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This chapter summarises the thinking behind panonomics and its conceptual framework, characterised as ‘A Fourth Way’. It includes an exploration of ‘A Fourth Way’ principles and a tabular summary of application of ‘A Fourth Way’ thinking to a range of concepts and constructs which have previously been established accepted as tripartite. Panonomics is based on an adoption of the holism proposed by ‘A Fourth Way’ as an organisational system. In concluding comments, the author sets out how the panonomic model can support our journey to and through the 4.0 innovation age and from the now to the next.

This paper investigates the relationship between local religiosity and episodes of persecutions in a sample of over 2,100 European cities during 1100-1850. We introduce a novel proxy for measuring local religion: the cult of saints in early Western Christianity. Our findings show that cities with an established cult of a saint are associated with a 16 and 10 percentage points (pp) increase in the likelihood of witch trials and witch killings and an 11 pp increased likelihood of Jewish persecutions. However, cities with more progressive gender norms, measured by the presence of a female saint cult, are less likely to persecute witches compared to male-only saint cities. Our baseline relationship persists after controlling for a range of city-level economic, geographic and institutional characteristics and after accounting for other major confounders. We find two plausible mechanisms behind the saints-persecution relationship: (i) changes in norms induced by longer exposure to Christianity; and (ii) proximity of religious groups due to congruence of religious festivities.

This chapter maps the trajectory of one of Jamaica’s striking engagements with Europeanized Christianity and its discursive practices: the religion of Rastafari and its ‘Gospel According to Babylon’. Not the most arresting of my questions was: what were the factors that led to changes in social structures, culture, and identity among the Afro Caribbean Rastafari? Chaperon—like accompanied by—why does this happen? The islands of the Caribbean, and in particular those of the Anglophone West Indies, suggested a delectable spread of answers to the question that most captured my attention: How do a people in a colonial outpost and a post-colonial nation-state deal with a dominant religious discourse such as White Christian theology? Followed by: What identities are produced by such an interface, and what spaces do these identities inhabit in the Caribbean?

Orthodox Judaism is, in part, a legal code comprising obligations (mitzvoth). Some are positive mitzvoth such as healing the sick, observing the Sabbath, and preserving life. Others are negative mitzvoth such as the prohibition of murder. The proper course of action in any particular situation is determined by identifying and weighing the mitzvoth that apply to that situation. There is unanimity that the fetus is not considered a completely full human life, and that the life of the mother takes precedence over the life of the fetus. There is also unanimity that abortion is prohibited. However, a difference of opinion exists regarding the exact nature of the prohibition. Some define the prohibition as similar to the prohibition of murder – a severe prohibition. As a result, exceptions to the prohibition are limited to instances when the mother’s life or health is in significant danger. Others define the prohibition of abortion as similar to the prohibition against wounding a person. This weaker prohibition is set aside in cases where the act of wounding provides significant benefit, such as easing physical or emotional distress. This understanding allows for a wider range of exceptions to the prohibition of abortion. However, abortion at will is never allowed, and the decision to destroy a fetus is always one that must be carefully and soberly considered.

Gaskell was a supreme storyteller who loved ‘strange customs and weird, uncanny stories’, some of which she heard orally as folk tales and later incorporated into her own writing. Her earliest biographer Mrs Ellis Chadwick claims that ‘All through her life, she loved to linger in the borderland’, the liminal space where reality, the supernatural and the unexplained manifest, merge and sometimes clash. This chapter locates Gaskell’s Gothic and ghostly short stories in the female Gothic, analysing the ways in which her texts offer an exploration of contemporary social and cultural fears, instabilities and anxieties which are the antithesis of her novels of social realism. It locates the discussion in the transcendental Unitarianism promulgated by James Martineau and builds on the argument put forward by Shirley Foster that many of Gaskell’s short stories are characterised by violence, particularly violence against women. I examine nineteenth-century concepts of self-harm and anorexia, trauma and dissociation, arguing that these stories reveal Gaskell as a more viscerally angry writer than has been acknowledged.

