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The article examines the relationship between quarantine practices and Western European medical notions of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth-century Mediterranean, as well as the crucial role of quarantine centres in facilitating trade and mobility between the East and the West. I argue that quarantine should be analysed to understand the complexity of the early modern Mediterranean as a shared context that saw both connections and clashes. The first part of the article focuses on Western European ideas concerning the geography of the Mediterranean, medical theories, and related quarantine practices. These theories often presented the 'healthy' 'Christian West' as opposed to the 'infidel' and 'plagued' Ottoman Empire. However, the article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the early modern Mediterranean, where both unity and diversity co-existed. Quarantine, despite its association with isolation and the reinforcement of borders, also enabled connections and circulation despite the fear of plague. This article explores quarantine centres as key components of the infrastructure of mobility, with a particular focus on religious diversity, tolerance, and multilingualism. The article also explores the perception of the institution through the eyes of Ottoman passengers, shedding light on their perspectives and attitudes toward quarantine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the South Indian state of Kerala is often explained through the idea of Kerala 'exceptionalism', a broad term used to explain the unique historical, political, and developmental trajectory of the state. However, such explanations do not adequately address the systematic and concerted attempts by Hindu nationalist organizations to transform the cultural sphere of Kerala into a fertile ground for its future electoral politics. Through an ethnographic study of three Hindu nationalist organizations in the civil society sphere of Kodungallur, a multi-religious town in central Kerala, this article explores the politics and implications of their cultural interventions. The article argues that, peeved by an 'absent Hindu atmosphere' in Kerala, these organizations are trying to construct new forms of sociality and subjectivity and a grassroots public sphere embedded in Hindu nationalist ideology in Kodungallur. Often described by these organizations as 'apolitical' and 'cultural', these interventions are indeed a critique of the Kerala public sphere which is characterized by religious pluralism and secular sociality. Hence, the attempt to create a 'Hindu atmosphere' by these organizations is a deeply political endeavour aimed at creating an exclusivist Hindu hegemony in the cultural sphere, which they assume will pave the way for their electoral hegemony in Kerala in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems" challenges the assumption that Buddhist and classical theistic beliefs are fundamentally incompatible. The authors argue that the core tenets of both traditions can be harmonized, not only in terms of metaphysics but also in ethics, soteriology, and religious experience. The book addresses objections to this synthesis and explores the compatibility of Buddhist consequentialist and virtue-centered ethics with divine command theory. It also examines the potential reconciliation of the soteriology of Abrahamic traditions with the liberation-focused soteriology of Buddhism. The volume concludes that it is possible to be a Buddhist Christian or a Christian Buddhist. [Extracted from the article]

This study explores the extent to which Mendelssohn's Jerusalem engages with Protestant sources in its portrayal of rabbinic tradition, which will allow further light to be shed on the pivotal role of rabbinic Judaism and its representations within the emotionally charged polemics surrounding Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century Prussia. This examination demonstrates that Mendelssohn's idealized perception of rabbinic thought is deeply embedded in anti-rabbinic Protestant works, whose framework aids him in shaping his own unique outlook. By analyzing Mendelssohn's deployment of the notion of contradiction, this article shows how his argumentative strategies in Jerusalem efficaciously counter well-known Protestant patterns of critique against rabbinic Judaism. By focusing on his idiosyncratic quotations and insinuations, it recovers the Christian works that he draws on and appropriates for his apologetic objectives and establishes that he uses Johann A. Eisenmenger for his depiction of the nature of rabbinic discursive practices while speaking out against "many a pedant" for their assertion that the rabbis disregarded the principle of noncontradiction. This article argues that Mendelssohn is alluding to eighteenth-century Protestant theologians who unreservedly follow Eisenmenger's anti-rabbinic perspective and elaborates on how Mendelssohn entirely reframes this view as a conceptual strength of Judaism's dialogical essence, thus rendering it compatible with the Enlightenment-based Weltanschauung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labelling traditional theological responses to these questions as walled-in-answers, the book calls for in-depth investigation of these questions and dwells upon them from outside organized religions and their theologies, which are referred to as "theologies with walls". Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz present CSR (cognitive science of religion) as a potential candidate which can provide common ground for conversations across religious traditions, though they do not engage with the idea of TWW directly (they do not even mention the phrase TWW). While the author does not see much difference between open field theology and TWW, he strongly advocates both of them for a meaningful theological conversation about the ultimate in our contemporary times as they open up new hermeneutical space for an open-ended interaction between religions. [Extracted from the article]

