Published Articles

Marione Ingram was born in 1935 in Hamburg, Nazi Germany. In late July 1943, two days before the date of Ingram’s family’s deportation, the Hamburg air raid, one of the biggest air raids during World War II, began. Ingram and her mother narrowly survived it and spent the rest of the war in hiding. In 1952, Ingram immigrated to the United States to follow after her mother. Upon learning about the discrimination against African Americans, Ingram became involved in the civil rights movement to protest racial bigotry and prejudice. She worked for the March on Washington in 1963 and as a Freedom School teacher in Mississippi in 1964. Through her involvement in the civil rights movement, Ingram transformed herself from a “victim” of the Holocaust into a “combatant in a campaign against racial injustice.” This study aims to demonstrate an example of how a Holocaust experience could turn into power to bring peace and equality to the world through the analysis of Ingram’s autobiographies, The Hands of War (2013) and The Hands of Peace (2015), which Miyuki Kita translated to Japanese.

This article is a review of David Hummel’s The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, a book that questions whether the academic debate around dispensationalism is truly dead. By exploring through the lens of metaphorical theology, we look at how commercialization caused academic dispensationalism to self-cannibalize. Applying analysis to both the ouroboros and butterfly metaphors we can examine whether dispensationalism is dead or if there is a potential for a newer, stronger version of academic debate on the topic to resurface once again. Equally as plausible, is the notion that dispensationalism has changed its meaning through the metamorphosis process of changing from academic dispensationalism to pop-dispensationalism. By looking at the meaning change that occurs at the point of transaction, we see that the biography of dispensationalism shows a significant shift in meaning as it becomes a commercial hit.

Licensed psychotherapist, podcast host, and religious trauma survivor, Dr. Laura Anderson, has contributed a volume drawing from both her own experiences and trauma studies scholarship. Anderson avoids harsh and direct condemnation of high-control religions (HCRs) but, rather, describes the human experiences and biological explanations of lives immersed in fear, shame, and mistrust. Her book, When Religion Hurts You, will likely connect most with religious trauma survivors who have already left an HCR (or are on the way out) and with professionals unfamiliar with the specific biological and relational theories of trauma. Anderson provides cautious optimism, noting the time and effort needed to “live in healing bodies.”

The problem of evil is the philosophical question regarding how to reconcile the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God with the pain and suffering in the world. The Hypothesis of Indifference is Paul Draper’s proposal considering that question. His claim is that the pain and pleasure we experience in our lifetimes has nothing to do with God or some other supernatural force acting as an agent of good or evil. In this paper, I argue that Draper’s Hypothesis of Indifference is a better explanation for why we experience pain and pleasure than theism is and that it survives major contemporary criticisms posed by Peter van Inwagen and William Alston.

Theorists emphasize the significance of the conceptualizing phenomena before any quantification in the scientific work process. The role of analogy among all human-beings’ cognitive tools in the process of problem solving and concept creation is undeniable according to experts. Accordingly, this paper defines the analogy of “religion as brand” as an analogical model to shed light on political and religious marketing aspects of two terrorist organizations and religious brands in the Middle East. The concept of “ISIS and Al-Qaeda are sub-brands of Islam” was extracted from this metaphorical structure. The paper illuminates different branding attributes of these two terrorist groups through reviewing approximately fifty first-hand and second-hand materials on the issue. This review reveals how Islam functions as a master-brand and nourishes these two brands ideologically. The analogy entails a variety of attributes among which five aspects of branding including communication, brand mythology, competition, attracting social and symbolic capital, and brand promise are discussed and religious associations which endorse these two groups’ political functions are examined.

This article addresses the contention commonly expressed among liberal theologians and commentators that the Jesus of history, to the extent that he may be identified, was essentially a social revolutionary, broadly sympathetic to what might be identified in contemporary terms as ideological “socialism.” It is often conceived that Jesus’ concern for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the underclass of Second Temple Judea endows him with a broad egalitarian ethic, making him akin to an ancient “redistributionist.” I will argue, however, that “socialism” did indeed exist in those days, in the form of the Dead Sea sect, and that the historical Jesus was profoundly opposed to the community of property it represented. For him, “social justice” was part of the embedded ethics of Judaism itself, divorced from the “redistributionist” theories of Marxist and neo-Marxist adherents. Whereas the Essene sectarians withdrew from what they called “the material wealth of wickedness,” Jesus admonished his disciples to pursue dealings out of economic contact with the world at large.

This paper seeks to explore the academic approach to interreligious dialogue by outlining some key features of what the author sees as its philosophical foundation: understanding. It argues that understanding what it is to understand is crucial to developing interreligious dialogue because, at its core, the goal of such dialogue is the exchange of differing religious understandings for mutual benefit. Thus, the author contends that a thorough academic perspective on interreligious dialogue can only be established if a robust account of understanding is first constructed. Having addressed this, the author outlines three key features of understanding: subjectivity, internality, and appreciation of the whole. Following this, a curious aspect of the generation of new understanding is explored, namely the seeming link between leisure, the absence of so-called “servile” work, and the generation of new insights. Whilst this collection of key features is by no means exhaustive, this paper seeks only to open a conversation on the nature of understanding that has been noticeably absent from philosophical and theological discussion in recent years. Given this, the author hopes to open avenues through which others might critique, explore, or add to the features identified in this article in order to expand the neglected field of the Philosophy of Understanding.

The Parable of the Three Rings is famous in its versions by Boccaccio and Lessing. They share the fundamental idea that only one religion is true but human condition does not let us know which one is the true one. It is an inherently modern idea to stress on the limits of human knowledge while arguing against pure forms of skepticism and relativism. The result of the parable is friendship in both versions, yet the question of truth remains at the center of the conceptual framework underlying the stories. On the contrary, scholars started giving much more relevance to the ethical side of dialogue, so that interpersonal relationship is not just the result of a cognitive process. Personal encounter should be prior to the question of truth. This new approach is challenged by the nature of the relationship with the other. Should it be symmetrical and mutual? Views on dialogue inspired by Lévinas must answer negatively. If we want to keep the relevance of friendship we should rather prefer Buber’s idea of dialogue. In our world, despite this, inequalities are such that symmetry and mutuality cannot be the standard condition of dialogue and we must be responsible in advance for the other (in the sense of Lévinasian servitude for the other). A mediation between these two standpoints can be found in Panikkar’s notion of inter-in-dependence, as I shall argue. In fact, this notion combines the interdependence present in Buber’s I-Thou relationship and the independence or separation stressed by Lévinas in the relation to the other understood in terms of relation between absolute terms.

Political theology has traditionally been dominated by Christian concepts, specifically the concept of a law-giving and order-preserving god. Other political theologies are possible, however, and this essay considers one—the trickster—a culture hero and comic buffoon who delightedly and shamelessly violates and subverts order to inaugurate a new reality of his own making, if not of his own will. The first half of the essay introduces the trickster as a cross-cultural agent of creative destruction, a messenger and civilization-bringer, and a clever fool. The second half explores how the last two centuries of Western social and intellectual history have shifted the ground from under a god of order toward a spirit of flux, transience, paradox, and liminality. The essay concludes that the contemporary post-modern state of permanent liminality is better symbolized and grasped through the mythical lens of the trickster than the biblical god, including and especially contemporary global right-wing populism, whose leading figures reflect the wicked energy and appeal of the trickster impulse.

