The attitudes toward genomics and precision medicine (AGPM) measure examines attitudes toward activities such as genetic testing, gene editing, and biobanking. This is a useful tool for research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics, a major program within the National Institutes of Health. We updated the AGPM to explore controversies over mRNA vaccines. This brief report examines the factor structure of the updated AGPM using a sample of 4939 adults in the USA. The updated AGPM’s seven factors include health benefits, knowledge benefits, and concerns about the sacredness of life, privacy, gene editing, mRNA vaccines, and social justice.

This article describes and examines six decades of the study of Asian laws around the world to construct a global map of the field. It demonstrates that Asian legal studies have been increasingly institutionalized, as evident in the global proliferation of centers, programs, associations, book series, journals, and courses. Substantively, Asian laws scholarship has grown into a sophisticated system of varied learning, including jurisprudence, legal history, comparative law, law and society, law and economics, and international law.

The institutional and substantive development of Asian legal studies follows a few common patterns corresponding to legal, social, and economic developments in the region. These include the formation of Asian legal studies during the post-World War II and post-colonial period between the 1950s and 1970s; its transition during the post-Cold War period between the 1980s and 1990s; and the transformation of the field in the context of globalization in the 21st century, projected as the “Asian century.”

Global studies in Asian laws are driven by both a deontological search for new knowledge and the instrumental necessity for a wide range of international, national, and individual actors. Instrumentalism, however, tends to play a stronger role in shaping Asian legal studies, and this pushes the focus toward large and developed jurisdictions and emphasis on contemporary legal issues.

As a consequence, Asian legal studies as a discipline displays two opposite trends: integration and differentiation. On the one hand, various specific areas of Asian laws deal with common cross-cutting themes, including religion, colonialism, pluralism, authoritarianism, and development, which renders them integral parts of the larger system. On the other hand, as the scholarship has grown to a greater level of complexity, disciplinary balkanization has become discernible. Different areas of Asian laws have different institutional, theoretical, and methodological underpinnings.

The future development of Asian legal studies requires the inclusive study of different areas of the laws of different Asian peoples. This inclusivity is premised on a balance of the considerations of necessity and the intrinsic pursuit of knowledge of Asian laws.

A core issue for media outlets and politicians since the assassination of Abe Shinzō has been monetary transactions between religious organizations and their current or former members. Anxieties surrounding religion's role in the public sphere have informed legal arguments about consumer issues. A category of fraud called “spiritual sales” has become a particular concern. In this article, I describe how interpretations of consumer law have been instrumental in dealing with spiritual sales and I discuss reasons why problematic consumption practices associated with religions that have attracted intense criticism have led the Japanese government to comprehensively revise regulatory protections as they reassess consumer vulnerabilities.

The papers in this special issue have highlighted new perspectives on food charity activities, as well as notions of food and ethics in contemporary Vietnam. As Vietnam is rapidly changing, food-related activities are dynamic phenomena that reflect the social, moral, and economic changes unfolding in society. However, ethnographic research on food culture in Vietnam published in English has been scarce. This epilogue provides a few exploratory insights into interesting social phenomena in recent years that exemplify the shifting landscape of cuisine and food ethics in modern Vietnam.

Recently, adherents of the lay religious organization Soka Gakkai have taken to the streets and the Internet to rebuke Komeito, the junior member of the ruling government coalition and the party founded by Soka Gakkai, for abandoning peace advocacy. This article places the recent protests in historical and doctrinal context as it introduces perspectives from within Soka Gakkai to complicate easy assumptions about adherents' ideology, and it suggests ways to determine how Soka Gakkai political activism may take shape in the near future.

Sinjŏm or spirit fortune-telling is now an intimate part of everyday life among many North Koreans. Extremely popular at the grassroots level, the rise of this traditional religious culture since the late 1990s, if properly understood, can provide an interesting looking glass into North Korea's society and politics in transition. This report is one small step to that end.

This introduction to the special issue on food charity, religion, and care in Vietnam compares grassroots philanthropy in Vietnam with broader trends toward religious humanitarianism happening across Asia. The co-editors of the special issue examine why food charity has become popular in urban areas like Ho Chi Minh City by exploring how food holds spiritual, moral significance for both donors and recipients. This survey illuminates how grassroots philanthropy in Vietnam can offer a comparative study for spirituality, ethics, and food practices across Asia, as well as religious humanitarian- ism globally.

Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level journalism and lawyers’ activism through interactions by these two researchers with the people who produce media narratives and legal interpretations. This brief introduction situates their insights within readings of opponents and defenders of the Unification Church who have shaped public discourse on intersections between religion and politics since July 2022.