Why anyone would be attracted to a cult has always puzzled me. To me, cults only evoke uncomfortable associations—for example, the Manson family, Heaven’s Gate, or Jonestown. Cults also remind me of the Hare Krishna movement, and other esoteric eastern religious groups. Beyond these religious groups, there is a lot of cult-like behavior within political and lifestyle groups, and even business associations. Certain political regimes are forms of cults, North Korea being a prime example. I wonder whether the proliferation of cult-like movements is symptomatic of the general social discordance that has plagued post-World War II Western society. And as I suggested in Chap. 23, it may even be a reaction against the movement from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft.

We present the story of a young Bulgarian man, who converted to Orthodox Judaism, a religious denomination highly unusual in his country of birth. He has adhered rigorously to religious rules; he has spent most of his time reading religious texts and watching religious videos on the internet. He has not socialized with anyone other than his parents outside his religion. He refuses to study and work, and his only wish is to go to Israel and study Judaism there living on donations. The diagnostic judgments of a number of psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist ranged from “an absence of mental disorder” to “Paranoid schizophrenia.” Diagnostic differences could be attributed to cultural factors and the influence of value judgments in diagnostic assessments.

This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents’ objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality.

This article seeks to establish the value of the concept of cosmotopia to historians of intercultural connections through presenting a case study of the Calcutta Unitarian Committee, which was active between 1821 and 1828. In tandem, it aims to enhance understanding of the origins of one particularly sustained set of intercultural connections: the interfaith network which developed between an influential group of Hindu religious and social reformers, the Brahmo Samaj, and western Unitarian Christians. The article focusses on the collaboration between the two leading figures on the Committee: Rammohun Roy, the renowned founder of the Brahmo Samaj, who is often described as the Father of Modern India; and William Adam, a Scottish Baptist missionary who was condemned as the “second fallen Adam” after his “conversion” to Unitarianism by Rammohun Roy, and who went on to cofound a utopian community in the United States. It explores the Calcutta Unitarian Committee's activities within the cosmopolitan milieu of early colonial Calcutta, and clarifies its role in the emergence of the Brahmo Samaj, in the development of a unique approach to Christian mission among Unitarians, and in laying the foundations of a transnational network whose members were in the vanguard of religious innovation, radical social reform, and debates on the “woman question” in nineteenth-century India, Britain, and the United States. In conclusion, the article draws on the case study to offer some broader reflections on the relationship between utopianism, cosmopolitanism, and colonialism.

The meaning and observance of Christmas has always been contested and perhaps those most associated with opposition are to be found amongst Reformed and Dissenting Protestants. In the aftermath of the Reformation, Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, and their heirs in both the Old and New Worlds most vociferously opposed and effectively proscribed the religious and secular observance of Christmas. Yet taking a longer perspective demonstrates that they too wavered between protest and participation and had to adapt their principles to changing circumstances. Was Christmas a holy day, a holiday, or neither? How could church leaders and theologians transform popular opinion and practice? Complexity of attitudes and often-pragmatic accommodation were inescapable as marking the passage of time and involved a range of complex issues. Their attitudes were further complicated by Church–State relations and denominational differences in which the celebration of Christmas became a sign of difference. Most of the groups belonging to these traditions dissented from Episcopalian state churches and objected to liturgies that followed the Christian Year; even in Scotland, where Presbyterians became the state church, the religious non-observance of Christmas became a symbol of Scottish identity in contrast to their larger English neighbour. Opposition to Christmas was also tempered over time by the involvement of Reformed and Dissenting Protestants in the broader evangelical movement as well as the commercial and industrial revolutions of the period. Groups belonging to this tradition were both the cause and the victim of the secularization and commercialization of the season.

From its inception, Reformed Protestantism was an international phenomenon. Invariably, the places where European and American missionaries went were the very same locations where European powers operated a vast set of economic and political enterprises. Furthermore, because the missionaries themselves were the product of Christian developments in the West—whether the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism or intra-Protestant squabbles (Lutheran vs. Reformed, pietist vs. confessional)—missionaries faced a considerable challenge in trying to adapt a faith heavily bound up with Western civilization for people for whom Europe’s history, language, and culture were alien. In other words, the challenge of foreign missions was how to decouple the simple Christian message from a set of understandings and practices thoroughly situated for over a millennium in the West. The globalization of Reformed Protestantism, then, was a by-product of European expansion around the world chiefly for the purpose of commerce and conquest. This process happened in two stages. The first, as exemplified by the experience of Dutch Reformed Protestants in Africa, involved the creation and establishment of European-styled churches for Western settlers in a foreign land. The second, as the history of Presbyterianism in Korea shows, occurred through the modern missionary movement where Protestants of European descent sought to evangelize and disciple an indigenous population. In both cases, despite the best of intentions eventually to rid Christianity of its cultural assumptions, European-based patterns of theology and church life continue to set the standard for Christians around the world who constitute what some scholars refer to as ‘global Christianity’.

