On the Frontiers of Psychedelic-Assisted Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care

Hannah remembers exactly where she was when she got the news her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Out for dinner and drinks with friends in Seattle, she noticed the missed call first. Then, the text messages from her older sister. When she stepped outside to talk to her mom on the phone, her father was already gone.

“I just stood there, frozen,” the 38-year-old said, “looking out and taking in the details. The way the sidewalk smelled after recent rain. The squeaking sound of the restaurant door as it swung open. The way a red light reflected off a puddle across the street. Every detail just singed into my memory.”

But Hannah could not remember the weeks and months that followed. “There was just a blur, a blank spot,” she said. There were family gatherings, a funeral, boxes of photos, and other details that Hannah struggled to recall.

Though the particulars were missing, the despair she felt only deepened. After a couple of years, her prolonged feelings of sadness and hopelessness drove her to seek therapy. She was prescribed antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help. Hannah withdrew from her church community and friends, developed anger management issues, and struggled with suicidal thoughts.

But then, Hannah came across a 2013 study from the University of South Floridaabout how psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms,” can stimulate nerve cell growth in parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory.

She sought out a counselor in Oregon who could guide her as she used psilocybin to access aspects of her memory she wanted to get in touch with again to help process the pain she continued to feel at the loss of her dad. More than psychological treatment, however, Hannah was also seeking spiritual solace. She did not want simply to recall the facts or feelings of her intense grief; Hannah was in search of something deeper: “I wanted to remember, to see how God was at work even then, in one of the darkest moments of my life.”

Now a spiritual director who offers similar services in the Seattle area, Hannah is part of a growing number of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others seeking out psychedelic-assisted chaplaincy and spiritual care to address psychological trauma and unanswered spiritual questions. Some, in search of mystical experiences, are also looking for unexplored avenues of spiritual connection to process suffering or to encounter the divine.

As part of a more general renaissance of interest in the potential medicinal and spiritual benefits psychedelics may provide, a slew of researchers, chaplains, theologians, and spiritual care professionals are asking questions about how substances like psilocybin connect the potency of mystical experience with the promise, and possibility, of mental healing.

They hope that in the next decade or so, new studies, therapies, and theological revolutions will lead to a breakthrough in the use of psychedelics for religious insight and remedial spiritual care.

A Cross In The Barbed Wire: Mixed Reflections On Faith & Immigration

In February 2019, Miguel stared out at the San Pedro Valley in Mexico, stretching for miles below him from his position on Yaqui Ridge in the Coronado National Monument. Standing at Monument 102, which marks the symbolic start of the 800-mile-long Arizona Trail, Miguel remarked on how the border here doesn’t look like what most people imagine.

Instead of 30-foot bollards, all one finds is mangled barbed wire to mark the divide between Arizona and Sonora. Here hikers can dip through a hole in the fence to cross into Mexico, take their selfie, and pop back over.

“It’s as easy as that,” Miguel said, with a melancholic chuckle.

But for Miguel’s mother the crossing was not only difficult — it was deadly. She perished trying to find her way to the U.S. across the valley’s wilderness when Miguel was just four years old and already living in the U.S. with his father.

Not knowing exactly where she died, Monument 102 became a makeshift memorial for Miguel’s mother, the obelisk marking the U.S./Mexico border a kind of gravestone. The barbed wire itself even holds meaning for Miguel. “When I come every year to remember her,” he said, “and the knots in the barbed wire remind me of the cross.

“It may sound strange, but that gives me comfort,” he said.

Miguel is far from alone in making religion a part of the migrant’s journey. As migrants move around, across and through borders and the politics that surround them, religious symbols, rituals, materials and infrastructures help them make meaning, find solace and navigate their everyday, lived experience in the borderlands.

With immigration proving a top issue for voters in the U.S. and Europe this year, this edition of What You Missed Without Religion Class explores the numerous intersections between religion and migration.

From Puerto Rico to Palestine, with Solidarity

“We’ve been here before,” Margarita says as she holds a sign with bold, red and green letters exclaiming, Basta ya genocido! Variously translated as “enough is enough” or “stop already,” basta ya is a Spanish exclamation of exasperation. And Margarita is exasperated. “What I mean is [that] we’ve done this before,” she explains, “when they [the Israeli military] evicted families in Sheikh Jarrah in 2021, when Israel invaded Gaza in 2014, after Hurricane María, when they [the U.S. Navy] bombed Vieques, during the Second Intifada, I was out here, protesting. Enough is enough!”

Wearing a loose, floral, floor-length dress, brown jacket, and burgundy head covering, Margarita joined thousands of other Puerto Ricans in November 2023 demonstrating in Brooklyn and Manhattan on behalf of Palestinians, demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. At the march, Puerto Rican flags flew next to Palestinian ones alongside signs reading Puerto Rico con Palestina or “Puerto Ricans for Palestine.” Other protestors paired keffiyehs, headdresses that have become associated with Palestinians, with black-and-white banners representing Puerto Rican resistance to U.S. colonialism.

As a Puerto Rican convert to Islam, Margarita feels compelled to take to the streets. But even before she became Muslim, Margarita possessed a sense of solidarity with people in Gaza and the West Bank. “We share a history of oppression, of being under empire’s foot, of being a people without a nation,” she says, “so I’ll continue to show up until Palestine and Puerto Rico are free.”

Puerto Rican demonstrations for justice in Palestine, and Palestinian solidarity with Puerto Ricans, is nothing new. Forged in their common colonial condition, Puerto Ricans and Palestinians have long spoken up — and out — for each other’s fight against imperialism and for independence.

