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The article comments on research on the relationship between religious and anxiety. Topics discussed include the effect of ritual practice to decrease or increase anxiety, the use of Holi and Navratri rituals for stress reduction, and the importance of ethnographic and quantitative stress data in the study of the correlation of ritual and anxiety.

Economic game experiments have become a prominent method among social scientists developing and testing theories of cooperation. These games provide a valuable opportunity to generate measures of cooperation that can be compared from one place to the next, yet challenges remain in how to interpret cross-cultural differences in these experiments and connect them to cooperation in naturally occurring contexts. I address these challenges by examining framing effects in public goods games (PGGs) with salmon fishers and reindeer herders in Kamchatka, Russia. Combining standard versions of the game with versions that refer to post-Soviet institutions coordinating fishing and herding, I show that (1) average contributions in the PGG in Kamchatka are substantially higher than reported elsewhere and (2) framing the PGG alters the relationship between contributions and expectations, shifting strategies away from unconditional generosity and toward conditional cooperation. My analysis, by synthesizing quantitative analysis of PGG data with long-term qualitative ethnography, including extensive postgame interviews with participants, supports the notion that cooperation in economic games increases along with cultural norms, values, and institutions that emerge from economic interdependence. Framing effects suggest that researchers shou'd devote more attention to investigating the relationship between contributions and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have argued that rituals serve to help individuals cope with challenges that arise under uncertain conditions. Ongoing research has been examining this claim with data collected on how Israeli women use psalm recitation to cope with the stress of war and terror. Here we compare the efficacy of psalm recitation among religious women who remained in northern Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War and women who relocated to central Israel, out of reach of Hizbollah Katyusha attacks. We show that psalm recitation is associated with lower rates of anxiety among women who remained in the north, but no such relationship was found among women who relocated outside of the warzone. We argue that psalm recitation reduces anxiety caused by the uncontrollable conditions of war but is ineffective at combating more mundane, controllable stressors. These findings will be discussed in light of Malinowski's theory of magic and related models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life history theory aims to explain the relationship between life events, recognizing that the fertility and growth schedules of organisms are dependent on environmental conditions and an organism's ability to extract resources from its environment. Using models from life history theory, we predict life expectancy to be positively correlated with educational investments and negatively correlated with adolescent reproduction and total fertility rates. Analyses of UN data from 193 countries support these predictions and demonstrate that, although variation is evident across world regions, strong interactions exist among life expectancy, reproductive investments, and educational attainment, and these relationships occur independently of economic pressures and disease burdens. The interactions are strongest, however, in countries with a life expectancy of ≥60 years as these countries tend to have stable economies and a limited HIV/AIDS burden. These findings suggest that policies aimed at influencing education and reproductive decisions should consider environmental characteristics that drive people's expectations about their longevity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examination of the extent to which women in the northern Israeli town of Tzfat recited psalms to cope with the stress of the Second Palestinian Intifada reveals that knowing someone who was killed in the Intifada, experiencing an income loss, and believing that Tzfat would be attacked by terrorists were strong predictors of psalm recitation among self-identified secular but not religious interviewees. Among secular interviewees who believed that Tzfat would be attacked, psalm recitation was negatively correlated with short- and long-term precautionary behavioral strategies such as caution after an attack and avoiding buses, restaurants, and large crowds. No such relationship was found among religious interviewees, although they were less likely to make precautionary behavioral changes. These findings underscore the importance of magico-religious practices as coping mechanisms that may reduce anxiety and provide perceptions of control under conditions of high stress and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the putative importance of ideological commitments in the evolution of large-scale cooperation among unrelated individuals, evolutionary researchers have yet to examine empirically the relationship between ideology and cooperation. We conduct