			Home About us Contact

Religious Life (religious + life)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	90%

Selected Abstracts

Do Genetic Factors Influence Religious Life?

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2008
Findings from a Behavior Genetic Analysis of Twin Siblings
Social scientific research assumes that religious involvement is primarily, if not exclusively, the product of social-environmental influences There is growing evidence, however, that genetic or other biological factors also play a role Analyzing twin sibling data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), this study addresses this issue by showing that individual-level variation on four different aspects of religious life,organizational involvement, personal religiosity and spirituality, conservative ideologies, and transformations and commitments,is indeed the product of both genetic and environmental influences Specifically, genetic factors explain 19,65 percent of the variation, while environmental influences account for the remaining 35,81 percent depending upon the aspect of religion under investigation Research of this type enhances contemporary social science by providing a new perspective that nicely supplements existing ones, but it also highlights potential implications, including explanatory power deficiencies and potentially bias [source]

The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life: A Cross-Cultural, Quantitative Analysis

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2008
STEPHEN K. SANDERSON
ABSTRACT, Previous cross-cultural studies of religion's evolution that employed Swanson's High Gods measure are plagued by methodological difficulties, especially the lack of proper statistical controls. Here, we attempted to rectify this, using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample to test five hypotheses employing multivariate statistical techniques. Results provided weak support for Swanson's Sovereign Groups hypothesis concerning High Gods and also limited support for a previously unexplored factor: writing and record keeping. In phase two of the study, we introduced a new measure, the Stage of Religious Evolution, based on Anthony Wallace's typology. When this new dependent variable was substituted for High Gods, much stronger results were obtained. The best predictors of Stage of Religious Evolution were mode of subsistence economy, writing and record keeping, and total population size. These findings allowed us to construct a new evolutionary interpretation of the development of different modes of religious life. [source]

On Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: The Scholarly Translator's Work

THE JOURNAL OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Issue 2 2004
Karen E. Fields
[source]

Lay-Religious Associations, Urban Identities, and Urban Space in Eighteenth-Century Milan

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2004
David Garrioch
Religious life was integral to the social and political organization of eighteenth-century Milan. The composition and character of lay-religious activities reflect not only official hierarchies within the city but also unofficial bonds and identities, such as those of neighbourhood. They reveal the multiple identities of neighbourhood, parish, trade and family, but equally the tensions between collective forms of piety and the new religious values and aesthetic adopted by the Milanese elites during the late Enlightenment. [source]

Art As Religious Commitment: Kafka's Debt to Kierkegaardian Ideas and their Impact on his Late Stories

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 4 2000
Leena Eilttä
Although Kafka's reception of Kierkegaardian ideas has received much critical attention the critics have so far paid little heed to similarities between Kierke-gaard's religious and Kafka's aesthetic views. My intention in the following is to show that in spite of Kafka's critical remarks on his philosophy, Kierkegaard's definition of a religious person influenced his description of the artist's existence in Erstes Leid (1922), Ein Hungerkünstler (1922) and Josefine, die Sängerin oder das Volk der Mäuse (1924). In these stories Kafka turns Kierkegaard's ideas about spiritual inwardness and passionate attitude towards religious life into artistic inwardness and passionate attitude towards art. He also describes how devotion that these artists feel towards their art leads to their solitude and how their lives reflect suffering, doubt and despair which is similar to Kierkegaard's description of religious suffering. Kafka's critical remarks on Kierkegaard's philosophy should therefore be understood as a clear rejection of Kierkegaard's Protestant theology, although these same ideas gave him inspiration to formulate his views on the artist's existence. [source]

Choosing Life or Second Life?

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 384-385 2008
Agency in A Mediated Culture, Discipleship
Liberationist theologies gave rue to a re-emphasis on Christian life as being primarily historical life, and Christian spirituality as rooted in faithful and honest attention to the immediacy of historical reality. However, for many people living in media-saturated, overdeveloped societies, any distinction between actual reality and a mediated pseudo-reality is blurred. Another facet of life in a media-saturated context is that of being regularly confronted with impressions of destitution, violence and ecological degradation, whilst at the same time being further distanced from the realities represented through communications media and their ,virtualizing' tendency. This rapid change in our relation to reality has, I suggest, profound theological and missiological consequences. The ways in which electronic media have modified life, including religious life, are complex and varied. Consumption of electronic media does not seem to have replaced religion as such but it has tended to shape religious life in its own image. With particular reference to Slavoj Zizek's reading of "the Real" after "9/11", I have attempted to sketch how some of these sweeping social and cultural changes may impact on the interpretation of Christian discipleship and mission. In the end, either the Christian life is vulnerable to potentially disruptive reality, or it is at risk of collapsing into a version of the pursuit of happiness mediated by and through late-capitalist culture. [source]

