Household & Family Religion in Persian-Period Judah: An Archaeological Approach. By José E. Balcells Gallarreta. Ancient Near East Monographs, vol. 18. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017. Pp. xiv + 192. $33.95.

Medhātithi reduces Manu’s descriptions of the householder as support and source of the āśramas to his performance of the five great sacrifices. Patrick Olivelle characterizes Medhātithi’s interpretation as “radical,” but a strong preliminary case might be made in its favor. Nonetheless, there are a number of reasons to resist Medhātithi’s interpretation. The more plausible interpretation of these passages is also the most straightforward. The householder is the support of the other three āśramas because he is economically productive. He is the (...) source of the āśramas because he has children. The householder is the best of the āśrama, in turn, because the broad benefits that he produces by these means, in particular, are so essentially important. Descriptions of the householder as source and support of the āśramas appear in a wide range of texts. In most of these contexts, they play a central role in justifying the status of the householder. At the same time, these claims often betray the same kind of ambiguity that Medhātithi notes. The fact that Manu counts these descriptions as distinct reasons for the householder’s superiority does not imply that other texts say the same thing. His precedent, however, is worth keeping in mind when interpreting parallel passages in other contexts. (shrink)

For scholars of ancient Indian religions, the wandering mendicants who left home and family for a celibate life and the search for liberation represent an enigma. The Vedic religion, centered on the married household, had no place for such a figure. Much has been written about the Indian ascetic but hardly any scholarly attention has been paid to the married householder with wife and children, generally referred to in Sanskrit as grhastha: "the stay-at-home." The institution of the householder (...) is viewed implicitly as posing little historical problems with regard to its origin or meaning. This volume problematizes the figure of the householder within ancient Indian culture and religion. It shows that the term grhastha is a neologism and is understandable only in its opposition to the ascetic who goes away from home (pravrajita). Through a thorough and comprehensive analysis of a wide range of inscriptions and texts, ranging from the Vedas, Dharmasastras, Epics, and belle lettres to Buddhist and Jain texts and texts on governance and erotics, this volume analyses the meanings, functions, and roles of the householder from the earliest times unti about the fifth century CE. The central finding of these studies is that the householder bearing the name grhastha is not simply a married man with a family but someone dedicated to the same or similar goals as an ascetic while remaining at home and performing the economic and ritual duties incumbent on him. The grhastha is thus not a generic householder, for whom there are many other Sanskrit terms, but a religiously charged concept that is intended as a full-fledged and even superior alternative to the concept of a religious renouncer. (shrink)

Though labor-force participation of women has considerably increased in industrialized societies and many households are now dual-earner, the gender imbalance in household division of labor persists. Moreover, the consensus amongst men and women is that such distributions are fair, resulting in normalization and further perpetuation of inequalities. We provide a multidisciplinary explanation, focusing on the economic, cultural and cognitive processes underlying the perpetuation of inequalities within households. The article begins with a broad, economic approach that details the role of (...) outside options and how they impact available decisions across different subsistence communities. We then discuss the role of cultural narratives and norms in shaping internalized structures of inequality. Finally, we unify these perspectives by focusing on the cognitive mechanisms that underpin self-perception and motivated assessments of fairness within households. We end with a brief discussion on the policy significance and avenues of future work. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the empowerment of families headed by solo moms in the United States and argues that the so-called “breakup of the family”—whether through divorce, chosen solo parenthood, or non-heterosexual families—is not the primary problem Christian ethicists should be concerned about. Instead, our attention should be directed towards a neoliberal political economic system that does not consider the rearing of children as a public responsibility and does not prioritize support to families of any type. This essay critiques the (...) traditional Christian framing of family and view of the “family crisis” by drawing on the work of Black queer scholars who offer a more inclusive and interdependent understanding of family that challenges the White heteronormative nuclear family ideal. It concludes with an argument for structural change that prioritizes the rearing of children as a public good and not simply the responsibility of individual households and offers support for the flourishing of all families with attention to particularities of race, class, and gender justice. (shrink)

This study aims to shed light on the relationship between individual and regional Christian religion and individual sustainable behaviors in an exploratory manner, with a special focus on sustainable consumption and investment decisions. To this end, we econometrically analyze online representative survey data that contains information on the self-reported importance of the consideration of ecological and social/ethical criteria in the context of a large variety of individual behaviors. The target group are financial decisions makers in German households, i.e., important (...) actors in the largest economy in Europe. Results of the econometric analysis suggest that Christian religion is positively related to a variety of ecological and social/ethical activities. Our findings empirically support explanations postulating a positive relationship between Christian religion and environmental behavior, such as the stewardship hypothesis, rather than opposite theories like White’s :1203–1207, 1967) dominion hypothesis. Particularly, we find that both individual and regional measures for Christian religion positively affect various behaviors emphasizing the importance of individual and contextual norms for individual behavior. Hence, we provide empirical evidence for the importance of Christian religion for another country than the USA, which is typically in the focus of similar studies. Our results can be used for targeted information campaigns by politicians to enhance sustainable behaviors or acceptance for related policy measures. (shrink)

The inaugural volume of Princeton Readings in Religions brings together the work of thirty scholars of the religions of India in a new anthology designed to reshape the ways in which the religious traditions of India are understood. The book contains translations of forty-five works, most of which have never before been available in a Western language. Many of these highlight types of discourse and voices that have not been sufficiently represented in previous anthologies and standard accounts of Indian religions.The (...) selections are drawn from ancient texts, medieval manuscripts, modern pamphlets, and contemporary fieldwork in rural and urban India. They represent every region in South Asia and include Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Muslim materials. Some are written texts reflecting elite concerns, while others are transcriptions of oral narratives told by nonliterate peasants. Some texts are addressed to a public and pan-Indian audience, others to a limited coterie of initiates in an esoteric sect, and still others are intended for a few women gathered in the courtyard for a household ceremony. The editor has reinforced this diversity by arranging the selections within several overarching themes and categories of discourse, and encourages us to make our own connections. (shrink)

