Coping with diversity in Religious Education: an overview

As a result of secularisation and increasing religious diversity, several European nation have states adapted their policy with regard to the organisation of Religious Education (RE) (or its equivalent) in state schools (schools funded and established by the state). In this article, different strategies will be outlined and evaluated: (1) the shift from confessional/catechetical to semi-confessional RE; (2) the possibility of exemption; (3) the organisation of an alternative, non-confessional, subject; (4) the expansion of RE subjects (multi-religious RE); (5) the shift from confessional to non-confessional RE; (6) the integration of information about religions in other school subjects. Based on a human rights perspective, the author argues why some of these strategies are preferable to others.     

Religious experience and mental health: anthropological and psychological approaches

ABSTRACT

Moreira-Almeida, Sharma, van Rensburg, Verhagen and Cook have written a very comprehensive position statement pertaining to religion and psychiatry. While presenting a good overview of studies of religion, spirituality and mental health it does not include the important area of the health implications of religious experience which is the focus of this piece. I begin by discussing definitions of religious experience before examining the work of William James. The second part of this paper focuses upon specific religious experiences and psychopathology with a focus on mysticism, hallucinations and culture.     

How Many Congregations Are There? Updating a Survey‐Based Estimate

Researchers have attempted to estimate the number of congregations in the United States using counts provided by denominations, existing media (newspapers, phone books, websites, etc.), and calculations using congregational surveys. Hadaway and Marler (2005) took the third approach, basing their estimate on the 1998 National Congregations Study (NCS), a representative sample of U.S. congregations, and select official denominational statistics. Since publishing their estimate of 331,000 congregations in 1998, two subsequent waves of the NCS have been conducted. Using the same approach, I estimate the number of congregations in 1998, 2006, and 2012. I conclude that congregations probably became more numerous, likely due to growth among nondenominational Protestants and the extraordinarily low death rate of congregations. But I also consider alternative interpretations of the data.     

Religious studies as a modern academic discipline in Korea

This article offers a historical and institutional overview of the discipline of religious studies in Korea. It first reviews four early sources of comparative studies: work by Christian missionaries; by Japanese scholars during the period of colonization by that nation; by nationalist Korean scholars who reacted against colonization; and by Korean Christian theologians. The founding of the Korean Association for the History of Religions (KAHR) in 1969 was a key point in the professionalization of the discipline. The field became more firmly established in the late 1980s and early 1990s and has diversified in recent years with a new generation of often foreign-trained scholars. The article ends with a brief discussion of potential contributions that the discipline could make to current debates of national significance.     

Interfaith Groups as Mediating Structures for Political Action: A Multilevel Analysis

This study investigates interfaith groups from across the United States to understand how these religious settings may serve as mediating structures to facilitate individual political action. Based on a multilevel modeling analysis with 169 individuals from 25 interfaith groups, we found that core activities of the group, such as group members sharing community information (e.g., announcing upcoming events, political meetings, community issues) or sharing religious information (e.g., educating members about their religion) positively and negatively predicted individual political action as a result of group participation, respectively. Moreover, a sense that the interfaith group served as a community to work for local change, but not trust within the group, predicted political action as a result of group participation. However, this effect for a sense the group served as a community to work for local change was stronger and more positive as the degree of community information sharing in the group increased. These results show that a core activity of sharing community information may enhance the ability of a group to mediate political action. Overall, these findings demonstrate the potential role of interfaith groups to mediate political action, and show the importance of considering both individual and group characteristics when understanding these religious settings. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Expressing the tradition in an educational context

Being born into a religious tradition, remaining within it and making one’s life an expression of it as a chaplain in a faith‐based college is not necessarily an unimaginative choice. A culture has some enduring characteristics but to survive meaningfully it has to be relevant to contemporary life. Thus, there is a necessity to question what is to be kept and what is to be discarded or less empathised. Most importantly, it must be asked by what means in such a college – through the design of buildings, chapel worship, respect of all college members, self‐conscious continuity and social projects – it can be effectively acted out in otherwise secular academic culture and multi‐cultural collegial community.     

日本的宗教法与宗教管理

自1946年颁布宗教法人令,日本的宗教法历经十余次修订,但其一贯的原则都是宗教自由、政教分离,政府对宗教法人的自治权和自律权给予充分的尊重。在宗教界内部的管理方面,宗议会制度和责任役员制度体现了民主的原则和平等的原则,为战后宗教的发展提供了制度性保障。由于宽松的政策环境和民主化管理,宗教在日本战后获得了很大发展。但1995年的奥姆真理教事件之后,日本政府对宗教法做出了重大修改,在尊重教团的自律性前提下强化了政府对宗教教团的管理,宗教团体的活动空间受到一定的限制。     

Fundamentalism and the masculine body: The case of Jewish Ultra-Orthodox men in Israel

The predominant model in the literature on fundamentalism focuses on the tense relationship between contemporary radical religious movements and their environment. The characteristic violence that has made fundamentalism notorious is conventionally explained in terms of defensive or offensive reactions to the challenge of the modern secular society. In light of recent developments in the fundamentalist world, we propose to employ a novel analytic framework to update and revise the current conceptualization. Our argumentation is based on extensive fieldwork in a particular case of Jewish fundamentalism. We introduce into the agenda of fundamentalism research a category conspicuously absent thus far: the body. Results of ethnographic study of Ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel throw light on the very existence of fundamentalist body, and emphasize its implications for better understanding the fundamentalist predicament. The body poses a major problem to fundamentalists and plays a key role in their typical behavior and particularly in their violence. Discussing fundamentalism in terms of the body allows us to see its militancy as a solution to intra-fundamentalist problems that emerge in advanced stages of the movements' life, on the one hand, and paradoxically as a means towards reconciliation with the movements' environment normally regarded as its enemy, on the other hand. In the case presented here the fundamentalist violence is manifested in various hitherto unexplored ways including an enthusiastic service in the military of the nation-state. Such peculiar violence indicates present-day fundamentalist experimentation in an attempt to establish new possibilities of coming to terms with ever changing social and political reality, while at the same time to pursue revolutionary options of radical religious experience.     

Women, piety and practice: A study of women and religious practice in Malaysia

While the definition of religion in sociology has been highly contentious, we define religion in this article as simply the acts of piety that are conducted within the religious sphere. The point of this definition is to draw attention to practice and away from belief. This approach to religion appears to be especially useful in the case of contemporary Islam, where female piety has become a significant aspect of religious renewal. The idea of a religious sphere is taken from the work of Luc Boltanski and his colleagues who have coined the expression ‘the inspirational city’. Religion thus consists of acts of piety within the inspirational city, where this space is seen to be in tension with the secular city. The measurement of piety in everyday life sharply differentiates the profane world from religion. These ideas are explored in this article through qualitative data that are drawn from a small sample of pious women in contemporary Malaysia. We explore three aspects of female piety: veiling, polygamy and child-rearing. The article attempts to understand the terms in which piety is measured within the broader context of the Islamization of public life in Malaysia.