Vaccine hesitancy (VH) remains a global threat, exacerbated by socio-political uncertainty. We aimed primarily to estimate VH prevalence in Italy, identifying the most susceptible subgroups, and secondarily to assess whether these patterns varied across VH dimensions. Cross-sectional survey (web/telephone) among adults in Italy (September 2024-March 2025). The sample (n = 52,094) was nationally representative by age, gender, education, area, municipality size. The primary outcome was VH (score ≥25, adult Vaccine Hesitancy Scale, aVHS). The secondary outcomes were aVHS subscales "Lack of trust" and "Risk perception". Post-stratification weighting for age, area, and municipality size was applied. VH prevalence was 46.09% (95% CI: 45.65-46.53%). Multivariable models showed several associations with VH, e.g., gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, health literacy, political and religious orientation, personal experiences, and vaccination support from community figures. Among many subgroups significant after multiple-comparison correction, the strongest differences in VH predicted probability (PP) were estimated among individuals using complementary/alternative medicine (PP = 58.5%), right-aligned (PP = 47.0%) or politically unaffiliated participants (PP = 48.4%), individuals with middle school education (PP = 48.3%), people aged 60-74 (PP = 49.0%), and participants uncertain about healthcare workers' pro-vaccination support (PP = 52.8%). While some groups, e.g., individuals with chronic conditions, inadequate health literacy, or religious participants reported higher perceived risk, others, e.g., non-binary respondents, showed higher lack of trust. This study highlighted the importance of granular data to inform inclusive strategies. Key figures and politics emerged as relevant, deserving further exploration. Future research should evaluate tailored interventions for identified at-risk groups. NextGenerationEU funding within the Italian Ministry of University and Research PNRR Extended Partnership initiative on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

This study examines the mystical elements in pre-Islamic Arab society and their role as formative influences on the development of Islamic Sufism. While much of European Orientalist scholarship of the 19th and 20th centuries often viewed Sufism as a foreign or externally introduced phenomenon, more recent research emphasizes its intrinsic connection to Islam, the importance of considering pre-Islamic socio-religious contexts was forgetten. This article is a part of my research that explores ascetic tendencies, mystical practices, and spiritual experiences among the Arabs of the Jahiliyyah period, drawing attention to early forms of piety, meditation, and esoteric exercises that prefigure Sufi doctrines. It investigates the influence of surrounding cultures, including Christian and Jewish mysticism, as well as Greek philosophical currents, while stressing that these external elements interacted with a pre-existing mystical substratum within Arab society rather than generating Sufism in isolation. The role of divination, mystical medicine, and encounters with supernatural phenomena are also discussed as integral components of the mystical worldview. Pre-Islamic Arabs’ exposure to monotheistic, polytheistic, and esoteric traditions, facilitated by trade networks and intercultural exchanges, created a fertile environment for spiritual exploration, which subsequently informed the emergence of Islamic Sufism. By tracing these pre-Islamic mystical trends, the study seeks to clarify the socio-cultural foundations of Sufism, highlighting the continuity between earlier Arab spiritual practices and the ascetic, esoteric, and devotional dimensions of Islamic mysticism.

ABSTRACT Art and religion are often compared on the grounds that there is an alignment between feelings of aesthetic rapture and religious experience. For many, the intense emotion we sometimes feel when experiencing art allows for an analogy to religious experience. Given this comparison, several scholars have suggested that artistic rapture might be a site for religious experience. Such arguments admit several important questions about this often-made comparison: Are there sufficient grounds for an analogy between aesthetic and religious rapture? Can the feeling-content of such experiences actually lead to knowledge of a corresponding spiritual reality, such as God? And, ultimately, what is the best way to understand the relationship between art and religious experience? This essay responds to these questions. The first section examines the comparison between artistic rapture and religious feeling. The second section then considers the epistemological claim that religious feelings can lead to knowledge of the divine, urging caution with such arguments. Nonetheless, I still contend that there is a profound relationship between art and religious experience. The third section pursues this through sacramental theology, conceptualising art as a site for encounter with the created world and a way of discerning and responding to the gift of creation.

