The effects of religious socialization and religious identity on psychosocial functioning in Korean American adolescents from immigrant families

This study examined religious identity as a mediator and moderator between religious socialization by parents, peers, and religious mentors and psychosocial functioning (i.e., social competence, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems) among 155 Korean American adolescents. Religious socialization by parents and peers were positively associated with adolescents' religious identity and social competence. Religious identity fully mediated the relationship between religious socialization by parents and social competence, and partially mediated the relationship between religious socialization by peers and social competence. A competing model with religious identity as a moderator found adolescents with low religious identity showed significantly more externalizing behavior problems when they received more religious socialization from parents.     

The role of congregations in preventive medicine

Congregations are involved in health care, but they don't know it. They have seldom examined how they do what they do to encourage healthy ways of living. A three-year action research model in the Chicago area incorporates a parish nurse on the staff of six large suburban churches. These nurses are essentially health educators and personal health counselors. A weekly intensive half-day continuing education seminar provides these six nurses with opportunities for interchange among themselves and a selected faculty. Perhaps a new specialty within nursing is being born—a minister of health to work alongside parish clergy.Granger Westberg, a Lutheran clergyman, has served for twenty-five years on the medical faculties of the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. He was the founder of Wholistic Health Centers, Inc.     

A religious perspective on climate change

The aim of this article is to argue that religions can contribute to fight climate change. It is argued that religions can contribute with ethics. Religions can contribute with reflections concerning fundamental ethical principles as well as practical ethical instructions concerning sustainable lifestyles. But it is also argued that religions can contribute with a world-view that underpins ethics in a very fruitful way. We can want to protect the world because it is beautiful, not simply because it is useful. A religious worldview is articulated very clearly in praise and celebration. Here all of creation is praised and celebrated as the works of an all loving God or Spirit. This implies that the universe, planet Earth and all life on it are seen as creations which all have an intrinsic value. They are not just accidental matter or means for human beings, but magnificent creations which are commendable in themselves, no matter what their utility value may be. According to this religious interpretation ethics are thus grounded in a cosmic love. The motivation for taking care of the environment is love and not rational calculation and duty. A motivation based on positive, elevated feelings such as love, respect, devotion and an experience of beauty is much more vigorous than a motivation based on cool calculations and cold-hearted duty. Religion can engage people at a deeper level than economics and policy, and a deep engagement is extremely important for the success of fighting climate changes, because it is going to take decades.     

Religious support and psychosocial well-being among a religious Jewish population

The three subscales of the Religious Support Scale assess perceived support from a person’s religious community, religious leaders, and God. This three-factor structure was replicated in the current study with a sample of 277 religious Jewish persons residing in Israel. Hierarchical canonical analysis showed that, even after controlling for general social support, Religious Leader and God Support were related to lower emotional distress, Religious Leader and Religious Community Support contributed to a higher level of life satisfaction, and Religious Community and God Support contributed to the prediction of perceived health. Findings are discussed in terms of religious support’s generalizability as a psychosocial resource for persons of various faiths.     

Measuring religious social capital: the scale properties of the Williams Religious Social Capital Index (WRSCI) among cathedral congregations

The theoretical construct of social capital remains contested in terms of conceptualisation and measurement. The present paper follows the convention of distinguishing between trust, bonding, bridging and linking social capital, to conceptualise how religious communities promote and develop social capital within a specifically religious cohort. Developing this construct of religious social capital further, this paper proposes a measure for use specifically among religious communities to assess individual‐level social capital. The Williams Religious Social Capital Index (WRSCI) provides a unidimensional construct of religious social capital taking into consideration the four elements highlighted. A sample of 720 members of six cathedral congregations in England and Wales completed a battery of items concerning social capital. Factor analysis procedures produced a 12‐item index of religious social capital. Reliability analyses demonstrated that this index achieved satisfactory levels of internal reliability consistency. Construct validity was supported by the clear association between frequency of attendance and levels of assessed religious social capital.     

The relationship between psychosocial developmental and the sports climate experienced by underserved youth

Objectives

This study was designed to assess developmental outcomes underserved youth report from their sports participation; identify perceptions of the sports climate their coaches create; and, measure the relationships between participants reported gains and perceptions of the psychosocial sports climate.

Method

Participants were 239 urban youth sports participants from an underserved community who completed the Youth Experiences Scale (YES-2), Sport Motivational Climate Scale, Caring Climate Scale and measures of the importance their coaches placed on life skills.

Results

Multivariate analyses revealed a number of significant relationships between YES-2 outcomes and motivation and caring climate predictor variables, which clearly show that the more coaches create caring, mastery-oriented environments, the more likely positive developmental gains result.

Conclusion

These findings are consistent with the previous motivational (Smith, Smoll, & Cumming, 2007) and caring climate (Fry & Gano-Overway, 2010) research and shows that coaching actions and climates have an important influence on personal and social development of young people.     

The religious physician

In order to understand what it means to be a physician, we must, according to Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, analyze four words that capture the essence of the medical enterprise: profession, patient, compassion, and consent. The resultant model provides a rational and secular basis upon which the Jewish or Christian physician can then build an understanding of medicine in its peculiarly religious form. This religious form is likewise characterized by four words: vocation, neighbor, love, and covenant. An analysis of these words provides a model of and for the religious physician.     

The changing dynamics of religious authority on Pakistani religious television

This paper analyses the production, ownership and control of Pakistani religious talk shows, which have emerged as a popular genre of religious programming, subsequent to the liberalisation of Pakistani media in 2002. Much scholarship has implicated the nexus between Islam and televisual media in enabling the fragmentation of religious authority, by altering ‘lay’ engagements with Islam and thereby eliciting wider participation in religious discourse. In contrast, this paper focuses on the changing terms of asserting religious authority in the newly liberalised media context. Based on an analysis of the innovative formats and modes of editorial control characterising contemporary religious shows, I posit the significance of religious talk shows in both altering the nature of scholarly participation in religious public debate, and subjecting featured scholars to non-scholarly interests and agendas. I argue that the latter two insights into the nature of religious authority on television are only accessible from a production-based perspective, which is crucial for evaluating the wider implications of broadcast media for religious authority.     

The discomfiture of religious experience

We live in an age where major and minor structured and unstructured cults are mushrooming, most of them aiming at achieving an ecstatic or religious experience. Rather than objective inquiry, reaction to them is often passionate, unreasoning, even vituperous to an extent that seems out of proportion to their relative size of clientele. On the basis of anthropological fieldwork with Apostolic congregations in the U.S.A., Mexico and Yucatán, and as a teacher of a specific technique for achieving religious ecstatic experiences in workshops, I propose to examine some of the cultural and psychological reasons for this abrogation of objectivity.     

The science of religious beliefs

Why have humans, throughout history and across cultures, shown a strong tendency to believe in the existence of superhuman intentional agents and attached this belief to notions of morality, misfortune, and the creation of the world? The answer emerging from the cognitive science of religion appears to be that explicit beliefs are informed and constrained by the natural and cross-culturally recurrent operation of implicit cognitive systems. Successful god concepts resonate with the expectations of these implicit systems but also have attention-demanding and inferentially-rich properties that allow their integration into various areas of human concern. Theological concepts may deviate from these natural cognitive moorings but require special cultural scaffolding, such as Whitehouse's two Modes of Religiosity, to do so and constitute additions to, rather than replacements of the religious beliefs supported by implicit cognitive systems.