In 1818, a spectre haunted Maryland���Unitarianism. That year, Unitarians dedicated a new church for their young movement, the ���First Independent Church of Baltimore.��� American Unitarianism was still emerging from the liberal wing of Congregationalism, and this was its first extension outside of Massachusetts. In 1819, the Boston theologian William Ellery Channing delivered the ���Baltimore Sermon,��� a widely reprinted defence of the beliefs and principles of Unitarianism, on the occasion of the ordination of Jared Sparks, the first minister of the Unitarian church in Baltimore. Also in 1818, Thomas Kennedy, a Presbyterian Maryland legislator, initiated the long debate over the Jew Bill, when he introduced legislation to allow Jews to hold state and local office in Maryland. The contentious fight to grant full political rights to Jews lasted until 1826, when the Jew Bill became law.

Research into the life and work of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher and one of the foundational figures of modern mysticism, remains an emergent field within the academic study of religion/s. While esotericists such as H. P. Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner have been thoroughly studied, international academic study of Gurdjieff is still scarce. Gurdjieff lived his early adulthood amidst a severe power struggle between the major powers of the Russian, British and Ottoman empires. He survived the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War of 1918–22 and two World Wars. In his writings, he states how after the turn of the twentieth century, he understood it to be his mission in life to help mankind stop wars from happening, and during his years as a teacher, the question of war was omnipresent because of the events surrounding him and his pupils. Despite all this, there is no previous academic research on the topic of Gurdjieff and war. In this article, I examine the role of wars and armed conflicts in Gurdjieff’s personal life narrative according to his own writings, present his narrative in a military-historical context and analyse his narrational tools and motives as a first step towards a comprehensive study of a much larger subject.

Pure Land Buddhist texts and practices have been part of the fabric of Japanese Buddhism since the Nara period, but they grew to have significantly greater impact in the Kamakura period when the first independent schools of Pure Land Buddhism were founded by Hōnen and Shinran. This article looks at the evolution of ritual funeral practices carried out within the Pure Land school of Shinshū, particularly the Honganji establishment, and discusses the apparent conflict many of these practices have had with orthodox Shinshū doctrine. The core issue here is twofold: 1) the ways in which Honganji decided to participate in mortuary rites to assuage the anxiety of its lay followers and strengthen its own financial base through the revenue it generated, and 2) the degree to which these practices could be rationalized in terms of their doctrinal orthodoxy. After tracing the historical links between Pure Land Buddhism and the afterlife in Japan, the article looks at the views of Shinran as well as the interpretations of Tokugawa-period scholars who tried to issue «rulings» on where Honganji orthodoxy should stand regarding the funeral rituals performed by Shinshū priests. By the Tokugawa period, mortuary rites had come to dominate Shinshū culture, and the most common of such rites are examined here: the kue-issho, o-toki, eitai-kyō, and hōon-kō.

Buddhism's historical attitudes towards women and female gender were ambivalent and inconsistent. In Pure Land Buddhism generally, such instability was seemingly marked in the concept of henjō nanshi, the idea that women would be born in the Pure Land as males, but the historical interpretations of this idea were ambiguous. In Japan, women's participation in Buddhism was complex even before the advent of the Kamakura reformers; subsequently Japan's Jōdo Shin-shū tradition retained a similar character. This article focuses on texts and their audience receptions. The original texts of Shinran contained apparent contradictions, especially about henjō nanshi, because of the way their rhetoric was formed creatively out of earlier Buddhist language. However, gender differentiation does not seem to have been a major problematic in Shinrari's essential thought. Furthermore, it appears that in practice women in Shin tradition adopted multiple interpretations (often ones favorable to women) from the very beginning. The initial issues recurred historically and can be traced through the proselytizer Zonkaku, the "middle founder" Rennyo, and Tokugawa-period writings, over a long span of historical evolution in which in the background women's social power in Japan declined. In the historical context it is hard to identify Shin women's subjectivity with clarity.