an experimental game on Israeli kibbutz members to evaluate whether: (1) differences in ideological commitment can explain variation in cooperation within and across kibbutzim; and (2) whether certain types of ideologies are better at promoting cooperation than others. We use the cooperative behavior of Israeli city residents as a baseline and show that members of collectivized kibbutzim are more cooperative than city residents, while members of kibbutzim that have abandoned socialist ideology (privatized kibbutzim) are no more cooperative than city residents. Our results further indicate that among collectivized kibbutzim, members of religious kibbutzim are more cooperative than their secular counterparts. Religious males who engage in thrice-daily communal prayer display the highest levels of cooperation of any subpopulation in our sample. We discuss how the performance of sanctified rituals serves to internalize religious ideological commitment, thus enhancing the ability of religious ideology to motivate cooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to correlate collective rituals as an expression and reaffirmation of shared beliefs, norms and values and communal stability and group harmony. Despite having achieved the status of conventional anthropological wisdom, the relationship between ritual performance and group solidarity has not been demonstrated empirically. The kibbutz was originally conceived as a small collective farming settlement in which members based their social and cultural lives on the collective ownership of property and wealth. The kibbutz developed out of an egalitarian ideology. This article seeks to find a reason as to why women are not allowed to participate in certain religious practices. These gender differences in ritual practice provide an opportunity to examine directly how group ritual performance impacts cooperative behavior hypotheses. The article also discusses challenges faced by kibbutzim in promoting and maintaining cooperation among its members.

Focuses on the patch choice decisions among human foragers. Calculations of the profitabilities of fishing patch; Emphasis of the per capita return rate of alternative patches; Maximization of the fitness currency.

Recently, political philosophers have debated the role of religious reasons in public deliberations, such as appealing to religious convictions and religious classics. Exclusivists, such as Rawls, Quong, Hartley, and Watson, argue that democratic governments and citizens should restrict or exclude the use of religious reasons in making laws and policies, while inclusivists, such as Gaus, Vallier, and Billingham, oppose such categorical exclusion. Nevertheless, the debate mainly focuses on the role of religious reasons in public deliberation. In this paper, I will argue that religious behaviors—defined as highly altruistic actions motivated by religious beliefs, such as dedicating substantial time and effort to serving the poor and advancing the common good—can exert positive influences on public deliberation. Through this kind of altruistic action, religious believers can subtly influence non-religious citizens. While religious believers may not rationally persuade non-religious citizens through religious reasoning, the altruistic actions exhibited by religious believers could emotionally inspire admiration and motivate non-religious citizens to learn more about those religions. This enhances mutual understanding among different religious and secular sects and thus improves public deliberation. Furthermore, I argue that the improved understanding fostered by religious behaviors can facilitate exclusivism and inclusivism to overcome certain philosophical challenges, such as the problems of incompleteness and anarchy, which are among the most frequent criticisms directed at exclusivism and inclusivism. Hence, this paper highlights an aspect overlooked in the exclusivism–inclusivism debate: no matter whether the democratic government and citizens should permit or restrict religious reasons, religious behavior is still beneficial in public deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Objectives Methods Results Conclusions Human childrearing is cooperative, with women often able to achieve relatively high fertility through help from many individuals. Previous work has documented tremendous socioecological variation in who supports women in childrearing, but less is known about the intracultural correlates of variation in allomaternal support. In the highly religious, high‐fertility setting of The Gambia, we studied whether religious mothers have more children and receive more support with their children.We randomly sampled 395 mothers and 745 focal children enrolled in the Kiang West (The Gambia) Longitudinal Population Study cohort. Structured interviews asked mothers who and how often people invest in their children, and about their religious practices. Data were collected at participants' homes on electronic tablet‐based long‐form surveys and analyzed using the Bayesian hierarchical models.Religiosity was weakly associated with women's higher age‐adjusted fertility. Maternal religiosity was negatively related to maternal investment in focal children, but positively associated with total allomaternal support. Specifically, a woman's religiosity was positively