Issues in the Sociology and Psychology of Religious Conversion

Pastoral Psychology - Religious conversion is the process by which a person commits to the beliefs of a new religious tradition and shifts away from their previously held religious beliefs (Stark...     

宗教问题与社会变迁的双重探索——宗教社会学在当代中国的发展轨迹

从1980年代以来,中国宗教社会学的研究就已经从欧美宗教社会学的译介开始了。30年以来,中国宗教社会学的研究,无论是对欧美经典的翻译,还是对中国本土宗教的社会学研究,都已经形成了一道可观的学术风景线,成为当代中国宗教学领域中一个重要的构成。本文对30年宗教社会学在中国的引进和发展,有一大致的综述,希望能够从中总结出中国宗教学、宗教社会学研究的某些发展规律。     

Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses

Book Information Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses. By Laurence BonJour. Rowman and Littlefield. Lanham MD. 2002. Pp. viii + 289. Hardback, US$75. Paperback, US$23.95.     

Religious Conversion and Personality Change

The question of whether religious conversion causes changes in someone's personality is examined in light of two bodies of literature—the research on personality change and the research on conversion. When the theory and research on personality change is applied to the question of whether conversion causes such change, the answer depends on what level of personality is of concern. Research on the relation between religious conversion and a variety of behavioral, attitudinal, emotional, and lifestyle variables is consistent with this conclusion. Although conversion seems to have minimal effect on elemental functions such as the Big Five traits or temperaments, it can result in profound, life transforming changes in mid-level functions such as goals, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, and in the more self-defining personality functions such as identity and life meaning. This seems to be so whether the process of conversion is sudden or gradual, active or passive, and to a traditional Western or Eastern religion or to a new religious movement. However, most of the research is retrospective and cross-sectional, and no systematic program of research has ever been sustained. Suggestions for the form of future research are made, and a model for integrating the many factors that must be taken into account and for guiding future research is sketched.     

开端:关于人道主义与异化的讨论

当代中国人学研究是在争鸣中曲折发展的。文化大革命结束后 ,讳言“人”的现象迅速改观 ,“人”在马克思主义哲学中的地位问题重新提到了广大理论工作者的面前。 2 0世纪 80年代初发生的那场争论 ,主要是围绕马克思主义人的学说展开的。争论从什么是马克思主义的出发点引起 ,进而引发出人道主义与社会主义异化问题等 ,为推动当代中国马克思主义人学科学的建立和发展奠定了理论基础。解放后 ,中国哲学界对于马克思主义人学研究曾作了艰苦的探索 ,涌现出一些成果。但是 ,由于左倾错误强调马克思主义阶级斗争一面 ,因而人的研究受到严重的影响 …     

宗教伦理学与当代社会--兼答万俊人教授《普世伦理如何可能》

这是一篇回应性的文章。作者在简要介绍了文章的由来以后,首先借用万俊人教授《现代西方伦理学史》一书中的材料阐述了西方宗教伦理思潮与西方社会的关系;然后指出在中国学界展开宗教伦理学研究的必要性,并论述了作者对建构中国宗教伦理学的一些想法;在文章的最后一部分,作者对万俊人教授《普世伦理如何可能》中的三个问题作出了回应：第一,关于“强伦理模式”;第二,有关世界宗教信仰现状的问题;第三,关于普世伦理以什么为基础的问题。     

Religious Conversion in 40 Countries

Using data from the International Social Survey Program and the World Values Survey about current and former religious adherence, we calculate country-level religious-conversion rates for 40 countries. Drawing upon a theoretical model based on rational individual choice, we posit that the frequency of religious conversion depends on the cost of switching and the cost of having the "wrong" religion. Findings accord with several hypotheses: religious-conversion rates are positively related to religious pluralism, gauged by adherence shares; negatively related to government restrictions on religious conversion; positively related to levels of education; and negatively related to a history of Communism. Conversion rates are not related to per capita GDP, the presence of state religion, and the extent of religiosity. Effects from the types of religious adherence are minor, except for the negative effect of Muslim adherence .     

Understanding Religious Conversion (Book)

This study investigated diverse measures of religiosity (i.e., religious orientation, coping, and problem solving) and healthy dependency as correlates and predictors of spiritual well-being. Results from an undergraduate sample (84 women and 52 men) indicated a pattern of inverse associations between religiosity and unhealthy dependency. Moreover, both religiosity (positive and negative coping for men, extrinsic motivation and a less self-directed problem-solving style for women)and healthy dependency(for women)predicted spiritual well-being. These findings provide preliminary support for the study of spiritual well-being as an outcome and for the inclusion of both religious and personality variables as predictors. Implications for future research are presented.     

Religious Conversion in a Psychotic Individual

The authors describe the case of a man who appeared to have psychotic symptoms, including self-injurious behavior, but who understood his own experience as a religious conversion. The symptoms, clinical course, and treatment response are described with reference to the works of Kurt Schneider and William James. Empirical studies of the attitudes of psychiatrists, psychiatric patients, and clergypersons about the relationship between religious belief and psychiatric illness are described, and various theoretical models used to understand this relationship are articulated.     

Religious Orthodoxy and the Complexity of Thought about Religious and Nonreligious Issues

Two studies examined the relationship between religious orthodoxy and the complexity of thinking about religious and nonreligious issues. In both studies, participants who were high or low in religious orthodoxy wrote a paragraph outlining their thoughts about a religious issue (life after death in Study 1; existence of God in Study 2) and/or a nonreligious issue (capital punishment in Study 1; free trade between Canada and the U.S. in Study 2). The results of both studies indicated that participants who were high in religious orthodoxy were less complex in their thinking about religious issues than those low in religious orthodoxy, but did not differ in the complexity of their thinking about nonreligious issues. These results do not support the notion that orthodoxly religious individuals are dispositionally inclined to think in simpler or more rigid ways overall, but they do suggest a tendency to think less complexly about religious issues.     

Contemporary philosophy of religion: Issues and approaches

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Being-There-With-and-For: Contemporary Psychoanalysis Characterizes Notions of Being Religious

Diverse religious communities and traditions share certain common notions among the ways of life they seek to cultivate, notions that contemporary psychoanalysis can illumine. This essay offers three contributions: (a) substantive—characterizing features of a way: being-there-with-and-for; (b) methodological—outlining genres of relating psychology and religion; (c) philosophical—discussing relations between epistemology and ontology (that is, between maps and territory).

Intergenerational Religious Mobility in Contemporary China

This study illustrates intergenerational religious mobility with the case of Chinese society. Using the quasi‐symmetric log‐linear model to separate structure mobility from exchange mobility, we examine the variation in religious identities between the reform era generation and their parents. Structure mobility results suggest that the encompassing social reform over the past decades in China has encouraged the structural growth of Islam and Christianity across generations, but traditional Chinese religions bear remarkable intergenerational disadvantages. Moreover, religious nones are growing across generations, at least relative to traditional Chinese religions. Exchange mobility findings indicate that individuals whose parents follow traditional Chinese religions are very likely to “convert” to Christianity. However, children of religious nones do not necessarily remain irreligious, possibly undermining the structural advantages of religious nones in the future. Finally, a comparison between cohort and period effects drives us to conclude that the major social force underpinning the revival of Chinese religion in the reform era is generational replacement instead of an increasingly religious transition of “old” generations.