This article examines the speculative potential of designing a spiritually attuned artificial intelligence platform capable of supporting processes of meaning-making, fostering conditions conducive to emotional resonance, and assisting in the discovery of intrinsic values across diverse spiritual orientations. Situated within the socio-cultural context of late modernity—marked by the rationalization of life-worlds, increased individualization, and the erosion of traditional frameworks of meaning—we interpret the renewed emphasis on spirituality, emotional and embodied experience, as well as interiority, as indicative of a broader re-engagement with right-hemisphere cognitive modes, as theorized by Iain McGilchrist. Rather than conceptualizing AI as a surrogate for spiritual experience or communal belonging, we explore whether this fundamentally left-hemisphere technological artifact could paradoxically be reconfigured to facilitate holistic perception, existential reflection, and prosocial engagement. Acknowledging the ethical complexities and epistemological constraints of such a vision, we propose a theoretical model for a digital interface that does not prescribe, but invites; that does not instruct, but listens. We conclude by posing a critical question: Can artificial intelligence, when sensitively designed, contribute to the re-enchantment of human experience—not by transmitting meaning, but by enabling deeper forms of dialogical presence?

This paper examines the application of the Act on the Removal of the Veil (Zar and Feredža) in the Gora region in the mid-20th century. Gora is a mountainous area located between the peaks of Šarplanina, Koritnik, and Korab. In administrative terms, it includes the borough of Dragaš and 18 villages. The Act on the Removal of the Veil came into effect in the People’s Republic of Serbia in 1951 and can be seen as an extremely radical step by the communist government. Its application involved the prohibition of wearing garments that Muslim women used to cover their heads and bodies. With this Act, two ideals of communist governance were promoted – the emancipation of women and the achievement of gender equality. According to the memories of the people from Gora, the Act had a very traumatic effect on many women in the Gorani community. It primarily disrupted the continuity of a centuries-old tradition of wearing headscarves and terlik, which also expressed the marital status of women within the Gorani community. This paper starts from the assumption that the ban on covering represents a strategy for promoting secular political ideologies, while highlighting the limitation of religious freedoms. The Act on the Removal of the Veil is analysed within the framework of a state-imposed process of secularization in the local community.

In 1934, after several years of struggle, the Orthodox community of Maribor was awarded a lot to construct a new sacral building on General Maister Square (then Yugoslavia Square) in Maribor, at the site of the recently removed monument dedicated to Vice Admiral Wilhelm Tegetthoff. The square boasts a rich symbolic history, wherein the very names of the square have clearly indicated the identity of the city over time. The new government sought to modify public space in accordance with the new state – these spaces had to be given not only a Slovenian, but also a Yugoslavian identity. The first modification was changing the square’s name to Yugoslavia Square, after which a Serbian Orthodox church was built in the Serbian national architectural style by architect Momir Korunović (1883–1969), who designed all three Serbian sacral buildings in the province of Dravska Banovina (in Maribor, Ljubljana, and Celje). The Church of St. Lazarus was to be ideologically connected to the monument dedicated to King Aleksandar Karađorđević on Liberty Square, which would provide a clear Yugoslavian identity to the city district.

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The paper examines Serbian press coverage of the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Serbia during the 1980s. It is based on an analysis of the most influential daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and magazines printed in Serbia between 1980 and 1990. The research aims to reconstruct perceptions of the revival of religiosity in Serbia during this period and to identify its root causes. The research showed a close causal connection between the change in public perception of religion, that is, the revival of religiosity in Serbia, and the changed political environment in former Yugoslavia in the 1980s. The research suggests that the escalation of tensions in Kosovo triggered the ethnic mobilization of Serbian society and consequently strengthened the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia in the late 1980s.

