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.     

A Comparison of Christians’ Concepts of Jesus Christ and God

In the god concept literature, little research has been conducted on how people think about and relate specifically to Jesus Christ. This study addresses the extent to which Christians distinguish between Jesus and God in terms of their concepts of Jesus and God, the pathways they use to connect with Jesus and God, and the benefits they seek and receive from Jesus and God. The study also tests whether participants’ concepts of Jesus have unique predictive power for psychological, social, and spiritual criterion variables after controlling for their concepts of God. The sample includes 165 college students and 107 church attendees who self-identified as Christians. Results indicate that although most participants view Jesus and God as being similar to each other, they perceive Jesus to be warmer but less transcendent and stern than God. Including participants’ concepts of Jesus in hierarchical multiple regressions accounted for significant additional variance after controlling for their concepts of God in predicting participants’ negative affect, social justice attitudes, spiritual emotions, and Christian orthodoxy. Participants generally used various pathways more to connect with God than with Jesus, and they reported seeking and receiving many benefits more from God than from Jesus. These results suggest that future research on god concepts among Christians ought to include separate measures of Jesus concepts and God concepts.     

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.     

A CHRISTIAN NATURALISM: DEVELOPING THE THINKING OF GORDON KAUFMAN

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory₁ and Jesus trajectory₂. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic‐humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form.     

Symbolism in Weakness: Jesus Christ for the Postmodern Age

The postmodern emphasis on human finitude encourages the reconsideration of religious traditions, and more particularly of Christianity. The doctrine of a vulnerable God dying on a cross speaks to postmodern civilization. Jesus Christ infuses transcendence into the realm of immanence by assuming the human predicament to its bitter end. The present essay critiques the recent attempts of deconstructionist philosopher John D. Caputo and systematic theologian Roger Haight to provide postmodern expositions for the Christian doctrine on the person of Jesus Christ. With the help of the fundamental notion of agapeic love, we demonstrate that in Jesus Christ, Caputo's philosophy of the event and Haight's theology of the symbol can be meaningfully integrated and human finitude responsibly overcome.     

Luther's Small and Large Catechisms: Defining and Confessing Christian Faith From the Centre in a Religiously Plural World

Abstract : In this article, the author argues that in his Small and Large Catechisms, which were both written in 1529, Martin Luther centres the Christian faith in a way that others can recognise as authentic and faithful to the Gospel vis‐à‐vis the relativism that is posited as the appropriate Christian articulation of the Gospel in a world of religious diversity. Luther's non‐negotiable centring on God for us in Jesus Christ, through whom God is uniquely and decisively revealed, speaks to the contemporary intra‐Christian and inter‐religious questions. The author finds evangelical and persuasive resonance in Lesslie Newbigin's call to indwell the Christian story and George Lindbeck's argument to attend to the grammar of the faith.     

Your Body is a Temple: Conversion Narratives in African-Led Eastern European Pentecostalism

The word conversion has a multitude of meanings within religions. For Pentecostal Christianity in particular it is spoken of essentially as an external act of religious change. In Pentecostalism, therefore, to convert is to move to the Christian faith and it usually implies making a personal decision for Jesus Christ. In the Church of the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations, a majority of its members have gone through this transition and in the process presented their human bodies to God as temples within which His Spirit now comes to dwell. The metaphor of the body is particularly strong in Pauline thought and it is one that enables a useful appreciation of conversion in Pentecostal spirituality.     

Word of God or Witness? Issues in Christian Biblical Hermeneutics

This article gives a historical overview of the main issues and problems facing Christian interpreters of the Bible. The Christian understanding of the Bible is influenced by two main factors. On the one hand, Christians believe that God revealed himself and was present in the life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, Jesus is the one Word of God. On the other hand, Christians believe that the Bible is inspired Holy Scripture, containing the revelation of God. There is a tension between these two approaches, as one locates the divine revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the other in the Holy Book. The article argues that this tension has been a major creative driving force in the history of Christian biblical interpretation. It traces the main strategies with which Christian interpreters have approached the Bible in order to reconcile these two elements, or in which they have allowed one to overrule the other. This will provide an introduction to the key approaches and methods in Christian biblical interpretation.     

