ABSTRACT In religious festivals celebrated at many sites across South Asia, colossal wooden vehicles known as “temple‐cars” convey images of deities and saints in a rapturous procession. Temple‐cars have garnered a disciplinarily fragmented body of scholarship that has treated them primarily as mobile temples by privileging their superstructures over their wheeled wooden bases. This essay thematically synthesizes existing scholarship through a “ground‐up” approach centered on the vehicle's mobility. Reframing the temple‐car first as a ritual transport ( vāhana ), the essay critically surveys three dimensions of temple‐car cultures in South Asia: the vehicle's architectural logic; its sociopolitical function in procession; and its capacity to produce sacred space. The vāhana paradigm, as this essay preliminarily argues, offers a more productive framework for understanding how temple‐car processions affect religious and political life across South Asia.
ABSTRACT Child marriage in Pakistan is routinely framed as a collision between immutable ‘classical Islamic law’ and ‘modern human rights’. This review article challenges that binary by advancing a precise argument: the operative dispute is a contest over interpretive authority —who holds the institutional and discursive power to translate premodern Sunnī juristic concepts— bulūgh (puberty), wilāyat al‐nikāḥ (marital guardianship) and khiyār al‐bulūgh (the option to repudiate upon maturity)—into the statutory language of a postcolonial state. Synthesizing scholarship on classical Ḥanafī fiqh, colonial legal transformation and contemporary Pakistani legislation, the article demonstrates that invocations of ‘the Ḥanafī position’ in current Pakistani debates are highly selective, systematically decoupling guardian authority from the classical safeguards—harm ( ḍarar ), suitability ( kafāʾa ) and repudiation ( khiyār )—that originally balanced it. The article integrates Pakistan‐specific evidence: the Council of Islamic Ideology's recommendations, provincial reforms in Sindh (2013), Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the government's Child Marriage in Islam (2020) document, UNFPA demographic data and recent scholarship on sacred justifications. It identifies three understudied areas for future research: the internal plurality of Ḥanafī jurisprudence on guardianship and harm, the empirical sociology of Pakistani family courts, and the institutional uptake of maqāṣid/maṣlaḥa reasoning in legislative and judicial forums. The article concludes that child marriage is a critical observatory for how Islamic legal authority is being unmade and remade in the modern Muslim nation‐state.
Scholars have recently debated the appropriateness of the term "Buddhist medicine," with some treating it as a term of convenience and others rejecting it outright. This essay argues that Buddhist medicine is uniquely constituted in Tibet through three interconnected dimensions: origin narratives, institutional arrangements, and ethical motivations. With respect to origins, the central scripture of Tibetan medicine, the Four Tantras, frames itself as the teaching of a buddha, a claim that has been debated for at least seven centuries. Far from a superficial framing, however, this narrative has shaped the way that Tibetan medicine developed for most of the past millennium. With respect to institutions, in addition to lay familial lineages that still continue today, monastic physicians began regularly studying and practicing medicine in Tibet by the fourteenth century at the latest. These changing institutional arrangements have also shaped professional medical ethics in Tibet, from a worldly non-maleficence concerned with protecting the physician's reputation to a bodhisattva beneficence enabled by monastic institutional support. Taken together, this fusion of Buddhist instructions, Buddhist institutions, and Buddhist ethics culminates in a Buddhist medicine that can be practiced not just on, but as a path to full awakening.
Religious environmentalism represents a growing field of inquiry at the intersection of faith and ecology. Despite growing scholarly interest in this area of study, a comprehensive synthesis of the psychological determinants and potential pathways that underlie religiously motivated environmental engagement remains noticeably lacking. Applying an integration of the Values-Beliefs-Norms (VBN) model and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) from environmental psychology literature as a conceptual lens, we illustrate how religious and spiritual elements map onto, influence or otherwise associate with key constructs of the VBN-TPB causal chain. This effort represents the first systematic attempt to integrate religious and spiritual variables into a unified VBN-TPB framework, moving beyond the fragmented, approaches that have characterized prior work in this domain. In doing so, we identify specific mechanisms through which religious belief systems facilitate or constrain pro-environmental behavior, and demonstrate how constructs such as consequence awareness, responsibility attribution, perceived behavioral control, and emotion must converge to activate the personal moral norms that drive environmental action in religious contexts. We offer a conceptual framework to guide scholars across religious studies, environmental psychology, and sustainability science in systematically examining how religious factors psychologically mediate and moderate pro-environmental behavior.