UMI Number: 3319553 This study is a historical ethnography of religious diversity in post-revolutionary Nicaragua from the vantage point of Catholics who live in the city of Masaya located on the Pacific side of Nicaragua at the end of the twentieth century. My overarching research question is: How may ethnographically observed patterns in Catholic religious practices in contemporary Nicaragua be understood in historical context? Utilizing anthropological theory and method grounded in Weberian historical theory, I explore Catholic ritual as contested politico-religious (...) cultural terrain. The patron saint celebration of Masaya becomes a contested symbol in 1999 as those who carry Saint Jerome in street procession refuse to honor a sitting president, challenging his right to rule. The deep Marian devotion of the Nicaraguan people is reflected in the household and neighborhood celebrations of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, while nation-building elites have a long history of claiming the Virgin as patron saint of the nation. While these traditional Catholic saint celebrations figure in imagining a nation, three "new" Catholic movements also compete for attention, while the polity is increasingly exposed to Protestant and Pentecostal groups. When Anastasio Somoza Debayle was overthrown in 1979, ending the 40-year family dictatorship, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ruled for a decade with the attention of the world placed on its religion of revolution, the Christian base community and liberation theology. At the same time, however, two other movements began growing quietly. They, like liberation theology, draw their justification from the second Vatican Council. In Masaya, Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Neocatechumenal Way are "exemplary" prophetic movements gaining ground within the Catholic Church in competition with the "ethical" prophets of the Christian base community. Selectively adopting "protestant-like" forms of worship through these modern movements, the Nicaraguan Roman Catholic Church reacts to the challenge to its cultural hegemony coming from evangelical competitors. New history is continuously being made as people in this part of Nicaragua struggle over the direction of their country within a complex terrain of religious competition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:524 BOOK REVIEWS Word is to interpret us" (189). That two-way response to the Word of God neatly summarizes William Hill's witness to us as theologian as well: to he the mediator between classical and contemporary idiomata in such a way as to enrich the deliverances of both, reminiscent of Matthew's commendation of the " disciple in the kingdom of Heaven [being] like a householder who brings out from (...) his storeroom new things as well as old" (13 :52). The excitement of this project will not he lost on students of theology confronted with novel theories periodically renewed. What makes William Hill a theologians' theologian is not only his conceptual clarity, hut his capacity to move among us as a fellow inquirer. Bereft of any need to kill off contenders to make room for his innovations, we rather find him recalling on every page how much he has learned from others and wishes to pass on to us. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana DAVID B. BURRELL, c.s.c. The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective. By J. A. D1NoIA, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992. $29.95 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). For some time now the debate in the Christian theology of religions has centered around the question of ·the possibility of salvation for nonChristians. The answers to this question have often been placed in a threefold typology: exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism. Exclusivists generally maintain that salvation is conditional on an explicit confession of faith in Jesus Christ, hence non-Christians are lost. Pluralists, on the other hand, maintain that salvation can he found in different religions in various ways, and that Christianity is one among many paths to the divine reality. Inclusivists agree that non-Christians may he saved, and if they are it may he through rather than despite their religion. Inclusivists differ from pluralists in believing that Christ is the constitutive cause of all salvation, even therefore the salvation of a non-Christian. DiNoia's hook claims to do two very significant things. First, to go beyond the three approaches and suggest a fresh way of dealing with the question. Second, in doing so, to create a new agenda for the Christian theology of religions. My verdict: he partly fails and partly succeeds, and both his failings and success are deeply instructive and profoundly illuminating. DiNoia's argument is advanced carefully and lucidly and is acces- BOOK REVIEWS 525 sihle to non-specialists. The bibliographic essay/notes related to each chapter indicate thorough research (with one exception) and are a pleasure to read. DiNoia (a Thomist with Barthian leanings) closely follows George Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic model of religion, arguing that the specific way of life, determined by the actual doctrines held, uniquely shapes and moulds the religious practitioner. The goal and means of the religious way are intrinsically related and cannot he separated. He then persuasively argues that the difficulty with pluralists and inclusivists is that they impose a soteriocentricism upon other religions where there may he none! In contrast, DiNoia maintains one cannot say anything about the meaning of another religion apart from specific and proper attention to the ways in which its doctrines regulate its practice and stipulate the goal to he achieved by that way of life. In Christianity, eternal fellowship with the blessed Trinity can be said to he the goal (salvation) which is carefully orchestrated in minute detail through the liturgical life of the community. To claim that other religions attain the same salvific goal is therefore problematic. DiNoia's argument creates a space for other religions to really disclose what they are about in their doctrines and practice, without a priori categorization, and this is to he welcomed. Hence, the necessity of dialogue as the proper location for disclosure of the "other". Dialogue thereby becomes central to a theology of religions. Only in this process can we ask the question as to whether and how these ways of life relate to Christianity. DiNoia allows for the possibility that doctrinal truth and good actions can he found in other religions, without compromising the cen· trality of the incarnation as constitutive... (shrink)

The first two sections of this article describe central developments in the areas of religion and family in Germany. These developments are interpreted as expressions of more general processes of social differentiation and modernization in the third section. The fourth section investigates how many and which children come into contact with church and religion today. It turns out that only a minority of children is introduced to religion. Especially less well-to-do children have little contact to the church. (...) The fifth section deals with the question if different types ofhouseholds differ according to their affiliation to the church. It is shown that church membership, the attendance of services and membership in religious groups in West-Germany are related to the familial character of households. (shrink)

On the fringes of post-Reformation Europe, church and state authorities faced problems in enforcing church attendance. In the Swedish kingdom, religious uniformity was seen as vital for the success of the state after the Lutheran confession had been established, and absences from church were punishable by law. The seventeenth century saw significant tightening of legislation relating to church absences and other breaches of the Sabbath, and severe punishments were introduced. Despite considerable deterrents, it was sometimes difficult to control local inhabitants: (...) absence cases were regularly brought before the local courts in Eastern Finland, where authorities were hampered by a combination of geographical distance and a highly mobile population. In this article, popular church-going practices are studied with an approach inspired by historical anthropology. In popular practice church attendance was required only on the most important holy days of the year, whereas on Sundays and prayer days, work or leisure were considered socially acceptable pursuits. Explanations of nonattendance should not only make reference to trying conditions: in certain situations people would travel long distances to church, despite the obvious difficulties they faced. Popular religious traditions and old conceptions of sacred time also affected behaviour among peasants. The great holy days of the year formed a ritual cycle, the aim of which was the maintenance of good relations with the supernatural. For the success of oneself and one’s household, it was more important to follow the norms of popular culture than the orders of the authorities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guilt History:Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"Werner Hamacher (bio)Translated by Kirk Wetters (bio)History as Exchange EconomySince history cannot be conceived as a chain of events produced by mechanical causation, it must be thought of as a connection between occurrences that meets at least two conditions: first that it admit indeterminacy and thus freedom, and second that it nonetheless be demonstrable in determinate occurrences and in the distinct form of (...) their coherence. Relations can thus be called historical and can be recognized as historical only if they are determined by neither necessity nor chance, and if their causality is of a different order than the mechanical. The temporal structure of history can therefore be characterized on the one hand by the distinct connection of its elements—and on the other hand by the dissolution of all connections that do not assist these elements in achieving their independence.A temporal nexus that clearly does not satisfy these conflicting requirements has been characterized in one of the oldest texts of occidental philosophy as the time of guilt. According to the sentence of Anaximander (from about 500 BC), handed down by Simplicius in his commentary (530 AD) on Aristotle's Physics, the origin and end of all things is subordinated to the law of necessity (katà tó kreòn). "They must pay penance and be judged for their injustice, according to the order of time (katà tèn tou chrónou táxin)"—so the fragment reads in the translation offered by Nietzsche in his treatise "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks." According to Anaximander, the sequence of time orders the rise and fall of all things and orders them in accordance with the law of guilt and punishment so that becoming (génesis) is a guilt (adikía) that must be expiated in perishing. Time and more precisely its táxis, the positing of time, is thought in Anaximander's sentence as an order of guilt and retribution, debt and payback. It is a time of economy in the sense that it is the time of law—and precisely a law that is valid for all beings, a táxis, a decree, an ordinance and an ordering—in which the unavoidable incurring of guilt is atoned in an equivalent penance that is just as unavoidable. The strict coherence of guilt and penance is ascertained by the principle of their equivalence. Time is therefore conceived here as a double process of coming into being and perishing, [End Page 81] a process that occurs in such a way that the genesis is erased in its passing away—so that time is thus erased by time itself.In Anaximander's sentence, however, time is not only the double-process of coming into being and passing away, it is—as a táxis—the common and constantly enduring medium of the exchange of the contrary but equivalent motions of coming into being and perishing. It is the time of the quid pro quo of everything that is generated and passes away within time. Its measure is a justice that represents itself as a táxis and thereby as the positing and the law of all becoming and vanishing, the law of physis and its demise as an onto-economic law. This taxiological order of time places every realm of the natural and human world under a law of substitution without exception; this also allows ethical, juridical, and economic concepts to substitute for one another within this order. The ethical dimension of justice, thus circumscribed by the order of time, is reduced to the juridical dimension of the decree, and both now define themselves according to the calculus of "an exchange economy in an eternally unchanging household of nature."1 It can only, however, be a matter of an ethics of time to the extent that this ethics, already juridified and economized, is subordinated to the schema of exchange, trade, and the equivalence of guilt and retribution. The time of history, ethical time, is thus interpreted in Anaximander's sentence as a normative time of inculpation and expiation. Whatever enters this táxis of time is thereby already guilty and can... (shrink)

