Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The framework emphasised in this special issue is convergence, a theoretical lens that challenges the dichotomous thinking embedded in the paradigms of rupture and repair.Across the case studies presented, from tantric Śaivism in medieval Kashmir to religious meme culture in the age of digital media, convergence emerges as a helpful framework for considering religious change.As mentioned in Kendall Marchman's introduction to this special issue, the convergence framework recognises that religious change is 'rarely unilateral but is the result of many different actors and processes colliding and aligning in ways that produce marked differences'.The articles in this issue, each in its own way, powerfully illustrate this process.Taken together, they show portraits of how religions change, not by rupture alone, nor by repair alone, but through crosscurrents of influence and adaptation.This experience adds a new framework to our analytical repertoire and affirms the value of convergence as a generative approach to studying religious change.To set the intellectual stage, Kendall Marchman's introduction challenges the dominance of rupture-repair models in the study of religious change, particularly within anthropological studies of Christianity.While acknowledging their utility, especially in cases where religious change appears traumatic or dramatic, Marchman critiques their limitations, including an overemphasis on singular events or specific actors.In contrast, convergence foregrounds the multiplicity of agents, temporal layers, and processes that shape transformation.Drawing on Henry Jenkins' notion of convergence culture, also used by Jonathan Johnson in his article, Marchman shows how religious change, like media change, emerges from the interplay of producers and consumers,
DOI: 10.1111/taja.70026
Author: J. Derrick Lemons
Institution: University of Georgia
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,010
OpenAlex ID: W4412913764