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This article explores the emergence of Protestantism in West Africa in the 17th century, using both primary and secondary sources. Its central argument is that the history of Protestantism in early modern Africa has mainly been examined within the paradigm of mission history, thus reducing the history of Protestantism to a history of Protestant missionary endeavors. By intersecting three complementary windows, – a Roman Catholic window, a chartered company window and a Euro-African window –, the article traces the wider history of Protestantism in early modern West Africa. It maps the impact of Protestantism on Roman Catholics in West Africa, sketches the significance of Protestantism for certain Euro-Africans, and shows that through a combination of dispersion, procreation and mission Protestantism became a reality in West Africa as early as the 17th century.

In this hyperconnected, dynamic world we live in, permeated by profound challenges and transformations, the awareness of complexity is unequivocally on the rise. This monograph argues that it is high time that our educational institutions and pedagogical approaches come to mirror this growing awareness, to assist and inspire humanity to embrace complexity, to learn to move within it with increasing sensitivity and wisdom. Doing so is necessary, for if there is one thing that the years behind us bear witness of, it is that the tendency and attempt to simplify, separate, control, and indeed exploit has – as the dark side of the advancements of modern life – brought upon us unprecedented ecological and humanitarian crises. Schools, notably, are not closed spaces separated from society but open places within society, and as such they are inevitably complicit in the (re)shaping of our shared world. This book, therefore, proposes an ambitious pedagogical agenda. Specifically, it explores the relational ontological premise of entanglement in the context of pedagogical theory, raising the question of how, as teachers, we might meaningfully and responsibly engage with the myriad ways in which students are simultaneously shaped-by and shapers-of contemporary societal challenges. In close collaboration with twelve teachers as co-researchers, the book offers six ''helpful perspectives'' for teachers seeking to embrace such complexity in their own practices, referred to as: (1) entanglement-orientedness, (2) entanglement-awareness, (3) hopeful action, (4) inquiry within entangled phenomena, (5) practicing perceptiveness, and (6) practicing integrity.

What does it mean to join a religion as a woman in the Netherlands? How do female converts negotiate questions of gender and emancipation? This dissertation analyses the experiences of Dutch women who became Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. A persistent stereotype about these women is that by converting, they give up their emancipated status, and that religion mainly limits women’s freedom. This work criticizes and nuances this image based on thorough qualitative research into the experiences of female newcomers themselves. Instead of asking why they joined Judaism, Christianity or Islam, it studies how the process of conversion takes shape in their daily lives. Think of everyday rituals, food, clothing, or the position of women in the new community. In its analyses, the dissertation highlights the intersections between religion, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity/race. This research shows that, whilst conversion has different meanings and expressions in each context, certain characteristics are shared. Conversion is often a long process without a clear beginning or end, in which practices are at least as important as beliefs. In this process, questions of gender and sexuality play a role in various ways, and these are the dissertation’s main focus. In addition, the difference in social position of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women in the Dutch context turns out to have a deep impact on the experiences of newcomers. With this unique comparative approach, this dissertation sheds light on broader societal debates on religion, emancipation and in- and exclusion in a predominantly secularized society.

The late antique pope Gregory the Great plays an important role in the discourse on the image of Mary Magdalene in the tradition of (Western) Christianity. Many publications, both scholarly and popular-scientific, claim that Gregory, by decree, would have established her identity, especially as a woman who was sinful sexually. A central source for this is his sermon 33 which, however, has been analyzed very little. Against the backdrop of this discourse on this pope and this saint, in a new analysis of this homily, this contribution examines Gregory’s treatment of Mary Magdalene’s identity and shows that both the view that he would have decreed something and that he associated Mary’s identity primarily with sinful sexuality are problematic. Eroticism instead plays a very different, positively notated role in the sermon, and the relationship between Mary and Jesus described in erotic terms is exemplified by Gregory’s audience, especially the men in it.

In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity. Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms-in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking-Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke’s political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration-understood as a neutrally applied civil right-which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter. Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls’s ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse-religious and non-religious-to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself.

