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In this paper I ask whether either theology or religious practice actually contribute to ethical theory or ethical practice. I rehearse well-known Humean arguments that they do not. I then reflect on the idea from Professor O’Donovan’s paper that it is virtuous for us to entertain hopes for redemption or for fulfilment and suggest that a careful weighing of these words may indicate otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I explore religious conversion and Christian identity among the Kelabit, an indigenous group from the interior of Borneo. The main thesis of the paper is that Christianity facilitates wider geographic mobility and urban migration and, over time, has led to a re-inscription of spiritual meanings in the local landscapes of rural homelands in the Kelabit Highland region. Beginning with a brief sketch of contemporary Kelabit life, presented through the lens of two individuals, I offer a history of Kelabit conversion and the ways that pre- and post- conversion beliefs are linked to issues of mobility and place. To illustrate how conversion has led to re-inscription of new spiritual meanings in the local landscape, the paper highlights the emergence of Christian revival movements in and around the Kelabit Highlands, including worship on nearby Mount Murud, which has become a highly significant site of spiritual practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the values of girls who affiliate themselves with Christianity, in comparison with the values of girls of no religious affiliation, in the context of the ongoing debate regarding the social significance of religious affiliation. The values of 9,447 Christian-affiliated girls, and 7,185 girls of no religious affiliation are explored over the six value areas of: myself; my worries; school; religion and society; moral issues; and societal and world concerns. The data demonstrate that Christian-affiliated girls as a group have a distinct identity as expressed through their values, in that they are more positive in their outlook on life, yet also more anxious, and more conservative in their values than girls of no religious affiliation. This finding supports the concept of religious affiliation is a key part of a person's identity, and has important implications for policy regarding young people, specifically Christian-affiliated girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a history and textual critique of the anthropology of millennial, pentecostal, and charismatic Christianity in Melanesia located in relation to interpretations of indigenous religiosities worldwide, particularly mainstream Christianity but including "cargo cults" and millenarianism generally. An important subtext is the correlation between anthropological scholarship and the empirical settings of fieldwork, historicizing ethnographic texts in terms of indigenous actions and desires which subtly helped mould particular representations. Anthropology's major national traditions have been pervasively secular, romantic, and ahistoric. In Melanesia anthropologists essentialized exotic, "traditional" ritual complexes and mostly elided the less dramatic, mobile religious practices and experiences of the evergrowing majority of Melanesians who appropriated varieties of Christianity to their own ends. Only recently has mainstream Melanesian Christianity become a proper topic for ethnography, often in conjunction with a prolifc literature on the "politics of tradition." Emblematic of the extent to which anthropologists are shifting Christianity from outside to within Melanesian religiosity is an emergent ethnographic focus on burgeoning pentecostal, charismatic, and millennial Christianity. Such movements may better cater to the discipline's expertise in exotic ritualizing than the seeming mundanity of mainstream Christian practices, but there is also powerful indigenous impetus in anthropology's romance with the millennial. [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]

The paper presents findings of the research of the religious conflicts in Georgia which erupted between November 2012 and December 2013. The research aimed to assess the causes of the religious conflicts between the Muslim minority and Orthodox Christians in the villages of Nigvziani (Lanchkhuti district), Tsintskaro (Tetritskaro district) and Samtatskaro (Dedoplistskaro district) in Georgia; as well as to analyze government policies enacted for the peaceful and just resolution of the conflicts. The study revealed the social and political contexts that were influencing the conflicts and conditioning them. The article is an analysis of the political aspects of the conflict and the problems related to the national-religious identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines organizational and theological frameworks to address the integration of Christian spirituality at work (SAW). It begins with a brief explanation of SAW, followed by a more narrow description of Christian SAW. The paper then provides a snapshot of several integrative models from the SAW literature, after which it offers a new theological model of Christian SAW, noting that Christians want to contribute to God's new creation while worshipping Him through their work. Both this and the models from the SAW literature are considered to be 'top-down' approaches in that they provide guidance for managers on how to integrate employee spirituality. The next section then provides new 'bottom-up' qualitative research exploring the underlying conditions that working Christians believe are required for enhancing their spirituality at work. The paper concludes by bringing these two approaches together to produce a new theoretical