Over the past several decades, historians of Medieval Europe have worked to show the complexity and diversity of Europe's religious, linguistic and cultural landscape. Medieval Europe was neither a multicultural paradise nor an ethnically pure enclave. Archaeology, ethnolinguistics, literary studies and textual studies all show the constant movement of populations into and across Europe, from earliest antiquity until today. I have participated in two European-funded projects that explore different aspects of that religious and cultural diversity. From 2010 to 2015, I directed an ERC advanced grant entitled 'RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5th–15th centuries)'. Since 2019, I am one of the four directors of an ERC synergy grant, 'The European Qur'ān,' which explores the place of the Qur'ān in European culture between the twelfth and early nineteenth centuries. This article presents these two European research programmes and their implications for understanding the history of Europe's religious diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the role of denominational competition in the expansion of higher education in the nineteenth-century United States. We document that nearly all colleges established in this period were affiliated with a Christian denomination. Empirical analysis reveals a robust positive relationship between the denominational fragmentation of the county and the number of colleges established. We take several steps to rule out competing explanations and also highlight the causal channel by utilizing two historical case studies. We conclude by estimating a model of school choice and showing that students exhibited strong preferences to attend same-denominational colleges in terms of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-travel. Therefore, we argue that religious diversity softened the extent of tuition competition between institutions and precipitated an "excess" entry of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is diversity to be found in the uses made of Wittgenstein's writings, reflecting the diversity of ways of understanding religion found in Wittgenstein's work. In both Wittgenstein's early and later work we can find an I existentialist i conception of religion, in which Wittgenstein emphasises the importance of experience and volition for religion. Andrejc, in his introduction (3), suggests that there are four dominant ways in which Wittgenstein depicts religion: the nonsensicalist, existentialist, grammaticalist and instinctivist conceptions of religion. [Extracted from the article]

The modern human rights movement arose during a moment of unprecedented encounter between global religions in the mid-twentieth century. Yet attempts to parse the historical relationship between human rights and religious thought have almost exclusively taken the form of case studies of individual religious traditions. This focus on intellectual genealogies obscures the fact that much of human rights doctrine emerged from interreligious contacts and conflicts between Judaism and Christianity, particularly in the context of the decolonizing Middle East. This article retraces this interreligious encounter through the writings of Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson, diplomat and theologian Charles Malik, and rabbi and activist Maurice Perlzweig. Together they represent three different theopolitical responses to the problem of religious pluralism after global empire: minoritarian human rights, majoritarian human rights, and cosmopolitan human rights. Recovering these interrelated human rights conceptions exposes the frames of religious difference embedded in the modern Western human rights imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: À partir d'une expérience s'étant déroulée au Québec auprès de plus de 200 personnes, cet article évalue dans quelle mesure l'humour peut alimenter les stéréotypes culturels et religieux. Si sur le plan des effets directs, les différences s'avèrent moins importantes, on remarque que le degré de participation religieuse joue un rôle significatif dans l'entretien d'une perception négative à l'égard des immigrants et de la communauté arabo-musulmane. Ce constat souligne la nécessité de considérer des facteurs modérateurs pour mesurer les impacts des diverses manifestations de la communication politique, dont l'humour, sur certaines attitudes liées à la diversité. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing effort to draw parallels between issues facing modern societies and how pre-modern societies engaged with similar social, political, religious and cultural problems. Moreover, 'the state's openness to the integration of the Muslim community ... is followed by the readiness of this community to be integrated into society without losing its religious identity' (p. 245). Coffey ends his chapter by examining how his findings for seventeenth-century England have bearing upon today's political discourse on freedom. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues that the Mongol empire's famous religious tolerance cannot be explained solely through its adoption of Inner Asian imperial political traditions of ruling over ethnically and religiously diverse subjects. Instead, this pluralism can be ascribed to a wider religious pattern of the Mongols. The first part argues that the analytical category of immanentist religions explains not only the inter-cultic transparency exhibited by the Mongol courts, but also the few explicit instances where the Chinggisid rulers reacted with 'religious' violence. The article further explores the strategies employed by the religious vectors, mainly Buddhists and Muslims, to address, accommodate, and subvert the Chinggisids' patterns of religiosity and primarily their pluralism, and the Mongols' deified mode of sacralizing kingship. Focusing on the Mongol-Ilkhanid court in Iran, the article examines how religious representatives used conceptual affinities and equivalences between the Mongol traditions and certain principles of their own religious frameworks to gain influence and favour, and persuade the khans to convert or retain their earlier commitment to the new religious affiliation. Employing this assimilative approach, they manoeuvred within the religious, immanentist paradigm of their nomadic patrons while moulding and manipulating it to their own religious, transcendentalist ends. The article further demonstrates how this 'translation' process of Chinggisid patterns became an arena of Buddhist–Muslim rivalry and competition, but also cross-cultural fertilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sulh-i kull or 'Total Peace' with all religions was a policy introduced by the Mughal empire in South Asia in the late sixteenth century. It was a radically accommodative stance for its day, especially when compared to the intolerant manner in which other Muslim and Christian polities of the early modern world dealt with religious difference. This article introduces a new perspective on Mughal Total Peace by arguing that it was meant to solve a long-standing problem created by the monotheistic ban on oaths sworn on non-biblical deities. Such a ban restricted the ability of Muslim kings to solemnize peace treaties with their non-monotheist rivals and subjects. In the second half of the article, I examine two pre-Mughal cases, from the eleventh century (Mahmud of Ghazna) and the seventh century (the prophet Muhammad), respectively, to explore what other, less 'total', mechanisms were invented to suspend this ban and enable oath-taking and solemn peace-making between monotheist and non-monotheist. In effect, I use the Mughal case to highlight a specific issue that shaped political theology in Islam over the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In presenting his theory of religious pluralism, John Hick discussed the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, emptiness, which he regarded as functionally equivalent to his postulated noumenal Real. This article introduces Hick's pluralistic hypothesis and reviews the major criticisms of his theory. It then investigates Hick's understanding of śūnyatā, before arguing that a Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā, within the context of the Buddhist theory of 'two truths', differs considerably from Hick's understanding. The article suggests that the Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā can be used to reconfigure Hick's pluralistic hypothesis, thereby avoiding the major criticisms Hickian pluralism faces, for it provides a new way of thinking about the relation between ultimate reality and the reality that we experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionally perceived as a geographical and civilisational periphery of the Muslim world, Indonesia has recently pursued an Islam-based diplomatic narrative that aims to promote itself as a model democratic Muslim-majority country, upholding religious pluralism and tolerance. This paper analyses the educational dimension of this Islamic soft power policy, which has been overlooked by the academic literature. It argues that the extroversion of Indonesian Islamic education--defined as the switch from an inward-looking perspective to a strategy of exporting this sector beyond Indonesia's borders, while upholding the narrative of its national distinctiveness--aims at fostering the authoritativeness of Indonesian Islam, enhancing the nation's standing within the Muslim world and, more broadly, bolstering the image of Indonesian Islam as inherently moderate and pluralist, which serves both domestic and foreign policy purposes. At the same time, extroversion seeks to legitimise local Islamic practices that have become increasingly challenged by external and, in particular, Wahhabi influences. By mapping out historical trajectories and current developments of the Indonesian Islamic educational sphere, we argue that future research on Indonesia's position within and relationship to the Muslim world--and particularly the country's Islamic soft power strategy--must consider Islamic educational institutes and their intellectual milieux as distinct actors in global religious and political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his conclusion, Smith emphasises the underlying similarity between the goals of English corporate religious governance as practised by the various companies under discussion. Taking as his focus religious governance in the seventeenth-century trading company, Smith unpicks an oft-overlooked aspect of English religious history. But as Haig Smith reminds us in this illuminating new book, the Church of England was adapting to the challenges of global encounter long before the foundation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698. [Extracted from the article]

