RELIGIONPub Date : 2024-06-27eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2024.2362069
Aike P Rots
{"title":"Utopia, theodicy, and ritual: East Asian perspectives.","authors":"Aike P Rots","doi":"10.1080/0048721X.2024.2362069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2362069","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This response argues that 'utopia' and 'utopianism' are useful conceptual tools for analysing and comparing social practices in different historical and geographical contexts. It also suggests that the theoretical interventions put forward in this special issue can be developed further by bringing them in dialogue with cases and theories from East Asia. The response introduces the example of Tenri City in Japan, conceived in the early postwar period as a physical realisation of the Tenrikyō Church's utopian vision, which today comes across as an outdated urban planning project. It asks how groups such as Tenrikyō reconcile their utopian promises with the inherent imperfections that characterise any real-world social project, focusing on two key themes: theodicy and ritual action. The insights from this approach contribute to broader discussions in the study of religions, underscoring the interplay between temporal imagination, materiality, and everyday ritual practices in sustaining community life and social identity.</p>","PeriodicalId":46717,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION","volume":"54 3","pages":"569-579"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11273730/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141789455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Re-enchantment’ and religious change in former socialist Europe","authors":"Agata Ładykowska, Viola Teisenhoffer, Alessandro Testa","doi":"10.1080/0048721X.2024.2281724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2281724","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay presents the concept of ‘re-enchantment’ as a useful heuristic tool to identify, analyse, and explain new forms of religious change in contemporary Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe. It seeks to understand new religious and ‘spiritual’ configurations in an area and in a period known as ‘post-socialist’. It also attempts to map out the historical conditions structuring both patterns of religious change and scholarly output on the subject, which continue to be particular and at times unique in this region. In so doing, this essay also raises questions about the persistence of the East/West divide, problematising it and seeking to go beyond this binary. Some of the new religious phenomena studied in this essay as well as in the entire thematic issue seem to emerge independently from the once typical state-church dynamics and seem to be more related to the both specific local and general global trends. We argue that the concept of ‘re-enchantment’ and a typology of the re-enchanted practices it encompasses allows to account for, analyse, and understand these dynamics and transformations.","PeriodicalId":46717,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION","volume":"109 46","pages":"1 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139390931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
RELIGIONPub Date : 2023-12-20DOI: 10.1080/0048721x.2024.2297336
Zachariah S. Motts
{"title":"The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism\u0000 The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism\u0000 , edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah, New York, Oxford University Press, 2023, xii +773 pp., US$175.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 019 088845 9","authors":"Zachariah S. Motts","doi":"10.1080/0048721x.2024.2297336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721x.2024.2297336","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46717,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138956825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}