Volume 3, Issue 1

It is argued that the concept of Multiple Religious Belonging as normally conceived relies upon a problematic construction of “religion” which can be expressed as the World Religions Paradigm. This relies upon a modern Western Protestant bias as to how “religion” should be understood. It is argued that religion can be understood otherwise, and looking at the Chinese context an argument is made that participation in different religious traditions relies upon a very different construct from Multiple Religious Belonging via the World Religions Paradigm model. This is termed Strategic Religious Participation in a Shared Religious Landscape. It considers the way that Chinese religiosity does not have fixed borders in the same way as the World Religions Paradigm suggests. Indeed, asking whether there is Multiple Religious Belonging in traditional Chinese thought seems to misconstrue the situation. A final reflection asks whether this new paradigm, of Strategic Religious Participation in a Shared Religious Landscape, may be appropriate to look at the contemporary Western context amongst a number of religious “nones”. Although no definitive answer is given to this question, the issue highlights that the World Religions Paradigm which shapes our sense of Multiple Religious Belonging may need to be rethought within different contexts.

The phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is studied from different perspectives, each of which reveals a different understanding of religion, religious diversity and religious belonging. This shows that the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is challenging the applicability of these central notions in academic enquiry about religion. In this article, I present the different perspectives on multiple religious belonging in theology of religions and show how the understanding of some central scholarly notions is different. In Christian theology, the debate on multiple religious belonging is conducted between particularists, who focus on the uniqueness of religious traditions, and pluralists, who focus on the shared religious core of religious traditions. Both positions are criticized by feminist and post-colonial theologians. They believe that both particularists and pluralists focus too strongly on religious traditions and the boundaries between them. I argue that the hermeneutic study of multiple religious belonging could benefit from a more open understanding of religious traditions and religious boundaries, as proposed by these feminist and post-colonial scholars. In order to achieve this goal we could also benefit from a more intercultural approach to multiple religious belonging in order to understand religious belonging in a nonexclusive way.

The discussion about “double” or “multiple belonging” does not take into account that there is no mandatory definition of religion. This paper explores some of the metaphors involved. “Belonging to a religion” implies a passive attitude and can signify “belonging to a mental or physical territory”; or it can signify “belonging to a group or person”, i.e. it signifies a relationship. “Religion” is a Western concept, which cannot be translated e.g. into Sanskrit. One of the important Indian metaphors used is “path” or “way”, which transports instead of a passive “belonging” the active notion of “owning it”. “Belonging” could be seen in a context of identity politics, whereas “way” or “path” refers to the human need of spiritual transformation.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate a difficulty which may arise in the attempt to simultaneously identify with more than one religious tradition. Drawing upon the philosophical insights of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, I demonstrate how some of the most cardinal themes in one faith or theological perspective may set itself against the central notions of another. Along the way, Kierkegaard, the perennial philosophy, process theology, and even Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune are woven into the discussion.

Dutch society is highly secularized in terms of decreasing church membership and church attendance. Meanwhile, there are many ‘religious creatives’ who fulfil their need for meaning by using multiple religious sources. This paper presents an empirical investigation into the occurrence and nature of hybrid religion in the Netherlands, seen as ‘multiple religious belonging’ (MRB). After a number of global indications of the importance of MRB, this is the first attempt to quantify and detail MRB in a population. A new approach to ‘religious belonging’ is developed, not in an exclusive, ‘property’ sense, but in terms of being related and feeling at home. This approach leads to a number of ‘modalities of belonging’, that can be measured per religion. To do so, a survey among a representative sample of the Dutch population was used. The survey results indicate that MRB is present among at least 23% of the population in varying combinations and intensities. They also highlight the tendency to emphasize the relatedness between religions, and the permeability and even blurring of the boundaries between them

This paper critically examines the notion of ‘multiple religious belonging’ (MRB). Through an analysis of a recent study by Joantine Berghuijs, it argues that MRB is ill-defined and exaggerates the extent of popular religiosity. If MRB is at all common, then the de-legitimating effect of religious pluralism (which is well-supported by the evidence) is challenged. This paper suggests that such a challenge is unwarranted by Berghuijs’s evidence and concludes with an elaboration of the various and very different things that might be encompassed by MRB.

Are people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) actually practicing multiple religious belonging (MRB)? Or are “multiple religious participation” or “multiple religious involvement” better designations? This article suggests that “multiple religious orientation” fits their practices better. But a subset of the SBNR movement, The Dances of Universal Peace, is used as a case study in straddling the boundaries between MRB and SBNR. It also suggests ways to understand and locate the practices of SBNRs within the MRB discussion.