Recent research on the evolution of religion has focused on whether religion is an unselected by-product of evolutionary processes or if it is instead an adaptation by natural selection. Adaptive hypotheses for religion include direct fitness benefits from improved health and indirect fitness benefits mediated by costly signals and/or cultural group selection. Herein, I propose that religious denominations achieve indirect fitness gains for members through the use of ecologically arbitrary beliefs, rituals, and moral rules that function as (...) recognition markers of cultural inheritance analogous to kin and species recognition of genetic inheritance in biology. This recognition signal hypotheses could act in concert with either costly signaling or cultural group selection to produce evolutionarily altruistic behaviors within denominations. Using a cultural phylogenetic analysis, I show that a large set of religious behaviors among extant Christian denominations supports the prediction of the recognition signal hypothesis that characters change more frequently near historical schisms. By incorporating demographic data into the model, I show that more-distinctive denominations, as measured through dissimilar characteristics, appear to be protected from intrusion by nonmembers in mixed-denomination households, and that they may be experiencing greater biological growth of their populations even in the present day. (shrink)

SummaryUtah has the highest total fertility of any state in the United States and also the highest proportion of population affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Data were used from the 1996 Utah Health Status Survey to investigate how annual household income, education and affiliation with the LDS Church affect fertility for married women in Utah. Younger age and higher education were negatively correlated with fertility in the sample as a whole and among non-LDS respondents. (...) Income was negatively associated with fertility among non-LDS respondents. However, income was positively correlated with fertility among LDS respondents. This association persisted when instrumental variables were used to address the potential simultaneous equations bias arising from the potential endogeneity of income and fertility. The LDS religion's pronatalist stance probably encourages childbearing among those with higher income. (shrink)

This paper concerns a collection of rough-hewn flat stelae excavated from the precinct of Zeus Meilichios in Selinus, Sicily between 1915 and 1926, a majority with two heads or busts, one male and one female, carved at their tops. These crudely fashioned idols are unique in their iconography. They combine the flat inscribed Punic stela with the Greek figural tradition, with some indigenous features. Their meaning is totally obscure – especially since they lack any literary reference. No comparable monuments have (...) been found in ancient Mediterranean cult. The twin stelae were often set up above a collection of burnt rodent and bird bones, ashes, lamps, broken and burnt pottery and terracotta figurines, as a memorial of a sacrifice. The stelae were the objects of a gentilicial cult, similar to that posited for the inscribed “Meilichios stones” with which they shared the Field of Stelae of Zeus Meilichios. The theory advanced here interprets these diminutive stelae as the objects of domestic cult. It was customary in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean, from the Bronze Age down to the Roman period, to venerate household or family gods who protected the health and the wealth of the family. They were thought to embody the spirits of the ancestors and could at times be identified with the gods of the state religion. This divine couple whose effigies were dedicated in the Field of Stelae over a period of four centuries, into the third century, cannot be claimed as Greek or Punic deities. What these nameless protectors of the family were called we cannot say: Meilichios and Meilichia, Father and Mother, or Lord and Lady of the household? As the objects of such a personal domestic cult, their names might have differed with each family. (shrink)

In Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant outlines a system of church government that strikes many as an unworkable ideal. The “invisible church” is to be structured according to four basic principles that correspond directly to the categories from the first Critique. Whereas ordinary political systems must involvecoercion, a church is to be a free association of persons governed by non-coercive, internally legislated moral laws. Is this a realistic blueprint for church government? Kant’s metaphor of a “ (...) class='Hi'>household” as the best way to regard the relationship between the “People of God” provides a much-neglected key to understanding how Kant’s ideal can be implemented. A new and technically more accurate definition of “theocracy”, as a system not of humanly-headed religious despotism but of divinely protected autonomous friendship, clarifies how Kant’s plan is not only realistic but currently implemented in some religious communities today. (shrink)

Whether discussing sport, household gadgets, the countryside, surrealism, Charlie Chaplin or religion, Lefebvre concentrates on the minutiae of lived experience in work and leisure, daydreams and festivities. Today this text is recognized as a path-breaking, radical and hugely influential book.

Most of the religions of the world are based on some fundamental moral principles of good conduct/virtues and prohibits its followers to do anything which is not good for the welfare of the society as a whole. This fundamental moral principal of good conduct, in Buddhism, is known as Pancha Shila. Pancha Shila is the basic assumption of moral activities for both households as well as for renunciates. It forms the actual practice of morality. Each time the precepts are upheld, (...) the moral volitions are strengthened, until morality becomes a habitualtrait through the condition of repetition. For the smooth functioning of a society, every Buddhist has to follow the five moral precepts i.e. abstaining from killing, abstaining from stealing, abstaining from sexual misconduct, abstaining from falsehood, abstaining from taking intoxicants. Jainism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam too accept such ethical codes with little modification. These are called cardinal virtues. Jaina concept of Pancha Mahavrata is very close to Buddhist concept of Pancha Shila. In Jainism these are; Ahimsa, Satyam, Asteyam, Brahmacharyam, Aparigraha. Mahatma Gandhi too accepted these five cardinal virtues given by Jainism but he added two more in it which are; Fearlessness and Faith in God. The five precepts of Buddhism offers the moral conducts following which everyone can avoid evil deeds and can contribute in making this world a better world for present and future generations. The precept of abstaining from killing leads to the respect for other’s life. The precept of abstaining from stealing leads to the respect for other’s property. The precept of abstaining from sexual misconduct leads to the respect for one’s own dignity and dignity of other’s especially women. The precept of abstaining from falsehood leads to the respect for honesty. The precept of abstaining from taking alcohol leads to innumerable number of good qualities like respect for a clear mind, respect for modesty of other human beings, respect for money, respect for one’s own dignity, respect for other’s life and so on. The five precepts of Buddhism make a person disciplined, which is one of the most important ingredients for the development of overall personality of a person. A developing country cannot become a developed one unless its citizens are disciplined. If we analyze the five precepts given by Buddhism then, we find that the solution for most of world problems lies in it. If everyone follows five precepts then, I think this world will be transformed into a better place, a place where people have respects for other’s life and property, where everybody’s interest will be taken care of, where people will have an altruistic approach towards society. In short, this world can be transformed into a heaven. (shrink)

