focus and scope

Aims

The Journal of Religious Studies (JORS) is an international, peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to advancing rigorous and innovative scholarship on religion as a lived, contested, and evolving phenomenon in contemporary societies. Distinct from confessional, theological, or tradition-centered approaches, JORS prioritizes critical inquiry into how religion operates within social, cultural, political, technological, and ethical domains, particularly in pluralistic and globally interconnected contexts.

JORS aims to provide a scholarly platform for research that moves beyond dominant religious narratives and normative frameworks by foregrounding non-dominant traditions, minority religious experiences, everyday religious practices, and emerging forms of spirituality. The journal promotes interdisciplinary dialogue and methodological plurality, encouraging contributions that interrogate religion through empirical, theoretical, and critical lenses.

By emphasizing analytical depth, international relevance, and conceptual originality, JORS seeks to contribute substantively to global debates in religious studies and related disciplines, positioning itself as a venue for scholarship that reshapes how religion is understood in the twenty-first century.

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Scope

JORS publishes original research articles, theoretical and conceptual papers, and critical reviews that engage religion from interdisciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy, political science, media studies, and related fields. The journal particularly welcomes contributions within, but not limited to, the following thematic areas:

1. Lived Religion and Everyday Religious Practice

Research examining how religious beliefs, rituals, and identities are enacted, negotiated, and transformed in everyday life beyond formal institutions and doctrinal systems.

2. Non-Dominant, Minority, and Marginalized Religious Traditions

Studies focusing on indigenous religions, minority faith communities, new religious movements, syncretic traditions, and underrepresented forms of religiosity across diverse global contexts.

3. Religion, Power, and Social Transformation

Critical analyses of the intersections between religion and social structures, including politics, governance, gender relations, migration, conflict, inequality, and social movements.

4. Religion, Media, and Digital Technologies

Research exploring the role of digital media, online platforms, artificial intelligence, and technological change in reshaping religious authority, communication, ritual practices, and community formation.

5. Comparative and Interreligious Approaches

Comparative studies that move beyond theological comparison to examine relational, dialogical, and contextual dynamics among different religious traditions and worldviews.

6. Ethics, Public Life, and Moral Contestation

Analyses of religion’s involvement in ethical debates, public discourse, human rights, environmental responsibility, and contested moral issues in local and global settings.

7. Theory and Methodology in Contemporary Religious Studies

Contributions that advance theoretical innovation, methodological reflexivity, and interdisciplinary research designs in the study of religion, including critical, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches.