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This paper presents a discourse analysis of publications of the Christian Reformed Church regarding its Rehoboth Mission near Gallup, New Mexico, among the Navajo. All issues of The Banner, Acts of Synod of the Christian Reformed Church, the Rehoboth Hospital Bulletin, and the Annual Report of the Rehoboth Mission from 1880 to the present were reviewed for references to health-care at Rehoboth from 1903 to 1943. Four religiously framed discourses were identified: discourses justifying provision of health-care at the mission, discourses of the Navajos as immature and potentially dangerous, needing to be civilized, discourses of cleanliness, and discourses of calling. This paper adds to a growing body of knowledge about religious frames within which nurses have practiced in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clerical frames for nursing practice: missionary nurses at Rehoboth This paper presents a discourse analysis of publications of the Christian Reformed Church regarding its Rehoboth Mission near Gallup, New Mexico, among the Navajo. All issues of The Banner, Acts of Synod of the Christian Reformed Church , the Rehoboth Hospital Bulletin , and the Annual Report of the Rehoboth Mission from 1880 to the present were reviewed for references to health-care at Rehoboth from 1903 to 1943. Four religiously framed discourses were identified: discourses justifying provision of health-care at the mission, discourses of the Navajos as immature and potentially dangerous, needing to be civilized, discourses of cleanliness, and discourses of calling. This paper adds to a growing body of knowledge about religious frames within which nurses have practiced in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of the Orisha religion in Africa, Nigeria, Cuba and the United States. There is a relationship between religion and territory in the Oyo empire in the West Africa. The paper looks at Orisha worship became established in Cuba. It did not disappear, but became a religion of slaves, and this transplantation provides a good illustration of the dialectal relations between civilization and society. The paper focuses on the introduction of Santeria into the U.S. and its development there. With Cuban emigration to the United States, other type of relationship between civilization and the society have been established. Santeria is recontextualized in a multicultural society segmented into communities. It has also penetrated the black American community. Santeria can be defined as a system of local cults whose essential element related to the adoration of the Santo, i.e. the original deity born of syncretism between African and Catholic beliefs. Santerism arose from the association of spiritism and Santeria produced in the centers of Puerto Rican spiritism in New York. Santerismo has smuggled in some practices of Orisha worship while still likening it to dangerous witchcraft.

The intent of this special issue is to extend community psychology's voice in the growing discourse about spirituality, religion, and psychology. While lively debate will continue about particular religious beliefs, the social significance of religious and spiritual experiences cannot be overlooked. These papers will not enter the debate over the existence of a higher power, but rather they will contribute to the development of knowledge and greater understanding of how these phenomena are interwoven into social life. Some authors focus on how religion and spirituality can serve as independent variables that have an impact on phenomena of interest, from the individual to the institution. In other papers, spirituality is treated more as a dependent variable, important as an outcome in its own right. In several of the papers, religion and spirituality are integral parts of an intervention. In sum, when religion and spirituality are viewed as legitimate variables of psychological study, they offer seemingly endless perspectives on human behavior. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the September 1, 2001 issue of the "Journal of Community Psychology." The papers in the issue discusses concepts of spirituality and community psychology. The papers were both stimulating and instructive. Stimulating because the authors in their different ways were confronting problems in living that no one anywhere can avoid trying to understand and answer; instructive because these papers as a first approximation of conceptualizing the issues in ways that have practical import.

The paper begins by tracing the development of the understanding of truth as adjunct to the self in postmodernity. It then proceeds to ask what history is in postmodernity in the light of the reconfiguration of truth, and what kinds of response Christianity, and especially Catholic Christianity might develop to the postmodern situation. Using a critique of Habermas’ speech “Modernity – an incomplete project” it develops a notion of postmodernity as an extreme interpretation of modernity, solely through reference to the self. By analysing the concept of the universal horizon in Habermas and in Hegel it shows how postmodernity both produces and deflects the notion of modernity, so that prior to the postmodern, neither modernity nor postmodernity can really be said to be thought at all. The paper suggests that postmodernity is not really ‘thought’ at all, but rather thinks for us, so that we take it for granted. It then takes a sketch of Nietzsche’s critique of the death of God as a springboard to ask what arenas a thoughtless theological response might be tempted into – especially that of conceiving the world purely and baldly as “sacramental” in structure. Finally it concludes by asking what possibilities postmodernity opens up through a thoughtful discernment of how it constitutes us at all [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his provocative critique of Geertz's 1966 definition of religion, Talal Asad (1993) suggests that the very project of defining the category of religion is rooted in the historical rise of Western secularism in societies formerly dominated by Christianity. In post-Mao China, there has been an explosion of activities that might be categorised as religious in the Geertzian sense, including church attendance, temple building, qi gong practice, pilgrimage, and geomancy. This paper examines two such activities, the participation of women in a Protestant church in rural Shandong and the recent protest by members of the Fa Lun Gong (Buddhist Law Qi Gong) society in Beijing, and asks what their emergence in a post-Maoist communist state tells us about the historical processes that frame the possibility of defining religion. Working with theories of religious participation from Geertz, Asad, Tambiah, and Feuchtwang, the paper develops a conception of 'symbolic participation' to illuminate the flourishing of religious practice in post-Mao China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time since the voluntary census in 1851, a question on religion will be asked in the 2001 Census for England and Wales and for Scotland. The justification given in the White Paper is that the information will enhance output from the ethnicity question, especially for groups originating from the Indian subcontinent. The decision has attracted criticism on the grounds that religion is a private and sensitive matter not suitable for a census and that the information yielded by the question will be of limited or no value. This paper contends that a question on religion should be asked and presents the main arguments in favour. In addition to enabling ethnic minority subgroups to be identified, it