The Supernatural Side of Malayan Rice Farming
In agrarian Malaya, spirit mediums negotiated with deities and demons to safeguard crops and shape the rhythms of rural life.
The Urgency of Indigenous Values
As global crises mount, religion scholar Philip P. Arnold argues the Haudenosaunee’s Great Law of Peace offers a way out of the West’s self-destructive path.
A Christian Case for Gossip
When silence allows harm to continue, warning others may become a difficult but necessary moral choice.
A Fierce Devotion to the “Empress of Hell”
Medieval dramatizations of the confrontation between the Virgin Mary and King Herod offered a symbolic resistance to tyranny.
Tutivillus Is Watching You
For medieval scribes, mistakes couldn’t be easily shrugged off, as Tutivillus, the stickler demon, was always looking over their shoulders.
“Border Science” vs. Commercial Occultism: A Nazi Debate
Occultism was widely embraced under the Third Reich, complicating Nazi attempts to wield it as a weapon against internationalism and other undesirable ideologies.
Should Yoga Be More Than Exercise?
How should Westerners studying modern postural yoga think about the religious and medical systems in which it developed?
Introduction to Jewish Studies: A Reading List
The broad, ever-expanding field of Jewish Studies is united by texts, events, and figures that engage an established canon of ideas across disciplines.
Christopher, the Dog-Headed Saint
Although the tradition has largely faded in the Western church, Saint Christopher sported a canine head through much of Christian history.
Vegetarian Heretics and the Christian Church
Since the religion’s early days, Christian thinkers have treated vegetarianism sometimes as heretical, sometimes as evidence of saintly asceticism.