This article examines the experiences of Thai women living in Finland, addressing a significant gap in research regarding their perspectives on the challenges they face in a new environment, particularly through the lens of Buddhism. In contrast to existing literature, that has often portrayed Thai women in Western countries through a problematic and negative lens, the current research, making use of fieldwork in Thai temples and life-story interviews with thirteen women, explores themes of suffering and coping mechanisms, and the role of lived religion in navigating personal meaning and community. Central to this exploration is the Buddhist concept of dukkha (suffering), which informs the subjects' understanding of life's challenges and their efforts to alleviate suffering through religious practices. By acknowledging the intersections of gender, religion and ethnicity, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted realities of Thai women's lives in Finland.

This thematic issue brings together current research focused on lived religion and/or lived theology. Several of the articles have been developed from papers presented at the national Research Conference in Theology and Religion held in Turku/Åbo in May 2024. The articles explore diverse possibilities of lived perspectives in current research, build on previous literature and critically challenge some of their assumptions. They highlight both the necessity of this perspective and the need for continued theoretical and methodological development.

Among the high number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe in 2015, thousands converted from Islam to Christianity. An emerging body of scholarship explores these conversions. This article sheds light on the lived experience of converting to Christianity during the asylum process. The data consists of in-depth interviews with five Christian converts granted refugee status in Finland. The theoretical and methodological starting points of the analysis were lived religion and practice theory. The analysis shows that forced migration, materiality, care, experiences of spiritual beings, doctrinal aspects and religious freedom are all relevant factors in the path to conversion. This contrasts with the asylum officials’ emphasis on individualistic and spiritual motives when assessing the credibility of conversion, as identified by previous research. Based on this research, I argue that the non-doctrinal and doctrinal dimensions of conversion should not and cannot be separated. Doctrinal dimensions should not be considered more genuine when assessing the authenticity of conversion in the asylum process, or vice versa. This is also a theological argument for a holistic understanding of Christianity, where the meaning of being Christian extends beyond adopting doctrinal ideas to include material and non-material aspects of life.

Following Part I, this essay (Part II) continues my attempt to develop an ontology of peace by drawing resources from Ricœur’s thought. I begin with Augustine, Dionysius, and Aquinas to show that peace is not contrary to our humanity but is a natural desire that runs with the grain of our being. This account is complicated by the category of the irascible, however, which Ricœur interprets as an appetite for difficulty, suggesting the human desire for peace is not directly continuous with the simple animal desire for rest and repose. Instead, there is a fundamental conflict at the heart of human being, which Ricœur identifies as thumos. I argue that thumos is not opposed to peace, but instead plays the essential role of mobilizing peace, just as it mobilizes other virtues like courage, moderation, and justice. Moreover, the right ordering of thumos does not eliminate the constitutive conflict of the self; right ordering is right conflict, with the right proportion of the disproportion of finite and infinite. As a result, this essay deepens our understanding of peace as more than rest and repose, and in turn also deepens our understanding of what rest is—in faith and hope as the finely tuned affective tension that makes up the self.

Learning penetrates religion in many ways. Primary religious socialisation – sometimes referred to as religious nurture – is the process by which children are explicitly and purposefully taught to do things religiously or they learn implicitly by following what their families and other people around them do, speak and feel. In secondary religious socialisation one sets about learning something additional to or different from what was learned and internalised in one’s religious or non-religious childhood home and surroundings. Secondary socialisation may also entail processes of unlearning something previously learned in order to grasp and master the skills, ways of thinking and feeling, and discursive habits of the new worldview and context of life. Learning in both primary and secondary socialisation can in some cases turn into a thoroughly religiously informed way of life. Alternatively, religious learning may not always be sufficiently lengthy and committed to result in full socialisation. Many people engage in religion merely in special situations or turning points in life, and after that particular need is over, religion loses its acute significance. Furthermore, religious learning may also have intended or unintended effects and consequences beyond the more strictly bounded religious sphere and may come to be reflected in personal and relational life much more widely. (See Long and Hadden 1983; Sherkat 2003; Collet Sabe 2007; Berliner and Sarró 2008; Erricker, Ota and Erricker 2012; Scourfield et al. 2013; Klingenberg, Sjö and Broo 2019.)