But for Puerto Rican Muslims in the archipelago and diaspora, that solidarity takes on additional, resonant meaning. For some, their faith imbues their solidarity with divine purpose. For others, it is solidarity that leads them to faith in the first place.

Feast or fast, food and faith

“You’d think we’d lose weight during Ramadan,” said Amina, a registered dietician who observes the Islamic month of fasting each year in Arizona, “but you’d be wrong.”

Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar calendar, is a month of fasting for Muslims across the globe. Throughout the month, which starts this year around March 11, observers do not eat or drink from dawn to sunset.

“It sounds like a recipe for weight loss,” Amina said, “but you’d be wrong. I’ve found it’s much more common for clients — of all genders and ages — to gain weight during the season.”

The combined result of consuming fat-rich foods at night when breaking the fast (iftar), numerous celebratory gatherings with family and friends, decreased physical activity and interrupted sleep patterns means many fasters are surprised by the numbers on the scale when the festival at the end of the month (Eid al-Fitr) comes around.

Christians observing the traditional fasting period of Lent (February 14 - March 30, 2024) can also experience weight gain as they abstain from things like red meat or sweets. Despite popular “Lent diets” and conversations around getting “shredded” during the fasting season, many struggle with their weight during the penitential 40-days prior to Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

The convergence of the fasting seasons for two of the world’s largest religions meet this month, and people worrying about weight gain during them, got me thinking about the wider relevance of food to faith traditions.

And so, in two pieces — one for ReligionLink and the other for Patheos — I take a deeper look at how foodways might help us better understand this thing we call “religion” more broadly.

What's behind the rising hate?

At the end of last year, the uptick in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the U.S. and around the globe captured headlines as part of the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war.

Reactions were swift and widespread, as university presidents resigned, demonstrators took to the streets in places such as Berlin and Paris and the White House promised to take steps to curb religious and faith-based hate in the U.S.

The topic of rising discrimination and incidents of hate remains contentious, as political polarization and debate over definitions challenge reporters covering the issues.

But before we come to conclusions, it’s important to consider a) what we are talking about - or - how we define antisemitism and Islamophobia and b) the long arc of “Other” hate across time.

In the latest editions of ReligionLink and “What You Missed Without Religion Class,” I unpack both so we can better understand and react to the surge in hate.

Tomorrow’s religion news, today

At the beginning of last year, I predicted the Pope would be big news in 2023.

While I thought it would be because of his declining health and increased age, it turned out that Pope Francis had big plans to cement his long-term hopes for renewal, which are likely to outlast his pontifical reign.

In 2023, Pope Francis remained busy, traveling widely, convening a historic synod, denouncing anti-LGBTQ+ laws and approving letting priests bless same-sex couples, overseeing the Vatican repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and facing various controversies.

For all the above, he was named 2023’s Top Religion Newsmaker by members of the Religion News Association, a 74-year-old association for reporters who cover religion in the news media.

Beyond Francis and the Vatican, there were other major headlines in 2023: the Israel-Hamas war, along with the rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the U.S. and around the globe, ongoing legislative and legal battles following last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the exodus of thousands of congregations from the United Methodist Church and the nationwide political debates over sexuality and transgender rights and the Anglican Communion verging on schism.

While it is one thing to look back on the top religion stories of the year, what about predicting — as I did with the Pope — what will be the big religion news in 2024?

In 2024, we will see ongoing wars in places like Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen and Nargono-Karabakh continuing to capture headlines. So too the state of antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination. The ubiquity and uncertainty of artificial intelligence should also be on our radars, as should news related to the intersections of spirituality and climate change, the fate of global economies and how religious communities adapt to the ruptures and realignments associated with an increasingly multipolar world.

For more on my predictions, as well as additional sources and resources to explore, click the link below.

And to go even deeper into 2024’s religion predictions, you can explore my analysis of religion’s role in ongoing conflicts, upcoming elections and more by checking out my column, “What You Missed Without Religion Class.”

Contradictory Conditions: Jewish Life in East Germany, Past and Present

It’s a decidedly blustery day on Karl Marx Street in Eisenach, in the eastern German state of Thuringia. Gold and rust-tinted leaves scatter the ground of a small park marking the site of the town’s former synagogue—burned down by a Nazi mob on Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogroms on November 9, 1938.

Tucked away in a quiet corner not far from Eisenach’s theater, the memorial is one of 32 sites across Thuringia—spots where synagogues were desecrated or destroyed that night in 1938. Of the many previously active synagogues, only a few remain today. Only one has been rebuilt for weekly services. The others are marked by memorial stones and stairways leading to nowhere—including empty lots or garden plots, apartment buildings, and even a grocery store. Where the small town of Vacha’s synagogue once stood, there is now a hobby shop.

These places dot the east German landscape, from Potsdam to Zwickau, Dresden to Magdeburg. Along with other memorials like Stolpersteine—stones with brass plates bearing the names of Holocaust (Shoah) victims, laid in the pavement in front of their former homes and businesses—they stand as stark reminders of the absent presence of the region’s once thriving Jewish population. They are places where the palpable influence of eastern Germany’s Jews remains potent, even where they are no longer present.

They also signal the Jewish community’s present absence. Since the Shoah, under sometimes radically conflicting conditions, a range of diverse Jews have returned, resettled, and restored a sense of Jewish life across the former East German Republic (GDR). But the community is less-than-half what it was in pre-war Germany.

