Category: English

“My soul must live with the colour”

Sari Kuuva Published: Categories: English

The article focuses on the transformative potential of colours described by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s colour definitions are approached through the aesthetics of religion, investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. The goal is to clarif…

Mapping the Memories of “Living on Light”

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

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 Kalevala and Finland’s Atlantean Past

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

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…

Religion: Memory and Innovation

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

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 Retrieved Altar Cross of the Luther Church Helsinki

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

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…

Suppressed, Adopted and Invented Memories

Irene Stengs Published: Categories: English

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…