Doctrinal reasoning, the practice of chanting nam-myōho-renge-kyō and its vision for kōsen-rufu has been how Sōka Gakkai (SG) promulgated Nichiren Buddhism. This paper explores, in an in-depth anthropological manner, how doctrinal issues matter significantly in the meaning of funeral practices in contemporary SG. So-called Friend Funerals have become widely common and demonstrate how SG members&rsquo, understanding of death and mortuary rites differ in some significant ways from common practices in Japan. To understand why specific funeral rituals are not in and of themselves considered of primary importance when a person dies in SG, this paper discusses its reading of key tenants of Nichiren Buddhism. What hotoke or buddha means is commonly seen in Japan as something achieved upon death facilitated by specific funeral rites. How such views fundamentally differ in SG is explored here based on long-term fieldwork and participant observation, as well as interviews and review of its doctrine. The research suggests that SG members engage in a cross-generational endeavour for kōsen-rufu where personal actions&mdash, what could be described as the &lsquo, political&rsquo, existence of this life&mdash, matters but in a non-dualistic way as this simultaneously becomes the sphere that &lsquo, transcends&rsquo, that contemporary existence. How one views death is not only seen as something relevant at the end of life, nor only to those remaining, but is taken as a reality that becomes the impetus for giving deeper meaning to how one acts in daily life as part of a cross-generational movement.

Let me begin by thanking the members of the George F. Kneller Advisory Committee and you the members of the American Educational Studies Association for inviting me to give the annual Kneller Lectu...

This paper was first presented at the conference “From Tiantai to Hiei: Transborder and Transcultural Spread of Tiantai/Cheontae/Tendai Buddhism and its Impact on East Asian Societies,” organized by the Center for Buddhist Studies at Peking University on December 7 & 8, 2019.

The murder of the German politician Walter Lübcke in 2019 by a far-right extremist with links to Neo-Nazi groups exposes the need to address European ethnonationalist extremism from a wider array of approaches, one of them, the religious one. European ethno-nationalists have found profitable the distortion of elements of Western Christianity and its use to reject individuals they consider undesirable, especially Muslims and non-European immigrants. By doing this, far-right extremists have managed to consolidate an ideological basis known as Christianism. This work examines the characteristics of the extremist ideology Christianism and its relation to white supremacism, as well as the historical bias of the Crusades they use and that is a central part of their ideology. This work analyses the manifesto written by white supremacist terrorist Brenton Tarrant with the aim to expose the relation between white supremacism and Christianism, as well as the influence on terrorist acts against non-Europeans in the West, and the main propositions of such extremist ideology. The conclusion proposes the need of better education in history and critical thinking skills in societies affected by white supremacism, as well as the participation of followers of traditional Christianity in counter extremism efforts