Interreligious tolerance is imperative for sustaining diversity and is fervently advocated by local, national, and international entities. The current essay focuses on the concept of perceived religious tolerance using Bandura's socio-cognitive framework, highlighting the interplay between personal, behavioural, and environmental elements in shaping attitudes towards religious diversity. The paper presents perceived religious tolerance as a subjective construct influenced by cognitive, emotional, and biological factors, as well as social and institutional contexts, vis a vis the sociological objective concept of religious tolerance. The reciprocal determinism model proposed by Bandura is used to illustrate how individual beliefs and environmental settings, such as family, education, and legal systems, contribute to the development of tolerant or intolerant attitudes. This entry explains how both proactive and exclusionary behaviours reinforce perceptions of religious tolerance, offering a sophisticated model for understanding religious tolerance as a socio-cognitive construct with significant implications for fostering inclusivity in diverse societies. The manuscript also critically applies this psychological framework to modern secularism, contending that 'difference-blind' secular policies create a fa & ccedil;ade of neutrality that compels the privatisation of faith, marginalises minority groups, and causes significant moral injury. Theoretical arguments are empirically substantiated by a case study of the Muslim minority in Calicut, Kerala, illustrating how a systemic transition from traditionally organic communal integration to majoritarian-biased secular nationalism propels minority populations towards intergroup anxiety, defensive self-censorship, social withdrawal, and perceived intolerance. The paper ultimately concludes that promoting genuine inclusivity and perceptions of tolerance necessitates substituting coerced assimilation with institutional 'relational neutrality' and facilitating significant intergroup interaction.
In 2012, Anna Halafoff, Ruth Fitzpatrick and Kim Lam applied Paul Numrich's framework to the study of Buddhism in so-called Australia, to determine if it constituted a distinct field of study. They concluded that it was an emerging field, according to Numrich's three categories of specialisation, organisation and publication. Thirteen years later, this article extends Numrich's framework, adding a fourth category of 'diversity', and applies this framework to the study of Buddhism in Australia, concluding that it is now a maturing, multidisciplinary, field of study. This article provides evidence for these claims, and particularly how recent Australian research is contributing to rendering Asian Buddhist communities more prominent in the study of Buddhism in Australia and the West more broadly. In so doing, it seeks to reposition the study of Buddhism in Australia away from the margins and more towards the centre of studies of religion on this continent, and also of global Buddhism.
ABSTRACT This article examines the recent resurgence of interest in plant intelligence at the intersection of botany, philosophy, and religious studies, arguing that contemporary debates over vegetal cognition are best understood as historically situated responses to crises within modern regimes of knowledge and authority. Drawing on research in plant neurobiology, behavioral ecology, and studies of plant communication, the article situates current scientific controversies in a longer intellectual and genealogical arc. It then turns to philosophical and “more‐than‐human” humanities literature that mobilizes plant intelligence to challenge modern epistemology and the disenchanting legacy of Enlightenment rationality. While these approaches often aim to unsettle human exceptionalism and mastery, they frequently reproduce foundationalist structures of authority by reinscribing nonhuman nature as a privileged source of epistemic normativity. To reframe these dynamics, the article draws on Hans Blumenberg's account of modernity as a reoccupation of vacated theological positions and on G. W. F. Hegel's conception of knowledge as historically contingent and conceptually revisable. From these perspectives, plant intelligence emerges not primarily as an empirical discovery but as a conceptual invention prompted by ecological crises. The article concludes by suggesting that debates over plant intelligence reveal shifting boundaries of intelligibility that are simultaneously epistemological, ethical, and religious in character.
