Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

Bettina E. Schmidt and Jeff Leonardi (eds), Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience and Health

Anna Lutkajtis — 2022-03-24

Bettina E. Schmidt and Jeff Leonardi (eds), Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience and Health, Sheffield, UK and Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2020, pp. vii + 248, ISBN: 9-781781-797655 (pbk). £26.95.

Adam Yuet Chau, Religion in China: Ties that Bind

Philip L Wickeri — 2022-05-12

Adam Yuet Chau, Religion in China: Ties that Bind. Cambridge and Medford, MA: Polity, 2019, pp. 200, ISBN: 9780745679150 (pbk). $23.95.

Andrew Singleton, Anna Halafoff, Mary Lou Rasmussen and Gary Bouma, Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity

Andrew P Lynch — 2022-05-12

Andrew Singleton, Anna Halafoff, Mary Lou Rasmussen and Gary Bouma, Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, pp. 235, ISBN: 978-1-350-17956-1 (hbk). $170.00.

David Newheiser, Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith

Petra Brown — 2022-07-13

David Newheiser, Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 177, ISBN: 9781108498661 (hbk). $156.95 AUD.

David J. Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897–1927)

Anton Karl Kozlovic — 2022-07-13

David J. Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897–1927). London: Routledge, 2019, pp. xii + 292, ISBN: 978-0-367-86944-1 (pbk). $77.99.

Andrew R. Polk, Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics and the Making of an American Religion

Manas Pandey — 2022-07-13

Andrew R. Polk, Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics and the Making of an American Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021, pp. 230, ISBN: 9781501759222 (hbk). $63.69 AUD.

David Rankin, Film and the Afterlife

Anton Karl Kozlovic — 2022-09-20

David Rankin, Film and the Afterlife. London: Routledge, 2020, pp. viii + 193, ISBN: 978-0-367-78548-2 (pbk). £36.99.

Religiosity and Entrepreneurship in Post-Soviet Russia

Edgar Demetrio Tovar-García — 2022-09-22

This article empirically studies the associations between religion (Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and non-religion), religiosity (to be a believer or not, and to what extent), religious participation (attending divine services, meetings or other religious events) and the probabilities of being an entrepreneur in post-Soviet Russia. Using logistic regressions and data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, the findings suggest lower likelihoods of being an entrepreneur in the case of Orthodox Christians, religiosity shows mixed results, and religious participation presents positive links (increasing the probabilities of becoming an entrepreneur). Nevertheless, the negative association between Orthodoxy and entrepreneurship lacks statistical significance in several specifications. Indeed, only religious participation shows robust results, particularly for men. Note that religious participation is linked to social capital, namely, networking, facilitating resources for entrepreneurship. Therefore, in Russia, the religion-entrepreneurship nexus is associated with participation, and not precisely with religious affiliations or beliefs.

‘It Makes a Difference in My Life’

Eric D Rackley — 2022-09-22

Informed by social theories of literacy, religious literacy, and motivation for literacy, this article examines the motivations for religious literacy embedded in the lived experiences of 16 Latter-day Saint young adults. Several cycles of qualitative analysis of semi-structured and verbal protocol interviews with Latter-day Saint college students point to three primary motivations for reading sacred texts: reading to improve one’s self, reading to learn information about one’s faith, and reading to receive guidance. These religiosocial motivations grew out of participants’ everyday religious, personal and educational experiences with sacred texts and provide empirical support for the religiosocial influence of sacred texts in young adults’ lives. Findings have implications for religious researchers and educators working at the intersection of religion, literacy and motivation.

Spiritual Practice and the Art of Ecological Living

Deborah Guess — 2022-09-22

Arguably, responses to the ecological crisis need to go further than renewable technology and emissions policy to embrace deeper and wider changes in ideas, attitudes and behaviour and more broadly cultivate an art of ecological living. This article discusses two sets of spiritual practice that contain within them seeds that implicitly cohere with an ecological ethos and therefore might be conducive to cultivating an ecologically sensitive way of living. These are the spiritual exercises of Greek and Roman philosophical schools, especially as understood by Pierre Hadot, and the contemporary practice of Christian meditation. This article discusses three aspects that, despite acknowledged differences, are common to both the ancient spiritual exercises and contemporary Christian meditation: the way they aim to transform the whole of the practitioner’s life, resonating with ecology’s broad and holistic scope; the
centrality of paying attention, enabling the practitioner to be grounded in the present time and place which in turn facilitates greater awareness of what is other to us; and the advocacy of an ethic of self-restraint, countering the ideology and practice of constant growth and consumerism.

Everyday Religion and the Complexity of Islamic Space

Samuel Blanch — 2022-12-06

The turn to ‘everyday religion’ has disrupted the so-called ‘Muslim problem’, suggesting modes of multiculturalism located not in abstract principles of citizenship but grounded in the concrete practices of local communities. In this article, however, I offer two critiques of the literature on everyday religion in Australia. First, the literature has limited itself to discursive methodologies, largely ignoring material aspects of the everyday. Second, I show how studies of everyday religion assume multiculturalism’s location in a given public space. Drawing on ethnography from the Shia Muslim community of Sydney, I show how Shia practices of visual pilgrimage leverage an understanding of complex space that transforms everyday experience. I argue that allowing for diversity requires not merely an attentiveness to different discourses in the public sphere; it requires an allowance for difference at a deeper level, where everyday religion can generate complex alternative experiences of space itself.