Physicians often avoid discussing patients' religious and spiritual concerns, even though most patients (i.e., 50-94%) want integrated care. To address this gap, medical students interviewed a Standardized Patient (SP) who was upset because the daughter did not confront her fiancée about converting to Orthodox Judaism. Students reflected on how their own religion and spirituality affected engaging with their patient.With a 97% response rate, 231 first-year medical students responded to open-ended questions about their patient encounter. For this quantitative content analysis, we used inductive reasoning, identifying three themes: (1) impact of students' own religion on their comfort, (2) change in comfort, and (3) their learning. We used deductive reasoning to compare qualitative results from half of the students who began the curriculum with a questionnaire about their own spirituality with the other students completing afterwards.Most students said being religious positively influenced their comfort, whether they were also Orthodox Jewish or from a different religion. Among uncomfortable students (6.5%), some attributed this to not being religious. Some students (4.8%) grew more comfortable discussing the religious issue, and 18.2% became uncomfortable due to lacking knowledge of Orthodox Judaism and the awkwardness of the topic. Students who had completed the questionnaire beforehand gave more comments about connecting with their patients than students who completed the questionnaire afterwards (XStudents' own religion influenced their comfort with discussing religious concerns, with some feeling more connected and others becoming uncomfortable. This finding helps inform medical educators about teaching mind-body-spirit care.Résumé.Les médecins évitent souvent de discuter des préoccupations religieuses et spirituelles des patients même si la plupart d’entre eux (soit entre 50 et 94 %) désirent recevoir des soins intégrés. Pour combler cette lacune, les étudiants en médecine ont interviewé un patient simulé (PS) qui était contrarié parce que sa fille n’avait pas confronté son fiancé à l’idée de se convertir au judaïsme orthodoxe. Les étudiants ont réfléchi sur l’impact qu’avait leur propre religion et spiritualité sur la façon dont ils abordent leur patient.Avec un taux de réponse de 97 pour cent, 231 étudiants de première année en médecine ont répondu à des questions ouvertes sur la rencontre avec leur patient. Dans le cadre de cette analyse de contenu quantitative, nous nous sommes servis du raisonnement inductif et avons déterminé trois thèmes :(1) impact de la religion des étudiants sur leur niveau de confort, (2) changement du niveau de confort et (3) leur apprentissage. Nous avons utilisé le raisonnement déductif pour comparer les résultats qualitatifs obtenus pour la moitié des étudiants qui ont commencé leur cursus en remplissant un questionnaire sur leur propre spiritualité, l’autre moitié ayant répondu au questionnaire subséquemment.La plupart des étudiants ont affirmé que d’être religieux avait eu un impact positif sur leur niveau de confort, qu’ils soient juifs orthodoxes ou d’une religion différente. Parmi les étudiants inconfortables (6,5 %), certains ont attribué ce sentiment au fait qu’ils n’étaient pas religieux. D’autres (4,8 %) se sont sentis plus à l’aise après avoir discuté le problème religieux et 18,2 % d’entre eux se sont sentis moins à l’aise en raison de leur manque de connaissance sur le judaïsme orthodoxe et du sujet embarrassant. Les étudiants qui avaient rempli le questionnaire auparavant ont fourni plus de commentaires sur leur façon d'aborder leurs patients que ceux qui y avaient répondu après (La religion des étudiants a eu un impact sur leur degré d’aisance au moment de discuter les questions religieuses; certains se sentant plus proches et d’autres, plus inconfortables. Cette conclusion informe les éducateurs en médecine de l’importance d’enseigner les soins du corps, de l’esprit et de l’âme.

In 1991, a group of Rastafarians in the village of Bullet Tree Falls, Belize, started out adhering to the principles of piety and protest that characterized the Rastafarians when began in Jamaica in the 1930s. After being Rastafarian for several years, village adherents gravitated to new values and lifestyles, not the protest and piety that kicked off the movement in Jamaica and Belize. The beginnings resembled a revitalization movement, an attempt at making a more satisfying culture. Yet over time, individual Rastafarians in Bullet Tree Falls sought material advantages, and the Rastafarians were flattered by the attention of tourists and others. Changes in the Rastafarians&rsquo, orientation and practices are examined as a consequence of global trends and local cultural influences. The article examines how international and local trends dissolved a revitalization movement.

Why do Jewish inmates in Israeli prisons embrace religion? What initially motivates them to participate in prayers during incarceration and what are their motivations to make a deeper commitment to observe orthodox Judaism while in prison? We conducted 30 qualitative interviews with 29 Jewish–Israeli men who underwent a process of “religious invigoration” or “religious strengthening” during their prison term and chose to continue being observant following release. We examine their motivations to initially participate in the less restrictive prison seminaries as well as their motivations to transfer to religious wards where incarcerated men must commit to a fully religious lifestyle. Building on the scholarship on the motivations and benefits of religious participation and conversion in prison, we suggest that incarcerated Jewish–Israeli men embrace religion for both sincere reasons and for the extrinsic benefits. Those who progress to a second stage of religious observance and transfer to religious wards do so primarily for extrinsic benefits. However, they report many intrinsic benefits of religion that lead them to continue to pursue religion once released. We suggest that men have different motivations at different stages of the path of religious invigoration in prison but that those men who commit to observance gain intrinsic benefits that may give them sincere reasons to continue religion upon reentry.

