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The article focuses on Brazilian spiritism (espiritismo) and discusses its inclusion within the study of religions. After introducing its core features, it shifts to spiritist hospitals that are common across Brazil. The third section examines the boundary of the study of religions and the problem of defining religion. It shows how the artificial divide between religion and non-religion impacts our discipline. Ultimately, it makes the case of an expansion of our area of study to reflect what people do.

This article illustrates the complexity of non-ordinary experiences during the pandemic, highlighting accounts of three different types of experiences: encounters with divine bliss, anger, and evil. The focus is on four narrative accounts of non-ordinary experiences that were submitted by email in response to a wider research project about religious, spiritual and otherwise non-ordinary experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following sections discuss the distinction between experiences perceived as ordinary and non-ordinary and the impact of non-ordinary experiences on wellbeing during lockdown—sometimes as positive meaning-making experiences that contribute to people’s ability to cope with the lockdown and the devastation of the pandemic, and other times expressive of stress and fear, often further exacerbated by silence about the experience. The article then contextualizes approaches to studying these experiences within the academic study of religion and spiritual experiences. Anthropologists have long understood non-ordinary experiences, along with their context-dependent interpretations, as reflective of cultural meaning-making processes.

According to Candomblé, axé is present in every living being and is necessary to life. To develop and maintain a sense of well-being, one must maintain a balanced level of axé which is linked to a reciprocal relationship between human beings and orixás [African deities]. This article will explore the link between the spiritual force axé and well-being [bem estar] within Candomblé philosophy. Starting with explaining axé within the context of Candomblé and its concept of personhood, the paper will reflect in the latter part on the concept of well-being from the perspective of axé and put forward an argument for the inclusion of Candomblé in philosophy of religion.

The communication with spirits is core feature of espiritismo. The chapter argues that experiences with the spirit world can improve wellbeing and support healing. After drawing on research carried out since 1990 in Puerto Rico, New York City and Brazil for a wider reflection on spiritism and health, the second section focuses on a Brazilian case study based on an interview about the importance of espiritualidade for health and wellbeing. The following section shifts the focus onto the researcher and leads to a wider discussion about reality, other worlds, and the importance of bodily experience for the understanding of a different ontology in the conclusion.

In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered – that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the “fundamental” transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a “glocalized” world.

On 12 October 2022, a seminar was held in the University of Edinburgh to review, discuss and critique James L. Cox’s book, A Phenomenology of Indigenous Religions: Theory and Practice (2022, Bloomsbury). This article contains revised papers from that event as prepared by the speakers, in-cluding Cox’s introduction and response to the presentations. The papers explore various themes, comprising a consideration of Religious Studies as a discipline, Indigenous Religions and the World Religions Paradigm, issues surrounding the formulation of research questions, the role of a re-searcher in relation to those being researched, the notion of the ‘sacred’ in the study of Indigenous Religions, and questions about who can be classified as a phenomenologist of religion. Cox responds to each of these issues by emphasizing local agency among Indigenous groups as the key concept undergirding what he calls ‘relational research’. The participants’ papers, which have been revised for publication in this article, are presented in the order they were delivered at the seminar.

This paper presents new research about spiritual experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to discuss the impact of spiritual experiences on people’s lives and relationships. Building upon William James’ four features of the “fruits” of religious experience as a conceptual frame, the paper presents data from two surveys in which participants narrated spiritual experiences and reflected on the impacts of those experiences. We start with a short presentation of James’ ideas about the fruits of religious experience. The next section outlines four themes that have emerged from the narratives of spiritual experiences during the pandemic: impacts on people’s relationships with their religious communities, shifts in one’s subjective sense of spiritual connection and intuition, encounters with spiritual figures and near-death experiences, and interpretations of COVID-19 as a spiritual contagion. The final section broadens the discussion from the impact of specific spiritual experiences to include spiritual responses to the pandemic more generally, leading to a discussion of the experiences within the wider debate in fruits of religious experience.