In the 2020s, Jewish activists, organizations, and congregations are making headlines for their support of reproductive rights and preserving abortion access in the United States. What many of these stories do not reveal is the deeper historical context: American Jewish women have been active in many women's health movements in the 20th and 21st centuries. From fighting for birth control access in the early decades of the twentieth century and extensive participation in the multifaceted feminist women's health movement of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to recent reproductive and abortion justice campaigns, American Jewish women have long brought Jewish identity, texts, and traditions to women's health activism. While perspectives, strategies, and rhetoric change, American Jewish women's commitment to women's health as a site of political action remains. This article aims to (1) introduce students and scholars of religious studies to the work of Jewish activists in the feminist women's health movement and (2) trace the multiple avenues through which historians and Jewish Studies scholars have approached and studied this history. The work of feminist women's health activists of 50 years ago continues to speak to core questions about how personal experiences and faith traditions can motivate, shape, and sustain health activism. In our Dobbs decision world, understanding the Jewish history of the women's health movement can provide much-needed context to today's headlines and underscore the necessity of deepening our historical understanding of the many ways women's health activism and religion intersect.
This article examines the concept of cult centralization, typically reserved for describing the religious reforms of the Judahite kings Hezekiah and Josiah. I argue that this terminology need not be reserved for these two monarchs, but, rather, that cult centralization manifests in multiple ways throughout the ancient Near East. Through three case studies, I suggest the ways in which cult centralization manifests, concluding that its method of implementation is intimately connected to its long-term success.
Few comparative frameworks in the historiography of Japanese religion have proven more durable, or more contested, than the analogy between the "New Buddhism" of the Kamakura period and the Protestant Reformation. This article traces the construction and consolidation of this analogy from its first systematic articulation by the historian Hara Katsur & omacr; (1871-1924) in 1911 to its absorption into the scholarly mainstream in the work of Ienaga Sabur & omacr; (1913-2002) in the 1940s. Situating this discourse within the broader history of modern Japanese Buddhist historiography, and in particular within the emergence of the "sect" as the fundamental unit of Buddhist historical writing, the article argues that the analogy's durability owes as much to institutional and ideological conditions as to its analytical value. Central to the argument is the claim that Hara, Matsumoto Hikojir & omacr; (1880-1958), and Ienaga shared a common narrative structure in which Kamakura-era Buddhism signified not rupture but recovery: the reactivation of a spirit of Japaneseness or, in Ienaga's more universalistic formulation, a logic of negation that had always remained latent. The fact that Ienaga's work, now celebrated as a landmark of postwar liberal historiography, initially garnered approval from figures with close ties to wartime nationalist networks further illuminates the ambivalences at the heart of this tradition. The article concludes by situating these findings within the ongoing entanglement of Buddhist scholarship with the institutional interests of the schools whose history it narrates.
This article surveys the historical development of Chinese utopianism and its relationship to broader debates in the field of utopian studies. While early scholarship often dismissed utopianism as a uniquely Western tradition, subsequent research has demonstrated that discourses related to the creation of an ideal society occupied a central role in Chinese intellectual, religious, and literary history. Adopting a historical framework, this study identifies four key junctures in the evolution of Chinese utopianism: (1) the emergence of classical philosophical utopianism during the Warring States and Early Imperial periods; (2) the rise of millenarian utopianism in Daoist and Buddhist traditions; (3) the dynamic encounter between the Chinese tradition and Western models of anarchic, socialist, and radical utopias in the late Qing, Republican, and early Communist eras; and (4) the diverse utopian expressions of the post-Mao Reform Era, including dystopian literature, eco-villages, revived Confucian projects, and new cosmopolitan theories of world order. In addition to tracing this longue dur & eacute;e trajectory, the article offers a theoretical intervention that moves beyond the conventional sectarian framework of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist utopias. Instead, it proposes a typology of "major" and "minor" utopias, distinguishing between large-scale, transformative projects and smaller, localized experiments.