This dissertation offers an exploration of four multiple-used city churches where Protestant faith communities share the church building with other secular users. Due to their multiple use, religious communities have to relate to secular actors, such as those involved in art and heritage. After an introductory chapter on the multiple use of church buildings, chapter 2 deals with the Geertekerk in Utrecht, where a relationship is established between the history of Remonstrant use and the current exploitation model. The (re)construction and the interior design show how the Remonstrants experience their own church building and what connection they see between aesthetics and spirituality. Chapter 3 of the Sint-Joriskerk in Amersfoort reveals the historical relationship between the local congregation and the interior of the church building. This church building is a good example of the increasing visibility of its Catholic past, partly due to the influence of tourism. Chapter 4 discusses the development of the Grote Kerk in Zwolle, which presents itself with the brand name Academiehuis. Besides restorations and alterations, the changes in the administrative structure are striking. The worship life is limited mainly to vespers. In the period 2015-2020, several developments took place in this church building, which gave rise to changes in ownership and in the user agreement. Chapter 5 concludes the series with the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, where the religious community lost ownership over the church building already long ago. In terms of multiple use, the Oude Kerk occupies a special position as a cultural institution with museum status. The commonalities, but also the frictions, between religion and art were clearly revealed during specific exhibitions and related events. This study shows not only that multiple use fits in very well with the history of the church buildings, but also that the church buildings have a great capacity to appeal to various users. Through the multiple use and the restorations, the pre-Reformation Catholic past is strongly and tangibly brought back. The interactions between users increase, but the users do not know from each other how they relate to the church building. Through all the care and investments, church buildings are becoming more accessible and prominent in their respective cities. Ownership is gradually becoming less unambiguous. The religious communities become more aware of the relationship between their liturgy and the church building. It is remarkable that some other users boldly name and appropriate the sacredness of the church building. De-churching is also visible in a shift in determining ‘proper use’ of the church building: instead of faith communities and church institutions, the new owners decide about what they consider proper use. As for rituals, a general trend is that Catholic holidays, silence and music are often chosen as starting points. Based on long-term ethnographic research and a detailed analysis, 'Religious Heritage as Shared Space’ shows and analyses the struggles and dilemmas of the various users.

The chapter critically discusses the so-called export narrative “from the West to the rest”, with which the globalization of American-style “fundamentalist Christianity” is often described. What lies behind the narrative is an observation of the global spread of Evangelical and Pentecostal forms of organization and expression, such as Megachurches, televangelism, the so-called prosperity gospel, and cell groups. These phenomena are often described as American exports with global success. Based on fieldwork observations in megachurches with TV-ministries in the USA and Singapore, the chapter offers an alternative approach to look at these practices in the global context. The author argues that a transcultural perspective allows for a more differentiated description and analysis of the material, one that takes varied positionalities, multi-directionality, and entanglement into account.

Contribution to book forum around Black Man in the Netherlands: An Afro-Antillean Anthropology by Francio Guadeloupe (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2022)

With a shift in healthcare from diagnosis-centered to human- and interprofessional-centered work, allied health professionals (AHPs) may encounter dilemmas in daily work because of discrepancies between values of learned professional protocols and their personal values, the latter being a component of the personal dimension. The personal dimension can be defined as a set of personal components that have a substantial impact on professional identity. In this study, we aim to improve the understanding of the role played by the personal dimension, by answering the following research question: What is known about the personal dimension of the professional identity of AHPs in (allied) health literature? In the scoping review, databases, CINAHL, ERIC, Medline, PubMed, and PsychINFO were searched for studies focusing on what is regarded as ‘the personal dimension of professional identity’ of AHPs in the health literature; 81 out of 815 articles were included and analyzed in this scoping review. A varying degree of attention for the personal dimension within the various allied health professions was observed. After analysis, we introduce the concept of four aspects in the personal dimension of AHPs. We explain how these aspects overlap to some degree and feed into each other. The first aspect encompasses characteristics like gender, age, nationality, and ethnicity. The second aspect consists of the life experiences of the professional. The third involves character traits related to resilience and virtues. The fourth aspect, worldview, is formed by the first three aspects and consists of the core beliefs and values of AHPs, paired with personal norms. These four aspects are visualized in a conceptual model that aims to make AHPs more aware of their own personal dimension, as well as the personal dimension of their colleagues intra- and interprofessionally. It is recommended that more research be carried out to examine how the personal dimension affects allied health practice.

Special issue for the occasion of the 350th publication anniversary of Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise.