As the novel coronavirus swept Japan, religious practitioners of all types responded. This article provides an overview of early-stage reactions by individuals and organizations affiliated with Buddhism, Shinto, New Religions, and other religious traditions in Japan. It features interviews with Japanese clergy and lay followers who contended with social distancing and more dire consequences of COVID-19, and it contextualizes their responses within media coverage, sectarian sources, and historical research. As it highlights trends in religious reactions to the coronavirus, such as a divide between policies enacted by “new” and “traditional” groups, the article discusses reasons for contrasting responses and points to dilemmas that will face Japan's religious organizations after the pandemic subsides.

This article explores the implications of attaching military chaplains and similar religious personnel to State and non-State fighting forces, and what this means for international humanitarian law (IHL). IHL assigns religious personnel a non-combatant humanitarian function equivalent to medical personnel, stipulating that they should perform exclusively religious duties. This underestimates the scope of “religious” activity, however, particularly the moral dimension of their ministry and the force-multiplying and restraining effects that this has on combatant behaviour. As representatives of non-State institutions embedded within military structures, many religious personnel also enjoy a unique degree of access to – and separation from – the chain of command, and can leverage this autonomy to influence the conduct of hostilities. The more that religious personnel are invested in the achievement of a fighting force's military objectives and are involved in its military operations, the likelier it is that they will test the parameters of their humanitarian function, and the protections they enjoy, under IHL. Moreover, some clerics associated with fighting forces do not aspire to non-combatant or exclusively humanitarian status, and should not be considered religious personnel. It is in the midst of armed conflict that religious personnel are most needed, however, and the tensions and ambiguities between their religious and military support functions are integral to their cross-cutting role. The contribution that religious personnel can make to humanizing war, and socializing IHL or corresponding religious principles, depends on them being present to support combatants and not confining themselves to a separate, but less effectual, humanitarian space. Criteria for their humanitarian exclusivity, attachment to fighting forces and protections under IHL therefore require some clarification.

Gun culture is properly measured by a population's emotional and symbolic attachment to guns and not by rates of gun ownership. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (wave 6), we find that nearly all gun owners feel that guns provide them with a physical sense of security (Gun Security), but a distinct and crucial sub-set of owners express an additional and strong attachment to their weapons (Gun Sanctity). Gun Sanctity measures the extent to which owners think their guns make them more patriotic, respected, in control, and valued by their family and community. We propose that Gun Sanctity is a form of quasi-religious or magical thinking in which an object is imbued with unseen powers. To assess this proposal, we look at the extent to which gun ownership, Gun Security, and Gun Sanctity are related to traditional religion and various forms of magical thinking, namely, (a) conspiratorialism, (b) the belief that prayer can fix financial and health problems, and (c) support for Christian Statism, a form of American theocracy. We find that Gun Sanctity is highly predictive of different forms of magical thinking but is often unrelated to more traditional religious practices and beliefs.

Brazilians in the United States voted overwhelmingly for right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. What role did religion play? Based on exit polling, focus groups, and observation of local Brazilian churches, this article explores how Christianity drives support for right-wing populism among Brazilian migrants to the Boston area. Christians, and especially evangelicals, are significantly more likely to vote for Bolsonaro, and the priests and pastors of Brazilian migrant churches are particularly willing to discuss parties and candidates. Yet neither clergy endorsements nor political conversations at church explain this religious effect. I argue that indirect influence within congregations, which reinforces a conservative worldview in non-overtly political ways, helps explain why most observant evangelicals favor Bolsonaro. Migrants potentially influence the voting behavior of friends and family in Brazil, including via transnational religious communities, so their political attitudes can help bolster authoritarian populism in the homeland, as also seen in India and Turkey.

Transgender rights are receiving increasingly greater attention in policymaking arenas around the globe. However, few studies empirically investigate the factors that shape the protection of these types of legal rights from a global perspective. Therefore, this article aims to contribute to the literature by examining how one potential correlate – religion – influences countries’ recognition of transgender rights. More specifically, this article distinguishes between the presence of religion in state institutions versus the society, allowing for a more nuanced investigation of the different avenues through which religion may influence a country’s trans-specific laws. Analyzing data from 173 countries between 2000 and 2021, this study finds that while religious influence over society more consistently explains variation in transgender rights, religion in government also plays a significant role. Overall, the findings shed light on an often-understudied population and offer valuable insights into the areas where transgender individuals may be most vulnerable.