Theory of Religion

(English below)
    «Propuesta teórica» con que la Comisión Teológica Internacional de la EATWOT lanza el «Nuevo Paradigma Arqueológico-Bíblico», para su estudio académico y su utilización pedagógica y pastoral.
    A short but practical and pedagogical presentation (offprint) of the so called “new archaeological-biblical paradigm,” with an informative purpose, that may become a guide to start studying the theme, both individually or collectively, even as a pastoral instrument of education for the communities. Of course this is just a point of support, what is important is the direct study of the sources.

It is a great honor to comment on Maurice Bloch's writings, as his work has been very inspirational to my youthful ethnography. A Marxist theorist with a Durkheimian style (Gellner 1999), as well as an indefatigable fieldworker, Bloch has been one of the most stimulating thinkers of religious persistence-or ritual persistence, one might say, given the trickiness of the word'religion (Bloch 2005). In this short article, I would like to develop what I see as

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

In partnership with the FaithX Project, SHERM is a full, no-fee, open access academic journal, which means it publishes and publicly makes available your research without charging subscription dues or publishing fees. Whereas other open access journals still require authors to pay for making their publications available, SHERM believes in making high-quality scholarship accessible to the public while promoting the wide dissemination and visibility of your published article. Our goal is to increase the opportunity for erudite academicians to publish their work, gain a larger readership outside the confines of conventional journals, and receive citations from future researchers.

The term “ethical monotheism” is an important marker of Judaism’s tumultuous transition into the modern era. The term emerged in the context of culture wars concerning the question of whether or not Jews could or should become emancipated citizens of modern European states. It appeared in arguments whether or not Judaism could be considered a Religion of Reason—a symbolic, motivational  representation of a universal morality—and in debates about whether or not Judaism could or should reform itself into a Religion of Reason. This book is both a decisive departure from those discussions and an attempt to add a further, post-modern statement to their ongoing development. As a departure, it refuses to take for granted a philosophical conception of Religion of Reason as the standard for ethical monotheism according to which Judaism was to be evaluated or reformed. As a continuation, the book undertakes a phenomenology of Jewish modes of ethical religiosity that allows it to inquire about what kind of ethical monotheism Judaism might be. The introduction and the conclusion present the argument of the book and explain its structure. Readers may benefit from reading those sections first, and then going on to the evidence in chapters 1 to 5.

This article seeks to demonstrate both the importance of expertise and scholarship in framing a religion’s claim of legitimacy in law, and how expertise can be harnessed by a religious group to gain this legitimacy. From a broad overview of the consequences of religious status in law, the article analyses the tests used to attribute the status, to show the crucial role that their application affords to experts and scholarship. It then argues that new religious movements, and Scientology, are ideal case studies to illustrate the importance of scholars and scholarship. Scientology is indeed the only major religion to have emerged in the twentieth century and is unique in that it has, over this period, gained, lost, re-gained, and grappled with ongoing challenges to its status in law. The article then illustrates these issues with an analysis of two key periods from Scientology’s history: its ultimately successful fight to gain tax-exempt status in the United States in the 1980s, and its response to modern-day challenges to this status. Both periods illustrate, in different ways, how Scientology has recognised the power of expertise and scholarship, and sought to harness it to frame its claim of legitimacy in law.

See https://www.routledge.com/Introduction-to-the-Study-of-Religion/Rodrigues-Harding/p/book/9780367407742 to preview the new content, topics, themes, current directions, and pedagogic aids added to the 2nd edition (15 years after the original).