Christ's Love as the Basis of the Church's Faith Witness to Muslims

According to the Christian view, the essence of the triune God is revealed in the relational event between God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible says of this God, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). By way of example, the article explores “God's love” to show that the Qur'an's conception of God is incompatible with key tenets of the New Testament. Thus, when keeping both conceptions of God in view, we cannot speak of one and the same God. Now what does this mean for the pursuit of conciliatory relations between Christians and Muslims? Which relational paradigms need to be kept in mind? After reflecting on the concepts of neighbourliness, companionship, and hospitality, the article goes on to trace the conceptual outlines of Christian mission as a mission of God's love (missio amoris Dei). Its hypothesis is that a characteristically Christian conception of God can supply useful motifs for appreciative and conciliatory actions by Christians toward Muslims. Finally, the author proposes a theology of interreligious relations (which he has elaborated upon elsewhere) as an alternative approach to conventional theologies of religion.     

The Limbic System and the Soul: Evolution and the Neuroanatomy of Religious Experience

The evolutionary neurological foundations of religious experience are detailed. Human beings have been burying and preparing their dead for the Hereafter for more than 100,000 years. These behaviors and beliefs are related to activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, which are responsible for religious, spiritual, and mystical trancelike states, dreaming, astral projection, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and the hallucination of ghosts, demons, angels, and gods. Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ, and others who have communed with angels or gods display limbic system hyperactivity, whereas patients report religious hallucinations or out-of-body experiences when limbic structures are stimulated or excessively activated. It is postulated that limbic and temporal lobe structures account for the sexual and violent aspects of religious behavior and also serve as a "transmitter to God," and that the evolution of these structures made spiritual experience possible.     

Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality: Ethnographic Approaches

Abstract

St Methodius of Olympus, Bishop of Patara and martyr of the Diocletian persecution, uses sexual language in an unusual way. In a treatise on celibacy, The Symposium, he describes the relationship of Christians to Jesus Christ using the language of male orgasm. The cross is described as the moment of Jesus Christ's own ecstatic orgasm, and St Paul is described as a figure inseminated by God. This language is investigated with reference to a variety of selected methodologies, including Christian Platonist perspectives, feminist perspectives, Foucaultian perspectives, and men's studies perspectives.     

Gross gods and icky atheism: Disgust responses to rejected religious beliefs

Disgust is an emotional response that helps to maintain and protect physical and spiritual purity by signaling contamination and motivating the restoration of personal cleanliness. In the present research we predicted that disgust may be elicited by contact with outgroup religious beliefs, as these beliefs pose a threat to spiritual purity. Two experiments tested this prediction using a repeated taste-test paradigm in which participants tasted and rated a drink before and after copying a passage from an outgroup religion. In Experiment 1, Christian participants showed increased disgust after writing a passage from the Qur'an or Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, but not a control text. Experiment 2 replicated this effect, and also showed that contact with an ingroup religious belief (Christians copying from the Bible) did not elicit disgust. Moreover, Experiment 2 showed that disgust to rejected beliefs was eliminated when participants were allowed to wash their hands after copying the passage, symbolically restoring spiritual cleanliness. Together, these results provide evidence that contact with rejected religious beliefs elicits disgust by symbolically violating spiritual purity. Implications for intergroup relations between religious groups is discussed, and the role of disgust in the protection of beliefs that hold moral value.     

Christian God‐Talk While Listening to Atheists,Pluralists, and Muslims

In the global conversation over religious ideas, a de facto debate is raging between atheism, pluralism, and Islam. Pluralism respects the claim of every religion. Atheism respects the claim of no religion. Islam respects the claim of its own religion. How should a Christian theologian construct a doctrine of God that benefits from listening to this conversation yet stresses what is important in the gospel, namely, that the God of Jesus Christ is gracious in character? What is recommended here is to (1) investigate the truth question; (2) avoid putting God in the equations; (3) affirm what is essential; and (4) practice charity.     

Re‐Framing the Question: How Can We Construct a Theology of Religions?

