Mark Chaves: American Religion: Contemporary Trends

Review of Religious Research -     

巴哈伊教:作为当代宗教的独特教义

本文分九部分介绍了巴哈伊教的教义。第一部分是该教的上帝独一论。第二部分是先知连续显现论。第三部分是人类一体论。第四部分是宗教同源论。第五部分是天堂地狱论。第六部分是宗教与科学论。第七是社会财富论。第八是对宗教仪式的态度。本文认为,巴哈伊独特的宗教观说明,只有消除宗教偏见,坚持团结统一,完成宗教的现代转换,才能使宗教保持活力,并有益于全球社会的的发展。巴哈伊的历史可以作为一借鉴,这是我们在研究中应特别注意到的地方。     

Global Hindu Communities: Constructing a World Religion in the South Asian Diaspora

International Journal of Hindu Studies -     

Teaching Religion in Its Contemporary Contexts: A Case Study

Abstract. After the disheartening results of an informal investigation of content knowledge and reading comprehension among her students, the author ponders the implications for her teaching objectives. What are we, as educators in religious studies, really teaching and how are we doing it? How are we accommodating students with less traditionally honed academic skills without diminishing content? She describes her experiments with several new teaching strategies for enhancing student learning by helping them improve basic skills, develop cultural literacy, and relate course content to their personal experience.     

Implicit Religion: A Contemporary Theory for the Relationships between Religion,State, and Society

This article demonstrates that the term ‘implicit religion’ provides an effective way to explore some of the philosophies and ideologies common to church, state, and society and to explain the mutual influence of traditional religion, civil religion, and folk religion in the creation of a national identity. Examples of church–state interactions from three continents are provided and variations in the definition of a national church are discussed. The effect of these variations on cross-cultural studies in religion, state, and society are assessed. The article concludes by examining the potential of the construct of implicit religion for bridging the different historical and cultural understandings of religion.     

Religion and Educational Ideals in Contemporary Taiwan

The relationship between religion and educational ideals in Taiwan is explored using the Taiwan Social Change Survey (1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005). Religion seems to influence the overall level of educational ideals. Both before and after controls, Taiwanese Protestants have the highest educational ideals for both boys and girls; the nonreligious have the second highest ideals. Members of the new religious movement Yi‐Guan‐Dao and Catholics have the lowest ideals, while folk religionists/Taoists and Buddhists are in the middle and not significantly different from each other. We discuss possible mechanisms of influence and how our findings speak to the available literature on religion and education in the United States and elsewhere.     

Function(s) of Religion in the Contemporary World: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

With respect to our psychoanalytic frame of reference allowing us to study the extent of the hypotheses concerning the religious phenomenon as formulated by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, in the context of a cross approach between the accuracy of the concept of conversion and of psychic mechanisms or phenomena at stake within conversions, and based on the testimonials of subjects acknowledging themselves in the experiment of conversion, we try to understand if and how religion is anchored in our cultural era through subversive effects it may have on the subject.     

Spirituality,Culture and Mental Health: Prospects and Risks for Contemporary Psychology of Religion

This paper asks whether: (1) psychology of religion is doing what it is supposed to do, (2) the contemporary psychological attention to religion and spirituality is perhaps of a transgressive nature, and (3) conceptualizations of spirituality in psychological publications are biased. It makes a plea for phenomenologically well-informed research on real forms of religion and spirituality, from a perspective that is as broad as psychology at present has become, with due regard for both the cultural make-up of the phenomena and the unavoidable limits of psychologists' professional competence.     

Liminal Subjectivities and Religious Change: Circumscribing Giddens for the Study of Contemporary American Religion

Observers of American religion have noted significant changes in the last 50 years. Many of the current theories interpreting these changes cite the writings of the British social theorist Anthony Giddens. Such works suggest that we are living in a post-traditional, ‘late modern’ society in which self-identity, community, and the codes we live by are no longer ascribed, but reflexively made and re-made in continuous ‘projects of the self’. This article seeks to circumscribe late modernity theory for the study of contemporary religion, examining its usefulness and limitations. I argue that the disembedding structures of late modernity—while uneven in their effects on individuals from different social locations—create ‘liminal subjectivities’ among certain classes and groups. This state of being ‘betwixt and between’ social locations places individuals into new and sometimes ephemeral social networks, which in turn may result in them seeking out and experimenting with new religious groups, beliefs, and practices.     

中国古代和谐思想的现代诠释

中国古代思想家关于“天人合一”、“以和为贵”、“和而不同”、“欲而不贪”、“协和万邦”等和谐思想,在构建社会主义和谐社会的今天又彰显出其璀璨的现代价值,它为我们揭示了一幅现代和谐社会的画面：人与自然和谐共生,人与人和衷共济,人与社会多样统一,身与心平和恬淡,国与国和平共处。