Religious Conversion

Ottoman Muslim holy places in Central Europe went through a tumultuous history during and after the periods of conquest and re-conquest. Some of them were little more than converted churches with small numbers of Muslims praying in them during the height of Ottoman advances. Farther from the frontlines a number of “greenfield” constructions attested to a growing local Muslim population.
The return of Christian power sealed the fate of all these communities and their shrines: most of the buildings were destroyed, and only a few were spared and transformed to embody the Baroque vision of victory. In the historiography of Ottoman art in Central Europe the period which followed the Christian re-conquest (corresponding mainly to the late 17th century) but preceded the rise of modern scholarly interest (over the course of the 19th century) has received very little attention. In the 18th century, local vestiges from the Ottoman period were often subject to a propagandistic narrative of Muslim defeat and Christian victory which was inherited from the 1680s and -90s. However, a closer look at the period can show that 18th century attitudes towards Ottoman heritage are more varied than they appear at first sight and this local heritage often proved to be highly inspirational for people who were living nearby, as well as visitors who examined them. As part of a larger investigation, this article will introduce selected case-studies of monuments to invite discussion about their diverse aspects, trace their textual and visual sources as well as their relation to parallel developments in other times and places of the history of Muslim conquests and Christian re-conquests.

Öz
İslamʹın Ortaçağ döneminde Hindistan alt kıtası, özellikle günümüz Bangladeşʹi üzerindeki en gözlenebilir etkilerinden biri, tasavvufun manevi ve insani öğretisidir. Esasen Eatonʹın The Rise of Islam in Bengal Frontier 1204-1760 (1993) kitabının eleştirel bir şekilde ele alınmasına dayanan bu makale; tarikat şeyhlerinin Babür İmparatorluğu (1526-1858) döneminde, Bengal halkının İslâma girmesindeki sosyo-kültürel ve dini rollerinin tasvirine çalışmaktadır. Sufilerin ihtidaya teşebbüsleri, yerel Hindu veya Budist hükümdarlar tarafından sürdürülen gayet düşmanca bir ortamda başlamıştır. Ancak bu tarikat şeyhleri veya pirler, yeni dinin sevgi, kardeşlik ve eşitlik gibi mühim öğretilerini tebliğ ederek yerel halkın çoğunu ihtida ettirmeye muvaffak olabilmişlerdir. Bahis konusu dönemde tasavvufi tebliğin, Bengallilerin ihtidalarında başarıya ulaştıran diğer amiller yanında; bu pirlerin yenilmez özveri ve müstesna dindarlıklarına ilaveten, Bengal halkı arasında; onların inkâr edilemez kerametler gösterebileceklerine dair müşterek inanç da vardı.

Authentic Abstract
One of the most observable influences of Islam on the Indian-subcontinent, especially in today's Bangladesh, is the spiritual and humane teaching of Sufism during the medieval period. Based primarily on a critical elaboration of Eaton's The Rise of Islam in Bengal Frontier 1204-1760 (1993), this article attempts to describe the socio-cultural and religious role of the Sufi sheikhs in the conversion to Islam of the Bengali people during the period of Mughal Empire (1526-1858). The earliest Sufis attempted at Islamic conversion began in the very hostile environment maintained by the local Hindu or Buddhist rulers. However, these Sufis sheikhs or pirs were able to convert most of the local population to Islam by preaching about the great teachings of the new religion about love, brotherhood, and equality. Among other success factors in the Sufi mission in Islamic conversion of the Bengali during the period under discussion were their unconquerable dedication and exceptional piety as well as the common belief among the Bengali people that these pirs could perform incontestable miracles.

