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Religious Participation (religious + participation)
Selected AbstractsThe Influence of Religious Participation on the Adjustment of Female InmatesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2009Lacey Levitt MEd Incarcerated women at a state correctional facility (N = 213) participated in a study of the relationship between stress, adjustment, institutional misconduct, and degree of personal support derived from religious participation. A series of multivariate analyses of variance investigated differences on adjustment indicators between four groups of inmates who differed on their self-reported support from religious activities, while controlling for self-reported support for other institutional activities. Inmates who received high-level support from participation in religious activities reported significantly less depression, recounted perpetrating fewer aggressive acts, and committed fewer serious institutional infractions than those who did not attend religious activities as well as those who attended but reported receiving low-level support. In addition, inmates reporting a high level of support through their religious activities reported fewer instances of feeling angry, having arguments with inmates and correctional officers, physical fights, and injury than those who reported no participation in religious activities. Results indicate that inmates who perceive that they are receiving personal support from religious activities are better adjusted to the challenges of prison. [source] Distress, Dissociation, and Embodied Experience: Reconsidering the Pathways to Mediumship and Mental HealthETHOS, Issue 1 2005REBECCA SELIGMAN This article explores the biocultural bases of spirit possession mediumship in the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé. After a brief review of the literature, the article moves beyond the biomedical and social-structural explanations that have dominated the theoretical landscape, by attempting to construct an etiology of mediumship that is traced through the interface of individual characteristics with the cultural belief system that forms their context. Data were collected from a total of 71 individuals over the course of a year-long field study in Salvador, Brazil. Analyses of social ethnography, life history and semistructured interviews along with results from psychological inventories, suggest that altered states of consciousness should not be considered the central and defining element of mediumship. An alternative model is proposed, in which the combination of social conditions and somatic susceptibilities causes certain individuals to identify with the mediumship role, and predisposes them to dissociate. However in the context of Candomblé, dissociation is not a pathological experience, but rather a therapeutic mechanism, learned through religious participation, that benefits individuals with a strong tendency to somatize. [source] Market Share and Religious Competition: Do Small Market Share Congregations and Their Leaders Try Harder?JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2009Jonathan P. Hill A central claim of the religious economies model is that religious competition affects levels of religious participation and commitment primarily because religious competition pushes the suppliers of religion (religious leaders and organizations) to market their faith more vigorously and effectively. We examine whether U.S. congregations experiencing greater religious competition measured by their smaller religious market share do more to recruit new members, offer more services to current followers, and whether their clergy work longer hours. The efforts of congregations and clergy do vary substantially, but this variation is not related to their denomination's market share. The variations are also not due to religious pluralism, intradenominational competition, or evangelical market share. Members of small market share congregations are more committed, but this higher commitment does not appear to arise because religious suppliers are responding to religious competition. Several alternative explanations for the higher commitment levels of small market share groups are offered with a discussion of the implications for theories of religious competition. [source] Negative Life Events, Patterns of Positive and Negative Religious Coping, and Psychological FunctioningJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 2 2007JEFFREY P. BJORCK Religious coping may or may not be adaptive depending upon whether such coping is positive or negative. We investigated the potential moderating effects of positive and negative religious coping patterns on the relationship between negative life events and psychological functioning. Questionnaires included measures of negative life events, positive and negative religious coping, and psychological functioning, and were completed by 336 adult, Protestant church members. Even after controlling for religious participation, negative events were related to increased use of positive and negative religious coping and decreased psychological functioning. Moreover, negative events and positive religious coping produced an interaction effect on depression, such that the high use of positive religious coping buffered the deleterious effects of negative events. [source] Ten Dimensions of Health and Their Relationships with Overall Self-Reported Health and Survival in a Predominately Religiously Active Elderly Population: The Cache County Memory StudyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 2 2006Truls Østbye MD OBJECTIVES: To document the extent of healthy aging along 10 different dimensions in a population known for its