Over the course of only a few decades during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, part of mainstream Buddhist education underwent a striking shift in China. From being a secluded practice within monastery walls taught by monastics for monastics with a strict focus on Buddhist scripture, it became one where monastics and laypeople study together, guided by teachers, both monastic and lay, studying a curriculum of both Buddhist and secular subjects. Although general reforms within the Buddhist community of the times received considerable scholarly attention, the topic of education development was discussed in only a few instances. Therefore, the present article sets out to explore why this radical methodological shift happened, and more concretely, how the individual learning trajectories of the reforms’ leading actors, and their involvement in specific communities, influenced the way the reforms unfolded. The author analyses the work and life of three generations of Buddhist reformers, namely the layman Yang Wenhui, and the monastic masters Taixu, Hsing Yun and Cheng Yen, employing Étienne Wenger’s social theory of learning. The theory’s main assertion that communities of practice provide the main fora of learning for individuals, and its description of the concrete ways in which this learning takes place can provide new insights regarding the specific unfolding of late-nineteenth to early-twentieth-century Buddhist education reforms in China.

The Gospel of John reflects several layers of social memory and theological creativity concerning Jesus’s death. In the early material, there seems to be a suppressed awareness of Jesus’s fate and an unwillingness to unfold it in narrative form – something that recalls the hypothetical sayings gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. There is also a search for alternative, figurative ways to visualize the endpoint of Jesus’s earthly life. Eventually, the narrative memory of Jesus’s passion, as told in Mark and Matthew, was adopted with some modifications. Among the modifications of the passion storyline is the narrativization of the image of Jesus as a Paschal Lamb, an image already known to Paul. The most remarkable innovation, however, was the figure of the “Beloved Disciple” as an eyewitness to Jesus’s passion and death.

The article focuses on the transformative potential of colours described by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s colour definitions are approached through the aesthetics of religion, investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. The goal is to clarify the identifiable features of the anthroposophical use of colour and how the Steinerian conception of colour relates to the anthroposophical worldview. Steiner’s conception of colours was strongly influenced not only by theosophy but also by J. W. von Goethe’s theory of colour and his ideas of metamorphosis. Steiner’s colour definitions are discussed both through his published lectures and through his own drawings and paintings. These pictures were intended to function as models for artists working with anthroposophical art, and they can be understood as specific sensational (i.e. sensory) forms that many later artists have produced variations of. Steiner’s use of colour is approached particularly through his Nature Mood sketches (1922) and his painting New Life (Mother and Child) (1924). The analysis of artworks made in the anthroposophical tradition can deepen our understanding of Steiner’s conception of colours and its transformative potential.

Cultural appropriation is a timely topic that has been taking up a lot of space in public discussions. The concept is often applied in heated debates aimed at calling out’ different actors and actions as appropriation, or on the other hand to defend against such accusations. This thematic issue seeks to look at the topic from a broader and more nuanced perspective, asking what different expressions of appropriation appear in the field of and in relation to religion and spirituality. What discourses and discussions emerge around instances of religious and spiritual appropriation? And how is appropriation understood, negotiated or problematized within, across and around different religious and spiritual groups? The publication is part of the research project ‘Learning from Religion and Spirituality’ (Academy of Finland 2019-2023) [325148].

There is little about globalized modern magical-religious Witchcraft that isn’t borrowed. It is well established that it is a creative response to modernity rather than an ancient continuous practice. Its inventiveness also makes it ripe for charges of religious appropriation. Complaints are compounded by claims that Nature Religions and New Age are consumerist movements, shaped by principles of alienated capitalism, fostered by ethnocentric views and coloniality. For British practitioners, anxieties about ethical practices mean they have recently turned to scrutinizing their own practice, but their questions focus on whether the entangled colonial histories of modern Witchcraft mean it is an inherently appropriated practice. In part this reflects changing political conditions, but it is also informed by the alignment of history with formal accounts over twenty years ago. I consider whether Liz Bucar’s (2022) valuable advice – to borrow more and better – will help shine some light on these debates.