Overzichtsuitgave bij het 10-jarig bestaan van de gecombineerde onderzoeksgroep LEVO/NP, bestaande uit de leerstoelgroep Levensbeschouwelijke Vorming aan de Universiteit Utrecht (UU) en het lectoraat Normatieve Professionalisering aan de Hogeschool Utrecht (HU). Met bijdragen van: Cok Bakker, Bram de Muynck, Inge Versteegt, Bas van den Berg, Elsbeth Vogel, Anne-Marije de Bruin-Wassinkmaat, George Lengkeek, Gertie Blaauwendraad, Peter Mesker, Dian Fluijt, Edwin van der Zande, Anouk Zuurmond, Jeannette den Ouden, Pim Klamer, Koen Wessels, Saro Lozano Parra, Robert Mentink, Anita Emans, Eline Belgraver, Marije Verkerk, Mathilde Tempelman-Lam, Nicolina Montessori, Ina ter Avest, Remco Coppoolse en Margreeth Kloppenburg.

The presence of houses of worship, religious clothing, food and sounds like church bells and the call for prayer in liberal and democratic societies is testimony to a vibrant religious diversity in the public sphere of such societies. In Germany, the historical predominance of Christianity is inscribed in the material culture as well as in temporal forms like the calendar. This chapter focuses on public controversies and social conflicts about religious holidays as public holidays in Germany. I discuss two such cases: the contested status of Good Friday as silent holiday and discussions about the introduction of an Islamic holiday as public holiday. I demonstrate that in both cases, religious holidays are mobilised as (temporal) things of conflict. State institutions use arguments based on culturalization or heritagisation of religion to escape accusations that the state privileges Christianity. Despite of that, however, the one-sided endorsement of Christian temporal forms by the state, contributes to the construction of an imagined collective cultural ‘we’ that is based on a ‘Judeo-Christian culture’, which is positioned against religious minorities, especially Islam.

Infections by Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase producing Escherichia coli (ESBL-Ec) are on the increase in Ghana, but the level of environmental contamination with this organism, which may contribute to growing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), is unknown. Using the WHO OneHealth Tricycle Protocol, we investigated the contamination of E. coli (Ec) and ESBL-Ec in two rivers in Ghana (Odaw in Accra and Okurudu in Kasoa) that receive effluents from human and animal wastewater hotspots over a 12-month period. Concentrations of Ec, ESBL-Ec and percent ESBL-Ec/Ec were determined per 100 mL sample. Of 96 samples, 94 (98%) were positive for ESBL-Ec. concentrations per 100 mL (MCs100) of ESBL-Ec and %ESBL-Ec from both rivers were 4.2 × 104 (IQR, 3.1 × 103–2.3 × 105) and 2.79 (IQR, 0.96–6.03), respectively. MCs100 were significantly lower in upstream waters: 1.8 × 104 (IQR, 9.0 × 103–3.9 × 104) as compared to downstream waters: 1.9 × 106 (IQR, 3.7 × 105–5.4 × 106). Both human and animal wastewater effluents contributed to the increased contamination downstream. This study revealed high levels of ESBL-Ec in rivers flowing through two cities in Ghana. There is a need to manage the sources of contamination as they may contribute to the acquisition and spread of ESBL-Ec in humans and animals, thereby contributing to AMR.

Understanding religion from a material and corporeal angle, this book addresses the ways in which refugees practice their religions and convert or develop new faiths. It also evaluates how secular institutions in Europe frame and determine what is classified as religion according to the law, and delineate the limits of religious authority, religious practice, and religious speech. The question of nationalism and migration has been shaping the political landscape in Europe for more than a decade, resulting in a nationalist upsurge. This volume places the current trajectories of people from Asia and Africa who flee from conditions such as oppression and conflict, and who are seeking refuge in Europe in a broader historical and comparative perspective. In so doing, it addresses past experiences in Europe with the role of religion in both producing and accommodating refugees, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, World War II, and in the context of the Cold War.

© 2021 World Council of ChurchesIn the context of the bilateral dialogue between the Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht, the question of Christology – and with that the joint reception of the conciliar tradition of the early church – played an important role, given the “families” of churches that both traditions belong to: “Western Catholic” and “Oriental.” This paper, written from the vantage point of Old Catholic ecumenical theology, analyzes how the topic of (Chalcedonian) Christology was addressed in this dialogue and places it in the context of the broad ecumenical movement. The dialogue focused reception on the content rather than on the wording of patristic convictions. This focus, as well as the willingness to look beyond confessional categories, facilitated a joint understanding of Christology that did justice to both of the traditions involved and was a faithful reflection of the conciliar tradition regarding Christology.