This volume makes available for the first time critical editions of John Locke's A Vindication and A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, in which Locke defends his interpretation of the New Testament and of the Christian Religion against charges of heterodoxy. These works contribute greatly to our understanding of Locke's Christian commitments, which it is now recognized played an important role in shaping his philosophical opinions; they also demonstrate his sophistication as a biblical scholar, and the breadth (...) of his theological learning. The texts are accompanied by a historical introduction explaining the origin of the works and setting them in context. In addition to a textual introduction and critical apparatus, editorial notes help to clarify the text. The volume also includes a French translation and abridgment by Pierre Coste, a Huguenot scholar, who was patronized by Locke and worked on his translations while residing in Locke's household. This definitive edition is an important contribution to an understanding of the development of modern enlightened Christian attitudes. (shrink)

Using data from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC), this Statistical Brief presents health insurance estimates for the Hispanic population by subgroups and U.S. citizenship status. An examination of these estimates reveals dramatic disparities in insurance coverage within the Hispanic population due to differences in eligibility for public programs and access to private coverage.

A treasury of teachings, stories, and sayings in the words of the Buddha himself--now part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. Here is the core of the Buddha's teaching in his own words, as it was memorized word-for-word by his disciples and written down two hundred years after his death. These selections from the Buddhist scriptures deal with the search for truth, the way of contemplation, life and death, living in community, and many other topics, serving as an excellent introduction (...) to the Buddha's teaching. Whether addressed to monks and nuns, householders, outcastes, or thieves, the Buddha's teachings are characterized by one main concern: conveying the reality of our bondage to suffering--and the supremely good news that liberation is possible. It is a concern as relevant for people today as it was for the people of north India more than 1,000 years ago. This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts.The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman.The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compactformat that is collectible, reader-friendly, andapplicable to everyday life. (shrink)

A fresh vision of the common good through pnumatological lenses Daniela C. Augustine, a brilliant emerging scholar, offers a theological ethic for the common good. Augustine develops a public theology from a theological vision of creation as the household of the Triune God, bearing the image of God in a mutual sharing of divine love and justice, and as a sacrament of the divine presence. The Spirit and the Common God expounds upon the application of this vision not only (...) within the life of the church but also to the realm of politics, economics, and care for creation. The church serves a priestly and prophetic function for society, indeed for all of creation. This renewed vision becomes the foundation for constructing a theological ethic of planetary flourishing in and through commitment to a sustainable communal praxis of a shared future with the other and the different. While emphatically theological in its approach, The Spirit and the Common Good engages readers with insights from political philosophy, sociology of religion, economics, and ecology, as well as forgiveness/reconciliation and peacebuilding studies. (shrink)

Background: The rapid spread of COVID-19 infection has led countries across the globe to take various measures to contain the outbreak, including the closure of Universities. Forcing University students to stay at home has created enormous stress and uncertainty in their daily life.Objective: This study aimed to assess the perceived stress and coping strategies among undergraduate health science students of Jimma University amid the COVID-19 outbreak.Materials and methods: An online cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 337 undergraduate health science students from (...) August to September 5, 2020. The perceived stress scale -10 and Brief-COPE scale were used to assess the level of stress and coping strategies, respectively. Statistical Package for Social Science Version 22 was employed for data analysis. Logistic regression was conducted to identify predictors of high perceived stress.Results: The overall mean [±standard deviation ] age of the participants was 22.88 years. The mean PSS score was 22.16, and high perceived stress was reported in 121 participants. The overall mean coping score was 72.34, and approach coping was the predominantly used strategy for coping with stress. Personal perception of being stressed by the daily number of COVID-19 cases/deaths in Ethiopia, rare online talk/chat with friends, presence of confusion due to the inconsistent strategies developed by the health/government authorities in view of the scientific recommendations, perception of self/family members being at risk of getting sick, decreased household income following the COVID-19 pandemic, practicing denial, self-blame, planning, and religion as means of coping with stress were associated with high perceived stress.Conclusion: Over one-third of the participants had a high level of perceived stress, and the majority of them were practicing effective means of coping with stress. The authors recommend that the hosting University in collaboration with the concerned bodies develop innovative strategies to improve the psychological well-being of the students. (shrink)