will provide counts for groups like Muslims and Jews that are currently invisible in ethnicity classifications. Information on religions will meet government needs arising from the increasing involvement of faith communities as collaborators in urban regeneration and health improvement and statutory requirements relating to such matters as standing advisory councils on religious education and local authority obligations under the Children Act 1989. It will also provide an evidence base for facilitating the identification of discrimination on religious grounds. However, the utility of the category 'Christian' in the question for England and Wales-in contrast to the broad subdivisions of Christianity in the Scotland question-is questioned, given that for some ethnic groups 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' are important cultural markers of difference. These developments merit critical review by professionals and the wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that the social scientific study of religion him long labored under a chafing constraint and a misleading premise. It suggests that our primary focus should he on the sacred, and that religion is just one among many possible sources of the sacred .Defining religion "substantively" but the sacred functionally helps to revolve a long-standing tension in the field Broadened conceptions of the sacred and of "sacralization" help to defuse the conflict among the two very different versions of secularization theory the "all-or-nothing" versus the "middle range "Meanwhile, a conceptual typo logy of the sacred pivots around tile intersections of two distinctions (compensatory vs confirmatory and marginal vs institutional,) Tins generates four distinct scenarios the sacred as integrative, the sacred as quest, the sacred as collectivity and the sacred as counter-culture The paper concludes wit/i three admonitions for research in the area [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the national narratives of young, urban Protestants in contemporary China. Based on 100 interviews conducted in Beijing and Shenzhen, it argues that in constructing their national narratives, Chinese Protestants display critical selectivity in adopting the values of official party-state nationalism. They display affection towards China, a sense of responsibility for improving the country and a concern for society's morality, all of which echo official nationalist priorities. However, they are critical of China's political arrangements, dispute the primacy of economic growth and are less hawkish on international and territorial issues. They see no contradiction between their Protestant and Chinese identities, but generally prioritise the former. This selectivity is explained by the fact that Protestantism generally attracts those less satisfied by the social and political status quo, and because of, in Carlson's terms, the 'boundary-spanning' nature of the Protestant identity and morality to which these converts then subscribe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as its starting point Carr's view that historical narrative reflects the preoccupations of the time in which it is written and Foucault's concept of consensual historical discourse as the outcome of a social struggle in which the victor suppresses or at least diminishes contrary versions of historical events in favour of their own, this paper traces and discusses the historical narrative of British nursing in the Crimean war and, in particular, three competing narratives that have arisen in the latter half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. These are the established narrative surrounding Florence Nightingale, the new narrative surrounding Mary Seacole and an Irish narrative surrounding the role of the Sisters of Mercy. It is argued that the increased vehemence of the debate surrounding these narratives is representative of the changes that have taken place in British society. However, we also argue that the Irish narrative and its critique are reflective of deep‐rooted Anglo‐Protestant attitudes articulated by Nightingale and uncritically accepted by subsequent historians even in modern British historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputes over gay and lesbian rights occupy a central place on both national and international agendas in recent years. This is also the case in societies emerging from chronic ethnonational conflict where debates over gay and lesbian rights vs. ethnic-based rights predominate. While much scholarly work focuses on the influence of socio-demographic factors in determining attitudes toward gay and lesbian rights in postconflict societies, to date, the role of political influences, such as ethnonationalism, is noticeably under-researched. It is with this omission in mind that this paper focuses on the influence of ethnonationalism, or congruency in religious, national and communal identity, on attitudes towards gay and lesbian rights issues. Using nationally representative data from Northern Ireland, the results suggest that while ethnonationalism is a key predictor of attitudes among Protestants, it is sociodemographic factors, such as gender, age and educational attainment, that are the primary determinants of Catholic views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last fifteen years the use of the indigenous Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca has been reimagined in alternative healing circles of Western countries. This paper explores the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia and examines ways in which acts of vomiting and ecstatic trance-visions involve heightened affective states and moral projects of healing. Aspects of everyday life are purged, rearticulated, and reconstituted in rituals where codes of conduct and discursive exchange encourage practices of personal evaluation and reflexivity that appear to index ideologies of individualism. Through exploring social and discursive prohibitions and forms of sensory organisation, the practice of drinking ayahuasca in Australia is shown to be constituted by ritual conventions that define the individual as autonomous and responsible in relation to ecstatic trance and articulations of wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval fatherhood, like masculinity, was built upon intersecting identities. The present paper aims to identify those identities, to analyse the way in which they were constructed and to examine the linkages between fatherhood and masculinity in the context of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Montpellier, a great city in Mediterranean Languedoc. Fatherhood is a dynamic research field in medieval studies that is now enriched by the gender studies’ conceptual frame. Becoming and being a father had many social and cultural implications in late-medieval societies that correlated to gendered constructs. Of this complex subject, our inquiry in the Montpellier archives can offer only a fragmentary view. The article focuses on three fields of history connected to the study of medieval fathers: legal history, the history of the emotions and economic history, and illustrates how those fields can benefit from a more gendered perspective, helping us to enrich our understanding of medieval fatherhood and its relationship with masculine identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2000s, a large group of Gogodala-speaking villagers in the Western Province (WP) of Papua New Guinea, led by a man I refer to as Henry, claimed to be members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Henry and his supporters arranged for the visit of Tudor