Understanding the Link Between Spirituality and Neurorehabilitation: A Narrative Review.

The article is devoted to an in-depth analysis of how the leading representatives of medieval religious philosophy understood the essence of God. For medieval thinkers, God was not merely an object of faith, as is often understood in contemporary everyday or religious contexts. He primarily functioned as a concept, a key instrument of thought through which philosophers sought to organize and systematize their worldview and cognitive activities. Through the conceptual understanding of God, thinkers aimed to achieve the highest level of rational comprehension of the world, delineate the limits of human knowledge and cognition, and simultaneously uncover the regularities of Being. The concept of God served as a methodological tool that allowed for the ordering of reasoning, the systematization of philosophical and theological knowledge, and the development of an internal cognitive discipline of thought. Such understanding of the essence of God contributed to the formation of a coherent, objective picture of the world, where the spiritual and material, the eternal and the transient, are interconnected. For medieval thinkers, the concept of God was not merely an abstraction but a means of constructing arguments regarding the origin, structure, and meaning of the universe. It provided a framework for moral, intellectual, and spiritual development, shaped the logic of religious and philosophical discourse, and served as the foundation for the formation of ethical norms and rules. In this way, medieval religious philosophy combined elements of faith and reason, spiritual experience, and rational analysis, demonstrating that the conceptual understanding of God is essential for constructing an objective picture of Being and for the development of a holistic human worldview. It is argued that there are grounds to consider that the philosophical understanding of the essence of natural and artificial intelligence found its clear definition in the concept of God, freed from mutable human-like corporeality, on the basis of which it is impossible to reveal and establish in human consciousness an objective worldview in its motivational and practical orientation.

ABSTRACT Japa is a Yoruba term used colloquially to denote a phenomenon in which young Nigerians emigrate with a high sense of urgency, distinguishing it from earlier migration forms. While existing studies often foreground economic, social, political, environmental, and security drivers, this paper examines how religion animates and organises the japa phenomenon. The paper proposes the “faith-flight-futures” triad to theorise the religious legitimation and spiritual infrastructure behind migration aspirations, thereby challenging dominant economic accounts of African youth migration. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography, comprising left-behind in-depth interviews (n = 35), focus group discussions (n = 24), key informant/expert interviews (n = 10), ethnographic observations, and field notes, we analyse participants’ religious beliefs, practices, and spiritual experiences. The findings reposition religion from post-arrival adaptation to a constitutive driver and capability in youth mobility, illuminating how spiritual imaginaries convert into infrastructures and outcomes. Religion legitimates departure (faith), equips movement (flight), and sustains imagined futures, challenging purely economic and political accounts.

ABSTRACT The reception of John Dewey’s A Common Faith has been quite marginal in philosophy of religion since its appearance in 1934. The more memorable aspect to Dewey’s reconstruction of religion, his reformulation for God, tends to confound natural theology, transgress scientific naturalism, and offend humanism’s secularity. Neither supernatural nor just natural, not personal but far from impersonal, and thoroughly experiential yet never observable, his philosophical divinity seems to elude categorization. Initially he pictures a God of personal ideals driving the process of self-realization. Then Dewey sketches how a society’s collective devotion to realizing its shared ideals amounts to its shared religious experience oriented through that idealized God. Not halting with religious pluralism, he demands natural piety from everyone in the pursuit of realizing shared ideals for all humanity. That universal project of realizing idealizations inheres a motivational unity into an ideally-real deity which Dewey calls God. That humanity-wide endeavor conveys the deified spirit of unlimited democracy, not because humanity or democracy should be God, but because genuine democracy without borders reveres one deity without peers. Dewey’s religious philosophy and its God, while distinctive among philosophical deities for personalistic, participatory, and progressive character can be classed with ethical monotheism.

Investigation into the psychometric properties of the Brief Religious Coping Scale (Brief RCOPE) in adults with substance use disorder.