In my first paper for SHERM, I argued that “fetus personhood” is irrelevant to the abortion debate. In this paper, I will argue that personhood is irrelevant to the euthanasia debate as well. Even though a terminally ill patient is a person, ending their life can still be moral. Because personhood (and mindedness) is only instrumentally valuable as means to attaining the good life, if a terminal illness has now made that impossible, it is permissible (when both the doctor and patient agree) for the doctor to help the patient end their life. Thus, euthanasia should be legal.

This sociological study aimed to ascertain the percentage of adults living in the United States who have experienced religious trauma (RT) and what percentage presently suffer from RT symptoms now. After compiling data from 1,581 adults living in the United States, this study concludes it is likely that around one-third (27‒33%) of U.S. adults (conservatively) have experienced religious trauma at some point in their life. That number increases to 37% if those suffering from any three of the six major RT symptoms are included. It is also likely that around 10‒15% of U.S. adults currently suffer from religious trauma if only the most conservative numbers are highlighted. Nonetheless, since 37% of the respondents personally know people who potentially suffer from RT, and 90% of those respondents know between one and ten people who likely suffer from RT, then it could be argued that as many as one-in-five (20%) U.S. adults presently suffer from major religious trauma symptoms.

The edited volume, Varieties of Jesus Mythicism, aims to present diverse approaches and theories to the debate on Jesus’ historical existence. While it includes several enlightening and worthwhile contributions, there are too many amateur contributions employing dubious claims and methodologies. The result is that, apart from the few worthy contributions, the book as a whole is only useful for comparing poor with genuine scholarship. And some advice on how to make such a comparison, so as to distinguish the one from the other, is here provided.

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between kerygma and dialogue, arguing that the proclamation of the Christian message can take the form of a dialogical practice, and indeed of an interreligious dialogical practice. There seems to be an underlying assumption that “dialoguing” necessarily requires the weakening of one’s religious convictions, insofar as to express these in their full-blown form would lead necessarily to conflict and/or the shutting down of the conversation. However, I shall argue that this conclusion is not demanded by the nature of dialogue per se but rather from a particular understanding of what dialoguing means. The latter is underpinned by the assumption that in the realm of religion and spirituality we have no objective access to truth. I shall then hark back to a different understanding of dialogue rooted in Socrates’ philosophizing by making reference to the episode of the Apostle Paul’s kerygmatic preaching of the Gospel in Athens. I will read such a scene as one where kerigma and interreligious dialogue intertwine. The Socratic model off dialogical practice makes room for truth and allows interreligious dialogue to take place without the need to set aside one’s own religious beliefs.

This article argues that the dendritic (tree-like) or traditional model of Christian origins must be replaced with a plectic (braid-like) model. The dendritic model assumes that Christianity began at a specific point in both time and space—in the person of “Jesus of Nazareth”—and then branched out to form the various ancient sects of Christianity. This article asks: What if the numerous forms of “Christianity” did not all derive from a single historical figure? What if these earliest “Christianities” arose in the same way that the different forms and varieties of Egyptian, Indic, and Greco-Roman religions evolved? A new paradigm is proposed where the various forms of Christianity can be envisioned as forming by the coalescence of various threads (or trajectories) of religious tradition. Some of the threads may trace back into the mists of prehistory, others may trace to the turn of the current era, and still others may have begun in the second or third centuries CE. Not all early forms of Christianity contained the same threads. Not all threads stayed in the braid for long, and still others continued into the present. After entering the braid, threads of tradition evolved, bifurcated, branched off, or were absorbed into other traditions. Clearly, this is what we see happening today as multitudinous sects, cults, and denominations continue to arise and go extinct. As in historical geology, so too in religious history: The present is the key to the past.

While religious belief is not a dominant theme in Levi’s Holocaust writing, over the course of a forty-year writing career this longstanding nonbeliever offers a number of thoughtful reflections on God, faith, and the Holocaust. The first half of my paper examines the Jewish identity of the young Levi, as well as the isolated thoughts on God, faith, and religion found in Survival in Auschwitz (1947). While that early work deliberately focuses on day-to-day exigencies amidst the unrelenting struggle for existence at Auschwitz-Monovitz, it still raises provocative questions about prayer and belief in the context of the Holocaust. In his later writing and interviews, Levi digs deeper and with greater frequency into matters concerning God and the Holocaust. From the recurring charge of “blasphemy” to his career-long characterization of his unlikely survival as a matter of simple luck rather than Divine Providence, my paper goes on to examine the later Levi’s increasingly subtle reflections on matters related to God and the Holocaust. Finally, I look at the later Levi’s repeated insistence that the years of persecution brought with them a newfound understanding of himself as a Jew. By examining his thoughts on how his Auschwitz imprisonment simultaneously confirmed his nonbelief and inaugurated his self-conception as a Jew, my paper demonstrates that Levi’s scattered reflections on God, faith, and the Holocaust are both challenging and well worth our careful, continued study.

In this paper, I ask whether the occurrence of the Holocaust is good reason to doubt the existence of God. To do so, I will explore different varieties of the problem of evil to determine exactly what kind of argument the problem of the Holocaust is. I will then explore proposed solutions to the relevant varieties of the problem of evil to see if they can solve the problem of the Holocaust. The logical problem of the Holocaust, I will argue, can only be solved at the cost of embracing an unorthodox (heretical?) “open” view of God. The evidential problem of the Holocaust can be solved, but only at the cost of embracing a deistic view of God that would entail that he might as well not exist. What’s more, both solutions are rooted in the idea of free will. Consequently, either the theist will have to answer the myriad of arguments which suggest that libertarian free will doesn’t exist, or embrace a compatibilist notion of free will which renders the above solutions moot and turns the problem of the Holocaust into a version of the logical problem of natural evil—a problem which has not yet been satisfactorily solved.

This article examines Haj Amin al-Husseini’s involvement in the Holocaust, his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood’s post-Holocaust influence on the spread of exterminationist Jew hatred. The article examines the connection between the Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood facilitated by al-Husseini, showing the pivotal nature of the Arab Revolt of 1936 – 1939 in these relationships. By then the Brotherhood was sending delegations to the Nuremberg rallies and distributing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Arabic-language selections from Mein Kampf. The article then explores al-Husseini’s direct collaboration with the Nazis and participation in the Holocaust. This begins with his instigation of a Nazi-backed coup in Iraq in April 1941, which was followed by the slaughter of hundreds of Jews in Baghdad. From there we go to al-Husseini’s first meeting with Hitler in November 1941 and his work with Himmler in organizing Muslim SS killing units in the Balkans. This section ends with al-Husseini’s hero’s welcome as a Nazi war criminal in July 1946, when he was once again embraced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Finally, the article moves to the post-war years, with al-Husseini’s recruitment and indoctrination of Yasser Arafat in the Brotherhood. This article considers the Brotherhood’s influence on the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas in the spread of an exterminationist agenda inspired by the Nazis.

India represents a country that was neither directly affected nor involved with the Holocaust. As the timeline of the Holocaust overlaps the timeline of the struggle for freedom for the Indian subcontinent, the later events overshadow the former. Holocaust education is neither mandatory nor prevalent in India. Equating the partition of India with the Holocaust and tagging the Holocaust as one of the genocides, represents one of the few misconceptions about the Holocaust in India that often strips off the uniqueness of the catastrophic event. My article describes the present status of Holocaust education in schools and universities. The survey stems from the standard books used in Indian schools and my personal experience as an educator. The article not only articulates the need of creating awareness regarding the Holocaust in India but also traces a few examples, which illuminate the fact that India proved a haven for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. The need of the hour is to recognize such connections, which would serve as the appropriate entry wedges to create awareness regarding Holocaust education in India.