In places like Berlin, Leipzig, and Erfurt, Jews’ stories over the last century speak to lives lived between far-right politics and those of the far-left, communism and capitalism, growth and decline, remembrance culture (Erinnerungskultur) and an ominously encroaching antisemitism. Looking at East Germany–past and present–through Jewish eyes reveals today’s controversies are nothing new.

The challenges Jews in Germany faced following the Holocaust, including perils to their very existence, have shaped Jewish lives in the east for decades. The story of how under such conditions they still preserved their heritage is decades long. Now, facing declining demographics, a resurgent antisemitism, and fearing a far-right political turn, eastern Germany’s Jewish communities are once again under threat. And, once more, they are not only preserving their heritage, but claiming their place in German society.

Your Favorite Stories from 2023

Each December, Religion News Association (RNA) members vote to select the Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year. This year, journalists on the religion beat chose the Israel-Hamas war and its reverberations as both the top international and domestic religion stories of the year.

No doubt, that is a story that will continue to dominate headlines for days — and months — to come.

Here on the Religion+Culture blog, you too cast your vote for the top stories of the year…even if you were not aware. Each year, I make a brief review of the stories that caught your attention here on KenChitwood.com. After crunching the numbers, I put together a Religion+Culture Top Ten, based on your clicks and views.

This year, you were tracking with some of the top stories around the world. But from time-to-time, you also chose to dig deeper into stories others might have missed. Good on you. From religious facial markings to Bible translation news, Hindu nationalism to religion at the Academy Awards, thanks for nerding out with me in the wide world of religion news.

Religion in your face

Ash Wednesday and the practice of religious facial markings

What Al-Aqsa means to Palestinians amidst continued conflict

For Norwegians so loved the Bible, a new translation made many mad

A critical look at Luther Country

Many who come to "Luther Land” never get to delve deeply into the man's life. Maybe that should change.

What is Hindu nationalism and how is it impacting the U.S.?

Barely anyone reads the Bible in Germany

So why are Luther Bibles selling so well?

Church planting after the fall (of the Berlin Wall)

Three generations after East Germany rejected Christianity, a small group of prayerful believers see an opportunity.

What one man learned about religion visiting every country in the world

Does the world really need interreligious dialogu

Whether or not you like it, interreligious dialogue is impacting your life.

Religion at the 2023 Academy Awards

Movies are filled with religious themes this year. What might we have to learn about this thing we call “religion”by heading to the cinema?

Religion at the Rugby World Cup

Rugby, Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, is a “hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.”

No doubt, rugby union is an aggressive, sometimes brutal, and incredibly demanding sport that pushes players’ bodies to the extremes: running, hitting, jumping, and grinding their way across the pitch for 80 minutes.

But what of their souls? How do these “gentlemen” (or women) bring their spirituality to bear in a sport many consider savage by nature?

In the lead-up to the Rugby World Cup (RWC) in France (September 8 - October 28, 2023), this month’s “What You Missed Without Religion Class” takes a look at how religion might play a role in the crowning of rugby’s world champions.

Within the field of religious studies, “religion and sport” research has traditionally focused on two areas: religion as sport and religion in sport. While one could make the case that rugby is religion in places like New Zealand, I consider what we might learn by looking at how the cultural phenomena of religion and sport intersect, overlap, and mimic each other in the wide world of rugby.

Faith and ‘footy’

Martin Lewis, a Christian chaplain for the Cardiff Blues — a professional Welsh rugby team — says that religion can play an important role in rugby players’ lives both on and off the pitch.

Lewis, a 6-foot-7 Welsh back-rower with more than 400 first class rugby matches behind him, said that even though spectators may not see it, faith influences some of the sports’ most prominent players. 

For example, Sonny Bill Williams, one of New Zealand’s all-time greats, converted to Islam in 2009, saying it helped him find his way in the chaotic world of professional sport.

Since retiring from professional rugby, the former All Black has become a prominent spokesperson for Islam on Instagram and other social media channels, not only sharing his personal pilgrimage journey but speaking out on social justice issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the recent “abaya ban” in France. In the aftermath of the 2019 attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, his mother and fellow All Black Ofa Tu’ungafasi converted due in part to his guidance.

Another famous faith-fueled player is Jonny Wilkinson, whose iconic drop goal in the dying minutes of the 2003 World Cup final ensured his place in rugby union lore, winning England their only Webb Ellis trophy to date. But beyond the highlight-reel, Wilkinson told Men’s Fitness that anxiety, depression and burnout haunted his career. Being a practicing Buddhist helped him make sense of his own mental health and find “spiritual ways to become more grounded in the present moment.”

Several big names you’re likely to see at the RWC are also vocal Christians. Siya Kolisi, captain of the current world champions, the South African Springboks, said he was “born again” following a public saga when his wife found provocative photos of another woman in his Instagram messages. Kolisi said his newfound spiritual commitments helped him fight off temptation and make better lifestyle choices.

Kolisi claims Christianity has not only made him a better husband, but a better player and leader on the field. That claim was put to the test when he tore his ACL in April 2023, putting his ability to play at this year’s RWC at risk. But in what The Daily Mail called a “medical miracle,” Kolisi went from “surgeon’s table” to “being back fit” in three months. His faith inspired him during the turnaround, he said, as he asked for prayers from supporters and regularly posted Bible verses alongside photos and videos of the personal training routine that brought him back to the pitch in time for the team’s RWC warm-up matches.

For each game day, he posts a different Bible verse, sometimes with a picture of his jersey draped over his open Bible. Upon his return against Wales in August, he posted a video with the following caption on Instagram:

Deuteronomy 31:8-9 The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Thank you Jesus ❤️🙏🏾Thank you for all the support [sic] and prayers through my rehab, im [sic] really grateful ❤️🇿🇦🙏🏾

It was liked over 62,000 times.