contribution on how best to integrate Christian SAW, and to achieve the benefits of doing so for an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplace decision-making is shaped by institutionally delimited and individually appropriated logics of action. Since 1997, when President Clinton issued a White House directive that protected religious expression in the workplace, religious rhetoric and symbolism have played a more significant role in the semiotic codes through which these logics are expressed. While a growing literature has attended to the interplay between the domains of faith and work, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways elite actors negotiate the sometimes competing demands of religious convictions and workplace responsibilities. In this paper, we examine how evangelicals in positions of public leadership account for the role of faith in workplace decision-making. On the basis of our analysis of interview transcripts of 360 national leaders, we construct a taxonomy of dispositions toward faith at work along two primary axes—the expression of faith in workplace decision-making and the reception of it in various situations or by particular reference groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A post-secular society is often defined as one with a renewed interest in the spiritual life. This paper argues for the contrary view: post-secular societies are neither religious nor secular, they do not prescribe or privilege a religion, but neither do they actively and intentionally refrain from doing so. They are neither for nor against religion(s) but rather take no stand on this matter because it is irrelevant for their self-understanding and without import for the way in which they define themselves. For them, religion has ceased to be something to which a society or a state has to relate in embracing, rejecting, prescribing, negating, or allowing it. People may or may not be religious, but states and societies are not, and hence there is no need for them to be secular any more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Kampala, Pentecostal churches have been filling the public space since 1986. The paper focuses on the transformation that Pentecostal churches have been experiencing in Uganda, with an increasing involvement in society. I discuss interactions between this process and changes in national strategies regarding HIV and AIDS prevention, and show how the concept of "salvation" assumes renewed meanings in this context. I analyze young people's involvement in religious campaigns against AIDS, and the fact that this is linked to the Pentecostal discourse of the "break with the past," which in Uganda has found a new dimension in the rhetoric of a "Joseph Generation," charged with building a Christian country and opposed to the fathers' generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have recently maintained that it is difficult if not impossible to postulate the definite parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. It is argued in this paper that recent criticisms against the 'parting of the ways'-model resemble criticisms levelled against the classical identity theory formulated by Erik H. Erikson. His identity theory emphasises the sense of personal sameness and historical continuity. In recent decades, however, it has become common to question whether the notion of unified and consistent self does justice to diverse social realities in which individuals construct their sense of who they are. Furthermore, the developmental stage model claims to be universal and culturally neutral while, as a matter of fact, it is implicitly moralistic and value-laden. In case of the 'parting of the ways'-model it has become clear that the model does not match the evidence showing an intense interaction between various Jewish and Christian communities during the first centuries CE. In addition, it has been claimed that the model is not an unbiased historical account but serves Christian theological interests. Comparing the 'parting of the ways'-theory with the Eriksonian identity theory highlights the problems inherent in both theories. It is suggested that psychological and social-psychological theories arguing for the flexible and dynamic nature of identity construction are best suited to describe the emergence of early Christian identity in relation to Jews and Judaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, quantitative accounts of religious membership range from more than one and a half times the total population to thirty percent or less, and we do not have a solid understanding of who these religious affiliates are. This paper addresses four core questions to provide a clearer portrayal of Japanese religious affiliation: 1) What is the approximate number of Japanese who claim religious affiliation? 2) How do the figures presented in this study differ from previous statistics and why? 3) Are there significant differences between individual affiliates and those who claim to have a "household" religion? And 4) What are some of the theoretical explanations for religious affiliation in Japan? Using data from large nationally representative probability samples of Japanese adults, multivariate analysis indicates that some deprivation measures (e.g., unemployment and low education and income levels) help explain individual affiliation with "New Religions" but not with Buddhist or Christian groups, and socialization controls (e.g., gender, age, social engagement, and traditional attitudes) can predict belief in Buddhist, New Religion, and Christian religions. Insufficient data have hindered research on this important topic in the past. This study takes advantage of new resources and supports findings from qualitative