This chapter provides an overview of Jamaica’s historical policy approach to ganja (cannabis) which emerged from the society’s West African and Indian cultural influences. The chapter also discusses the impact of the earliest social agitators for change of Jamaica’s cannabis policy as well as early attempts at reform. The discourse then moves into more recent occurrences that led to Jamaica’s Dangerous Drug (Amendment) Act 2015 and the decriminalization of ganja in the island state. The chapter looks forward to the role that a small island state such as Jamaica can play in developing an alternative sustainable development framework that is built on the cannabis crop presently deemed as illicit in the international setting. Jamaica’s approach to cannabis can be viewed as a change to a more inclusive perspective involving cultural and traditional cultivators and users, which is intended to bring about reform that is sustainably based on the legal market and by-products from cannabis. It can be stated that Jamaica has also attempted to include a cultural regulation to cannabis through its recognition of rights of the Rastafarian community to use cannabis (viewed by the Rastafarian movement as the “healing of the nation”) for sacramental purposes.

This case study illustrates how religious conflict can define a couple’s therapy. The couple therapist’s understanding of religious background can enable deeper discussion. For example, the therapist’s knowledge of observance creates a therapeutic space to explore broader themes of grief, longing, anger, religious commitment, God, and ultimately, commitment to marriage. Religious themes emblematic in Orthodox Judaism are highlighted in this case study. Changes in one’s religious practice can generate a shift in the marital relationship; how to address religious changes and conflicts in therapy is explored using a framework of emotionally focused therapy. Practice implications are offered, which focus on confronting religious conflict when working with similar couples.

Starting from the assumption that education and scholarship are important venues for the transmission and preservation of culture, this article notes that non-Christian writings have had a significant and lasting impact throughout the history of learning in Western Christianity. It is then argued that eclecticism, the selective and critical usage of texts and ideas from various backgrounds, has been a deliberate practice in Christian history. As an expression of independent thinking, eclecticism allows the positive use of what a critical inquiry has shown to be “good” (1 Thess. 5:21) in nonChristian (and Christian) sources. When it succeeds in maintaining its critical independence and its commitment to truth, eclecticism does not produce what G.W.F. Hegel called “superficial aggregates”.

Through a personal narrative about my own entry into the field of science and religion, the essay reflects on the interplay of religion and science in Judaism. In addition to documenting my...

As Israel’s Orthodox Jews struggle to live up to high-fertility norms rooted in religious and Zionist ideals, an obscured model of stratified critique has emerged. Based on an ethnography of Israel’s reproductive landscape, I found that critique of high fertility standards is based on particular social and cultural capital only available to the religious elite. While scholars of religious critique have demonstrated how religious elites act as actors and leaders of resistance, my findings illustrate an opposite pattern. Instead of disseminating this critique publicly, religious elites engage in private strategies of secrecy as well as creative performances of failure that enable these individuals to diverge from norms without publicly contesting them. Following Shellee Colen’s term “stratified reproduction” (Colen, 1995), I demonstrate how these strategies create hidden power relations by which some people are empowered to nurture and reproduce, while others are disempowered. Secrecy creates a distinction between different sub-groups of Orthodox communities, as it is specifically the newcomers, the Ba’aley Teshuva (regenerated Jews) that are currently carrying most of the fertility load. This phenomenon obliges us to rethink the ideological and harmonious picture of religious life by focusing on the struggles, failures, and power entailed in ‘everyday Judaism’. This vivid and complicated picture adds to the current anthropological debate on ‘everyday religion’ as well as offers a unique setting to explore how convictions gain and lose their force at particular moments in history.

In this paper the authors edit two Old Uigur fragments that have recently become accessible from Dunhuang. The first is part of a poem on the famous story of King Bimbasāra and his wife Vaidehī that was popular in Pure Land Buddhism. The second is a kind of a commentary that uses Chinese phrases in original Chinese script.