Abstract : The existing framework—the typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism—seems inadequate for resolving the dilemma Lutheran theologians confront: how to show respect for believers of the world's religions while still retaining the Christian commitment to mission. A substitute typology is proffered that distinguishes confessional exclusivism, confessional universalism, and supra‐confessional universalism. The option of confessional universalism provides a path for affirming a specific religious commitment—that in Jesus Christ God has been revealed as gracious—that is universally applicable; yet, holders of this position can demonstrate respect for, and cooperate with, members of other religious traditions who see matters differently.     

Promoting Justice in the Classroom: Looking Beyond the Label to See the Individual

Christian educators are faced with the task of promoting and encouraging justice from the viewpoint of Christ as they encounter the broad strokes of diversity within their classrooms and schools. Following Christ means that the Christian educator must look beyond the labels that have been applied by the religious and secular to see each student as made in the image of God. This article presents a paradigm that recognizes the worth of each individual within the context of the student’s background knowledge, language abilities, academic achievement, and behavior (BLAB) instead of the singularly focused labels that marginalize students.     

A Review of Jesus: A Psychological Biography

Capps's book uses historical, sociological, and psychological methods to probe the personal identity and self-understanding of Jesus. This reviewer suggests that historical, sociological, and psychological methods are modes of discourse that are modern forms of myth. Myth is understood as any narrative form that is used, and/or taken for granted, as a way of self-understanding and understanding the world. These disciplines are useful critical tools with which to explore the text and its world, but they do not guarantee knowledge about the past. As modern modes of discourse they create narratives (i.e., myths) about the past, that for us are preferred epistemological pathways. Jesus Christ is the ultimate model of the God-person relationship in the Christian west. Therefore, any serious attempt to render a realistic portrait of Jesus using contemporary modes of describing reality has the possibility of effecting a profound transformation of the images of God and Jesus. This then can transform our own relationship with God. The value of Capps's book is not in any knowledge it might give us about Jesus, but in the transformation it can effect within the reader, and the author, of central religious images. Psychoanalytic and developmental theories are limited in their explanatory effectiveness because they are materialistic and personalistic (reductive). The analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the archetypal psychology of James Hillman are proposed in order to add a transpersonal dimension to Capps's approach to the personality of Jesus.     

In The Theater of Confusion: Mourning and Its Consequences for a Four-Year-Old Child

Abstract

Hyrck M. Inner Objects and the Christian Images of God. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:41-43. Stockholm, ISSN 0803-706X.

Religion can be viewed very differently by different individuals. For some people it forms the basis of emotional safety while others regard it as the main obstacle to true humanity. One reason for this wide variance of opinion lies in the different ways that God can be perceived even within the same religious tradition. He can, for example, appear as a cosmic sadist torturing men eternally or as the vicariously suffering Christ sharing and containing the evils of mankins.

These and other images of God are analyzed by a systematic psychoanalytic instrument constructed upon the object relations theory. It describes five inner objects created by different partial drives or aspects of these drives. The inner objects are regarded as unconscious phantasies in the Kleinian sense. Five corresponding analoguous emotional images of God are abstracted from the Christian tradition.     

The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self‐disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach.     

Abuse and religious experience: A study of religiously committed evangelical adults

Two hypotheses were tested: (1) in a sample of religiously-committed evangelical adults, past experience of abuse is related to more frequent (a) religious behaviour such as prayer, church attendance and Bible reading, and (b) religious experiences, such as religious visions, healings and speaking in tongues; (2) abuse is also associated with evidence of alienation from God, as noted in more frequent reports of God as distant and more frequent religious doubting. Survey data from 3424 adults attending one of four new evangelical movement churches were analysed. Controlling for socio-economic and religious socialization variables, a series of regression equations were calculated looking at the relationship between the experience of abuse and the dependent variables of three factor scores representing conventional religious behaviour, transcendent religious experience and feelings of distance from God. Self-report of the frequency of abuse was positively associated with frequency of reported transcendent religious experiences and with feelings of distance from God. A significant relationship between abuse and more conventional religious behaviour was not found. The findings provide mixed support for the idea that abuse results in ambivalent responses toward religion and God in religiously committed adults. The lack of relationship between abuse and conventional religious behaviours is somewhat inconsistent with prior results, and likely represents a ceiling effect. The positive correlation with transcendent religious experiences and distance from God are consistent with prior studies, but may suggest alternative explanations.