But religion can also cause controversy in the rugby world.

Israel Folau, a professional dual-code rugby player who has represented Australia and Tonga at the international level, was famously sacked by the Australian national rugby association after he paraphrased a Bible verse promising damnation for unrepentant "drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators.” In other posts, Folau claimed transgender people were evil and that the devil was influencing governments to allow primary school children to change their gender. 

Several fellow players supported Folau, defending his “religious freedom” and right to share his opinion in public fora. Others denounced his fundamentalist perspectives, including fellow Wallaby David Pocock, a Christian rugby rockstar and politician who has been an outspoken advocate for equal marriage rights for same sex couples and has called out homophobic abuse on the field of play.

Weeping Welshmen and post-game prayer

As a rugby chaplain, Lewis says it’s not his job to weigh in on such issues but focus on the individuals in front of him.  

Lewis said he offers “well-being support” that is “pastorally proactive and spiritually reactive” to Christians, Muslims, or those of no faith at all.  

Martin Lewis, rugby chaplain. (Courtesy Photo, Sports Chaplaincy UK)

“A lot of players are just looking for someone to talk to who isn’t their boss or a fellow player,” Lewis said, “and I’m there to have a chat and maybe offer a bit of advice.”  

More than that, Lewis said he’s been a shoulder to cry on — literally — for some of Wales’ biggest players. “Being a chaplain is all about journeying with people,” he said. To that end, he’s performed funerals for players and their families, celebrated births and marriages, and even got a call from thankful parents who said his counsel helped save their son from suicide.  

At this year’s RWC, Lewis said there won’t be any official chaplains like there were at the 2011 event. Instead, chaplaincy will happen in a more informal way, he said.

Nations like Fiji, Samoa, Namibia, and Tonga might even bring their own chaplains. “Some of their assistant coaches might even be pastors or spiritual leaders for the team,” he said, “and might lead prayer time or Bible study every day during training.”

Keen viewers might also catch players praying together on their knees before or after the game. Even players from different teams will often circle up and pray with one another, he said, “maybe even for forgiveness for the cheap shots they took at each other on the field.”

Off the field, churches are using the excitement around the event for outreach opportunities. Conversion stories like that of former Welsh international Brian Haywood have been translated into multiple languages to be handed out in the form of tracts and booklets at fan zones in France. Lewis himself will be hosting an event in advance of the RWC featuring the testimony of retired rugby player Nick Williams, first cousin of Sonny Bill.

Whether it’s outreach, outspoken players or pre-game rituals by fans and players seeking to bend the will of the rugby gods in their direction, religion will play a role at this year’s RWC.

The keen student of religion should take note.

As a sport chaplain, Lewis will be one of those observers. “Rugby is bringing in people from all over the world,” Lewis said “and many people come to the pitch with a faith background. You have to look after that.”

Asked to prophesy this year’s winner, Lewis doesn’t think he can discern the outcome. “The Springboks, All Blacks, and France are all looking pretty good,” he said, “but my heart has to stick with the Welsh.”

Given their recent form, that may take all Lewis’ prayers to prove true.

In the beginning, we argued over origins

At the most recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, the nation’s largest evangelical denomination upheld its policy of not ordaining women as pastors.

After voting to finalize the expulsion of churches with female pastors, Southern Baptists voted to further expand restrictions on women in church leadership, potentially opening up hundreds of new churches to investigation and expulsions.

The SBC's policies state, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

As gender studies professor Susan M. Shaw wrote for The Conversation, such “battles over women in ordained ministry in the SBC are not new.” The matter of women’s roles as preachers, teachers and leaders at large have been debated by Southern Baptists since the convention’s founding in 1845.

One of the points used to undergird the argument to exclude women from ordination is a doctrine known as the “orders of creation” (or “order of creation”), which affirms God’s role in establishing social domains in the family, church and society through the very “order” of creation of the world, as recorded in the book of Genesis.

Shaw wrote:

In 1984, as fundamentalists gained greater control, the SBC passed a resolution against women’s ordination. The resolution said that women were excluded from ordained ministry to “preserve a submission God requires because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.”

Indeed, the discourse around origins can be powerful.

In this post from “What You Missed Without Religion Class,” I explore the conflict over origins and show how dealing with the genesis of the universe isn’t necessarily about what happened (or not) in the past, but very much about ordering life, traditions and communities in the present.

Of αιτία and the κόσμος

For word nerds, etiology – when used within the realm of religious studies – refers to a quasi-historical or mythical description of origins. Drawn from the Greek term αιτία, these stories have to do with the cause or why of something — that which is responsible for a present condition, the reason for today’s state of affairs.

One type of etiology is a cosmogony, which is a myth on the origins of the cosmos (κόσμος) – a story that tells us how the grandest system of them all came into being in the first place.

When I first started studying religion, I was fascinated with cosmogonies.

I devoured stories like that of Rangi the Sky-father and Papa, the Earth-mother from the annals of Maōri teachings (akoranga), perused narratives about humanity’s creation from reeds (uthlanga/umlanga), as told among the Nguni peoples of Southern Africa (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi), and dove deep into Ancient Near Eastern origin myths like the “Enuma Elish,” the Hindu “hymn of creation” from the Rig Veda, and Maya myths like the Popol Vuh.

Coming from a Christian household, my original intentions were to compare these cosmogonies to that with which I was raised. I wondered what different traditions had to say about the origin of everything that ever existed and what these stories had to say about the relationship between humans and the cosmos.

