A new issue of the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture is out. Wendi Bellar, Heidi A. Campbell, Kyong James Cho, Andrea Terry, Ruth Tsuria, Aya Yadlin-Segal and Jordan Ziemer (Texas A&M): Reading Religion in Internet Memes. For a religion that some experts estimate includes only 30,000 members worldwide, Scientology attracts an extraordinary amount of media attention. Paul Hedges (Winchester): Why are There Many Gods? Religious Diversity and its Challenges. If there is one God, why are there many religions? Douglas Groothuis wonders. Gabriela Rusu-Pasarin (Craiova): Religion and Folklore or About the Syncretism of Faith and Beliefs. Jessa Crispin reviews A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism by Page duBois. Edwin Ng (Deakin): Of Intellectual Hospitality: Buddhism and Deconstruction. How might looking at Hinduism alter philosophical approaches to religion that take Christianity as their primary example? Gary Gutting interviews Jonardon Ganeri, author of The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450–1700. Legions of faiths, girded for battle: Norton’s latest anthology explores world religion. Is religion to blame for history’s bloodiest wars? John Gray reviews Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong. Lorenzo Zucca (KCL): A Secular Globe? The Place of Freedom of Religion in the Westphalian World Order. Vinicius Marinho (UFRJ): The Tension Between Normativity and Plurality in Religious Dogmas and in Constitutional Principles. From Cato Unbound, Kevin Vallier on a genuinely liberal approach to religion in politics. Must a scholar of religion be methodologically atheistic or agnostic? Michael A. Cantrell investigates. Morten Hoi Jensen reviews Atheists: Origin of the Species by Nick Spencer; and Culture and the Death of God by Terry Eagleton; and The Age of Atheists by Peter Watson. Jack Miles on why God will not die: Science keeps revealing how much we don't, perhaps can't, know — yet humans seek closure, which should make religious pluralists of us all.
