宗教公益信托:宗教组织进入社会服务领域的新模式

宗教组织与信徒介入和举办各种类型的社会公益事业,被认为是当代中国宗教达致与社会主义社会相适应目标之基本途径。但在现有政策框架下,宗教组织缺乏进入社会服务领域的渠道和途径。本文借鉴海外宗教公益信托的经验,拟对以公益信托方式支援我国宗教界进入社会服务领域的可行性与优势进行了初步探讨。     

俞正声走访在京全国性宗教团体

俞正声指出,要继续全面贯彻党的宗教工作基本方针,发挥宗教界人士和信教群众在促进经济社会发展中的积极作用,为实现全面建成小康社会的宏伟目标共同奋斗。     

The Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Association Between Interfaith Contact and Religious Pluralism

This research contributes to increasing understanding of the ways in which Christians think about religious pluralism in the United States. It does so by empirically uncovering the relationship between inter-faith contact and the willingness of white Christians to support tenets of religious pluralism. To that end, this study largely intimates that religious identity reinforces a dualistic world view. For white Christians, it is likely that contact with Jews and not Muslims is salient to their religious pluralist understandings. Nonetheless, more so than other Christians, Evangelicals tend to embrace a theology that views their belief system as being in conflict and competition with non-Christians. To that end, it is plausible that even when Christians have positive contact experiences with Jews and Muslims, Evangelicals are less willing than are other Christians to recognize them as members of the American religious polity.     

Bring Race to the Center: The Importance of Race in Racially Diverse Religious Organizations

In recent decades we have witnessed increased interest in racially diverse religious organizations. Similar trends are occuring in other institutions, like education and business. In this article I discuss the importance of understanding the role that race, as a system that advantages whites, plays in the congregational life of racially integrated churches. Drawing upon the critical race literature, I propose that because race is central to how our society is organized, interracial chruches will need to placate white members' and affirm their religiocultural preferences and interests in order to sustain a racially diverse congregation. I offer some evidence supporting this claim. I also discuss the strengths and limitations of other perspectives used to explain racially diverse religious organizations.     

A Theological Challenge: Coordinating Biological, Social, and Religious Visions of Humanity

This paper attempts two tasks. First, it sketches how the natural sciences (including especially the biological sciences), the social sciences, and the scientific study of religion can be understood to furnish complementary, consonant perspectives on human beings and human groups. This suggests that it is possible to speak of a modern secular interpretation of humanity (MSIH) to which these perspectives contribute (though not without tensions). MSIH is not a comprehensive interpretation of human beings, if only because it adopts a posture of neutrality with regard to the reality of religious objects and the truth of theological claims about them. MSIH is certainly an impressively forceful interpretation, however, and it needs to be reckoned with by any perspective on human life that seeks to insert its truth claims into the arena of public debate. Second, the paper considers two challenges that MSIH poses to specifically theological interpretations of human beings. On the one hand, in spite of its posture of religious neutrality, MSIH is a key element in a class of wider, seemingly antireligious interpretations of humanity, including especially projectionist and illusionist critiques of religion. It is consonance with MSIH that makes these critiques such formidable competitors for traditional theological interpretations of human beings. On the other hand, and taking the religiously neutral posture of MSIH at face value, theological accounts of humanity that seek to coordinate the insights of MSIH with positive religious visions of human life must find ways to overcome or manage such dissonance as arises. The goal of synthesis is defended as important, and strategies for managing these challenges, especially in light of the pluralism of extant philosophical and theological interpretations of human beings, are advocated.     

全国性宗教团体联席会议聚焦做好宗教领域疫情防控工作

新华社北京2月11日电11日,全国性宗教团体联席会议第十二次会议以视频方式召开。会议的主题是进一步做好宗教领域疫情防控工作,把落实工作抓实抓细。新冠肺炎疫情发生以来,全国性宗教团体和各地宗教界迅速行动起来,认真学习习近平总书记重要指示精神,坚决落实党中央决策部署,按照当地党委政府统一要求,暂停开放宗教活动场所,暂停一切集体宗教活动,宗教院校延迟开学。     

Religious Networking Organizations and Social Justice: An Ethnographic Case Study

The current study provides an innovative examination of how and why religious networking organizations work for social justice in their local community. Similar to a coalition or community coordinating council, religious networking organizations are formal organizations comprised of individuals from multiple religious congregations who consistently meet to organize around a common goal. Based on over a year and a half of ethnographic participation in two separate religious networking organizations focused on community betterment and social justice, this study reports on the purpose and structure of these organizations, how each used networking to create social capital, and how religion was integrated into the organizations' social justice work. Findings contribute to the growing literature on social capital, empowering community settings, and the unique role of religious settings in promoting social justice. Implications for future research and practice also are discussed.     

