Conspiracy theories and religion intersect within the profane world of politics, society, and social communities. The role of religion in the instigation and perpetuation of moral panics is well known, but what occurs when conspiracy, moral panics, religion, and the securitization of perceived national threat interact? In this paper, social media posts, podcasts, and online interviews with the leaders of an organized protest, Take Back Our Border, are analyzed for content of each of these topics. The Take Back Our Border convoy named themselves God’s Army and are fighting to save the United States from unauthorized immigrants. These immigrants are perceived to be crossing into the nation to destroy its culture and Christian faith, and to stop the elites behind the Great Replacement conspiracy: the enslavement of white Christians.

This article introduces “Immanentist Pentecostalism” (IP) to analyse the complex relationship between Bolsonarism and (Neo)Pentecostalism in Brazil. Based on in- depth interviews in Belo Horizonte, IP is defined as a lived theology characterised by a direct, constant relationship with an immanent divine active in all worldly life. The ethnographic findings reveal the primacy of personal faith over institutional loyalty; overt political discourse is largely absent from these accounts. The article argues that the link between IP and Bolsonarism is not direct ideological command but one of affective alignment. Bolsonarism’s political imaginary, its moral dualism and messianic leadership, resonates with the pre-existing spiritual dispositions of believers. This dynamic, which re- embeds spirituality in human experience, re-enchants politics from within Charles Taylor’s “immanent frame,” representing not a pre- modern revival but an exhaustion of a modern logic.

Latour constructs a plurality of ontologies by distinguishing various modes of existence with their own type of existent. One of these modes of existence is religion, which involves invisible “beings of religion.” Latour criticizes both psychological and (onto)theological interpretations of such beings. He distinguishes between psychogenic beings that constitute the self, and beings of religion that transform the self. Whereas psychogenic beings can be addressed through therapeutic or ritual procedures that can provide cure, beings of religion can be addressed through contemplative practices of prayer, meditation, or ceremony that can transform. This article argues that Latour’s beings of religion may have much potential for religious studies and presents a Latourian description of ayahuasca ceremonies as a case study.

This article discusses how Bruno Latour’s sociology of associations can help renovate the sociology of religion and its subfields of spirituality, mysticism, and esotericism. It proposes a moratorium on the idea of modernity and its relative theories on secularisation, spiritualisation, and commodification, arguing for a renovated focus on ethnographical fieldwork. Drawing on Latour, this article suggests seeing the sociology of religion as including metaphysics, which has often been forgotten through a focus on power struggles. It suggests that the methodology of religious discourses could be crucial, avoiding descriptivism and hyper-specialisation and offering a tool that can be applied to different religious and cultural contexts. Furthermore, this article suggests that artistic products in popular culture are not only receptacles of social forces but could be seen as nonhuman actors, capable of producing new religious doctrines and practices. To conclude, this article discusses the ethical and political implications of Latour’s sociology of associations, showing how its bottom- up approach favours a postcolonial approach to subjectivities and commensurability.

In May 2022 we held a workshop at the University of Erfurt titled Aesthetics and Affects of Power in the Context of Religion. The workshop was born out of a shared personal interest in the implicit, unconscious, material, and embodied negotiations of power, specifically as they take place in religious fields and discourses of religious participation. We observed that religious practices and discourses have historically taken, and continue to take, an especially important role in creating sensory mechanisms that structure power relations: shaping perception via aesthetics and affects. These sensory power mechanisms outlive religious practices and expand far beyond the religious sphere. They become alive in the body of the aesthetically affected. This conversation is an attempt to approach, grasp, and frame aesthetics and affects of power as a starting point for any future exchange and discussions.

Private self-care practices and displays of community-care often appear to be at odds, yet this article explores how physical proximity and spatial dynamics during face-to-face encounters contribute to the overall aesthetic experience of both – self-care and community-care. To comprehend the significance of domestic space within Beirut, particularly in the context of Sufism, the article explores Sophie’s narrative and her conceptualization of her apartment as a private-public space for communication. Hinging on certain privileges, this refuge, distinct from the world outside, serves as a stage for the ritual gatherings of the Sufis. The positioning of bodies during these gatherings illustrates how this arrangement is maintained or disrupted through practices involving different degrees of proximity and distance. Socio-spatial interactions display a social order that oscillates between self-care and community-care, between self-control and collective intimacy. By contemplating the power dynamics inherent in this ethnographic context, the implicated link between socio-spatial interaction, practices of class distinction, and aesthetics within spiritual practices are discussed.

Political ceremonies are particularly suitable for examining the relationship between aesthetics, power, and religion. This article discusses the roles of religion and power in multimedia events that prominently involve sensual perception and emotions through the lens of the “Torch Lighting Ceremony” for the State of Israel’s 70th Independence Day in 2018. By use of a theoretical approach combining concepts of ritual, the body and materiality, the article aims to explore the dynamics of power in interaction with religious and aesthetical dimensions. It argues that both the emotionality of the event and references to religion within it decisively contribute to the legitimation of the performed narratives concerning Israeli national identity. With this approach, the contribution presents a study of religion and politics in the contemporary world that goes beyond the dichotomic accounts influenced by secularizing narratives and rather stresses the entanglement of both spheres.

This article uses the case study of Sri Lankan women who went to Buddhist and Christian middle-class girls’ schools in Colombo and Kandy to examine the influence of affect on their intersectional lives. I use the theories of Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed on affect. Affects, they agree, emerge within the brinks of contact, it is the process of being acted upon (being affected) and acting on (affecting)—affect is a specific form of relation. This article interwaves the ethnographic findings with the theoretical discussions to progressively build on it and show precisely the relations between affect, language and intersectional identities. Buddhist and Muslim girls’ voices and experiences at middle-class girls’ schools in Sri Lanka will be examined from an intersectional perspective. I propose to think of affect as the binding glue of the frames of our intersectional identities.

In May 2022, we held a workshop at the University of Erfurt on aesthetics and affects of power in the context of religion. The idea was to create a forum for exchange on how to approach social-cultural-religious power dynamics in their embodied and material dimensions, and how to explore how religion participates in the formation of subjects through aesthetics and affects. This special issue continues the discussion. The editorial contextualizes the special issue’s theme within various academic discourses. It shortly introduces the key concepts “power” and “aesthetics and affects” as well as the different contributions.

The body plays a crucial role in a critical study of religion that is interested in the interrelation of religion and social and cultural power dynamics, yet the “body” often remains a floating signifier. This paper seeks to overcome this default mode of critical social and cultural studies by placing the focus on the material body. Through an examination of the aesthetics of the neo-spiritual Israeli movement practice known as Gaga, I demonstrate how power materializes in bodies during practice; how the bodily and material power dimensions, both implicit and non-linguistic, can by critically addressed; and how neo-spiritualities as part of a contemporary religious landscape evolve around the body as a medium of power dynamics. I exemplify my approach by examining two aesthetic processes in the context of Gaga: (1) the connection between the teacher of movement instruction and the Gaga class participant and (2) Gaga’s body techniques that train sensory attention.