولوجية، فإن هدفنا من خلال هذا العمل هو محاولة دراسة وتحليل المجتمع المغربي في قلب التحولات، لهذا تلامس المقالات المدرجة ضمن هذا العمل مجالات وجوانب عديدة من عمليات التحول التي يشهدها المجتمع المغربي، بمقاربات وطرائق مختلفة ومتقاطعة في آن واحد. وسيجد القارئ أن العنوان الذي اخترناه لهذا العمل يعبر إلى حد بعيد عن طبيعة مسعانا. فرؤيتنا هذه نابعة من قناعتنا الراسخة بأهمية المعرفة والبحث العلمي المتكامل، خاصة إذا تعلق الأمر بموضوع الديناميات والتحولات المختلفة التي لا يمكن الإمساك بها إلا من زاوية التعدد والتكامل المعرفي، على الرغم من التحديات والثغرات التي قد تواجه مثل هذا الطموح. -/- توجه هذا العمل تساؤلات كثيرة تستدعي نفسها، من قبيل: هل انتهت الفلاحة العائلية بالمجالات الرطبة؟ وما الذي تبقى من السكن التقليدي بالواحات؟ وما هي مختلف الديناميات التي شهدها المجتمع القروي المغربي؟ وإلى أي حد ساهم الاستعمار كلحظة "مثاقفة كبيرة" وكل عمليات التحديث وسياسات التنمية الوطنية مند الاستقلال، في تغيير البنيات الفكرية والقيّم الثقافية للمجتمع المغربي التقليدي؟ وهل ساهمت المدرسة في الحدّ من التراتبية الاجتماعية القائمة على التمييز الجنسي والاثني؟ وكيف أثرت هذه الديناميات على علاقة الفرد المغربي بالمجال والجسد وتراثه الأنثروبولوجي المتنوع؟ وهل يمكن القول بأن المجتمع المغربي يتجه أكثر فأكثر نحو قيم السوق والفردانية؟ -/- بناء على هذه الأسئلة وغيرها، تتنوع أعمال هذا الكتاب، بين الاهتمام بالفلاحة العائلية(د، بن محمد قسطاني)، وتحولات المجتمع القروي(الباحث: الصديق الصادقي العماري) الذي ساهمت فيه عوامل كثيرة، كالاستعمار والمدرسة التي سرعت وتيرة التغير على مستوى الحركية الاجتماعية للفئات التي كانت تنتمي إلى القاع الاجتماعي قبل الاستعمار(ذ، عبد الكريم الوزيري)، كما أن الديناميات السوسيو-مجالية لهاته المناطق، خاصة بمجال الواحات(د، محمد جاج)، إلى جانب الهجرة الداخلية والخارجية، وانفتاح المجتمعات المحلية على القيّم الحديثة، غيرت بشكل كبير نمط السكن التقليدي وأزاحته من موقعه(د عبد الفتاح الزهيدي)، كما لعبت دورًا كبيرا في التأثير على الأدوار الاجتماعية والممارسات الثقافية والرمزية المرتبطة بالجسد وتحولاته التي امتدت إلى الأنثى بالمجالات الواحية(د، ابراهيم حمداوي). -/- وقد حاول الباحث (محمد كركوب) من جهته، الوقوف عند التحولات التي شهدتها قيّم الزواج ومؤسسة الأسرة داخل المجتمع، أما الأستاذ (عبد القادر محمدي) فقد تناول أنثروبولوجيًا طقوس الليلة الكناوية وبعض ما شهدته من تحولات، كما حاول الباحث (عبد العزيز اجدي) تتبع بعض التحولات القيمية التي شهدتها ثقافة المجتمع المغربي، و من ضمنها ما ركز عليه الباحث (صلح نديم) بخصوص التحولات التي طالت الرصيد اللغوي للطفل. وإلى جانب هذه الديناميات، فإن المغرب لم يعد فقط، بلدا مصدرا للهجرة، أو محطة عبور فحسب، بل صار بلدا حاضنا للمهاجرين الأفارقة بشكل خاص، الأمر الذي طرح أمامه مجموعة من التحديات الاجتماعية والثقافية، من ذلك مثلا، تلك التحديات المتعلقة بسياسة إدماجهم داخل المجتمع وسوق الشغل، وهو ما تقصاه الباحث (عبد الله أزرار). إن هذه التغيرات والديناميات التي شهدها المجتمع المغربي على مستوى بنيات تفكيره ومؤسساته وروابطه، مند الاستعمار، لم يصحبه بالضرورة اختفاء الأطر الفكرية والمؤسسات التقليدية التي كانت تحكم المجتمع، لذلك لم يتأسس الرابط السياسي والمدني، بشكل يمكننا الحديث عن مجتمع حديث بالمعنى السوسيولوجي للكلمة. فالإجراءات التي أحدثها الاستعمار ثم الدولة الوطنية، إلى جانب التحضر النسبي للبنيات التحتية في المدن القديمة والناشئة على حد سواء، على الرغم من أنها عملت بالتدريج على تفكيك البنية القبلية وخلخلة البناء الاجتماعي التقليدي، بإدماج المجتمع القبلي في المؤسسات الجديدة عبر عمليات بناء الدولة وتبني نظم التحديث والتنمية التي اتخذت أشكالا سياسية واقتصادية واجتماعية متنوعة، إلا أن الباحث (رشيد الزعفران) قد سجل ضعف وهشاشة الرابط المدني والسياسي، في مقابل استمرار حضور الرابط الأسري الذي حافظ على قوته. -/- إننا، إذ نقدم هذا العمل لعموم الطلبة والأساتذة والباحثين، فإنه يسعدنا أن نتوجه بالشكر الجزيل لكل المشاركين من الأساتذة والباحثين، وكل أعضاء اللجنة العلمية الذين عملوا على مراجعة المقالات وتحكيمها. ولابد من الإشارة هنا إلى أن ترتيب المقالات ليس له أي علاقة بمكانة الباحث، بل يتعلق الأمر بالتوزيع الموضوعاتي للأعمال بما يتماشى وتنظيم أقسام وفصول هذا العمل، الذي نرجو أن يشكل إضافة نوعية للمكتبة المغربية. لجنة التنسيق: الصديق الصادقي العماري رشيد الزعفران. (shrink)