In this paper we present a multidisciplinary, developmental analysis of a Dominican Republic Vodou servidor (" Marcos "), from childhood to early adulthood, integrating ethnographic observation, field documentation , and anthropological analysis, with relevant constructs from developmental, personality, and clinical psychology. Marcos transitioned from a child with many problems to a young adult who has learnt how to control and adapt dissociative manifestations into a professional role as a Vodou priest. Most empirical studies on spirit possession (SP) have rarely taken a longitudinal, multidisciplinary approach, which may better account for such a complex phenomenon. Adopting such an approach helps make sense of both the continuity and changes in Marcos, as well as of his community's shifting attitudes towards him. We describe how specific psychological and cultural conditions help explain the change from originally dysfunctional expressions of SP to personally and socially beneficial ones. [anomalous experience, dissociation, gender, spirit possession, Vodou]

In the historiography of the early modern history of the Crimean Khanate there are few microhistorical studies of individuals. This article presents such a case study based on a lawsuit brought before the Sharia court in the Khanate’s capital city of Bahçesaray. The lawsuit concerns a woman who had apparently converted to Islam of her own volition but later married a non-Muslim man and claimed to be Christian. Her motivations and the validity of her marriage are analyzed relying on the Crimean court records and the legal opinion of a contemporary Ottoman shaykh al-Islam.

Contents: "From Conversion to Ritual Murder: Re-Contextualizing the Circumcision Charge" (Paola Tartakoff); "The Scenography of Power in Al-Andalus and the ʿAbbasid and Byzantine Ceremonials: Christian Ambassadorial Receptions in the Court of Cordoba in a Comparative Perspective" (Elsa Cardoso); "Messianism as a Philosophical Problem: The Liber de Adventv Messiae by Ramon Llull" (Celia López Alcalde)

In 1776, Moses Isaacs died in Berlin. Along with Isaac Daniel Itzig and Veitel Heine Ephraim, Isaacs had made a fortune during the Seven Years' War minting coins and supplying the army. Isaacs left behind an estate of three-quarters of a million talers in gold, most of which was organized into a family trust extending to the life of the grandchildren. The only stipulation Isaacs placed on his will was that should any of his five surviving children convert to Christianity, they would forego their share of the inheritance. The first of Isaacs' s children to convert were his two daughters, Rebecca and Bliimchen, who both proceeded to marry noblemen. In 1780, their two unconverted brothers appealed to King Frederick the Great to uphold their father's will and exclude the two defecting sisters from the inheritance. The king ruled in agreement with the brothers more out of loyalty to the deceased Isaacs than out of an aversion to Jewish conversion to Christianity. Whatever his motives, the sisters felt they had been treated unfairly, and so in 1786 they sued in the civil courts to have the anti-conversion clause of the will declared invalid. The first court's decision was in their favor. This court ruled that the anti-conversion clause was inappropriate in a Christian state, insofar as the clause interfered with the inheritance rights of Christian subjects, in this case the two newly Protestant Isaacs' daughters. But later that year a higher court reversed this decision, judging from the viewpoint of the Jewish parents, not the Christian children. This second court ruled that Jewish as well as Christian parents had the right to determine who could inherit their property. Later that same year, this second decision was overturned by a third court. The anti-conversion clause was thereby declared invalid, which meant that the daughters had won their inheritance. But in an absolutist age, the kings, not the judiciary, had the final say. When Frederick William II came onto the throne later in 1786, he followed his uncle's example and again confirmed Isaacs' s controversial will, depriving the rebellious daughters of their inheritance.

Contents: "Introduction: Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond" (Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers); "Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages" (John Tolan); "The Brighter Side of Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemical Encounters: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in the Midi (Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries)" (Gad Freudenthal); "Better Muslim or Jew? The Controversy Around Conversion across Minorities in Fifteenth-Century Castile" (Ana Echevarría); "The Spirit of the Letter: The Hebrew Inscription in Bermejo’s Piedat Revisited" (Yonatan Glazer-Eytan); "Forgotten Witnesses: The Illustrations of Ms Escorial, I.I.3 and the Dispute over the Biblias Romanceadas" (Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto);"From Christian Polemic to a Jewish-Converso Dialogue" (Yosi Yisraeli); "The Rabbi and the Mancebo: Arévalo and the Location of Affinities in the Fifteenth Century" (Eleazar Gutwirth); "The Virus in the Language: Alonso De Cartagena’s Deconstruction of the “Limpieza De Sangre” in Defensorium Unitatis Christianae (1450)" ( Maria Laura Giordano); "Apologetic Glosses—Venues for Encounters: Annotations on Abraham in the Latin Translations of the Qurʾān" (Katarzyna K. Starczewska); "Vox Populi: Carnal Blood, Spiritual Milk, and the Debate Surrounding the Immaculate Conception, ca. 1600" (Felipe Pereda); Review of "The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa, edited by Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon" (Fallou Ngom); Review of "The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition: the Role of Arabic in Judah ibn Tibbon’s Ethical Will, written by S.J. Pearce" (Igor H. De Souza)

