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In contrast to popular Marian rites throughout the world, the Jerusalem Dormition Feast is held on a canonical route that includes the purported sites of some of the key moments in the Virgin's life. The festival boasts an ancient liturgical order consisting of utterances and customs that are assiduously preserved by Jerusalem's Greek-Orthodox Church. Drawing on Engelke's distinction (2007) between scriptural authority and religious performance and numerous scholarly analyses of cohesion and dissent at assorted Marian shrines (e.g., Eade and Sallnow [1991]), this article explores the reactions to the local ceremonial on the part of various participants. While the clergy strives to impose its particular reading of the Scriptures on all the attendees, the different lay groups insist on performing rituals that give expression to their own knowledge of the canon and their own understanding of the Virgin's nature. All told, their reactions range from rigid obedience to creative practices and heated dissent. The event ultimately splinters off into several factions and the host's orderly script is compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of ‘market theory.’ While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the ‘aura’ of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods – in the spirit of Walter Benjamin's essay ‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’ (1939) – is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I put the ‘supply-side model’ advocated by religious economists to an empirical test. The ‘supply-side’ model in some measure already constitutes a move ‘beyond the market’, as it seeks to expand and enlarge the economic interpretation of religion by linking it to a concept of networks and social tensions and integrating the concept of religious and cultural capital. In applying the model to the (dynamics of the) historical growth of Protestantism in 19th and early 20th-century China, I examine three distinct aspects of the conversion process: the supply-side (missionaries), the demand niches (Chinese converts), and the question of ‘strict’ churches. Arguing that the religious background of Protestant converts – their rootedness in Chinese popular religion – determined this process throughout, I seek to develop an understanding of religious competition, supply and demand that takes cultural interpretive frameworks into account. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction discusses in general terms the applicability of the religious-economy (or market) model to the religious field in China and summarises the discussions in this special issue. This model has been adopted as a tool with which to grasp theoretically the complexities of said field; however, its application to Chinese religion(s) has taken place without an in-depth discussion of its analytical value to this subject matter. Contributions to this issue critically discuss the religious-economy model with regard to the institutionalised religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, ‘popular’ or ‘local’ religion, and the new player, 19th-century Protestant Christianity. While some contributions acknowledge a certain heuristic value of the market model, all of them point to conceptual flaws and highlight the need for revision. Taken together, they suggest a methodological pluralism in response to the pluralism of the Chinese religious field itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the major hypotheses of the religious-economy model is that the more unregulated the religious market is, the more diversity and pluralism will be found, the more competition there will be, and the higher the level of participation is to be expected. The article discusses this hypothesis in light of the pre-modern Chinese discourse on the Unity of the Three Religions (sanjiao heyi 三教合一). Since the rational-choice-based model is not able to provide an explanation for this specific concept, this article proposes the definition of a new case of a regulated pluralism defined by its claim to give up competition, and suggests a new kind of threefold monopoly independent from coercive measures by the state. Some explanations for this new case are provided and the usability of rational-choice theory in analysing the data gained outside of the European frame of the model is discussed. As the author will show, the religious-economy model appears only to be able to follow historical analysis and adapt its propositions accordingly; the model itself seems to be far too narrow and too undifferentiated to reliably include analyses of Chinese religions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the Chinese religious landscape through the lenses of ‘modalities of doing religion’ and ‘ritual polytropy’ and explores the implications such different conceptualisations might bring to the religious-market model. It argues that in Chinese religious culture one can identify five modalities of doing religion (the scriptural/discursive, the self-cultivational, the liturgical, the immediate-practical and the relational), each cutting across broader, conceptually aggregated religious traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Instead of competition between membership-based churches, there is more typically competition within each modality, especially the liturgical modality. Religious pluralism in China is not manifested as the co-existence of, and competition between, confession- and membership-based denominations and churches, but rather as the co-existence of, and competition between, various ritual-service providers with different (though sometimes convergent) liturgical programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the ways “sensuous ethnography” can illuminate the dynamism of embodied religious perception and behavior. It discusses the author's ethnographic research in an African-American community of Lucumí/Santería practitioners on the South Side of Chicago, and explores the sensorily attentive methodological approach adopted to engage with this house of worship, Ilé Laroye. The kitchen of Ilé Laroye became the author's main fieldwork site, and this article historicizes