Call for Paper

The topic for this Special Issue is “lived religion”, an approach that focuses on ordinary people practices when they engage in religious activities in everyday life. It does not focus on religious prescriptions, even when we cannot ignore them, but on how the ordinary persons adopt, adapt, modify, and create religion. We are interested in understanding how people invent alternative ways of being religious or cultivate dimensions they consider sacred, even if not prescribed by traditional religions.

The works of Nancy Ammerman, Meredith McGuire, Robert Orsi, and David Hall; the numerous articles published in different journals, and special issues in Religions (2019), LARR (2014), both on Latin America, and the Journal of Contemporary Religion(2020) have set a framework for this approach.

However, most of the articles have been based in the “Global North”, that is, the United States, and in a minor way Europe, and many of them have dealt with Christian traditions. For these reason, we encourage colleagues who work on non-Christian religious traditions or explore cases in the “Global South”, especially in Africa and South Asia. Regardless, we support colleagues working with this approach in any region of the world, and with any religious tradition to send their works.

The area of the publication is religion and social sciences, so we do request that papers be based in empirical research and contemporary cases.

Religions would like to provide some discounts or fee waivers to scholars who do not have enough funding, are based in the Global South, and are the first authors of the paper. After acceptance and before the Special Issue goes online, authors may apply, and Religions will check and apply for a fee waiver if possible.