Cowan's book should be read because it does show that the Religious Right was created by coalitions involving US and Brazilian conservatives; it should also be read because it models a transnational methodology towards which historians must continue to move. Yet, Cowan is correct in pointing out that it is in the years of the Brazilian dictatorship that the power of Brazilian Evangelicals emerged to unprecedented levels - and it did so partially as a result of the pro-dictatorship initiatives of Brazilian Evangelicals and the strengthening of conservative, US-Brazil theopolitical coalitions. For Cowan, the US-supported dictatorship in Brazil (1964-85) and the simultaneous consolidation of Evangelical political organisation in the US provided a crucial immediate context for the development, strengthening and expansion of a transnational religious Right - whose power is felt today in the US, Brazil and beyond. [Extracted from the article]

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes Climacus, famously distinguishes two kinds of religiousness, kind A and kind B. He claims that, even though kind A is basic to kind B, including as represented in Christian religious commitment, kind A both has God 'in its ground' and 'can be present in paganism' that is atheist or agnostic. This apparent conflict calls for a resolution, if kind A is to be coherent. This article offers a new resolution with a familiar distinction between God de re and God de dicto, even though interpreters have overlooked the importance of this distinction for understanding Kierkegaard. In addition, the article contends that this distinction is supportable from Kierkegaard's own writings, even though he himself did not draw it explicitly. The article also explains the importance of the distinction for understanding Kierkegaard on religious diversity in intellectual content. It proposes that it enables Kierkegaard to offer a compelling position on such diversity, given his understanding of God's perfectly good character and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Roman tradition that Numa once negotiated with Jupiter about human sacrifice. Complete versions of the myth survive in Ovid, Plutarch and Arnobius (citing Valerius Antias). Previous studies of this tradition have proposed four main interpretations of it, which have done important service in modern reconstructions of the character of Roman religion. These scholarly treatments raise several questions. First, are they actually supported by, or the most convincing way of reading, the surviving ancient sources? If so, have they been correctly attributed? Why might a specific ancient author present the myth of Numa and Jupiter in a manner which suggests one interpretation rather than another? What ideological and theological work does the story do for Ovid, for Plutarch and for Arnobius? Finally, can this myth, in whatever version, support the weight of the implications put on it for the character of Roman religion? This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this myth in its surviving versions, not just by analysing the evidence for each of the modern interpretations, but also by considering why ancient authors tell the myth of Numa and Jupiter the way they do. It is argued that their choices illustrate best not one meaning of the myth nor one Roman way of piety but the richness and diversity of religious reflection in antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents' objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite trends towards greater LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights in industrialized democracies, the rights of sexual minorities have become increasingly politicized and restricted throughout Africa. Recognizing religion's central role in shaping attitudes toward gays and lesbians, we hypothesize that local religious diversity could expose individuals to alternative religious perspectives, engender tolerance toward marginalized communities, and therefore dislodge dogmatic beliefs about social issues. Employing cross-national Afrobarometer survey data from 33 countries with an index of district-level religious concentration, we find that respondents living in religiously pluralistic communities are 4–5 points more likely to express tolerance of homosexual neighbors (50% increase) compared to those in homogeneous locales. This effect is not driven by outlier countries, the existence of specific religious affiliations within diverse communities, respondents' religiosity, or other observable and latent factors at the country, sub-national, district, and individual level. Further robustness checks address potential threats to validity. We conclude that religious diversity can foster inclusion of sexual minorities in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses John Glas, a