As scholars and the public grope towards understanding emergent forms of religiosity (multiple-religious belonging, spiritual but not religious, interspirituality), notions of discernment, religious depth, and spiritual practice figure prominently in defining and assessing these forms. Some form of commitment to a particular religious tradition is often considered the most important factor in the discernment of religious depth, while “spiritual but not religious” is often seen as the amorphous searching or the drifting whims of an immature ego. I will argue, however, that failing to take into account the most mature forms of emerging religiosity is bound to miss important developments, just as similar methodologies would for traditional religions. Further, I point out problems with correlating religious depth with belonging to a particular religious tradition, and offer an alternate way to conceive of religious depth. In doing so I develop the concept of the religious quest as transformative journey, allowing for a more capacious understanding of religious consciousness. I then introduce interspiritual religious belonging, contrasting it with certain understandings of “multiple-religious” belonging, and providing mature examples of its embodiment. Finally, utilizing new surveys from Pew and PPRI showing accelerating growth among the “spiritual but not religious” and “religiously unaffiliated”-as well as expanding religious and racial diversity within the United States-I briefly reference potential political ramifications the interspiritual movement might have, and address the importance of developing mature theological perspectives from within it. It is my hope that the Theology Without Walls project can provide academic space for the latter.

The Netherlands has undergone a radical religious transformation through secularization, individualization and migration. Expressions of Christian belief are no longer strictly defined by the Church and hybrid forms of religiosity incorporating other religions have emerged. After a brief sketch of Dutch religious plurality, the author focuses on interviews with ‘flexible believers’, people who combine elements from different religious traditions and worldviews. Through interviews, she discovers a number of characteristics of these multiple religious believers (MRB) - interviewees - such as ritual praxis, identity-making processes and belonging - and reflects on their impact for the wider picture of religiosity in today‘s post-Christian Dutch network society. She concludes that hybrid forms of lived religion like mrb, present a challenge to traditional concepts of religious identity and belonging. They require a paradigm shift from an ‘either/or’ to a relational ‘as well as’ approach within a rhizomatic network of meaning.

Using resources from Ludwig Wittgenstein and George Lindbeck, this paper develops a new conceptual tool for the understanding of religious identity: the ‘religion-game’. Although related to Wittgenstein’s language-games and drawing on Lindbeck‘s cultural-linguistic model of religion, this conceptual tool produces new results when applied to examples of multiple religious belonging. Drawing on the existing literature about the practice of multiple religious participation in Western countries, two realistic examples are developed at length and it is shown that the concept of a religion-game can help people to express their religious belonging in more positive ways. In particular, the many everyday choices made by people with more than one religious affiliation are clarified as choices to participate in some religion-games but not others. This de-emphasises the role of identity, often assumed to be singular, in religious belonging and enables an emphasis on behaviour which both fits with the turn towards ‘lived religion’ and permits a vivid and accurate account of the experience of at least two common paths to multiple religious belonging.

An important subset of the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is that of Buddhist- Christian belonging: people who claim to belong to, owe allegiance to or believe in both the Buddhist and Christian faiths. This phenomenon has not yet been the subject of much normative theological investigation, as opposed to descriptive and empirically-oriented social scientific study. Recently, however, two theological studies have appeared on dual Buddhist-Christian belonging: Rose Drew’s Buddhist and Christian? and the collection of essays Buddhist-Christian Dual Belonging. From a theological point of view, is it possible to be authentically both Buddhist and Christian? Rose Drew has formulated two demands that can be applied in investigating such a theological question. In this article, I will first critically assess several possible strategies for dealing with those two demands, and then explore an approach to Zen-Christian dual belonging that focuses on the practice of apophasis.

The reaction to multiple religious belonging has been fraught with anxiety in the monotheistic traditions. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of people report belonging to multiple religions. I propose that it is most useful to think of multiple religious belonging not so much as an expression of choice, but just the opposite. Multiple religious belonging is best explained as the ontological condition of two or more religious traditions constituting the self, so that the self’s possibilities are constrained by those religions. Furthermore, I argue that multiple religious belonging per se does not threaten traditional religious communities. Threats are by definition future possibilities, and ontologically speaking, we always already belong to multiple religions. We belong to multiple religions because every religious tradition is an amalgam of earlier distinct traditions. There is nothing new about multiple religious belonging. It is nearly unremarkable. Two philosophers in particular-one a twentieth-century German phenomenologist, the other a second-century Indian Buddhist-have given particularly careful examination of the phenomenon of belonging. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of Wirkungsgeschichte [history of effects] and Nāgārjuna’s teaching of śūnyatā [emptiness] both imply that multiple religious belonging is the ontological condition of all human beings, and that producing any monolithic religious identity requires significant mental gymnastics.

After reviewing various forms of multiple religious belonging, the author argues for the necessity of preliminary first principles, primarily coming from a considered form of a theology of religions. While an exclusivist theology would not allow multiple belongings, forms of inclusivism, pluralism, and postmodern mutualism provide possibilities. Since Roman Catholicism takes the most typical inclusivist position and has documented authoritative magisterial texts regarding Christianity and the religious other, the author makes a test case from the official Roman Catholic position. These he uses to guide theological possibilities and limitations. Ultimately, what he argues is that the Catholic position is not completely coherent and itself weaves some pluralist and postmodern principles into its supposedly rigid inclusivist position. As a test case, it shows the problems in creating a complete and absolute paradigm regarding Christianity‘s relationship with other religions. He finally argues for a modestly faithful form of Catholic theology that allows for some forms of multiple religious belonging, but also shows how full-fledged multiple identities are fraught.