When spreading antisemitic ideology, Hitler and his followers sometimes turned to the Bible to verify and support their hatred of the Jews. Passages such as “you are of your father the devil,” were used to encourage Bible-believing Christians that Jesus himself was antisemitic and that those who held antipathy towards the Jews were following Jesus’s legacy. However, many of these passages that the Nazis used to support their antisemitism were taken out of context and the original intent of the author was ignored. Anti-Jewish Christian expositors also ignored the contexts of Biblical passages––expositors both during the time of the Nazis and earlier. This article will consider this decontextualization of the Bible by the Nazis and anti-Jewish theologians. It suggests that if the original meaning of the text has been obscured by decontextualization, the solution is not to reject the text as anti-Jewish, but rather to reevaluate the anti-Jewish interpretation and recontextualize the passage.

International genocide intervention strategies that involve the extended evacuation and/or displacement of refugees often save the physical lives of would-be victims at the expense of psychological and social trauma and cultural erasure. Through a comparison of the international rescue efforts of the Kindertransport program in Great Britain prior to and during the Second World War and the refugee caravans organized by La Benevolencija in Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War, the benefits and dangers of inter-ethnic, inter-religious rescue in times of mass violence are examined, along with how the social dynamics of racialized religious identification influenced the occurrence of these intervention strategies. The implications gleaned from this comparison offer guidance for current and future genocide intervention programs, where great care should be taken, whenever possible, to keep family groups intact and together, provide necessary psychological and social services for refugees, and allow for the continued practice of communal cultural and religious traditions without forced assimilation. The moment of physical rescue is only the initial component of a successful intervention into religio-ethnic violence; to truly prevent the genocidal destruction of a people and culture, those people’s ability to identify with their traditions and maintain their way of life is of equal and vital importance.

There has understandably been a good deal of emphasis on how Jewish faith has been affected in the wake of the genocidal catastrophe of the Shoah. Much less attention has been devoted, however, to how observant Jews were impacted, with regard to their faith, in the midst of the tragedy. Elie Wiesel, for his part, was said to have put God on trial at Auschwitz. It will also be instructive to consider two Jewish leaders, both ultra-orthodox rabbis, who were victims of the Nazi genocide. Their perspectives (unlike post-Holocaust theology) provide a window on Jewish thought while events were unfolding. The reflections of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, who was residing in Warsaw at the outbreak of the war, were published in Israel in 1960 under the title Esh Kodesh. The work elucidates what may be viewed as a normative theology of suffering. Another ultra-orthodox rabbi, Yissachar Teichtal, was living in Budapest during the Nazi era. His theology is even more dramatic, rejecting all exilic philosophies, and developing a religious Zionist philosophy. If there is a to be found a merging of the two approaches, it is in the idea of “reconstruction,” on the one hand of the individual, and on the other, of the Jewish nation – the uniquely Jewish concept of tikkun.

The Annotated Passover Haggadah, coedited by Professors Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson, is a meticulous collaboration that incorporates a set of essays by various authors. The book offers unique reflections from myriad vantage points to the well known and often repeated story of the Jewish ritual. The essence of The Annotated Passover Hagaddah lies not only in the central theme of celebration of the Haggadah but also in the numerous ways in which it can be celebrated in other traditions, as well as how it has evolved through times. It is this renewed prospect that imparts multiple connotations to the Jewish Passover ritual. The book has an eclectic prominence that manifests through a careful hermeneutical exploration of the Passover Haggadah from the Judeo-Christian prism. With significant overlaps between the Christian and Jewish liturgy, this culturally rich interfaith volume transcends the scope of the Jewish ritual of Passover and Haggadah.

This article collects and examines data relating to the authors of English-language texts written and published during the past 500 years on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and then compares this data to Gary R. Habermas’ 2005 and 2012 publication on the subject. To date, there has been no such inquiry. This present article identifies 735 texts spanning five centuries (from approximately 1500 to 2020). The data reveals 680 Pro-Resurrection books by 601 authors (204 by ministers, 146 by priests, 249 by people associated with seminaries, 70 by laypersons, and 22 by women). This article also reveals that a remarkably high proportion of the English-language books written about Jesus’ resurrection were by members of the clergy or people linked to seminaries, which means any so-called scholarly consensus on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection is wildly inflated due to a biased sample of authors who have a professional and personal interest in the subject matter. Pro-Resurrection authors outnumber Contra-Resurrection authors by a factor of about twelve-to-one. In contrast, the 55 Contra-Resurrection books, representing 7.48% of the total 735 books, were by 42 authors (28 having no relevant degrees at the time of publication). The 42 contra authors represent only 6.99% of all authors writing on the subject.

Rube Goldberg’s cartoons made him the first Jewish-American comedy star, but on the surface his works seem completely American and not at all Jewish. While the content of his most famous comic strip “The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts” is reflective of the American ethos of innovation that was flourishing at the time, his religious roots are present in the form of the cartoons. There are strong structural similarities between these drawings and the European Jewish joke cycle concerning the wise men of Chelm that lampoon the byzantine Talmudic arguments of the rabbinate. In adopting this Jewish form of humor, but substituting the American civil religion of modernist innovative capitalism in the place of Talmudic interpretation as its focus, Goldberg’s humor signals the interest of Jewish Americans to be both Jewish and fully American.

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard ideas. Consequently, post-1414 (“later”) Lollardy in England has been characterized as an amorphous, introverted network—appealing to those of lesser socio-economic status—being unworthy of description as a sect because of its deficiency of organization. However, the movement’s consistency and infrastructure are reappraised by considering its heterogeneity in terms of society (demography, literacy, and socio-economic status), interactions (modes of dissemination), and motivation, participation, and organization (appreciating the dynamics of religious movements). From a comparative perspective, Lollardy’s acephalous, reticulate infrastructure—similarly to that of Waldensianism and other movements—may have proved beneficial by facilitating adaptability during persecution thereby ensuring Lollardy’s survival until the Reformation.

This contribution is an examination of so-called “religious antisemitism” vis-à-vis the various Christian religious communities and/or denominations at the present time, framed by the recognition that, over the last several years, an increase in antisemitism in the United States has been shown by figures compiled by both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It is further framed by examining the 2015 Pew Research Center Report “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” and its 2016 “If the U.S. had 100 people: Charting America’s Religious Affiliations.”

Family and religion have been shown to be important to the majority of people in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Numerous research studies suggest that childhood relationships and environment are influential to mental health and well-being, with research on religious families significantly increasing in the last few decades. The purpose of this study is to explore counselors’ experiences of the influence of a fundamentalist religious upbringing on mental health and well-being in adulthood, across the Abrahamic traditions within the United Kingdom. The primary objectives are to psycho-educate professionals to recognize and understand the influence of a fundamentalist religious upbringing on mental health and well-being in adulthood, and to add to the sparse literature on this largely hidden topic. In-depth, qualitative, non-structured interviews were conducted with eight counselors (one withdrew at pre-analysis stage), who were collaborative co-researchers throughout the process. The focus of this article aligns with one of the interpretative readings of the interview transcripts undertaken by the researcher and co-researchers during the research process, namely appraising issues of power and control. The author outlines her insider researcher background, chosen methodology, co-researcher recruitment, and ethical considerations, before sharing the co-researchers’ stories around the power and control dynamics of a fundamentalist religious upbringing. The co-researchers’ adult religiosity is briefly outlined, before some brief reflections conclude the article.