the kitchen in Lucumí tradition as a woman-centered space that has privileged complex forms of labor defined as generative of virtue and ritual competence. It is argued that post-sacrificial food preparation in particular has served to prepare the uninitiated for the rigors of Lucumí priesthood, and proven necessary for the internalization of dispositions and sensibilities that lead to initiation. The author contends that kitchen work has played a key role in transmitting somatic knowledge indispensable for the practice of this Afro-Cuban tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religious market theory has figured prominently in recent scholarly debates in the social scientific study of religion in China. This article argues that the existence of ‘religious markets’ should not be assumed as axiomatic but should be investigated as concrete social processes, distinguishing between market and non-market relations. Based on field research among popular religious and spiritual groups in China and drawing on the literature of economic anthropology, the author proposes an alternative model of a ‘religious gift economy’ made up of gifting exchanges between humans and between gods and humans. Five ethnographic cases from China illustrate the operation and coexistence of gift and market exchanges. In contemporary China, there is a tendency towards an increasing marketisation of religion, with a simultaneous growth of religious movements explicitly offering non-market forms of sociality. Rather than subsuming all exchanges under the blanket concept of the market, studies of religion must be attentive to the distinct logics of different models of exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces the themes and articles of a special symposium on new directions in the organizational structures and pedagogical emphases of religious studies programs around the world. The thematic focus of this symposium is the range of ways that specific religious studies departments and programs have recently experienced dramatic changes, whether in response to financial, administrative, and other external pressures (‘crisis’) or as a proactive step, aiming at greater student success or manifesting an innovative vision of the nature and function of the discipline (‘creativity’). The authors begin by addressing the nature and status of the study of religion\s as an academic discipline. They then discuss some of challenges that it faces in light of economic and political pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999 signed by ministers of education from 29 European countries resulted in the so-called Bologna process: a starting point and platform for various university reforms in the signatory countries. The present paper explores the implications of the Bologna process for the situation of the study of religion\s in selected countries that are subject to this process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study and teaching of religious traditions pre-dates political independence in Nigeria. Certain features have usually marked this enterprise since it commenced. One is the assumption that students of religions who graduate from the universities can only work as preachers or teachers of religion. Second, the number of candidates applying for the study of religions in Nigerian universities has remained small. Third is the belief that religion has little value in the employment market, because its relevance is limited to the spiritual sensitivities of adherents of the religion concerned. These features have remained unabated and compelled the review of courses in the study of religions in some Nigerian universities. This review addresses the above-mentioned assumptions and argues that religion is a crucial educational component with far-reaching implications for the human phenomenon. This paper seeks to evaluate the current situation concerning the study and teaching of religions in Nigerian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a framework for redesigning Religious Studies doctoral programs so as to include a stream that prepares students to be teachers. The example used is the Canadian Laurier–Waterloo Ph.D. program. Carefully configured teacher training need not extend the length of a program, and it will prepare students to take up teaching and other positions both inside and outside universities and colleges. Introducing teacher training within a doctoral program will require some additional university resources, but will especially require rethinking the priorities of graduate education in the early 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper the authors trace very briefly the most consequential points of the history of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This history demonstrates that the structural location and the disciplinary horizon of Religious Studies are central factors in whether Religious Studies is a marginal, threatened endeavor or whether it has a central, thriving place within the family of social sciences in a larger, research-oriented university. The main advantages and disadvantages of a cross-departmental and multi-disciplinary Program in the Study of Religion are presented in the last part of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The higher-education system in the UK, and especially England, is currently undergoing an unprecedented amount of change through massive cuts, a completely new system of student funding, the inclusion of impact in the assessment of research, and the disappearance of small departments into larger faculties. This paper considers the background to this revolution and looks at the policies that are driving it. After initially looking at this in general terms, the paper will consider what this means for teaching and research in the Humanities, and more specifically for the study of religion (in its broadest sense). The paper also seeks to look at any opportunities that these changes may bring, and considers some creative solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper provides a case study from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, describing the changes in the Religious Studies program as a response to institutional