Parfitt, then Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of London, to WP. In this paper, I suggest that an ongoing local interest in 'origins' has been framed in light of biblical teachings, and this more recent claim of a connection between the Gogodala ancestors and the Lost Tribes of Israel. I explore the generation of such ideas and claims through an examination of the significance of babala ('rules' or 'laws') as practices vital to the maintenance of village-based life, and biblical teachings on behaviour and practice focused on by the local Unevangelised Fields Mission. In this context, I explore the implications of the conjuncture of babala and the Bible, and the visits by Parfitt and his team, through the recent development of a 'Messianic Church' in Balimo with explicit forms of worship associated with Judaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter Kevern believes that the cognitive science of religion ( CSR) provides a justification for the idea of spiritual care in the health services. In this paper, I suggest that he is mistaken on two counts. First, CSR does not entail the conclusions Kevern wants to draw. His treatment of it consists largely of nonsequiturs. I show this by presenting an account of CSR, and then explaining why Kevern's reasons for thinking it rescues 'spirituality' discourse do not work. Second, the debate about spirituality-in-health is about classification: what shall count as a 'spiritual need' and what shall count as 'spiritual care'. It is about the politics of meaning, an exercise in persuasive definition. The function of 'spirituality' talk in health care is to change the denotation of 'spiritual', and attach its indelibly religious connotations to as many health-related concepts and practices as possible. CSR, however plausible it may be as a theory of the origins and pervasiveness of religious belief, is irrelevant to this debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the nature of matter from an Orthodox Christian patristic perspective, specifically that of St. Gregory of Nyssa, and compare this with David Bohm's concept of wholeness and the implicate order. By examining the ramifications of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the basic nature of matter as being rooted in the mind of God reveals itself, and furthermore shows that certain conceptions of quantum physics can provide language with which to give voice to this ancient view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Amid concern about the reach and inclusivity of parenting interventions, attempts have been made to culturally adapt programmes for specific ethnic or linguistic groups. This paper describes a novel approach of the religious adaptation of a parenting programme, namely the Family Links Islamic Values course. Methods A small-scale qualitative process evaluation was conducted on one Family Links Islamic Values course for Muslim fathers in the South of England in order to describe the intervention as implemented and its theory of change, as well as the acceptability of the programme to the participants. The data consisted of 13 semi-structured interviews (10 with parents and three with staff), 25 h of observation and reading of programme manuals. Results A logic model is presented to describe the theoretical basis of the intervention. The programme was highly acceptable to fathers who valued the integration of religious teachings and were generally very positive about their experience of attending the course. Post-course interviews with both fathers and mothers mentioned some positive changes in fathers as a result of their attendance. Conclusions It is important to be responsive to the needs of some British Muslims for religiously credible interventions. This small-scale process evaluation needs to be followed by a robust evaluation of programme outcomes for parents and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers important insights into the contemporary nature of youth transitions and the ways in which religious affiliation and engagement with international volunteering influences and interplays with negotiations of the life course. Situated within interdisciplinary debates about youth transitions, as well as discussions about relational geographies of age, religion and voluntarism, we demonstrate the multiple relationalities that are at play as young religious international volunteers negotiate the transition to religious adulthood. We focus on religious, vocational and aged relationalities to explore how these are engaged with, and experienced by, young people 'over there' in Latin America and 'back home' in the UK. Additionally, we explore how these relationalities shape identities within and between religiosity, age (youth) and volunteering, and how these are (re)organised through networks, flows and mobilities. To do so, we draw on our analysis of the experiences of young volunteers who participated in faith-based international volunteering with an evangelical Christian organisation that sends teams of young people on short-term missions to Latin America. We draw on our analyses of two sets of interviews with 22 young volunteers, 14 of whom also completed a diary about their experiences, supplemented by four focus groups. Our analysis points to the ways in which the spatial emphasis of geographical engagements with youth transitions can be well informed through considerations of religion; a key challenge being how young volunteers renegotiate their sense of religious self on returning 'back home'. In addition, although our participants displayed some self-reflexivity about the social construction of age, they did not necessarily exhibit an understanding of the power underpinning their encounters with others. Finally, our findings open up possibilities for appreciating the diversity of volunteering experiences and the role that volunteer organisations have in shaping the expectations and aspirations of those who participate in their programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A "supply-side" theory of religion claims that ties between church and state inhibit religious mobilization. The theory also asserts that the weakening of church-state ties is the inevitable harbinger of broad religious pluralism. This paper investigates these claims using the relationship between the state of Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the "LDS" or Mormon church) as a case study. Data demonstrate that the loosening of church-state ties in early Utah coincides with rising rates of religious activity and the emergence of religious pluralism, as supply-side theory predicts. However, these incipient trends were swiftly curtailed by renewed growth within Mormonism, which rebuts the theory's claims. The paper presents several reasons why Mormonism was able to circumvent the predicted effects of religious competition in Utah, and offers these as caveats for supply-side theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a wide range of researches to stress the importance of social context to the sociological understanding of religious experiences. It argues that individualistic definitions fail to take into account real group experiences such as those resulting from the reforms of Vatican II. For the sociologist, it is important to explore general patterns of group experiences and the meanings attributed to them. The paper discusses some of the methodological and conceptual problems in this area before considering evidence for the patterning of religious experience according to differences of generation, gender, class, level of urbanization, institutional involvement, and status inconsistency. The paper concludes by