Religious transition: beliefs and life histories of some Canadian Anglo Catholics

There are a range of communities within the Anglican communion that seek to maintain a more orthodox or Catholic emphasis. One of these is the Traditional Anglican Communion. In 2009 the Vatican announced a special accommodation to allow these Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church and to retain key aspects of their Anglican usage and practice. As such many of these communities have sought to formalise their links with Rome. At this important historical juncture this study utilises a qualitative narrative approach to explore the life histories of members of a small community of Canadian Traditional Anglicans. It explores in detail the salient beliefs of these individuals and as such contributes to the growing discourse on the importance of beliefs in the sociology of religion.     

A category mistake: why contemporary Australian religious education in Catholic schools may be doomed to failure

Assuming religious education to be the same as other subject areas of a Catholic school’s curriculum by, for example, applying the outcomes based philosophy and language of other subject areas to religious education renders a category mistake. A prominent notion in the work of metaphysical philosopher Gilbert Ryle, a category mistake arises when facts of one kind are presented as if they belong to another. This is significant. When Australian Catholic diocesan syllabus documents treat and describe religious education as being like other subjects comprising the curriculum, a category mistake is made, the effects of which may be damaging for student learning. Following an examination of relevant Church documents to describe its purpose, a brief analysis of contemporary Australian Catholic diocesan religious education syllabi (cases in point) indicates that a series of category mistakes have been made. These findings have significance in informing the development and refinement of theory, policy and practice in religious education.     

Say one for me: the implicit religion of prayers from the street

Within the field of the psychology of prayer, there has been a growing interest in empirical studies concerned with the analysis of the content of ordinary people's private prayers, with a view to providing a more nuanced understanding of the psychological correlates of prayer among those who engage in the activity. One research tradition has focused on the content analysis of intercessory prayer requests left in church-related settings, and it is within this context that the present study is located, examining 417 intercessory prayer requests, collected on the streets by bishops in the Church of England as part of the 2011 “Say One for Me” Lent Prayer initiative. The study was informed by the constructs of implicit religion and ordinary theology, and employed ap Siôn's general analytical framework for intercessory prayer requests. Three types of implicit religion were found to be present in the prayer content: societal consensus, the source of explicit religion, and the effect of explicit religion, and the significance of these results is discussed.     

The Person and work of Christ in the theology of Heinrich Bullinger

In christology, as elsewhere, Bullinger's approach is both biblical and patristic. Although the starting point is biblical, the emphasis is often patristic, especially when he is engaged in controversy. He begins with the Person of Christ — stressing the divinity. This is the basis for what he says on the work of Christ, not least as mediator. This determined his use of traditional language (one Person, two natures), but the emphasis, especially in debates on the Eucharist, is on the distinction of the two natures. The fundamental importance of christology is evident in the way his 1534 work on the two natures of Christ, described as an orthodox and Catholic confession refuting various heresies, prefaces the collected edition of his commentaries on the epistles. It is shown how Bullinger defends the use of non-biblical terms in the classic definition as consonant with Scripture and necessary because of the cunning of heretics. In his biblical approach he uses first testimony, and then argument.     

Dyadic Nexus Fighting Two‐Front Battles: A Study of the Microlevel Process of the Official‐Religion‐State Relationship in China

This article provides a microlevel perspective of the interacting dynamics between religion and the Chinese state, demonstrating how religious leaders and local officials negotiate with each other pragmatically, continually withstanding pressure from hardline religious masses and state bureaucracy. This perspective, constructed using qualitative data on the True Jesus Church, also helps to answer a critical empirical question left open in scholarly discussions: When and how does the state regulative power on religion come to the fore in the economic reform emphasizing pragmatic religion‐state cooperation? The findings show how religious leaders and local officials have become pragmatic, cooperating to form a dyadic nexus that tackles regular affairs in a practical way, though it may run the risk of fracture when lay members and bureaucratic superiors pressure leaders and officials, respectively, to take hardline positions. The leaders and officials have continually fought two‐front battles while shuttling between negotiations with their nexus partner and aligning with their hardline sources of pressure. This study may shed light on future research of the Chinese religion‐state relationship in general by illustrating a microlevel, integrative, dynamic approach.     

Roman Catholic Approaches to the Qur'an since Vatican II

Vatican II opposes polemical attitudes to Islam but gives no specific guidance on the Qur'an. Modern Roman Catholic writing on the Qur'an includes a considerable variety of approaches. At the positive end of the spectrum: for Christian members of GRIC (Groupe de Recherche Islamo-Chrétien) the Qur'an is “an authentic Word of God, but one in part essentially different from the one in Jesus Christ”; George Dardess affirms that the Qur'an and the Eucharist are both means through which “God shares with us God's self through the word”; for Giulio Basetti-Sani the Qur'an is divine revelation but it does not contradict Christian doctrine; Jacques Dupuis sees the Qur'an as a real but imperfect revelation. More cautious approaches are found in the writings of Jacques Jomier and Christian Troll, for whom the biblical testimony to Christ is the decisive word of God, and not just one divine revelation alongside another in the Qur'an.     

From Olaf to Omar: Pedagogy of Place at a Lutheran University

This article reflects on the range of environmental and institutional layers that support pedagogical composition and student learning at a Lutheran University affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the Pacific Northwest. After reflection on layers that include geographic location, institutional affiliation and denominational affiliation, the author traces the way in which she incorporates these elements into the content and methods of assessment in a religion class on Islam.     

Towards a model for evaluating spiritual recollections

Spiritual recollections are often evaluated through the effectiveness of delivery, rather than the outcomes of the recollections. Such preference is understandable given the difficulty in defining and quantifying recollection outcomes. To address this gap, the article proposes a framework for evaluating recollection outcomes rather than delivery, and shows how a Filipino Catholic university makes use of this framework for its spiritual recollections. Using data from the university’s Office of Campus Ministry, the study shows how these outcomes were defined and finds that prayer significantly increases the odds of gaining from the recollection while participation in the alternative multifaith group reduces these odds. The article details the changes that were made in response to these results and ends with possible adaptation of this model in other contexts.