pressures, and emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration in the context of Cultural Studies as a perspective for the future development of Religious Studies as a discipline and as a field of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In highlighting common themes among the articles from the panel, this essay focuses especially on two related movements in higher education: an apparently global emphasis on education as preparation for employment and the application of administrative models derived from business to universities and colleges. In critically interrogating both movements, it suggests that there need not always be a high degree of correlation between what a person studies at university and his or her later occupation, and further, that a managerial administrative vision tends to neglect the ‘positive externalities’ that derive from subjects that do not lead directly to employment for a large number of students. Thus, the results of both movements are disadvantageous not only for the study of religions but also for society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multi-religious student groups pose challenges to Religious Studies programmes. This essay proposes a pedagogical method for tackling feelings of exclusion among students who do not share the secular post-Judeo-Christian worldview that is often taken for granted in European curricula. It argues that the diverse backgrounds of the students can be made an asset rather than a problem if principles of self-contextualisation, non-confessionalism, perspectivism and equal treatment of different traditions are articulated and brought to the fore as vital parts of studying Religionswissenschaft at the undergraduate level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Japanese Association of Religious Studies (JARS) had 2112 members in 2006, a fairly large number. On the other hand, among 756 universities in Japan, there are only ten universities with departments or courses in Religious Studies or the academic study of religion. In spite of this unfavorable situation, JARS has been quite active and Religious Studies is widely recognized within Japanese academia. Because religious traditions in Japan are multiple and interconnected to each other in complicated ways, scholars have been working on them from various perspectives and by various methods. JARS is recognized by a wide range of scholars as an appropriate institution for discussing various topics related to multiple traditions. This has become possible because Religious Studies in Japan has been dealing widely with various religious traditions; it is one major academic institution for comparison and dialog among various traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a perspective for the analysis of the literary form of myth drawn from literary-critical theories of the fantastic and fantasy. The aim is to demonstrate the value of such analyses for understanding what a religious narrative is and what it does – as an addition to existing approaches (phenomenological, historical, structuralist, formalist, and so on.) To achieve this aim, the paper presents a fantasy-theoretical case study of the Exodus narrative from the Hebrew Bible (Ex. 1–18). The analysis shows that this narrative of the fantastic events at Israel's exodus from Egypt confounds distinctions (natural/supernatural, benign/malign, self/other, hope/horror), generates varied reactions in the personae, foregrounds the uncertainty and ambiguity of the events, and points to its own artifice. The literary strategies are shown to have effects that are apt to unsettle, disturb and fascinate; effects that are both semantic and affective, mobilising the recipients in the interpretation of the status, veracity and meaning of the fantastic events. Proposals are then made about the literary fantastic as a fruitful analytical perspective specifically for narratives about metamorphoses and miracles, and about incorporating destabilisation, uncertainty and ambiguity more strongly into theories of what a religious narrative is and does in the study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dreams are a universal human experience and they form cultural themes in folk traditions and religious rituals, such as pilgrimages and dream incubation. Dreams and dream beliefs are important since they contain representations of interacting supernatural agents that have full access to information of strategic importance to humans. The relevance of dreams often relates to the dreamers' concerns about the future and about health, and in this sense they show similarity with divination and oracles. This article suggests that religious dreaming is underpinned by an evolved system of threat simulation that is activated in dreaming processes; this is associated with a proclivity to evoke agent concepts and to use counterintuitive representations in cultural communication. It is argued that the use of a ‘hypersensitive agency detection device’ draws upon emotionally laden threat simulation in dreaming that makes reference to counterintuitive supernatural agents that are particularly relevant. This suggests that recalling religious dreams and the cultural transmission of dream reports, narratives and interpretations rely on representations of agents in general and the salience of counterintuitive agents in particular. Furthermore, the explanatory adequacy of ‘threat simulation theory’ is related to non-apprehensive religious dreams and ‘social simulation theory’. These discussions lead on to ethnographic descriptions of the connections between ‘supernaturalism’, pilgrimage, dream beliefs and dream incubation rituals in Nepalese Himalaya and Indian Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The study of U.S. religion, which dates from the 19th century, expanded its sources, methods, and scope during the last quarter of the 20th century, as specialists offered more inclusive historical narratives. That methodological expansion never went far enough, however, and the impulse toward narrative inclusiveness has been restrained in recent years. The subfield, I argue, now faces a number of challenges that also confront other specializations in the