It is often said that analytic theology is not really systematic theology; it is something else entirely. However, specifying what this “something else” amounts to has proven a little more difficult. In this article I argue that analytic theology may be a species of systematic theology. I show that there is no agreed view on the nature of systematic theology amongst several leading practitioners of systematic theology by comparing the work of John Webster, Brian Gerrish, and Gordon Kaufman. I then set out the Shared Task of Systematic Theology (Shared Task), which is a conceptual threshold for systematic theology that reflects the thought of Webster, Gerrish, and Kaufman. With this in mind, I argue that analytic theology can meet this threshold, and count as a version of systematic theology.

We present a criterion for the use of thought experiments as a guide to possibilia that bear on important arguments in philosophy of religion. We propose that the more successful thought experiments are closer to the world in terms of phenomenological realism and the values they are intended to track. This proposal is filled out by comparing thought experiments of life after death by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman with an idealist thought experiment. In terms of realism and values we contrast an exemplary thought experiment by Iris Murdoch with one we find problematic by William Irwin.

Critical realism (CR) has served as a benchmark in science-theology dialogue as a way of determining similar rational structures in these disciplines. One implication has been that Theology has a parallel form of verification to that of the natural sciences. However, defenders of CR in Theology have not clarified how this might be the case and so critics of CR have noted numerous alleged shortfalls in thinking of Theology objectively from a pragmatist perspective. This paper describes some of these criticisms, especially the more nuanced perspective of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, whose concern for hermeneutics and epistemology is well suited to CR. Taking several cues from the theory of retroduction in the work of philosopher of science Ernan McMullin and the philosopher theologian Bernard Lonergan, this paper proposes a more explanatory form of CR that takes hermeneutical issues seriously while also retaining a cognitive focus on judgment. It is the capacity to judge, in the form of verified theories in science and theological doctrines, where a true parallel exists between theology and the natural sciences. The paper ends by noting a number of themes in Lonergan’s magnum opus Method in Theology, where theological doctrines are capable of being explanatorily true whilst remaining subject to revision, analogous to the status of verified theories in the natural sciences.

Clarity about analytic theology’s theological authorities and their relative order will secure analytic theology’s place at the systematic theological table. Indeed, working on this issue suggests that analytic theology has the potential to be the best kind of confessional theology because not only can it receive and regulate classic sources of authority, but it has an advantage over other forms of systematic theology in the realm of philosophy of language. This paper makes two contributions towards this goal. Firstly, it proposes “hermeneutical confessionalism” as a way for AT practitioners to order theological authorities. It is a confessional approach for determining the relative weight and significance of various theological authorities for the task of analytic theology. This model is warranted by the hermeneutical trajectories set by the reception of theological pressures in the New Testament, the early “Rule of Faith” and the Seven Ecumenical Councils. This historically realist and ecclesial approach for ordering theological authorities is set over and against other models in which theological sources have little explicit theological ordering and are mostly treated launching pads for thought experiments. Secondly, I suggest that analytic theology may be able to develop theological outcomes that are not possible for other forms of systematic theology. This is possible because it has a historical affinity with, and the skill set to deploy, precise and theologically invested forms of language as theological resources. Such possibilities originate in analytic theology’s direct pedigree from 20th century analytic philosophy, and from its affinity with some proto-analytic theologians from the Middle Ages. These points about the necessity of sophisticated uses of language as a theological authority and working within the hermeneutical bounds of creedal Christianity are demonstrated via a case study. The case study makes a number of relevant points for ordering and developing theological authorities particular to analytic theology. I conclude by making a final suggestion for research to do with Personalism.

In a recent essay, the prolific and influential evangelical theologian, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, claims that analytic theology “is one of the major developments of our time, boasting annual conferences, a manifesto, and an online journal.” Vanhoozer mentions the rise of analytic theology not to celebrate its success but to offer a cautionary note to those who are inclined to practice theology in an analytic key. One of the concerns that Vanhoozer raises is that the analytic method falls short of what we might call “sapiential theology”-roughly, theology that facilitates the acquisition of wisdom. In this paper, I examine this concern and explore a few ways in which analytic theology might be sapiential.

This article responds to Jordan Wessling’s paper that engages a concern I expressed about analytic theology not doing justice to the sapiential requirements of theology. I examine Wessling’s summary of my paper, conclude that his description is accurate and fair, appreciate his proposed solution, then go on to restate why I think he may not have fully allayed my concern. I suggest that analytic theology is a vital tool in the theologian’s toolkit, but that ultimately more is needed in order to interpret Scripture theologically.

The questions of whether God reveals himself; if so, how we can know a purported revelation is authentic; and how such revelations relate to the insights of reason are discussed by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, G. W. Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant, to name a few. Yet, what these philosophers say with such consistency about revelation stands in stark contrast with the claims of the Christian East, which are equally consistent from the second century through the fourteenth century. In this essay, I will compare the modern discussion of special revelation from Thomas Hobbes through Johann Fichte with the Eastern Christian discussion from Irenaeus through Gregory Palamas. As we will see, there are noteworthy differences between the two trajectories, differences I will suggest merit careful consideration from philosophers of religion.

