This article interrogates the discursive construction of the female voice as ‘awrah within digital da’wah, specifically analyzing the Instagram account @thesunnah_path. Utilizing Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), synthesized with the Mubādalah (reciprocity) hermeneutic, the study examines how religious authority and patriarchal ideologies are reproduced through social media. The analysis of text, discursive practices, and social structures reveals that theological terms such as fitnah (temptation) and obedience are instrumentalized to legitimize the domestication of women. This phenomenon represents a form of “digital patriarchy” that operates through language and algorithms to silence female agency. Conversely, the Mubādalah approach offers an egalitarian reinterpretation, positing the female voice as a medium for spiritual and intellectual expression rather than a source of moral corruption. Ultimately, this research underscores the urgency of deconstructing hegemonic narratives to restore gender justice and human-centric values to contemporary Islamic digital discourse.

ABSTRACT Migration reshapes South Africa’s religious and political landscape, yet the experiences of African youth who traverse the continent remain under-examined. Drawing on biographical interviews and participant observation with Nigerian and Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg (2024–25), this article explores how young people negotiate xenophobia, post-apartheid inequality and the unfinished business of decolonization through religious and spiritual practices. We show how schools, clinics and urban neighborhoods function as key sites where colonial and apartheid racial hierarchies are reproduced, and where migrants are marked as criminal, excessive or disposable. At the same time, faith-based organizations and everyday spiritual repertoires provide infrastructures of mobility, belonging and political critique, enabling youth to reframe marginalization in Pan-African and theological terms. By bringing postcolonial and Pan-African debates into conversation with lived religion, the article demonstrates how transnational African youth convert traumatic encounters with exclusion into fragile yet meaningful forms of agency and hope in Johannesburg today.

Abstract The paper is the first attempt at theo-linguistic research into the formation of basic theological terms in the Turkmen language based on the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” prayers. The formation of these basic terms is not yet finished. It is a process known in Christianity since the very beginning to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith in a new language. Often it also changed the original meaning of the existing words. It might be noted that in the Turkmen language the biblical parts of the “Our Father” and the first part of the “Hail Mary” have a relatively established nomenclature. The translation of the second part of the “Hail Mary” is still the work of amateurs, who use the language on a daily basis but have no linguistic training. Certain concepts may, therefore, still evolve.

The study “Proposals for the Refinement of Theological Terminology in Slovak: Part Six” examines the inaccuracy of the Slovak term stvorenie (“creation” –creatio ex nihilo) in relation to beings that did not come into existence through stvorenie, i.e. God’s act of bringing things into existence from nothing, but rather through tvorenie (“forming” –creatio ex materia or formatio), i.e. from pre-existing matter and through the actions of other creatures. This issue appears in certain magisterial, liturgical, and theological texts. The study analyses the theological terms creatio prima, creatio secunda, and creatio continua, ultimately proposing that only the term stvorenie (i.e. in the sense of creatio ex nihilo) should be used.

Comprehensive evaluation of the teaching curriculum proportion at GBI Rayon 15 Musi Palem Indah (MPI) Palembang is a fundamental element in ensuring the doctrinal health of the congregation. However, the current evaluation process is inefficient due to reliance on manual mapping of ever-growing sermon archives. This conventional method carries a high risk of subjectivity bias, making it difficult for church leadership to objectively observe teaching theme trends. This study addresses this issue by developing an automated document clustering system based on Text Mining to process 406 sermon summary documents from the 2023-2025 period. The methodology includes preprocessing, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) weighting to highlight distinctive theological terms, and the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm. DBSCAN was specifically selected for its superiority in handling data with varying densities and its ability to isolate outliers without requiring a static cluster count parameter. Test results indicate an optimal configuration at Epsilon 0.3 and MinPts 3, yielding very high internal validity with a Silhouette Coefficient of 0.8888 and forming 32 core topic clusters. Significant findings reveal a high noise ratio (71%), which effectively separates incidental topics, such as holiday celebrations, from regular material. Practically, these results serve as an early warning system mechanism for the church to detect doctrinal imbalances or material gaps, providing a strategic data-driven foundation for holistic curriculum improvement.

