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Little did I know as I looked up at the stars in the summertime of my childhood that one day I would return to that memory, saying: Here is where [...]

This essay seeks to demonstrate how ministers and others can enhance attentiveness to God in a culture that does much to distract us. Through such practices as fasting from technological distractions and retreating. We can open ourselves to God's transforming love and allow that love to flow through us in our everyday lives and ministries. Keywords Ordinary Time, Liturgical Calendar, Spirituality, Contemplation, Fasting, Retreat, Humility, Love, Introduction All of life should be spiritual, or it is not spiritual at all. As Thomas Merton once wrote, if we are to live spiritually, we 'must be all alive, [...]

The explanatory power of the moral community hypothesis is evaluated through an analysis of survey data collected from a sample of 11, 789 state prison inmates housed in 275 prisons located throughout the United States. The results of the multilevel regression analysis are not consistent with what would be predicted by the moral community hypothesis. The theoretical implications of this line of research are also discussed. KEYWORDS deviance, institutional misconduct, moral community hypothesis, prison, religiosity DOI: 10.1080/10509674.2010.489468

There was a certain pious man among the heathen named Job, but he [thought that he had] come into this world only to receive [here] his reward, and when the [...]

In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called 'absorption,' which may be involved in contemporary Christian evangelical prayer practice (and in the practices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for 'absorption.' Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture-and-cognition school. Keywords: proclivity, absorption, Christianity, anthropology of religion, prayer DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01197.x

WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT "THE SECULAR STATE"? This question has more purchase than one might think. Consider Charles Taylor's paper published elsewhere in this issue. Taylor [...]

TO BE HUMAN IS TO EXPRESS AN IMAGE OF THE HUMAN predicament, or sometimes two or three competing within you. It might find collective expression (today) in church sermons, novels, [...]

This article uses quantitative data from the 1996 Religious Identity and Influence Survey to examine the relationship between religious identity, gender ideology, and marital decision making. The focus is on variation across religious groups in beliefs about the husband as the head of the family and reported patterns of marital decision making. While conservative Protestants espouse a traditional gender-role ideology, their marital decision-making practices are not significantly different from those of other religious groups. On the other hand, theologically liberal Protestants have more egalitarian ideology while reporting decision-making practices that are not significantly more egalitarian than those of conservative Protestants. The findings suggest that ideology should not be equated with practice without taking into consideration the broader context and subcultural meanings of the beliefs in question., ********** For decades in America, the traditional family has been closely associated with religious influences. At the end of the 1950s, married couples with children made up nearly half the [...]

The contemporary interest in spiritual experience has some theological and ethical ambiguity. To what extent does it reflect genuine engagement with the sacred, to what extent is it dabbling in experience without adequate interpretation or moral commitment? Jonathan Edwards faced similar challenges in his sermons on 1 Cor 13, Charity and Its Fruits. Alasdair MacIntyre and Pierre Hadot have explored the constitutive role of practices in forming of virtues and transmitting a way of life. Their writings help show the continuing relevance of the spiritual practices that Edwards advocated, particularly self-examination, healing by contraries, and solidarity. KEY WORDS: Edwards, Jonathan, religious experience, spirituality, virtue

The author discusses how the goal of 'bimaadiziwin' urges Anishaabe followers to live long and healthy lives. Topics include myth, moral values, kinship, human-animal relationships, and cultural tradition.

A closer look at the intricate religious heritage of Los Angeles, CA, is significant in these times where there is a great need to learn cultural sensitivity, respect various degrees of differences and identify the bonds that will keep the nation as a whole. Examining the dynamics of religion's impact during the formative era of urbanization also provides a clear understanding of how religion and class interaction influenced the city's political life as well. Religious communities during this period played essential roles in helping communities adapt to modern changes.

Building on a model first proposed by Gary Johnson, it is hypothesized that religious institutions demanding celibacy and other forms of altruism from members take advantage of human predispositions to favor genetic relatives in order to maintain and reinforce these desired behaviors in non-kin settings. This is accomplished through the institutionalization of practices to manipulate cues through which such relatives are regularly identified. These cues are association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kin terms. In addition, the age of recruits and their contact with actual kin are factors that relate to kinship recognition and that are similarly manipulated by institutions in order to reinforce altruistic behavior directed toward non-kin. Support for this set of predictions is presented from historical and ethnographic sources on monastic life in Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, as well as Islamic dervish groups, the Essenes, Shakers, and others. Potential implications of the model for understanding the development of religious institutions are preliminarily explored by reviewing Joachim Wach's model of religious developmental stages as well as some of the literature on the relationship between individualism and communalism in incipient religious organizations, in light of the kin-cue manipulation model.

The Faith at Work movement for bridging the 'Sunday-Monday gap' is discussed. Topics include historical antecedents and influences, scope and scale of the movement, a language for the movement, and a framework for faith at work.

This essay examines extant religious textile artifacts in the Armenian churches of Istanbul. The churches are not only social links, but also repositories for highly perishable material expressions of religious life, which enhanced the community. The pieces, most of which were donated to individual churches by the resident Armenian community, feature intricate designs and rich embellishment. They exhibit a remarkable level of technical sophistication and skill both within the professional artisan class and the lay community, especially Armenian women. The textiles are significant in the study of late Byzantine and Ottoman art, and the movement of Armenians in the Diaspora. The Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church has long been an anchor of a minority people, and the caretaker of its artistic expression. It continues as an important link between the religious, cultural, and civil life of Armenians in Istanbul and all Turkey.

About a year before the death of Oliver Cromwell and shortly before the subsequent unraveling of the Protestant regime in England, Increase Mather was keenly enthusiastic about his personal prospects. [...]

This study examined the relationships between religious orientation and components of religious attitudes. Religious orientation was measured using Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis' (1993) Religious Life Inventory. Affective, cognitive, and conative components of attitudes toward religious beliefs and practices were measured using an instrument constructed for the study. Participants were undergraduate students from four educational institutions in the United States. Systematic relationships were found among the dimensions of religious orientation and the components of religious attitudes. Means and Quest orientations had very similar profiles, characterized by high Cognition scores and relatively low Affect and Conation scores. By contrast, modestly low Cognition scores and significantly high Affect and Conation scores characterized the profile of the Ends orientation. Results are discussed in terms of the concept of mature religiosity.

There are Christians who are convinced that they believe and preach an 'old time gospel' that is unchanged from the time of the New Testament, and there is merit in [...]

Daniel Dennett is one of America's most relentless debunkers of religion, a passion so dedicated and committed that no anecdotal stone is left unturned in his highly intelligent assault on [...]

In his memoir Open Secrets, Richard Lischer tells of his search for a pastoral vocation in 'New Cana,' a small town in southern Illinois. When he reconnoitered the site of [...]

Issues of knowing, religious belief, and questing are discussed within the contexts of Arab-Jewish relations and a Russian immigrant's meeting with the Pope.