Religious pluralism and justified Christian belief: A reply to Silver

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Religious Studies Collections and Information Literacy: A Snapshot of a University Library

Academic library collections are maintained to support programs and research at their home institutions. Information literacy, the formal instruction in the use of library resources, has become one of the essential programs in higher education. There is little research that shows how collection development, information literacy, and religious studies programs can be coordinated to produce successful partnerships. The authors, coordinators of Information Literacy and Collection Development, examined the religion collection, including purchase, usage, and circulation statistics. Information literacy courses in relation to the religious studies program were also investigated. After analyzing this data, the authors identified challenges, as they exist at their home institution, which includes a deficiency in both the religion collection and information literacy classes taught for the religious studies program. The authors conclude that much work is needed to advance successful collaborations between libraries and the religious studies departments, and academic librarians will need to examine their own religion collections to address similar challenges.     

Teaching Religious Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.     

The case of the disappearing disagreements: A reply to Yussen

S. R. Yussen (1984, Developmental Review, 4, 139–144) and I have few disagreements. The major one seems to be in what the purpose of my article (R. J. Sternberg, 1984, Developmental Review, 4, 113–138) should have been. I believe the article fulfills my own purpose, if not Yussen's.     

Through Literacy to Fluency: Reading in the Religious Studies Classroom

This paper addresses a perennial question of the religious studies and, indeed, of most liberal arts classrooms: How do I get my students to read texts thoroughly and with understanding? After briefly reviewing the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data, I argue that what teachers desire is not just basic literacy, but fluency, which is the capacity to read analytically (and, for me, appreciatively), deploying the strategies of reading in a high process, improvisational mode. I unpack the elements and efficacy of one close reading classroom teaching practice I use, guided annotation, as a strategy for developing fluency. I argue that close analysis of a short, intentionally chosen passage with a guiding question builds towards reading fluency. Annotating short passages, singly and then in relation to other passages, with the author's and disciplinary concerns as the foci, practices the skills that build fluency. Annotation is akin to playing scales in music, repeating a baseline task of reading; working slowly and simply at first, but then with increasing speed and complexity, moving the student towards reading whole texts well.     

《宗教学研究》严正声明

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Western Esotericism——宗教学领域新兴研究学科

上世纪90年代开始,西方学术界兴趣了一门新的研究学科即西方灵知主义,并把它视为西方另一种宗教传统。本文试图探讨西方灵知主义研究学科的产生、研究范式及研究意义。     

Merging the Religious Congregations and Membership Studies: A Data File for Documenting American Religious Change

The decennial religious congregations and membership studies are a popular data source for analyzing local religious composition and diversity, but several methodological challenges hinder merging the datasets for longitudinal analyses. In this paper, we introduce strategies for addressing four of the most serious challenges: religious mergers and schisms, changes in membership standards within certain groups, missing data and changes in county boundaries. In doing so we successfully merge the 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 collections and build new longitudinal datasets of congregational and membership counts at the state and county levels. These changes increase religious group representation from 48 to 76, reduce bias from missing data, allow for the more reliable inclusion of 20–23 million adherents in each year, and improve overall ease of use. We also document instances when corrections were not possible and alert readers to the limitations of the merged files when measuring change among certain groups. The new longitudinal files are accessible from theARDA.com.     

Religious Studies in Britain: Lancaster in the Sixties

Among the factors which have sustained the religious and cultural orientation of Sikhs in Britain, the role of the visiting Sants is of crucial importance, though little studied. Sants have shaped the lives of many of their Sikh disciples directly, inspiring others to uphold the religious ideals, and have contributed in several ways to the community's causes and institutions. The paper contributes towards an understanding of the growth and multiplicity of the Sant's role among the British Sikh community.     

Religion and Coping: A Contribution from Religious Studies

Freud and Marx pegged religion as a beguiling painkiller. Recent social scientific research has exposed the not-so-simple reality of religious coping, identifying differential usage, means, and outcomes. Appropriately, psychologists, many with clinical training, lead the way. This article is a contribution from religious studies. It describes two thus far neglected modes of religious coping that are prominent in traditions and distinctly representative of religious responses to suffering—magical rituals and religious experiences. Consideration of these forms will address deficiencies and imbalances in the literature apparent from the study of religions. Specifically, the current investigation of religion and coping would benefit from historical perspective, greater attention to unconscious coping processes, heightened use of qualitative data, and fuller recognition of the challenges inherent in the therapeutic use of religion .     

Searching for Religious Eroticism: The Solitary and the Ocular in Gay Religious Studies

Abstract

In this article Jay Johnson responds to the previous papers which have argued for the religious significance of particular forms of gay eroticism. Jay is critical of the definitions of religions employed, which he believes are far too broad to be helpful. He also questions the assumption, which he believes to be prominent in the work of many gay scholars of religion, that for gay men ‘our eroticism is our religion’. Jay makes the point that this is an extravagant claim that may contribute to a near narcissistic obsession with the male form which is already a dangerous undercurrent in Western theology. However, he nevertheless believes that the papers he critiques are reaching, through the vehicle of religious eroticism, towards an intense longing for communion. This, Christians believe, results from God's own desire for humanity which finds its resolution through incorporation into the erotic community of the body of Christ.     

Forum: Crafting the Introductory Course in Religious Studies

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision‐making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's “The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion” series, Russell McCutcheon explores a “baker's dozen” of such choices and the larger pedagogical problems with which they are entwined, ranging from classic questions of skill development and content coverage to philosophical concerns around students' identification with their topics of study and institutional concerns around governance and assessment. Aaron Hollander provides a brief introduction and four doctoral students at the University of Chicago Divinity School respond to McCutcheon's essay, widening its scope, testing its applicability, and interrogating its undergirding suppositions from the perspective of early‐career educators in the field.     

东岳司职图像探源

佛教东传的过程中逐渐汉化,经数百年的演变,由最初以地藏菩萨为中心十王为辅的图式逐渐转化为十位独立的官吏审判图式,这种以十殿阎王为主的图式,浸入了中国传统文化里官僚府衙的权阶色彩。东岳大帝管辖的司职图像系统便借鉴了佛教的十王题材。     

Accreditation: A reply to mathers

Accreditation in counselling is meant not for the benefit of the counsellor but for the protection of the public. It is concerned more with guaranteeing certain standards of ethics than with the acclamation of status. Whatever method is used, it must avoid the pitfalls of conservatism and academicism which in other professions have been jointly responsible for the attack on accreditation itself as a process. Those involved in counselling and psychotherapy should not wait passively until Parliament acts, but need to be critically involved in bringing into being a system of accreditation which is both flexible and creative.