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Religious Faith (religious + faith)
Selected AbstractsECONOMICS, RELIGION AND THE DECLINE OF EUROPE,ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2004Niall Ferguson This article asks whether there is any casual connection between the contemporaneous decline in industriousness and religiosity in Europe over the past 25 years. In the United States working hours and levels of religious faith and observance have held steady or even increased over this period. But in most European countries they have declined together. Could this be a posthumous vindication of Max Weber's thesis about the Protestant work ethic and the rise of capitalism? Though there clearly are some important links between religion and economic behaviour, the article concludes that the evidence does not perfectly fit Weber's theory, which emphasised abstinence rather than consumption as a determinant of economic development. [source] Religious Expression amongst Adults with Intellectual DisabilitiesJOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 3 2004Susannah Turner Background Although religion is an important part of many people's lives, little is known about the role of religion in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. Method Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 29 people with intellectual disabilities of a range of faiths (various Christian denominations, Islam and Hindu dharma). Participants were asked about the meaning of religion for them, the role of religion in their lives and the attitudes of others towards religious expression. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. Results Participants expressed strong religious identities. Prayer was a particularly popular form of religious expression, with other forms of religious expression often hindered by services or faith agencies. Some individuals expressed how their religious faith was not recognized by services or faith agencies. Conclusions Services and faith agencies need to recognize the importance of religion in the lives of many people with intellectual disabilities, and support religious expression in this group. [source] Coping over time: the parents of children with autismJOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 12 2006D. E. Gray Abstract Background Although coping with autism has been examined in a number of papers, virtually no research exists on how families cope over time. This paper reports the results of a longitudinal study of parents coping with autism over a period of approximately a decade. Methods The research method for the study was based on ethnographic methods that emphasized in-depth interviews and participant observation. The sample for this study consisted of 28 parents (19 mothers and nine fathers) of children with autism. The instrument for the interviews consisted of questions concerning: the child's medical history and referral experience, the child's present symptomatology, the effects of the child's problems on the parent's well-being, the effects of autism on the family's social life, parental coping strategies, illness conceptualization and the parents' expectations for the future. Results and conclusions Coping strategies changed from the time of the initial study, as fewer parents coped through reliance on service providers, family support, social withdrawal and individualism and relatively more parents coped through their religious faith and other emotion-focused strategies. The results tentatively support previous research on coping that indicates that aging is linked to the use of more emotion-focused coping strategies. [source] Containing "Contamination": Cardinal Moran and Fin de Siècle Australian National Identity, 1888,1911JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2010MARK HEARN Cardinal Patrick Moran, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney 1884,1911, believed that Australian Catholicism would flourish with the emergence of the new nation through Federation in 1901, provided that Australians turned away from foreign influences, including anarchism and nihilism. Moran also sought to use Australia to "Christianise" the enormous population of China, and believed that Chinese immigration could make a useful contribution to nation building. As the nineteenth century closed, Moran's aims were also complicated by the more insidious threats represented by a challenge to religious faith by fin de siècle ideas , a modernism manifesting as both a general challenge and a specific doctrinal relativism that might erode the Church's authority, and the threat Moran felt was posed to the development of the liberal Australian state and the Catholic Church by radical political alternatives. Concern that a mood of religious apostasy and secularisation might spread to the Catholic community also influenced Moran's support for the fledgling Australian Labor Party, which Moran believed could develop as an instrument to reinforce a moral and inclusive sense of Australian identity for the Catholic working class. Like his pro-Chinese views, Moran's advocacy of "the rights and duties of labour" was defined by an imagined alliance of evangelism and nation building, stimulated by