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Organized Religion (organized + religion)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

THEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2006
Mark Considine
In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re-theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge-based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity-centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks. [source]

Religious Involvement, Conventional Christian, and Unconventional Nonmaterialist Beliefs

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2006
TONY GLENDINNING
This article uses a Scottish national sample to examine the relationship between church involvement, religious socialization among nonattenders, orthodox Christian beliefs, and a variety of unconventional nonmaterialist beliefs. Greater conventional religious belief is strongly associated with supposed alternatives but nonetheless, nonattenders are more likely to believe in the unconventional over and above any enduring sympathy they may hold for Christian doctrine. One group in particular stands out: belief remains high among nonattenders who once went to services regularly and seriously contemplate reengaging with organized religion. The article discusses the importance of these findings for "believing but not belonging." [source]

Christianity, Gender, and the Working Class in Southern Dunedin, 1880,19401

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2006
JOHN STENHOUSE
This article is a study of the southern suburbs of Dunedin, which during the late nineteenth century became the most industrialized and working class urban area of New Zealand. Analyzing the social composition of fifteen southern Dunedin churches, I question the idea, widely held by New Zealand historians, that the working classes had largely turned their backs on organized religion. In keeping with recent scholarship in the social history of British and Irish religion, I show that unskilled workers were better represented in many southern Dunedin congregations that previous historians have acknowledged and that skilled workers numerically dominated most churches. When women are included in the analysis, working class predominance increases further. Signing the suffrage petition in remarkable proportions, working class Christian women turned the southern suburbs into a world-leading first wave feminist community. Moreover, varieties of popular Christianity flourished beyond the ranks of active churchgoers. I conclude by suggesting that New Zealand historians need to rethink the old "lapsed masses" and "secular New Zealand" assumptions and to investigate the diverse varieties of Christianity shaping the culture, and their sometimes conflicting this-worldly meanings. [source]

Catholic Social Policy and U.S. Health Care Reform: A Relationship Revisited

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001
Michael V. Angrosino
The Roman Catholic Church is the single largest denomination in the United States and the one with the most extensive provider stake in health (and related social service) care. As a follow-up to an earlier analysis of the Catholic role in the thwarted health care reform effort of1993,94, this article looks at the revival of interest in reform and at the rationale behind and strategy of the Catholic Church's current agenda-setting initiative. The emphasis in this article is on the delicate relationship between organized religion and social policy in a society with an officially secular culture, [health care reform, policy analysis, Catholic social policy] [source]

The Kabbalah Centre and Contemporary Spirituality

RELIGION COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2008
Jody Myers
This paper focuses on the Kabbalah Centre, an international new religious movement that popularizes formerly esoteric Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and attempts to spread it to a universal audience. Like many new religious movements, its cultural and social nonalignment fosters intense opposition as well as attraction, the latter most notably from celebrity followers such as Madonna. I summarize portions of my ethnographic and historical research to illumine some basic aspects of the movement: its connection to Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, its postmodern social structure, and its appeal to both people seeking a spiritual outlook and practice seemingly unconnected to normative, organized religion. [source]