research, enabling us to explore who are religious affiliates in Japan and why they might claim such associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a detailed consideration of ways in which Chinese religious practitioners, including Daoists, Christians, and spirit mediums, deploy syncretism in complex fields of practice. Rather than focusing on doctrinal blending, this study emphasises the ways in which these practitioners combine elements from diverse religious traditions through the media of ritual performance, visual representation, story, and landscape. After considering the diverse ways in which syncretic processes may be deployed in a field of practice, the paper investigates three ethnographic cases, exploring ritual co-celebration at Wudang Mountain in South-central China, charismatic Christian practices in Singapore, and the recent development of Holy Mount Zion as a Christian pilgrimage site in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of religious orientation as proposed by Allport and refined by Batson has provided a useful tool for identifying and discussing individual differences in religiosity within Christian and post-Christian contexts. The present paper accepts the conceptual and empirical usefulness of distinctions between the three constructs of intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religious orientations; reviews the conceptual and empirical strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of existing measures in this field; and proposes three new indices to assess these orientations. The New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO) are designed to be of equal length, to give equal empirical weight to three conceptual components within each construct, and to employ direct and accessible language. Data provided from a sample of 517 undergraduate students in Wales demonstrate the satisfactory psychometric properties of these new indices. A clear distinction is made between the appropriate use and the inappropriate misuse of these indices in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers non-linguistic criteria for dating prophetic texts. It examines texts from Isaiah (e.g., Isa 10:5-12:6), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32-33), Ezekiel (Ezek 37:15-28), and the Book of the Twelve Prophets (Zephaniah 1) in an effort to determine their respective historical contexts. Criteria employed include formal characteristics, historical allusions, and intertextual citations or allusions. Although problematic, the paper argues that such criteria provide some basis for dating prophetic texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper was part of a larger project, which investigated the process of knowledge acquisition in Christian religion. The concept of God in particular is a core construct in any religion and it has been involved in a number of changes in the history of religions. Some of those changes were observed in the children's constructions of the house that God lives in. Among children's drawings we found changes which imply, in terms of Thagard (1992) not only belief revision, but also a conceptual change. However, hierarchy reinterpretation, in which the concept of God changes from the part of the cosmos to the creator (ontologically different from the creatures) we did not observe among the primary school children. The development of the different hierarchies we constructed on the basis of children's drawings seems to follow the developmental changes, which took place in the history of Greek religions. Finally, there were some implications for Religious Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refers to a participant-observation study of pilgrimage toward the Shrine of Monte Carmine, in southern Italy. The main focus is on the procession made on the day of celebration of the Virgin Mary venerated as Madonna del Carmine. The paper argues that the true raison d'âtre of the pilgrimage resides in the presence of a dominant symbol. This is perceived by devotees as sacralizing the space and making sense of their performance. It also refers to a mythical time. The study is also concerned with the critical analysis of the issue of pilgrimage in general, with some of the most important meanings and functions which anthropology variously attaches to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about realities embedded in the notions of "religiosity" and "Armenian religious identity" in contemporary Armenia. It is focused on some patterns of the Armenian national religion and official forms of Armenian Apostolic Christianity. In particular, the article discusses links, attitudes, interrelations, contradictions and mutual influences of doctrinal Armenian Apostolic Christianity and its vernacular versions. The Armenian version of vernacular Christianity includes the religious practices of worshipping local saints, magic, healing and divination. An attempt to outline three conventional models of religiosity within the Armenian Apostolic Christian identity, those of "grassroots", "privatized", and "fundamental", has been made in the paper, and the main patterns of attitudes among these models are discussed. In fact, these models of religiosity represent different religious subcultures, with different systems of signs and different patterns of religious mentality, though sharing the symbols, values, and priorities of Armenian Apostolic Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the famous prewar internationalist Nitobe Inazō, and inquires into the origins of his Christian faith. Born in 1862 in Morioka in the last years of the Tokugawa period, he imbibed Christianity while attending the Sapporo Agricultural College. That institution's unique historical