Why origin stories matter

But my early investigations were plagued by a fatal problem: I was searching for an essence, archetype, or sacred thread that would link these various stories into one grand narrative or speak to some fundamental truth about how the Divine is related to life in the world today.

Today, some two decades after I first heard the story of the Rainbow Bridge — a Chumash narrative about how people came to the mainland from Limuw (Santa Cruz) Island after being created from the seeds of a magic plant by Hutash, the Earth-mother — I’ve come to view these texts from a very different perspective than what my previous lens could offer.

These texts matter, but less because of what they have to say about the essential nature of things (which I was in search of) or whether or not they are historically verifiable.

As a point of fact, the interpretation of creation myths has changed over time. Take, for example, how the “Creation story” in Genesis has been seen as everything from a poem to a quasi-scientific textbook concerning earth’s origins and used as a prooftext to support views ranging from “young Earth” creationism to evolutionary creation, “old Earth” creationism to intelligent design.

Instead, cosmogonies and etiologies matter because they provide a window into how communities, or the students and scholars who study them, utilize such stories to situate themselves in the world and in relation to others.

The search for origins always comes from a specific place, interested in defining truth from its own position. And, in doing so, establishing the otherness between “us” (placed perfectly in the perspective of eternal history) and “them” (hopelessly askew in the etiology of things).

As the SBC example shows, these accounts use some narrative from the past (i.e., the world’s creation, a nation’s origins, the conception of a community, or the genesis of a particular place or geological formation) to authorize a position in the present.

In other words, these origin discourses are not actually about how something came into being, but instead about legitimizing or benefitting the position of the one who is telling or hearing the tale today.

Comparing cosmogonies, evaluating etiologies

There are innumerable etiologies floating around the world. The student of religion is welcome to read and study them. In fact, it is critical that the student of religion pays attention to origin stories. But not for the reasons we might think. 

Rather, we should approach them as just-so stories that authenticate contemporary discourses or positions of power in the fertile soil of a past beyond our reach and understanding.

In the case of the SBC, that means reminding women that they come after men. And, further, because of that “fact,” they are not meant to serve as pastors.

The student of religion’s task in studying cosmogonies like that is to make sense of alternative orders of reality and how they shape social realities in contemporary contexts.

Above all, as we compare cosmogonies and evaluate etiologies, we should be careful to approach them as very human attempts at producing a comprehensive vision of ultimate importance. Even describing them carries the risk of uncritically reproducing them and therefore, legitimizing them.

We must always remind ourselves that as these stories are told and retold, studied and deciphered, they are meant to not only remind hearers of their place in the cosmos, but to form persons for a particular kind of religious, social, political, or economic life.

And finally, a humble student of religion will remember that’s as true of our evaluations as it is of the origin stories we study.

The Library of Forgotten Wonders

In a small, eastern German city, a treasure trove of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian manuscripts invites visitors to explore the longstanding and ongoing connections between Europe and the Middle East.

You could walk by every day and not know it was there.

That is, if you could ignore a sprawling, white-walled palace perched high upon a hill, overlooking the town of Gotha’s bucolic environs in central Germany.

Known as Friedenstein Palace, it is one of the best-preserved examples of early Baroque European architecture. Established in the mid 17th-century by Duke Ernst I (1601-1675) of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, the building survived World War II and the Cold War, but the signs of its age are showing. With orange stains dripping from its windows, rotting support beams in its vaulted roofs, scaffolding clinging to columns in the courtyard, and the detritus of renovation strewn about its gardens, Friedenstein might look like a palace long past its former glory. But inside are resplendent rooms reflective of the riches of a dukedom at the height of its power and, in the east wing, a world-famous collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts and artifacts.

PHOTO courtesy AramcoWorld/Fabian Brennecke.

Altogether, the Gotha Research Library holds about 1 million objects, including nearly 362,000 books, manuscripts, and print materials. Among them are 800 years of Islamicate scholarship, comprised of 3,500 manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. This “Oriental Collection” — featuring reams of legal, literary, grammatical, philosophical, geographic, theological, and other texts — sits side-by-side on the floor-to-ceiling shelves with paragons from the history of Europe, including a UNESCO World Heritage first print copy of the German Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s "On the Freedom of a Christian,” published in 1520.

Each book and every manuscript has a story: from a famous hadith collection possibly pulled out from under a murdered mufti’s corpse during the siege of Buda in 1684 to an account of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great in Turkish, featuring a richly colored depiction of the Greek king’s mythical “flying machine” — a set of gryphons chained to a throne with rods of meat above. As they traveled, these texts survived numerous, disruptive epochs in European and Middle Eastern history — including two world wars, the French campaign in Egypt and Syria, and the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Today, scholars across the globe travel to Gotha to explore its almost encyclopedic collection of treasured documents.

The library’s history tells a tale of scientific adventure and of a contemporary renaissance in the study of Middle Eastern manuscripts. More than that, it reveals how such a significant treasury made it to a somewhat forgotten, small city in the former East German Republic.

*Corrections: the lead image on the website is of the Herzogliches Museum of Gotha, not the Palace with the library. Also, Kathrin Paasch did not become director until after the tenure of its previous director, Rupert Schaab, ended in 2005.

From Mecca to Mount Kailash: The Enduring Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World

As the summer travel season starts and the annual Hajj — the Islamic pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia required of all Muslims who are able — is expected to begin on June 26, it seems a good time to reconsider the concept of “spiritual travel” or, more specifically, pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is generally defined as a journey with a religious purpose, often taken to a place of spiritual significance involving certain rituals or paths.