Drawing on primary sources spanning from the late 19th century to the early 21st, this dissertation looks at proposals for 'missionary Judaism' (also discussed as 'outreach to the unchurched' and 'proactive conversion') both in sociological and historical context. Using a taxonomy of conversion based on the works of conversion scholars, this work tries to create an analytical framework for understanding the phenomenon of missionary Judaism as proposed by thinkers such as Leo Baeck, Alexander Schindler, Harold Schulweis and Gary Tobin, drawing lessons for the Jewish community of today.

This Master's dissertation was written as a requirement of the Jewish Studies MA programme at King's College London and Rabbinic Ordination at Leo Baeck College, London.

This is a qualitative study of 17 Iranian Muslim converts to Christianity residing in Canada. The study asks how the sample narrativizes the meaning of religious conversion in their lives. Analysis reveals a six-fold thematic pattern, the underlying premise of which is the relationship between volition, cognition, and sensory experience (or religious emotion). There is a consensus among respondents that human knowledge is always limited, whatever the field of inquiry. In consequence, religious knowledge based on cognition alone proves to be an insufficient guide to matters of ultimate truth. It follows that conversion is frequently experienced and represented less as a rational choice than as a spontaneously gifted event in which cognition and volition are absorbed by what Azari and Birnbacher have so aptly expressed as a " [knowing] that feels like something. " Re´sume´: Cette e´tude qualitative porte sur 17 personnes musulmanes iraniennes converties au christianisme et re´sidant au Canada. Nous examinons la mise en narration de la signification attribue´e a` la conversion religieuse. Notre analyse met enlumière une tendance the´matique en six points distincts dont la pre´misse de base est le rapport entre la volonte´, la cognition et l'expe´rience sensorielle (ou le sentiment religieux). Les re´pondants s'entendent pour dire le savoir humain est toujours limite´, quel que soit le champ de recherche. Conse´quemment, le savoir religieux fonde´sur la cognition seule est un guide insuffisant pour trouver la ve´riteúltime. On peut en de´duire que la conversion religieuse est souvent ve´cue et repre´sente´e non pas en tant que choix rationnel, mais davantage comme une´vènement spontane´ment offert lors duquel la cognition et la volonte´sont absorbe´es par ce que Azari et Birnbacher ont si habilement caracte´rise´« un savoir que l'on ressent ».

В статье рассматривается роль мученичества в распространении христианства в первые три века. Традиционно считается, что оно производило большой эффект на языческую аудиторию, демонстрируя отвагу христиан и их верность своей вере. Мы полагаем, что это было не так: мученичество не могло сыграть сколь бы то ни было значимую роль при обращении язычников. Оно было полностью внутрихристианским явлением, малопонятным и скорее отталкивающим для постороннего наблюдателя. Мученики, сосредоточившись на своем подвиге, не обращались к зрителям, она воспринималась ими не как объект проповеди, а как инструмент достижения Царствия Небесного. Во время их казни не происходит никаких чудес, которые могли бы прославить силу Бога христиан, а те, что происходят, видят лишь их единоверцы. Известные нам случаи обращения язычников после мученичеств при тщательном рассмотрении оказываются результатом или более или менее длительного общения с осужденными до казни, или реакцией на происходящее уже состоявшихся христиан. Тем не менее, мученичество воздействовало на членов христианских общин, еще не принявших крещение – катехуменов. Оно укрепляло новообращенных, давало им образец поведения, достойного настоящего христианина и подталкивало к следованию этой модели.