From the original edition:

Why do people study religion? How have they studied it in the past? How do we study religion today? Is the academic study of religion the same as religious education? These and many other questions are addressed in this engaging introduction to the discipline of religious studies, written by two experienced university teachers. The authors have crafted this book to familiarize novice students with key concepts and terminology in the study of religion. More advanced students will find a varied array of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to the field. Topics include:

* definitions of religion
* perspectives in the study and teaching of religion
* how religion began to be studied: traditional
perspectives – philosophical and theological
* how people experience religion: perspectives in the
study of religious consciousness and perception –
phenomenological and psychological
* studying religion within communities: Social and
cultural perspectives – anthropological,
sociological, political and economic
* judging religion: critical perspectives –feminist
approaches, the interaction of popular literature and
religion
* contextual perspectives – historical and comparative

The book encourages students to think critically about the theories and methods presented. Students will find arguments for the strengths and limitations of these approaches, understand connections among religious studies and other intellectual movements, and develop their own ideas of how they might want to go about the study of religion. Summary boxes, a timeline, a glossary and other pedagogic aids help students grasp key concepts, along with a companion website at www.sastor.com.

How do ‘new’ and ’old’ Islamic actors in contemporary Albania define religious legitimacy, the nation and religious otherness? This chapter uses Olivier Roy’s analytical distinction between accommodationism and neo-fundamentalism as a compass to navigate through Albania’s complex religious landscape by exploring different sets of beliefs promulgated by a selection of Islamic groups (2010).  These are the Muslim Community of Albania, which represents ‘official Islam’ , and ‘mainstream’ Sunni Muslims, who are typically accommodationist. I also analyse a Sufi subgroup thereof, which is equally accommodationist, but in a slightly different manner. As a neo-fundamentalist counterpoint, I explore the ideas of a competing organisation composed of Salafi imams.

Accommodationism means that the bond between religion and a specific territory and culture of origin is tight. In this context, ‘culture’ refers to Albanian historical tradition and the language-based, secular nation-building project engineered by modernising state elites since the early 20th century. Neo-fundamentalism, conversely, is a globalised form of religion that emphasises the gap between faith and culture. As such, it represents a reformatted, exportable form of religiosity, which stands in contrast to cultural ethno-national ways of being Muslim. Neo-fundamentalist religious identity is faith-based, and seeks to ground itself solely upon explicit religious norms, at least in principle. Accordingly, these believers make their religiosity visible through a global uniform of religious markers detached from the surrounding culture.

In the Albanian Islamic context, the theoretically informed labels, neo-fundamentalist and accommodationist, roughly correspond to the ‘Albanianist’ versus the ‘Salafi’ forms of Islam. To some extent, this resonates with mainstream distinctions adopted in Albania and in the Balkans. A popular Albanian term for Muslims associated with neo-fundamentalist forms of Islam is ‘fanatic’ (fanatik). Accommodationism is commonly related to ‘old’ forms of Islam, which many be deemed as local, rooted, and European as well as tolerant and moderate. Neo-fundamentalism, conversely, refers to certain ‘new’ forms of Islam, i.e. those perceived to be imported, transnational, alien, ‘fanatic’ and a threat to local religious customs. This cultural distinction between what are deemed acceptable and unacceptable forms of Islam is often politicised and securitised. As I will show, the association between neo-fundamentalism and violence is not necessarily correct, and the Salafi community under scrutiny here can be defined as pacifist and purist (Wiktorowicz 2006). These two formats, moreover, clash and merge together as different local actors seek to recast and legitimize their respective positions.

Until 1993 there were conducted first excavations in what promised to be the site of one of the most important buildings of Petra, the stunning capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Its construction, whose initiation century BC, several changes, reconstructions and landslides along its more than five hundred years of operation. But despite this still unknown for certain functions for which it was designed and that, regardless of the construction elements, materials have been located just still less inscriptions that shed some light on a mystery that will try here exhibit various theories that enable closer to resolution.