Cebu has become one of the Philippines’ liveliest destinations for religious tourism, marked by daily acts of faith, ritual customs, and spiritual activities. This study examines how different groups, such as regular believers, local pilgrims, domestic tourists, international visitors, and commercial stakeholders, interact with the sacred sites of Cebu, including the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, Simala Shrine, and Magellan’s Cross heritage area. Using qualitative and phenomenological methods, like semi-structured interviews, field observations, and spatial-material mapping, the research investigates how sacredness is shaped through embodied practices, sensory experiences, commercial exchanges, social interactions, and digital circulation. The findings reveal four interconnected dynamics: (1) hybrid visitor identities, with individuals switching between pilgrim and tourist roles; (2) the importance of embodied and sensory elements in creating sacred experiences; (3) the merging of devotional sincerity with commercial mediation; and (4) the role of social encounters in forming negotiated ideas of sacredness, particularly among locals and foreigners. The study argues that sacredness in Cebu is not a fixed trait but an ongoing, emergent phenomenon, co-produced through relational, material, and emotional processes. These insights enhance scholarly discussions on lived religion, material religion, spiritual mobility, affective atmospheres, and religious economies in Southeast Asia. The paper also considers implications for managing religious heritage, tourism governance, and community-based site stewardship.

From advanced anal squamous cell carcinoma to complete remission: A case report with clinical, radiological, and patient-narrative perspectives.

The development of digital technology has driven significant transformations in how Hajj pilgrims present their religious experiences in public spaces. This study aims to analyze forms of self-representation among Hajj pilgrims in digital narratives published on social media platforms, as well as to examine the symbolic meanings that shape the construction of their religious identities. A qualitative approach using semiotic analysis was employed to examine ten digital posts purposively selected from Instagram and TikTok. The findings indicate that pilgrims digital narratives function not only as documentation of spiritual journeys but also as performative media through which piety, social status, and religious credibility are negotiated before broader audiences. The visual and textual representations reveal a shift from collective expressions of religiosity toward consciously constructed personal practices aimed at gaining symbolic validation and public interaction. These findings contribute to the field of religious communication by highlighting digital narratives as a new arena for the production and consumption of religious identity in the era of global connectivity.

The rapid expansion of psychedelic research has opened significant pathways of opportunity in treating mental health disorders. Participants in recent clinical trials consistently report mystical-type experiences during dosing sessions, and some scholars posit that such experiences themselves help mediate clinical improvements in depression, PTSD, anxiety, and substance use disorders. These reports are in keeping with the historical reality that the use of psychedelic substances and plant medicine has been tied to spiritual experience and shamanic ceremonial practice. Professional clinical chaplains are trained and experienced in providing spiritual and emotional support for people encountering illness, life change, and trauma. They regularly assist participants who seek to make meaning of their experiences in the context of their own beliefs and spirituality. This article argues that as subject matter experts in spirituality and health, chaplains are an asset to psychedelic assisted therapies and should be utilized in research trials and clinical practice, especially given a relative lack of training in spirituality and religion among interprofessional practitioners. We offer this set of competencies for chaplains to provide high quality, safe, and ethical care in the context of psychedelic medicines. These competencies include spiritual and religious care, spiritual inquiry, empathic presence, ethical engagement, and advocacy. We recognize that chaplains will need to pursue specialized education and supervised experience beyond their standard professional requirements, and pathways of personal preparation are discussed. The presence of qualified chaplains will help ensure that participants navigate non-ordinary states of consciousness with safety, sensitivity, and insight regarding improvement and growth.

The dilemma of religious language is more prominent in two influential twentieth-century philosophical thoughts: logical positivists’ verificationism and Wittgenstein’s language-games theory. The contention is whether religious language can be meaningfully intelligible and cognitively credible in light of verificationist criteria of meaning and non-cognitivist interpretations of religious discourse. This paper analyses logical positivist claim that the verification principle renders metaphysical and theological statements cognitively meaningless and examines Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language-games and forms of life, as a response that relocates meaning within communal practice rather than empirical verification. It adopts philosophical analytic method by combining textual evaluation with comparative theoretical analysis. The study reveals that both Logical positivists’ and Wittgensteinian approaches are internally coherent yet philosophically insufficient when taken in isolation. The logical positivists’ principle of verification fails to account for non-empirical yet meaningful expressions of religious experience, while Wittgensteinian non-realist readings risk reducing religious language to expressive or regulative functions devoid of truth-claims. The paper contends that neither strict empiricism nor radical contextualism adequately captures the full semantic scope of religious discourse. Conversely, a mediating posture that integrates symbolic reference, communal usage, and rational evaluation is proposed, drawing insights from analogical and critical realist theories of religious language. The study concludes that religious language remains a legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry and requires interpretive models capable of sustaining both meaningful practice and claims to truth.