longevity. DESIGN: A cohort study with baseline measures of overall self-reported health and health along 10 specific dimensions; analyses investigated the 10 dimensions as predictors of self-reported health and 10-year mortality. SETTING: Cache County, Utah, which is among the areas with the highest conditional life expectancy at age 65 in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Inhabitants of Cache County aged 65 and older (January 1, 1995). MEASUREMENTS: Self-reported overall health and 10 specific dimensions of healthy aging: independent living, vision, hearing, activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, absence of physical illness, cognition, healthy mood, social support and participation, and religious participation and spirituality. RESULTS: This elderly population was healthy overall. With few exceptions, 80% to 90% of persons aged 65 to 75 were healthy according to each measure used. Prevalence of excellent and good self-reported health decreased with age, to approximately 60% in those aged 85 and older. Even in the oldest old, the majority of respondents were independent in activities of daily living. Although vision, hearing, and mood were significant predictors of overall self-reported health in the final models, age, sex, and cognition were significant only in the final survival models. CONCLUSION: This population has a high prevalence of most factors representing healthy aging. The predictors of overall self-reported health are distinct from the predictors of survival in this age group and, being potentially modifiable, are amenable to clinical and public health efforts. [source] The Influence of Religious Participation on the Adjustment of Female InmatesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2009Lacey Levitt MEd Incarcerated women at a state correctional facility (N = 213) participated in a study of the relationship between stress, adjustment, institutional misconduct, and degree of personal support derived from religious participation. A series of multivariate analyses of variance investigated differences on adjustment indicators between four groups of inmates who differed on their self-reported support from religious activities, while controlling for self-reported support for other institutional activities. Inmates who received high-level support from participation in religious activities reported significantly less depression, recounted perpetrating fewer aggressive acts, and committed fewer serious institutional infractions than those who did not attend religious activities as well as those who attended but reported receiving low-level support. In addition, inmates reporting a high level of support through their religious activities reported fewer instances of feeling angry, having arguments with inmates and correctional officers, physical fights, and injury than those who reported no participation in religious activities. Results indicate that inmates who perceive that they are receiving personal support from religious activities are better adjusted to the challenges of prison. [source] The Flourishing of Religion in Post-Mao China and the Anthropological Category of ReligionTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2001Andrew B. Kipnis In his provocative critique of Geertz's 1966 definition of religion, Talal Asad (1993) suggests that the very project of defining the category of religion is rooted in the historical rise of Western secularism in societies formerly dominated by Christianity. In post-Mao China, there has been an explosion of activities that might be categorised as religious in the Geertzian sense, including church attendance, temple building, qi gong practice, pilgrimage, and geomancy. This paper examines two such activities, the participation of women in a Protestant church in rural Shandong and the recent protest by members of the Fa Lun Gong (Buddhist Law Qi Gong) society in Beijing, and asks what their emergence in a post-Maoist communist state tells us about the historical processes that frame the possibility of defining religion. Working with theories of religious participation from Geertz, Asad, Tambiah, and Feuchtwang, the paper develops a conception of ,symbolic participation' to illuminate the flourishing of religious practice in post-Mao China. [source] Analysing patterns of religious participation in post-communist Eastern Europe1THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2001Ariana Need ABSTRACT It is generally thought that processes of modernization generic to industrialized societies have resulted in a process of secularization with respect to conventional religious participation and observance in most Western countries. It is not at all clear, however, whether the post-communist societies of Eastern Europe have followed this pattern. In this we paper we examine whether levels of religiosity in ten post-communist societies , five generally Catholic in orientation and five Orthodox , are consistent with secularization theory, or whether instead they display, as some have suggested, the impact of seven decades of atheistic communism followed by a recent resurgence among the young. For this purpose we examine denominational membership and church attendance using descriptive and multivariate analysis of large-scale national sample surveys conducted in the mid-1990s. We find that age and educational differences in participation rates follow patterns expected on the basis of secularization theory with no evidence of resurgence among younger groups. Also, however, Catholic participation rates are significantly higher than Orthodox ones, indicating the importance of denomination in understanding patterns of religiosity in the post-communist context. [source] | |||||||||||||