Yugoslavia officially recognized major religious communities, including the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the Islamic community, while around fifty smaller, unrecognized groups also existed by the 1960s. This study examines state laws and the development of two such communities – Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Bahá’í community. Despite a legal framework that guaranteed religious freedom, including the separation of church and state and protection from coercion, the reality was shaped by tensions between government policies and religious groups. This analysis explores how national identity, legal compliance, and ideological alignment with the state influenced the treatment of smaller religious communities within Yugoslavia’s broader framework of religious freedom.

The global emergence of Charismatic Christianity ought to be regarded as one of the most consequential phenomena in contemporary history. With estimates reaching as high as 700 million adherents, Charismatics from various denominations have heralded the emergence of Global Christianity. Their considerable popularity has prompted numerous scholarly analyses aimed at elucidating the factors contributing to the emergence of Charismatic Christianity. Social scientists often elaborate on functionalist explanations, suggesting that the popularity of Charismatics can be understood through varying responses to social modernisation. Such explanations, however, frequently neglect the theological innovations inherent to Charismatic Christianity, which garners greater focus from theologians. Among them, Harvey Cox notably asserted that the widespread appeal of Charismatic Christianity can be attributed to its embodiment of experiential primal spirituality. Cox elaborated on three dimensions of Charismatic Christianity as a manifestation of primal spirituality: primal speech, primal piety, and primal hope. The objective of this article is to elucidate Cox’s argument and to examine the advantages of this approach while also offering insights derived from fieldwork conducted among Charismatics in Slovenia. The article posits that Cox’s approach merits appreciation among social scientists, as it identifies unique characteristics of Charismatic spirituality, while also acknowledging its limitations.

This article presents the concept and dynamics of secularization policies and the atheization process in Montenegrin society following World War II. The process of secularization began with the Communist Party’s rise to power and had its most significant manifestations until the mid-1950s. In this research, in addition to the specific secularization policies of the communist authorities, an analysis of the relationship of the state, that is, the communist authorities, towards the religious communities in Montenegro is given. Montenegro was the Yugoslav republic in which the process of atheization and secularization took place most intensively in relation to the federal level. The research presented in the article also includes an analysis of the results of the secularization of the three largest religious communities in Montenegro.

Particularly in comparison with the neighbouring republic of Croatia, where the ethnicization of religion, beginning in the early 1970s, was rather pronounced, relations between the Catholic Church and state authorities in Slovenia – the northernmost republic of Yugoslavia – remained relatively calm and cooperative throughout the late socialist period. Based on an analysis of a wide range of public and archival documents, this paper demonstrates how Slovenian religious policy was proposed as a sophisticated example of how believers could be successfully integrated into modern socialist society, and was presented as such to Vatican diplomats, international experts, and foreign journalists. Up until 1990, the communication between Party officials and the Church hierarchy conveyed a distinct tone of courtesy, and local priests generally encountered a supportive or at least unobstructive attitude when, for instance, proposing the construction of new churches. At the same time, however, the more independent intellectuals, Catholics and Marxists alike, who urged the Party to abandon its orthodox Marxist-Leninist understanding of religion in favour of a genuine dialogue, were marginalized. Thus, a proper debate about a topic so essential for socialist secular society never took place, and the late socialist religious policy left behind an ambiguous legacy.

This article proposes that the material dimension of religion can be articulated and experienced online. Considering that religion is an embodied phenomenon which relies on material elements, this paper will particularly focus on religious practices taking place in immersive virtual platforms in order to comprehend how the material dimension is manifested by users in their everyday life. Through a theoretical analysis, we propose that 3D social virtual worlds efficiently enable users to experience key material aspects such as embodiment and space, due to their high levels of immersivity, interactivity, and agency, by embodying avatars in customizable spaces. Meyer’s theory of mediation, Hoover and Echchaibi’s Third Spaces of Digital Religion, and Campbell’s theory of Religious–Social Shaping of Digital Technology (RSST) allows us to center the discussion on how religions are practiced and experienced by individuals and communities through various mediation practices, and how digital media acquires more affective meanings when they are involved in religious pursuits.