The economics of new religious life

James T. Richardson (ed.), Money and power in new religions. Lewiston, New York, and Lampeter, Wales, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988, Volume 22 of studies in religion and society, pp. 435. $39.95     

The 2007 Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education: a new direction for statutory religious education in England and Wales

The aim of this article is to introduce and summarise the main feature of the new Birmingham City Council Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (2007 Birmingham City Council (BCC). 2007. Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education, Birmingham: City Council.  [Google Scholar]), consider the relevance of its commitments and conclusions to ongoing debates within British religious education, and, finally, offer some kind of provisional assessment of its strengths and worth. By way of introduction, attention is given both to the mounting controversy that currently attends British religious education, which has given rise to conflicting opinions and estimates of its achievements and value, and to the historical role and legal status of agreed syllabuses within English and Welsh education.     

Making a religious diagnosis: The use of religious assessment in pastoral care and counseling

This essay discusses the importance of assessing the religious condition of persons in pastoral care and counseling. Undertaking such assessments via the use of explicit theological terms assures a unique role for pastoral counselors in the helping process and provides a model that avoids overdependence on psychology or psychiatry. Utilizing a method proposed by Paul Pruyser, the development of a psychometrically sound interview and inventory is described. These measures, based on eight dimensions of the Christian tradition, have been found to relate positively to mental health and personality strength. The importance of using such assessments of functional theology in helping persons grow in spiritual living and effective functioning is described.Paper delivered at the 4th International Congress on Pastoral Care and Counseling, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, August 3–10, 1991.     

The X-claim argument against religious belief offers nothing new

Stephen Law has recently offered an argument against the rationality of certain religious beliefs that he calls the X-claim argument against religious beliefs (Law in Relig Stud, 2017,  https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034412526000330). The argument purports to show that it is irrational to believe in the existence of extraordinary beings associated with religions. However, the X-claim argument is beset by certain ambiguities that, once resolved, leave the argument undifferentiated from two other common objections to the rationality of religious belief: the objection from religious diversity and the objection from unreliable sources. And though the latter pose serious obstacles to the rationality of religious belief, the X-claim argument adds no further difficulty.     

Self-concept: Psychosis and attraction of new religious movements

Self-concept is both a social product and a social force, and can be defined as the sum total of an individual's thoughts and beliefs regarding themselves, as well as perceptions by others. Such a view is essential for the well being of individuals and allows a person to function well within parameters of the society. When this self-concept starts to change then the individual looks for other pointers to gain a degree of self control back. Such an approach can explain some of the reasons why some individuals with mental illness turn towards new religious movements that may well be extreme. With data from two studies showing that patients with first onset psychosis are likely to change their religion, it is proposed that clinicians and researchers alike be aware of some of these factors.     

The eleventh commandment fellowship: A new religious movement confronts the ecological crisis

Edward Tiryakian, Thomas Robbins and Phillip Hammond, among others, have highlighted the role of new religious movements (NRMs) as reflectors of larger social trends and innovators of broad cultural change. This paper presents a case study of the Eleventh Commandment Fellowship, a subgroup of the Holy Order of MANS (an American NRM founded in 1968) that attempted to uncover and articulate an ethic of ecology from within the Judeo‐Christian tradition during the late 1970s and 1980s. I contend that these efforts both reflected the broader movement within North American Christian denominations to engage seriously the ecological crisis, and offered innovative theoretical and practical solutions to this crisis. The fellowship is also shown to have been instrumental in the formation of an international coalition of both religious and secular environmental groups.     

宗教社会学研究的新视角:宗教组织研究

随着社会转型的深入,宗教在此过程中宗教性、社会性的表现形式已成为当前宗教社会学研究的重要论题之一.不论是从社会现实情况要求,还是从完善现有研究路径来看,对于推进我国宗教社会学的发展来说,宗教组织研究不失为一个较好的视角切入点;此外,我们还可借助"通过组织来研究宗教,通过宗教研究社会,通过社会来研究宗教"的分析思路来整合宗教组织研究中的不同思路.     

The impact of a religious opera on a secular audience: the existential and religious importance of art

Abstract

Although there is a voluminous literature on the use of traditional healers by ethnic minorities, their use by psychiatric patients has been little studied. This study looks at the use of traditional healers by Asian psychiatric patients. Five of the sample of 14 patients had consulted a traditional healer at some time during their psychiatric illness. Three case histories are presented.     