Romanian biblical texts are a fundamental source for documenting the old Romanian lexicon and for capturing the semantic evolution of numerous words, playing a decisive role in the compilation of the Thesaurus Dictionary of the Romanian Language (Dicționarul-tezaur al limbii române). These texts provide both specific theological terms and elements of common vocabulary, contributing to the reconstruction of the graphic, phonetic, and morphological forms that were characteristic of the era. Although some lexical references extracted from these texts are not always scientifically rigorous, their theological and cultural importance remains essential. Numerous lexical units identified in the biblical corpus represent the first attestations of words or meanings, which were later integrated and developed in the main lexicographical works dedicated to the Romanian language. At the same time, biblical texts provide very early attestations, often extremely close to the first appearances of a term, thus supporting the diachronic analysis of Romanian vocabulary. The use of biblical texts in the Thesaurus Dictionary has not only documentary value, but also helps by providing a complex framework for understanding the evolution of the Romanian language in all its dimensions (lexical, stylistic, and cultural).

Abstract: The article explores late-medieval vierges ouvrantes (hinged Virgins that reveal Christological or Trinitarian interiors) as thresholds between secrecy and revelation. They translate the porta clausa of Ezekiel 44:2 and the hortus conclusus of Song of Songs 4:12 into sculpture, illustrating the paradox of a body that is both inviolate and permeable. Their mechanisms turn the Incarnation into a visible event and also expose cultural fears about vision, curiosity and trespass. Patristic writers framed these fears in theological terms. Jean Gerson condemned the vierge ouvrante as ‘unwarranted exposure.’ Later comparanda, from illuminated manuscripts, obstetrical collections and the Mechelen Besloten Hofjes , repeat the same tension between revelation and restraint. The article argues that both the opening and the later sealing or destruction of these statues reveal a theology of thresholds that reshaped the act of seeing.

This study explores the intersection between the concept ‘kudu sumunar pindha baskara’ in the Sapta Darma Sesanti and the phrase ‘lampsatō to phōs humōn’ in Matthew 5:16. The central issue addressed is how these two concepts of light relate in ethical, spiritual and theological terms, and how their relationship may serve as a foundation for gospel contextualisation. The research employs a qualitative-critical approach through biblical text analysis (narrative hermeneutics) and a theological-cultural examination of Sapta Darma teachings via literature study and contextual interpretation. The findings reveal a similarity in the ethical dimension – namely, a call to live as light for others through open and constructive good works. However, a significant ontological difference emerges: Sapta Darma presents light as the emanation of human spirituality, whereas in Matthew 5:16, light originates from the relationship with Christ as the true light. In conclusion, the Sapta Darma Sesanti can serve as an effective starting point for gospel contextualisation, provided that the concept of light remains grounded in the Christological and soteriological framework central to Jesus’ message. Contribution: This study contributes to the discourse on contextual theology by positioning local Sesanti as a medium for critical theological reflection. Furthermore, it enriches the methodology of gospel contextualisation in dialogue with the indigenous spirituality of the archipelago in a scholarly and responsible manner.

ABSTRACT The notion of ‘traditional values’ is a relatively new phenomenon in the political discourse of Russia. This concept was elaborated by the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 2000s and has become a contribution to the construction of the new Russian identity. For more than 20 years, the concept has evolved from a theological term based on the theological interpretation of human nature to a set of rigid propositions and a subject of serious attention of the state. The concept of traditional values as understood by the ROC and the state is compared. Traditional values are examined in the light of Christian nationalism. The dichotomy of the universality/particularity in the interpretation of traditional values is highlighted. The relationship between the proclaimed Christian nature of traditional values and their rootage in the Soviet understanding of morality is shown. The impact of traditional values on the public mood in Russia is discussed.

According to Flannery O’Connor, the theme of her prose is ‘the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.’ Taking his cue from this claim, the author reconstructs in theological terms the relationship between grace and human nature in O’Connor’s stories. The sharp contrast between the divine and the human, and the violence of the encounters between these two realms of existence has led some scholars to claim that O’Connor’s religious thought owes much more to the Southern Protestant tradition than the Catholic Church’s theology. The author attempts first to show what is specific to the Protestant approach to the relationship between human nature and grace, and then to consider whether such an approach can be found in O’Connor’s stories. The main conclusion is negative; although one can hardly accuse her of anthropological optimism, in her stories she presents a vision far removed from Lutheran pessimism. Among the typically ‘Catholic’ features of her worldview have been highlighted: her faith in a finite, material, imperfect reality – especially in the human body, which becomes a place of epiphany.

