Psychological types of male and female Bible College students in England

A sample of 278 male and 213 female Bible College students in England completed Form G (Anglicized) of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The data demonstrated clear preferences for introversion over extraversion, for sensing over intuition, and for judging over perceiving among both male and female Bible College students. Among females there was also a clear preference for feeling over thinking. The two predominant types among female Bible College students emerged as ISFJ (23%) and ESFJ (17%). The two predominant types among male Bible college students emerged as ISTJ (15%) and ISFJ (13%).     

The Relationship Between Biblical Literacy,Academic Achievement,and School Behavior Among Christian- and Public-School Students

This study assessed the relationship between Bible literacy among secondary school students and their academic achievement and school behavior. A total of 160 students who attended either Christian or public schools in the 7th to 12th grade were randomly selected for the study sample. Three measures of Bible knowledge were combined to obtain an overall measure of Bible literacy. The results indicate that students with the highest level of Bible literacy also had the highest average grade point average (GPA) and the highest ranking in test and grade results. In contrast, those with the lowest level of Bible literacy also had the lowest average GPA and the lowest ranking in test and grade results. This trend held for students attending both Christian schools and public schools. Christian school students were also rated higher than public school students in school behavior.     

To Know and Be Known: An Intimacy‐Based Explanation for the Gender Gap in Biblical Literalism

We assess the gender gap in U.S. Christianity by examining in a national sample (Baylor Religion Survey 2010) a particularly robust measure of religiosity: biblical literalism. Women are more likely to report biblical literalism than men in bivariate comparisons, but we argue that intimate attachment to God is a related intervening mechanism. The results of this study indicate: (1) intimate attachment to God is associated with more literal views of the Bible, (2) after accounting for attachment to God women are no longer associated with increased literalism, (3) divine proximity‐seeking behaviors are associated with more literal views of the Bible, (4) proximity‐seeking moderates the relationship between attachment to God and Bible views, and (5) gender moderates the relationship between both attachment to God and proximity‐seeking behaviors and Bible views. The evidence presented here provides a plausible mechanism by which gender differences in biblical literalism may be accounted for.     

Beyond the “Critical” Curtain: Community‐based Service Learning in an African Context

Abstract. A case of community‐based service learning in the School of Theology at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa is analyzed for what it means to teach biblical studies in an African context where biblical scholarship is partially constituted by ordinary African readers of the Bible and where context is a central pedagogical concept. Reflecting on a series of experiments over the past ten years in two second‐year University level modules, the article analyzes the contours of a partnership between the academy and local communities of the poor, working‐class, and marginalized through community‐based service learning. This partnership provides a form of contextualization that enables students to integrate the forms of engagement with the Bible they bring to their formal theological studies and the forms of critical distance that characterize the discipline of biblical studies.     

The Familiar Made Strange: An Orientation to Biblical Study in Vancouver

Abstract. This paper originated in a Wabash‐funded colloquium organized by Richard Ascough and Leif Vaage, on the theme: “Teaching the Bible for Leadership in the United Church of Canada.” Professors teaching biblical studies at United Church seminaries and theological schools met over three years to share pedagogy, things that have worked and not worked in the classroom, changes in teaching Bible over the years, and the role of context in shaping teaching. In the final year they presented their philosophy of teaching to one another; this paper arose from that meeting. The paper describes an orientation to teaching New Testament Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, a theologically liberal school in the context of Vancouver, Canada – paradoxically one of the most secular and multi‐religious cities in the world. Guided by Denise Levertov's poem, “Overland to the Islands,” it explores the promises and challenges of biblical study grounded in the material reality of the world, amidst older students who bear the marks of secularity, who are impatient with traditional orthodoxies, and who long more for life before the grave than after it. Adopting ideas from Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and Julia Kristeva, it explores teaching the Bible in a way that promotes the polyvalence, strangeness, and irreducibility of biblical texts, in order to move students away from exegetical and hermeneutical theories content with recovering authorial intent and reconstructing historical origins as the primary tasks of biblical study. The paper describes a model of teaching that celebrates the materiality of the New Testament together with its textual, social, theological, and historical complexity, as well as a tradition‐constituted means of apprehending the world, and which treasures students as living texts who in the course of interpretation awaken ever‐fresh meanings relevant to their own communal and personal identities.     

Thinking Developmentally: The Bible,the First‐Year College Student,and Diversity

Abstract. The Bible is a non‐western text subject to a variety of interpretations and applications – constructive and destructive. The academic study of the Bible, therefore, requires critical thinking skills and the ability to engage with diversity. The reality is that most first‐year college students have not yet developed these skills. Rather than bemoan students’lack of development, the essay explores ways of teaching and applying critical thinking within the context of an introductory Religion course. The essay claims that first‐year college students can better learn the content of the discipline and function in a pluralistic world if the teaching of critical thinking skills is a part of the pedagogy.     