In this address, Leslie Allan shares his early experiences and how they shape his humanist outlook today. He then outlines what he considers to be the three core principles underlying the humanist world view and illustrates their application with historical and contemporary examples. He concludes by drawing upon each of these principles to tease out what it means to live a good life; a life of meaning and purpose.

QAnon is beginning to gain attention in scholarly circles, but these sources often disagree about how to categorize the movement. This amounts to the meta-dispute between those who view QAnon primarily as a religious “cult,” and those who grant it greater credibility as a political populist movement. Using quantitative and qualitative methods we test the proposition that QAnon could be a mix of both. Results from both analyses suggest that QAnon is best understood primarily as a political populist movement, but (...) one that utilizes religious rhetoric. The findings thus highlight the asymmetric nature of the conflation of religion and politics in the contemporary American civil sphere. (shrink)

Violations of religious freedom resulting from how states arrange their recognition and registration policies continue to escalate around the world. States might seek to regulate the religious activities of their citizens and recognition and registration are convenient tools in this pursuit. Registration is sometimes made mandatory; groups may be barred from accessing it and what they must do to first obtain and then to maintain registered status can be onerous. Such restrictive policies serve to preserve a religious or political hegemony (...) by filtering out religions and beliefs deemed unfavourable and unworthy of recognition. After surveying the ways recognition and registration are misused, this article contends that more definitive international standards are necessary to supersede ambiguous guidelines. Furthermore, this article deliberates over the plausibility that recognition, as a mode of state–religion relations, might still have the potential to facilitate freedom of religion or belief. This relies on whether a state uses recognition to facilitate all religions and beliefs by reducing deep-set favouritism and any administrative hurdles imposed during registration. (shrink)