study of religion—contraction, overspecialization, fragmentation, and parochialism. After a focused overview of the subfield’s history, I discuss those challenges. Proposing a tentative response, I suggest that specialists celebrate methodological diversity and theoretical sophistication, encourage comparative and translocative studies, and increase collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and national borders. Finally, I suggest that we expand the subfield’s temporal span and geographical scope and reframe the study of U.S. religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Western Hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is a reflection on the attempt of authors like E. Valentine Daniel, S.Balagangadhara, Daniel Dubuisson, Timothy Fitzgerald and Tomoko Masuzawa to argue that the word “religion” is most appropriately used to describe Christianity but that it tends to distort description and analysis of non-western traditions. My concern is to correct their tendency to divide the world between east and west by using Daniel’s (and C.S. Peirce’s) notions of Mind and Mood to analyze a variety of religious traditions, east and west, that fulfill different social and cultural functions, and thus relate to definitions of words like “religion” and “dharma” and “shukyo” in a variety of ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Religious Experience Reconsidered was premised on the idea that experience is a site of contested meaning and value for subjects (and scholars). Although the concept of specialness has drawn considerable attention, my goal in writing the book was to update efforts to use attribution theory to bridge between religious studies and the psychology of religion. I intended the focus on micro-social processes to complement analysis at the macro-social level. The need for a broader, more generic second order term, such as specialness, emerged in the context of working out an attributional approach and can and should be extended more broadly. While anything can be set apart as special and an analysis of the politics of deeming is essential, we can still ask if there is empirical evidence to suggest that humans are more likely to set some things apart than others within or across cultures. When we take experience as a site for study, we do not have to limit ourselves to describing the range of views held by our subjects, but can also legitimately seek to explain experience in terms that make sense to us as researchers. The breaking of taboos against explaining experience in naturalistic terms will only have apocalyptic consequences if we assume a special/ordinary binary; viewed on a continuum, we can still find special meaning and value in experiences that are not protected by taboos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: I suggest that Taves’ prescription for Religious Studies and related fields comprises a shift in perspective for approaching the psychology of religion, from an of-religion perspective to a psychology-of perspective, and that this reframing has a number of important and promising implications for future progress. I then use this perspective-shift characterization to extend and comment upon Taves’ discussion of several key issues, including the distinction between ascriptive and sui-generis models of religion, the need for a building-block approach to religion and religious experience, and the problem of defining religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ann Taves has written an interesting, lucid and informative book. In particular, the author’s suggested reformulation of religious studies as the study of “things deemed special” indicates a critical alternative to the dominant discourse. But such a reformulation implies that the ‘secular’ side of the mutually parasitic religion-secular binary also requires deconstruction. This in turn must surely lead to a critique of the representation of social psychology and related disciplines as ’natural science’, a representation which itself is already dependent on the wider, globalizing, ideological religion/secular binary, and its supernatural/natural correlate. The author’s ambiguous alternation between things deemed special and things deemed religious invites the discursive contours of ‘religion’ to re-enter through the back door, leaving the status quo substantially intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: According to Ann Taves, many humanist scholars of religion are afraid of science. In particular, they object to scientific reductionism because reductive explanations violate taboos that prohibit reducing religion to something else. This essay will analyze how Taves and other proponents of cognitive approaches to religious studies fashion a kind of secular praxis in which breaking taboos is a crucial attribute of scholarly integrity and intellectual heroism. I will argue that this equation between reason and profanation reproduces the discursive logic that legitimates the global expansion of a constellation of overlapping secular scientific, economic, political, and religious institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This introductory essay to a review symposium on Religious Experience Reconsidered by Ann briefly reviews some main stages of the discussion of religious experience in the study of religion\s with special attention to the Romantic tradition and its apologetic legacy and to more recent attempts to revise, rehabilitate, or challenge this key category. The essay then summarizes the argument and structure of Taves'' book and highlights main points of the responses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Implicit Religion: the Journal of the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality began publication in 1998, but the formal study of Implicit Religion began just thirty years before, in 1968. Its study concentrates upon those aspects of everyday life, the understanding of which may be enhanced if we ask whether they might have, within them, some sort of inherent religiosity of their own. While many other terms, and many other journals, have some degree of overlap with this area of interest, now, it is thought that this Journal is unique in its consistent study of the non-reductionist theory and empirical manifestations of (what might be termed) “secular faith.