In response to Stephen Davis’s criticism of our previous essay, we revisit and defend our arguments that the Resurrection hypothesis is logically incompatible with the Standard Model of particle physics—and thus is maximally implausible—and that it cannot explain the sensory experiences of the Risen Jesus attributed to various witnesses in the New Testament—and thus has low explanatory power. We also review Davis’s reply, noting that he evades our arguments, misstates their conclusions, and distracts the reader with irrelevancies regarding, e.g., what natural laws are, what a miracle is, and how “naturalism” and “supernaturalism” differ as worldviews. Contrary to what Davis claims (even in his abstract), we do not argue that “if the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) is true, then the resurrection of Jesus did not occur and physical things can only causally interact with other physical things.” Davis distorts our claims and criticizes straw men of his own creation.

This research aims to discover the number of clergy deaths in the United States that resulted from complications associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). The FaithX Project, in association with researchers from the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), conducted a survey of sixteen major Christian denominations in the United States. The methodology for this study was to contact leaders in these denominations (via email and phone) who oversaw specific church judicatories. The research took place from January to June of 2021. There was an average response rate of 23.12% across the sixteen Christian denominations contacted. 169 judicatories responded to the survey and a total of 118 clergy deaths were reported, with the Catholic Church recording the most: 43 deaths. The average overall death rate for these denominations was 0.23%, with the highest rate being the Catholic Church at 0.73%. Utilizing this information, it can be estimated that somewhere between 1,008 and 1,099 total clergy in the United States died from Covid-19.

Do mystical experiences make it rational to believe in God? A fair number of theistic philosophers have thought so, and, for the mystic who is ignorant of current scientific findings, perhaps that conclusion is correct. But the ignorant are not best qualified to judge: let us see how science might inform judgment. Here I will focus most particularly on the neurological basis of mystical experiences (MEs). It might initially seem that the evidence for such a basis is theologically benign—neutral on the question whether MEs may reasonably be considered veridical perceptions of the divine. I shall argue that this is a mistake.

The Christian biblical canon consists of the Old Testament (referenced as the Hebrew Bible by Jews), New Testament, and Apocrypha for some denominations (e.g., the Roman Catholic Church). The name “New Testament” is associated with, but misapplied with the Berit Ḥadasha/“New Covenant” which the Lord was to make with the Houses of Israel and Judah, not with Nations (Jer 31:30). A more accurate association/understanding is “new covenant in my (Jesus) blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25); “new covenant not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:6); “the veil remains when the old covenant (Torah) is read” (2 Cor 3:14); and so on. The New Testament embraces 27 separate books of different size, composition, and focus. They include the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the Acts of the Apostles, 13 Epistles by Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Epistles by Peter, James, John, and Jude, and John’s Revelation (the Apocalypse). This article discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity (primarily spelled out in the Gospels and Pauline literature), evaluated from the perspective of Jewish-Christian polemics, apologetics, and respectful co-existential dialogue.

This book seeks to put an end to the debate concerning the date of production of the Muratorian Fragment by applying the second phase of the Inference to the Best Explanation method. The author presents extensive research on the debates, a clear methodology, and his own conclusions on the subject. This is a book mainly about New Testament canons and church authority, but also church history and historiography.

In Faith After Doubt, Brian McLaren formulates doubt as a means to enhance and enrich religious faith. In progressive fashion, doubt is reclaimed as a means to develop faith, such that believers can aim towards a greater solidarity with others and practice revolutionary love. By providing a nuanced analysis of faith, McLaren takes a phased approach where believers experience increased levels of wisdom and spiritual depth as they engage in different levels of doubt. This text may offer assistance to those who have been discouraged and fearful of entertaining doubt in their spiritual lives. Through invoking a healthy skepticism of inherited doctrines passed down by dogmatic Christianity, individuals are provided a means to further develop their faith as opposed to becoming disjointed from it. Much of this text constructs a progressive future for Christianity in an effort to ensure its relevance and continued survival. Beyond the complex analysis given to faith and doubt in this work, it is lacking a robust means to ensure that Christians will enact the revolutionary love McLaren aims to achieve. To impart such a vision of love requires practicing radical hospitality towards the most vulnerable, and believers cannot remain complicit to a toxic form of orthodoxy. Pursuing social justice aims necessitates an activist faith that critically probes dogmatic theology; and by making allowances for the faith commitments of all believers irrespective of consequence, this project remains a tepid means to further a truly progressive evolution of Christianity.

Early medieval society had complex views of crime and sin. In early medieval English society, concepts of crime and sin overlapped to a certain extant in terms of what “wrongs” were under either religious or secular jurisdiction, or which fell under both. An in-depth analysis of the definition of crime versus sin in early medieval English society has not yet been undertaken, a feat that is attempted in this article in the context of one of the worst crimes and sins: homicide. It is found that a crime can be defined as any act that is performed against the protection of the king, while a sin is any action that falls within the confines of the capital sins or can be considered either an affront to God or detrimental to the soul.

This article examines the nature of religious interactions in the Muslim stronghold town of Ede in southwest Nigeria between the Muslim majority and the Christian minority. In particular, it examines the conflict that arose between Muslim and Christian groups in the town over the famous Christian programme, “Healing Jesus Crusade” in 2011. The programme represents the height of religious misunderstanding in Ede as the situation almost degenerated into open conflict between Muslims and Christians during this period. This article looks at the fundamental and immediate causes of the conflict, as well as the nature of the conflict, its implications for religious interactions in Ede, and the methods adopted in resolving the conflict. Based on oral interviews and the use of extant literature, this article contends that the crisis surrounding the “Healing Jesus Crusade” was a manifestation of the “aggressive” Christian evangelism in the Muslim-dominated town of Ede, and the “radical” reactions of the Muslim majority to maintain the status quo of the dominance of Islam in the town.

Throughout history, religious beliefs have been a primary way of understanding the experience of epidemic disease. This article offers a pan-historical and cross-cultural analysis of such interactions. The first section examines common structures and assumptions of religious explanatory models. These are characteristically two-fold, nominating both supernatural causal agents and particular human actions that have set these forces in motion. A society’s identification of the behaviors that would prompt the infliction of mass suffering and death upon an entire people reveals a great deal about the values and world view of that culture. Most revolve around definitions of the sacred, which could be polluted, profaned or neglected by deliberate or inadvertent actions, and acceptable standards of moral behavior. Defensive strategies vary according to the nature of the supernatural agency held responsible, from one or more angry gods to offended ancestors, hungry ghosts or hostile demons. The final section investigates the extent to which religion may be helpful or harmful in shaping responses to epidemics, including the present global pandemic of Covid-19.

Bayes’ Theorem is a simple mathematical equation that can model every empirical argument. Accordingly, once understood it can be used to analyze, criticize, or improve any argument in matters of fact. By extension, it can substantially improve an overall argument for atheism (here meaning the belief that supernatural gods probably do not exist) by revealing that god apologetics generally operates through the omission of evidence, and how every argument for there being a god becomes an argument against there being a god once you reintroduce all the pertinent evidence that the original argument left out. This revelation further reveals that god apologetics generally operates through the omission of evidence. This paper demonstrates these propositions by illustrating their application with examples.