In this article, I draw on critical investigations of gendered, racialised and sexualised discourses on Islam and Muslim minorities in Western Europe to explore two recent instances of Muslim female intellectuals and artists responding to what has been dubbed “the Muslim question”. I shall show that Muslim women’s counter-voices are multilayered, conveyed through various means, and context-dependent, as well as dependent on intersectional marginalised positionalities. My goal is to theoretically rethink the feminist methodology of ‘talking back’ on the basis of the complex ways in which Muslim women establish modes of critique.

In our afterword to the special issue on the negotiation of Christian identities between global entanglement and local identity politics, we shed light on what unites the four contributions and provide some questions that invite us to think further. We argue that all four of the presented case studies demonstrate that naming is a dynamic, contested and on-going process that unfolds between the local and the global and to which we thus refer to as the "transcultural dynamics of naming". We ask if these dynamics play out differently in everyday life practices and institutional politics; if these dynamics have to be analysed as instances of identity politics or if other concepts might offer more analytical purchase; and finally, we ask how religious identifications materialize on the ground and what material effects they might produce.

Shahab Ahmed’sWhat Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic(2016) challenges Islamic Studies scholars, (art) historians, and anthropologists to reconsider theoretical frameworks underpinning historical and ethnographic research. This article addresses Ahmed’s concerns that studies of Islam often conceptually privilege orthodoxy, by including drinking and intoxication as worthy of close attention in examining the history and the anthropology of Islam. The case of Wine Shop the Philosopher, run by a former Afghan refugee in The Hague and Amsterdam, is presented after establishing the comparative and interdisciplinary relevance of alcohol consumption in studies of Islam and Muslims. Ahmed’s conceptual framework is used and assessed in comparison with the wine shops’ contemporary pluralist reality by exploring the idealized boundaries of Persianate culture and Islam in dialogues between Persian-speaking interlocutors. It is argued that alcoholic drinks lend themselves to competing gastro-nationalisms and prompt ethnolinguistic tensions between and within groups with Turkish, Moroccan, Iranian, and Afghan backgrounds in the Netherlands. The focus on diverse, coexisting and clashing drink regimes, in conclusion, allows us to deconstruct dichotomies between sober Muslims and European drinkers, African and Asian believers and European unbelievers, and refugees and citizens.

The four articles that make up this symposium on Tariq Modood's recent collection, Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism (2019), are based on a public conversation and research colloquium held at Utrecht University on 18 February 2020. In the first article, Modood introduces the conversation with a statement of his thinking over two decades on the subjects of secularism and multiculturalism. This is followed by responses by Pooyan Tamimi Arab and Ernst van den Hemel and, in the fourth and final article, Modood has the last word.

This article explores how in Morocco, music is used to construct and subvert discourses on a ‘moderate’ vs. a ‘radical’ Islam. I focus on experiences and practices of vocal performers of Islam-inspired music, who operate in two different musical domains: state-sponsored stages for Sufi music, and non-state-sponsored stages for anashid – acapella Islamic songs, generally associated with more orthodox interpretations of Islam. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among these artists, I analyze how the Moroccan response to the War on Terror, and concomitant perceptions of ‘radical’ versus ‘moderate’ Islam, affect the ways in which they present themselves and their music. I propose the notion of ‘dissonance’ to demonstrate how the artists’ musical practices, as well as their narratives of performance, ethics, and emotions converge with, yet simultaneously also rub against state discourses on a ‘moderate’ vs. a ‘radical’ Islam.

Volker Kessler (‘God becomes beautiful … in mathematics’ – HTS 2018) argues two points to Rudolf Bohren’s list of four areas where (1) God becomes beautiful should be extended with a fifth one: mathematics and (2) mathematics can be argued as a place where God becomes beautiful. In this response, we would like to argue that (1) the extension of Bohren’s list that Kessler argues in favour of is superfluous and (2) that Kessler makes a number of questionable assumptions about (the philosophy of) mathematics. By arguing against Kessler, we intend to make an interdisciplinary contribution to the discussion about the relationship between mathematics and theology by pushing the debate into direction of a more careful consideration of mathematics as an area in which God’s beauty may become apparent. Contribution:Contributing to the interdisciplinary exploration of theology inHTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, this article further develops the consideration of the fundamental theological topic of God, the beautiful and mathematics as it was proposed in this journal by Volker Kessler, by discussing it from a systematic theological and mathematical perspective.

