Introduction: Rabbinic Sacramentalism? It is no news to announce that in rabbinic Judaism learning and study are holy, even sanctifying activities. But what is gained by asserting, as I do in the title of this essay, that aspects of classical rabbinic learning, particularly its insistence on the oral mastery of textual material, are usefully described as not merely 'sanctifying' but 'sacramenta...

It is no surprise to anyone in this audience that in the past century or so, worldwide Christianity has definitively moved South. In 1900, Christianity firmly rooted in Europe and North America, while by the mid-21 century it will find by far its greatest strongholds in Africa and Latin America. But while so much is familiar, it’s still tempting to position North and South in the familiar terms...

Among many indigenous peoples of Amazonia, shamanism and Christianity co-exist as central cultural elements shaping the ways in which people interpret and interact with the world. Despite centuries of co-existence, the relationship between shamanism and Christianity has entered an especially dynamic era as many of Amazonia’s indigenous peoples abandon Catholicism for Evangelical and Sabbatarian...

Over the past 30-40 years there has been a steady growth in the academic literature concerning the relationship between sport and religion. [1] What this article aims to do is to map out the key features of this relationship focusing specifically on developments in the UK both during and since the Victorian period. To this end, we begin by addressing the formative and innovative role which the ...

Without Christianity, the world would be a better place. So says a growing body of scholarship on the effects of religion on physical and mental health. The central claim is that Christian belief and practices are neutral or positively bad for your health, and that studies to the contrary are badly flawed, “weak,” or inconsistent with other studies and, hence, can be ignored. In one recent arti...

abstract one of the most ancient religious rituals expanded throughout many asian and european countries was mehr faith or so called western mithraism  according to the ancient texts, it has iranian roots but the lack of documents including bas-relief or artistic works in general as well as the scarcity of remnants has caused the historians to be doubtful and skeptic about its origin to the ext...