environment, and the spiritual legacy implanted there by its charismatic founding president, William S. Clark, is described, and it is demonstrated how Inazō and his classmates were profoundly influenced by New England puritan values in their early exposure to Protestant Christianity. It follows Inazō on his six-and-a-half years of study abroad, and traces his inward struggles to attain a genuine Christian faith free from the taint of foreign culture. His academic studies in the United States and Germany is described in detail. Special attention is paid to his Quaker religious experiences, since these left indelible marks upon his later life and career. Peculiar tenets of his faith and mentioned, and one m particular--the doctrine of pacifism--is highlighted; one which many people who have studied Nitobe's career feel he failed to resolve adequately. Finally, there are some remarks about the legacy of the Sapporo Band, of whom Satō Shōsuke, Ōshima Masatake, Uchimura Kanzō, Miyabe Kingo, and Nitobe stand out most notably today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out the proposition that being associated with the marginalised, the 'outcasts' of society, those who are rejected for whatever reason, is not an optional extra for the church. Rather it is a vital expression of Christian discipleship, just as it was a vital part of Jesus' ministry on earth. It postulates that too often the church has ignored or undervalued one of its prime functions. Yes, it has cared for marginalised people but usually at a distance, afraid to get too close, afraid to step out of its cosy club mentality. It is a call to a radical re-evaluation of how to follow Christ in the way he associated with marginalised people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aborigines successfully incorporated Judaeo-Christian myths. Jesus. and the Prophets of the Old Testament into their worldview. This provides a neat refutation to the still commonly held assumption that Aboriginal religious life is rigid and unchanging. This paper contrasts the way in which Christianity has helped break down the separation between cultural groups with its function as a structure for explicit discourse on Aboriginal / non-Aboriginal relations and inequality. Furthermore, this article considers the way Christianity has transformed the concept of the Dreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I would like to present three approaches to Heidegger’s religiosity and religious thinking and underscore the importance of Heidegger’s thinking in the 20th century philosophy of religion. I will highlight the parallel interpretations of the religious movements in the 19th – 20th century and Heidegger’s approach to religion as a fundamental methodological problem of phenomenology. Furthermore, I will examine the connection between the original methodological inquiries and the reflection on religiosity in the later writings of Heidegger on historical being.

American social policy decisions are deeply intertwined with the religious lives of its citizens. Here we apply the tiered beliefs described in the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the views of several American Christian communities on social policy questions that involve (religiously defined) notions of sexual purity. We find a surprisingly large amount of variation in the policy beliefs, although this varies by denomination, and for Catholics varies by levels of loyalty to authority as well. We conclude that despite deep core beliefs about the fundamental nature of the world, and a scriptural orientation and notion of loyalty to authority defined by denomination, that there may be more policy flexibility at lower tiers of belief than the conventional wisdom would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the start of the 1920s the Korean Christian community in Hamgyeong Province and Manchuria had little control over the financial and educational policies of the Canadian Presbyterian missionaries. By the end of the decade the Presbyteries determined how the home funds would be spent on evangelical work and Korean church leaders sat on a Joint Board with the Canadians to aid in the management of the mission. The Canadian decision to share power with the Koreans was made out of necessity. Throughout the 1920s, students, elders, ministers and a large segment of the laity vigorously, sometimes violently, advocated for a transformation of mission policies. The Canadians became extremely fearful and concluded that to save the mission they would have to reform their methods. In the literature published on the mission, the 'positive side' of the story, namely the Canadian ability to empathise with the Koreans and their denouncements of the Japanese colonial regime in 1919 as well as 1920, has been emphasised. This article focuses on the less seemly nature of the Canadian-Korean relationship. It will examine the temporal factors that contributed to the Korean acceptance of missionary authority before 1919, their rejection of it in the 1920s and the attempts of the Canadians to bring order back to the mission compounds. The ultimate purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the Korean Christians were active agents who through their protests during the 1920s came to assume a prominent position within the mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to look at priests as individual actors of religious history. Their behavior reflects the typical motifs of Medieval popular Christianity. They were also confronted with the ideas of the more radical reformations of the sixteenth century. The Consistory, a clerical body of church administration, worked at building up Utraquist identity. This was initially directed against