Confidence in Religious Leaders in Korea: A Research Note

Korea may provide an important testing ground for assessing religious growth as a correlate of religious authority. In Korea from 1985 to 1995, all religious groups experienced growth, but from 1995 to 2005 only the Catholic population did so. Favorable images of Korean Catholicism compared to other Korean religions point to one factor that may account for this trend, namely, confidence in religious leaders. Up to now there has been no empirical test measuring confidence in religious leaders among different religious groups in Korea. Using the 2003–2007 Korean General Social Surveys cumulative data, we found a hierarchy of confidence in religious leaders ranging from highest to lowest as follows: Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, no religion. Our finding may suggest the continued vitality of Catholicism in Korea.     

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。     

Period and Cohort Effects on Religious Nonaffiliation and Religious Disaffiliation: A Research Note

Period and cohort effects on reports of no religious preference and religious disaffiliation are estimated. Results show that by 2006, the probability of reporting no religious preference had risen to almost .16. Additionally, the growing proportion of Americans raised with no religious preference substantially influences the increase in reporting no religious preference. Two recently developed analysis techniques for disentangling period and cohort effects are used: intrinsic estimator models and cross‐classified, random‐effects models. Results show (1) period‐based increases in the probability of reporting no religious preference from 1990 to 2006, (2) across‐cohort increases in no religious preference beginning with those born in the 1940s, and (3) a decline in the likelihood of religious disaffiliation (being raised with a religious preference but currently reporting no religious preference) for those born in the 1960s and 1970s compared to those born between 1945 and 1959.     

Religious Organizations and Homosexuality: The Acceptance of Gays and Lesbians in American Congregations

The participation of gays and lesbians in all aspects of society is continually disputed in the United States. Religion is one of the key battlegrounds. The extent to which religious congregations include lesbians and gays in congregational life is vital to the wider debate over homosexuality because congregations consistently influence more Americans than any other voluntary social institution reported by Putnam (Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000). Using nationally representative data from the 2006–2007 National Congregations Study this analysis investigates the level of acceptance of gays and lesbians within congregations as well as which congregations are most likely to allow lesbians and gays to become involved. I find that religious tradition, theological and political ideology, location, and demographic composition of congregations all influence the degree to which gays and lesbians are included into congregational life.     

Creative Employees: A Challenge to Managers

Employee creativity and corporate innovation have become important topics in management literature. Because the broadcast industry is dependent upon entertainment to attract viewers and listeners, most radio and television stations are staffed by artistic, creative personnel. These creative employees do not always respond to standard management and motivational techniques. Recent theories focus upon the end product to define creativity. Artists, however, often consider the process of creativity as more important than the final product. A new modified-process definition of creativity is suggested in which the artistic concerns of production personnel and the goal-oriented business requirements of management combine to form a structured system for creative endeavors. Characteristics of creative people are discussed along with techniques to manage creative personnel.     

Ecclesiology and Ethics: A Critical Self‐Reflection1

This contribution is based on the welcoming remarks of the Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba, the Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape, who opened the conference on “Ecclesiology and Ethics: The State of Ecumenical Theology in Africa,” hosted by the Department of Religion and Theology and the Desmond Tutu Centre for Spirituality, held at the University of the Western Cape on 3–5 June 2015. It is included here in the form in which it was presented at that conference.     

全国性宗教团体联席会议召开第十五次会议

本刊讯2021年3月18日,全国性宗教团体联席会议以视频方式召开第十五次会议。会议的主题是学习贯彻新修订的《中国共产党统一战线工作条例》,推动落实党的宗教工作理论方针政策。各全国性宗教团体主要负责人、驻会负责人、秘书长(总干事)及中华基督教青年会、女青年会全国协会负责人参加会议。中央统战部副部长、国家宗教事务局局长王作安出席会议并讲话。会议由全国性宗教团体联席会议轮值主席、中国基督教三自爱国运动委员会主席徐晓鸿主持。