The article deals with the role of martyrdom in the spread of Christianity during the first three centuries. Traditionally, it’s considered to have a great effect on the pagan audience demonstrating the courage of Christians and their loyalty to faith. We believe that this was not the case: the martyrdom could not play significant role in the conversion of the Gentiles. It was completely inter-Christian phenomenon, obscure and repulsive to the outside observers. Martyrs, focusing on his feat, did not address the audience, Gentiles were perceived not as an object of preaching, but as a tool to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven. No miracles did happen that would glorify the power of God of Christians during their execution. Cases of conversion of the Gentiles after the martyrdom were the result of more or less long-term association with convicted before the execution, or reaction of peoples considered themselves to have been to what had taken place. However, martyrdom effected on members of the Christian community that weren’t baptized – catechumens. It strengthened converts, gave them a pattern of behavior dignified for a true Christian and pushed to following this model.

BAHA’U’LLAH AS ZOROASTRIAN SAVIOUR (1998)

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33. 

https://www.academia.edu/4332699/_Baha_u_llah_as_Zoroastrian_Saviour_1998_

ABSTRACT

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276).

Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). 

These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

Christianus Lazarus Lauria e l’attività della London Society for the Propagation of Christianity among the Jews in Italia , in Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 34/1 (2017), pp. 199-228

The essay reconstructs both the biography of Christianus Lazarus Lauria (circa 1821-1885) and the activities of the London Society for Propagating Christianity among the Jews in Italy. This British missionary organization, founded on interdenominational lines in 1809, became an expression of the Church of England in 1815.  Its purpose was the conversion of the Jews, emphasizing at the same time the Jewish roots of Christianity (the organization, which still exists, since 1995 took the name of Church's Ministry Among Jewish People). Approached by missionaries of this Society in Jerusalem, rabbi Eliezer Lauria converted to Christianity in 1843, changing his first name to Christianus Lazarus. He subsequently became a minister of the Church of England. A missionary in Italy, he was first in Turin (1855-1862) and then in Livorno (1862-1866). Moved by the illusory hope that the political Italian Risorgimento could trigger a religious reformation, the organization published books and pamphlets and employed several agents in Italy (the last outpost of the Society in Rome was closed in 1914).

Established in 1542, the Roman Inquisition operated through a network of almost fifty tribunals to combat heretical and heterodox threats within the papal territories. Whilst its theological, institutional and political aspects have been well-studied, until now no sustained work has been undertaken to understand the financial basis upon which it operated. Yet - as this book shows - the fiscal autonomy enjoyed by each tribunal was a major factor in determining how the Inquisition operated. For, as the flow of cash from Rome declined, each tribunal was forced to rely upon its own assets and resources to fund its work, resulting in a situation whereby tribunals increasingly came to resemble businesses. As each tribunal was permitted to keep a substantial proportion of the fines and confiscations it levied, questions quickly arise regarding the economic considerations that may have motivated the Inquisition’s actions. This book argues that the Inquisition, with the need to generate sufficient revenue to continue working, had a clear incentive to target wealthy groups within society - rich Jews, merchants and aristocrats - who could afford to yield up substantial revenues. Furthermore, as secular authorities also began to rely upon a levy on these revenues, the financial considerations of decisions regarding heresy prosecutions become every greater. Based upon a wealth of hitherto neglected primary sources form the Vatican and local Italian archives, Dr Maifreda reveals the underlying financial structures that played a vital part in the operations of the Roman Inquisition. By exploring the system of incentives and pressures that guided the actions of inquisitors in their procedural processes and choice of victims, a much clearer understanding of the Roman Inquisition emerges.

Paul and the Gentile Problem provides a new explanation for the apostle Paul's statements about the Jewish law in his letters to the Romans and Galatians. Paul's arguments against circumcision and the law in Romans 2 and his reading of Genesis 15-21 in Galatians 4:21-31 belong within a stream of Jewish thinking which rejected the possibility that gentiles could undergo circumcision and adopt the Jewish law, thereby becoming Jews. Paul opposes this solution to the gentile problem because he thinks it misunderstands how essentially hopeless the gentile situation remains outside of Christ. The second part of the book moves from Paul's arguments against a gospel that requires gentiles to undergo circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law to his own positive account, based on his reading of the Abraham Narrative, of the way in which Israel's God relates to gentiles. Having received the Spirit (pneuma) of Christ, gentiles are incorporated into Christ, who is the singular seed of Abraham, and, therefore, become materially related to Abraham. But this solution raises a question: Why is it so important for Paul that gentiles become seed of Abraham? The argument of this book is that Paul believes that God had made certain promises to Abraham that only those who are his seed could enjoy and that these promises can be summarized as being empowered to live a moral life, inheriting the cosmos, and having the hope of an indestructible life.