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of (...) anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely sentient non-persons by discounting their existing differences with actual persons. I show that this attitude can lend support to the resurgent attempt to treat fetal pain as equally morally considerable to that of childbearing persons they gestate within. I explain that the only sound way to apply the principle of equal consideration of comparable interests is to compare experiences of actual persons. Therefore, while supporting a vegan economy may be morally praiseworthy, it should not be deemed morally obligatory. (shrink)

The 2010 U. S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations and Membership Survey (RCMS) is the most comprehensive picture of U.S. religious life, county by county. How thorough is the RCMS in covering local religious groups? To answer this question, three county snapshots were performed with collected data compared to the RCMS 2010 reported numbers. Data suggest that there has been an underreport by as much as 25 percent of the number of local congregations in these counties. New and emerging religious movements (...) and denominations as well as ethnic congregations comprise much of this percentage, making it more imperative for scholars to develop methodologies and frameworks in order to capture these “others” and invisible churches in America. Recently spotlighted by Religion Watch, see link below. (shrink)

Religion, stubbornly refusing to disappear as a moving force in the conduct of human affairs, continued to pose a seemingly intractable problem for modern social theory. As their successors in the first half of the nineteenth century learned to view religion as a complex, although deficient, social phenomenon rather than as a simple pathology of thought and emotion, some of them invested considerable effort in searching for a rational and scientific substitute. Compared to the attitudes toward religion set by the (...) philosophers of the Enlightenment, the post-Hegelian critique of religion may be said to have had a better—and an astonishingly "modern"—grasp of the universal human basis of religion. In most archaic and many traditional societies, only one social form of religion either existed or was dominant to the near exclusion of others. In most archaic and many traditional societies, only one social form of religion either existed or was dominant to the near exclusion of others. (shrink)

Religion, belief and culture should be recognized as potential sources of moral purpose and personal strength in healthcare, enhancing the welfare of both clinicians and patients amidst the experience of ill-health, healing, suffering and dying. Communication between doctors and patients and between healthcare staff should attend sensitively to the welfare benefits of religion, belief and culture. Doctors should respect personal religious and cultural commitments, taking account of their significance for treatment and care preferences. Good doctors understand their own beliefs and (...) those of others. They hold that patient welfare is best served by understanding the importance of religion, belief and culture to patients and colleagues. The sensitive navigation of differences between people's religions, beliefs and cultures is part of doctors' civic obligations and in the UK should follow the guidance of the General Medical Council and Department of Health. In particular, apparent conflict between clinical judgement or normal practices and a patient's culture, religion and belief should be considered carefully. Doctors' own religion or culture may play an important role in promoting adherence to this good practice. In all matters, doctors' conduct should be governed by the law and arrangements for conscientious objection that are in effect. (shrink)

In this chapter I discuss Roger Trigg’s contribution to this volume on Wittgenstein, concepts, and human nature. Trigg shares many of the basic assumptions that form the methodological framework of cognitive science of religion (CSR) arguing that Wittgenstein’s later work shares common ground with presumptions, commitments, and accounts in cultural studies that are usually rejected by proponents of CSR. In particular, he challenges Wittgenstein’s notion of truth, that he sees under the threat of radical relativism. Against his view I argue (...) that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy never comes at the cost of losing the notion of objective truth. It rather demands a change in the conceptual framework that underlies the use of this notion of truth. In the first section I argue for the claim in terms of Wittgenstein’s development. In the second section I explore the social nature of meaning in the Later Wittgenstein, arguing, in the third section, that it does not commit us to radical relativism. Finally, I draw some conclusions from my argument for the studies of CSR. (shrink)

