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Open research questions in Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

33 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,341 Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • This raises the fundamental issue that, if we want to explain the initial acquisition, we need something that is not a right (since all rights are acquired rights), but the mere idea of a power in the form of an authorisation is insufficient in the context of a non-idealised plurality of agents for the 1 3C.

    Pettit, Philip: When Minds Converse: A Social Genealogy of the Human Soul · 2026 · DOI

  • Through analysis of previously understudied texts, the article demonstrates how Patočka positioned philosophy against both scientific rationalism and religious dogmatism, advocating instead for an autonomous form of philosophical thinking that embraces uncertainty while maintaining a commitment to truth.

    The Vocation of Thinking the Conception of (Shaken) Philosophy in Jan Patočka’s Early Writings · 2025 · DOI

  • The claim is made that this is indeed the case as he models the human situation so that the ‘outside of the system’ is not understood only as a continuation of reality, but visualizes and includes within the system a space for a radical intrusion of possibility – for the truly unpredictable – on the level of culture, humanity, as well as the individual.

    Reflections on religion and the status of ‘the outside’ in the Lotmanian understanding of culture · 2023 · DOI

  • The materials of modern field research have been introduced into scientific circulation, which allowed to trace the local features, the level of conservation of the ancient beliefs and customs, their current state within the peculiar ethnographic region of Volhynia insufficiently studied in the ethnographic literature.

    Christmas Beliefs, Customs and Rites of the Volhynians Related to the Perceptions of the Dead · 2021 · DOI

  • In recent years, an expanding cohort of scholars, both Russian and non-Russian, have striven to assess Roerich without falling victim to the hagiographie tendencies so common among his admirers, but also without giving into the temptation - particularly strong among his detractors from the late 1970s onward - to dismiss him more than is warranted.

    The myth of the masters revived: the occult lives of Nikolai and Elena Roerich · 2015 · DOI

  • These risks are, namely, the essentialism which is implicit in any religiously, anti-historically oriented phenomenology; an also often implicit agnosticism; an empiricismlimited to themere, a-problematic description of the so-called religious phenomena; and, last but not least, an absolute cultural relativism.

    Comparativism in the history of religions: Some models and key issues · 2007 · DOI

  • " Geertz himself argues that "ide- ologies make empirical claims about the condition and direction of soci- ety, which it is the business of science (and where scientific knowledge is lacking, common sense) to assess" (232).

    An interpretation of geertz · 1974 · DOI

  • But an answer to this underlying question is beyond the scope of this paper, for it requires not just an account of the limitations of Horton’s perspective, but some idea also 228 of the plausibility of rival views about what those essential religious pre- occupations might be.

    Science and Traditional Religious Thought III & IV · 1973 · DOI

  • The relatively short duration of most EI among the Kamba adults, for example, the mean was 111 seconds-and the lack of evidence for the claim that EI can be evoked "hours, days, even years" after the initial exposure (9, p. That experiment, however, also offers contradictory evidence: the variable of "set" was effective, and the arousal of that "set" must be considered either a form of suggestion or else a way of ensuring that the instructions regarding the reporting of images on the blank screen have been adequately understood. Another conclusion, also tentative, emerges: it seems highly unlikely that EI, PE, or PI serve any important social func tion such as enabling people without standardized forms of writing to store the information essential for the functioning of their society.

    Eidetic Imagery: A Cross-Cultural Will-O'-The-Wisp?* · 1966 · DOI

  • This paper aims to address that gap in the literature, bringing to the fore concepts that are of central importance to Hillman’s oeuvre as soul and soul-making.

    Psychopathology and the religious imaginary in Freud and Hillman · 2024 · DOI

  • An essential criterion in understanding the new aesthetic paradigm and highlighting the means of artistic expression characteristic to the two periods temporally delimited by the event of the Incarnation, is the way in which artistic consciousness relates to divinity.

    LUX INCORPORATA. The Theme of Light and Its Ancient Sources in the Imagery of Christian Art · 2023 · DOI

  • This article argues that this framework is not productive for examining ritual brotherhood because it does not account for the emotional bond which encouraged men to become ritual brothers.

    ‘<i>Comme Nostre Frere</i>’: Knightly Ritual Brotherhood Reconsidered · 2022 · DOI

  • By seeing these currently available technologies of self in the Foucaultian lens we are given the opportunity to appreciate their work on subjectivity as necessarily political and social, a radical education not limited to the realm of individualistic aspiration and narcissistic temptations.

    Radical educations in subjectivity: the convergence of psychotherapy, mysticism and Foucault’s ‘politics of ourselves’ · 2018 · DOI

  • It might also suggest new ways of interpreting the deep, recurrent association between gifts and rites of passage, which Rites de passage unwittingly contributed to highlight, but still needs to be further explored and conceptualized.

    Gifts in <i>Rites of Passage</i> or gifts as rites of passage? Standing at the threshold between Van Gennep and Marcel Mauss · 2018 · DOI

  • First, the text by Sundararajan and Kim have been misread; second, the critique works from insufficient information regarding late medieval German mysticism, which constitutes the historical context for Thomas Muntzer, the self-proclaimed ‘mystic.

    Müntzer and mysticism: A contested connection. · 2015 · DOI

  • Although much scholarly literature has been devoted to Imber and his famous poem, his interest in the occult and Jewish mysticism has not been investigated.

    FORWARD, TO THE EAST: NAPTHALI HERZ IMBER'S PERCEPTION OF KABBALAH · 2013 · DOI

  • Happily, scientific and philosophical studies of mind are coming to view the human mind as embodied, enactive, encultured, and embedded in social and technical networks, and as a construction not limited to the boundaries of the individual organism.

    EXTERNALISM, RELATIONAL SELVES, AND REDEMPTIVE RELATIONSHIPS · 2011 · DOI

  • Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors.

    Dimensions of Ritual Economy · 2008 · DOI

  • Some will argue that a tradition is always a construct, while I think that the basis for such thinking is that there is no consensus among academics on what/which are the true contents of a tradition.

    The White Angel: Where he sits and what he does?: An example of construction and reconstruction of a tradition · 2005 · DOI

  • Further study of frightening NDEs may reveal whether or not those NDErs who travel to a less than heavenly realm may be going to two separate places instead of one.

    A comparison of other world perceptions by near-death experiencers and by the Marian visionaries of Medjugorje. · 2000 · DOI

  • \nThough underreported, links between sparks, spirits, and life have been confirmed for the Ojibwa Shaking Tent, Delaware curings, Lakota Yuwipi, and, more universally, the flames, or tongues of fire, of Pentecost.

    Indien Personhood II: Baby in the Oven Sparks Being in the World · 2000 · DOI

  • I aim to show, with reference to an action research project, that spiritual development is best facilitated via these commonly appreciated myths, legends and stories and that the affective dimension is insufficient on its own.

    Spirituality and Post‐Modernism: A Classroom Perspective · 1997 · DOI

  • Conversely, and this would warrant further study, subsequent sectarian movements within Christianity seem to be accompanied by a return of hopes for physical resurrection.

    Body-symbols and social reality: Resurrection, incarnation and asceticism in early Christianity · 1982 · DOI

  • This past, which affected the present, could be studied and transmitted by identifying evidence of past action and thought in various collective representations embodied in texts, art forms, architecture, social practices, and customs.

    Toward a Rapprochement · 1981 · DOI

  • These feelings had not previously been expressed in words and were not understood but led to the anxieties which played such an important part in her life.

    Over-determination of a fantasy involving compulsive rituals and thoughts · 1972 · DOI

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33 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,341 Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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