This article explores the relationship of two “metaphysical” religious traditions, Christian Science and New Thought. The argument developed here is that the two traditions are closely related, using the category of Religious Idealism to identify similarities. The article offers a departure from traditional, long-standing assessments of the relationship between the movements, which focus on their differences. Specific problems considered are initially posed by questions related to the origins of the movements, and the study of origins is the focus of this paper. Three other categories of relevance will also be noted: (1) theology and cosmology, (2) the centrality of mental healing, and (3) biblical exegesis.

This article examines religion’s public role in Central Europe by investigating people’s expectations and perceptions regarding distinct facets of religion. The paper analyses factors related to the first wave and the second wave of religiosity along different lines such as church and government policies, the roles of churches in strengthening democracy, etc. According to the Aufbruch data research project and partially from the ISSP (International Social Survey Project), religious depiction of some post-communist countries are brought to the table. A deeper analysis is undertaken for 6 countries (Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Poland), considering that in the countries previously listed, the distinction in the general level of religiosity differ remarkably, in order of the extremely religious country (Croatia) to the extremely non-religious country (Czech Republic). The discoveries from the various indicators shows that there is a good reason to believe in a possible second wave or different form and kind of religiosity compared to the times of the transition or the mid-1990s in contemporary times.

This paper will apply Peter Homans’s argument on mourning to the new religious movement phenomena of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). Homans’s theory focused on the progressive and creative aspects of mourning and extended the discussion from the personal to the social, collective level of mourning. Sifting through the history of the FFWPU, I will show how the emergence, formation, and transformation of this new religious movement (NRM) arose as a creative response to absence, ranging from personal death to the loss of religious values and symbols.

This article focuses on how NRMs are depicted in the mass media in the province of Quebec, and examines some of the ethical, deontological and legal issues reflected in journalistic coverage of controversial groups known as “sectes” or “cults” in the francophone and anglophone medias. These groups include: Les Apôtres de l’Amour Infini, Le Mouvement Raëlien, L’Église essénienne chrétienne, L’Ordre du Temple solaire, La Cité Écologique de Ham-Nord, la Mission de l’Esprit-Saint, and Lev Tahor. News reports on these groups, collected over a period of fifteen years, will be analyzed within the framework of James A. Beckford’s 1994 study, “The Mass Media and New Religious Movements.” Relying on Beckford and models supplied by other sociologists, this chapter will identify various types of biased approaches used by journalists and analyzes the external pressures that shape their stories. Finally, it will attempt to explain why Quebec’s new religions are consistently portrayed by journalists as controversial and threatening, in a manner that tends to generate and perpetuate conflict.

Following the ideas of a Cognitive Optimum Position, this paper aims to illustrate how cognitive science of religion can be fruitfully applied to understand the appeal of certain metaphysical beliefs within modern New Age religiosity. By diving into the popular DVD version of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, this paper seeks is to uncover the cognitive mechanism and systematic biases involved when New Age sympathizers engage in ritual practices and beliefs related to positive thinking and the Law of Attraction. We propose to view the visualization rituals highlighted in The Secret as “internalized” similarity magic, possibly triggering the adaptive principle appearance equals reality. We further argue that the mind-over-matter belief promoted throughout The Secret—that thoughts affect or interact with physical reality—in certain cases are strengthened by a human bias to see a mental-physical causal relationship, a causation heuristic. The cognitive processes behind the general metaphysical belief that thoughts can affect reality are elaborated further by the concept core knowledge confusion. Finally we suggest that together with an illusion of control over uncertain future events, an optimism bias may incite people to engage in continual ritual practice.

This is the Plenary speech presented by Murphy Pizza, Ph.D, the current president of the Upper Midwest American Academy of Religion, to an audience at the April 2019 Meeting for both the UM AAR and the UM Society for Biblical Literature at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN. The speech is an overview of the diversity of Paganisms in the movement, in practice and theological approaches, and it also references the community building efforts of the Pagan Community in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, the research area of the speaker.