Las críticas que brotan en un medio en que el debate epistemológico parece encabezar los problemas que competen al filosofar, tienen en el negar el sentido de verdad al discurso de índole religiosa la ratificación del estatus de cientificidad. Esta es la apuesta de teóricos inscritos a la tradición analítica surgida en el pasado siglo. No obstante, frente a los discursos neopositivistas y el radical evidencialismo vienen las posiciones de algunos filósofos y teólogos analíticos quienes paralelamente abogaron por la validez (...) y el sentido de lo religioso. (shrink)

La iglesia católica, inmersa en la sociedad y en su continua labor por la santificación de los pueblos, percibe en el ambiente escolar un espacio para la formación humana integral de todas las personas. Sin embargo, las múltiples dificultades sociales hacen de esta el principal foco de problemas, por lo que es necesario incitar a un proceso consciente y perseverante de cambio personal en función del bien común. Así pues, se exponen las principales contribuciones doctrinales de la Iglesia Católica en (...) lo que respecta al problema educativo, con base en los documentos conciliares del Vaticano II, seguidas de una sucinta reflexión que advierte la urgente difusión de valor en beneficio de la humanidad. (shrink)

The chapter explores the question of whether humanity should give up religion, through the lens of the Dune series of novels (1965-1985) by Frank Herbert. The novels describe the future history of humanity, in which we are ruled by an oppressive theocratic emperor, first under a self-declared messiah, and finally, under a self-declared God-emperor. Numerous proposed harms of religion are considered, including that it encourages hated, violence, exploitative power hierarchies, and empire, and that it retards the progress of science and (...) the arts. Numerous proposed benefits of religion are considered, including that it gives people solace in times of trouble, the it promotes kindness and other virtues, that it has motivated positive political change, and that it has been instrumental in establishing educational, charitable, and other social institutions. Finally, it is concluded that, as argued by W.K. Clifford in “The Ethics of Belief” (1877), whether we should hold religious view or not depends on whether we have good grounds to believe that those religious views are true. Holding false beliefs is dangerous, since it can lead to inappropriate actions in unpredictable ways. (shrink)

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks (...) and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysical research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein's objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind. Contents: Introduction (Robert Vinten); Ch.1: 'Wittgenstein, Concepts, and Human Nature' (Roger Trigg); Ch.2: 'On Truth, Language, and Objectivity' (Florian Franken Figueiredo); Ch.3 'Pascal Boyer's Miscellany of Homunculi: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Religion Explained' (Robert Vinten); Ch.4 'The Brain Perceives/Infers' (Hans van Eyghen); Ch.5 'The Imaginary Inner Inside Cognitive Science of Religion' (Christopher Hoyt); Ch.6 'Cognitive Theories and Wittgenstein: Looking for Convergence not for Divergence' (Olympia Panagiotidou); Ch. 7 'Wittgenstein, Naturalism, and Interpreting Religious Phenomena' (Thomas Carroll); Ch.8 'Natural Thoughts and Unnatural Oughts: Lessing, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary CSR' (Guy Axtell); Ch.9 'Normative Cognition in Cognitive Science of Religion' (Mark Addis); Ch.10 'Brains as the Source of Being: Mind/Brain Focus and the Western Model of Mind in Dominant Cognitive Science Discourse' (Rita McNamara); Ch.11 'On Religious Practices as Multiscale Active Inference: Certainties Emerging From Recurrent Interactions Within and Across Individuals and Groups' (Inês Hipólito and Casper Hesp). (shrink)

One of the issues that caught my attention in the discussion on Religion and Human Rights, which is also an issue that has recently started to be hotly discussed in Indonesia, is the issue of LGBTQ+ minority rights (gay rights). This issue becomes interesting, the issue of gay rights, especially when this issue deals with the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). As we saw in the discussion of human rights at International, tensions between gay rights and FoRB in several (...) countries have their own characteristics. For example, in Indonesia, recently, the movement for defenders of the FoRB has begun to bloom, and, I observe, there is a tendency to include minority groups such as indigenous people, including LGBTQ+ people (gay rights), into their circle of struggle. The question is, how do religious freedom rights (FoRB) deal with gay rights? Or conversely, how do gay rights deal with religious freedom? In that context, this book becomes relevant to discuss. This book provides each author’s many different moral arguments and philosophical commitments. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to a festschrift in honor of Rev. Chris Ferguson's leadership of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. It engages the Accra Confession and suggests that the next step for bringing the Confession to bear on our current realities requires churches to consider what it means to be confessional and catholic. In doing so, it introduces inter-confessionality as a possible way forward, not only to address global challenges today, but how the Accra Confession can help facilitate (...) that mission. (shrink)