This research contends that the singular purpose of the material production of four different types of artefact is to provide a religious function for a discrete society of people located in the Pilbara, Western Australia. Integral to this argument is that these Indigenous people, the Yindjibarndi (pronounced Injar-barndi), practise a religion. Although the High Court of Australia, in the case titled Church of the New Faith v Commissioner for PayRoll Tax (Vic) [1983] HCA 40, 154 CLR 120, defined the attributes required for a group of people to be regarded as 'religious', none of the 147 religious denominations officially recognised and listed by the Australian government at Schedule 1 of the Marriage (Recognised Denominations)

Classical Buddhism-"Rise from dreamland loiter not, Open to truth thy mind, Practice righteousness and thou Eternal bliss shalt find." It was the Buddha himself who reportedly observed: ' Whoso sees the Dharma (the subject-matter of his teaching), he sees me; whoso sees me sees the Dharma. .. Seeing the Dharma he sees me; seeing me, he sees the Dharma...'. These are clearly written lines , delivering a message of appropriateness and enlightenment of inner soul. The school of Buddhism evolved in the eastern part of India in 563 BCE. More or less at the same time (in & around 550 BCE) another school, Jainism, with almost similar thoughts, was developing in the other part of India. Buddhism is a way of finding peace within oneself. It is a religion that helps us to find the happiness and contentment we seek. Buddhists develop inner peace, kindness and wisdom through their daily practice; and then share their experience with others bringing real benefit to this world. They try not to harm others and to live peacefully and gently, working towards the ultimate goal of pure and lasting happiness for all living beings.

This thesis aims to explore the spirituality in contemporary visual arts through the motive and the materiality of blood in Ron Athey's Self-Obliteration and Vincent Castiglia's Stings of the Lash through the analysis of religious symbols and icons, along with the dual use of blood as material and symbol. By blood been assigned and marked to its sacred role through the sacrifice of Jesus and the Eucharist, I explore its modern artistic representation and ask about its final effect and affect. In order to precisely determine the difference between the traditional religious meaning of blood and suffering in its modern artistic ritualization and performance, my case studies are placed within a broader framework of ritual theory and sociology of art, along with spirituality as the detachment of the physical world. A biographical dimension is added to my analysis of the artworks especially concerning their use of tropes, materials and effects of pain and suffering. With reference to the concepts of trauma and catharsis, such as Aristotle's affective empathy in Poetics, I analyze the two artworks with the help of theories on trauma, as well as semiotics, affect theory, and the ritualistic practice of performance, since ritualization and performance can build the bridge between religion and modern art. This thesis aims to explore the production of spirituality in art through the use of blood and suffering. It will put the reference to and the use of religious symbols, rituals, and 'material' in contemporary art to the discussion.

Decolonial and postcolonial knowledge regimes are typically endorsed as multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary in character. This is because a significant segment of the current encyclopedia of disciplines in the human and social sciences are products of the late 18th to early 20th century European imperial project, such that critique of the imperial project also entails envisioning new ways of knowing, constructing objects of study, and inventing new scholarly discourses. Thus, the definition of religion (as sui generis phenomenon), the invention of world religions, indeed the invention of religions such as Hinduism or the indigenous religions of Southern Africa (to name some historical examples), bear the imprint of the imperial and colonial context which gave rise to these discourses, but also constitute the sites of decolonial revisioning of scholarly discourses on these phenomena. This paper will reflect on contemporary theorizing of religion which embodies an explicit critique of the imperial project, specifically the work of Craig Martin, Russell McCutcheon, Kocku von Stuckrad, and for ancient religion, that of Jörg Rüpke, Guy Stroumsa, John Scheid, and Brent Nongbri. The golden thread that ties their work together is the concept of discourse. In this sense, I am proposing a discourse approach [in the Foucaultian, Bourdieuan, and Lefebvrean sense] is proposed that translates all the most prominent terminologies in the study of religion, like ritual, belief, faith, etc. into redescriptive moves. But simultaneously, all these terms, e.g., faith, beliefs, theologies, rituals, myths, ethics, sacred texts and narratives, secularisation, institutions and institutionalisation, modernism and modernity, postmodernism, gender, race-and nowadays one could add space and spatiality, also appear in more critical and interdisciplinary oriented theological studies. This brings about a most extraordinary situation where the outsider perspective and the insider perspective 'speak about' and 'speak with' the same set of vocabularies, and yet are practised either in isolation from each other as distinct theoretical and disciplinary bounded/defined study fields, or-the other and almost direct opposite-religious studies being performed in the context of theological study, situated in and offered by theological faculties. What complicates the matter is that religious studies as a disciplinary field of study is also conceived in some scholarly circles as what amounts to an insider, theological perspective, vide the current debates between Roberto Orsi and Russell McCutcheon [to name two scholars famously connected as symbols of the discusive clash]. This contribution, then, aims at a kind of metatheoretical reflection on the study of religion and theology both as discourses that serve mythmaking, identity formation, culturally strategic purposes. That is, from the discourse perspective that is proposed here, it is possible to move beyond the definitional divide between religious studies and theology-even beyond 'religion' itself-to focus on the mundanely material practices that constitute that which is called religion. None of the terms used for studying religion [or theology] are insider terms and are imported from outside of the folk practices to describe these practices. And in the way in which the terms are used-plus the history of the growth of these very uses and definitions-it is clear that the terminologies themselves bear the imprint of historical social discourses that occasioned the rise of their use. This proposal, then, is something of a metacritique of the language of the study of religion-beyond religion, beyond the study of religion and theology. And this, it is maintained, is in line with the aims of decolonial and postcolonial studies of the discourse of the study of religion and theology.