Background The 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) established the validity of both cardio-respiratory and neurological criteria of death. However, many religious traditions including most forms of Haredi Judaism (ultra-orthodox) and many varieties of Buddhism strongly disagree with death by neurological criteria (DNC). Only one state in the U.S., New Jersey, allows for both religious exemptions to DNC and provides continuation of health insurance coverage when an exception is invoked in its 1991 Declaration of Death Act (NJDDA). There is yet no quantitative or qualitative data on the frequencies of religious exemptions in New Jersey. This study gathered information about the frequency of religious exemptions and policy in New Jersey that was created out of respect for religious beliefs. Methods Literature and internet searches on topics related to religious objections to DNC were conducted. Fifty-three chaplains and heads of bioethics committees in New Jersey hospitals were contacted by phone or email requesting a research interview. Respondents answered a set of questions about religious exemptions to DNC at the hospital where they worked that explored the frequency of such religious exemptions in the past five years, the religious tradition indicated, and whether any request for a religious exemption had been denied. This study was approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (IRB #: 16–03-15). Results Eighteen chaplains and bioethics committee members participated in a full research interview. Of these, five reported instances of religious exemptions to DNC occurring at the hospital at which they worked for a total of approximately 30–36 known exemptions in the past five years. Families sought religious exemptions because of faith in an Orthodox Judaism tradition and nonreligious reasons. No failed attempts to obtain an exemption were reported. Conclusions Religious exemptions to DNC in New Jersey do occur, although very infrequently. Prior to this study, there was no information on their frequency. Considering religious exemptions do occur, there is a need for national or state policies that addresses both religious objections to DNC and hospital resources. More information is needed to better understand the impact of granting religious exemptions before new policy can be established.

The underlying premise of this case study of the growth and development of the Hare Krishna movement is that frame alignment is a necessary, but largely unexplored, element in recruitment to religious movements. Attention is given here to the interactive and communicative processes used by ISKCON members in the United States as they strategically sought to align the practices, goals and beliefs of the movement with the unconventional interests and perspectives of recruits from the 1960s counterculture. The alignment processes described here represent attempts to gain the provisional interest of potential recruits. Whether successful or not, the alignment strategies helped define the Hare Krishna movement in America. As the counterculture declined in the mid-1970s, however, the leadership turned to a new constituent base of Hindu immigrants from India to secure the movement’s future. This required new forms of alignment that contributed to the Hinduization of the North American Hare Krishna movement.

Hinduism in Indonesia has been embraced in various ways. In addition to individual adoption, the conversion to Hinduism has also be performed through religious groups, which later develop by adjusting the local customs. The distinction between one adherent to another is essentially unified by the same theology. Panca Sraddha is one of the binders of Buddhis’ belief to Brahman, Atman, Karmaphala, Punarbhawa or Samsara, and Moksa. By utilizing this similarity, people who belong to Hinduism in Indonesia can live in harmony with other fellow Hindus as well as other religious communities, including Indonesian "indigenous religion" followers. Taking the fact into account; however, there are some Sampradaya or spiritual groups which aim to study the religion deeply by making the Vedic scriptures as the only source of the teachings which might lead them into certain challenging situations in terms of living in harmonious life. The problematic situations were addressed through this qualitative research, which employed interviews, observations, as well as document analysis as source of data. This study concludes that the three religious spiritual groups in Hinduism described in this article are now well-welcomed as an integral part of Indonesian Hindus and members of community in general, although they initially have been rejected at the beginning of their development. In keeping harmony among religious believers, these three spiritual groups, Hare Krishna, Sai Baba, and Brahma Kumaris are actively managing pleasant relations with the Indonesian government, Hindu councils, traditional Hindus, and other religious communities. They have performed strategies of dialogue, cooperation, and social service through humanitarian activities based on love and universal values.

El anglicanismo, cuyo origen se remonta a la Iglesia de Inglaterra, con Enrique VIII, constituye hoy una comunión de Iglesias de tipo episcopal que se mantienen unidas a la sede de Canterbury. La Iglesias Luteranas, provienen de la reforma del siglo XVI emprendida por Martín Lutero. Su lucha fue por la reforma de la Iglesia de Cristo. La Iglesias reformadas o presbiterianas son aquellas comunidades herederas del reformador Juan Calvino. Todas provienen del mismo tronco, pero su dispersión ha sido muy determinante. Es decisivo tener en cuenta cómo el conjunto de estas Iglesias, tratan de mantener ciertos vínculos con la Iglesia católica. Su liturgia ha ido perdiendo riqueza y fuerza ante la masiva depuración hecha por las distintas Iglesias y Comunidades eclesiales. Aún con todo poseen un protocolo y un ceremonial muy interesante, después de su separación de Roma, en el año 1520, fecha histórica de la cristiandad occidental.___________________________________________The Anglicanism, which origin goes back to the Church in England by the times of Henry VIII, constitutes a community of Episcopal churches in unity with Canterbury seat. The Luteran Churches come from the Reform in the XVI century with Martin Luther’s leading. Martin’s goal was to reform Christ’s Church. The Presbyterians and the Reformed Churches are the heiress communities of John Calvin’s Reform. All of them have the same origin, however their dispersion has been very important to determinate their outcomes. It is very important to take into account the way these groups of Churches tried to keep some kind of links with the Catholic Church. Their liturgy has lost richness and strength progressively due to the depuration made by the different churches and ecclesial communities. And yet, they have a very interesting protocol and ceremonial after their break-up with Rome in 1520, a historical date on the western Christianity.