minister deposed by the Church of Scotland in 1728, in order to examine the growth of religious pluralism in Scotland. The article begins by considering why Glas abandoned Presbyterian principles of Church government, adopting Congregationalist views instead. Glas's case helped to change the Scottish church courts' conception of deposed ministers, reflecting a reappraisal of Nonconformity. Moreover, Glas's experiences allow us to distinguish between church parties formed to conduct business, and those representing theological attitudes. Finally, Glas's case calls into question the broadest definitions of the 'Scottish Enlightenment', drawing attention to the emergence of pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evangelicals garner much attention in polling and public opinion research, yet measuring white evangelicals remains elusive, even opaque. This paper provides practical guidance to researchers who want to measure or analyze evangelicals. In the social sciences, many have adopted a detailed religious affiliation approach that categorizes evangelicals based on the religious tradition of the denominations to which they belong. Others have used a simpler self-identification scheme, which asks respondents if they consider themselves "born-again or evangelical". While the affiliation and self-identification schemes are predominant, a practical examination of these approaches has been absent. Using several waves of the General Social Survey and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we compare them. We find almost no statistical differences between the two measurements in prominent demographic, political, or religious factors. Thus, we suggest that for most a simple question about broad religious affiliation followed by a born-again or evangelical self-identification question will suffice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article maps a selection of Pope Francis’ social teaching, which supports respect for diversity. It undertakes this task with the aid of a green theo‐ecoethical lens. That hermeneutical lens is first introduced to the reader via an explanation of its constituent parts. It is then employed to help situate respect for diversity as a Christian ethical principle. With those foundations in place subsequent sections employ the lens to colligate Francis’ teachings which, dialogically, both inform and come into focus through a green theo‐ecoethical perspective concerned with respect for diversity. Here, three sections unfold the Pope’s treatment of themes relevant to respect for diversity in a green theo‐ecoethical light. Specifically, these sections focus on contributions emerging from (1) Francis’ public ministry in general, (2) his first substantive piece of Catholic Social Teaching, Evangelii Gaudium, and (3) perhaps the most anticipated papal encyclical of all time, Laudato Si’. The article's conclusion helps situate the contextual cogency of insights emerging from this multi‐dimensional mapping for what Francis names as our common home, a planet which encompasses an Earth community in a dire need of increased levels of socio‐ecological flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These are invigorating times for the philosophy of religion. It is thus an honour and a privilege to be editing this special issue on the theme of cross-cultural and multi-religious approaches to the philosophy of religions. I am grateful both to the present editor of this journal, Yujin Nagasawa, and to the previous editor, Mark Wynn, each of whom has been extremely helpful in enabling this special issue to come to fruition. [Extracted from the article]

When religious tolerance appears in the literature on ecumenicism, religious pluralism, and other modes of peaceful coexistence, it is frequently juxtaposed with the words “beyond,” “more than,” and “is not enough.” To be sure, it is generally conceded in these contexts, tolerance is an improvement on intolerance, and, relatively speaking, then, a fine thing, as far it goes. For many, however, it does not go very far. “Religious tolerance,” we are told, “however virtuous, does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another.” It is thought to lack strenuousness, and hence, to be unsuited for modern moral conflicts, which tend increasingly toward the polarity characteristic of war: “Tolerance, especially of the knee-jerk variety. . . works as long as people can slink off by themselves, avoiding contact, and never facing up to what they truly believe.” No one says, “I am fighting for [fill in the blank] with all the toleration I can muster.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most studies on diversity in Southeast Asia focus on the nation-state, with much less attention given to everyday encounters and the negotiation of diversity in local contexts. This article investigates the discourses and practices of various actors in the historically tolerant, generally peaceful, and diverse city and special region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This study examines this ethnic, religious and cultural diversity and illustrates the negotiations among various interest groups and actors that strive to maintain this balance, or sometimes to strategically disrupt it. As such, the findings offer a different way to understand and interrogate the challenges confronting present-day diversity both on a local level in Yogyakarta, and also for Indonesia and