Th e establishment of a Shi'i Islamic network in Senegal is one alternative to following the coun-try's dominant Sufi orders. I examine Senegalese conversion narratives and the central role played by the Iranian Revolution, contextualizing life stories (trans)nationally in Senegal's political economy and global networks with Iran and Lebanon. Converts localize foreign religious ideologies into a 'national' Islam through the discourse that Shi'i education can bring peace and economic development to Senegal. Senegalese Shi'a perceive that proselytizing, media technologies, and Muslim networking can lead to social, cultural and perhaps even political change through translating the Iranian Revolution into a non-violent reform movement.

Gauri Viswanathan’s notion of religious conversion as an ‘unsettling’ political event has recently figured prominently in the scholarship on conversion. However, although numerous scholars have productively applied Viswanathan’s understanding in their work, primarily in the context of
conversion to religious minorities within the nation-state, to focus too heavily on conversion’s unsettling effects risks overlooking political constellations in which it might have rather settling effects. In contrast to the scholarly focus on conversion’s disruptive qualities, this article offers an
ethnographic account of the ‘settling’ ambitions and logics that underwrite the state politics of Jewish conversion (giur) in contemporary Israel. By looking ethnographically into the mundane discursive, pedagogic, and bureaucratic processes through which the Jewish state converts non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, I demonstrate how religious conversion works to restore the bureaucratic logic of Israeli nationalism, thereby reinstating unambiguous forms of
Jewish belonging. Religious conversion can also be an act of taxonomic repair.

According to the Third Look, at the core of Jesus’ mission is the Kingdom of God. By His words, deeds, and person, Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God—a new world on earth marked by mercy, compassion, love, justice and joy. Inherently connected to Jesus’ ministry is His death and resurrection. This proclamation challenged people of Jesus’ time a radical faith-conversion (metanoia). This challenge continues today.

This article explores, by using the model of inculturation, how Christ entered the world of the medieval Frisians. (1) It investigates what terms for "Christ" and "Lord" were adopted;.(2) It explores what imaginative roles were assigned to Christ in transforming medieval Frisian feuding customs. (3) It presents a detailed analysis of a complicated Christianized scenario which scripts how a killer has to reconcile himself with the party of the victim, a ritual known as "deditio".

Since the 1960’s there has been a marked increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. This thesis asks whether certain of these ex-Muslim Christians engage in the process of theology-making and, if so, it asks what these theologies claim to know about God and humans’ relation to God.
Utilizing the dialectic of contextuality-contextualization of Shoki Coe, and the sociology of theological knowledge of Robert Schreiter, the thesis seeks to answer these questions by the use of two case studies and an examination of some of the texts written by ex-Muslim Christians. Lewis Rambo’s theory of religious conversion and Steven Lukes’ theory of power will be used to clarify the changing dynamics of power which have helped to foster modern contexts wherein an unprecedented number of Muslims are both exposed to the Christian message and, if they choose to do so, able to appropriate it through religious conversion.
The two case studies are of a Christian community which founded a Muslim-background church in the Arabophone world and some Iranian Christian congregations in the USA and UK Diaspora.
Aspects of the contexts of these believers are investigated in some detail, including motives for religious conversion, numbers and locations of the converts, how apostates may be treated by Muslims, changes in migration and communications, and the Christian concept of religious conversion.  The concept of inculturation which helps to describe the meeting of a specific community with the Christian message will aid in analyzing the communities and individuals being studied.
The final chapter brings together the various threads which have been raised throughout the thesis and argues that ex-Muslim Christians are engaged in theology-making, that areas of interest to them include theology of the church, salvation and baptism, and that the dominant metaphor in these theologies is a conceptualization of love and power that sees the two divine traits as inseparable from each other; they represent a knowledge about who God is and what he is like, which, in their understanding, is irreconcilable with their former religion, Islam.