associated with allomaternal support from matrilineal kin, other offspring, and affinal kin, but unrelated to paternal, patrilineal, and non‐kin investment.These results suggest that higher fertility among religious mothers may be supported by high levels of investment from biological and affinal kin. Matrilineal kin, other siblings, and affinal kin seem to be the most responsive to a woman's religiosity. Our findings cast doubt on interpretations of women's religious behaviors as signals of fidelity, and instead suggest they may be part of strategies to enable collective allomaternal resources and higher relative fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Attitudes of Catholic clergies to the application of ChatGPT in unite religious communities" investigates the perspectives of the Catholic clergy on the integration of ChatGPT technology in religious environments. Bearing in mind that communication technologies are becoming an integral part of every aspect of life, including religious practices, the study delves into the potential, advantages, and challenges associated with using ChatGPT to support religious discourse. Adopting a qualitative approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with eleven Polish priests, addressing the diversity within the group. The respondents, who play important roles in organising the life of Catholic religious communities, highlighted ChatGPT's potential in enhancing the dissemination of information, educational initiatives, and pastoral care. However, they also expressed concerns about the technology's impact on genuine human interactions and the preservation of religious practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a universal definition of religion eludes the field of religious studies, it certainty seems that people are becoming differently religious rather than a-religious, especially since the latter half of the twentieth century. To explain the enduring relevance of religion in human experience, this article expands on recent evolutionary and sociological research in the systems theory of religion and develops a philosophical approach to understanding religion as a complex adaptive system. Frameworks of meaning and beliefs communicated by religious systems emerge and adapt in relation to interpretive selection pressures communicated by individuals-in-community relative to entropy's role in one's contingent experience as a "teleodynamic self" in the arrow of time. Religious systems serve an entropy-reducing function in the minds of individuals, philosophically speaking, because their sign and symbol systems communicate an "anentropic" dimension to meaning that prevents uncertainty ad infinitum (e.g., maximum Shannon entropy) concerning matters of existential concern for phenomenological systems, i.e., persons. Religious systems will continue to evolve, and new religious movements will spontaneously emerge, as individuals find new ways to communicate their intuition of this anentropic dimension of meaning in relation to their experience of contingency in the arrow of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As William Cavanaugh has remarked, the scholarly notion of religion "should often be surrounded by scare quotes. Its flexibility and occasional nebulousness make evaluating its role in conceiving of, effecting, and justifying violence even more difficult. At the same time, it sticks around and remains a vital category of contemporary analysis. What if getting behind the Wars of Religion—the period to which Cavanaugh traces the emergence of his "myth of religious violence"—could plant the seeds for a new paradigm in understanding the relationship between religion and violence? In this article, I analyze the Chronicon of Jean Hocsem, a fourteenth-century canon from Liège. Untranslated into English and rarely written about, Hocsem's text offers an unexpectedly political perspective on this question. Combining insights from Augustine's City of God as well as Aristotle's Politics and basing his ideas on his own experience of nearly constant conflict, Hocsem develops the idea that class antagonisms and human frailty make violence—especially political violence—inevitable. He takes this approach within a polity ruled by a prince-bishop, though one he would not have thought of as "religious". Hocsem's solutions are thus avowedly political. His pessimism about such questions leads to an emphasis on mitigating violence through the institution of proper socio-political structures. This reading of Hocsem and his politicizing of the question of violence opens new possibilities for scholars, further calling into question any easy relationship between the modern categories of "religion" and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current trends within both religious and secular communities suggest that contemporary times mean that people spend more time alone than with others. Community engagement in general has been declining, while religious and spiritual community engagement in particular has dropped off significantly in recent decades, and most especially following the COVID-19 global pandemic. Although humans are social beings and benefit from community engagement, we tend to avoid or minimize our affiliations and associations, including our religious and spiritual ones