This qualitative study examines the religious identity commitments of 18 emerging adults who grew up in strictly Reformed contexts in the Netherlands. During in-depth narrative interviews with photo elicitation, the participants reflected on who they are and the meaning of religion to their identity. Our thematic data analysis reveals that the participants’ religious identity commitments are diverse and diffuse, although they all were religiously socialised in more or less the same way. It, therefore, is inadequate to label the participants as Christian or not and as strictly Reformed or not. Second, the analysis reveals four commitments to trusting God, self, rational belief and not knowing yet.

This article explores how Muslim-led civil society organizations (CSOs) implement programs to Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) in Malindi, Kenya, while adapting these programs to both their local context and the CVE-policies of Western donors. So far, little research has been done on how East-African Muslims relate themselves to (global) anxieties about Islam and violent extremism. Taking theories within the anthropology of secularism as an analytical frame, I argue that although Western donors try to maintain a public stance of neutrality towards different religions, they perpetuate stigmatizing associations between Islam and terrorism by tacitly mobilizing a distinction between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ Muslims. Based on extensive ethnographic research, I subsequently analyze how Muslim-led CSOs strategically navigate and challenge these stigmatizing associations as they implement CVE programs in Malindi. I also show how the desire to present Islam as peaceful limits possibilities to address widespread feelings of marginalization among Kenyan Muslims.

Research shows that teachers and educators struggle to act when conflict appears in the classroom. This article argues that (political) conflict should not be avoided or eradicated. Teachers should enable conflict and attend to their pupils in the process, in order to enable further understanding of each other and their differences, as part of living together in a plural and diverse society. Scholars and educators often take a deliberative approach to citizen education by focusing on problem solving and consensus seeking. This article explores how conflict can be educational if we accept that antagonisms are inherent parts of human relations. The aim of this paper is not to propose moral boundaries to conflicts. Instead, it wants to contribute to a shift from teaching citizenship as conflict-free space towards learning democracy, in which educational conflict, or friction, is seen as an important part of the political education of pupils. This paper uses democratic theory, narrative theory, and the cultural-historical theory of play as described by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, to construct analytical tools to further understand conflict in the classroom.

Roger Canals, A Goddess in Motion: Visual Creativity in the Cult of María Lionza (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 202 pp., $120 (cloth).

This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the six articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.

Citizenship education is an important part of current debates about future education. In contrast, educational philosopher Gert Biesta calls for a shift “from teaching citizenship to learning democracy”. This study wants to contribute to this shift. A Delphi-method is applied on a Dutch case study, presenting a way to collect and analyze data from experts that can be applied in different political, cultural and geographical contexts. The Delphi panel consists of experts from three categories of expertise in the field of democracy and Dutch education. A thematic analysis of the data collected through two succeeding rounds showed four emerging themes when turning the scope from citizenship to democracy: the distribution of responsibility of teachers and school leaders, the questions revolving around the freedom of education secured by the Dutch constitution, the nature of citizenship education, and most importantly, the school as a playground to practice democracy. This final theme was singled out by the experts as a higher purpose of democracy in education. This study argues that the concept of the school as a playground to practice democracy should be the focus to make the shift from teaching citizenship to learning democracy.

This study explores how 33 student teachers’ reflections during 106 ‘bumpy moments’ while in an international student teaching internship reveal their professional beliefs, and how the moments make the student teachers reflect upon their subjective educational theories. Student teachers described four themes of professional beliefs: (1) pedagogical content knowledge, (2) school context, (3) organisational skills and (4) self-reflection. Their reflections highlighted aspects of their subjective educational theories when they perceived they lacked an appropriate practical teaching strategy or they had pedagogical interactions with pupils or supervisors. The student teachers’ reflections on pedagogical interactions in a cross-cultural context made them aware of moral dimensions in teaching and their own position during normative (inter)actions. The findings of this study indicate that teacher educators should focus on everyday teaching details that occur during bumpy moments in a student’s teaching practice to explicate larger concepts such as the student teachers’ beliefs.

