Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
In this article, I examine what selected Muslim women in Finland and Egypt do with the Qur’an in their daily lives. I shed light on their modes of engagement with the Qur’an (spiritual, emotional, intellectual, communal). I analyse how their…
Our article has two aims: first, to track the ethos of learning and the importance of the guru–disciple relationship in the Amma movement, and secondly, to explore the ways in which one Finnish disciple frames her life though this special re…
Over the last fifty years a plethora of new spiritual practices has emerged in the Church of Sweden. Many fall within a category of holistic practices, aimed at engaging body, soul, and spirit. Among these, two categories are dominant: meditations and …
Sohbet (conversation) is a weekly, informal, religious-learning gathering that has been conducted by members of the Islamic Hizmet/Gülen Movement since its inception. The movement was established in Turkey in 1966 by Fethullah Gülen and his …
Atheism has had a strong presence on YouTube since its founding in the mid-2000s, which coincided with the rise of the new atheism movement, and lay atheists were quick to use the platform to spread new atheist ideas. Drawing from a sample of sixty-fiv…
The concept of “unlearning” has been positively endorsed in both self-help literature and organizational research, but has yet to be discussed in the study of religions. Is there room for it in the conceptual space of religious socialization…
This article seeks a better understanding of how Rudolf Steiner envisioned his reform pedagogy as a site of spiritual learning (for example through art, seasonal festivals, ritual drama, etc.), but also as a specific site intended to resist the encroac…
Women often embody the central values and practices of their religious tradition. When they leave their community, women find a part of the “religious tapestry” remaining with them long after their disengagement. In this article, we draw fro…
This article discusses adult conversion in the Russian Baptist community as the unlearning of old sinful ways of living. Russian Baptists see conversion as an act of repentance, surrendering to Christ, and becoming born again, and as a life-…
Numerous scholars have signalled that neo-pagan practitioners use their body and their senses to interact with the divine and elaborate a spiritual experience. However, the learning process followed to achieve and produce a sensing body capa…
Learning penetrates religion in many ways. Primary religious socialisation – sometimes referred to as religious nurture – is the process by which children are explicitly and purposefully taught to do things religiously or they learn implicit…
Simon Peter undergoes a considerable development from his first introduction in the Gospel of Mark to later narratives, where he gains remarkable miraculous abilities. In Mark, he witnesses Jesus performing numerous miracles without himself being named…
The current issue of Approaching Religion is based on a summer school and conference arranged in Åbo/Turku, Finland, in June 2023, on the theme of “Religion: Memory and Innovation”. The event was organized jointly by the Polin Institute for …
The Gospel of John reflects several layers of social memory and theological creativity concerning Jesus’s death. In the early material, there seems to be a suppressed awareness of Jesus’s fate and an unwillingness to unfold it in narrative form – somet…
In this article a case study of the phenomenon of “living on light” is presented. The interlocutor “Eva” shares her memories from the period when she did not eat material food. Actor-network theory (ANT) is adopted to analyse the interview. This method…
The topic of this article is religious materiality in a Finnish, Lutheran setting. Reflecting on the altar cross of the Luther Church Helsinki – and more specifically the elevated role the cross played in the re-opening of the church in 2016 – the arti…
Nationalistic interpretations of history were prevalent in Finland until the Second World War. A unifying past for Finns was sought in antiquity, often influenced by interpretations of the Kalevala, regarded as the Finnish national epic. The Kalevala a…
Cultural appropriation is a timely topic that has been taking up a lot of space in public discussions. The concept is often applied in heated debates aimed at calling out’ different actors and actions as appropriation, or on the other hand t…
This article investigates the notion of spiritual appropriation in Finnish schools, with a particular focus on the experiences of religious minorities. It draws on narratives from these communities, shedding light on their daily experiences in the educ…
Moluccan people arrived in the Netherlands in 1951, as a result of the complicated process of the decolonization of Indonesia. A situation of permanent waiting and political disappointment resulted in this growing Moluccan community remaining. The Molu…
This study examines the appropriation of religious symbols by the Nordic Alt-Right over the last decade, focusing on their use for völkisch identity construction around whiteness. It locates this signification historically, both before and during the T…
A new dispute about the ownership of Karelian laments emerged in Finland in 2021. The severely endangered Karelian language is the closest relative of Finnish. Karelian laments were brought into new Finnish contexts during the late twentieth century by…
There is little about globalized modern magical-religious Witchcraft that isn’t borrowed. It is well established that it is a creative response to modernity rather than an ancient continuous practice. Its inventiveness also makes it ripe for charges of…
In this article, based on my doctoral research, I discuss the appropriation of religious elements from South America by Finnish ‘mystical tourists’. The plant medicine ceremonies are approached as spiritual commodities. Imagining local beliefs and prac…
Concluding remarks for the special issue of Approaching Religion, ‘Appropriation as a Perspective and Topic in the Study of Religion and Spirituality’.