Much like how fruitful and wild branches are mixed in the same vineyard, there is a great deal of confusion when someone tries to discern the religious roots of heretical movements grown out of the Middle Ages. Two peculiar cases are often associated by confessional literature: Waldensians and Albigenses, demonized by Roman Catholic literature or romanticized by Protestant and modern Medieval fictional literature. In the quest for historical accuracy this paper intends to argue for the supremacy of certain contextual theological beliefs rather than socio-economic features alone in discerning the true nature of these movements despite their similarities and common persecution by the dominant Catholic religion. While the Albigenses reintroduced the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, the Waldensians were driven by a return to apostolic Christianity. The study also points out the need to analyze those movements beyond a one-dimensional approach in order to see the heterogeneity inside each movement, especially in their progressive evolution through time. Results point toward the need to reject an ancient origin thesis for the case of the Waldensians, whereas still allowing, in their case, a possible proto-Protestant connection.

Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will call) The Resurrection Hypothesis, The Lie Hypothesis, The Coma Hypothesis, The Imposter Hypothesis, and The Legend Hypothesis—will be considered. While I will not attempt to rank them all from worst to best, what I will reveal is how and why The Legend Hypothesis is unquestionably the best explanation, and The Resurrection Hypothesis is undeniably the worst. Consequently, not only is Craig and Davis’ conclusion mistaken, but belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus is irrational. In presenting this argument, I do not take myself to be breaking new ground; Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have already presented a Bayesian refutation of Craig and Davis’ arguments. But I do take myself to be presenting an argument that the average person (and philosopher) can follow. It is my goal for the average person (and philosopher) to be able to clearly understand how and why the hypothesis “God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead” fails utterly as an explanation of the evidence that Christian apologist cite for Jesus’ resurrection.

Recent initiatives by Stein, Flynn, Conrad, and others have promoted ‘unbelief’ as a replacement, an ‘umbrella term,’ for concepts like atheism, secularism, and irreligion. In this essay I show that unbelief as it is currently construed cannot serve this function: it is simultaneously too broad (embracing not only irreligion but heterodox religious belief) and too narrow (focusing on religious belief to the exclusion of other types of belief), and it commits a taxonomic error of equating unbelief with categories above and below its level. However, I also argue that, once reformed and disciplined, unbelief is a valuable and essential tool, and I provide some resources and models for a future Unbelief Studies in the Credition Research Project and the literature on agnotology, as well as ethnographical material questioning the cross-cultural applicability of belief and unbelief. Finally, I charge Unbelief Studies with the mission not only to analyze belief but to criticize and ultimately banish it as a bad mental and linguistic habit that perpetuates mistakes and leaves individuals vulnerable to further faults while eroding social trust and facticity itself.

The authors show the Jewishness of Jesus and his teachings. They delve into what unites and what distinguishes Judaism and Christianity, especially in the Jewish liturgical practices that the early Christians, who were mainly Jews, took from their ancient traditions and modified to establish the liturgies that Christians practice today. They call, rightly, for dialogue between all Christians and all Jews, having established how much we can learn about ourselves by learning from the other.

This article seeks to take a position different from John Hartung’s position in his article entitled, “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality.” His article was originally written in two separate issues in Skeptic in 1995 and 1996. Hartung takes the position that in-group morality (a moral code for a specific group) exists so that religious groups can compete against other groups, even overcoming them through violence and subordination. The position of this present article seeks to show that Hartung’s premise falls short through examination of presuppositions, the central motif of redemption, and a high view of Scripture in light of its context. This article will address certain components from Hartung’s article to state a position that remains true to the biblical text. Instead of an in-group morality, this article promotes an all-inclusive group morality that is intended to extend beyond that group to others for the purpose of evangelism, not competition.

John Hartung asserted in “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality” that the command to love, and the later use of it by Jesus, does not apply to everyone but only to those within one’s own group. Through a close reading of Leviticus and the Gospel of Matthew, this essay questions Hartung’s hermeneutic and assesses his conclusion as erroneous. By interrogating the world of the text using a literary method, this essay argues for an appreciation of the complexity of the language and the importance of literary context.

This paper examines modern hermeneutic approaches and how patristic exegetes can complement interpretative methods. Modern hermeneutics apply different procedures depending on the genre. Kannengiesser’s Handbook of Patristic Exegesis is used to summarize patristic views by specific book and genre, while Russell’s Playing with Fire, Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard’s Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, and Kaiser and Silva’s, Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics frame the range of modern hermeneutic approaches. Perspectives on spiritual formation are addressed per genre since it is important for biblical interrelation and application and was valued by patristic exegetes like Augustine. The paper shows how patristic exegetes focused on the spiritual and seeking the Bible’s deeper meaning. It demonstrates how Russell’s spiritual formation emphasis aligns with Augustine’s spiritual burning that transformed his life and how this emphasis aligns with the patristic exegetes’ desire to seek deeper spiritual meaning in scripture.

This article re-examines the dominant scholarly perception that Christian support for Arab Nationalist regimes is primarily a product of fear of Islamism. After a brief examination of the Christian origins of Ba’athism—a form of Arab Nationalism—the author argues that a more granular understanding of the current Christian politics of Syria and Iraq reveals that while some Christians have supported regimes out of fear, there is also significant strain of active, positive support, though to what extent this is a product of Christian identification with Arab identity requires further research. The study employs an examination of posts from pro-Assad Syrian Christian Facebook pages.

Accepting Diller’s challenge to justify “global atheism,” despite its supposed crushing burden of knowledge, this paper argues that the global atheist bears no extraordinary burden. In fact, all atheism is global atheism, as an atheist lacks any and all god-beliefs; while a local theist, who accepts one of the myriad god-beliefs over all others, has a special burden to account for that choice. Surveying the diversity of god-concepts across religions and how atheists dismiss and discard them, this paper provides an inductive and philosophical foundation of global atheism—as well as illustrating that local theisms are more prone to blending and overlapping than allowed in Diller’s scheme.

In light of the wide acknowledgement that humanism influenced the Protestant Reformation, one must ask the question about how much of what Protestantism maintains owes a debt to this modern ideology often juxtaposed in contrast to Christianity. Given the remarkable role of such a controversial ideology during a seminal period of the modern church, this study seeks an answer to the following question: how did the humanism movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries impact the lives and work of the main Magisterial Reformers? This research is important and necessary because discovering the answer to this question leads to an understanding of the larger question of how humanism impacts the Protestant tradition. Understanding the nature of this impact sheds light on what Protestantism means and may induce some Christians to contemplate why they call or do not call themselves “Protestants” or “humanists.” This present study progressed through four phases. First, the study sought to describe the humanism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Second, it sought to describe the impact this humanism had on society. Third, the study analyzed how the social impacts of the humanism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries served to advance or hinder the causes of the main Magisterial Reformers. Finally, it synthesized the findings. This paper argues and concludes that the humanism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries impacted the lives and work of the main Magisterial Reformers by facilitating their desire to include the common people in a religious world previously dominated by the elite.