More broadly, pilgrimage can be any journey and its associated activities, undertaken by people to and from one or more places made meaningful by the pilgrims themselves.

Though long associated with European Christianity in Western academia, or perhaps with significant sacred shrines like Mecca or Mount Kailash in Tibet, pilgrimage can also include trips to seemingly mundane places or movement to and from otherwise unexceptional locations.

Furthermore, pilgrimage is not restricted to institutional religions. Some pagans and others with a focus on old traditions (i.e., Reconstructionists or "Recons") travel to lands where they believe original gods were from or to ancient sites of significance. For example, a Greek Recon may go to Greece; Celtic practitioners to standing stones in the United Kingdom; heathens to Iceland; African traditionalists to significant sites in South Africa or Uganda.

Visits to nonreligious sites have also become increasingly popular as a form of pilgrimage in recent years. Large numbers of people find meaning in traveling to memorials of suffering, pain and bloodshed like the 9/11 Memorial in New York City or the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. There are also pilgrimages to places linked to such pop culture icons as Elvis Presley, Susan B. Anthony, Steve Prefontaine or Taylor Swift.

With all these varying expressions, pilgrimage — like other religious rituals and phenomena — is what we make it. Less than looking for the transcendent meaning or chasing after miracles, the student of religion should pay attention to the human elements of spiritual travel: Things like tourism and economics, politics and place.

The importance of place, people and politics.

Journeys to holy sites and major religious celebrations can be shot through with multiple meanings, personal motivations, and traveling trajectories.

Take, for example, the pilgrimage experience of those who make the expedition to Tepeyac hill in modern-day Mexico City. There, each December, pilgrims from all over the world gather to celebrate the annual feast of the Virgen de Guadalupe, joining a centuries-old Catholic tradition of celebrating what is known as “the miracle on Tepeyac Hill.”

According to celebrants, it was at that spot that May, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a Nahua villager named Juan Diego. The cloak she gifted him included an image of herself as a radiating, brown-skinned goddess robed in stars. Despite its linkages with Spanish colonialism and forced conversion, the image and festival have enduring cultural importance in Mexico. After 500 years of devotion, the annual celebrations are some of the most robust in all of Catholicism.

But each year, it is not only Catholic devotees who make the pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. So do some of the city’s Sufis. According to religion scholar Lucía Cirianni Salazar, members of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi tariqa in Mexico City join millions of others to commemorate the Virgin’s apparition. Justifying their presence from a universalist perspective, the leader of the group — Shaykha Amina — told Salazar that the location represents one of the most powerful places for connection to the “one God.”

This example reminds us that far from removing people from the world, pilgrimage is all about places in the world. Less about the world beyond, pilgrimage is often very much about places we inhabit and fill with meaning.

This means that although often associated with the extraordinary and faraway, pilgrimage sites can be local and surprisingly unremarkable. What matters is context and the meaning people give such locales.

Pilgrims frequently journey with the expectation of miracles or receiving spiritual blessings from contact with significant religious figures, symbols and artifacts (e.g., relics or icons). Or they expect the travel itself will provide some transcendent benefit. Even so, pilgrims' progress and practices are intimately tied up with the worldly dynamics of tourism, local economies and the embodied experience of bumping up against fellow pilgrims with blood, sweat and tears along the way.

Pilgrimage also has powerful political overtones. For example, the disputed site of Marian pilgrimage in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is suffused with symbols of Croat nationalism, featuring prayer beads in national colors and Mary set against the backdrop of a Croatian national flag on everything from pillows to pillboxes. Still, despite its contentious place in the civil war of the 1990s and ongoing tensions in the Balkans, Medjugorje has become a huge draw for pilgrims drawn to its calls for peace and the renewal of faith along with prophecies of divine intervention.

Other pilgrimages such as the Hajj become playgrounds for political football, with nation-states and power brokers fighting over everything from logistics and management to the miracles and blessing associated with sacred sites.

The politics of pilgrimage are also at play around physical boundaries and borders that some spiritual travelers must contend with. Beyond visas and travel quotas, pilgrims must navigate the vicissitudes of state power and the various impediments that are put in place to deter, capture, or otherwise manage and control traveling bodies.

Those journeying to and from pilgrimage sites are often on the margins of official religious communities. Instead, their motivations for movement are linked to personal spiritual trajectories, frequently with little or nothing to do with institutionalized religion.

The physicality of pilgrimage must also be taken into consideration. To return to Tepeyac, Elaine Peña talks about Marian pilgrims’ “devotional labor.” Peña writes of “the moments of pain and discomfort” for pilgrims making their way to offer devotos to the Virgin of Guadalupe every December — “walking on blistering feet, proceeding on injured knees and cramped legs, with growling stomach and salty saliva, with too much light and too little sleep.”

Enjoy the journey.

As I write this blog, I am already starting to plan for my own travels this summer, including a visit to the largest mosque in the United Kingdom and some off-the-beaten-track churches in Berlin, Germany. While not explicitly pilgrimages, these trips will be filled with divine intimations.

This means I will be looking out for some of the very things mentioned above: The importance of place, the role of politics and economics and the position and plurality of bodies that inhabit a space or move around, through and within it.

Perhaps you too are getting ready for a trip. Maybe, you are embarking on a pilgrimage of your own this summer. As you do so, try to not only savor the spiritual importance of such travel, but the very human aspects of how these journeys are made holy in the midst of the mundane.