This paper reviews the evidence for Neolithic burial practices in SE Arabia, focusing in particular on sites in the Ja'alan region of eastern Oman. Attention is given to the nature of material buried with human remains, including jewellery and, most interestingly, the bones and shells of green turtles in the burials of Ra's al-Hamra 5 and 10. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible evidence for "necrophobia" at the 5 th millennium BC Neolithic necropolis of Suwayh 1.

“The true devotees love the world, the society and everything around because they perceive each and every manifestation of the artful Prakrti (Supreme Creative Power) with one universal spirit. They also love the finite, since it is also a portion of the Universal. They perceive worldly pleasures as divine bliss varied by time, place and person. They keep their mind-stuff absorbed in the eternal currents of the divine flow. Such devoted aspirants are the only true enjoyers or rasika and their object of enjoyment is the Supreme Brahma (God).” Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti (1921-1990) was a Tantric guru in the tradition of Shiva and Krishna. He introduced the empowered universal spiritual mantra “Baba Nam Kevalam”, composed a collection of 5018 spiritual songs called Prabháta Saḿgiita, and founded the socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“the Path of Bliss”).  –  Richard Gauthier, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California, USA, August 18, 2021.

What are objective and intellectual backgrounds giving form to the modernity? Are the modern life compatible with pre-modern law? The paper deals with these two lines of discussion. Law is seemingly a fruit of moderity and also its preserver. Also, it has changed in four directions: its aim, source, reasoning and competent legislator. The quesion however is wether or not a religious law can trun modern and still remain religious.

In Euro-American Islamic Studies, the terms orthodox and orthodoxy have a history of imprecision and collusion in theological axe-grinding. Yet despite their oft-noted inadequacies, scholars continue to invoke and retool the terms with a perplexing persistence. The resilient reworking of the term has resulted in a marked indeterminacy which renders orthodoxy a liability rather than an asset in scholarly nomenclature. This paper examines the trajectory of orthodoxy in scholarly works on Islam, outlines its conceptual problems, and probes its place within the conceptual "religionization" of Islam. Special attention is paid to Talal Asad's influential usage and revival of the term. Despite its newfound life, this paper concludes that orthodoxy remains as problematic as ever.

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of “posthumanism.” This essay examines some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. I explore the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behavior and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.