Considerable progress is being made in robotics, with robots being developed for many different areas of life: there are service robots, industrial robots, transport robots, medical robots, household robots, sex robots, exploration robots, military robots, and many more. As robot development advances, an intriguing question arises: should robots also encompass religious functions? Religious robots could be used in religious practices, education, discussions, and ceremonies within religious buildings. This article delves into two pivotal questions, combining perspectives from philosophy and religious (...) studies: can and should robots have religious functions? Section 2 initiates the discourse by introducing and discussing the relationship between robots and religion. The core of the article (developed in Sects. 3 and 4) scrutinizes the fundamental questions: can robots possess religious functions, and should they? After an exhaustive discussion of the arguments, benefits, and potential objections regarding religious robots, Sect. 5 addresses the lingering ethical challenges that demand attention. Section 6 presents a discussion of the findings, outlines the limitations of this study, and ultimately responds to the dual research question. Based on the study’s results, brief criteria for the development and deployment of religious robots are proposed, serving as guidelines for future research. Section 7 concludes by offering insights into the future development of religious robots and potential avenues for further research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 12.2 (2007) 125-127MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whither Environmental Philosophy?Dale JamiesonBy most reasonable standards, environmental philosophy has been an enormous success since its beginnings in the 1970s. Courses in the subject are now taught around the world, there are many opportunities for publishing, there are two dedicated graduate programs, and there are even some jobs in the field.Yet these marks of success mask some problems. Environmental (...) philosophy is fragmented along many dimensions and there are no widely shared standards of competence. The available jobs often go to surprising candidates whose skills and interests are extremely diverse. Too much publication appears in "specialist" journals, unnoticed by anyone but other contributors. Unconstructive debates, often reminiscent in tone, substance, and rancor of the old and new left, linger. In light of all this, I am no longer surprised when I meet people active in environmental studies and causes who claim to be environmental ethicists but who are almost entirely ignorant of the academic field that bears the name.It is well known that the environment suffers because it is not a well-bounded domain (like the economy, for example), but is rather multi-dimensional and implicated in almost every area of human choice and action. This problem is reproduced in environmental philosophy, [End Page 125] which impinges on many fields, disciplines, and areas of inquiry, but is still struggling to find its own boundaries and identity.One of the core challenges for environmental philosophy is to understand its audience and to whom it is responsible. Historically, the field grew out of the discipline of philosophy, but many who consider themselves environmental philosophers are hostile to the discipline as it is currently practiced. They don't read the journals, go to the conferences, or try very hard to integrate their concerns into the discipline as a whole. Another possible home for environmental philosophy is environmental studies which is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field. Trouble is, environmental studies has many of the same problems as environmental philosophy without even a home discipline to secede from or rebel against. It also carries the added burden of delivering a respectable major to large numbers of eager, but often intellectually impatient, undergraduates. Perhaps one day environmental philosophy will be absorbed into an expanded field of bioethics, which increasingly sees itself as concerned not only with medicine, but with health, a concept that many believe applies broadly across the biosphere.Some put their faith in "public philosophy" or the "policy turn." I can hardly object. When pluralism, pragmatism and inherent value were all the rage in environmental philosophy, I was writing about climate change, zoos, and preserving urban landmarks. Yet it must be acknowledged that with the exception of Peter Singer (whom many would not consider an environmental philosopher), those who have touched the public most deeply in recent years have largely been writing about traditional philosophical concerns rather than about applied, practical, or interdisciplinary problems. Some examples: Paul Boghossian's critique of relativism was favorably reviewed in much of the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal. Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the highly influential Council on Foreign Relations. Books on free will and the philosophy of religion are everywhere; Daniel Dennett has almost become a household name. Most strikingly of all is Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit, originally a critique of deconstruction delivered to a Yale seminar in the 1980s, which beginning in 2005 spent 26 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. It's enough to make you wonder what relevance is and whether it's really relevant.What is to be done? For fear of sounding like a third-rate marriage [End Page 126] counselor, the field needs communication and good will. These are the necessary building blocks for constructing a common sense of identity. The signs are encouraging but equivocal. The June conference in Colorado, now entering its fifth year, has been an important forum for communication, as has the International Society for Environmental Ethics meetings held in conjunction with the divisional meetings of... (shrink)

Ever since Max Weber started an argument about the role of Protestantism in jump-starting northern Europe's economic development, scholars have clashed over the influence of religion and culture on a society's economic prospects. Today, many wonder whether the "explosion" of Protestantism in Latin America will effect a similar wave of growth and democratization. In this book, Sherman compiles the results of her field study and national survey of 1000 rural Guatemalan households. She offers persuasive evidence that, in Guatemala and (...) throughout the region, religious world-views significantly influence economic life. Sherman explains how the change in attitude and behavior that accompanies conversion from animism to a Biblically orthodox world-view has improved the domestic welfare and economic status of many families. Further, she asserts that this new attitude, sympathetic to democratic-capitalism, has created a "moral cultural soil" in which freedom, personal empowerment, an enhanced status for women, and a desire to get ahead can be nurtured. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889, son of parents of Jewish extraction but not Jewish religion. Asked how his family came by the name ‘Wittgenstein’ Ludwig said they had been court Jews to the princely family and so had taken the name when Jews were required by law to have European-style names. The father, Karl, was a Protestant, the mother a Catholic. The Jewish blood was sufficient to bring the family later on into danger under Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. They (...) did not think of themselves as Jews or belong to the Jewish community in Vienna. The children were brought up sort-of Catholic though so far as I know only the eldest, Hermine, towards the end of her life, took this seriously and made a profession of faith before friends and household. At 9 years of age Ludwig and Paul, a year or two older than Ludwig, talked together and decided that their religion was all nonsense. Paul became a pianist of some fame, but soon after his debut in Vienna he became a wounded prisoner on the Russian front and his arm was lopped off by a surgeon who did not know he was a pianist. (shrink)

Discussions on women's work and its private and social value have begun with the history of mankind. But until the Industrial Revolution, great differences between men and women labour haven’t been emerged. After that revolution, as most of values, the worth of women's work has changed. After the Industrial Revolution, mass production and transnational wars have resulted rising both for supply and demand of female labour forces. Then female labour force has come into public area and women have got out (...) from their households for paying jobs. This trend has been similar in Turkey, too. However, discussions about the conditions of women participation in labour force have been continuing. Today, in Turkish society, some surveys show that it is widely accepted that women can work outside the home for paying jobs. The ratio of those saying “women can work outside of their home is acceptable and favourable” reached 85% of the population. But there are still some opposite views. Some opponents concern for traditional values, some others for religious understanding. The main issue is managing domestic responsibilities of women in the household and imagined rules of religion on working outside of the home. In this study, the questions about these issues asked for to the High Council of Religious Affairs in Turkey are embraced within the context of how issues are differentiated from male and female perspectives. (shrink)

Sharrad, Scott After the Census in 2011, the Australian Bureau of Statistics under took a major review of the questions it asks, how it asks them and how it presents them on Household Forms. Consequently, there was a large campaign around the question, 'What is the person's religion?' The push was on to either change the wording, split the question or to bring the 'no religion' option to the top of the list.

“Yoga, a general name for the systems of spiritual and physical culture practised from ancient times in India, has become a household word in the Western world. Its exponents combine religion, philosophy, psychology, and physical culture into one composite science and art. The word yoga has been applied not only to the central aim of attaining heightened consciousness, but also to the development of every human faculty – physical, emotional, and ethical – which may conduce to that end. (...) This volume, based largely upon the leading classical books on the subject, is supplemented in many cases by the author’s own experience with advanced exponents and practitioners of the art. It shows that the judicious introduction of selected yoga methods and practices can be of great benefit in the stormy and nerve-racking conditions of modern life in the West as well as in the East.”- Publisher. (shrink)