Immanuel Kant argues that though Divine revelation is ontologically possible, given phenomenal level constraints on our cognitive faculties, it isn’t epistemically possible for us to know or to recognize Divine revelation on the noumenal level of reality. We call this Kant’s Epistemological Objection Against Divine Revelation (EOADR). Contra Kant, in this paper, we argue that the EOADR doesn’t undermine the Reformed tradition’s view of Divine revelation because it has resources that make knowledge of Divine revelation intelligible. The primary way of establishing our argument is by articulating and furthering Alvin Plantinga’s religious epistemology. After doing this, we tackle two objections to our approach that are in the family of Kant‘s objection, namely Stephen Law‘s X-Argument Against Religious Belief and Erik Baldwin‘s Multiple Viable Extensions Objection. Similar to Kant‘s argument, these arguments attempt to show, that the Reformed epistemologist is in danger of acquiring an undercutting defeater for trusting her religious belief. We respond to each in turn.

Theological method is situated properly in relation to a range of doctrinal commitments, especially commitments located in the doctrines of God, creation, and theological anthropology. In this article, I use Thomas Aquinas’s account of theological predication to illustrate this doctrinal and methodological interconnection. Then, I describe the methodological commitments of analytic theology as they have been articulated by its advocates and argue that analytic theology should embrace an explicitly theological methodology. This requires taking seriously the proper ends of theology and the varied means used by theologians in the Christian theological tradition. I argue that analytic theologians should nurture attentiveness to theology’s chief end (the visio Dei and the corresponding goals of faithful worship and personal formation), the doctrinal order in which specific doctrinal questions find their proper context and location (beginning from and ending with the doctrine of God), and the practices that facilitate good theological judgment-making (prayer and contemplation).

This essay discusses the nature and relative priority of the sources for analytic theology with an eye to the manner in which the analytic theologian ought to orient herself to them. Of Tradition, Scripture, and (analytic) philosophy, the Tradition of the Church has ultimate priority as analytic-theological source insofar as it infallibly mediates the genuine, divinely revealed content of Scripture and justifies the utilization of analytic philosophy for theological purposes. The argument proposes a fundamental gap between the biblical text, which can be held in the hands and read, and Scripture, which is the revealed content communicated by the former and grasped by the intellect of the reader. Because of this gap, it is possible to be quite familiar with the biblical text and yet remain ignorant of Scripture, of the revealed truth of God. The Tradition of the Church functions as the bridge by which this “grand canyon” becomes crossable by offering normative interpretations of the biblical text. Consequently, the analytic theologian ought to be a committed adherent of this Tradition above all, making it the measure of all other things. This same Tradition also provides the theoretical justification for the appeal to (analytic) philosophy in the performance of the analytic theologian’s task through its teaching about the fundamental openness of the world to God, i.e. the world’s capacity to serve as medium for the divine-human dialog.

The debate about religious experiences has recently been shaped by the question of whether they exist or if they are a myth. One of the most compelling arguments for the non-existence of religious experience was put forward by Nick Zangwill. In his “The myth of religious experience” (2004) he argued that God can be perceived neither by our ordinary five senses nor by some special sixth sense. While I agree with Zangwill that God cannot be perceived with our ordinary five senses (or a sixth religious sense), I do not think his argument shows that religious experience - based on Zangwill’s own understanding of the term - is a myth. In this paper, I offer in two steps a philosophical defence - in the analytical tradition - of the possible existence of religious experience as perceptual experiences. In the first step, I adumbrate Zangwill’s argument for the myth of religious experience, which fails because it ultimately begs the question - as I argue in the second step, by presenting a Berkelean answer to Zangwill’s challenge.

Following Alfred Schutz’s “On Multiple Realities,” the religious province of meaning, like the provinces of phantasy, dreaming, and theoretical contemplation, differs from the “world of working,” everyday life’s form of spontaneity, because its tension of consciousness is more relaxed. The relative passivity characterizing the religious province, which depends on a benevolent transcendent accompanying everyday projects and overcoming the distance between the believer and itself, appears also in religion’s release of subliminal processes (e.g., in religious dreams) and in its reliance on passive syntheses. Such syntheses occur in appresentative pairing and apperceptual transfers among diverse symbols and between symbols and the transcendent. Consequently, the religious province becomes a very important site for the “appresentative mindset.” In addition, the peculiar epoché of the province is symbolically induced when the very symbol (e.g. temple or ritual) that serves as the gateway into the province and separates it from the “profane” world of everyday life also appresents the transcendent. The unrestrained reliance on appresentative pairing within the religious province overflows its boundaries as the mundane events of everyday life come to appresent the transcendent. The release of subliminal processes and unreflective, passive synthesizing, however, requires critique through theory, Levinasian ethics, and legal and social restraints.

Work in what has been known as the theological turn in French phenomenology describes the way in which human beings are always, already open to a religious encounter. This paper will focus on Levinas as a proper transcendental phenomenologist as would be characterized by parts of Husserl and Husserl’s last assistant Eugen Fink. What Levinas does in his phenomenology of the face/other (which gets tied up in religious language) is to describe an absolute origin out of which the subject arises. This point of origin structures the self in such a way as to always, already be open to that which overflows experience and, thus, makes possible the very experience of an encounter with the numinous. Such an approach to religious experience for which I am arguing simply takes Levinas at his word when he declares “The idea of God is an idea that cannot clarify a human situation. It is the inverse that is true.” (“Transcendence and Height”) Understanding the structure of the subject as open to that which cannot be reduced/totalized/ encapsulated is to recognize that the human situation is ready for the possibility of religious experience.

