Esperanto: One Language, Many Religions (in English)

 Fascinating paper on the relationship between Esperanto and the world's religions. Here is the abstract:

"Some of the world’s major lingua francas are closely identified with particular religions – Latin and Catholicism, Arabic and Islam, Sanskrit and Hinduism, and so on. Esperanto offers an intriguing counterpoint to this pattern. An artificial auxiliary language promulgated in 1887, it has attracted attention from an extraordinary array of religions, typically those with universalistic aspirations, ranging from the Vatican to the Raelian UFO cult. Drawing on the fields of comparative religion and sociolinguistics, this article situates Esperanto in its European context. It discusses different religious interpretations of the language and isolates two leading religiolinguistic ideologies: the governmental and the ecclesiastical. A closer look at Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox liturgical texts reveals differing receptions of Esperanto in kindred ecclesiastical traditions."