Theists often claim that neither the diversity of religious experience nor natural explanations for religious experience can threaten the ability of religious experience to justify religious belief. Contrarily, this paper argues that not only do they pose such a threat, but the diversity of religious experiences and natural explanations for them completely undermine their epistemic justificatory power. To establish this, the author first defines the supposed role of religious experience in justifying religious belief. Then the author shows how the diversity of religious experience raises an inductive problem that negates religious experience’s ability to justify religious belief. The author then shows that available natural explanations for religious experience do the same by simply providing better explanations of religious experiences (i.e., explanations that are more adequate than religious explanations of those experiences).

This essay is a reply to “The Implausibility and Low Explanatory Power of the Resurrection Hypothesis—With a Rejoinder to Stephen T. Davis” by Robert Greg Cavin and Carlos Colombetti. In it, I establish what natural laws are, what a miracle is, and how “naturalism” and “supernaturalism” differ as worldviews. Cavin and Colombetti argue that if the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) is true, then the resurrection of Jesus did not occur and physical things can only causally interact with other physical things. I argue that neither point follows.

The story of the drunkenness of Noah that caused him to remove his clothing and thus provided the opportunity for his son, Ham, to “see” him (Genesis 9:20‒27), has never received an interpretation that has been unanimously adopted by interpreters over the centuries. By examining the concept of “nakedness” as it functions in biblical legislation, this article argues that the most plausible understanding of the passage is that Ham committed incest with the wife of his father, Noah. Concomitantly, it becomes clear that the literalist idea of “race” used to undergird either slavery or any comparable form of white supremacy cannot be derived exegetically from the passage.

A review of John W. Loftus’s edited volume, The Case Against Miracles.

While the Torah instructs Jews not to practice soothsaying or divination, the Talmud includes several discussions about the power of astrology with many Rabbis even arguing that the use of astrology is both permitted and meaningful. Add to this discrepancy the numerous astrological mosaics on the floors of ancient synagogues, as well as certain Kabbalistic practices, and it becomes clear why there is confusion within the Jewish community. This article examines Jewish perspectives on evolutionary astrology throughout Jewish history and its link to current mystical applications.

This essay argues for the rationality of truth claims arising from religious faith over against the contention that such claims are, at best, viewed as subjective “value” language or, at worst, strictly irrational. An argument will be offered for the epistemic warrant of faith-based claims, not for the objective veracity of the religious claims themselves.

In this paper, I consider whether (religious) faith has any role to play in conferring positive epistemic status to (especially religious) beliefs. I outline several conceptions of faith that have been historically important within Western religious traditions. I then consider what role faith might be supposed to play, so understood, within the framework of internalist and externalist accounts of knowledge. My general conclusion is that, insofar as faith itself is a justified epistemic attitude, it requires justification and acquires that justification only through the regular faculties for contingent truths: sense perception and reason. I also argue, however, that the operations of our cognitive faculties in arriving at epistemic judgments on matters of substance are sufficiently complex, subtle, and often temporally prolonged, to make it exceptionally difficult to reconstruct the cognitive process and to judge whether it meets standards of rationality.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the construction and exploitation of ignorance, with the establishment of a field of agnotology (ignorance studies). This effort has focused almost exclusively on governments and corporations, though little or none on religion. After exploring work in agnotology and introducing the concept of agnomancy (the creation or conjuring of ignorance), the present article offers a preliminary application of these perspectives to religion, investigating what light agnotology sheds on religion and when and for what reasons religion engages in agnomancy.

Inspired by Stephen J. Gould’s NOMA thesis, it is commonly maintained among academic theists (and some atheists) that religion and science are not in conflict. This essay will argue, by analogy, that science and religion undeniably are in conflict. It will begin by quickly defining religion and science and then present multiple examples that are unquestionable instances of unscientific reasoning and beliefs and show how they precisely parallel common mainstream orthodox religious reasoning and doctrines. It will then consider objections. In essence, this article will show that religion and science conflict when religion encroaches into the scientific domain. But in closing, it will show that they might also conflict when science encroaches into domains traditionally reserved for religion.

With the common correlation of the patriotic music community to “America,” country music after 9/11, in many respects, could be seen as a site for the reinforcement and construction of American national identity. This article particularly explores the use of country music in the United States to represent and create a political ideology of “imagined” national identity in the time period between September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in the Spring of 2003. However, the nation, as imagined in these country song lyrics, has very specific dimensions. It is not just any nation. It is perceived (and valued, for that matter) as justifiably aggressive. It is a Christian nation defined in opposition to the Islamic “other.” This targeted racial and religious group is not just an outside foreign “other” but a heavily stigmatized foreigner from within their own country. The mapping of these particular concepts of nation and religion onto mainstream country music constitutes its primary imagined identity.

We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the Resurrection hypothesis.

This article is a rebuttal to Robert G. Cavin and Carlos A. Colombetti’s article, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: Problems with Craig’s Inference to the Best Explanation,” which argues that the Standard Model of current particle physics entails that non-physical things (like a supernatural God or a supernaturally resurrected body) can have no causal contact with the physical universe. As such, they argue that William Lane Craig’s resurrection hypothesis is not only incompatible with the notion of Jesus physically appearing to the disciples, but the resurrection hypothesis is significantly limited in both its explanatory scope and explanatory power. This article seeks to demonstrate why their use of the Standard Model does not logically entail a rejection of the physical resurrection of Jesus when considering the scope and limitations of science itself.

This article’s aim is to highlight the impact that plain sense readings of the Gospel of John have on educated Jewish and Christian lay persons but who typically do not aspire to learn or appropriate current scholarly theories seeking to explain sacred texts in a technical and often inordinately complex fashion. Essay topics include: 1) the anonymous author (“John”), the relationship of his gospel to the Synoptic Gospels, his interpretation of Jewish actions and customs, and his influence on a distinct group of early Christians, the “Johannine” community; 2) John’s portrayal of Jesus’ self-identification in using the divine name YHWH; 3) John’s description and interpretation of various Jewish responses to Jesus, as well as the author’s understanding of the reasons for Jews rejecting the message and person of Jesus; and 4) John’s portrayal of the early break between Judaism and Christianity, laid entirely at the feet of “the Jews.”

The purpose of this article is to answer what the socio-historical method is when applied to the study of religion, as well as detail how numerous disciplines (e.g. archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, theology, musicology, dramatology, etc.) contribute to its overall employment. In the broadest (and briefest) definition possible, a socio-historical study of religion coalesces the aims, philosophies, and methodologies of historiography with those of the social and cultural sciences, meaning it analyzes the interpretation and practice of religion through the lens of social/historical contexts, scientific discovery, and from within each faith tradition. The result is that the contexts surrounding a particular religion becomes the primary subject of study in order to better understand the origin, development, and expression of the religion itself. This article explains that the socio-historical study of religion is, in essence, an eclectic methodology that focuses on describing and analyzing the contexts from which the interpretation and practice of religion occurs. The goal is to examine how different aspects of a religion function in the broader socio-political and cultural milieu. Its most fundamental postulation is that the social history of a religious community affects how it interprets and practices their faith. By approaching religious inquiry from a socio-historical perspective, researchers are better able to recognize religion as a cultural and institutional element in ongoing social and historical interaction. Three sections will help to explain the socio-historical method: 1) a definitional dissection of the term “socio-historical”; 2) an elaboration of the principles inherent to the methodology; and 3) a case study example of the socio-historical method in practice.

Mark S. Massa argues that the history of natural law discourse in American Catholic moral theology, since the promulgation of Humanae Vitae in 1968, is marked more by discontinuity, rupture, and revolution than has been appreciated.