Religion, as well as any individuals’ volitionally chosen ‟worldview,” generally get conceived solely in affirmative terms of value. ‟Religion” has been conceptualized almost solely on the terms of axiology: as the experience of ‟the greatest” holiness (Otto), the purely valuable sacred (Eliade); the most ‟ultimate concern” (Tillich); the symbols accepted to order life (Geertz), or the binding of oneself to deep value (Müller). Yet there are limitations of such axiomatic thinking, limitations that can be exemplified through an interpretation of Derrida’s ‟globolatinization,” which he described as a system of thought that promotes a universalism of pseudo or petit-valuations, and punishes those resistant and inflexible to them in the name of toleration. This essay investigates what happens when this ‟axiomatic” register (i.e. a reduction to a set of values) gets displaced in order to conceptualize religion also in terms of the nonvaluable or ‟rejected.” Rejection entails the paradox that what is rejected often speaks to a deeper reality of what in fact is desired. Thus, what we reject usually says infinitely more about us than what we claim to value and affirm. This essay interprets Derrida’s essay ‟How to Avoid Speaking: Denials” alongside his ‟Faith and Knowledge” in order to offer a Derridean conception of religion on the terms of a rejection that amounts to a double-affirmation or de-negation.

An ordinary religious experience does not entail an overwhelming sense of the Divine; it is not a “numinous” experience. It is instead easily ignored. In a phenomenological psychological inquiry into such a religious experience, both the noema, the “what” experienced, and the noesis, the mode of givenness of the experience, manifested themselves in distinctive ways. The paper examines a simple experience of having been guided in making a decision. The guidance was recognized only at the moment of realization. The realization revealed the decision to have been part of a larger drama that transcended the immediate experience. The “world” of this moment of realization included sensing that the sky above-as an “elemental”-was a dome, with allusions to the Noah story. Even at the time, this perception was not experienced as literal, but as symbolic. The social, historical, and theological contexts for the possibility of this experience receive attention. Theological as well as psychological reflection indicate such an experience continues to happen, in memory and thought, and even in action, long after the initial moment. Essential to the meaning of the experience is an admonition to transcend egocentricity.

The paper urges a reconsideration of the term “religious experience,” as it is presently used in textbooks in the Philosophy of Religion (to which it first refers). The term needs to include not only what might be termed “extraordinary” religious experience (as used in those texts), but the “ordinary” experience of most who practice a religion, and it needs to assess such experience not so much as a “proof” of God (or a “Transcendent Reality”), but rather as a credible witness to what it affirms. The central portion of the paper then investigates how “experience” was used and understood-as a conscious term of analysis-by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. It then argues that this understanding of “experience” can be applied successfully to refer to “religious experience,” whether “ordinary” or “extraordinary”: it argues that such an understanding would fit well any phenomenological description of what most people mean by their “religious experience.” It concludes that there is work to be done both to develop adequate criteria to discern how credible religious experience is, as a witness to its object, and to apply such criteria to major religions.

In this paper, I investigate the non-rational, affective dimension of religious experience that Rudolf Otto attempted to address with his notion of the numinous. I argue that this notion is best understood in terms of an atmospheric quality impacting on the subject’s feeling body. Therefore, I draw on discussions in phenomenology and pragmatism, despite the fact that Otto’s own epistemological framework is rooted in a different tradition. Drawing on those discussions helps defend some of Otto’s claims about the relation between the non-rational, affective dimension and reason against the prevalent accusation of unscientific mysticism. I then illustrate the yet unexhausted potential of these very claims by arguing that the numinous in Otto’s sense plays an irreducible role in the ethical reflections of such distinct authors as Kant and Levinas.

In this paper I develop a phenomenology of religious experience through the notion of keyphenomenon. My analysis moves from a general phenomenology of situation, in which we have to relate different phenomena according to a sense. What does “according to a sense” mean? My suggestion is that we should look for a relationship among these data when we find a key-phenomenon (among a series of phenomena) that would enlighten all the others. This key-phenomenon would show a non-phenomenal meaning which would make all the others understandable. Each other datum, therefore, becomes the witness of invisible meaning through a key-witness. The key-phenomenon we choose determines the role (i.e., the truth) of each datum within its situation. This phenomenological relationship belongs to both the sense of day-life situations, and that one of possible religious situations. If the religious interpretation of a situation depends on our choice of key-phenomenon, or key-witness, we have to define what kind of keyphenomenon constitutes a religious intuition.

This paper seeks to perform an interdisciplinary reading of some scriptural passages in light of Heidegger‘s phenomenology generally and his discussion of thinking in particular. The paper treats one passage from Isaiah and two from the Gospels of Luke and John that highlight the human situation of signification (or meaning) and abandonment (or alienation). Using Heidegger‘s description of experience, which roots the logic and unfolding of meaning as expressing the structure of human existence, the paper proposes that the movement toward the divine that each of the scriptural passages embodies (albeit each in its own unique situation) moves us toward an essential insight--namely that the human being exists as a divine sign of care. As such a sign, humans exist not just as the reception of the calling but also as the very calling of thinking itself.