Falun Gong was originally a qigong group that entered into conflict with the Chinese state around the turn of the century. It gradually transformed into both a religious group and a political movement. Exiled to the United States, the founder-leader, Li Hongzhi, acquired property near Cuddebackville, New York, which he subsequently designated Dragon Springs. Dragon Springs, in turn, became the headquarters of Shen Yun Performing Arts, an ambitious touring dance and music company that claims to embody the traditional culture of China prior to its subversion by the Chinese Communist Party. Though Li’s earlier eschatology emphasized that individuals needed to become Falun Gong practitioners in order to survive the imminent apocalypse, the significant success of Shen Yun seems to have prompted Li Hongzhi to rewrite his eschatology, which now emphasizes that all one need do in order to be “saved” is to view live Shen Yun performances.

The Qigong movement was one of the most remarkable New Religious Movements, and one of the most important social and cultural phenomena in China during 1980s–1990s. It rose rapidly and created what was termed a “fever” in a very short time in Post-Mao China, and then suddenly fell off the late 1990s. This paper analyzes how and why Qigong, as a new religion, endured such a drastic change within specific political, economic and cultural contexts in China across the course of twenty years. It argues that the rise of Qigong can be mainly ascribed to people’s urgent need for the promotion of health, eagerness to restore national pride, and the change of people’s lifestyle and mindset in response to the “Reform and Opening-up” subsequent to 1978. The collapse of the movement could be seen as an unavoidable result from certain intrinsic and extrinsic factors, namely, the natural tensions between Qigong itself and the national political authorities as well as the scientific establishment, harmful outcomes it produced among some practitioners, and the change in the social and cultural contexts that fostered qigong. In general, it is plausible to say that both its rise and fall were products of the time China underwent subsequent to the “Reform and Opening-up” period.

This article examines how modern Chinese Buddhism has been influenced by its interactions with the modern world. For our purposes, ‘modern Chinese Buddhism’ refers to a form of what has become known in the West as ‘Engaged Buddhism,’ but in Chinese is known by titles that can be translated as ‘Humanistic Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhism for Human Life.’ This tradition was initiated on the Chinese mainland between the two World Wars by the monk Tai Xu (1890–1947). Its main branches have flourished in Taiwan, whence two of them have spread worldwide. The most successful, at least in numerical terms, has been Fo Guang Shan (the Buddha’s Light Mountain) and Ci Ji (the Buddhist Compassion and Relief Society), the former founded by a personal disciple of Tai Xu, Xing Yun, the latter founded by Zheng Yan. Both of them are now very old but remain powerful charismatic leaders.

The PRC has a systematic, self-consistent theory and set of policies focused on xie jiao (邪教), a term that is often mistranslated as “destructive cults,” thereby causing disagreement throughout the international academic world. A more appropriate and accurate translation/interpretation agreeable to all within the PRC and beyond would contribute to bridging the confusion that often leads to misunderstanding. Our article addresses this problem by analyzing official Chinese documents and the critiques of certain international experts. Although the concept of xie jiao has its own philosophical logic, that it is often misunderstood in international communications leads to much dispute over interpretation and policy. Sino-western cultural differences explain much of this misunderstanding.

From about 1939 to 1947, G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) taught some of his pupils exercises to send help to deceased persons and at the same time develop themselves. So far as the author is aware, the exercise is entirely unique in the annals of contemplation and mysticism. More even than Gurdjieff’s other exercises, this one seems to partake of the nature of “ritual.” The evidence is found in newly available material from his American pupil Donald Whitcomb, the recently published transcripts of his 1943 and 1944 group meetings, and from the memoirs of J. G. Bennett and Kathryn Hulme. It is contended that, unusual as they may be, these ideas and practices are related to and entirely consistent with Gurdjieff’s basic system. It appears that scholars may have underestimated the extent to which Gurdjieff developed his methods, and perhaps also his ideas, over the years.