Taking Jesus’ call to love our neighbors seriously requires engaging them in the neighborhoods where they live. However, neighborhoods are transforming demographically faster than ever before. If we can help congregations more quickly understand their neighborhoods, there is a much greater likelihood that they will grow to love them as they love themselves. The question before us is, how do we help faith communities and their leaders engage missional opportunities that are emerging from rapid population change? The goal of the FaithX Project is to make it possible for faith communities, their leaders, and the judicatories that support them to employ location intelligence and predictive analytics in order for them to discern emerging missional opportunities. FaithX then helps them to create effective missional strategies for engaging those opportunities by asking four essential questions: What is our neighborhood? Who are our neighbors? What are our neighborhood’s issues and opportunities? What are our neighborhood’s resources?

Research indicates that religious communities are important sites for the development of social resources, including social capital. Several studies suggest that religious involvement beyond worship services is a meaningful predictor of civic engagement that may foster bridging social capital, or ties that bridge social groups and cross lines of status and identity. This article explores the relationship between religious involvement and bridging social ties. Using nationally representative survey data and a subsample of individuals who are affiliated with one particular congregation, the article examines how religious service attendance and congregational participation (beyond services) are associated with frequency of interaction with someone from one of nine different social groups that vary along dimensions of social status and identity. Congregational participation beyond services positively predicts contact with several of the groups. In contrast, service attendance is either negatively related or not at all significantly related to interaction with someone from each of these nine different social groups.

This article contends that theology is a scientific endeavor if it 1) makes correlations between humanity’s deepest existential questions and the answers provided by any given religious tradition and/or 2) it describes the beliefs and practices of various religious traditions as accurately as possible. The correlations in methodology are made by psychology, sociology, anthropology, and/or neurobiology. The descriptions in method are also collectively furnished by archaeology, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other cognate disciplines. The article further maintains that metaphysics is a scientific endeavor if it explains 3) the constituent elements of reality as a whole, as well as 4) explains the presuppositions used to detect these elements. I take a scientific endeavor as one that requires empirical and/or logical verification of its claims. Since my conceptions of theology and metaphysics demand such verification, they should be considered scientific.

Once esteemed as the highest form of knowledge, the legitimacy of metaphysics as a rational discipline has been severely challenged since the rise of modern science, particularly since it seemed that while the latter reached overall consensus, the disputes in the former seemed interminable. The question naturally arises whether metaphysics could ever achieve the status of a science. The following article presents the view that metaphysics is not nor could ever become a science in the sense of the modern “hard” sciences today because a) it seeks a different sort of knowledge, which b) cannot be acquired by the methods of modern science; and c) metaphysics serves a different cognitive purpose than the sort of knowledge that science can provide. It is, nevertheless, a rational subject, one in fact that supplies the necessary rational foundation for the positive sciences.

This article argues that, given the historical and linguistic background of the terms involved, the study of theology can, in fact, be considered a scientific endeavor, but one must clearly note what is inferred by the term “scientific.” Historically, the term “science” or “scientific” has dealt with the realm of knowledge of both the natural and supranatural world. The question of whether theology should be classified as a science arose during the formation of the medieval universities in the thirteenth century, as well as the formation of modern German universities in the nineteenth century. Theologians from Aquinas to Schleiermacher argued that theology should be considered a science and, therefore, a proper subject of study in the university. The affirmation of theology as a science in this article is based on this historical survey, as well as the broader linguistic understanding of the term “science.”

This article answers the question of whether the study of theology and metaphysics can be classified currently, or ever qualify in the future, as a scientific endeavor. Rather than choose a particular theology or metaphysics as the subject of inquiry, this essay argues that it is not only necessary to recognize the role of hermeneutics within different fields of study, but that it is also necessary to begin a human hermeneutic with human experience. Changes in our global context, whether social, economic, political, or environmental, are important drivers of hermeneutical evolution. We should expect no less change in the areas of theology, metaphysics, and science. The question of truth, whether subjective or objective, is a hermeneutical one.

Understood as being nothing more than fallible assumptions about the boundary conditions of an inquisitive worldview, this article seeks to argue that metaphysics and theology can, in fact, be pursued as a scientific endeavor. If we broaden our understanding of how perceived realities furnish feedback in order to refine preestablished human discourses, Ruist (Confucian) metaphysics and theology especially can be recognized as being historically pursued as a science by its own right. Eventually, the distinction of Western and Ruist traditions of metaphysics and theology, as well as the imperfections in each of them, speaks to the need of mutual learning for constructing a more robust metaphysical worldview in the twenty-first century.

In this paper, I address the question of whether metaphysics and theology are or can become science. After examining the qualities of contemporary science, which evolved from an earlier historic concept of any body of literature into a formal method for obtaining empirical knowledge, I apply that standard to metaphysics and theology. I argue that neither metaphysics nor theology practices a scientific method or generates scientific knowledge. Worse, I conclude that both metaphysics and theology are at best purely cultural projects—exercises in exegesis of local cultural and religious ideas and language—and, therefore, that other cultures have produced or would produce radically different schemes of metaphysics or theology. At its worst, metaphysics is speculation about the unknowable, while theology is rumination about the imaginary.

The notion that there existed a distinction between so-called “Alexandrian” and “Antiochene” exegesis in the ancient church has become a common assumption among theologians. The typical belief is that Alexandria promoted an allegorical reading of Scripture, whereas Antioch endorsed a literal approach. However, church historians have long since recognized that this distinction is neither wholly accurate nor helpful to understanding ancient Christian hermeneutics. Indeed, neither school of interpretation sanctioned the practice of just one exegetical method. Rather, both Alexandrian and Antiochene theologians were expedient hermeneuts, meaning they utilized whichever exegetical practice (allegory, typology, literal, historical) that would supply them with their desired theology or interpretive conclusion. The difference between Alexandria and Antioch was not exegetical; it was theological. In other words, it was their respective theological paradigms that dictated their exegetical practices, allowing them to utilize whichever hermeneutical method was most expedient for their theological purposes. Ultimately, neither Alexandrian nor Antiochene exegetes possessed a greater respect for the biblical text over the other, nor did they adhere to modern-day historical-grammatical hermeneutics as theologians would like to believe.

Disagreements about abortion are often assumed to reduce to disagreements about fetal personhood (and mindedness). If one believes a fetus is a person (or has a mind), then they are “pro-life.” If one believes a fetus is not a person (or is not minded), they are “pro-choice.” The issue, however, is much more complicated. Not only is it not dichotomous—most everyone believes that abortion is permissible in some circumstances (e.g. to save the mother’s life) and not others (e.g. at nine months of a planned pregnancy)—but scholars on both sides of the issue (e.g. Don Marquis and Judith Thomson) have convincingly argued that fetal personhood (and mindedness) are irrelevant to the debate. To determine the extent to which they are right, this article will define “personhood,” its relationship to mindedness, and explore what science has revealed about the mind before exploring the relevance of both to questions of abortion’s morality and legality. In general, this article does not endorse a particular answer to these questions, but the article should enhance the reader’s ability to develop their own answers in a much more informed way.

