Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

The canonical texts of the New Testament are well known and studied, but the variety and number of extant early Christian noncanonical texts, also known as New Testament Apocrypha, have not been as widely recognized. Thanks to the stellar work of numerous translators and the editorial work of Tony Burke, many more of these texts are now available with introductions in English translation through two volumes (soon to be three) of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. In the series of articles in this special section of Studies in Religion, three early Christian scholars (Ronald Charles, Sean Hannan and Mona Tokarek LaFosse) review the second volume of the series, published by Eerdmans in 2020, which is followed by a detailed response by Tony Burke. The reviews and response were originally presented at a joint session at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and Canadian Society of Patristic Studies/Association canadienne des études patristiques in May 2022. The reviews and response encourage scholars of religion to consider how these ancient texts might contribute to larger contemporary conversations around coloniality, diversity, pedagogy and storytelling, demonstrating the value of collaborative scholarship.

In this review article, the author makes the case for Tony Burke’s recent second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2020) as a publication that can help historians and scholars of religion navigate the convoluted warrens of ancient Christian literature. Adopting a pedagogical lens, the author argues that this volume goes deeper than standard tomes like Marvin Meyer’s Nag Hammadi Scriptures (HarperOne, 2007), offering its audience a more rigorously up-to-date picture of the state of Apocrypha research. The level of rigour and detail on display here might also make the volume more suitable for graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses. In order to support his presentation of the pedagogical value of Burke’s work, the author draws on specific examples rooted in several primary sources contained therein, from the Old Uyghur Adoration of the Magi to the Byzantine Life of Mary Magdalene.

The author’s aim in this review article is to highlight a few points that he finds intriguing, especially with regard to the classification of the texts and the question of genre, in the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by Tony Burke and published by Eerdmans in 2020. He also reflects on what the process of rereading and reframing the narratives present in these texts entails. Choosing which texts to translate and which ones to read and analyse is a process that needs to be evaluated for various reasons. In conclusion, the author mentions a few areas of research that the volume pushes scholars to examine further.

In this review of the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, published by Eerdmans in 2020 and edited by Tony Burke, the author praises the clarity and rigour of the translations and their introductions in the volume. She highlights the value of these texts for modern readers as a glimpse of the range of stories and imaginative thought of early Christians, particularly considering what these texts might reveal through the lenses of orality and storytelling, on the one hand, and embodied experiences (physical spaces, objects, healing, ritual, etc.), on the other.

In a joint session at the 2022 annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Patristic Studies and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Mona Tokarek LaFosse assembled a panel of reviewers to engage with the texts presented in the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2020). This article is a response to those papers by Tony Burke, the editor of the volume. The response addresses a number of themes raised by the reviewers, including the selection and arrangement of the texts, their troubling depictions of race and gender, the role of orality in their creation, and how the texts can be used in the classroom.

Is the gambling business compatible with Christianity? Catholicism, the largest Christian denomination, does not provide a clear answer to this question, which has also been largely dismissed by scholars from gambling studies and religious studies alike. This article fills this gap through an assessment of the gambling business in light of Catholic moral and social teachings. It offers two main findings. First, it challenges the widespread notion of the neutrality of the Catechism towards gambling and argues that contemporary commercial gambling is in contravention of core Catholic moral teachings. Second, it offers a novel assessment of the legitimacy of the gambling enterprise through the application of the concept of ‘social usefulness’. It proposes that any positive social outcomes resulting from gambling, regardless of their entity, do not render the gambling enterprise socially useful and legitimate – from a Catholic social-teaching perspective – since gambling also brings about significant gross social costs. This article contributes to a better understanding of the place of gambling within Catholicism, and hence within Christianity more broadly. Likewise, it offers suggestions on how the Catholic Church could embrace a more accurate assessment of the gambling enterprise that better reflects Catholic social doctrine so as to mitigate problem gambling, which is particularly salient among Catholics.

While rates of religious affiliation are rapidly declining in most Western societies, a growing number of individuals, mostly youth, are choosing to distance themselves from religion. Thirty-eight (38) young Québécois aged 20 to 30 identifying as “religious nones” were interviewed for this qualitative study. This article explores the relationship of different young Québécois towards religion and its configuration based on semi-directed interviews conducted with our respondents. Three distinct and complementary aspects will be addressed : (1) an exploration of the socio-religious trajectories that lead to this claimed religious non-affiliation, (2) an examination of the main arguments used by the respondents to justify their state of non-affiliation, (3) a presentation of two types of religious representations that can be identified in the respondents’ discourse.

Few studies have delved empirically into the various factors driving Islamophobia and negative attitudes towards Muslims, or the various forms they can take among individuals. To what extent does state secularism (or laïcité) policy, such as Bill 21 in Quebec, affect attitudes towards Muslims among the general public? What are the various dimensions of attitudes towards Muslims that can be measured in recent years? Using 2011–2019 Canadian Election Study data, the authors do not find a large impact of state secularism policy on public opinion towards Muslims, nor a strong dislike of organized religion explaining all negative attitudes towards Muslims in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. Instead, they find a wide variety of negative attitudes towards Muslims: some respondents specifically targeted Muslims with their discomfort and dislike, while others showed dislike towards Muslims tied to wider xenophobic attitudes towards racial minorities, immigrants, and other minority and vulnerable groups in society.

Warlpiri women from the Tanami Desert of Central Australia have across generations passed on their yawulyu ceremonies, which nurture kin, country and cosmological connections. Dussart has previously shown distinct shifts in purpose in the 1990s, as Warlpiri women first began to perform yawulyu for non-Indigenous audiences. In the past decade, a further shift has occurred, with yawulyu being held predominantly as part of community-development arts initiatives. These opportunities are now the primary contexts in which yawulyu are held, while redefining the values, power relations and types of capital central to these performances, be they surrounding prestige, monetary payment or cultural recognition, as well as providing ambiguous and elusive communitas of ‘contentment’ for the performers as they engage with their audiences. In this article, the authors present case studies that span from the 1980s, when Warlpiri women first considered how to present yawulyu to non-Indigenous audiences, through to the pan-Aboriginal Women’s Law and Culture meetings of the 1990s and 2000s, and the Warlpiri-led Southern Ngaliya dance camps of the 2010s, and up to the present day, where they are being invited to perform yawulyu as part of larger theatrical events. As the authors examine performative events during different periods in Australia since colonisation, they draw on Thomas Turino’s definitions of participatory and presentational genres of musical performances to analyse how and why the reasons to perform have shifted. The authors conclude by highlighting that such shifts shed light on how entangled politics of relatedness are also changing.