the fear, as he expressed in 1891, of "an unchristianized world." [source] THE RESPONSE OF A THEOLOGIAN TO CHARLES TAYLOR'S A SECULAR AGEMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 3 2010GREGORY BAUM The author of this article confirms Charles Taylor's thesis that despite the growing spread of unbelief in modern society, i) religion remains an independent variable, ii) a creative "back and forth" continues to occur between secular wisdom and religious faith, and iii) the difference between these two does not necessarily produce opposition between them. The author also agrees with the importance Taylor attaches to the emergence of immanent humanism. Yet the author disagrees with Taylor's account of contemporary culture and religion as expressions of people's quest of identity; the article demonstrates instead that religion participates in all contemporary social movements. [source] Mozart Among the TheologiansMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2000David J. Gouwens The essay compares and contrasts the philosophical, theological, and aesthetic approaches to Mozart in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard's aesthete A (Either/Or, I), Karl Barth (primarily Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), and Hans Küng (Mozart: Traces of Transcendence). Whereas Kierkegaard's A outlines a non-religious ,daemonic Mozart', Barth and Küng depict two contrasting theological understandings of Mozart's music. Barth's Mozart reflects a Reformed aesthetic, with Mozart as a ,parable' of gospel, whereas Küng's Mozart reflects a Roman Catholic ,sacramental' vision of music and religious faith. The essay explores how these different visions of Mozart are shaped by both their theological and aesthetic commitments. [source] Faith and its fulfillment: agency, exchange, and the Fijian aesthetics of completionAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 1 2000Hirokazu Miyazaki In this article, I develop a theory of what I call the abeyance of agency, drawing upon a comparison between Fijian Christian church and gift-giving rituals. I argue that from religious practitioners' viewpoint, religious faith concerns not so much the intentions of an anthropomorphic God as the limits that are temporarily placed on ritual participants' agency. Such abeyance and subsequent recovery of their agency enables them to experience the intimations of an ultimate response,[agency, form, temporality, gift exchange, Christianity, Fiji] [source] Marie Nathusius' Elisabeth and Fontane's Effi Briest: Mental Illness and Marital Discord in the "Century of Nerves"THE GERMAN QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2010Nicole Thesz This comparative analysis of Marie Nathusius' Elisabeth (1856/57) and Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest (1895) reveals striking similarities. Both novels depict child brides whose disappointment in marriage leads to nervous ailments. The Kur that both heroines undergo represents one of several contrasts between domesticity and the outside world. Illness, in Nathusius's portrayal, is an opportunity to negotiate difficulties in marital relationships. While Elisabeth upholds traditional models of femininity, it also shows the husband's nervous reactions to discord. Like Effi Briest, there are implications of social pressures, but ultimately healing Elisabeth involves her free will to choose religious faith, and thus health or "das Heil". Fontane, in contrast, places the etiology of illness firmly within the vicissitudes of patriarchal society, which crushes the individual beneath its hypocritical norms. The Kur thus offers Effi no respite, and instead transports her toward isolation and untimely death. [source] ALSTON ON BELIEF AND ACCEPTANCE IN RELIGIOUS FAITH1THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009HAMID VAHID In this paper, I shall examine William Alston's influential view that the cognitive element in religious faith should be identified with ,acceptance' rather than ,belief'. Although I am sympathetic to Alston's reluctance to regard belief as essential to faith, I shall argue that one can redescribe the cases that Alston invokes in support of his claim in terms of the standard notion of degrees-of-belief without loss. It will be further argued that, given Alston's constraints, his notion of acceptance, if not identical to belief, is at least a species of belief. [source] Theological Pragmatism: A Critical EvaluationTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 2 2000Mikael Stenmark Theological pragmatists like Daly, Kaufman, McFague and Reuther claim that the God we should believe in and the kind of images we should use to express our religious faith should be evaluated primarily on the basis of the consequences they have for the maintenance of certain political or moral values. These views are presented and critically evaluated. One difficulty is that their pragmatism seems to clash with our intuition and experience that there is no automatic fit between our moral aspirations and political visions, on the one hand, and how the world is actually structured, on the other. Their strong emphasis on political and moral considerations is, therefore, questionable and only