FURTHER READING:

•Read “A pilgrim’s progress: Resources for reporting on religious journeys,” from ReligionLink.

•Explore the Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism book series.

•Read Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement, by Simon Coleman (2022).

•Explore the Oxford Bibliography on Pilgrimage for numerous resources, studies and possible sources.

What is Hindu nationalism and how is it impacting the U.S.?

In August 2022, the township of Edison, New Jersey, celebrated the 75th anniversary of India’s independence with a parade through its central business district. Many in attendance, including local and statewide politicians, wore and waved India’s tricolor flag.

One of the floats in the procession was a bulldozer bearing photos of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Yogi Adityanath.

The bulldozer’s symbolism was lost on many in attendance.

But, as Reuters reported, for Indian Muslims at the parade, the “baba bulldozer” – a blunt instrument used to demolish Muslim homes in India — was a “symbol of division and discrimination.”

In January 2023, after months in court, the inclusion of the bulldozer in the procession was declared an “act of bias“ after a joint investigation by the local county prosecutor’s office and police department. But they said there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges against parade organizers.

The incident highlighted the global relevance of Hindu nationalism, a political ideology that views Indian national identity and culture as inseparable from Hinduism as an ethnic category.

With origins dating back to the 19th century, Hindu nationalism — or Hindutva — encompasses a broad range of groups in India, but also among the Indian diaspora, from Europe to Edison.

The latest edition of ReligionLink provides background on what Hindu nationalism is, stories that show how it is influencing politics across the globe and experts to help you better understand its heady mix of ideology and national identity. 

Barely Anyone Reads the Bible in Germany. So Why Are Luther Bibles Selling So Well?

From “better an end with horror than a horror without end” to expressions like bloodhound, baptism of fire, and heart’s content, the German language is peppered with idioms from a source that’s more than 500 years old: the Luther Bible.

A translation by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, the Bible continues to be a touchpoint for German culture, politics, and language. And in 2022 — over 500 years after its initial publication — it was a bestseller yet again.

According to the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft) in Stuttgart, they circulated 130,000 copies of the Luther Bible in 2022, accounting for almost half of their total distributions that year.

“After five centuries, it remains the most popular Bible translation in Germany,” said the German Bible Society’s General Secretary Christian Roesel (Rösel), “it is and will remain a classic.”

While the Luther Bible may remain a definitive example of German literature and hold a special place in its national psyche, ordinary Germans often know its catch phrases better than its contents. According to a 2017 opinion poll conducted by Insa-Consulare (Erfurt) and the German Christian magazine “Idea,” only four percent of German adults read the Bible every day. 70 percent say they have never read it once.

That begs the question, at a time when Bible sales are generally falling — related to a decline in Christianity’s share of the overall German population — why do so many Germans keep buying it?

BorderLine Impossible

As Hamza starts tellling his story, tears roll slowly down his cheeks.

Sitting on the back of a white pick-up truck with other Ghanaians, Hamza and his fellow countrymen are within eyesight of the rusted steel bollard fencing that demarcates the dividing line between San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

On the other side of la linea, Hamza hopes to claim asylum in the United States.

It’s been a long, laborious journey to get this far. Hamza left Ghana for Brazil the day after his only daughter was born, which also happened to be Eid al-Fitr. That was May 2, 2022. It took Hamza another three, arduous months to make his way by foot, truck, train, and bus across the Amazon and then through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to Mexico. Along the way, Hamza said he saw dead bodies hidden in the bush, witnessed multiple assaults, and suffered the pangs of frequent hunger without adequate access to halal food. He spent another one and a half months in Mexico, bouncing from shelter to shelter, struggling to maintain a halāl diet and keep to his daily cycle of prayers.

Then he heard about Albergue Assabil (“the Shelter of the Path”), a sanctuary in Tijuana for Muslim migrants run by the Latina Muslim Foundation (LMF) of San Diego, California.   

Sitting outside the shelter, tantalizingly close to his goal, he is filled with hope and fear, expectation and exhaustion. “Next week, insha’Allah, I will be in the U.S.,” he said.

Hamza is far from alone.

Described as a “waiting room” for “thousands of migrants who try to reach the border between Mexico and the US every month” and a principal landing point for deportees, Tijuana has taken center stage in the ever-unfolding drama of migrants’ journeys to the U.S.

Among them are Muslims like Hamza, from places like Chechnya and Afghanistan, Syria and Ghana. According to Eduardo Campos Lima, writing for Arab News, “thousands of people from Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa try to reach the US-Mexico border every month.” Although there are no firm statistics about these “Muslim migrant flows,” organizations in the region report that more-and-more are making their way north from Brazil to the U.S./Mexico border.

For Muslim migrants, the “normal” stresses of labor precarity, family separation and potential imprisonment, deportation, or death are compounded by additional complications. Arriving in Tijuana, Muslim migrants face added challenges of finding shelter where they can consume halāl food, access facilities for prayer, and procure information about asylum in a language they can easily comprehend. If they are able to cross over, a triple bind of Islamophobia, anti-migrant sentiment, and a host of American fears about crime, disease, and a loss of cultural privilege await.

To provide a humane, and helpful, place for Muslim migrants to land in Tijuana Sonia Tinoco García and LMF constructed a purpose-built Muslim shelter. Opening in the border city’s Zona Norte neighborhood in March 2022, the shelter features separate men’s and women’s facilities, a prayer and wudu area, halāl food, Quran classes, and legal services to assist migrants. In the first year of operation, they served over 1,000 asylum seekers, deportees, and others seeking shelter.

What Hath Religious Studies To Do With Interreligious Dialogue?