The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng perform a ritual pilgrimage (hajj) to the top of Mount Bawakaraeng (as a sacred space). This ritual is often considered heretical and deviant. These negative assumptions are the result of the monopoly definition of “sacred place” by the world religion paradigm which is only limited to the doctrine of the holy book and is hierarchical-exclusive. Meanwhile, in the indigenous religion paradigm, “sacred place” is closely related tothe surrounding environment (nature) which also (...) gives life to indigenous peoples. The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng construct the sacredness of the mountain, not only as a place for religious rituals but also as a guarantor of their life. There were lacking previous researches discussing “sacred place” through the indigenous religion paradigm approach. This research contributes to that lack. This study examines how the indigenous religion paradigm interprets “sacred place”. The research method used in this research is qualitative. This study argues that there is no better way to understand why indigenous people perform rituals on Mount Bawakaraeng than using the indigenous religion paradigm. This study also shows that the “sacred place” associated with Mount Bawakaraeng is a way for the indigenous people who live around the mountain to preserve the nature around them which has enabled them to live and make a living such as accessing water, gathering medicines from nature, and so on. Eventually, with research that provides a better explanation of what a “sacred place” is in the indigenous religion paradigm, negative assumptions about indigenous people who regard a mountain as sacredplace can be better understood. (shrink)

The initial foundations to the notion that Cometan's grandparents, Irene Mary Taylor and Derrick Taylor, should be recognised for their life as laypeople in the Roman Catholic Church first emerged in January 2020 and October 2021 respectively. Irene Mary was well known for her devotion to Catholicism among her family and acquaintances, yet Cometan saw in her icon and life events an opportunity to reinvigorate Catholic fervour in England and abroad. In his own endeavour as a religious figure and philosopher (...) as the founder of Astronism, Cometan had made it clear that his paternal grandmother had played a large role in his religious life from infancy and so Irene Mary's Cause for Beatification was the culmination of this destined religious figureship. The Beatification Story of Irene Mary Taylor holds the responsibility of presenting Irene Mary for the recognition in the Roman Catholic Church in whichever capacity the Church deems suitable. The book explores the major remembered life events of Irene Mary Taylor, relates them to Catholic doctrine, and systematises them to form Irenianism, Irene Mary's eponymous Catholic system of thought. (shrink)

This article contends that James Baldwin’s exploration of racism and resistance to it in The Fire Next Time may be put into conversation with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s consideration of fundamental epistemic commitments in On Certainty. Out of this constructive engagement, I argue that white supremacism in the United States may be interpreted as being like a Wittgensteinian grounding or "hinge" commitment and that this viewpoint illuminates some of the ways in which white supremacism may interact with various kinds of religious commitments. (...) This combined analysis depicts the extent to which fundamental commitments about race deeply affect people, including the formation of their ethical and civic values, existential and religious commitments, and range of empathetic capacity and also details similarities between Baldwin and Wittgenstein when it comes to their contentions that there is ethical value in the clarification of language and work on oneself. (shrink)

