The world is changing, and so is the truth. Or is it? The last half decade or so has been turbulent, not least in the questions it has raised about truth. During those years Donald Trump and his mendacious strategies have come and gone, but not before leaving us to think again about the dark and frightful effects of those strategies through the attacks in Washington DC at the beginning of January 2021. It is no more than four and a half years since the International Society of Religion, Literature and Culture (ISRLC) gathered in Glasgow for its 18th Biennial conference around the theme ‘Lines in Sand’. The world was utterly different, then. In September 2016, few saw Trump as a winner, and the pandemic was still more than four years ahead. But shortly afterwards, Trump took over the White House just as the ISRLC conference committee from Uppsala was slowly starting to plan the 19th Biennial conference for September 2018. At that point, it became almost unavoidable to bring truth to the table, and the conference theme was decided in accordance with that feeling: ‘The Place of Truth’. Now, in a pandemic when the world is, to some extent, standing still, this issue of Literature and Theology presents a small selection of the many interesting papers that were presented on this theme in Uppsala back in 2018. The 20th Biennial ISRLC conference was supposed to take place in September 2020 in Chester, but it was postponed. We are now in the situation of waiting—and hoping—for that conference to take place in August 2021, while at the same time we see—or at least hope to see—a possible restoration of the public conversation, not least in its view of truth. What a mess. In the midst of this, writing a passably truthful introduction to a scholarly journal issue on truth suddenly becomes a huge challenge.

中文翻译：

---

简介：真理之地

世界在变化，真理也在变化。还是吗？在过去的大约五年时间里，动荡不安，尤其是在它提出的有关真相的问题上。在那几年，唐纳德·特朗普和他的卑鄙的策略来了又去了，但是在离开我们之前，我们不得不再思考一下这些策略通过2021年1月开始的华盛顿特区袭击而产生的黑暗和可怕的影响。不超过四个自国际宗教，文学与文化学会（ISRLC）聚集在格拉斯哥举行了为期18年的第18届双年会议，主题为“沙子中的线条”。那么，世界就完全不同了。2016年9月，很少有人认为特朗普是赢家，大流行病仍需四年多的时间。但不久之后，在乌普萨拉ISRLC会议委员会缓慢开始计划于2018年9月举行第19届双年会议时，特朗普接管了白宫。在那一点上，将真相表露无遗几乎是不可避免的，会议主题是根据感觉：“真理的地方”。现在，在大流行的情况下，世界在某种程度上处于停滞状态，《文学与神学》仅提供了2018年在乌普萨拉针对该主题发表的许多有趣论文中的一小部分。第20届ISRLC双年展会议原定于2020年9月在切斯特举行，但会议被推迟。我们现在处于等待和希望会议于2021年8月举行的情况，而与此同时，我们看到（至少希望看到）公开对话有可能恢复，尤其是在公众看来真相。真是一团糟。在这种情况下，撰写一篇关于真理的学术期刊的如实如实的介绍突然变成了巨大的挑战。