Editorial for the March 2026 issue
Posted by Arthur C. Petersen on 2026-03-30
This issue [click here to browse the issue online; click here to view and download a PDF of the entire issue; and to order a printed copy for $9.99 (no-profit-to-journal price) through Amazon, choose for instance one of the following market places: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, BE, IE, JP, CA or AU] opens with an Editorial essay by Rex Hunt, who surveys twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates among liberal theologians and religious humanists over what it means to be “at home” in the universe in explicitly naturalistic terms.
Below, you will find a brief overview of the articles included in this issue, both in the general articles section and in a book symposium, as well as an overview of books reviewed in the latest edition of Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology.
Articles
This issue contains 14 articles in the general articles section. Yogi Hendlin analyzes the relationship between humans and the tobacco plant through juxtaposing traditional versus colonial tobacco use; he urges for decommercialization and reverence. Noor Ahmad Jaser and Chaïma Ahaddour survey the literature on Islamic perspectives on prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy; they observe disputes pertaining to the permissibility of abortion before “ensoulment” and they conclude that there is a real scarcity of literature addressing the larger topic. Neil Tarrant uses the works of Gabriele Amorth to describe the process of disenchantment in the catholic world; he highlights, with Amorth, that the failure of belief in both the devil and exorcism was the result of misguided biblical hermeneutics influenced not by science but by a misguided scientism. Irina Podgorny studies the new venues and old formats of creationist museums in South America and the connection between different Adventist creationism endeavors; she shows how Adventist resource centers appeal to the most conventional paleontological evidence, traditional collecting methodologies, and established scientific authorities. Jeffry Halverson proposes the inclusion of the astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and public intellectual Carl Sagan as a theorist of religious studies; he concludes his article by advocating greater interdisciplinary coordination between the physical sciences and the humanities/social sciences in sharing a collective body of knowledge. Roland Karo examines currently available explanations for near-death experiences and their tacit metaphysical assumption; he concludes that the possibility that the mind is modulated by the brain but not created by the brain should be left open. Márk Horváth and Ádám Lovász advance a case for considering transhumanism as a religion; using a religious studies framework gleaned from William James, they argue that the complex technological circumstances of the early twenty-first century have resulted in a technognostic form of religiosity that blends a belief in human technological prowess with a religiously motivated hope for transcendence. Marcelo Cabral employs concepts from social epistemology to elucidate the nature of the epistemic clash between scientific and religious beliefs; he suggest a course of action an agent may take to mitigate their cognitive uneasiness and move towards a more integrated rational profile. Juan Eduardo Carreño, Juan Pablo Badía, and Vicente Ignacio Moya address the “origin of life” question and aim to go beyond both abiogenesis and divine interventionism; the resulting model, inspired by the philosophical proposals of Thomas Aquinas, harmonizes the action of God as the first and principal cause with the action of secondary and instrumental causes described by natural history in its own epistemological domain. Sara Lumbreras, Lluís Oviedo, and Peter Jeavons offer a fresh perspective on the argument from design by drawing on modern evolutionary computation, which they argue provides a more fruitful analogy than traditional craftsmanship models; on this basis, they argue that a divine designer would appear to value growth, adaptability, robustness, diversity, and creativity above static perfection. David James Hooker analyzes human aging as a creational good, while addressing interactions between theology and molecular biology; he argues that aging processes are indivisible from life, health, and growth processes and shows how human biological aging can understood as a good of divine creation. Anthony Baker asks how biological mass extinction events register theologically; drawing on eschatology, he demonstrates how anthropogenic mass extinctions can register as a call for contemplative acknowledgment. Alma Espartinez addresses “divine lament,” God’s active grief over creation’s vulnerability to systemic evil; expanding biblical precedents where divine grief expresses covenant faithfulness rather than moral failure, she argues that divine lament emerges through constructive appropriation of participatory ontology, process theology, and evolutionary cosmology. Finally, Samantha Mattheiss studies redemptive suffering through a psychological lens; she suggests that suffering can foster a reorientation of one’s values, with perceived meaning as a pathway to intrapersonal as well as communal growth.
Book Symposium
(by Mladen Turk)
The Book Symposium in this issue features Michael Mørch’s Systematic Theology as Rationally Justified Public Discourse about God (2023). It has two commentators: Lois Malcolm and Dirk Evers. Mørch responds to the comments.
Books reviewed in Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology
Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology is a quarterly joint publication of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and is distributed free to all members of ESSSAT and ISSR. Here is the list of books reviewed in the Reviews issue of December 2025:
- Saša Horvat and Piotr Roszak, eds., Neuroscience of Religion: Integrating Brain, Mind and Beliefs, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2025
- Ignacio Silva, Thomism and the Natural Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025