În 1978, în monografia sa dedicată lui Eliade, Ioan Petru Culianu atrăgea atenţia că René Guénon şi Julius Evola trebuie luaţi în considerare printre autorii care au contribuit la formarea teoriilor istorico-religioase ale acestuia. 1 A trebuit să treacă, însă, aproape un deceniu până când relaţiile lui cu exponenţii aşa-numitei "Tradiţii" au început a fi discutate şi analizate. Deşi se discută deja de un sfert de secol, 2 suntem încă departe de o concluzie clară sau de un consens asupra naturii raporturilor lui Eliade cu operele lui René Guénon, Julius Evola şi Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

This collection illustrates the spectrum of ideas that people throughout history have had when considering how to understand and study religion. The editors present a selection of key writings that reflect a broad range of voices on the nature and practice of the discipline. Religious studies draws on works by anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theologians, and others, which notably impact our understanding of the concept of religion, of particular religious ideas, and on how religion should be studied. The Study of Religion: A Reader contains both classic and contemporary perspectives, including material from non-Western traditions. It provides students of religion with an understanding of how the discipline developed, some of the current issues and lines of thought, as well as future prospects.

This article first predicts, on the basis of an analysis of deep absorption, a number of features of mystical and related states of consciousness. It then observes that these very same features appear in beliefs held by people who have never experienced deep absorption. Moreover, many people engage in activities that, though not normally leading to deep absorption, bring about lesser states of absorption. The article will propose an answer to the question how it is that many people are influenced in their beliefs and practices by experiences (deep absorption) they have not had.

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual’s appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly
discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication.
These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.

In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that Shi‘a Muslims ought to imitate Husayn by actively fighting against oppressors rather than passively mourning Husayn’s martyrdom. This prohibition has not been unanimously applied in all Muslim
countries, including Syria, where such practices persisted until the Arab Spring (when virtually all Shi‘a Muslims left the shrine-town where these practices were performed). By closely reading the linguistic, conceptual, and juridical discourses that circulated in Syria in order to justify this position, the paper shows that the performers of tatbir conceived of these rituals in revolutionary, rather than reactionary, terms. By examining the performance and reception of flagellation processions in terms of differing modalities of affect, the paper opens up spaces for rethinking ‘revolution’ and ‘redemption’ in contemporary Twelver Shi‘ism.

Joannes Leo Africanus, (c. 1494 – c. 1554?) (or al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, Arabic:حسن ابن محمد الوزان الفاسي) was an Andalusian Amazigh Moorish diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell’Africa (Description of Africa) describing the geography of North Africa.

The quest for the 'Origins of Religion', which so characterised early scholarship in the field of religious studies as opposed to Theology, has, on the whole, become outdated and, seemingly, destined to fail under scrutiny fed by an exponentially growing library of anthropological data and independent human experience; theories of origins claiming universality do not stand up to the test of modern scholarly practice. Yet the ideas of the early theorists concerning the development of religion in man still hold considerable power. Such theories are inherently bound up with the post-Darwinian age, informed by the knowledge that all life on Earth is connected to a primordial originating form coupled with philological advances concerning the ancestry of the Indo-European language family. Thus religion, as an observable human phenomena, was thought to be reducable to a primal state or a necessary, universal, characteristic of humanity. As Stark and Bainbridge noted, "Available 'theories' about religion remain largely the product of 19 th century social thought and the tradition of grand theory… but… close scrutiny reveals that these theories are not so grand… classics such as Emile Durkheim's 'The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life' [and Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo] could be excerpted on a few printed pages. The rest is illustration and digression." 1

Throughout history, the Druids have always been seen as sorcerers who had a strong bond with nature. Ancestral knowledge holders within Celtic society, directed all religious activity as the highest authority linked to the gods, practiced human sacrifices and festivals organized as Imbolc, Beltaine, Lugnasad or Samain, etc.. all aspects of which are discussed in this article.

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.

In this engaging and detailed study, ancient near eastern tendencies concerning the conception of the nature of a god's body as corporeal, fluid and multiple are situated in conversation with biblical sources, rabbinic thought, mystical speculation and Christian reflection. In doing so, the work explores the inadequacy of the monotheist-polytheist dichotomy by exploring the legacy and impact of the conception of divine fluidity in Judaism and Christianity. Given the extent to which the work raises critical issues concerning how contemporary scholars read ancient texts, especially when considering whether a text is to be read literally or metaphorically, this highly readable tour de force of biblical scholarship deserves to have a significant impact on many aspects of the study of religion. In accomplishing this, Sommer's works meets all the criteria for the AAR book award in textual studies: well organized, clear writing style, engaging to the reader, and with a clear demonstration of the significance of the work undertaken.