This essay explores the intersection of medieval Christian mysticism and AI-generated imagery, reflecting on a six-week online course taught in summer 2024 at Drew University. A student’s experiments with AI-generated images of texts by Pseudo-Dionysius, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan Ruusbroec, and Catherine of Genoa prompted reflection on pedagogy, ethics, and the representation of spiritual experience. Engaging ChatGPT as a dialogic partner, the author interrogates the capacities and limitations of AI to render mystical texts, considering issues of bias, historical context, creativity, and energy consumption. Using frameworks of purgation, illumination, and union, the essay examines how AI images mirror social and algorithmic constraints while offering opportunities for wonder, ethical reflection, and transformative learning. The discussion foregrounds questions of student-teacher dynamics, the construction of esprit de corps in online classrooms, and the role of generative AI in visualizing the ineffable. Readers are invited to participate in this exploratory, practice-oriented engagement with spirit.

Religious buildings such as synagogues, churches, and mosques, which are central to religious, cultural, and social life, have served important purposes throughout history as sacred spaces where art, architecture and performance converge. Although these sacred spaces offer unique spatial contexts that deepen individuals’ spiritual experiences through their physical, symbolic, and atmospheric qualities, empirical studies examining this relationship remain limited. This study aims to investigate the impact of biophilic design features within the Yivli Minaret Mosque, one of the oldest Islamic monuments in Antalya, constructed during the 13th-century Anatolian Seljuk Period, on the spiritual experiences of congregation members, and to identify the key psychological mechanisms shaping this relationship. The methodology of the study is based on a mixed-methods approach that combines expert assessments conducted using the Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (BID-M), which integrates proven scientific data with artistic perspective within a historical and symbolic religious structure, with survey data obtained from 359 mosque congregation members. The findings indicate that the mosque exhibits medium-to-high levels of biophilic design characteristics and that the relationship with nature is established indirectly through historical, cultural, and ecological contexts and symbolic representations rather than directly through natural elements. In this respect, the biophilic characteristics of sacred spaces are not merely an artistic and aesthetic approach, but an element that supports individuals’ relationship with nature and their restorative and spiritual experience. Overall, the study reveals that spiritual experience cannot be considered independently of its spatial context and that sacred spaces related to nature support spiritual experience.

Inclusive Qur’anic education demands pedagogical approaches that respond to the diverse cognitive, emotional, and sensory characteristics of children with special needs, as conventional memorization models often emphasize technical accuracy while overlooking how the Qur’an is experienced and embodied in daily learning. This study examines Qur’anic memorization as a lived religious practice through the implementation of the Tajdied Method at Mumtaz Elementary School, Sidoarjo. Using a qualitative case study design, data were collected through classroom observations, in-depth interviews with Qur’an teachers, inclusive facilitators, and students, as well as institutional documentation. The data were analyzed thematically within a living Qur’an framework. The findings reveal that the Tajdied Method—integrating rhythmic movement, melodic recitation, and mnemonic reinforcement—encourages affective involvement and embodied engagement with the Qur’an. Memorization is thus positioned not merely as a cognitive achievement but as an emotionally mediated and socially situated religious experience. Learning outcomes varied, influenced by attention span, sensory sensitivity, emotional regulation, and teacher–student interaction. This study contributes to living Qur’an scholarship by reframing Qur’anic memorization among children with special needs as an experiential, contextual, and socially embedded religious practice.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of social media in the religious lives of Muslim youth in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Social media has become an important source of religious knowledge and contributes to religious expression, experience and identity formation. The Internet has immensely changed the way religion is understood and practiced today and also offers new and innovative forms of religious engagement. Young people, who are considered to be ‘digital natives’ or the ‘Internet generation’, offer an interesting case to observe this evolution. Based on fieldwork in Bishkek and on virtual ethnographic research, the author elaborates on the notion of ‘religious engagement’ among Muslim youth in Kyrgyzstan both online and offline. This topic lies at the intersection of anthropology, religion and media studies, thereby providing a valuable framework for interdisciplinary dialogue on digital religion.