The Astronist Statement on the Situation of the Human Species, often simply referred to as The Astronist Statement, is a non-technical manifesto of the Astronist philosophy and religion, altogether referenced as the Astronist belief system. It provides a summary of the Astronist perspective on the human condition as this pertains to and is influenced by the ultimate goals of Astronism and the purposes it prescribes to human life through its doctrines on transcension, cosmocentrism, suronality and astrosis. The Astronist Statement is (...) made equivalent to other kinds of theological or ideological manifestos in that it outlines the fundamental problems that Astronism sees effecting the human species and presents solutions to these problems identified. The underlying principle of The Astronist Statement and thereby, all Astronism, is that due to the pervading cosmic limitation, human beings both individually and collectively are limited in our capacities to do and be. This means that the human species is inherently though not hopelessly limited which is pinpointed as the underlying reason for all the suffering, evil and wrongdoing in the world. It is the goal of the Astronist religion to extinguish human limitation because in humanity, Astronism sees the potential for transcension meaning that humanity may one day, via our expansion into the astronomical world, transverse the boundaries of cosmic limitation to become unlimited beings possessing total freedom and thereby having also extinguished our woes of suffering and evil. The Astronist Statement conveys this message of humanity's capacity to transverse limitation via the salvific process of transcension, an endeavour that has indeed become the central dogma of the Astronist religion and thereby the central goal and life purpose of all Astronists. (shrink)

Conditions for recognition of religion or belief (RoRB) continued to deteriorate around the world from June 2021 to June 2022. Authoritarian regimes bent on controlling religious activity maintained a foothold in Africa, Asia and parts of Central and South America. The liberties enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights are at serious threat by the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine. While in Afghanistan, the Taliban's reclamation of power after twenty years of being kept at bay likely signals a new (...) generation of Afghan boys and girls who will not see their fundamental human rights upheld by the very institutions that are supposed to protect them.​ -/- The Religious Recognition Project considers the topic of how countries register religious groups and activities is one of the foremost issues in the modern world when it comes to respecting and protecting freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). The majority of countries and territories (58% or 137 out of 235 studied) either continue to make government registration mandatory for religious groups or provide no registration procedures at all. -/- An even greater majority of countries have established onerous registration procedures, the consequences of which, whether by intention or not, include the disenfranchisement of belief communities, the deregistration or denial of registered status for minority or "untraditional" religious groups, and the state's maintenance of control over the religious and philosophical lives of citizens. In essence, issues of registration remain a harbinger of worse violations of FoRB to come so if a focus is placed on dismantling these misused recognition and registration systems, it is possible that we could see a brighter future for FoRB conditions in countries worst effected by this issue. (shrink)

(ESP) Recensión del libro "Los ingenieros de Franco. Ciencia, catolicismo y Guerra Fría en el Estado franquista". Barcelona: Crítica, 2017, 317 páginas. La investigación principal de Lino Camprubí, nos ofrece una historia de la transformación del territorio español desde el punto de vista de las ciencias y las tecnologías. Constituye un ejemplo de constatación de la imbricación entre ciencia, tecnología y economía política –sin olvidar la religión. El libro muestra cómo el régimen franquista utilizó la ciencia y tecnología a su (...) alcance para la (re)construcción del país, pero también cómo esos mismos ingenieros construyeron la España franquista. // (ENG) Review of the book "Los ingenieros de Franco. Ciencia, catolicismo y Guerra Fría en el Estado franquista". (Franco's Engineers. Science, Catholicism and Cold War in the Francoist State) Barcelona: Crítica, 2017, 317 pp. The main research of Lino Camprubí, offers a history of the transformation of the Spanish territory from the point of view of science and technology. It constitutes an example of the verification of the imbrication between science, technology and political economy -without forgetting religion. The book shows how the francoist regime used the science and technology at its disposal for the (re)construction of the country, but also how those same engineers built Franco's Spain. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 386-400, May 2022.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 438-451, May 2022.

My purpose here is to provide a theoretical context for exploring what enables and prevents interreligious dialogue. My approach is to look at the possible attitudes within personal interactions that motivate and inform prejudice toward and acceptance of people of other religions and the possible attitudes that would mitigate it. I do not see religious tolerance and intolerance as an either/or relation but as varied phenomena that emerge from everyday human life. Societies and religions are many-sided, and personal interactions between (...) people of different religions reflect not only religious beliefs and traditions but the constellation of social forces and personal desires and fears. (shrink)