Expertise in Deception Detection Involves Actively Prompting Diagnostic Information Rather Than Passive Behavioral Observation

In a proof‐of‐concept study, an expert obtained 100% deception‐detection accuracy over 33 interviews. Tapes of the interactions were shown to N = 136 students who obtained 79.1% accuracy (Mdn = 83.3%, mode = 100%). The findings were replicated in a second experiment with 5 different experts who collectively conducted 89 interviews. The new experts were 97.8% accurate in cheating detection and 95.5% accurate at detecting who cheated. A sample of N = 34 students watched a random sample of 36 expert interviews and obtained 93.6% accuracy. The data suggest that experts can accurately distinguish truths from lies when they are allowed to actively question a potential liar, and nonexperts can obtain high accuracy when viewing expertly questioned senders.     

Narrating and Navigating Authorities: Evangelical and Mainline Protestant Interpretations of the Bible and Science

Research on the way Protestants interpret the Bible in relationship to science has tended to focus on biblical literalists; less research, however, has examined the heterogeneity of how nonliteralists interpret the Bible. Utilizing data from semi‐structured interviews with 77 evangelical and mainline Protestants who attend high‐SES congregations, we find that members of both groups draw on similar interpretation strategies in discussing the Bible and evolution. Both eschew literal interpretations of the Bible, demarcate boundaries between the Bible and science, and subsume evolution under broader theological beliefs. Mainline Protestants and evangelicals differ in the way they interpret miracles, with mainline Protestants revealing more openness to scientific and social interpretations of the Bible's miracles, while evangelicals emphasize God's authority over nature. Findings show that different strategies are evoked depending on the issue discussed, revealing implications for a deeper understanding of the way different traditions provide resources for interpreting the Bible and its relationship to scientific issues. Finally, findings contribute to a more robust knowledge of boundary work between the Bible and science as institutional and epistemic authorities.     

Using the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to Teach Biblical Studies in Christian Liberal Arts Colleges

Biblical studies professors in Christian liberal arts colleges typically face greater hostility from students nurtured in fundamentalist churches than they do from those who attend mainline churches. Guiding them through their first academic study of the Bible poses many challenges. To avoid the course becoming a battlefield, and to facilitate integration on a higher level, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral provides a middle way between right‐wing and left‐wing extremes. This approach gives priority to the Bible as the primary source for determining theology and practice, but relies heavily on tradition, reason, and experience as well. It also promotes interaction with the spiritual, moral, and ethical concerns expressed in the biblical texts. To adopt the Quadrilateral involves active concern for character formation, inspiring students to become better people. If we merely dispense historical‐critical or literary information without considering contemporary relevance, we bore students and fail in our duties as educators.     

Extending self‐leadership research to the East: Measurement equivalence of the Chinese and English versions of the MSLQ

In response to calls regarding the applicability of self‐leadership measurement in Eastern (collectivistic) and Western (individualistic) cultures, this study examined the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the modified self‐leadership questionnaire (MSLQ). The sample consisted of 395 Chinese students and 241 Australian students. Results revealed that the modified self‐leadership questionnaire exhibited a satisfactory condition of psychometric properties across cultures. A series of multi‐sample confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated the cross‐cultural similarity of an 11‐factor model across the Chinese and Australian samples. The modified self‐leadership questionnaire was also found to possess measurement invariance, suggesting that it is appropriate for cross‐cultural research assessing differences of self‐leadership behaviour across Chinese and Western cultures. Implications for future research are also discussed.     

The Context and Shape of Theological Education in Mozambique with Special Reference to Women

In Mozambique, a marked increase in evangelical churches was recorded in the 1980s. This brought the need for pastoral training into sharp focus, and many new Bible schools were founded in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, the shape and context of theological education remains rather different from other African countries, as Bible schools are mostly not accredited by the government and most schools train part‐time in the evening. As of 2017, religious studies cannot be found at universities, leaving theological training firmly in the hands of the churches and mission organizations. The training of women has become increasingly important, but they also face many challenges. To shed light on these challenges, I present the results of 52 interviews with female students at various Bible schools in Mozambique, ranging from lack of family support to the fact that theological training is perceived to be only for men and full‐time/ordained ministry.     