When I moved to Germany, I was invited to take part in a pioneering project to map interreligious dialogue (IRD) efforts across the country.

In the aftermath of the 10th World Assembly of Religions for Peace in Lindau in August 2019, a group of colleagues got together to pursue the idea of an interreligious cartography in Germany. The goal was to make a comprehensive survey of local, national, and international interreligious initiatives and actors in German municipalities to serve as a reference for future research.

Through our investigation, we gained a clearer picture of what IRD looks like in Germany and who is taking part. From Bonn to Berlin, Flensburg to Freiburg, one of the things that became evident was that many of the local initiatives involved, or were led by, religion scholars and academic theologians. Based on my own research and experience, this holds true in the U.S. and elsewhere, with scholars often actively involved in IRD efforts at the local, regional, national, and international levels.

As I reflected on this, I pondered a few questions: Are religious studies and IRD natural companions or should they be carefully delineated and divided? Should those who study religion lead the way when it comes to multi-religious responses to the world’s pressing issues? Or, as some argue, should IRD remain an object for critical study and not participation?

Religion at the 2023 Academy Awards

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominations for the 95th Academy Awards in January, contenders included several movies with religion angles and numerous actors with faith backgrounds.

A short list for the ceremony, to be held March 12, 2023, includes the eco-spiritual themes of Avatar: The Way of Water, revivalist roots in the Elvis biopic starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, themes of “faith and fatness” in The Whale with Brendan Fraser, the Bible Belt cultural cues that are felt but never fully seen in To Leslie’s melancholic storyline, and confessions and questions of whether God cares about miniature donkeys in The Banshees of Inisherin.

That’s not even to mention Stranger at the Gate. Directed by Joshua Seftel, the film is about an Afghan refugee named Bibi Bahrami and the members of her Indiana mosque, who come face to face with a U.S. Marine who has secret plans to bomb their community center. That’s when the Marine's plan takes an unexpected turn. The moving real-life story is considered a favorite in the best documentary short film category.

Beyond awards season, 2023 has a slew of new religion-related releases sure to catch audiences’ attention.

It’s safe to say that if you head to the movies – or catch the Academy Awards ceremony – this year, you’re likely to run into religion. But what might we learn about religion and culture from this year’s many intersections between faith and film?

Religion in Your Face: Ash Wednesday and the Practice of Religious Facial Marking

Several years ago, when I was living in Houston, TX, a man walked up to me at a local café and kindly said, "Excuse me sir, you've...um...I think you have dirt on your face."

He was half right.

It wasn’t exactly dirt, but ashes. Ashes smudged on my forehead in the shape – if you looked at it just right and from a 43-degree angle – of a cross.

One could not blame the man for mistaking my visible marker of inward penance and outward allegiance to a particular strand of religiosity…for dirt.

These days, in places like H-town, you don’t see too many people wearing their religion on their face.

Nonetheless, later this month (February 22, 2023) millions of Christians across the world -- Catholic, Lutheran, Anglicans, others – will also don gray smudges on their brows to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

Traditionally viewed as the start of Lent – a 40-day penitential season of fasting and preparation preceding Easter – Ash Wednesday is most widely associated with the "imposition" or "infliction" of ashes on practitioners’ foreheads.

Christians, however, are not alone in marking their faces with religious symbols. There are traditions in India, New Zealand, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere that involve religious symbology born on foreheads, cheeks, and chins.

While such outward signs of devotion may seem an extreme in our seemingly secular age, more often than not, these religious facial markings tell us relatively little about the “inner religion” of the devotee and much more about spiritual symbols’ social function(s).

The Past, Present, and Future of Religion

Every year, numerous pundits and forecasters offer their crystal-ball takes on financial futures, political potentials, and what they think will be the calendar-defining or epoch-making events in the year to come.

But what about religion?

As 2022 ended, I had the chance to look back on, and forward to, the year in religion.

Working with the Religion News Association (RNA) – a 73-year-old trade association for reporters who cover religion in the news media – I helped oversee a poll of its membership on the top religion stories over the previous year. Then, in my capacity as Editor for ReligionLink – a monthly resource for reporters writing on religion – I put together some predictions for the big religion news to come in 2023.

The two experiences gave me an opportunity to reflect on religion’s persistent and ubiquitous role in global events. They also underscored once more how a basic knowledge of religion is not so much about understanding worlds beyond, but the world we live in right now.

Spirit Tech is here to stay

In our house, we have a new laptop.

It’s shiny and new, with a fancy blue OLED touchscreen and widgets galore.

Perhaps you too — not long after “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” nor long before the festive, gift-giving season — will be purchasing new tech.

Maybe a new smartwatch? The latest video game console? How about a meditation headset from tech startup Muse?

Yep, you read that right. The Muse headband is a brain-sensing device that provides real-time neurofeedback during meditation sessions or, as the company promises, to help you focus, sleep, or otherwise reach peak performance.

It is one of many technological innovations promising to trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experiences and deliver more peace and progress in the process.

From brain stimulation to synthetic psychedelics, new spiritual movements in Silicon Valley to the everyday ways technology is used in worship and devotion technology is changing the way we do religion.

This is what researchers Kate Stockly and Wesley Wildman of Boston University’s Center for Mind and Culture call “spirit tech.”

Not only do they believe “spirit tech” is here to stay, they also suggest it has the potential to heal our relationship with technology and radically alter the way we think and pray.

Recently, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into the world of “spirit tech,” writing two pieces to help you explore the wide world of religious technologies, their meaning, and their potential futures.