locating religious experiences in the context of modernity. In contrast to related theories of secularization, it draws attention to the recent work of Hervieu-Léger which suggests that utopian future expectations create space which can only be met by new forms of religious experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of religion and spirituality to the American public has been highlighted by recent opinion polls, media attention and empirical studies. Psychosocial researchers are incorporating these variables into studies of emotional and physical illness. A number of studies have found that, for cancer patients, religious, spiritual and quality of life concerns are paramount. This paper reviews the literature relating religion and spirituality to physical and emotional health and quality of life. Definitions and measurement issues related to religiosity/spirituality and quality of life are discussed. The paper provides a rationale and methodological suggestions for future studies assessing religious and spiritual beliefs of cancer patients in relation to quality of life. The authors conclude that regular inclusion of religiosity and spirituality measures in quality of life studies is needed in order to understand the integration of mind, body and spirit in cancer care. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years Australian nationalism has attracted considerable attention from historians, but most of the literature has been written from a secular standpoint. The present paper focuses on the contribution of the Anglican Church to the development of nationalism in the period between the coming of Federation and the attainment by the church of a new constitution that gave it autonomy. The first part of the paper examines the English character of the church and its attitudes towards empire, monarchy and "White Australia." The second part explores the emergence of a more distinctively Australian identity within the church. Although importannt, this was not strong enough greatly to influence the church whose presence helped perpetuate the hold of British cultural values in ways and to an extent not hitherto fully appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars broadly agree that no persuasive general theory of religion exists. Recently, however, new efforts at producing one have appeared. These range from wishful-thinking theories to rationalist and linguistic ones, but they increasingly emphasize cognition. This paper reviews several current approaches and summarizes my own cognitive theory: that religion is a form of anthropomorphism. Earlier writers who have seen anthropomorphism as basic to religion have disagreed about its nature and causes. Most explain it as comforting or as extending what we know to what we do not. Neither explanation is sound. Instead, anthropomorphism stems from a necessary perceptual strategy: facing an uncertain world, we interpret ambiguous phenomena as what concerns us most. That usually is living things, especially humans. Thus we see the world as more humanlike than it is. Religions, this paper holds, are systems of thought and action building in large measure upon this powerful, pervasive, and involuntary tendency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of liberal Protestantism offers an important canvas upon which to portray a myriad of cultural and structural factors at work within religion, on the one hand, and organizations, on the other. Specifically, this paper argues that the decline represents the structural consequence of Protestantism's liberal cultural triumph on behalf of such values as individualism, freedom, pluralism, tolerance, democracy, and intellectual inquiry. As laudable as these values may be from other perspectives, they can be anathema to mobilizing and sustaining any organization that requires a loyal and disciplined membership. The paper puts religious "strictness" in a broader perspective and reviews several temporal models that specify the effects more closely. These are all at work within the most recent cycle of liberal cultural assertion followed by membership decline in the 1960s. The paper concludes with some strategic implications for the future as various "remnants' seek to stem the tide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Branch Davidians were linked to the Seventh-day Adventist Church by their historical roots, the source of their members, their name (officially the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists), their identity, and their apocalyptic preoccupations, idiom, and paranoias. This paper examines the responses within Seventh-day Adventism to the sudden notoriety of the Branch Davidians. In so doing, it sheds new light on the Branch Davidian tragedy: Because Adventist leaders focused on distancing their church from the stigmatized Davidians, the confusion and misconceptions surrounding the latter's practices and apocalyptic theology were not clarified, and information and resources that might have helped government officials play a more constructive role during the siege were withheld. However, the official response was only one of several within Adventism to the Branch Davidian saga. The paper isolates three divergent responses, which are used as a vehicle for exploring long-term trends within Adventism - its increasing diversity and the strains flowing there from. The uncovering of these differing responses opens the way for an investigation of the pattern of diversity that emerges in a sect that is, in the terms of Stark and Bainbridge, reducing its tension with society and moving toward denominational status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Glock and Stark theoretical framework on Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism implies that orthodox religious beliefs perpetuate secular anti-Semitism via particularism and religious anti-Semitism. Several critics have argued that the major weakness of this study is its failure to examine explanatory variables other than religious beliefs. This paper addresses these issues using data from a 1990-91 national Dutch survey. Although the results tend to support the assumption that nonreligious variables are far more important to the explanation of anti-Semitism and, too, that they attenuate the impact of Christian orthodoxy, the effects of the latter are by no means spurious. The most important conclusion of this paper is therefore that there still is, in Holland at least, a religious factor at work, albeit a modest one, generating anti-Semitic beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When U.S. respondents to soda surveys are asked to report their attendance at religious services, approximately 40% of Protestants and 50% of Catholics claim to attend church in any given week. These survey findings have been widely disseminated. They are prominently and broadly cited though out scholarly, popular and textbook writing on American religion. Such extensive interest makes it all the more important to investigate whether these rates give a true or a distorted picture of religious practice in the United States. A recent paper has shaken confidence in the self-reported church attendance rates. Using counts of actual attendees at religious services rather than self-reports, the study has argued that the true weekly U.S. church attendance rate is approximately half the rate implied by the self-reports. The line of investigation is continued by collecting count-based church attendance data from an additional 31 Catholic dioceses. Including 17 dioceses reported on in the original paper, one is able to calculate count-based church attendance rates in 48 U.S. Catholic dioceses.