The article discusses the presence and interpretation of religious and ethical messages in the Íslendingasögur. It is clear that the saga authors were dependent on their time-ethical and religious ideals, and also that they were directly influenced by didactic literature. But to what extent it is reasonable to see a full religious-ethical message in a saga as a whole? To what extent is it reasonable to see the structure as guided by the desire to illuminate religious-ethical conflicts and ideals? To what extent are the saga characters and their acts exempla guided by didactic literature? The starting point of the article is the debate about the ethics of Njáls saga and significance of the conversion for the structure, message and conception of the saga as a whole. The investigations lead to the conclusion that individual sagas are not intended as religious or ethical exempla and that the individual characters and actions in them should not be interpreted from didactic literature. Instead the structure, development of the plot, character description and implicit values of the sagas are governed by the saga genre and its tradition.

Spotlight Monica Colominas Aparicio, July 8, 2021, 4:30 p.m.

Religious minorities are a key element for the writing of the history of the medieval Iberian Peninsula, not only of the Christian territories but also of those under Muslim rule known as al-Andalus. These are communities to which scholarship has sometimes paid less attention or for which we have less evidence in the sources. For example, the data of tributary Christians in the period of splendor of the Nasrid Muslim kingdom of Granada, in the fourteenth century, is scarce. Yet the picture changes somewhat if we take into consideration a wider range of identities at the time and a theoretical perspective that stops at particularly sources that are useful to understand the practices of the communities. In this presentation I will ta-ke one of these sources to briefly discuss two elements of importance for intergroup relations at the time: mixed marriages and conversion.

There has been a rich body of scholarship in recent years that challenges the accepted idea of the spread of nationalist thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by highlighting the flexible, ambiguous, opportunistic or instrumental ways in which the inhabitants of central and eastern Europe engaged with ideas about nationhood. However, so far these discussions of ‘national indifference’ have not extensively examined the crossovers with flexible and ambivalent attitudes and actions regarding matters of religion, such as oscillating religious commitment, hybrid forms of religiosity and conversion. This article examines cases of conversion and reconversion (apostasy) between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces of the Russian empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, in order to deepen our understanding of how institutionally determined forms of religious ascription often became blurred at the level of everyday activities as people exercised choice over matters of faith for various personal, social and economic reasons. By extending the concept of national indifference through an examination of religious indifference, the cases under consideration elucidate how confession became entangled with ideas about national and imperial belonging in the late nineteenth century.

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh government enacted an ordinance-'Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020'. Since the ordinance has made the process of religious conversion and interfaith marriage complicated and prolonged in the state, it is commonly known as 'antilove jihad law'. This paper analyses and lays out the potential impact of this ordinance on inter-religious marriages, and how it conflicts with women's religious, marital, and bodily autonomy. Here the author discusses the procedures of anti-conversion ordinance along with the Special Marriage Act (1954) and personal laws related to marriage to assess their impact on inter-religious couples and their prospect of getting married. The paper focuses on 'opindia.com', a self-proclaimed liberal right news portal that publishes news, current affairs, and opinion pieces from Hindu right-wing perspective, and it is frequently cited on social media by groups and people who believe in the conspiracy of love jihad in order to understand the discourse on love jihad and demand for anti-conversion law in various Indian states.

El gran príncipe de Fez es una obra de Calderón que dramatiza un perfil espiritual de importancia en la España y la Europa de la época: el converso. Ninguneada por Menéndez Pelayo, Wardropper la estudió dentro de las comedias religiosas de Calderón, pero la incluyó en un grupo que consideramos poco adecuado. Por ello, en este artículo se pretende demostrar que conforma, junto con El José de las mujeres, Los dos amantes del cielo y El mágico prodigioso, una traza de perfiles bien definidos, la de la conversión al cristianismo de un intelectual no cristiano, lo que permite resituar su lugar dentro de la obra de Calderón.