The paper explores how different models of space articulate the nature of religious experience. Analyses are focused primarily on Heidegger’s phenomenology. Throughout his work, three models of space are determined: an opened, an empty, and a topological space. According to these models, there are three types of sacred places, that is, places of encounter with Divine: 1. a sacred place defined by coordinates materialized in a sacred building or symbolized by a cultic procedure; 2. a negative place, a place of a negative form of encounter; 3. a place as a path-mark, defined by a transitive (wayfaring) involvement into a lived environment.

This paper investigates the connections between the phenomenology of religious experience and Michel Henry’s entire body of work. Henry debated on Christianism and the phenomenological interpretation of religion in the latter part of his philosophical thinking. However, a new interpretation of Henry’s work is needed starting from his work The Essence of Manifestation and his critique of religion by Marx and Feuerbach which he analyzed in two volumes devoted to these two philosophers (1976). Although it has been scarcely investigated, Henry’s work should be considered as a whole from its beginning to his philosophy of Christianity. As this aspect of Henry’s work has often been ignored, this paper proposes a new interpretation of the essence of religion through its connections with the essence of manifestation. This will be done in three steps: firstly, an investigation of Henry’s thought starting from his interpretation of Marx and Feuerbach will be proposed; secondly, a “new ontology of manifestation” by Henry will be analysed; and finally, a connection between Henry’s phenomenological essence of manifestation and the new conception of the essence of religion will be suggested.

Applying Michel Henry’s philosophical framework to the phenomenological analysis of religious experience, the author introduces a concept of material introspection and a new theory of the constitution of religious experience in phenomenologically material interiority. As opposed to ordinary mental self-scrutiny, material introspection happens when the usual outgoing attention is reverted onto embodied self-awareness in search of mystical self-knowledge or union with God. Such reversal posits the internal field of consciousness with the self-disclosure of phenomenological materiality. As shown by the example of Vedantic self-inquiry, material introspection is conditioned on the attitude ‘I “see” myself’ and employs reductions which relieve phenomenological materiality from the structuring influence of intentionality; the telos of material introspection is expressed by the inward self-transcendence of intentional consciousness into purified phenomenological materiality. Experience in material introspection is constituted by the self-affection and self-luminosity of phenomenological materiality; experience is recognized as religious due to such essential properties as the capacity of being self-fulfilled, and specific qualitative “what it’s like”(s). Drawing on more than 5000 live accounts of internal religious experience, it is shown that introspective attention can have different trajectories, producing, within a temporal extension of material introspection, different spatial modifications of embodied self-awareness and a variety of corresponding religious experiences.

In this paper, I investigate the account of self-consciousness provided by Chinese Yogācārins Xuanzang (602-664CE) and Kuiji (632-682CE). I will explain how they clarify the transition from selfattaching to self-emptying through the articulation of consciousness (vijñāna). Current scholarship often interprets the Yogācāra account of consciousness either as a science of mind or as a metaphysical idealism. Both interpretations are misleading, partly because they perpetuate various stereotypes about Buddhism, partly also because they overlook the religious goal of realizing in practice the wisdom of emptiness and the non-egoistic compassion. Against the status quo, I argue that through their account of self-consciousness, Xuanzang and Kuiji advocate what can be referred to as transcendental idealism that stresses the correlation between subjectivity and objectivity. Yogācārins thus neither nullify the existence of subjectivity nor formulate subjectivity as a higher entity. The transcendental idealism yields a Buddhist phenomenology that is similar to and also different from Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. In what follows I will first characterize Husserl’s phenomenology as an approach to consciousness at two levels (the descriptive level and the explicative level). Then, I elicit the Buddhist phenomenology from Yogācāra philosophy that is not only descriptive and explicative but also prescriptive. This three-level architectonic of consciousness, while reaffirming the importance of agency, further justifies the role of religious rituals and moral practices for Yogācāra devotees.

That there are genuinely religious representations, and that the practice of praying with images involves no confusion of the divine with its representation, are matters firmly established by a phenomenology of imagination such as Edmund Husserl’s. Moreover, such a phenomenological regard can become attentive to the concrete roles played by a viewer’s imagination in his dealings with various sorts of images. I propose to bring these phenomenological insights to show that there is a distinctively religious play of imagination in dealing with religious images. Moreover, I address this question by turning to one kind of representation which Barthes and others have found unsuitable for representing a religious subject, namely, photographic images. While agreeing with some of these reservations, this paper explores some of the ways in which photography may still be found to represent a religious subject, shifting the problem of religious photography from its inherent impossibility to its inadequacy. In doing so, I show that the distinctively religious play of imagination vis-à-vis religious representations cuts a wedge between the depictive and the symbolic, and is rather akin to a metaphorical use of representations.

The Nazarenes were founded by a former Reformed minister Samuel Fröhlich about 1830 in Switzerland, but they soon expanded to Central and Eastern Europe. Because of their pacifist beliefs and refusal to swear and to take an oath a large number of the Nazarenes were condemned to severe prison sentences. This religious community was persecuted primarily during the communist era in Southeastern European countries (Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia) since they were considered disloyal citizens and a threat to the government. From 1945 until 1960 the Nazarene illegal border crossing from Yugoslavia to Italy or Austria was highly present. Rejecting one of the essential components of Yugoslav communism, so-called “nationwide defence and social self-protection”, the Nazarenes were perceived as anti-communists and their existence was seen as illegitimate. The repression of this religious minority in communist Yugoslavia is the subject of this paper. The material collected for the purposes of this paper came to be the result of empirical research, conducted in Serbia (2009-2013) and the United States (2015), on the Nazarene community and their emigration to North America. Based on qualitative interviews and archival research, this paper aims to analyse community members’ narratives of their lives during communism and emigration of this religious minority across the Atlantic.