In keeping with talmudic tradition, this article presents a rabbinical thought experiment that questions the authenticity—indeed the very historicity—of the Apostle Paul’s Pharisaic Jewish background. By examining current interpretations of Saul’s Damascus road conversion, as well as Lukan and Pauline accounts in the New Testament, it becomes evident that there exists a striking disparity between Paul and other first century Pharisees, particularly since he took far too many liberties with his beliefs and behaviors (pre- and post-conversion) that would have set him apart from his Pharisaic contemporaries. Moreover, Luke (a non-Jew writing in a post-Sadducean world) was both an unreliable biographer and yet the primary source for claiming Paul was a Pharisee. Thus, from a Jewish perspective, it is thought-provoking to ask whether the idea of Paul as originally a Sadducee best explains these disparities. Ultimately, the thesis of this article is that interpreters should not view Paul as having followed the standard path to becoming an authentic Pharisee. In fact, Paul’s radical revision of prevailing Pharisaic exegesis suggests he was likely never a Pharisee or, at the very least, not a consistent Pharisee in the tradition of Gamaliel. The purpose of this article is to trace just how modern scholarship would change if Pauline scholars presumed that Paul was, in fact, a Sadducee instead of a Pharisee. Undoubtedly, the consequence would suggest that both Paul and Luke were world-class (albeit opportunistic) rhetoricians who used Pharisaic imagery solely to add credibility to Paul’s image and his emerging influence on the primitive church.

The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) has attracted a surprising amount of scholarly attention for a phenomenon notoriously resistant to definition and whose impact and size have been challenging to quantify. This edited volume, Crossing Boundaries, Redefining Faith: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Emerging Church Movement, seeks to be a touchstone of the best scholarship about the ECM to date. Across ten chapters with thirteen contributors, the volume succeeds, although it is not without its flaws. Most notably, the relatively small universe of congregations upon which the work in this volume—and broader ECM scholarship—is based raises the question of how to quantify the impact and significance of the movement, something this volume leaves unresolved. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that Crossing Boundaries, Redefining Faith—as a single volume—is the best assemblage of scholarship about the ECM thus far. This book makes obvious sense as a core text for any college or seminary course.

Since the publication of Kenneth Howard’s 2017 article, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” there has been an increasing demand to understand the root causes and historical foundations for why institutional Christianity is in a state of de-institutionalization. In response to Howard’s research, a number of authors have sought to provide a contextual explanation for why the religion singularity is currently happening, including studies in epistemology, church history, psychology, anthropology, and church ministry. The purpose of this article is to offer a brief survey and response to these interactions with Howard’s research, identifying the overall implications of each researcher’s perspective for understanding the religion singularity phenomenon. It explores factors relating to denominational switching in Jeshua Branch’s research, social memory in John Lingelbach’s essay, religious politics in Kevin Seybold’s survey, scientific reductionism in Jack David Eller’s position paper, and institutional moral failure in Brian McLaren’s article.

Applying the Buddhist “law of interdependent origination,” which states that if the conditions are right, a particular phenomenon may exist, Brian McLaren provides ten conditional factors that he believes have contributed to Ken Howard’s “religion singularity” (i.e. the multi-faceted collapse of institutional Christianity). Each condition falls under two main categories: either a lack of rapid adaptability in religious institutions or the moral failure of institutional leaders. The ten conditional factors include authoritarian centralization, betrayal of the religious founder’s non-violence, a history of unacknowledged atrocities, military imperialism, white supremacy, scandals, reaction against scientific inquiry, doubling down on dualism, integrated and change-averse institutional systems, and paralysis and nostalgia.

This article argues that if Kenneth Howard’s prediction of a “religion singularity” is true, it should not be a worry for social scientists, who must remain neutral on religious matters. Further, the deinstitutionalization, fragmentation, atomization, and even extinction of religion should come as no surprise to scholars who have observed these processes repeatedly. This process occurs not only in the realm of religion but in all social domains, from family and marriage to government—and indeed not only in social domains but in the natural world, as well. Contemporary forces of mediatization and neoliberalism are only the latest threats to institutional membership, creating a crisis among established authorities and encouraging “irregular” religion just as much as they encourage “irregular” employment. While the “religious economy” model suggests an adaptation of religion to the tastes and preferences of today’s religious consumer, ethnographic evidence illustrates the difference between religious institutions and religiosity, the rise of multiple small religious movements, and the struggle for survival between sects, denominations, and churches. Ultimately it may be the case that the institutional phase of Christianity was only one moment in its religious evolution, which evolved from small, local, independent congregations and may return to—or end in—that form.

Kenneth Howard argues in his paper, “The Religion Singularity,” that institutional Christianity has experienced and will continue to experience an increase in the number of denominations and individual worship centers, which, along with a slower increase in the number of Christians in the US, will make institutional Christianity unsustainable in its current form. While there are, no doubt, many reasons why this religion singularity has or will take place, this paper examines the role of cultural cognition on the trends reported in Howard’s article. Cultural commitments and values, such as group membership and identity, influence the position individuals take on a variety of religious and political topics, which can then lead to polarization on these issues within the broader society. While we might expect that religious affiliations play an important role in determining a person’s political views, this article seeks to identify whether the reverse is also true, namely the extent to which political views affect an individual’s religious affiliation. This article reviews research that suggests the increasing political polarization in the United States over the past few decades has contributed, along with other factors, to the religion singularity reported by Howard.

In light of Ken Howard’s recent “religion singularity” phenomenon, this article attempts to ascertain the nature of Christian diversity during the last seventy years of the first century (roughly 30 to 100 CE). It offers an examination of the two largest Christian movements that existed before the second century, as well as when those movements may have begun and the locations they most likely flourished. The article argues that the earliest Christian tradition was the one persecuted by the Apostle Paul and that later, two breakaway movements splintered off from this tradition: the Pauline and Ebionite movements. The paper concludes that during the first century, of these two splinter movements, the Pauline movement likely preceded that of the Ebionite movement, though they both flourished in many of the same locations. Of interest is the finding that all three Christian movements (the pre-Pauline tradition, Pauline, and Ebionite) flourished in Asia Minor, a cosmopolitan sub-continent which appears to have served as a geographic information nucleus through which diverse ideas easily proliferated.

Termed the “religion singularity” by Kenneth Howard, the habitual fragmentation of institutional Christianity has led to the exponential growth in denominations and worship centers despite the annual growth rate of new believers remaining the same. Howard has concluded that denominations are unlikely to survive this crisis, although worship centers are much more likely to survive if they are willing to be flexible. The purpose of this article is to identify the epistemic trends that have led to the destabilization of institutional Christianity over the last century, namely the shifting worldview from modernity to postmodernity, and how this shift has influenced the rise of nondenominational house church attendance in American Christianity.

Since 2004, Gary Habermas has referenced his resurrection bibliography. Frequently, Habermas and Christian apologists assert that the scholarly consensus is that writers support the resurrection: a solid majority (about 75%) of scholars who have published books or articles on Jesus’ resurrection accept the historicity of the empty tomb. However, Habermas has not presented supporting evidence for the past twenty years. This article collects and presents factual data and information about the authors of nonjuvenile, English-language texts, at least forty-eight pages written during the past 500 years on Jesus’ resurrection. Significant categories of data investigated include (1) degree(s) earned and level of education, (2) occupation and interests, and (3) religion or denomination. Approximately 775 books (including six double-counted debates) were surveyed, with 713 pros and 62 contras. Pro authors were 610 and forty-six contras. The data substantiates and expands the earlier report by Alter and Slade. This article provides evidence that a remarkably high proportion of the English-language books written about Jesus’ resurrection were by members of the clergy or people linked to seminaries and those having a professional and personal interest in the subject matter.