3-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship (251k€), COMCON project (Jan. 2022-Jan. 2025) "Communities of Concord: Building Contentment and Belonging through Emotional Images in Early Modern Europe and Beyond", which involves a 24-month outgoing phase at The Center for Renaissance Studies | The Newberry Library, Chicago (US), and a 12-month return phase at the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti. Grant agreement ID: 101028785. Funded under Horizon 2020 by the European Commission.
https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101028785 

How were European identities constructed in the early modern period? What sort of visual and narrative paradigms or patterns (in paintings and prints) were devised in Catholic and Iberian contexts between the 16th and 17th centuries? How were these used to advance key community ideals? The EU-funded COMCON project seeks to answer these questions. It will explore how iconographic themes and historical contexts express community values. It will examine patronage, cultural networks and social groups represented in the works of art. The findings will shed light on how images codify emotions. Specifically, COMCON will show how European imagery was selected and projected around the world to promote a particular idea of ‘emotional community’.

The project aims to uncover case studies and connections that shed light on how European identities were constructed in the early modern period. It focuses on visual and narrative paradigms/patterns—in paintings and prints—devised in Catholic and Iberian contexts between the 16th and 17th centuries and used to advance key community ideals, such as cohesion, enthusiasm and concord. In order to explore how iconographic themes and historical contexts express community bonds and values, it also deeply examines patronage, cultural networks and social groups—confraternities, religious orders and political authorities—represented in the works of art. In the process, it interrogates how the power of images served to codify emotions. It focuses on images of the triumphant and merciful church, ideal to create consensus and affiliation with the Iberian imperial and Catholic canons. It furthermore studies how these visual paradigms were transferred outside Europe, particularly in the Iberian Americas. By analysing how artistic (and social) patterns were applied and re-elaborated in new transnational contexts, the project will make a significant contribution to scholarship on how European imagery was selected and projected around the world to promote a particular idea of “emotional community”, initially as part of Rome's response to the Protestant Reformation and later as a strategy to gain new believers and subjects in New Spain. It will also explore how a normative and strategic representation of the emotions was employed—and is still used in some cases—in the politics of evangelization to shape, transmit and dictate ideal social characteristics of communities.

In the Bolivian highlands, rezos designate discs of clay on the surface of which various objects and figurines of clay are arranged in spiral. Each object is the three-dimensional transcription of a word or syllable from Catholic prayer texts translated in Quechua, which are taught during Lent. Rezos are destroyed after the Holy Week. We give here a pragmatic approach of the making of these artefacts, their materiality and their practical uses, all involving the senses (in particular sight, hearing and touch). We first offer a sample of how the mnemonics and other various elements gathered together work, giving a semiotic overview of this devices. Besides this approach of a logo-syllabic writing system, we then show that rezos also correspond to a miniaturization of the daily and agro-pastoral activities of the communities under study. This allow us to describe the parallel activities organized during the ritual season, from Lent to the Holy Week, a period characterized by a strong sensory contrast.

Prima facie, St. Benedict’s monasticism and John Calvin’s Geneva don’t seem have anything to do with each other. However, I argue that the Benedictine conversatio morum is present in Calvin’s Geneva that adopted the practice of censura morum. Proceeding with an understanding of monastery as a utopian city, I argue that in Calvin’s Geneva, the monastery has become a city. I also suggest a way forward to embrace the call of life reform for the Reformed Christians who live in the 21st century urban context. This life reform I call reformatio morum, which is regulative but not intrusive.

Simone Weil's fascinating story has attracted the attention and the admiration of people all over the world. She speaks especially to those who struggle with faith, the reality of suffering and being part of the institutional Church.
Her struggles and failures, and even her death, touch and speak to the heart of many contemporaries, as she discovered Christianity after passing through syndicalism, anarchism, communism and an in-depth study of oriental religions.
Her influence reached out beyond European borders. The Chinese Culture Christians, a group of scholars who sparked the hope of a new cultural season for Christianity in China in the 1990s, refer to her as their prototype and inspirational figure.
They especially value the anti-establishment, irregular and anti-institutional elements of Simone Weil’s Christian faith and her existence as a Christian without baptism and outside the Church. As we will see, although a believer in Jesus, she refused until nearly the end of her life, to enter the Catholic Church, objecting to its dogmatic pronouncements and condemnations.
However, the notion that she died without baptism prevailed for few decades after her death and still persists in some quarters, in spite of strong evidence of the contrary.