This paper argues that the belief in and reverence for superhuman beings cannot be understood as the chief distinguishing characteristic of religious phenomena. The consideration of Buddhism has always been central to the discussion of what religion is, and this paper focuses on the limitations of the human-superhuman dichotomy as it might be used to apply to Buddhist traditions. The argument makes three points: a) There are important sects of Buddhism that do not rely on reverence for superhuman beings, and the concept "superhuman" is difficult (if not impossible) to use in cross-cultural studies because of cultural variations in what it means to be human; b) the insistence that "philosophies" should be systematically distinguished from "religions" is arbitrary and culturally biased; and c) Buddhist doctrines that assert that reality is ultimately "nondual" provide the conceptual context for understanding superhuman beings in Mahayana, and this conceptuality is not consonant with superhuman definitions of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, concerns are addressed regarding the validity of the Quest scale introduced by Batson (1976) and Batson and Ventis (1982). Some have wondered whether this scale might be more a measure of agnosticism, of anti-orthodoxy, of sophomoric religious doubt, or of religious conflict, if indeed, it is a measure of anything religious at all. We have reviewed the available evidence regarding validity, much of which has appeared in unpublished research reports, theses, dissertations, or convention papers, and thus has not been widely available. Based on the evidence, we have concluded that the Quest scale does indeed measure a dimension of personal religion very much like the one it was designed to measure: an open-ended, active approach to existential questions that resists clear-cut, pat answers, Concerns regarding the reliability of the Quest scale, which have proved more persistent, are addressed in a companion paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I question Stark's and Bainbridge's (1985) characterization of the Bible Belt view of southern religion as a myth. The origins of the Bible Belt are examined in this paper. Using a conceptualization of the Bible Belt thesis based on a "captive region" view of religion, I expected clergy to be over represented in the South. Data on full-time clergy were analyzed by region during the 1890-1930 period. When urban/rural background was controlled, consistent evidence in support of the Bible Belt thesis appeared. The lack of clergy over representation in the rural South may be explained by the importance of part-time clergy, which were not counted. In addition, the data offered no support for the application of the captive region view of religion to the black experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to further empirical and conceptual understanding of collective forms of disengagement from new religious movements I describe empirically the events and social forces giving rise to factionalism, group defection, and schism within the Los Angeles Hare Krishna community following the death of the movement's founder I also describe the emergence, mobilization efforts, and ultimate failure of an incipient sectarian organization founded by dissident Hare Krishna members. Social psychological and structural approaches are analytically integrated to account for differing modes of collective disengagement and the fate of "movements of exit" (Hirschman, 1970) The paper concludes with a number of theoretical implications suggested by this ethnographic study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an attempt to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data obtained from a survey of the delegates to the 1980 National Pastoral Congress of English Catholics eighteen months after the Congress. Progressivism is regarded as the espousal of the new elements of religious ideology and pastoral emphases which have emerged since the Second Vatican Council.
Following earlier attempts using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, this paper describes the use of cluster analysis to identify distinct groups of individuals and discriminant analysis to identify the separate dimensions which distinguish between the clusters. Seven dusters ware identified in terms of six discriminant functions. An analysis of the social and religious characteristics of the seven types indicated that there was no simple unidimensional scale of progressivism. The paper concludes with some suggestions for a more comprehensive classification of progressive Catholics which might be explored in the case of other or more representative samples.
This paper set out to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data from a survey of delegates to the National Pastoral Congress. Following preliminary investigations using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, cluster analysis was employed to identify seven types of respondents with characteristics defined by six discriminant functions which were found to be theoretically meaningful. The social and religious characteristics of the seven dusters indicate that they may be regarded as seven distinct types of progressive. The typology that resulted from this study (Table 3) indicates that only seven of a possible 64 combinations are relevant for this particular sample. There is no reason to suppose that this would be the case for other samples, such as a nationally representative sample of English or American or Australian Catholics. However, on the basis of the present research, a number of key... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines indiscriminate proreligiousness as a construct which holds important implications for the scientific study of religion Approaches by researchers relevant to the construct are critically reviewed. As an alternative, our research team developed two scales directly measuring personal and congregational aspects of indiscriminate proreligiousness. The scales were refined using factor analytic methods and were empirically validated on samples of church members and church-going students. Both scales demonstrated evidence of content validity, internal consistency, construct validity, generalizability, and utility. A number of empirical and theoretical questions about the antecedents and consequents of indiscriminate proreligiousness are raised.