today. Religious and spiritual communities must adapt to changing times or risk becoming irrelevant, diminishing further, and losing their sustainability to continue with their activities and services. Religious communities might wish to consider the best state-of-the-art evidence-based practices to engage their members, as well as appeal to those who might be interested in joining with them. There are many mental and physical health benefits to active engagement with spiritual religious practices and communities. The world could use more rather than less community engagement, including religious and spiritual engagement, during our challenging contemporary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sufism is teachings that can play a significant role in shaping one’s religious behavior. Studies of Sufism and the Sufi behaviors have been carried out extensively, yet generally by their domains. This article is presented to fill this gap by offering the logic and the mechanism by which ‘Irfani, Philosophical, Moral Sufism (Sufism Trilogy) shape individual religious behavior. This paper focuses on three main discussions. First, the Sufism Trilogy’s underlying concept was discussed based mainly on the founders of Sufism’s work. Second, it delineates the orientation and goals of the Sufism Trilogy to depict their similarities and differences. Third, it proposes a model of the Sufism Trilogy contribution to the formation of human religious behavior. The study concludes that despite seemingly having different orientations and goals, Sufism Trilogy ends with the same purpose: to get close to and be with God; hence adherence to only one dimension of Sufism would sway one from being real closeness to God. Then, the trilogy of Sufism with these three approaches turns out to be able to make a social contribution in society, namely with the purity of one's heart can see everything the same so as not to feel higher than others, with a mind that is always used to think able to form an advanced mindset and committed to fostering progress and civilization with togetherness, with noble behavior (morals) can unite relationships between individuals, so that social can establish togetherness and unity in the midst of differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic presented what, on both global and national levels, has arguably so far been the most extensive health, economic and social challenge of the 21st century. Responding to this challenge, it soon became clear that, while having a vital role in the contextual provision of necessary services, public authorities also needed to engage with organizations in the voluntary, community sector, including Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs). This article presents and discusses and analyzes a digest of research and resource evidence from the beginning of 2020–to the end of 2023 concerning the organizational, financial and human contributions of and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on, in particular, Christian FBOs in Great Britain. It goes on to analyze these contributions and impacts within the analytical framework of what it calls a wider "Christian ecology" as the context within which such FBOs live, to which they contribute, and, as argued by this review, apart from which they cannot be properly understood. Finally, in exploring some of the lessons to be learned from the evidence and analysis presented, the article identifies and considers some key opportunities and issues that arise at the interface between the work of (especially, but not only, Christian) FBOs and the structures and processes of the governmental powers-that-be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically examine the moral theory of Public Service Motivation (PSM) with data from a large online Dutch household panel. Inspired by Moral Foundation Theory, we develop and test several hypotheses on the role of moral foundations in shaping PSM, as well as the behavioral implications regarding participation in social organizations. The individualizing foundations of Care and Fairness (jointly referred to as INDV) are found to positively relate to all four dimensions of PSM—Compassion (COM), Self-Sacrifice (SS), Attraction to Public Service (APS), and Commitment to Public Values (CPV). Moreover, PSM mediates the positive relationship between INDV and participation in humanitarian and environmental organizations. Sanctity is positively correlated with SS and APS, mediating the often-observed relationship between PSM and religious activities. Loyalty is significantly and positively associated with SS, with the correlations with other PSM dimensions being gender-specific. Authority is significantly and negatively related to COM, SS, and APS. Overall, we provide empirical evidence on the influential role of moral foundations in engendering PSM and its behavioral consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year around 200,000 Māyāmārā Vaiṣṇavas congregate in a small village in Mājulī, Assam, India, for the annual śevā, or worship service, to Ājali Āi, a 16th-century female figure. She was the mother of Sri Sri Aniruddhadeva, the founder of Māyāmārā Vaiṣṇavism, a religious sect originating in medieval Assam that experienced royal persecution and ethnic cleansing. Among contemporary Māyāmārā Vaiṣṇavas, veneration