the domestic radical tradition, the Unity of Brethren, and later with the influence of the foreign Reformation. The study is an attempt at a historical sociology of religion. It tries to present priests as a specific social group. The micro-historical case study of Jan Lahvička can serve as an example of the above-mentioned thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the increasingly common argument that Pentecostal Christianity, far from being apolitical, is very politically engaged. I make two contributions to this discussion. First, my analysis provides a detailed account of how Pentecostal religious life serves as political engagement in an especially significant ethnographic context: Zambia, the only African country to make a constitutional declaration that it is a "Christian nation." For Zambian Pentecostals, "die declaration" is a covenant with God made according to the principles of tire prosperity gospel. By regularly reaffirming that covenant through prayer, believers do political work. My treatment of the prosperity gospel represents the second contribution of this article. Whereas others have argued that the prosperity gospel undermines public engagement, I show how its practices inform the political efforts of Zambian believers. I conclude by reflecting on how changes in the prosperity gospel may shape the future political actions of African Pentecostals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One key political development in the past decade in many, but not all, countries across Africa has been the growing saliency of morality politics in general, and of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) politics in particular. I argue that the uneven upward trend in the political saliency of LGBTs is closely related to two recent political processes: (1) a rapid growth of Pentecostal, Evangelical, and related Renewalist or Spirit-filled churches (demand-side factor) and (2) a democratization process leading to heightened political competition (supply side). To evaluate the above proposition, I created an original, fine-grained longitudinal dataset of media coverage of LGBTs in Africa, which I use as a measure of issue saliency. Using a series of negative binomial regression models, I find robust evidence that the saliency of LGBTs increases with a country’s population share of Renewalist Christians and that this effect increases with rising levels of political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study deals with the traditional religious practices and belief system of the 'Lusei.' The study looks at the practices through a historical perspective to see how the practices hold a meaningful relation to their daily livelihood and the life after death. Since the coming of colonial administration and Western missionaries in the then Lushai Hills (present Mizoram in India), the traditional religious beliefs and practices were enormously replaced by Christianity, which resulted in majority of the communities neglecting their traditional practices. Since they abandoned their old religious practices, proper studies could not be easily conducted on it. To some extent it created a problem in the reconstruction of their history and religious life, too. There are no systematic studies of traditional religion of the Lusei, neither are there any detailed accounts in the academic discipline except for anthropological monographs. However, few theologians have done some research on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a number of years I have contended that powerful religious experiences comprised a major factor in the religious innovations represented in earliest Christianity. These are experiences that strike the recipient with the force of new revelation, typically introducing new beliefs or a significant reconfiguring of previous beliefs. In this essay, I return to the topic, surveying more recent interest in religious experience and also proposing some of the specifics of the experiences that helped to generate innovations in earliest Christian circles, with special attention to the eruption of the remarkable Jesus-devotion that distinguished them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Britain along with other western European countries has seen a marked decrease in allegiance to traditional forms of Christianity during the latter part of the 20th century. Although church attendance remains relatively high among older people compared with younger age groups, there has been little or no investigation into the stability or change of people's religious belief and practice with increasing age. This paper present findings on these issues from the Southampton Ageing Project, which from 1977-78 to 2002 followed 342 people almost all of whom had had an entirely Christian religious education and all of whom at the outset were aged 65 or more years. Although religion has continued to have considerable meaning in the lives of up to one-half of the participants, approximately one-quarter of the sample expressed a declining commitment to a religious faith and to church membership. The participants' accounts of their recent life experiences, for example following bereavement, give instances of disappointment with the support that they received from institutional religion and show that this was a factor in their declining adherence. They also provide suggestions for further investigation into the origin of this decline. The conclusion argues that the study of older people's religious and spiritual beliefs and practice should be integrated with the investigation of self and identity and of sources of existential meaning in later life. KEY WORDS--religion, Christianity, age changes, existential meaning, identity, bereavement.