The sacred second: religious moments in a Colombo marketplace

How does the marketplace of a busy city shape the religious practices of its shopkeepers? Combining historical and ethnographic research, this article examines the cosmopolitan past and present of Colombo’s Pettah neighbourhood. Its role as an Indian Ocean port resulted in a continual influx of new religious players, leaving its present pluralistic pantheon, from which shopkeepers (many of whom have made their own transoceanic journeys to work in other port cities like Dubai) can choose the saint or god best suited for their needs. Meanwhile, the pace of the marketplace has structured religious time accordingly; sacred moments are improvised sporadically among the bustle of the business day. Religious ritual is now part of the general pattern of marketplace routine, along with a number of other habits for passing time – unscheduled but expected activity, both personally meaningful and socially symbolic. In turn, religious performance can enhance market performance, instrumentalised in spur-of-the-moment sales techniques, lines between sacred and profane continually blurred.     

Intermodal matching of vision and audition in infancy: A proposal for a new taxonomy

The aim of this review paper is first to devise a common framework for the various procedures used in experimental investigations of intermodal auditory – visual matching by human infants, and second to propose a new taxonomy of intermodal tasks in order to gain a better understanding of the perceptual-cognitive processing underlying these tasks and their relationships to other cognitive achievements such as the development of language. Based on an examination of the tasks used in the developmental literature, we suggest analysing them in terms of (a) their mode of presentation (simultaneous or sequential) for accessing the information in the two modalities (auditory and visual) and (b) the type of relation (amodal or arbitrary) between these two stimulus sources. A review of the literature in the light of this classification shows that most experimental studies employ parallel intermodal presentation (PIP) using both amodal and arbitrary relations between stimuli. Very few investigations have used sequential intermodal presentation (SIP) with amodal relations, and none have used SIP procedures with arbitrary relations. It is claimed here that this last approach might be the most appropriate one for furthering our understanding of (a) the categorical and semantic processing involved in intermodal matching and (b) how the developing infant learns to process words.     

Psychological consequences of involvement in a new religious movement or cult

It has frequently been suggested that the psychological consequences of involvement in new religious movements or cults can be profound for those who come into contact with them. To explore this further a study was carried out to investigate the relationship between personality, group membership of The Family (a new religious movement or cult) and mental health. Sixty six subjects (22 males, 44 females) in three different groups took part in this study. Group 1: Ex-members who felt negative about their involvement with The Family. Group 2: Present day members of The Family. Group 3: Ex-members who felt positive about their involvement with The Family. They completed two personality inventories (The Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire combined with the psychoticism scale of the Short Form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Beck Sociotrophy-Autonomy Scale). The results from this study were consistent with previous research indicating that experiences within the group increase social dependency and decrease autonomy for those who leave, whilst increasing the need for autonomous or individualistic achievement and lessening social conformity for present day members. This study suggests that some of the psychological difficulties which people have reported experiencing on leaving these groups are likely to be alleviated, to a degree, by time and from contact with a support group.     

Contemporary New Age transformation in Taiwan: A sociological study of a new religious movement

This article explores commentary in UK newspapers which, while sympathetic to the notion of Turkish EU membership, still deploys a discourse that remains exclusionary where assumptions of Turkey's intrinsic cultural and civilisational ‘Europeanness’ are concerned. Turkish membership is advocated as a sort of strategic supplement to a historical ontology of ‘Europe’ proceeding from a grand narrative of Latin Christendom – Reformation – Enlightenment – Modernity (adorned with the selective appropriation of Classical antiquity), superimposed upon a wider historico-cultural and religious milieu. Membership is supported on the basis that Turkey is an exceptional case, considered on the instrumental grounds of guaranteeing Turkish secular democracy within the context of EU institutions while presenting an ‘example’ to the wider Islamic ‘world’. Support for membership does not proceed from assumptions that Turkey may possess an existing, intrinsic, historically locatable European ‘right’, implied by the extension of the EU into Ottoman successor states in south-eastern Europe as well as Cyprus. The potential for the deployment of this latter discourse to support Turkish membership from an assumed a priori cultural and historical European belonging is explored.     

The strings on David’s Harp: religious ritual as a container for spirituality

ABSTRACT

Religion and spirituality have often been defined over against each other. The spontaneous, emotional and experiential nature of the spirit has been seen as preferential to the structured, fixed, and predictable nature of religious ritual. Religion education for children has moved away from the performance of ritual behaviour toward creating an environment to nurture the innate spiritual nature of children. This paper questions whether the pendulum has swung too far, neglecting rituals that have sustained religious and communal life for generations, and considers ways of reimagining traditional ritual as a way to encounter the spirit and build community.