The conquest of the land in 2 Kgs 17:5 is the key element in the account of the fall of Samaria (2 Kgs 17:3–6). The source analysis of this verse leads to the conclusion that its shorter version, witnessed by the Old Latin Palimpsestus Vindobonensis (La115) where the conquest of the land is not mentioned, may be the oldest recoverable form of this text, allowing for the reconstruction of the true Old Greek text and its Hebrew Vorlage, in this regard alternative to the longer version attested to by the Masoretic text. The survey on the possible reasons underlying the postulated textual expansion in 2 Kgs 17:5MT indicates that the men­tion of the attack on the entire country adds drama to the events narrated, emphasises the totality of the As­syrian invasion, and makes the capture of Samaria more significant. In contrast, the lectio brevior of the OL appears to be less dramatic and somehow ‘flat’ from the narrative point of view. In this way the narrative of the lectio longior takes on an increasingly anti-Samarian tone disclosing possible pragmatic motives un­derlying postulated textual expansions. Historical contextualisation of the events narrated in 2 Kgs 17:5MT completes the picture, which seems to be much more complex than the straightforward biblical narrative would suggest. The final literary context in which these events are narrated indicates that the biblical editor is mostly interested in theodicy to depict the total defeat of Samaria and the definitive end of the Kingdom of Israel in theological terms. In this regard, the remark about the conquest of the land in the MT, in later Greek versions, and the Targum, intensifies the anti-Samarian rhetoric of the biblical text in comparison with those textual versions which do not mention it (OL and several Greek testimonies).

This research is a study of the local cultural tradition integration in Islamic education that focuses on the Malam 1 Suro tradition in Petanusugi Village, Indonesia. The research was conducted through a qualitative case study, and data were gathered via in-depth interviewing, participant observation and document analysis. Key informants were also purposively selected and were religious teachers, community leaders, and educational officers. The study examines how Islamic educational structures can be made to align with culturally embedded practices while preserving theological coherence, especially the doctrine of tawhid. Results indicate a range of attitudes between firm support and outright refusal of the tradition, depending on its perceived conformity with Islamic norms. Others, such as congregational prayer or religious sermons, were considered pedagogically compatible with Islamic values. Still, other rituals that include influential gestures, such as tapa bisu (silent puberty fast), had to be revisited in theological terms. The study notes that Islamic educational values, tazkiyatun nafs, muraqabah, silaturahmi, and tauhid, can be found in traditional formats, indicating that, in fact, learning from local wisdom can be placed in the context of character and spiritual education. This research contributes to the literature on contextual Islamic pedagogy and supports the indigenization framework by providing empirical evidence of culturally responsive religious education. Practical implications include the need for policy frameworks that support curriculum adaptation, capacity-building for educators, and the development of an Islamic Cultural Education (ICE) model. These findings affirm that Islamic education can be made more inclusive, dynamic, and contextually relevant through dialogical engagement with local traditions under theological guidance.

This study aims to examine the theological meaning of the nggua ceremony, a traditional death ritual practiced by the Liti Pumbu tribe in East Manggarai, and its relevance to Catholic eschatological teachings. Employing a qualitative-descriptive approach and ethnographic method, the research explores the local community’s understanding of life after death and the symbolic meanings embedded in the nggua ritual. Data were collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation involving customary leaders and community members. The findings reveal that nggua is understood as a sacred transition of the soul toward eternal life and as an expression of communal faith in salvation and union with God and the ancestors. The ritual centers on pau (customary prayers) and the offering of sacrificial animals, symbolizing hope for heavenly peace and divine light. Although the community does not articulate the concept of eschatology in formal theological terms, they demonstrate a deep spiritual awareness of eternal life. Supporting factors for the preservation of this ritual include the transmission of ancestral values and strong spiritual convictions, while hindering factors involve the low engagement of younger generations and the influence of modernization. This study highlights the importance of inculturating the Catholic faith in local contexts and calls for pastoral and educational strategies that bridge the gap between doctrine and cultural expressions of belief.