Based on archival research in France and China, this article examines Chinese Catholic virgins and the early history of Roman Catholic communities of women in northeast China. When foreign Catholic orders of women came into China in the second half of the nineteenth century, they introduced to China a new kind of organized religious life to women. However, not all Chinese Catholic women were willing to join the orders. There was apparently a tension between the Catholic Church's effort in institutionalization and the 'traditional' Catholic lifestyle chosen by Chinese Catholic women, especially Chinese Christian virgins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Scripture to contest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century societal norms, Elizabeth’s memoir of her life in slavery contests the legal and cultural structures that rendered her as secondary, inferior, and subhuman. In answering the call to public ministry, Elizabeth embodies womanist ethics by being outrageous, audacious, and courageous in spite of the vocal opposition to her ministerial vocation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the eighteenth-century history of the Mexican religious brotherhoods known as the Santas Escuelas de Cristo, or Holy Schools of Christ, groups of men that organized around their Catholic practices of collective acts of devotion and self-mortification in the viceroyalty of New Spain. The group predominantly consisted of ethnic Spaniards of elite status from the upper classes. Topics considered include reformed Catholicism, cultural change, religious tradition, the Baroque period, and Spanish colonialism.

This research examines two factors that have an impact on the self-esteem of African Americans and whites: religion and socioeconomic status (SES). Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that for whites, belief in the Bible (i.e., that it is the literal word of God) and self-identifying as fundamentalist were significant predictors of self-esteem. For African Americans, belief in the Bible and being Catholic were significant predictors of self-esteem. However, the association between belief in the Bible and self-esteem was stronger for African Americans than whites. SES was positively associated with self-esteem for both groups. The interactions between SES and the measures of religiosity reveal a greater impact on self-esteem for lower SES respondents. This was especially true for African Americans. These findings are discussed in light of the resource compensation hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the premise that the task of systematic theology is to promote an understanding of doctrines by relating different doctrines to one another, and in dialogue with the religious-cultural context, this article provides a systematic proposal for understanding the Roman Catholic doctrine that affirms the church as the universal sacrament of salvation. This doctrine will be clarified by relating it to the doctrine that interreligious dialogue is part of the Catholic Church's evangelising mission. The context for this understanding is one in which religious diversity is both a fact and often times, a problem. The reflections begin with a survey of several terms and relations that are central to the doctrines that are being discussed. Bernard Lonergan's notion of mutual self-mediation is then explained and presented as a tool for both Christian and ecclesial self-understanding. Mark Helm's so-called "theology of religious ends" is appealed to as a concrete way for mutual self-mediation to be practised, and Lonergan's ecclesiologial suggestions allow the notion to be applied on an ecclesiallevel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histories of the English Christmas tend to downplay the role of religion in the development of the modern festival. This article examines the place of religion in the popular celebration of Christmas, as well as the provision of worship offered by the Protestant Churches during the festive season. It argues that although some churchmen viewed Christmas pessimistically as part of a broader battle between sacred and secular, the Churches played an important role in the expansion of the urban public culture of Christmas in the late nineteenth century, whilst the doctrine of the incarnation provided a religious framework for the celebration of childhood and domesticity that the festival had come to embody. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article proposes an alternative way to think about the violence that swept the Roman Empire in the wake of Constantine's conversion to Christianity. Traditionally seen as the inevitable result of Christian intolerance, recent experience suggests that this violence can be better understood by casting a broader net and including political as well as theological issues. The result shows this violence to be the by-product of a struggle between emperors and bishops to control access to the divine. In an age of widespread belief in the active intervention of deity in human affairs, this “religious” prerogative was fraught with profound “secular” implications that make our distinction between “Church” and “State” meaningless. Martyrs play an important role in this process, but it is a symbolic one. Bishops use martyrs to control emperors. But, as a famous confrontation between Ambrose of Milan and the emperor Theodosius shows, bishops also relied on their new role as patrons of a large and volatile constituency. Their efforts were abetted by significant rethinking of the meaning of martyrdom and persecution that followed Julian the Apostate's ill-starred efforts to rein in Christianity without producing martyrs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the concept of "ordo" as the basic structure of Christian worship. According to the author, ordo is a descriptive task that characterized Christian worship from its beginnings. The author outlined a number of reasons why Christian should follow the basic ordo. The author opined that ordo is a practice that is not narrowed to the written texts of liturgies, but should signify the Christian life as a whole.

