{"title":"Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved","authors":"Mark CE Peterson","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.26877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.26877","url":null,"abstract":"Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2023), 288pp., $29.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780197662069.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"17 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140260051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jon Mathieu, Mount Sacred. A Brief Global History of Holy Mountains Since 1500","authors":"Edwin Bernbaum","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.27451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27451","url":null,"abstract":"Jon Mathieu, Mount Sacred. A Brief Global History of Holy Mountains Since 1500 (Winwick, UK: The White Horse Press, 2023), 170 pp., £30.00 (pbk), ISBN: 978-1-9121867-71-6.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"10 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140258009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo, Quakers, Ecology, and the Light, Series: Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies","authors":"Sarah Werner","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.27193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27193","url":null,"abstract":"Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo, Quakers, Ecology, and the Light, Series: Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies (Boston: Brill, 2023), 96pp., $84 (pbk), ISBN: 9789004535916.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"69 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140077797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Joel E. Correia, Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco","authors":"Dana Lloyd","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.27018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27018","url":null,"abstract":"Joel E. Correia, Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023), 236 pp., 34. (pbk), ISBN: 978052039103.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"25 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140077615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Footprint Stones in Lithuania","authors":"Vykintas Vaitkevicius","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23402","url":null,"abstract":"This study will examine unique monuments of the Baltic religion consisting of 231 stones with impressions reminiscent of human and/or animal footprints recorded in Lithuania. Data are drawn from archaeology, linguistics, folklore, ethnology, and history related to these stones. Footprint stones are autonomous natural holy places that rarely belong to complexes of archaeological and mythological sites. After the introduction of Christianity, Baltic chthonic gods and goddesses who were believed to have left traces of their presence on stones were either proclaimed evil spirits or granted the names of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ, or other Christian holy figures. Religious rites recorded at the footprint stones by historical sources and/or those which have survived to this day have left no clear archaeological traces.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"31 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139444910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue on Religion and the Experience of Nature","authors":"Matthias Egeler","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23386","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"21 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139445059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metamorphosis, Mediation, Mannat","authors":"Sara Kuehn","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23391","url":null,"abstract":"In the South Asian discourse of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, ‘natural’ functions can be transcended and bodily boundaries are permeable. Defying species boundaries, this relational ontology entails a belief in the capacity for bodily transformation, or metamorphosis, from one category of being to another (as from human to nonhuman animal). In turn, both human and animal actors enter into conversation with mediating ‘spirits’. To this day, these religious entanglements, passed down through generations, allow Sufi communities in Bangladesh and Pakistan to protect ‘sacred’ animals at shrines as vital refuges for wildlife species and to make an important contribution to their conservation. The relational dynamics allow for the cultural division between human and non-human life forms (plants, animals, and spirits) to be problematized, and permeable boundaries to be dissolved into liminal and dynamic zones of interaction. Deeply entangled, agents both human and non-human actively participate in shared ritual configurations that take place within and are nourished by a locally embedded Sufi spirituality. Ritual and devotional practices revolve around their intercessory mediation (shafa'at) with the divine, which endows them with spiritual agency, as they engage in cycles of exchange, such as the practice of taking vows (mannat). Within the framework of this Sufi-inspired, locally embedded spirituality, it is possible for animals to be genuine agents, to have spiritual ‘agency’ and to be involved in cycles of exchange.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"15 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139446815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forests, Rivers, and Mountains","authors":"J. Bangura","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23395","url":null,"abstract":"Although Pentecostalism is a major stream within Christianity in Sierra Leone, the first field where Protestant missionaries were active in tropical Africa, this ecclesial development remains marginally represented in research. The Pentecostalisation of Sierra Leone points to the nation’s continuous recontextualization of Christianity from its inherited missionary vestiges to meet local cultural needs. In this paper, I discuss the retreat by Pentecostal clerics to nature (forests, rivers, and mountains) from where they expect to connect with the transcendent God and receive spiritual power. To do so, I first discuss Sierra Leone’s traditional conceptualization of forests, rivers, and mountains as sites for the acquisition of spiritual power. Second, I briefly survey the emergence of Pentecostalism in Sierra Leone, probing the specific uses by Pentecostals of natural spaces. Finally, I conclude with an intercultural theological assessment of Sierra Leone’s emerging Pentecostal uses and interpretations of natural spaces.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"15 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139445643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Languages of Life and the Blending of Worlds","authors":"K. V. Stuckrad","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23396","url":null,"abstract":"Addressing the links between religion and experiences of nature requires language, and at the same time it moves beyond linguistic forms of communication. After a brief review of the linguistic paradigm in the study of religion, the question of linguistic understandings of nature is addressed from two perspectives. First, linguistic approaches attempt to include experiences of nature in our knowledge about the natural world and the human place within it; these perspectives usually extend linguistic knowledge to poetic expressions. Second, approaches that problematize the focus on linguistic communication altogether favor non-linguistic or semiotic interpretations of human communication with the more-than-human world. Making use of biosemiotics and other interdisciplinary research, an argument is made for radical entanglement and a scholarly strategy to coordinate the languages of life and to blend the different worlds and perspectives that we find on the planet.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"9 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139445910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Larisa A. White, World Druidry: A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality","authors":"Wayne Martin Mellinger","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.26706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.26706","url":null,"abstract":"Larisa A. White, World Druidry: A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality (Belmont, CA: Larisa A. White Publisher, 2021), 322 pp., $48 (pbk), ISBN: 9781736779217.","PeriodicalId":503148,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture","volume":"57 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139166516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}