One of the areas of study of tafsīr is the stories in the Qur’ān. In the stories of the Qur’ān, generally creation, man, the nature of man and different societies that lived in history are mentioned. Although the main theme in the stories is belief and disbelief, social structures and cultural features are explicitly and indirectly mentioned as well. But the mufassirs approached the stories mainly from the point of view of belief and disbelief. They did not declare an opinion (...) on cultural studies. Positive science applies the culture, science and technology that humanity has, only to the will and labour of man. However, when we look at the sacred texts, humanity has not only realized its development in the field of culture, science and technology, but also evolved by the presence of divine grace as well as the mind. In this evolution, the prophets were given a special task. This study covers the prophets and some inventions and professions attributed to them. The examination of the influence of divine grace and the Prophet’s fatānah (outstanding reasoning power) in the development of culture, science and technology is among the importance of the study. Because when scientific determinations are examined, it is seen that the first cultural events and civil developments occurred in the geography of the Prophets. Again, it can be seen that the explanation of culture and cultural developments with a positivist perspective and an empirical paradigm has some shortcomings. For this reason, the article aims to explain how cultural developments are formed based on sacred information data. In the study, the qualitative method was selected and the document examination technique was applied. Along with cultural activities, the prophets and their works were discussed; classical and modern tafsīr sources, as well as historical books, akhīlik (a guild system) works and futuwwatnāmas (rules and regulations of the guild) were addressed. Man was created by Almighty Allah with different and superior equipment than other beings. He has been taught all names. Names mean having the ability to recognize-classify-name the creature, to reason, to transform the nature and to transfer the culture. The meaning of the verse “he taught him all the names” is to teach the Prophet Adam the knowledge of things and the general knowledge of civilized life. The general knowledge was developed by people and various and different objects were produced; science and technique were constantly developed. Especially the prophets made a great contribution to these scientific and technological developments. Thus, the prophets guided people in the spiritual sphere such as faith, worship and morality, as well as in the scientific and material sphere. Throughout the history, the prophets have shed light on scientific developments directly or indirectly, showing the limits of the level of science that humanity can reach through their miracles. According to Islāmic Sciences, the process of domesticating seeds and taming animals began during the reign of the Prophet Adam. He produced dresses for himself and his wife. As a prophet, a religion and belief system was formed during his time. Along with Prophet Idrīs, more beautiful dresses began to be knitted and sewn, writing with pencil. In the era of Prophet Noah, besides agriculture, art was also developed; sculptures and ships were made. During Prophet Hoad period, there was progress in agriculture as well as urbanization activities, and villages and towns began to form. During the reign of Ṣāleḥ, cities were founded in a serious sense. For this reason, in Prophet Ṣāleḥ’s stories, emphasis is placed on the words dār and diyār, which means house or houses, and in particular the word medīna (city) is used. The inscription, which began to be mentioned with Prophet Idris in Islāmic Sciences, also began to be used in the Qur’ān along with Prophet Abraham/Ibrāhīm, and during the reign of Prophet Moses/Mūsā, it was referred to as the book. During the reign of Prophet Joseph, money was invented and the clock and calendar were used. Again, Islāmic sources also contain the information that Prophet Joseph/Yūsuf invented paper for the first time. During the period of Prophet Shu‘ayb, the knowledge of account, measurement and weighing were developed, and they began to be used extensively in trade. During the reign of Prophet David/Dāwūd, iron was very widely used, and Prophet David, made household items out of iron, as well as war tools and equipment. Prophet Solomon/Sulaymān, on the other hand, expanded the processing of iron further, making it widely in all areas of life. During the reign of Prophet Jesus/ʿĪsā and Luqmān, medicine also made progress; Prophet Jesus developed and treated methods of treatment for crippled patients. Along with Islām, this information has been included and developed in the most detailed way in the Qur’ān, the personality of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the Hadīth. (shrink)

This study examines whether mortality of two adjacent siblings in families is age-specific and is modified by the MCH78, 198590 in the treatment (MCH–FP) and comparison areas. Logistic regression was used to estimate the net effects of survival status of elder siblings on mortality of younger siblings in the neonatal, postneonatal and toddler periods, controlling for birth order, previous birth interval, maternal age, education and religion, household possession of valuable items and sex of the child.

We analyze the section from Hesiod’s Works and Days (724–760) that equips the farmer with the expertise necessary to facilitate the household’s harmonious relationship with the gods. We propose that this section with its tabular ordinances represents the earliest collection of Greek religious norms, and we contextualize it both within the structure of the W&D and within the wider framework of Greek religion. The section is carefully developed and purposefully placed towards the end of the poem, with an (...) eye to symmetry and rhythm: Hesiod distributes divinely sanctioned social norms alongside religious norms in three distinct sections of the poem, providing ever more specific cautionary advice in the form of ordinances and injunctions. The passage 724–760 is also artfully structured and divided into ἀπό and ἐπί sections. By drawing attention to overlaps of the Hesiodic material and later inscriptional ritual norms, we demonstrate that they share common linguistic and thematic features. We also demonstrate that well-informed readers such as Plato, Plutarch, and Proclus repeatedly interpreted Hesiod’s norms in the light of their own religious experience. (shrink)

This study in Bangladesh found that inter-cluster variation in the use of modern reversible methods of contraception was significantly attributable to the educational levels of the female family planning workers working in the clusters. Women belonging to clusters served by educated workers had a higher probability of being contraceptive users than those whose workers had only completed primary education. At the household level, important determinants of use were socioeconomic status and religion. At the individual level, the woman being (...) the wife of the household head and having some education were positively related to her being a user. The model also found that inter-household variation was significantly greater than inter-cluster variation. Finally, the study concludes that after controlling for various covariates at all three levels, the clusters do not have significantly different levels of use of modern reversible methods of contraception. There are, however, some special areas where contraceptive use is dramatically low, and these contribute significantly to the observed inter-cluster variation. (shrink)

Originally published in 1985, this distinguished and constructive critique of modern culture introduced into our language a brand-new term, ‘PN’, standing for ‘psychic nutrition’, which at the time promised to become a household expression. Drawing on his first-hand knowledge of oriental civilizations; on discoveries of Jung, especially his concept of psychic energy; on the ideas of the cultural anthropologists; and not least on the New Science implicit in microphysics and microbiology, E.W.F. Tomlin, whose philosophical books have been translated into (...) several languages, shows how the human psyche requires its own kind of nourishment just as urgently as the body needs food. In the industrial societies of the West, this need has often been ignored. Reformers, in their earnest though sometimes inept endeavours to create a better world, have too often exposed us to the dangers of psychic starvation and the noxious effects of what may be called ‘neg-PN’. Here lie the roots of violence and the lack of direction so conspicuously afflicting modern man and woman. Examples of PN, positive and negative, are given, lending the book an immediacy and practical character often lacking in studies of this kind. In the new scientific approach here adopted, the divisions between matter and life, and life and mind, are discarded, and the old conflict between science and religion shown to belong to an out-of-date world view. The result is a radical reappraisal of the nature and function of religion and art, the two great psychic forces in history. Indeed, the present crisis is shown to originate in the psychic sphere rather than in the political and economic order. Deeply felt and elegantly written, yet not lacking in wit and humour, the book ends with some concrete ideas on how a more balanced culture may be achieved. (shrink)