This paper examines indiscriminate proreligiousness as a theoretical construct which holds important implications for the empirical study of religion. More specifically, approaches by researchers relevant to the problem of indiscriminate proreligiousness will be critically reviewed. An alternative to these efforts to understand and deal with indiscriminate proreligiousness, one which involves the direct measurement of the construct, will then be presented and examined empirically. These findings simply provide initial support for these direct measures of indiscriminate proreligiousness. Additional studies are necessary to examine these constructs among other samples using other validation operations. Particularly important are investigations which test the relationship between indiscriminate proreligiousness and the accuracy of their religious reports. These studies may help answer a critical question: To what extent is indiscriminate proreligiousness a source of error in our attempts to obtain accurate estimates of religious practices, experiences, and attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of socio-economic achievement is elaborated through an analysis of data from eight NORC surveys, combined to create a sample of members of six religio-ethnic groups. Correlational analysis indicates findings similar to earlier studies. Using Methodists as the comparison group, Scheffe tests indicate that Jews differ in education, occupational achievement and income, Episcopalians in occupational prestige, and Baptists in education and income, but no significant differentials existed for Irish and Italian Catholics. Further analysis using decomposition suggests that traditional Jewish emphasis on education is an important factor in explaining these differences, but that the factors included in the model explain only a small part of the Baptist and Episcopalian differentials. It is suggested that religious values and religious perspectives are important considerations in understanding these findings.
This paper will review research since 1960, and will seek to define the relationship among several social structural determinants of status within each of several religio-ethnic groups. Our guiding hypothesis is that religious values and beliefs interact differently with other variables across these groups in shaping socioeconomic achievement, and decomposition will be used to specify the effects of background factors on achievement among various religio-ethnic groups. The findings reported in this paper are consistent with those of earlier research concerning religio-ethnic differences in education, occupational achievement and income. Scheffe analysis indicated that the hypothesized differences in the relationships among the determinants of socioeconomic achievement are only partly supported. Not only did Irish and Italian Catholics not differ from Methodists on any of the measures used, but Episcopalian and Baptist differentials were smaller than those of Jews. Jews exceed Methodists in income, occupational prestige, and educational achievement,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operationalizing religion in terms of both its official manifestations and an interrelated quasi-religious meaning system, the present study analyzes the impact of religion on the quality of life for adherents of one of society's alternative lifestyles, the Back-to-the-Land Movement Data from a mailed questionnaire returned by 510 (66.2 percent response rate) are presented Back-to-the-landers, often part-time and self-employed professionals practicing semi-subsistence agriculture on small parcels of land, have an elaborate worldview that justifies their counter-cultural lifestyle on the basis of ecological wholeness, simple living and self-reliance. Both simple correlations and multiple regression models are explored in order to assess the impact of official and unofficial religion, back-to-the-land behaviors and background factors on measures of quality of life. Generally, the measures of unofficial religion, termed quasi-religious meaning systems, are the strongest predictors of quality of life
In short, this paper focuses on these two aspects of religiosity as they relate to QoL. In addition, according to the criterion of the ability to explain variance, both religious measures will be compared with a number of other behavioral and background variables to assess their relative importance.
Religious belief has rarely been the primary focus of attention in QoL research, although there is both empirical and theoretical evidence for its importance as a predictor of life satisfaction and happiness (Hadaway, 1978; Hadaway & Roof, 1978; McNamara & St. George, 1979; Moberg, 1984). The analysis of this paper's empirical data attempts to make a comment on the question of the relationship between religion and QoL, as well as describe in a substantive manner the nature of the quasi-religious meaning systems that appear to sustain the back-to-the-landers in their alternative lifestyles. Contextualizing quasi-religious meaning systems within the alternative... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences of Mennonites who move from rural communities to urban areas are not unlike those of other people who have had similar experiences. What is unique, however, are the conceptual adaptations which this sample of Mennonites have made. This paper reviews the major influences which have loosened individual commitments to Mennonite rural communities. It then examines the conceptual adaptations made by a sample of Mennonites living in one metropolitan area, as they attempt to maintain their identities. Key processes in their adaptations are the revised definitions of "community" and "service." Associated processes are the high degree of involvement in philanthropic projects and the use of psychological terminology which appears to bridge the gap between a heightened importance assumed by the self in an urban setting, and images of what it means to be a Mennonite.
This paper continues this field of inquiry. It examines the way in which a group of Mennonites, formerly from rural areas, incorporate the social realities of urban life into their rural-based religious beliefs. In many respects their experiences are similar to others who have moved from rural communities to urban areas. However, what makes these people somewhat unique is that they continue to identify themselves as Mennonites and their processes of adaptation are not so much ones of trying to be accepted in the urban world as they are attempting to make the urban world acceptable to their beliefs. Further, these processes are ones that came about only after the individuals in this study made the choice to leave their rural communities. They came as individuals to the city, but having come, they sought religious community.