BackgroundReligious minority groups posed challenges to health authorities in Western countries, by violating guidelines for fighting Covid-19, many times from lack of access to relevant health information. This phenomenon occurred among the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) population in Israel – a religious minority whose many members violated Israeli Ministry of Health guidelines, causing high rates of infection.ObjectiveThe study aims to examine messages dissemination regarding Covid-19, among the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, via an alternative—“traditional”—communication channel used by this community over the years: street posters (pashkevils).MethodThematic analysis of 20 pashkevils collected during the first year of Covid-19.ResultsFindings revealed three major discourses emerging via these pashkevils: A medical support discourse, calling for compliance with medical authority guidelines; An oppositional discourse, expressing strong objection toward medical authority guidelines; and a theological discourse, explaining the pandemic in theological terms, mainly related to immodesty.ConclusionFindings provide insights regarding the ability of religious leadership to take action to influence the health of the ultra-Orthodox community by disseminating messages and controlling access to information; the intersection of communication, religion, and health; the importance of identifying communication channels unique to religious minorities in order to learn their perspectives regarding health behaviors; and to use these channels for culturally adapted information dissemination.

The article examines the conditions and mechanisms leading at an early stage of the formation of a literary tradition to the dependence of the innovative meaning of the word and its context. The translation of the title of Kosta Khetagurov‘s program verse “Nystwan”, which opens his poetic collection “Iron fændyr” (“Ossetian Lyre”), shows the fundamental differences between the semantics of this word in the ethnographic era and its modern interpretation. Further on, following Buslaev‘s fundamental idea that at its initial stage literature assumes not only secular, but also spiritual social obligations, it is possible to show that the title of the poem turns out to be a semantic intensifier, necessary to strengthen the imperative mood of the verb phrase “Nybbar myn!” (“Forgive (me)!”), which opens the verse. The word in the title is not only desemantized, but also loses its nominal features, at the same time acquiring verbal properties. As a result, the boundary, which should run between the title and the beginning of the poem, is blurred. At the same time, “Nystwan” acquires a special emotional strength, which puts it on a par with the verbal and interjective titles so characteristic of Kosta Khetagurov's poetry. This ‘blurring’ is due to the need to bring to a common denominator both Christian theological concepts, in this case, of a sacrifice, and also the ideology of the Ossetian spiritual tradition, which reveals itself in prayer and ritual tra­di­tion in general. It is also concluded that, in terms of semantics, Kosta Khetagurov, pro­ceeds from the etymological meanings of the word ‘nystwan’, interpreting it as an Ossetian ana­logue of the historical and theological term ‘church tradition’, as a kind of ‘divine institution, rule’. The transition from folklore to literature itself is considered within the framework of the distinction proposed by Yu. M. Lotman between the aesthetics of sameness and the aesthetics of contradiction.

The aim of this article is to first investigate the history of the English usage of “atonement” as a theological term and the confusion caused by it, uncovering the cause of this confusion. Secondly, it examines how the original interpersonal concept of the term was lost and explores the recovery of the original concept and its influence. Finally, it introduces the fact that the concept of personality was lost in Japanese translation and highlights its contemporary issues. The term “atonement,” originally created as a translation of the Latin word “reconciliation,” lost its connection to its original concept. This article demonstrates that the cause lies in the history of English Bible translation. Firstly, it confirms the understanding of the term as translated by William Tyndale. Tyndale originally used atonement to mean “recovery of a relationship between people” in the New Testament, but the Old Testament uses the same word to mean “expiation.” However, the Bible translators after him starting with translation of the Old Testament, were likely not aware of the theological intent in its Old Testament use, and automatically limited its use to “expiation”. Then, it acknowledges that due to the limited use of atonement in the King James Version and the Geneva Bible, which adopted only the passages used by Tyndale in the Old Testament, the personal concept of reconciliation was lost from atonement and was replaced with the word “expiation.” Furthermore, it confirms that this understanding of atonement has persisted in Bible translations to this day. However, it points out that since F. D. Maurice, related concepts have been reintroduced, leading to a flourishing of theological studies on atonement. Finally, it reports that a similar process has occurred in Japanese translation. This study offers a valuable contribution to modern theology of the atonement.