Evangelical disenchantment-a concept coined by historian David Hempton-is not new, but has manifested in new ways in the twenty-first century. The departure from conservative evangelicalism by those termed ex- and post-evangelicals has altered the landscape of American Christianity. I argue for the utility of the term "post-evangelical," which reflects the tension of continuity and discontinuity, history and present context. Many post-evangelicals continue to embody evangelical tenets including the centrality of scripture, belief in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the drive to spread Christian messages, while separating themselves semantically and institutionally from evangelicalism. This essay discusses the extant literature relating to post-evangelicalism and related movements including the progressive evangelicals of the 1970s, the emerging church movement of the 1990s and the 2010s, and recent treatments of twenty-first century post- and ex-evangelicals. By highlighting a group of post-evangelical feminists on digital media, I demonstrate the relevance of post-evangelicalism to recent developments in American Christianity and argue that there is more work to be done on the phenomenon of religious disaffiliation.
This essay is a follow up to three others published in Religion Compass in 2011 which survey research on Hindutva (Hindu nationalism or political hinduism), covering its seminal ideologies and its evolution into multiple modes of practice. I focus now on the period from 2014 to the present, when the BJP under Narendra Modi has been in political office. This essay therefore considers the forms that Hindutva assumes as a means and tool of governance, and the wide, contentious field of cultural politics it continues to shape beyond state office. The unwieldiness of 'Hindutva' in the present moment (and the commensurately large volume of scholarly writing) can be parsed by thinking of it as expressed in two overlapping but still distinct forms: one which uses the institutional and bureaucratic apparatus of the state by which to manifest core ideologies, and the other which far exceeds formal channels and makes use of all available means to decry, challenge, or enforce a political status quo. These many layers of increasingly polarised, intractable politics have heightened the need for opposition and activism, limiting room for dialogic and reflexive work which may be equally invaluable in addressing Hindutva challenges.
This article examines the contemporary resilience and influence of interwar fascist ideas within the Romanian Orthodox Church's fundamentalist groups. Through the postwar survival of legionaries who entered the Orthodox clergy and rose through its ranks, religious fascism permeated subcultures within the Orthodox milieu, expressed as a distorted veneration of Iron Guard martyrs to be regarded as Orthodox saints. Building on previous scholarship, the article addresses why the persistence of fascist ideas and the promotion of canonizing legionaries who perished under communism have fueled dissent toward the Romanian state and its pro-European and pro-Atlantic orientations. It further traces the evolution of Orthodox neo-fascism from its interwar Iron Guard roots to a more populist form attuned to contemporary challenges, particularly those posed by de-Christianization, Westernization, and societal modernization. In this vision, Orthodox neo-fascism fosters an ethnocentric fundamentalist landscape that rejects the authority of modern medicine, privileges Orthodox conservative morality over human rights extended to sexual minorities, and supports the neo-fascist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) as a political vehicle for its anti-Western and Orthodox fundamentalist agenda.
Although a fairly marginal figure in some respects, the fame of Fr. Seraphim Rose has increased dramatically in an online age. His legacy, however, intersects with key tensions in Eastern Orthodoxy in the U.S., including the role of Russia, conspiracy theory, and apocalyptic theology. This article seeks to examine his life and reception in order to show how both of them shed light on these ongoing tensions among U.S. Eastern Orthodoxy.
This article examines the manifestations and meanings of the spectacularly increased visibility of Santa Muerte devotion in contemporary Mexico. This remarkable development acquires significance against the background of the cult's previous history of concealed devotion. To confront their existential uncertainties and vulnerabilities, present day Santa Muerte devotees engage in a range visual, performative, and spatial practices. Although empirically signaled, hitherto no systematic analysis has been made of the cult's iconic aspirations and its increased public visibility in conceptual terms. To make up for this deficit and deepen our understanding of its meanings, this article explores the theoretical notions of "iconic aspirations" and (the anthropology of) "display." As a key component of popular religion-making, it is important to understand the assemblage of a new visibility regime by the efforts of assorted congregations and their leaders over the course of the past decades. Based on ethnographic material, I show how these range from place-making interventions through the appropriation and sacralization of secular spaces, to the visibilizing effects of commodities, rituals, processions, and human bodies. These practices feature critical bottom-up agency, that explains the cult's religious, iconographic, and expressive dynamics, as well as their profound social, political, and symbolic meanings.