This qualitative narrative study examined the development of values and character among students by exploring the factors that influence moral formation, the challenges encountered in sustaining ethical behavior, and the strategies that may strengthen character development. Guided by the theoretical perspectives of Jean Piaget, John Dewey, and Lawrence Kohlberg, the study sought to understand values formation through lived experiences and social contexts. Fifteen participants—comprising five teachers, five parents, and five first-year college students from a university in Tacloban City—were purposively selected. Data were gathered through narrative inquiry and analyzed thematically to identify recurring patterns and meanings. Findings revealed that values and character development is a multifaceted process shaped primarily by family upbringing, faith and religious beliefs, school influence, peer relationships, media exposure, and personal life experiences. Despite these foundations, students face significant challenges, including peer pressure, digital distractions, inconsistencies in value reinforcement across environments, conflicts between personal beliefs and societal norms, and emotional and psychological stressors. These challenges often hinder the consistent practice of moral values, even when students possess a clear understanding of ethical principles. To address these concerns, participants emphasized the importance of integrating values education across the school curriculum, strengthening faith-rooted and experiential learning activities, providing mentorship and safe spaces for dialogue, promoting active parental involvement, and encouraging community engagement. The study concludes that character development is a collaborative and continuous process that requires alignment among the home, school, faith institutions, and the broader community to foster morally grounded and resilient individuals.

Purpose: Black communities experience higher rates of preventable health inequities, such as uncontrolled blood pressure (BP), pain, and overall health challenges. The Nurses 4 Black Well-being (N4BW) project explores these inequities through a health promotion lens. Spirituality has been shown to be a positive culturally relevant health factor that is central to holistic nursing efforts. Therefore, this study explored relationships between self-rated spirituality and health outcomes (BP, pain, and overall health) among marginalized Black community adults. Design: A cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted. Methods: Surveys were administered to a convenience sample of N = 203 Black adults across local community sites in marginalized areas in the Midwest United States, with support from key community partners. Theistic and non-theistic spiritual experiences, systolic BP, pain, and self-rated health were assessed using standardized assessments. Findings: Regression analyses found no significant health effects for theistic or non-theistic spirituality across outcomes of systolic BP, pain, and self-rated health. Conclusion: While spirituality remains a central concept in holistic nursing, these findings suggest that its relationship with health may be more nuanced than previously understood.Additional holistic nursing research exploring spirituality's role in the health and holistic well-being of marginalized Black community adults is needed.

ABSTRACT Nowadays, travelers tend to seek spiritual and sacred experiences on a personal level rather than through institutionalized religious structures. Göbeklitepe and Karahantepe, selected as the study sites for this research, are significant ritual sites dating back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in Upper Mesopotamia. Recently, these sites have attracted increasing attention from spiritual tourists, and organized tours incorporating spiritual activities have become more common. Transcendence is regarded as one of the key components of spiritual experience. Accordingly, this study explores the components of transcendent experiences among spiritual tourists visiting these sites. In this study, a qualitative research design was employed, and purposive sampling was used to select participants. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 21 tourists and analyzed via content analysis. The findings indicate that the experiences of spiritual tourists consist of dimensions such as timelessness, self-loss, flow, connection with something higher, connection with communitas-others and nature, spirit of place, positive emotions, limitlessness, awe, and transformation/self-development. Thus, this study theoretically contributes to the development of transcendence by proposing novel sub-dimensions specific to spiritual tourism experiences at Neolithic ritual sites. In addition, the study offers practical implications by focusing on site managers and spiritual tour operators at Göbeklitepe and Karahantepe.