This article presents a new approach to Japanese Zen Buddhism, alternative to its traditional views, which lack exact definitions of the relation between the meditator and the Buddha’s ultimate cause, dharma. To this end, I offer a comparative analysis between Zen Buddhist and Christian views of causality from the medieval to early modern periods. Through this, human causation with dharma in the Zen Buddhist meditations can be better defined and understood. Despite differences between religious traditions in deliberating human causal accounts, there are parallel ways of thinking and practicing between Christian and Buddhist meditators. Firstly, I reconstruct three sorts of Christian scholastic theories of creaturely causality: conservationism (realist or active view of our volitional action), occasionalism (passive view), and concurrentism (interactive view). Secondly, Zen Buddhist doctrines are introduced by placing particular emphasis on dharma as causal agency. Focusing on the Japanese Zen practice of meditation (zazen), finally I expound two theories of human causality: Sōtō Zen quasi-occasionalism following Master Dōgen’s teaching of enlightenment (satori), and Rinzai Zen quasi-concurrentism given the meditator’s interactive kōan practice. Hence, my comparative analysis explains why religious beings are causally active, passive, or interactive in relation to the first agency, God or dharma, whereby systematically establishing alternative definitions of human causality in Zen Buddhism.

Media technologies are being utilised as an effective medium to distribute diverse messages including religious messages. Numerous Muslim preachers have taken advantage of the advance of information technology in order to reach vast audiences and establish their religious authority. However, recipients do not accept the messages blindly. Recipients critically filter and examine all information available online, including religious messages. Making use of Hall’s encoding-decoding theory, despite Sven Ross’s and David Morley’s criticism, this article analyses how encoding and decoding processes work for both messenger (preacher) and recipient respectively. This may ensure the presence of hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional positions when audiences make sense of messages. Basalamah is arguably one of Indonesia’s most favoured preachers who utilises YouTube as a medium to proselytise. This article studies how Basalamah’s online audiences, both in Indonesia and overseas, examine and make sense of the religious messages he communicates through the internet.

Studies of western esotericism in the twentieth century proposed a certain number of characteristics as fundamental and universal to esotericism. This article first reviews Antoine Faivre’s intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics and Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s typology of esotericism, constituting the so-called empirical historical method. Next, it considers the case of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949), a prominent Russian-speaking spiritual teacher who developed his own method of personal perfection and whose place in the history of western esoteric thought is not indisputable. Through a discussion of some main points of Gurdjieff’s teachings and the ways he dealt with esoteric subjects, it is suggested that Faivre’s and Hanegraaff’s material can partly be applicable to his system. It finally argues that this uncertainty can be explained by specifics of Gurdjieff’s teachings, which should be considered as crucial in formulating his esotericism, as well as by limitations of the above-mentioned approach.

Discussion around religion is abundant. Talking directly to it as a phenomenon is unusual. Yet, this brief essay aims to speak directly to the question of our positionality to religion by way of drawing lessons from the Harry Potter story. It does this by thinking about the takeaway message on religion from this literary epic with the aid of Martin Heidegger, but also in conversation with John Carroll’s piece on the same. There is something to be said for the practicality of religion as reflecting the practicality of being. Being as we are in the sense of becoming, religion might be argued to denote the act, rather than the ideal, of being human.

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court affirmed by its decision in Jacobellis vs. Ohio that the French art film, Les Amants, was not, as the State of Ohio had previously defined it, “hardcore pornography.” In his concurrent opinion, Justice Potter Stewart wrote that, though he couldn’t properly define what might constitute “hardcore pornography,” it was something that would be obvious to most of us, especially when compared to a bawdy, yet otherwise harmless, foreign film. His exact words were: “but I know it when I see it.” And while Justice Stewart’s simple acknowledgment that we might “know” what something means merely based on our personal perceptions helped justify the Court’s stance on how it approached similar obscenity laws (as well as made him famous) from that point on, it also serves us well in our own search for definitions of words like “religion” or “Atheism.” This article will use Justice Stewart’s argument as a base of discussion for the latter, providing in the process examples of Atheists across three historical periods, that will in turn support a practical description of the term itself, while simultaneously challenging the need for a “definition of Atheism” in the first place.