The medieval Papal Revolution was the first successful attempt by a body of intellectuals to affirm what we would now call the political priority of principles. At that time, this priority was expressed in juridical and theological terms. In my essay, I start from Kantorowicz’s sidelining of medieval ecclesiastical duplications to show a more general downplaying of the cultural (and political) hegemonic role of the Papal Revolution and its long-term legacy. I trace the transformations in the European lexicon of notions such as corporation, world, body politic, theology, and abstraction to argue that the synergy between the Papal and the scribal revolution actually constructed law, theology, and politics as we know them. More in general, this synergy in its Scholastic embodiment produced our familiar image of the world as an object and a content of books. I suggest that reconsidering how the Papal Revolution both triggered and joined a series of processes that turned the page of our history may perhaps support our effort to turn the page again.

The Life of Constantine-Cyril (VC), originally written in Greek, is only preserved in an Old Church Slavonic translation. The OCS text follows the lost Greek original not only in terms of style, but very literally translates even Greek morphosyntactic features. The close translation technique has not only been a great obstacle in the understanding of the text, but gives reason to ask, how the theological terminology in VC is connected with the Greek use of the respective terms. Theological terminology occurs above all in the long dialogical passages, which like protocols represent the disputes of Constantine-Cyril with various interlocutors. The term "spirit"/ дух occurs 27 times in VC (plus 2 times "breathing"/ дыхание); the article gives an overview of all instances of дух in their respective contexts, compares its meaning with the semantics of similar theological terms and describes the argumentative function of the term "spirit" in intercultural debates. Spirit, Soul, Energeia, Neoplatonism, Christian Tradition Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von "Geist" und "Seele" im Wortschatz 1 der Vita des Slavenapostels und "Philosophen" 2 Constantini-Cyrilli (VC) oder zu dem philosophisch-theologischen

The article attempts to analyze the interaction of the religious language sphere with the Ukrainian language in the context of the religious discourse. Due to the ability of religious discourse to interact with other types of discourse, the speech activity of Orthodox believers is realized within institutional and personal discourses, the latter of which covers the sphere of interpersonal communication in the context of everyday interactions. The objective of the study is to find out the specifics of the functioning of lexical units expressing religious meanings in everyday language of Orthodox believers of Ukraine. The attributive and modus specificity of language of the religious sphere makes it possible to distinguish the language of religion as a representative of the meaning of the existence of religion and the religious language as the embodiment of manifestations of religion in the socio-cultural context. The religious language, which is objectified in the everyday language of Orthodox believers, includes a set of language units and lexical-semantic constructions peculiar to the church-religious sphere. At the same time, the everyday language of believers is characterized by coexistence of lexical units of sacred and national languages, an appeal to the emotional sphere of believers, and the use of verbal and non-verbal means of communication. The everyday language of Orthodox believers includes theological terms, church Slavonicisms, archaisms, historicisms, borrowed words. It also contains the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy and acts as an additional means of communication in the context of social interactions.

Dialogue needs provocative interlocutors. Instilling a grave and shuddering awakening to the conscience, Emmanuel Levinas has provided a corpus of writings unveiling an immemorial horizon and divine calling of infinite responsibility before the other, the brother/sister stranger. Roger Burggraeve has animated Levinas’ writings within a Christian theological horizon as a source of formation in the service of promoting biblical wisdom and love in the life of faith. The writings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis together portray a Catholic theological gravity to bring dialogue into a spiritual, practical, and social domain. Accordingly, this article develops the notion of dialogue within a Jewish and Christian lens by introducing the sense of the non-reciprocal character of dialogue, an asymmetrical relation of responsibility to the other evidencing the preconditions of dialogue. Levinas’ notion of non-reciprocal dialogue, taken further by the writings of Burggraeve, reveals a pre-original affectivity or ‘dialogical’ character of interpersonal relations of commitment respecting the other’s mystery and unknowability. This means that the dialogical relation is a pathway of ethical transcendence, a holy ground evoking an integral human ecology of maternity and fraternity. Such covenantal alterity in spiritual theological terms signifies an affectivity of atonement and redemptive love. In this way, the movement towards dialogue reveals a synodal path and holy ground to walk together and imagine an integral ecology of difference and mystery to transform words into sacrifice and truth into redemptive love. Journeying together upon such holy ground witnesses to a spiritual theology of dialogue envisioning a place to hear the “good news” (Lk 4:16) and encounter “the hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt 5:6).