Southeast Asia at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies examining the relationship between social cleavages and party system fragmentation maintain that higher levels of social diversity lead to greater party system fragmentation. However, most aggregate-level studies focus on one type of social cleavage: ethnic diversity. In order to develop a better understanding of how different cleavages impact electoral competition, this article considers another type of social cleavage: religious diversity. Contrary to previous literature, higher levels of religious diversity provide incentives for cross-religious cooperation, which in turn reduces party system fragmentation. Using a cross-national data set of elections from 1946–2011, the results show that, in contrast to most studies examining the effects of social cleavage diversity on the number of parties, higher religious diversity is associated with lower levels of party system fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious dynamics in Europe, especially regarding religious pluralism, are largely affected by the characteristics of legal recognition of religious entities in individual countries. The implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights clearly points to democratic pluralism as the essential principle in treating religious entities by the state. On the other hand, the situation in European countries is very complex and certain tendencies opposite to the European Convention of Human Rights directions, particularly in terms of privileging of traditional entities, are still deeply entrenched. Recent changes in Slovenia, where two essentially parody religions have been registered, and in Hungary, where registration and recognition of previously registered churches have been annulled, are considered. It is argued that the implementation of the liberal course set by the Council of Europe is (still) largely dependent on the political situation in individual countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about secularism in post-independence India have often revolved around the visions of two of the country's founding fathers—M. K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. A sharp distinction is drawn between them by those who argue that the Gandhian model (or, what in common parlance and state discourses is called communal harmony) stems from Indian cultural and religious values, and lies beyond the realm of the state. The Nehruvian model, however, is a state project through and through. This article transcends this dichotomy to show that the association of Nehru and Gandhi with these models does not necessarily mean that secularism and communal harmony faithfully reflect their ideas and, despite the differences in their aims and methods, both models are united in the discourses and practices of the state as strategies of ‘governmentality’. After redefining the core of communal harmony as reciprocity (rather than tolerance), I show how it is performed, how it supplements the state's efforts to keep the peace in a religiously plural society by the force of law, and shores up the state's legitimacy deficit. However, the state's simultaneous involvement in Nehruvian and Gandhian projects is not an innocuous fact because it undermines the state's constitutional and secular obligations to non-discriminatory citizenship in the Indian nation. The argument is that the state's endorsement of dargah-centred Islamic piety as an exemplary site of communal harmony and particular ideas of the Indian nation legitimized by communal harmony ‘problematizes’ the national belonging of certain kinds of pious Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How far can monotheism be reconciled with the pluralism characteristic of modern societies? In this article, I focus on the “value pluralism” of Isaiah Berlin, which I suggest captures a deeper level of plurality than Rawls's more familiar version of pluralism. However, some critics have objected that Berlinian pluralism is too controversial an idea in which to ground liberalism because it is profoundly at odds with the monotheism professed by so many citizens of a modern society. I argue that monotheists can be value pluralists as long as they do not insist that their faith is superior to all others. This pluralist position is exemplified by elements of the interfaith movement, according to which many religions are recognized as having roughly equal value. I also argue that a value-pluralist approach to religious accommodation, if it can be achieved, may be more stable than the uneasy combination of disapproval and restraint involved in the more orthodox solution to conflict among religions, toleration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interesting version of religious pluralism has been proposed by Peter Byrne in his Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism. Byrne's pluralism aims to unite an affirmation of the equal cognitive and salvific success of all major religions with a realist view of religious truth and a severe agnosticism about specific descriptions of religious reality. I argue that Byrne's proposal, while an improvement upon non-realist versions of pluralism, fails to resolve the tensions between its agnosticism about detailed descriptions of the sacred reality and its realist conception of religious truth, which requires the revisability of descriptions of the sacred offered by diverse