Observation of children with attention‐deficit hyperactivity (ADHD) problems in three natural classroom contexts

Background. Observation studies of students with attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) problems in natural classroom situations are costly and relatively rare. Aims. The study enquired how teacher ratings are anchored in actual student classroom behaviours, and how the behaviour of children with ADHD problems differs from their classmates. The authors attempted to broaden the usual focus on disruptive and inattentive behaviours to elucidate the role of various on‐task behaviours, as well as considering differences between classroom contexts. Sample. DSM‐III‐R criteria were used in conjunction with a teacher rating scale to select a sample of 55 students with ADHD problems, and 55 matched controls from a population of 569 primary school students. Method. Students were observed in their natural classrooms using the Munich Observation of Attention Inventory (MAI; Helmke, 1988 ). Correlations between teacher reports and observation codes were computed, and systematic differences between students with ADHD problems and controls in different classroom contexts were examined using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM). Results. Global teacher reports showed moderate to strong correlations with observed student behaviours. Expected on‐task behaviour demonstrated the strongest relationship (r >?.70) with teacher reports. As hypothesized, the children with ADHD were more disruptive and inattentive than their matched peers. They were also less often inconspicuous on‐task as expected by their teachers. However, their behaviour was assigned to two other on‐task categories more often than their peers, and this raised their total on‐task behaviour to over 66%. Situational differences were found for all codes as well, which mostly affected all students in a similar way, not just students with ADHD. Conclusions. ADHD related behaviours are pervasive across the classroom situations coded. Teachers appear to distinguish between desirable and undesirable on‐task behaviours. Nevertheless, assisting students with ADHD problems requires shaping both. Future studies need to include more differentiated codes for various types of on‐task behaviours and also need to code the lesson context concurrently.     

Concurrent validity of the College Adjustment scales using comparison with the MMPI College Maladjustment Scale

The concurrent validity of the College Adjustment Scales was assessed using comparison to the College Maladjustment Scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory-2. Undergraduate students (N=56, 40 women, M age = 21.3 yr., 87.5% white, non-Hispanic) completed both tests. Analysis indicated scores on 8 of 9 College Adjustment Scales correlated significantly in the predicted direction with those on the College Maladjustment Scale, thereby providing some additional support for convergent validity. While the conclusions are limited significantly by the small sample, this report provides an incremental contribution to the validity of the College Adjustment Scales.     

Associations between religious behavior and attitude to Christianity among Australian Catholic adolescents: scale validation.

In a sample of 1,166 Catholic high school students (age = 13-18 years), the author used confirmatory factor analysis to validate a 30-item instrument that assesses 6 dimensions of attitude to Christianity (viz., attitude to prayer, attitude to God, attitude to Jesus, attitude to the Bible, attitude to Christian practice, attitude to social justice). Goodness-of-fit indices for the proposed measurement model revealed that the model fitted the data very well, thus confirming the instrument's structure. A correlation analysis revealed associations between religious behavior and attitude to Christianity.     

Predicting Relationship of Smoking Behavior Among Male Saudi Arabian College Students Related to Their Religious Practice

This study describes the relationships of smoking behavior among a sample of male college students in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to their religious practice, parents’ smoking behaviors and attitudes, peers’ smoking behaviors and attitudes, and knowledge about the dangers of smoking. A 49-item questionnaire was developed and pilot tested in KSA. This questionnaire was completed during the academic year 2013 by 715 undergraduate male students at the King Saud University in Riyadh. 29.8 % of the students were smokers (13.8 % cigarette smokers, 7.3 % sheesha smokers, and 27 % cigarette and sheesha smokers). Students in the College of Education were much more likely to be smokers than the students in the College of Science. The differences between the College of Education and the College of Science was statistically significant (χ² = 16.864. df = 1, p = .001). Logistic regression analysis suggested that students who were more faithful in their practice of Islam were 15 % less likely to smoke. Students who were more knowledgeable about the dangers of smoking were 8 % less likely to smoke. The logistic analysis identified peers (friends) as the most powerful factor in predicting smoking. The four-factor model had an overall classification accuracy of 78 %. The need to understand more fully the dynamics of peer relations among Saudi Arabian males as a basis for developing tobacco education/prevention programs. Prevention programs will need to include education and changes in the college level or earlier in KSA.     

Associations Between Religious Behavior and Attitude to Christianity Among Australian Catholic Adolescents: Scale Validation

Abstract

In a sample of 1,166 Catholic high school students (age = 13–18 years), the author used confirmatory factor analysis to validate a 30-item instrument that assesses 6 dimensions of attitude to Christianity (viz., attitude to prayer, attitude to God, attitude to Jesus, attitude to the Bible, attitude to Christian practice, attitude to social justice). Goodness-of-fit indices for the proposed measurement model revealed that the model fitted the data very well, thus confirming the instrument's structure. A correlation analysis revealed associations between religious behavior and attitude to Christianity.