The Seventh Messenger and Australia 1904,1980: Benjamin Purnell and the House of David

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2005
GUY FEATHERSTONE
The Southcottian tradition of the Seven Angelic Messengers of Rev. 10:7 has a long association with millennial belief in Australia. Brought hither by Christian Israelite missionaries in the 1840s, the final three Messengers (Wroe, Jezreel, and Purnell) all journeyed to Australia to win converts. After describing the origins and beliefs of the sects established by these Messengers, this article outlines the impact of Benjamin Purnell's House of David on local Christian Israelites and others. His visit to Melbourne in December 1904 to "ingather" over seventy converts from the Fitzroy congregation is outlined; a comparison is made with J. A. Dowie's missionary tour of the same year. A description of the life the Australians led in Michigan and their attempts to leave the colony and expose Purnell's sexual misconduct are outlined. Despite unfavourable press reports, continuing missionary activity in Melbourne and then in Sydney resulted in further converts leaving for America, and the establishment of a branch community at North Ryde. A comparison of its ethos and that prevailing at Benton Harbor is included. Details of the eventual demise of the North Ryde community are followed by a brief analysis of its place in Australia's religious life. This essay is published to mark the centenary of the departure of the Christian Israelites in February 1905. [source]

An encounter between psychology and religion: Humanistic psychology and the Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2005
Robert Kugelmann
In the 1960s, humanistic psychology changed the relationship between psychology and religion by actively asserting the value of individual experience and self-expression. This was particularly evident in the encounter group movement. Beginning in 1967, Carl Rogers conducted a series of encounter groups, in order to promote "self-directed change in an educational system," for the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a religious order in California running an educational system. William Coulson, one of Rogers's associates in the project, later charged that the encounter groups undermined the religious order and played a major contributing part in the breakup of the order in 1970. The article examines these charges, situating the incident within the context of the changes occurring in religious life and in psychology in the 1960s. The article concludes that an already existing conflict the nuns had with the conservative Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles led to the departure of some 300 nuns from the order, who began the Immaculate Heart Community, an organization existing today. Nevertheless, encounter groups proved to be a psychological technology that helped to infuse a modern psychological,specifically, a humanistic psychological,perspective into contemporary religious life. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life: A Cross-Cultural, Quantitative Analysis

Sound and American Religions

RELIGION COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2009
Isaac A. Weiner
Americans of diverse religious backgrounds have striven to hear God's voice or to respond to the call of other suprahuman forces. Yet despite increased attention to visual and material culture, religious studies research mostly has been deaf to the sounds of American religious life and to the significance of hearing as a spiritual practice. This essay explores the theoretical and methodological roots of this disciplinary deafness and offers theoretical resources from fields such as social history, anthropology, acoustic sciences, and phenomenology. It reviews recurring themes in research on sound and American religions,especially related to the role of music in constructing identity and difference,and suggests directions for further research, including the need to attend to how sound mediates contact among diverse religious communities. This essay encourages scholars to become more attuned to the sonic world of American religious life. [source]

Catholic Schooling, Protestant Schooling, and Religious Commitment in Young Adulthood

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 2 2009
Jeremy E. Uecker
If and how Catholic and Protestant schools influence the religious lives of their students once they have graduated is unclear. Methodological limitations and inconsistencies in previous studies have resulted in confusing and often contradictory findings. Using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N,= 11,212), I compare the religious lives of young adults who attended Catholic, Protestant, and secular schools as adolescents. The results suggest that Protestant schoolers are far more religious as young adults than those who attended a secular school, a difference that is at least partially explained by the schools' religious environment. But young adults who attended Catholic schools report levels of religiosity that are similar to those educated in a secular school, and are actually lower for some outcomes. Studies of religious schoolers that ignore the religious tradition of the school overlook these differing effects and forfeit statistical explanatory power. [source]