religions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Indonesia's state-owned mosques are important sites for observing changes in religious life that have taken place since the demise of the Suharto regime. During the New Order period, ideological and political factors restricted access to mosques owned and managed by provincial and regency governments. In contemporary West Java, access to such mosques has been broadened, and they now display a diversity of religious programs and practices. Drawing on recent fieldwork, this article makes a case study of the intercession ritual known as manakiban which has recently emerged in government-owned mosques of West Java. It identifies two dominant factors behind the new inclusiveness: a desire for visibility and public legitimacy on the part of some members of the Sufi order that promotes the ritual, and secondly, a broadening of access to state-owned mosques as a result of more inclusive participation in the electoral process. The article contributes to knowledge of the politicisation of religion in contemporary Indonesia, and suggests new possibilities for understanding the meanings of public Islamic infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

State religions form one of the main features of the international political landscape, but scholarly research into their dynamics and effects remains limited. This article aims to address this deficiency through a comparative examination of state religions and levels of political and religious freedom. The findings show that countries with a state religion have substantially lower levels of freedom across a range of measurements than countries with no state religion. The absence of any clear correlation to levels of human development, religious diversity and religiosity indicates a key causal role for the institutional mechanics of state religion itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mutual autonomy between religious and state institutions is often seen as a key ingredient for democratization. Yet, there are a large number of democracies with an established religion. If a separation of church and state is desirable for the maintenance of a stable democracy, then why do so many democracies continue to support religious institutions and practices? As the evidence from this study reveals, the difference between democracies and non-democracies does not depend on a wall of separation between church and state, but instead, on the protection of religious freedom for minority groups and the promotion of secular legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyzes the diversity in the Jewish community in Argentina, taking two identity projects into account: Jabad Lubavitch and the YOK Project. This analysis allows us to observe the differences regarding identity definitions in each project and the relationships between Jewish identity and national identity. Starting from the study of the Jewish community, the article examines social issues linked to the revitalization of religion and tensions among ethnic, religious, and national identities in the era of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable data on Protestant and Catholic membership in 18 Latin American nations show that Protestants have recruited a larger percentage of the population in many nations than previously estimated. Analysis of these data shows that, as predicted by the theory of religious economies, the Catholic Church has been invigorated by the Protestant challenge: Catholic mass attendance has risen to unprecedented levels, and is highest in nations where Protestants have made the greatest gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like David Silver before them, Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune argue that the facts of religious pluralism present an insurmountable challenge to the rationality of basic exclusive religious belief as construed by Reformed Epistemology. I will show that their argument is unsuccessful. First, their claim that the facts of religious pluralism make it necessary for the religious exclusivist to support her exclusive beliefs with significant reasons is one that the reformed epistemologist has the resources to reject. Secondly, they fail to demonstrate that it is impossible for basic religious beliefs to return to their properly basic state after defeaters against them have been defeated. Finally, I consider whether there is perhaps a similar but better argument in the neighbourhood and conclude in the negative. Reformed Epistemology's defence of exclusivism thus remains undefeated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussions of the evidential import of religious experiences have tended to focus on the intra-cultural variety: that is, experiences the content of which accord with the religious/cultural background of the experiencer (eg. someone raised in a Buddhist culture might experience the oneness of all, whereas someone from a Christian background might have a vision of Jesus). But what of counter-cultural experiences? That is, experiences which fall outside of the individual's religious/cultural background? Little attention has been paid to these, though such experiences are far from unheard of in the case study literature. In this paper I explore some preliminary questions surrounding the evidential import of counter-cultural religious experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]