Originally published in 1773 in two volumes, and now reissued here together in one, this work by the writer Hester Chapone, a renowned proponent of female education, contains advice delivered in the form of letters to her niece. The first volume deals primarily with matters of religion and morality, while the second volume addresses questions of behaviour and schooling. Unusually for self-improvement books of this era, Chapone recommends that a young woman should have a rigorous education in a wide (...) variety of subjects, including ancient history and geography, as well as instruction in ladylike deportment and mastery of household matters. She exhorts young ladies to avoid vanity and other vices through devoted study of scripture, and writes of the importance of choosing worthy and sensible friends who can be trusted to offer good advice. Chapone's posthumously published works, in two volumes, are also reissued in this series. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and vice, which suggests that they are not fully immune to introspective (...) awareness or “stealthy” in the sense that Cassam (2015) argues. This is an important methodological result and may pave the way for future research on intellectual virtue and vice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment by T. J. GorringeLibby GibsonThe Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment T. J. Gorringe New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 309 pp. $90.00Building on arguments set forth in A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, and Redemption (2002), theologian Timothy Gorringe begins The Common Good and the Global Emergency by (...) exploring whether an idea of the common good is relevant in a multicultural society and, if so, how an account of the common good can give rise to an alternative economic paradigm grounded in grace. While respect for cultural differences and the rise of individualism may argue against a robust understanding of the common good, Gorringe looks to the concept of oikonomia, or household management, to express the concept of managing “our affairs in such a way as to further what we perceive to be good ends” (35). Since our understanding of the economy shapes every aspect of the built environment, Gorringe traces local, regional, and national economies to what Wendell Berry calls “the great economy” or God’s creation, redemption, and sustenance of all things.Gorringe grounds his arguments about the common good in his Trinitarian theology of the built environment, expressed as God the Creator, God the Reconciler, and God the Redeemer. The triune perichoretic nature of God is inherently relational; therefore, as humans made in God’s image, we cannot ignore our interdependence. While God the Creator offers a sense of the common good springs from creation, God the Reconciler gives Gorringe traction to discuss the many barriers—race, gender, class, and space—that divide human beings and how our built environments structure these separations. God the Redeemer is concerned with empowering human beings to challenge all things that destroy life; thus Gorringe sees his project as contributing a theology of liberation committed to justice and fullness of life for all humans.Gorringe argues that our best chance to identify a common good rests on constructively addressing the common bad that he calls the global emergency. This emergency can be seen in the doubling of the world’s population in the past forty years, the problem of climate change, and global resource depletion. Seeing climate change and food, water, and energy issues as among the most pressing ethical issues of the coming decades, Gorringe challenges the reader to examine how our current common values have degraded the environment [End Page 202] and the lives of people worldwide. Since he specifically addresses the built environment, Gorringe’s purview is necessarily anthropocentric and justified by the doctrine of incarnation. Yet the Creator God expresses great wisdom in the laws of nature, and much could be learned from the “built” environments in the animal kingdom. While this line of thought would clearly depart from the rigorous academic method of Gorringe’s analysis, the book arose from a feeling that the Lord instructed him to continue working in this area, and attending to other nonrational sources of wisdom could greatly enhance our understanding of God’s grace in all the world.Gorringe acknowledges that the chapters do not unfold linearly, and that he seeks to point out points of confluence. The fluidity with which he addresses theological, political, economic, architectural, sociological, and ethical issues leads the reader to an overall picture of the common good and its powers to liberate us from injustice while an exact map of this process may be difficult to draw. Gorringe clearly and directly addresses both critics and supporters of his previous work on the built environment and solidifies his case for attending to the ways that our built environments could express a common good, grounded in grace, that allows for the fullness of life for all beings.Libby GibsonVirginia Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This essay explores social forces which contributed to regaining independence by the Polish people and sovereignty by the Polish state after 45 years of Soviet domination There were four major factors or forces of historical change: workers' resistance (big-industry working class); intellectual opposition (dissidents); grass-roots movement (families, households and their microeconmuc activity); and the Catholic Church (in the late phase of the Polish People's Republic). The preliminary thesis is that Poland succeeded in transcending communism and Soviet domination as quickly as (...) it did thanks to its civil society traditions. In particular, universities and their intellectual influence on the young generations of Poles helped nurture the political opposition Equally, the grass-roots movement of Polish family households undermined the unrealistic, strange system of national (planned) economy, which otherwise could have lasted much longer in Poland, as it did in all of Eastem Europe. The conclusion follows that the historically formed cultural capital of the Polish people was the decisive factor in the nation's liberation from totalitarian rule. (shrink)

The Market as God captures how our world has fallen in thrall to the business theology of supply and demand. According to its acolytes, the Market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It knows the value of everything, and determines the outcome of every transaction; it can raise nations and ruin households, and nothing escapes its reductionist commodification. The Market comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal to convert the world to its way of life. Cox brings that (...) theology out of the shadows, demonstrating that the way the world economy operates is neither natural nor inevitable but shaped by a global system of values and symbols that can be best understood as a religion. -/- Drawing on biblical sources, economists and financial experts, prehistoric religions, Greek mythology, historical patterns, and the work of natural and social scientists, Cox points to many parallels between the development of Christianity and the Market economy. At various times in history, both have garnered enormous wealth and displayed pompous behavior. Both have experienced the corruption of power. However, what the religious have learned over the millennia, sometimes at great cost, still eludes the Market faithful: humility. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Islam as a religion and culture on Turkish women’s health. The study included 138 household members residing in the territory of three primary health care centers in Turkey: Güzelbahçe, Fahrettin Altay and Esentepe. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire prepared by a multidisciplinary team that included specialists from the departments of public health, psychiatric nursing and sociology. We found that the women’s health behavior changed from (...) traditional to rational as education levels increased, and that religious and traditional attitudes and behaviors were predominant in the countryside, especially practices related to pregnancy, delivery, the postpartum period, induced abortion and family planning. One of the most important prerequisites for the improvement of women’s health is that nurses should know the religious practices and culture of the society for which they provide care, so that their efforts to protect and improve women’s health will be effective. (shrink)

Respiratory illness continues to be a leading cause of paediatric morbidity and mortality in Indonesia. The Indonesian government is moving towards a more managed care-based approach as it reforms its health care system following the 1997 financial crisis. In order to better design contractual relationships between the payor and different providers, there needs to be a better understanding of the patterns and predictors of health services utilization for respiratory illness. This study uses the Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey to study (...) the determinants of private, public and non-formal provider utilization for respiratory illness. Multinomial logistic regression models for predicting use were constructed using the Andersen Behavioural Model as the conceptual framework. The findings indicate that age, household size, maternal education, religion, the asset index, location and illness severity play a role in determining use of private, public or non-formal providers. The results indicate that from a policy perspective, the Indonesian government needs be inclusive rather than exclusive in the choice of providers that are contracted by the managed care plans, in order to safeguard the health of the under-five population. (shrink)

Josiah Royce’s philosophical interest in religion can be traced to his earliest days, when hymn singing and reading the Bible were constant practices in the fervently evangelical household of Josiah, Sr., and Sarah Royce in Grass Valley, California.1 Royce’s mother, Sarah, in particular, was a profound influence. She burned with the Holy Spirit, sparked by the fire-and-brimstone revivalism of the Second Great Awakening in New England, where she grew up. Educated at Phipps Union Female Seminary in Albion, New (...) York, Mrs. Royce treasured the scriptures, and was an elegant and thorough interpreter of them for Josiah and his three sisters.In spite of his delight in the reading and study of scripture at home, young.. (shrink)