Few octogenarians command intellectual respect like Peter Berger. His prolific oeuvre, spanning half a century, includes several classics which have shaped both the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of religion. In the 1960s, Berger was a key proponent of secularisation, a theory which essentially posits that the constituent components of modernisation—rationality, bureaucratisation, and the emergence of social institutions from the shadow of ecclesiastical control—collectively tend towards religious decline. More recently, reflecting a broader shift in the discipline, Berger has recanted his earlier views, declaring them untenable in the face of global empirical evidence. If secularisation theory is not defensible, what should replace it? In this, his latest book, Berger sketches the rudiments of an alternate paradigm—rooted in the phenomenon of pluralism—and sets out to synthesise some of his earlier insights with the seemingly implacable verve of a global religious landscape.

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In sum, this is an eminently readable attempt by a leading sociologist of religion theoretically to interrogate the contemporary religious landscape. The title derives from Nietzsche whose anguished forebodings over a century ago proclaimed a future of abandoned, desolate altars. What has instead transpired, maintains Berger, is a proliferation of altars, as the religious impulse refracted through the prism of modernity. Why this should be so will no doubt continue to exercise sociologists of religion for years to come.

The Institutional Dictionary of Astronism is the cumulation of receptions between Cometan and the astronomical world during the Founding era (2013-2021). The publication of this very first full-length Institutional Dictionary of Astronism represents eight years of the development of Astronism from its inception to how it stands today in 2021. The publication of this dictionary also encapsulates Astronism exactly as it exists now and how Cometan conceives it by the end of the Founding era. This dictionary and its contents capture what Astronism is now for posterity to look back on how this astronomical belief system will change as time progresses. Many of the words and definitions of this dictionary will alter as we enter the Establishment era and Astronism continues its progression in becoming world religion. However, what will not ever change is Cometan’s absolute devotion to the stars of the night sky and his discovery of their secrets through his receptions, personal inspirations, and his overall relationship with The Great Cosmos.

Covering all the major Astronist beliefs, practices, cultural elements, theories, branches of study, and historical events, A Dictionary of Astronism, also known as the Institutional Dictionary of Astronism, is published by the Astronist Institution through its subsidiary, Astral Publishing, to commemorate the end of the era of The Founding of Astronism.

The Founding of Astronism began exactly eight years on 1st July 2013 which sparked Cometan's ideations and indrucies and which afforded him the insight, knowledge, and vision to found a new religious movement, philosophy, spirituality and political ideology. As The Founding of Astronism, also simply known as the Founding era, comes to an end, the Astronist Institution wants to acknowledge the fundamental importance of this year period of the history of Astronism and to the wider history of religion, philosophy and spirituality as a whole.

The Dictionary of Astronism immortalises that commemorative spirit by providing thousands of definition entries of Astronist terms that have been authorised by Astronist Institution scholars for dissemination worldwide. This dictionary captures the most up-to-date understanding of what Astronism is and how it as a whole and its component parts should be defined. Enjoy this dictionary that emblematises Astronism and how this new religion has so far developed.

From an ethnographic and qualitative perspective, we will explore religious expression around the globe, including the major Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but also Buddhism, Hinduism, African religions, and lesser-known faiths from small-scale, non-industrialized societies. Emphasis is placed on the analytic categories for understanding religious experiences and the prospects and challenges of cross-cultural comparison. We will adopt the techniques of anthropological inquiry to consider the social forces at work within religious life, including the political, colonial, gendered, and transnational dimensions of worship. Topics of ritual, mythology, ecology, witchcraft, trance, magic, and science will guide our exploration of belief and spirituality beyond the formal boundaries of institutional religions. Experiential assignments, including participant observation and interviews with practitioners of unfamiliar spiritual traditions, are combined with in-depth written exercises to strengthen intercultural and communication skills.