This paper examines the Vietnamese expression “ Ông Trời có mắt ” (“Heaven has eyes”) as a window into the moral, theological, and symbolic worlds of Vietnamese religiosity. While often interpreted as a proverb of cosmic surveillance, the saying points to a deeper and more relational understanding of Ông Trời , the transcendent figure who sees, judges, and cares for human life. Across Vietnam’s...
Eunice Victoria Pike (1913-2011) was a missionary and Bible translator who worked among the Mazatec people of Huautla de Jiménez in Oaxaca, Mexico. In the 1950s, she assisted the amateur anthropologist R. Gordon Wasson in his research on the psychedelic Psilocybe mushrooms found in the area. Although Pike’s contribution was superficially acknowledged, the full extent of her involvement and...
Context-dependence of meaning resulting in serious loss of content of theological language between the West and Africa, leads to the conclusion that genuine African theology must occur using African languages. To verify this conclusion, this article considers the use of distinct labels for reference to God arising from different “cultures,” followed by a study of altered states of consciousness...