Vol. 7 (2024): Religion in Transition
With NEXT, we aim to spotlight the work of the next generation of religious studies scholars, and this volume showcases the voices of six scholars who engage with the discipline in fresh ways. Despite differences in subject matter and approach, each of the essays highlights attention-worthy issues, innovations, or ideas for the field of religious studies, religious traditions, and the world itself. The authors seek to complicate our understanding of past or current religious phenomena in productive ways, and each piece in this volume points to religion as process, or religion in transition. Rather than viewing religions as static or discrete entities, the authors examine shifting notions of identity, culture, religious practice, and more. Some of the authors do so by looking to the past, while others engage deeply with the realities of the contemporary world, especially with regard to a world permeated by colonialism.
The opening papers in this edition engage with historical conceptualizations of religions in transition. Lauren Mayes begins this edition with an examination of identity formation in late Second Temple Judaism. Through a historical-critical analysis of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Paul, Mayes emphasizes how first-century CE Jewish figures constructed their identities within the terms of their cultural contexts. As a result, Mayes argues, they intentionally presented their Jewish identities as “inextricably philosophical.” In crafting this argument, Mayes emphasizes the adaptability and agency of historical figures and conveys the value of incorporating dynamism when studying with historical figures.
Zane Johnson continues the throughline of historical analysis within religion in transition in “Late Modern Esoteric Christianities.” In this piece, Johnson connects historical themes from esotericism to major currents and/or appropriations of the rhetoric of esotericism within late modern Christianity. By analyzing the interactions between esoteric principles and specific 20th and 21st century religious groupings, Johnson crafts an argument for esotericism as representative of larger cultural underpinnings in the late modern period. Both Mayes and Johnson engage with analysis of the past to illuminate emerging contours within present scholarship.
Turning toward the present, in “The Inner Vehicle: Prayer, Tulpamancy, and the Magic of the Mind,” Elizabeth Hale examines two contemporary groups of people that seem quite different on the surface: Vineyard Church members and tulpamancers. This paper engages with how tulpamancers themselves transition between faith-based practices and their tulpamancy. In addition, Hale points to ways in which religion and religious practice, especially involving tulpas, are shifting in contemporary society. The concept of a tulpa comes out of Tibetan Buddhism, but the tulpamancers Hale highlights have found community online, and this online community grew out of interest in a TV show, My Little Pony.
The final three papers in the volume consider religious transitions resulting from colonialism, engaging particularly with the complicated, multi-layered violence wrought by the practice. David Kemp analyzes the colonial gaze operating within the US even as many people fail to notice the continued reverberations of colonialism here. Kemp argues that the colonial gaze works to reinforce Christianity and capitalism in ways that impact the self-actualization of queer people. Furthermore, this paper nuances understandings of queerness itself, and Kemp uses queerness as a framework for thinking through the subversion of power. This paper engages with contemporary US society but accounts for both historical processes and continued change now and in the future.
In “Dangerous Ramifications of Recent Ghar Wapsi Efforts,” Kevin Grane examines Hindu nationalist reconversion efforts within a broader framework of political and religious colonization, hegemony, and violence. Looking closely at the development of the movement, Grane offers a picture of how Hindu nationalist reacted to a constantly evolving religious landscape in ways that predominantly harmed and stigmatized groups which were already socioeconomically disadvantaged. Tying together religious conversion and political power, this paper offers an in-depth perspective of how colonialism and religious hegemony often operate in tandem.
Along these lines, Alfredo García Garza’s “‘Decolonizing Reality:’ The Absence of Divine Elections in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Process of Shamanic Initiation,” complicates common-place conceptions of Gloria Anzaldúa’s claim of being a shamaness. Rather than being grounded in Mexican religious and spiritual traditions, García Garza contextualizes Anzaldúa’s decolonial shamanic initiation within a process of religious and political shapeshifting as in the work of Carlos Castañeda. Drawing on numerous examples, García Garza offers a framework through which we can understand indigenous spirituality, and religiosity in general, more complexly while being more critical of the ways that scholars think with and employ indigeneity.
It has been an honor to work alongside these authors as we aim to amplify their diverse perspectives. Throughout this volume, we hope to raise a broad set of questions, pique interest in novel areas of study, and present a varied collection of intellectual perspectives, frameworks, and approaches which center religion in transition. By highlighting the next generation of scholars, journals like NEXT remind us that not only is religion constantly in transition but so too is the academic study of religion itself.