In encouraging men and women to rethink the moral bases of sexual relations, HIV/AIDS-prevention campaigns commonly entail efforts to reshape their subjectivities. This article relates conceptions of morally correct forms of subjectivity to religious understandings of proper speech to and about God. Historically, experiences with sexually transmitted diseases in Botswana have compelled family members to imagine and reshape the nature of their caregiving sentiments toward one another. Thus, for members of a church of the spirit in Gaborone, expressing faith in God so as to heal the sick and console the bereaved is a means of authorizing certain forms of intersubjectivity, rather than of asserting self-determining agency. AIDS-control policies ought to be designed to enhance people's capacities to care for one another properly, and to avoid reinforcing distinctions between healthy and sickly lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining the recently-publicized diary of Chiang Kai-shek, this study investigates how he accepted Christianity, what influences Christianity had on him, and how his faith was realized in his daily life. What initially prompted Chiang to accept Christianity as his personal faith, around the time he married Song Meiling, was the admonishment of Ni Guizhen, Song's mother. Since that time, Song wielded great influence over him, which played a significant role in his final conversion. But Chiang did not truly live life as a Christian until the 20 or so days of the Xi'an Incident in December 1936, when he was imprisoned. Around 1938, his spiritual life centered on regular Bible studies and prayer sessions. After he became Christian, his goal was not only the pursuit of moral enrichment and cultivation on a personal level; it was also focused on help for China. Particularly after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident when China was in the crisis of perishing as a nation, Chiang prayed primarily for national salvation. As China continued to lose many battles in the war and the future became increasingly bleak, he grew increasingly reliant on God's help, trusting to prayer for national liberation and independence. He wrote in his diary that his own sins led to the suffering of the country, and sought God's forgiveness for them. He also advocated a reform of China based on the Christian spirit of sacrifice, service, and solidarity. Thus, Christianity provided one of the most important paths for Chiang the politician not only to become a better person but also for China to be saved and to become a better society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is at stake in accounts of “prayer” is reflection on a practice that cannot be readily spoken of free from the most important considerations of God, world, human identity and the shape of its performance. Instead, if prayer “is not to become a harmless game and an endlessly babbling chatter” (Karl Rahner), attention needs to be paid to the god or gods that practices of so-called “prayer” encounter, and it may be that much of what moves in the name of the God of Jesus Christ is, in Barth's terms, no-god. For Barth not only has the knowledge of the practice of prayer, in a sense, been taken out of our hands in its Christ-grounding, but its Christ-shaped performance involves the determination of Christian life and its self-reflective thought in the pattern of the new life that might be characterised as the properly ordered freedom of self-dispossessing obedience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the claim that some Melanesian Christians are caught between cultures; between a Melanesian 'relationalism' and a Christian 'individualism'. It is suggested that such an argument attributes Western knowledge conventions and dilemmas, where understanding involves distinct but connected whole orders of knowledge, to Melanesians. The article questions the appropriateness of this. To illustrate the issue, case studies of understanding Melanesian Christianity from a historical and anthropological perspective are considered and it is shown that interpretive problems arise by being caught between these disciplinary wholes. It is argued instead that Melanesian Christians are not caught between cultures. Rather, the diverse forms of Melanesian Christianity express conventional Melanesian concerns about certainty, power and truth, concerns that are nonetheless influenced by Christian conceptions and conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of religion in generating violent conflict and peace is a major topic in public, political and scholarly debates. However, despite a burgeoning field of literature, this relationship remains inadequately explained. In general, social and religious studies tend to focus on macro-analyses, resulting in essentialist and even ethnocentric notions of religion, violent conflict and peace. By using the Bougainville crisis as a case study, this article argues that as long as we disregard people's 'lived religion', local realities remain intangible and, furthermore, no insight is gained into the actual processes by which religion may generate conflict and peace. In particular, I show how the Bougainville crisis was conceptualised as a Holy War, revealing how Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, inspired people to fight against oppression and for peace at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of religion in the life of U.S. progressive educator William Heard Kilpatrick. It is noted that Kilpatrick rejected his personal religious devotion as he pursued his career, but not the bedrock religious ethic of his childhood. Despite his embrace of science as the sole arbiter of truth, he incorporated significant elements of Christian faith and practice in his manners, writings and work. Kilpatrick ultimately recognized his ability to escape religious influences.