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article provides an overview (as of September, 2008) of the state of the field of l’histoire des religions in the four french-speaking countries of Europe. It discusses the pioneers, along with their followers and influence, the position of principle institutions regarding teaching in the field, and the general orientations of each university, along with distinct emphases that reflect recent socio-political and cultural developments. This detailed panorama brings to light the relative weakness of french-speaking research in the field of l’histoire générale des religions. It calls attention to tensions between the former high status of this academic area, more than half of a century ago, and the disrepute into which its comparativist project has fallen over the last decades. It asks how French secularism – and the growing secularization of western societies more generally – may have influenced perceptions of the discipline, its orientations, and its position in today''s academic market academic market. It also considers the impact of declining comprehension of religious phenomena among younger generations and correlated concerns with popularisation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Increasing numbers of students of religion, from various disciplines, address issues of public interest, going beyond documentation and analysis, taking the quality of human life in religion and society as a criterion for their recommendations. Accordingly, systematic reflection on the concerned study of religion is gaining relevance. The approach chosen in this article is to focus on one particular aspect, in this case the double – cognitive and moral – disparity in religious contexts between forms of power and play. Power is viewed as the human capacity to influence other people’s behaviour, even against their will. Play is defined here as the human capacity to deal simultaneously with different realities. Power and play represent two human capacities that in themselves are neutral but in combination may change from means, a situation of parity, into goal, a situation of disparity. A first type of disparity is cognitive in nature. It stems from the reduction of the potential open dynamic meaning-making that the power–play constellation could stimulate as well. A second disparity is of a moral nature. It stems from the fact that the power–play set may come to interfere with the quality of human life. As a set, power and play thus move between the roles of being either subservient means or self-fulfilling goal, between a soft and a hard version. Religion is one field in which the gift for play is applied, resulting in the relationship with a sacred or divine reality. Whereas religions cannot survive without some form of power, the form given to the power–play set marks out a religion’s identity. Within our time the critical study of the double disparity of hard power and play has gained urgency. Global society faces severe problems of poverty, violence, pollution and miscommunication. Religions may act as a cause, but also as problem solver. Students of religion are invited to form multidisciplinary teams to study the double disparity in its actual form, while simultaneously exploring prospects for the promotion of both open meaning-making and the quality of human life, with power and play in a relationship of parity. This turn would necessitate a reappraisal of the research agenda for Religious/World-view Studies. It demands an identity change for this study field, both in the selection of themes for research and funding, and in the explicitly applied nature of scholarly work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Beginning its sixth year of publication, Material Religion is an interdisciplinary journal that seeks to gather the best work from around the world engaged in materializing the study of religions. The editors welcome original scholarship on any religion and from any period in human history that treats material objects and practices as primary evidence and engages in critical reflection on the cultural construction of materiality. In this article the editors reflect on the formation and format of the journal, the force and direction of its articles and other features, the question of what constitutes the material culture of religion, and finally the role of materiality in the current study of religions. Along the way, the editors consider new theories and concerns that have been taken up in the journal''s pages and address the range of disciplines and interests that are represented in the different departments of the journal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article examines the evolution of the transnational orthodox Anglican movement through the lens of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)—the movement’s most significant public expression to date. GAFCON represented the first large-scale event at which a sizable number of Anglicans (ordained and lay) from both the global North and global South gathered to galvanise an ‘orthodox’ response to the current ‘crisis’ in the Anglican Communion (a crisis precipitated by debates over the status of homosexuality). The analysis is based upon fieldwork conducted at GAFCON, a review of a range of documentary sources, and retrospective interviews with several attendees. The article argues that GAFCON constituted a key moment for the attempted framing of movement objectives for participants, other Anglicans, and outside observers, fixing a standard of orthodoxy in the final Jerusalem Declaration. While attempting to project an image of orthodox unity to outsiders, GAFCON leaders also made the negotiation of certain aspects of cultural difference central to the event’s purpose. Detailed examinations are provided of two topics (homosexuality and female ordination) that exemplify the ongoing negotiation of the boundaries of orthodoxy within the movement. The article concludes with reflections on the significance and further development of the movement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]