Torah scrolls are more than ritual objects; when used in a congregation, they take on semi-human characteristics and given special agency. For Sephardic communities, some bear witness to the history of migration trade that has uprooted them over five centuries. This article examines originating Morocco or today by Moroccan arguing different meaning for community depending whether used, displaye...

Cinematic language is rich in examples of religious metaphors. One Japanese film that contains religious “tropes” (figurative language) is the 2008 human drama, Departures. This paper focuses on the analysis of religious metaphors encoded in select film shots, using semiotics as the theoretical framework for film analysis. The specific metaphors discussed in the paper are the Shinto view of dea...

Unlike peer nations’ residents, Americans are less accepting of, and concerned by, (especially anthropogenic) climate change. Reinforced Theistic Manifest Destiny theory (RTMD; e.g., Ranney, 2012) explains many such “U.S.exceptionalist” phenomena by combining geopolitical history with six belief constructs: afterlife, deity, nationalism, creation, evolution, and global warming. We assess predic...