The musha mukadzi (Shona) or umuzi ngumama (Ndebele) is an African gendered philosophy that means women make up the home. This philosophy has been researched in African traditional religions (ATRs) and is interrogated from interdisciplinary angles in academia. African feminist research has highlighted how this philosophy can be derogatory, stereotyped and oppressive to women if it is naïvely used in domestic contexts. As a result, contemporary African feminists and gender scholars attempt to expose both the liberative and oppressive nature of (...) this philosophy. This study seeks to interrogate how women from the grassroots understand this philosophy. It draws from in-depth interviews with women from Zimunya, Mutare, in Zimbabwe who describe this philosophy as a resource for sustainable livelihoods. Methods used to collect data involved in-depth interviews from a sample of 10 women whose ages ranged from 35 to 50 years. The findings highlight that for both single and married women in Zimunya, the musha mukadzi or umuzi ngumama philosophy has empowering traits that enhance women’s agency and sustainable livelihoods in the domestic household. They describe how this philosophy has empowered them to initiate income-generating projects that include rearing of poultry (road runners), membership to a sewing club, selling dried traditional foods and money savings ( mikando ). Contributions: This article explores an African gendered philosophy, musha mukadzi or umuzi ngumama [women make the home], and how this has been used as a resource by women in sustaining livelihoods. (shrink)

A vivid and accessible new translation of Cicero’s influential writings on the Stoic idea of the divine Most ancient Romans were deeply religious and their world was overflowing with gods—from Jupiter, Minerva, and Mars to countless local divinities, household gods, and ancestral spirits. One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think about (...) God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy. On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio are Cicero's best-known and most important writings on religion, and they have profoundly shaped Christian and non-Christian thought for more than two thousand years, influencing such luminaries as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Thomas Jefferson. These works reveal many of the religious aspects of Stoicism, including an understanding of the universe as a materialistic yet continuous and living whole in which both the gods and a supreme God are essential elements. Featuring an introduction, suggestions for further reading, and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Think about God is a compelling guide to the Stoic view of the divine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Institutional AuthorityA Christian PerspectiveTerrence MerriganIn a reflection that is intended to serve as a contribution to greater mutual understanding between religious traditions, it seems appropriate to begin by putting one’s best foot forward. When one receives a guest into one’s home, one usually makes an effort to do just that. One cleans and organizes one’s home, and even attempts to disguise, or at least to deflect attention away from, (...) the defects of one’s living space—the scratches on the furniture, for example, or the chair that has seen better days. If someday the guest becomes a friend, he or she will drop in unexpectedly and see how things look on a day-to-day basis. And when one feels completely at home with one’s friend, one will make no fuss at all when that friend comes by. Our friend, one assumes, will put the best possible face on the chaos they see. And we will trust them to be mild in their judgments on our household and our capacities as a homemaker.The following reflection on institutional authority within Christianity is structured in the light of the analogy of a friend’s visit to one’s home. Part 1 provides a description of the Christian “home,” that is to say, an outline of the most striking features of the Christian religion. This is, of course, inevitably, the view of a homeowner. Though the Christian home might not appeal to a non-Christian, it is important to know what it looks like. Part 2 aims to take the visitor into the heart of the Christian home. Of course, like every homeowner who welcomes a first-time visitor, the host will attempt to present their home at its best, that is to say, how the home looks when everything is in its place. Concretely, this means reflecting on how institutional authority is intended to function within the Christian community, how it—ideally—serves the goal of the Christian religion. Part 3 will deal with the impressions that a visitor might have of the Christian home if he or she were to drop by on a very busy weekday, when there are still a lot of chores to be done and there has been no time for housecleaning. In other words, this section will examine the way in which institutional authority works in practice and how this might appear to those members of the community who suffer under its exercise, as well as to those who are not part of the community to begin with. Finally, part 4 provides an analysis of how a member of the family or the community of the church might go about coping with the exercise of institutional authority. In other words, this section will reflect on what it is like to [End Page 133] live in a home where chaos seems to be order of the day and where the hope of ever having everything in its place is at best a very distant one. The goal here is to seek to make clear to the non-Christian visitor why, despite the chaos, a Christian can still feel at home in, and even cherish, the Christian family that is the church. But let us begin with the description of the Christian home.The Nature of the Christian ReligionOrthodox Christianity is perhaps best summarized in the proposition that God engages in a personal relationship with human beings in and through the processes of human history. Let us look more closely at the central notions that make up this proposition.The first notion that merits consideration is the description of God as “personal.” What Christianity claims (and this is the fruit of its roots in Judaism) is that the origin and goal of all that is, has disclosed itself to human persons as a Being possessed of “person-like characteristics,” such as “individuality, intelligence, and love.” 1The second notion that needs to be considered is that of “relationship.” The possibility of some sort of relationship between human beings and God is predicated on the first notion, namely, that God is in some sense “personal.” According to the Judeo-Christian... (shrink)

Dominant Northern development expertise acknowledges religion mostly as impeding development processes and aim to secularize and ‘modernize’ the South. This paper seeks to map out the various intersections of church and actors’ livelihoods, and explain those nodal points through villagers’ eyes. The study employed ethnographic interviewing to weave life-histories of households, and analyzed data to locate patterns and concepts at intersections of church and livelihood. The paper reports that actors employed church as arena to construct, extend and defend livelihoods; (...) and re-engineering a resource-system church is promising. Thus church interlocks with livelihood construction processes, presenting opportunities for synergy in mission. (shrink)

Jörg Baur compares the the entries ‘orthodoxe’, ‘orthodoxie’, ‘l’hérésie’ and ‘l’hérétique’ of the classic ‘Encyclopédie’ with the corresponding articles in the less well-known ‘Encyclopédie Méthodique’ of Abbé Bergier, who was confessor to members of the Royal Household in Paris. With France as the model, the analysis of these short texts serves to cast some light on the complex process which led to the dissolution of the ‘Constantinian’ alliance between the ruling political forces on the one hand and the church (...) and the faith it propagated on the other. The aim of the articles published in 1765 is obvious: No single religious conviction, nor any ecclesiastical institution representing it, should have the support of the ‘King’ in making presumptuous claims of exclusive and universal prevalence. Consequently, any social discrimination or psychological defamation of ‘heretics’ is denounced. Interestingly, this critical approach does not result in a fundamental rejection of Christianity itself. Rather, on the eve of the Revolution, the ecclesiastical texts see traditional religion endangered by the ‘forceful minds’ and their potentially violent, destructive determination. They foresee antireligious pressure, but have nothing to set against it except helpless protestations of the innocence of the true believers. This ecclesiastical impotence compels us today to analyse with an open mind the distortions of the Christian project of ‘orthodoxy’, a project which was originally intended to combine the collective validity of universal truth with the liberating influence of individual insight. (shrink)