The history of the modern prison as an institution founded upon Christian-specifically, Quaker and Calvinist-ideals is well-documented among scholars of US history, religion, and carcerality. Since its inception, the American prison has been depicted as a prominent site of religious formation and conversion, not only by religious leaders and religious studies scholars, but also by secular researchers, prison authorities, and many incarcerated people themselves. In tracing the development of the US prison over the last 200+ years, it is difficult to overstate the importance of religious ideologies, practices, and communities and their enduring influence on the disciplinary and rehabilitative projects shaping the carceral apparatus today. This article engages the prison as a site that holds contemporary religious significance. Beginning with a brief survey of historical scholarship examining the prison's religious past, it then turns to work by sociologists, legal scholars, religion scholars, theologians, and ethicists to consider how the (always ambiguous, persistently negotiated) category of religion continues to take shape in and through US prisons. This includes scholarship exploring lived experiences of religious worship, belief, ritual, and community-building among the incarcerated, as well as work analyzing contemporary incarceration as a religious practice in itself. The article then examines several recent texts that engage religious practice and thought as resources in the ongoing work of carceral critique and abolition, and it ends with a consideration of potential future directions in the study of religion and prisons. This article shows that religion still plays a substantial role in the work of the US prison and many who study it, as an influence that is simultaneously continuous and highly mutable; it also demonstrates the importance of the prison to contemporary studies of American religion, showing how present-day concerns like mass incarceration, racist sentencing practices, or solitary confinement are intimately linked to religious commitments, rituals, and communities. Following the lead of multiple interdisciplinary scholars of religion and carcerality, it demonstrates the capaciousness of both of these categories-religion and the prison-as sites of critical inquiry that cannot be analyzed in isolation, or shackled to a particular place or time.
Park Chung Hee (Pak Chong h & ubreve;i 1917-1979) is the most controversial president in South Korean history. The relationship between religious groups and Park's regime is a particularly complicated historical issue. Scholars have rightly criticized Korean Buddhism's relationship with the Park Chung Hee regime, particularly condemning the Chogye Order, the largest Order of Korean Buddhism, for allying with Park's anti-democratic government under the guise of "state-protection Buddhism" (hoguk pulgyo). Thus far, however, studies have been heavily centered on mainstream institutional perspectives; scholarship on modern Korean Buddhism, especially in the English-language, is lacking comprehensive, multi-dimensional studies of Buddhism under Park's government. The field requires a balanced understanding of Buddhism in the period that combines: (1) the transnational dimensions of Korean Buddhism during the Cold War; (2) institutional dealings between and within the government, the Chogye Order, and other Buddhist Orders (T'aego, Ch'ont'ae, etc.); and, (3) the lived experiences of everyday lay Buddhists, including students, soldiers, and women. In this article, I highlight some recent works that exemplify these approaches and suggest directions for further research.
In September 1976, British Tidings, a publication of the Neo-Nazi political organisation, BM, announced they were to begin a women's division. Their Headquarter was based in Queensferry, Flintshire, North Wales; on the cusp of the English border. The British Movement (BM), who had disseminated literature thick with racially targeted rhetoric, had decided a women's division was the natural progression for the movement. The announcement stated that this division would be instrumental in attracting 'countless thousands of nationalist like-minded women in Britain to work in an organised way for our Country's future'. Mary Calland, wife to local leader, Arthur Calland, was to head up the BM Women's Division (BMWD) Calland emphasised that mobilising would be an opportunity for 'wives, girlfriends, sisters and mothers' alike (British Tidings [Queensferry], September 1976). This paper will examine the rhetoric and position of the women's division of the BM in Flintshire, during the late 20th century. This research sheds light on the gender dynamics within Neo-Nazi political groups, exploring the motivations and the reception of female participation. Using British Tidings, this article argues that the BMWD functioned less as an autonomous political body and more as a gendered support structure; attempting to legitimise the movement through domesticity and racialised moral panic within a borderland Welsh context.