Christianity and circus entered the Australian landscape within a few decades of each other. Christianity arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. Five years later, Australia’s first church was opened. In 1832, the first display of the circus arts was given by a ropewalker on the stage of Sydney’s Theatre Royal. Fifteen years later, Australia’s first circus was opened in Launceston. Nevertheless, Australia’s historians have tended to overlook both the nation’s religious history and its annals of popular entertainment. In their new antipodean setting, what did Christianity and circus offer each other? To what extent did each accommodate the other in terms of thought and behaviour? In raising these questions, this article suggests the need to remove the margins between the mainstreams of Australian religious and social histories. For the argument of this article: 1) the term “religion” will refer to Christianity, specifically its Roman Catholic and principal Protestant manifestations introduced in Australia, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist; and 2) the term “circus” will refer to the form of popular entertainment, a major branch of the performing arts and a sub-branch of theatre, as devised by Astley in London from 1768, and first displayed in the Australia in 1847.

The Order of Saint Charbel, and its founding prophet William Kamm (b. 1950), also known as “The Little Pebble,” has been a marginal presence on the fringes of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia since the 1980s. While a series of bishops from the Diocese of Wollongong (and other dioceses) have issued official statements taking issue with the beliefs and practices of the group and publicly distancing the group from normative Catholicism, little systematic analysis of its beliefs has been undertaken which situate these within a wider historical Roman Catholic context. This article offers a preliminary analysis of some key themes occurring in the “private revelations” which form a key aspect of the Order of Saint Charbel’s religious repertoire and their relationship with the broader theological positions of Catholic traditionalists. This article suggests that the Order of Saint Charbel, while sharing some concerns with traditionalist and other groups across the spectrum of conservative reactions to Vatican II, is best classified as a “devotionally traditionalist” lay movement exhibiting a kind of popular theology that can only be properly understood when viewed against the wider backdrop of traditional vernacular Catholic devotional practices, many of which have either declined or become marginalized since Vatican II.

Nestorius and his relationship with his eponymous heresy, Nestorianism, has been a controversial topic in religious studies and in Christian theology. Largely thought to have been condemned for professing Nestorianism, the discovery of the Bazaar of Heracleides of Damascus (written by him in exile) led to a wide-reaching reassessment of this very relationship. Despite Nestorius’ protestations in defence of his own perceived orthodoxy, his rejection of the stronger term henosis for the weaker synapheia to describe the union of the natures of Christ and criticism of the use of the term “hypostatic union” both demonstrate that, implicitly, he did profess a two-person Christology. The authenticity of the Bazaar’s authorship and other historiographical issues came to the fore soon after its discovery. The dating of certain key events and the silence of Nestorius in other parts have led to a consensus of sorts amongst scholars in accepting the Bazaar, in large part, as being the work of Nestorius whilst still admitting of later additions and emendations. This article examines the relationship between Nestorius and Nestorianism, explains key theological terminology used in the Christological debates of the First Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon, situates Ephesus I and Chalcedon in their proper context and their relationship to Nestorius, provides an overview of the key arguments for and against the acceptance of the authorship of the Bazaar, and includes a concise summary of the most compelling arguments in favour of the acceptance of the Bazaar’s authorship.

One of the most iconic television series of the 1990s, The X-Files drew on religious and folkloric traditions regarding supernatural phenomena for many of its plotlines. Among the themes that the show’s writers turned to repeatedly was witchcraft, using it as a major plot device in six episodes over the course of the series’ eleven season run. While drawing on longstanding ideas about witchcraft arising from European and European-American culture(s), these writers also had to contend with a social environment in which fears of witchcraft had resurfaced in the form of the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria and where various forms of modern religious witchcraft had arisen, often claiming proprietorship of the concept of the witch itself. How the show’s writers chose to portray this topic and navigate around the social issues it posed offers insight into the nature of beliefs about witchcraft present in American culture, especially at the close of the twentieth century.