While the native Mennonites in this sample have already taken a major step toward the values of individualism, they have maintained a sufficient identity with their Mennonite heritage to experience the tensions inherent in practicing their beliefs in an urban... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the financial activities, ideological foundations and goals of three new religious movements The movements are: 3HO Foundation, Divine Light Mission and Vajradhatu Research methods include participant observation, taped interviews, analysis of movement literature and examinations of group financial records. Results indicate that worldly success has become a religiously significant venture for at least two new religious movements Within these groups there is a high degree of successful entrepreneurial and professional activity There is also organizational and ideological support from the movements' leadership to the membership to become rich. Several interpretations are offered including historical precedent, sect-church transformation, institutionalization, a search for legitimacy and leadership influences Resource mobilization is argued to be the most effective theoretical approach Accordingly, movement direction is determined by rational leadership decisions in a practical attempt to realize projected goals and to promote group maintenance and survival.
In this paper we have demonstrated that a trend exists toward individual worldly success within at least two new religious movements. These two groups, 3HO Foundation and Vajradhatu, have developed an ideological orientation that supports worldly success as a religiously significant venture and thereby sees no contradiction between the spiritual and the earthly realm. The variety and the success of the money-making ventures undertaken by members of these two groups is especially noteworthy considering that the groups themselves only began 14 years ago.
We have argued that the turn to worldly success by the new religious movements did not result from a transition from a sect ideal-type to a church ideal-type nor did it result from institutionalization. Our evidence indicates that the transition was initiated by rational leadership decisions in response to changing social and... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing research by Roof, Mol and Kaill, this paper examines relationships among the following explanatory variables theological conservatism, localism, authoritarianism/dogmatism, and civil liberalism. Using data drawn from members of three Protestant denominations in Australia, it is found that, of these four variables, theological conservatism is the best predictor of frequency of church attendance, degree of involvement in other church activities, views about ecumenism, attitudes to change in church structures and practices, and moral conservatism But the other three explanatory variables are each more useful than theological conservatism in predicting degree of concern for social justice and degree of approval for church activism on social, political and economic issues The four explanatory variables are all fairly weak predictors of political-economic conservatism. It is argued that the affects attributed to localism, authoritarianism/dogmatism or lack of civil liberalism can be explained by a more general concept, breadth of perspective Modifications to Roof's theory are suggested it is hypothesized that at least among Protestant church members, the impact of breadth of perspective decreases, and the salience of theological orientation increases, as the proportion of the total population which regularly participates in church-oriented religion decreases.
This paper provides a critique and extension of studies undertaken by Roof (1976 and 1978), Mol (1969 and 1971) and Kaill (1971). Each of these studies deals inter alia with the relative importance of theological orientation and of some other variable in the explanation or prediction of church members' attitudes and behaviors.
It is clear that Roof's theory needs considerable qualification in the light of the data reviewed in the present paper. In particular, I would now hypothesize that at least among Protestant church members,[6] the impact of breadth of perspective decreases, and the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an ideal type process which considers any patient, his intimates and hospital chaplain in the wider setting of personal care. It calls attention to an important aspect of patient care which offers a starting point from which to begin assessing the needs of any patient from a complementary perspective. The paper reveals two important consequences of the features of any patient situation for the structuring of whole patient care. The first is that the ill person can be susceptible to certain fundamental characteristics which bring him face-to-face with situations in which established practices display an insufficiency for providing mechanisms of adjustment. The second is that spiritual support can be a most important mechanism of adjustment to the aleatory and frustrating facts of these basic characteristics of the patient's existence. Also, it is not only that the ill person may have a need to be helped in this way, but that the appropriate general pattern of action in regard to the source of help is often related to evaluation by nursing and other health service personnel--who are inexpert in this field of care--of the general requirements of any patient situation. This evaluation may have important consequences regarding the completeness of patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examined the relationship between class, religion and political ideology. I proposed to show that religious beliefs and values incorporate elements of class based ideology which then serve to legitimate a militant or submissive world view. Class, in this paper, is defined as a collectivity of individuals who are conscious of their socio-economic status and interests. I distinguish between ascending, retrenching, bourgeois, and the alienated classes. Corresponding to these classes are four types of religions: inclusive and exclusive militant and submissive religions. The religious values which assume theology-like status are as follows. The religions of the ascending classes are primarily inclusive militants emphasizing the values of collectivity, equality and justice. The religions of the retrenching classes are exclusive militants which stress individualism, freedom, and Christian love. Bourgeois religions are inclusive submissive and while they incorporate the values of the above two, they also add the values of charity and decorum. The religions of the alienated classes are exclusive submissive and anti-class although they do manifest a caste-like system with an elitist self concept and a total commitment to the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of multiple social identities into a coherent in-group construal is of immediate relevance in today's complex and diverse societies. This paper proposes a conceptual and operational framework to examine how individuals subjectively construe their in-group in the context of multiple, cross-cutting group memberships. The subjective combination of multiple social identities is described in terms of structure (social identity structure) and inclusiveness (social identity inclusiveness (SII)). Two studies assess SII and social identity structure in community samples to whom the subjective combination of multiple, cross-cutting in-groups is of particular relevance: a sample of Turkish-Belgian Muslims (Study 1) and Turkish-Australian Muslims (Study 2). Across both studies, SII uniquely predicted attitudes toward a range of out-groups, over and above identification with singular in-groups. Moreover, a wide range of social identity structures were identified, further attesting to broad individual differences in the construal of the perceived in-group. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditions and beliefs about the Mesopotamian deity Enki/Ea - the god of water, wisdom, magic, and creation - formed a major part of the Sumerian and Babylonian religious text material. They cover a period from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE. This paper traces the history of these traditions focussing on the later periods, reviews the mythological texts representing the 'Eridu tradition', and outlines Enki/Ea's change of roles especially during the 1st millennium BCE. It deals in detail with the story of the Great Flood and considers the conditions for a possible influence of the Enki/Ea mythologies on neighboring literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious beliefs influence many aspects of daily life. It is therefore plausible to argue that these beliefs affect some of our most central endeavors, such as trade, migration, foreign investment and travel. This paper investigates the role a country's religious affiliation plays in destination choice for international tourism flows. To that end, a gravity model for international tourist arrivals is estimated by using a large dataset of 164 countries for the period 1995-2010. Results provide evidence that religious similarity have significant explanatory power in global tourism flows even after controlling for other measures of cultural affinity. Moreover, the presence of common religious minorities in the country has a positive impact on tourism flows. However, although religious pluralism foster tourism flows between countries, religious similarity has a stronger positive effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If theological education is to prepare religious leaders who will respond faithfully and capably to ecological challenges, what models of teaching and learning will best equip them for this work? In conversation with environmental education theory and examples from diverse learning contexts, this paper proposes a model of 'learning on the ground' which is characterized by engaged and embodied pedagogy through participation in earth-honoring social practices. See a companion essay in this issue of the journal ( Kevin J. O' Brien, 'Balancing Critique and Commitment') and a response to both these essays (Forrest Clingerman, 'Pedagogy as a Field Guide to the Ecology of the Classroom') also published in this issue of the journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, a land spirit disrupted plantation development within a contested Economic Land Concession in Cambodia. The spirit, along with efforts of a monk and NGO, ultimately persuaded state officials to return 5 ha of land to the local temple. In this paper, we bring together literature on the anthropology of religion, political economy of land possession, and critical development studies; we demonstrate that land spirits continue as members of political patronage chains at both the state and the local level, and show how the non-capitalist logics of spirit negotiations both challenged and legitimized large-scale land acquisition projects. The spirit was not subsumed by, but rather shaped, contemporary capitalist expansion in ways that call for a critical examination of the ontological certainty that all land is designed for human production and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and to what extent other education motives might have been involved as well. We employ a historical data set from Switzerland which allows us to differentiate between different cognitive skills: reading, numeracy, essay writing, and Swiss history. We develop an estimation strategy to examine whether the impact of religious denomination was particularly large with respect to reading capabilities. We find support for this hypothesis. However, we also find evidence which is consistent with the view that Protestants' education motives went beyond acquiring reading skills. ( JEL I20) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current debates on Nazism and religion are focused around the notion that the Nazis sought to promote a kind of Christian faith called 'positive Christianity'. This article challenges such perspectives. It establishes that 'positive Christianity' had an existing meaning in German society before the Nazi Party was formed - dogmatic Christian faith - and demonstrates that this was the same interpretation of religious faith that Hitler appeared to advocate in Mein Kampf. By contrast to recent revisionist accounts, the paper argues that 'positive Christianity' had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered as a cohesive construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses two related questions: 1. the much debated issue concerning philosophy's proper way of engaging with religion, and 2. the extent to which religious concerns belong to our existence. If philosophy is understood as the hermeneutics of existence, that is, as the self-interpretation of existence, as the early Heidegger proposes, then the way the second question is answered bears on the approach to the first issue. While endorsing Heidegger's claim in the 1920s that philosophy should be autonomous and neutral in relation to religious concerns, I reject his view that this can be achieved through a silencing attitude characteristic of a 'fundamentally atheistic' philosophy. I link Heidegger's failure to offer a convincing response to the first question to the way in which he addresses the second question as to whether religious concerns essentially belong to our existence. In contrast with his views on the second question, which often seem to propose a negative answer to it (but which, I claim, are not as not as clear as it is sometimes assumed), I argue that spiritual comportment is an essential aspect of our life. How can then philosophy 'transcend' it and be religiously neutral without becoming silent about it? I argue that philosophy can be religiously neutral and, at the same time, speak about spirituality as an open question within a shared space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present results from an investigation of religious information searching based on analyzing log files from a large general-purpose search engine. From approximately 15 million queries, we identified 124,422 that were part of 60,759 user sessions. We present a method for categorizing queries based on related terms and show differences in search patterns between religious searches and web searching more generally. We also investigate the search patterns found in queries related to 5 religions: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. Different search patterns are found to emerge. Results from this study complement existing studies of religious information searching and provide a level of detailed analysis not reported to date. We show, for example, that sessions involving religion-related queries tend to last longer, that the lengths of religion-related queries are greater, and that the number of unique URLs clicked is higher when compared to all queries. The results of the study can serve to provide information on what this large population of users is actually searching for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]