of Ājali Āi as the mother of the founding Guru has become popular, which is somewhat puzzling since historical information about her life is scarce. Nevertheless, as Guru-Mā, Ājali Āi today has become a symbol of holiness in Māyāmārā society with community members attributing to her mahimā, translated as a divine agency, mysterious glory, or supremacy. Guru-riṇ and Mātri-ṛin, categories that are a part of the Vaiṣṇava and the larger Hindu canon, can generally explain the holiness accorded to the mother of the Guru. In the case of the Māyāmārā Vaiṣṇavas, however, they are not sufficient to explain the power in the form of mahimā that the community ascribes to her in the present day to the degree of attributing to her the power to grant wishes. This exploratory chapter argues for a systems approach to understand the phenomenon of the mahimā of Ājali Āi in contemporary Māyāmārā society. The chapter finds that socio-economic and political forces interacted with extant legends around Ājali Āi and ideas around Āi as Devi and mother in complex ways to create the community's contemporary understanding of Ājali Āi as a holy and loving maternal figure with mahimā—one who keeps a watchful and nurturing eye over the community and grants the wishes of ardent devotees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between institutional trust and elements of religion in contemporary American society. Using a nationally representative survey, we utilize latent class and regression analyses to assess the contours of these relationships. Our findings reveal a diverse institutional trust profile, with pronounced distrust in democratic institutions, especially Congress, although the group with low institutional trust is the smallest one within the society. While trust in religious institutions, and to an extent broader institutional trust, predict religiosity, this is less so with the case of spirituality. Institutional trust similarly shows modest positive relationships to public religious practice, while a clear negative relationship to private religious practice. Interpreting these findings through the lens of secularization and privatization of religion, we hope to provide a strong empirical contribution to the literature regarding intersections of institutional trust and the evolving religious and spiritual orientations of today's American landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common to hear the refrain that religion is a major cause of violence today. And this claim is not without merit. Religious differences can fuel animosity and lead to societal conflict. On the other hand, scholars have increasingly recognized the role of religion in overcoming societal divides and helping people to heal and forgive. This paper will examine the latter capacity of religion to minimize the harms that occur during violent conflicts. It will be argued that secular ethical theories often fail to provide any principles or foundations that can help moderate passions, alleviate tensions, or provide frameworks for what is licit in war. In fact, the world views of terrorists and secular ethicists of war are often strikingly similar. Religious ethicists, on the contrary, have often encouraged practices (prayer for one's enemies, forgiveness) and provided principles (dignity of every human, non-combatant immunity, just war theory) that can help moderate the violent tendencies of war and bring about a more peaceful and equitable resolution. While religion is not entirely off the hook for promoting violent conflict, religion can provide ethical frameworks and principles that help minimize the harms of conflicts and promote world peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the analysis of the discourse in major Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspapers during the first year of COVID-19. Following Durkheim, we argue that the pandemic not only brought about a health emergency, but also a state of anomie. Analyzing both Hamodia and Yated Neeman—both major news outlets of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel—we show how in a time of anomie when the sanctity of life (pikuach nefesh) conflicted with the sanctity of the community, the latter prevailed. Thus, this study unveils a different set of moral priorities than the one commonly referred to in Israeli bioethical discussions in the pre-COVID-19 era. We also found that the Durkheimian "totem" or "God" metaphors—a symbol of society itself—are highly relevant in analyzing how leaders of the Haredi community in Israel tried to keep their congregation together. This was expressed in the two heavily censored newspapers we analyzed: they placed communal living above the sanctity of individual life in a way that exposed how the cohesion of the group and the community itself were sanctified. At the same time, what was identified as the real virus was in fact secularism and not COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a response by Richard Sosis and Bradley J. Ruffle regarding the structural-functionalist research paradigm of past generation. Development of costly-signaling model of religious behavior; Correlation of the cost or benefit to the signaler of sending the signal with the signaler's quality; Link of the perceived cost or benefit of ritual performance with intensity of belief.