plausible under certain specific circumstances. [source] INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL: EXPLORING THE MISSISSIPPI MODEL OF EPISCOPAL MEDICAL MISSIONS TO PANAMAANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2010Robert P. Connolly This article explores the faith-based medical missions of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi to underserved rural indigenous peoples of Panama. The Mississippi Model focuses on health care delivery and de-emphasizes conversion to a religious faith, an approach that some may classify as a faith-based community performing secular tasks. However, the Mississippi Model arises from incarnational theology, which,viewed from both historical and contemporary perspectives,argues against a secular categorizing of the mission clinics. Consistently, our interviews with missioners, participant-observations, and review of the Episcopal Church literature, both nationally and in Mississippi, suggest that mission performance is considered a practice of faith not distinct from other expressions of faith, such as liturgical worship. [source] The family impact of skin diseases: the Greater Patient conceptBRITISH JOURNAL OF DERMATOLOGY, Issue 5 2007M.K.A. Basra Summary Background, Although the impact of skin disease on patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is well known, little work has been carried out to determine the secondary impact of a patient's skin disease on the patient's family or partner. Objectives, The aim of this study was to identify the different aspects of a family member's QoL that may be affected by having a family member with skin disease. Methods, Qualitative interviews were conducted with 50 family members/partners of patients attending the outpatient clinic of a university hospital, with a wide range of dermatological conditions (n = 21). Subjects were invited to discuss in detail all the ways that their lives were affected by living with a patient with skin disease. Results, The mean age of subjects (M = 19; F = 31) was 48·1 years (SD = 15·7) most were either parents (44%) or spouses/partners (44%) of the patients. Patients' ages (M = 16; F = 34) ranged from 5 months to 84 years. Fifty-nine aspects of QoL of family members were identified that were adversely affected by the patients' skin disease. These were categorized into 18 main topic areas: Emotional distress (98%), Burden of care (54%), Effect on housework (42%), Social life (48%), Holidays (46%), Financial aspect (30%), Physical well-being (22%), Job/study (40%), Leisure activities (26%), Sleep (20%), Food/drink (12%), Restriction of liked activities (14%), Need for support (12%), People's attitude (10%), Dissatisfaction with medical care (14%), Effect on sex life (8%), Role of religious faith (8%) and Miscellaneous (16%). There was no significant difference between male and female subjects regarding main QoL areas affected. The median number of main topic areas reported per family member was five (mean = 5·2, range = 1,10, SD = 2·64). Conclusions, This study has demonstrated that skin diseases can significantly impair the HRQoL of the patient's family in very diverse ways. Asking family members about this impact is greatly appreciated by them. We propose the ,Greater Patient' concept to describe the immediate close social group affected by a person having skin disease. [source] Lifetime alcohol use, abuse and dependence among university students in Lebanon: exploring the role of religiosity in different religious faithsADDICTION, Issue 6 2009Lilian A. Ghandour ABSTRACT Aims To examine alcohol consumption and the role of religiosity in alcohol use disorders in Christian, Druze and Muslim youth in Lebanon, given their distinct religious doctrines and social norms. Methods Using a self-completed anonymous questionnaire, data were collected on 1837 students, selected randomly from two large private universities in Beirut. Life-time abuse and dependence were measured as per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version IV. Findings Alcohol use was more common in Christians, who started drinking younger and were twice as likely to be diagnosed with abuse and dependence. However, among ever drinkers, the odds of alcohol use disorders were comparable across religious groups. Believing in God and practising one's faith were related inversely to alcohol abuse and dependence in all religious groups, even among ever drinkers (belief in God only). The associations were sometimes stronger for Muslims, suggesting that religiosity may play a larger role in a more proscriptive religion, as postulated by,reference group theory'. Conclusions Students belonging to conservative religious groups may be shielded from the opportunity to try alcohol. Once an ever drinker, however, religion is not related to the odds of an alcohol use disorder. Religiosity (i.e. belief in God and religious practice) is, nevertheless, related inversely to alcohol-related problems, even among drinkers. Findings from this culturally and religiously diverse Arab country corroborate the international literature on religion, religiosity and alcohol use, highlighting potential differences between Christians and Muslims. [source] | |||||||||||||