This article examines the evolution of Bellow’s proposal for a newly reformed Unitarian “catholic” church during the 1850s and 1860s. For Bellows in particular, political, cultural, and ecclesiastical matters collided in his efforts to transform a diffuse set of liberal Christian churches in fellowship into a denomination of national, even global, caliber. The creation of this “new catholic church” would, in turn, help to heal an ailing nation. There are two questions driving this narrative. First, how did Bellows arrive at the conclusion that Unitarianism was the future of Christendom, the more “Protestant-Protestantism,” or even more boldly, the “more Catholic-Catholicism?” Secondly, how did Bellows arrive at the conclusion that uniting Christendom under a “catholic” Unitarian banner could unite a fractured country? During the early 1860s, the language of nationalism and catholicity merged in Bellows’ organization of the National Convention.

For four centuries the book of Enoch was lost to Western Christianity and Judaism. That was until 1773, when Scottish explorer James Bruce brought back from Ethiopia ‘three’ copies of it to France and England. Yet, by the end of the eighteenth century there was another copy of the book of Enoch in Rome, in the library of Cardinal Leonardo Antonelli. This was an Ethiopic manuscript that, around 1825, would be acquired by Angelo Mai for the Vatican Library, where it is currently preserved (Vat. et. 71). The provenance of the manuscript has remained until now unknown. Through the recovery of eighteenth-century neglected letters and documents, this article uncovers a forgotten chapter in James Bruce's biography, his adventurous journey to Rome immediately after his return from Ethiopia, his meeting with Pope Clement XIV, and the ‘fourth’ Enoch manuscript he donated to the Antonelli Library. Personal and political reasons led Bruce to suppress the memory of his precious gift.

Muscovy and the kingdoms of Western Christianity differed considerably in their ideology of power and the imagery expressing that ideology as Muscovy was part of the Orthodox community. Examination of early seventeenth-century English examples of symbolic political theology elucidates these differences, especially as to the female personification of sovereignty and ‘nation’, at a time when the female personification of “Russia” was just becoming manifest in Russian literary and ceremonial sources.

Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Nichiren Buddhism lay organization that has greatly grown in the last decades. Through a strong organizational structure and a membership that undertakes the job of spreading the practice and recruiting new members, they became Argentina’s biggest Buddhist organization with approximately 30,000 members. Through this article, I would like to highlight some factors that I believe contributed to its growth by focusing on two main aspects: Their practice—shown as simple, easy to learn and that will bring concrete benefits in short term—and their network organization based on residence groups, which allows them to cover more territory by decentralizing the space in order to make a closer follow-up of the newcomers and to generate lasting relationships among the members. This point also helps to create the image of a horizontal organization (consistent with the idea of equality among all people held by Nichiren Buddhism), where all members are disciples of one mentor: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai’s president. This mentor/disciple relationship is the visible face of a rather invisible organizational structure that has proven to be very successful, given the current worldwide scale of Soka Gakkai.

In this article, I examine a new religious initiative of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland called the Extreme Way of the Cross (EWC, Ekstremalna Droga Krzyzowa). Proclaimed as a ‘new form of spirituality’, the EWC has rapidly become a nation-wide phenomenon, with more than 450 routes and 52,000 registered participants in 2017. I start with a description of the history, organisational features and main principles of the EWC, followed by the social-religious profiles of its participants. Drawing on Elaine Pena’s concept of ‘devotional labor’, I shed light on how a strenuous, long night-time walk, combined with the rule of silence and meditation on the Passion of Christ, can lead EWC participants to an immediate experience of the sacred, in which a fatigued human body plays a central role. To this end, I discuss the EWC in the context of the traditional Catholic Ways of the Cross and Passion Plays, and contemporary pilgrimage in the Western Christianity.