The current paper is concerned with the ways that delegitimized forms of spirituality in communist Romania found unexpected ways of circulating their knowledge. Because of state control, especially during the repressive cultural revolution of the 1970s, magic practiced by Romanian Orthodox believers (as opposed to magic done by practitioners in other faiths) was practiced underground and was not a desirable topic of engagement for public figures and scholars. Conducting research on the topic of ritual magic was difficult for social scientists working in state institutes, and could only be done in secret. The current article explores one aspect of the politics of the communist regime against magic. In the late 1960s to early 1970s, a Romanian ethnographer shot and produced a documentary on ritual magic using the state’s technical and social tools. I investigate how the methodological problems faced by Romanian social researchers illuminate their research on ritual magic as a space of resistance.

The article concentrates on the history of Astral Karate, its doctrine and sources. Astral Karate was a late-Soviet eclectic spiritual movement based on esoteric interpretations of martial arts and yoga. The term “Astral Karate” had spread in the 1980s thanks to spiritual leader and underground esoteric author Valery Averianov who called himself Guru Var Avera. On one hand, the movement reflected global tendencies, such as growing interest in Eastern cultures and spirituality, that characterized esoteric groups in the USSR as well as in the USA and Europe during this period. On the other hand, esoteric groups in the Soviet Union developed in isolation from European and American esoteric currents and under unique ideological and legal pressures. The combination of these factors contributed to the originality of late-Soviet esoteric currents and therefore makes Astral Karate an important object of academic inquiry, which helps us to understand the specifics of Soviet spirituality and its further developments in post- Soviet states

The 1970s in the Soviet Russia were characterized by religious revival among the members of the Soviet counterculture milieu. The young generation often opted for religious ideas and Tolstoyism served as one such option. The article explores individual cases of coming to Tolstoyism, reading and perception of his ideas, as well as a general historical background of spiritual search of Soviet youth (hippies and others) of the period. The article demonstrates that all countercultural Tolstoyans shared two basic values - personal autonomy and nonviolence. They asserted the ideals of the free and individual search for the truth, of nonviolence, of anti-authoritarian humanism, a quest for a new, spiritual form of community, having nothing to do with obligatory Soviet-type communist, atheist, and materialistic collectivism. The spiritual alternative of the Tolstoyans was directed it not only at the individual, but at society as a whole fully anticipating that society would be improved. The research is based on the wide range of unexplored primary sources (rare samizdat texts and personal archives).

The paper presents a Hungarian Ethno-Pagan group (Bolyanest) which was established in 1979, active in and around Budapest. In the early 80s the group was a forum for New Age-like ideas: Gaia cult, esoteric concepts, natural-based peace-campaigns, yoga, Reiki and other theories about nature, love, humanity, human potentials and peace. The author analyses how this group shifted slowly from the New Age to the Neo-Pagan characteristics during the 80s. The group had a complex survival strategy, which contained several conscious and instinctual responses to the communist system. One of these was the use of espionage: having an informer within the police from among their membership to provide reports that were to benefit the movement. Another strategy was that some members joined the Socialist Party to reassure the communist authorities of their loyalty. The Hungarian society considered communism as a field of parallel realities: one was the communist system‘s narratives, and the other was the society‘s private discourses. Beside these, Bolyanest members created a third reality: the group‘s own value-system and narratives. The cognitive ability to alternate between the realities was also an important key to survival.

Neopaganism (Dievturība) in Latvia has undergone phenomenal transformations which have been driven by socio-political conditions. The history of the Dievturi movement makes it possible to outline the historical change in the movement due to differing political circumstances. In the first period of its development (1925-1940), Neopaganism displayed itself as a form of politicised phenomenon; it became part of prevailing policies of nationalism by offering a Latvian national religion. With Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet forces (1940) Latvian Neopagans, Dievturi, became a disadvantaged group. Persecution and repression faced by Dievturi (1940-1953) were due to the imposition of Communist ideology and restrictions on freedom. Later during the Soviet regime (1953-1986), the Dievturi were not part of an organised religious movement, their teaching and ritual practice were not further developed during this time period. However, it was while in exile that the Dievturi had the opportunity to develop and expand the movement, but they had to address an urgent problem of preservation of ethnic identity. In the 1980s the Dievturi movement gradually resumed its activity, and it was officially registered as a religious organisation (1990). Today the Dievturi movement in Latvia includes controversial aspects: opposition to globalisation trends and its New Age trajectory.