Highlighting common threads in the pieces by Beekers, Kasmani and Mattes, and Dilger, this concluding essay reflects on the potential of comparison as conceptual innovation in the anthropological study of religious plurality. Asking how to develop innovative practices of comparison for the sake of grasping the dynamics of plural societies in the light of the articles in this collection, I argue that it is necessary to transcend the bifurcation of the study of religions, which was accentuated with the rise of the anthropologies of Islam and Christianity, in favor of a focus on the secular configuration as a whole, paying attention to power dynamics that assign different spaces for action to different religions (notwithstanding their equality in legal terms). The point of comparison, understood as a critical project geared toward conceptual innovation, is not only to discern so far overlooked, unexpected differences and similarities, but also to understand how these differences and similarities, as well as the possibility to compare as such, are outcomes of long-standing entanglements.

Kulturell-mehrheitsorientierte Identitätspolitiken zielen darauf, die kulturelle Identität alteingesessener gesellschaftlich dominanter Mehrheiten zu schützen und zu bewahren. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Rolle von Religion im Kontext aktueller Debatten über kulturell-mehrheitsorientierte Identitätspolitiken. Dabei analysiere ich zunächst wie verschiedene Vorstellungen von Religion konstruiert werden und welche Funktion sie in konkreten identitätspolitischen Vorschlägen und Debatten haben. Daran anschließend gehe ich der Frage nach, inwiefern derartige Identitätspolitiken das Recht auf Religionsfreiheit relativieren, beziehungsweise welchen Einfluss bestimmte kulturell-mehrheitsorientierte Identitätspolitiken auf Bedingungen für die Ausübung von Religionsfreiheit haben können. This contribution concerns the role of religion in the context of cultural-majoritarian identity politics. Such identity politics aims at the conservation and protection of what is construed as ‘national identity’ or cultural identity of the predominant majority in society. I analyse the role of religion in such identity politics, both as cultural basis of society and as ‘significant other’ that is framed as ‘foreign’ and not really belonging to society and ‘national identity’ respectively. Finally, I investigate whether and to what extent particular forms of cultural-majoritarian identity politics are at odds with an egalitarian understanding of the right to freedom of religion., Ethik und Gesellschaft, Nr. 1 (2020): Kritik der Identitätspolitik

PurposeThe purpose of this paper aims to disclose shared beliefs and understandings about the concept of professionalism amongst Dutch commercial real estate valuers. It examines prevailing logics of action in a mature European valuation industry and reflects on the potential influence of these logics on the occurrence of judgement bias in valuation.Design/methodology/approachThe underlying study adopted a grounded theory approach to facilitate reflexive in-depth interview sessions with 20 experienced valuation professionals in the Netherlands. Emerging data on core categories of professionalism were initially identified and grouped; and subsequently conceptualised into ideal role types of valuers using institutional logics theory.FindingsThree different ideal types appear to guide Dutch valuation practice: the expert, the service provider and the reporter. The expert emphasises professional standards and technical quality, while the service provider advocates commercial quality and the reporter aims to uphold procedural quality. The authors find that the attention for technical quality associated with the expert role may be at risk of underexposure, fostering concerns about judgement quality and associated bias risks.Research limitations/implicationsThe potential impact of both commercial and bureaucratic logics on valuation quality may raise authoritative and educational concerns over judgement bias effects. However, while trends in professionalism may transcend national boundaries, the specifics of local real estate market structures and regulations require replication of results in other markets.Originality/valueInstitutional logics provide an alternative, socio-economic perspective on present-day valuer behaviour that progresses the understanding of the valuer–client relationship, thereby advancing the knowledge base on valuer judgement and client influence. Furthermore, the authors' role typology offers future research opportunities in terms of measurement and explanation of differences.

This introduction argues that the study of light and lighting devices, and the light mediations yielded by them, is important for scholars of material religion. Discussing the four articles on aesthetics of light in Christianity, we argue that synthesizing metaphorical and physical uses of light allows for a deep understanding of the processes through which a professedly immaterial transcendent becomes real for religious practitioners in the material world. Inspired by these contributions and the two essays in the In Conversation section, we plead for a methodology of following the light in scholarly research.

The future of the study of religion/s must be actively envisioned and pursued. In the aftermath of the deconstruction of ‘religion’ and the idea of ‘secularization’ as imbued with a Western teleology, it is necessary to rethink and reconfigure the study of religion/s against a global horizon. In this essay I propose that we should move out of the unproductive Religious Studies-Theology binary and frame our work in the midst of the humanities. A new mindset is needed for scholarly research on religion, and to achieve this I point at the new vistas arising from a transregional and pluralistic outlook.

As a platform for the study of “material religion,” for more than 15 years this journal has showcased the innovative potential of material approaches to religion through detailed historical or ethn...