Search

This experiment tests predictions based on research and evidence around the biopsychosocial model (BPSM) that people in a challenge state have faster, more gain orientated search patterns than those in a threat state. Participants ( n = 44) completed a motivated performance task involving the location of a target appearing in one of two search arrays: one associated with gaining points and the other associated with avoiding the loss of points. Midway through the task, participants received a false feedback prime about their performance invoking either challenge or threat. We found that participants receiving a challenge prime (high performance feedback) spent longer searching the gain array and made fewer fixations on the loss array. Those receiving a threat prime (low performance feedback) made fewer fixations on the gain array. These findings are in line with the BPSM and provide evidence that allocation of attention (measured using eye movement data) is related to challenge and threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses apocalyptic scenarios that view the end of the world as a time in which there will be no surviving rivals to one's own faith. Apocalyptic visions that seek to exercise the complexities of the social order; Ways in which prophets and scribes make the flow of time seem more continuous; Ramifications of living in the expectation that time will end.

The argument has long been made that Christianity is part of a tradition that has had a strong secularizing influence especially on Western societies. The emphasis of Christianity on direct access of the believer to the divine also has tended to make any form of institutionalized religion seem precarious. Certainly the Christian faith has made individuals responsible for their use of time, both in this life and in the next, what are regarded as modem tendencies toward a rational and responsible use of time have been traced to the monastic system of the regular division of the day into hours under a variety of spiritual disciplines. Furthermore, the individual has been trained to become responsible for his or her spiritual development and for the development of selfhood over a lifetime. Tendencies toward a rational and coherent intellectual framework for religious belief have placed a high premium on rationality throughout the social system and have made the Christian churches intolerant of local and anomalous forms of belief and practice.

The article focuses on the issues related to fetishism. Language becomes invested with magical powers and significance when ritual is unable to accomplish its work. Ritual is uniquely suited to differentiate and at the same time to provide the basis for a re-integration of the two lineages. Where ritual fails, however, it is left to language to provide the meaning that both sets apart one lineage from another and yet allows two lines to meet with a minimum of damage to either side. Augustine seeks to define the boundary between lineages by a verbal magic so to speak: as if the right formulation of one lineage's claims to life eternal would make it so. Ritual tends to re-enact critical moments of the past in which firm divisions were made of one lineage or house from another. Every new parting, that is, rekindles memories of earlier divisions. By transposing to language the burdens and magical powers of ritual, Augustine undertakes through speech the task of renewing and then disposing of earlier partings.

The functional synthesis in the sociology of religion has dissolved. In its place are left broad theoretical orientations and general methodological approaches to interpreting and explaining accounts of religious commitment and practice. Functionalism provided a privileged methodological stance from which the sociologist could interpret and transcend the accounts of groups and individuals. Sociologists of religion still employ the critical distinction between myth and reality as their theoretical point of departure. Functionalism has provided a privileged standpoint for the sociological inquirer in the past, but it no longer guarantees the sociologist's own immunity to debunking and correction. Functionalists have been able to complete what was missing in the personal accounts of religious commitment and behaviour by introducing variables from the social system. The claim that a sociologist's account of a given religious group or practice is an improved and not merely adequate translation of that group's own experience and understanding rests on the sociologist's more direct and complete access to common sources of knowledge.

The future of the sociological study of religion is of less interest than the future of modern societies. Though the sociology of religion may be marginal to the discipline as a whole, its salvation does not lie in abandonment of the classics but, rather, in reconsideration of some of the original problems posed by the sociological "masters". Re-opening these old debates involves the problematic of the state as a form of domination and it may be useful to view the state from the standpoint of classical anarchism. Perception of the state as problematic and moribund in a secular society entails adoption of a "minimalist" position that questions all forms of social obligation beyond the most immediate, temporary and specific. Revival of the anarchist program challenges sociology to consider the possibility of a society based on minimal obligation i.e. to envisage a wholly secularized social system based only on the most immediate, temporary and specific forms of authority. Radical analysis of the "cult of authority" appears to offer sociologists their best opportunity for clarifying the nature of religion and the meaning of secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the analogy between the early Orthodox church's self-representation as the new Israel and the similar use of this symbol in the U.S. Such analogy is reflected in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on the First Amendment, extending from the early nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth; that history provides several cases in which the justices drew upon the assumed religious commitments of the population in order to justify restrictions on religious freedom. The differences between the American Republic and the early Church in this analogy become particularly important. For although the Court has at times acted in favor of what might be construed as orthodox religious opinion, as in its rejection of the Mormons' pretense that the practice of polygamy stems from religious commitment, the Court has acknowledged that the law knows no heresy.

Analyzes society's conception of time in relation to sin and delves into Dante's characterization of time in purgatory in his `Divine Comedy'. Concept of serving time for sinning; Sin as the taint of time in the soul and purgatory as the place where that taint is cleansed.

Discusses ideas presented by books on the sociology of American religion, published as of July 1990. Study of the way that Protestants have succeeded in maintaining their communal life and traditions in the U.S. by Gwen Neville in her book 'Kinship and Pilgrimage: Rituals of Reunion in American Protestant Culture'; Study of the way denominations are losing their distinctiveness by Robert Wuthnow in his book 'The Struggle for America's Soul: Evangelicals, Liberals and Secularism.'