The aims of this research were to determine: (1) the existence of an internally consistent and valid latent construct of the Satanic syndrome, and (2) if psychopathy and depression are significant predictors of the Satanic syndrome within different sex and ethnic subsamples. We conducted a survey in a community sample of adult Christians in the region of eastern Croatia where the Croats (most who are members of the Roman Catholic Church) live together with a Serbian ethnic minority (most who are members of the Serbian Orthodox Church). The equalized convenience sample (N=1100) was divided into two sex and ethnic homogenous subgroups. The Satanic syndrome proved to be characterized as a one-dimensional factorial construct indicating the importance of participating in Satanic rituals; psychic seances during which the dead are called to appear; persons becoming knowledgeable about black magic; being a member of an occult society; and reading books and magazines that deal with esoteric and occult issues. Multiple regression analysis showed that psychopathy and depression were significant predictors of the Satanic syndrome within both sex and ethnic different groups. Within male, female, Croatian and Serbian ethnic minority samples, the amount of variances explained by the predictor variables were 20, 18, 20, and 16 percent, respectively. There is evidence that depressive psychopaths are attracted to the Satanic syndrome as a means of obtaining magical power and control over their destiny, regardless of sex and ethnic differences. The hypothesis confirmed that comorbidity of psychopathy and depression expresses the existence of a destructive sub-personality underlying the Satanic syndrome which indicates the existence of Satanic spirituality.

Nicolas Berdyaev’s understanding of the self-revelation of God to humankind is a point of connection between the central ideas of his religious philosophy. Berdyaev says that God’s self-revelation occurs within the inner person, through divine-human spiritual cooperation, bringing about a revolutionary transformation of the human consciousness. Yet, the degree to which revelation can occur depends on human spiritual development. The eschatological culmination of this development will be the revelation of God in humankind and humankind in God-fulfilling the Godmanhood of Christ. The content of revelation is the Truth that is Godself, expressed in relational knowledge of God. Revelation occurs as an activity of divine-human cooperation. It is affected by human limitations and must be open to critique, particularly to purge from it human categories of dominance, power and enslavement. Truth is its own criterion, but in sobornost there is a sense of communal discernment. Only in freedom may revelation and truth may be found.

This article examines four theologies of identity and community from Africa and their relevance in combating ethnocentrism in Africa. The article focuses on the works of Vincent Mulago, John S. Mbiti, Kwame Bediako, and J. N. K. Mugambi - the key proponents of the schools of thought that we examine. The themes of identity and community have practical implications. For example, a people’s perception of themselves and their communities (social identity) affects how they perceive and relate to others. Therefore, considering the challenge of ethnocentrism worldwide, the themes of identity and community must always be examined. This article has two major sections. Foremost, it explores the relationship of these concepts. Second, it examines and critiques African theologies of identity and community and their consequent theological implications for social cohesion of communities. Finally, it proposes a way forward utilizing contributions from each theologian.

This article replies to Manuel Fasko’s “The Demystification of Nick Zangwill’s ‘Myth of Religious Experience’” (2017), showing how author’s argument against the possibility of religious experience presented in “The Myth of Religious Experience” (2004) remains in tact.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a hypothesis that might explain the decline of religious belief and practice among the so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations. The main point of this paper is to postulate a causal relationship between two variables that appear to be significantly correlated: on one hand, the decline of religious belief and practice that has been observed in those populations during the twentieth century, and especially since the second half of that century; on the other, the remarkable growth of their life span during that period. The factor that the author proposes as an explanation for that correlation is the causal link relating to the experience of the death of significant others and belief in the supernatural in such a way that the more that experience happens to be relevant in a population’s day-to-day life the more that population will be prone to entertain beliefs in the supernatural, and conversely, the less prominent that experience happens to be, the less inclined that population will be to uphold those beliefs.

South African Bantu mediumism (of “Sangoma” type) has moved from contexts in African Traditional Religion (ATR) and rural culture into South African Christianity, especially in the African Instituted Churches (AIC), which have adopted and transformed elements of mediumist practice and ritual. In recent years it has spread to urban culture and to white milieus in South Africa and Europe, where it is received in Esoteric contexts and beyond as a form of (alternative) “healing”. The spiritual aspects have been received as expressive of a “universal” spirituality, in particular by Jungian psychoanalysts. This reception involves reinterpretation in Jungian terms as by Ch. Bühler, which may be criticized as ambivalent. Although its concepts, phenomena and experiences exceed the Jungian or Esotericist frames of references, they are acknowledged by some, e.g., J.B.F. Laubscher. On an academic level this reception has been facilitated by approaches of anthropology of experience (V. Turner, W. Dilthey) in dissertations on the authors’ initiation and training as Sangomas, and by L-R.N. Mlisa and J.T. Wreford. In their itineraries of double spiritual or religious and therapeutic practice, epistemic repercussions on both sides and in their academic work are interesting, with observable transformations. Effects of “reductionism” can be observed where Sangomas in academia reframe their practice and its epistemic concepts in terms of Pragmatism or Positivitism or of Esotericism. However, the opposite can also be observed where cosmological and anthropological concepts encoded in Sangoma experience and practice have a transformative effect on the receiving milieus of Esoteric spirituality and Jungian psychoanalysis, and of wider audiences who participate through media of television and internet, literature as well as personal encounter and practice. Even this mediated “dual practice” provides avenues for reception and adaptation in both ways, leading to stimulating debate about cultural conditioning of perception and arcane realms of reality.