The rejection of confessional commitments in the study of religion in favor of social-scientific or humanistic theories of religion has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer-practitioners. These biases derive from assumptions of undemonstrable, dogmatic, metaphysical naturalism or its functional equivalent, an epistemological skepticism about all truth claims of revealed religions. Because such assumptions are so widespread among scholars today, they are not often explicitly articulated. They were overtly asserted by Emile Durkheim in his "Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (1912), however, and are implicit in the claims of two other thinkers influential in the study of early modern Christianity in recent years, namely Clifford Geertz and Michel Foucault. The use of such theories in the history of religion yields secular confessional history, parallel to traditional religious confessional history only with different embedded metaphysical beliefs. If scholars want to understand religious persons such that the latter would recognize themselves in what is said about them, rather than impose their own metaphysical convictions on them, then they should reject metaphysically biased reductionist theories of religion no less than confessional religious assumptions in the practice of their scholarship. Instead, a study of religion guided not by theories but by the question, "What did it mean to them?" and which is particularized in metaphysically neutral ways offers a third alternative that avoids confessional history, whether religious or secular. When carried out consistently for multiple traditions, such an approach can reconstruct disagreements that point beyond description to historical explanation of change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sample of 65 men and 93 women attending eight Anglican churches in Wales completed a questionnaire concerned with beliefs, attitudes and practices. Alongside conventional Christian belief, unconventional belief was assessed by eight items relating to good luck and eight items relating to bad luck. Alongside conventional Christian behaviour, unconventional behaviour was assessed by eight items relating to protection from bad luck or promotion of good luck. The data demonstrate how many churchgoers combine their conventional Christian beliefs about God with unconventional beliefs about good and bad luck. It is perhaps this special blend of conventional Christian beliefs and practices with unconventional beliefs and practices that helps to define the implicit religion of Anglicans in Britain today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous writings, I have argued that a three-to-five-year-old boy's emotional separation from his mother is the key experience in his development qf a melancholic orientation to life, and that men's religious proclivities (based on honor, hope, and humor) reflect this emotional separation. In the present essay, I argue that Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the iconic center qf the religion qf male melancholia, and thus displaces the Virgin Mary of traditional Christianity in this regard. I provide evidence in support qf this argument by focusing on Walter Pater's essay on Leonardo da Vinci, and interpreting Vincent Peruggia's theft, Hugo Villegas's stoning, and Marcel Duchamp and others' humorous assaults on the dignity of Mona Lisa as expressions of male melancholia. I conclude that the painting aids in the difficult task of transforming melancholia into mourning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses Italian Renaissance intellectual Lorenzo Valla's efforts regarding orthodoxies that were both intellectual and religious. Struggle with what Christianity and monotheism meant in practice; Orthodoxy of 15th-century thinkers; Suggestion that paganism had less to do with unfettered polytheism and more to do with a certain fluidity and openness regarding just how one was allowed to worship.