The Saint

Today, within the Christian culture, the celebrity has replaced the idea of the saint. Very strangely, the celebrity is the dire opposite of the classic notion of the saint. Even more strikingly, the idea of celebrity runs contrary to Jesus' teachings. Of course, in Jesus' day, there were no celebrities, as we know them today. What passed for celebrities in his day were the rich and wealthy. They were the ones that everyone looked up to and admired, but Jesus tells us that they are actually the most unfortunate, and that wealth is the most dangerous of any of the idols that possess us and keep us from the fullness of life God has for us.     

Broadway Musicals and the Christian Sermon: Communicating Moral Reasoning,Church Values,and Prosocial Behaviors

This article considers the influence of Broadway musicals on the spiritual growth, prosocial attitudes, church values, and moral reasoning of adults when used in Christian congregational worship. Can a church structure and use Broadway musicals in sermons to encourage its lay congregation to identify moral reasoning and recognize core church values and prosocial ideas through sermons based on Broadway musical theater? We applied humanistic psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and development considered along with the church's stated core values and prosocial behavior to test if these themes were reflected in the rhetoric of sermons based on Broadway musicals presented from 2008–2015. Findings indicate that this series was well received by the congregation and leadership. Suggestions for further research and church applications for Christian education are given. This research highlights the importance of church archives and library support for the further development of information about the church and its role in society.     

Exploring social television,opinion leaders,and Twitter audience reactions to Diane Sawyer's coming out interview with Caitlyn Jenner

With increasing visibility in both fictional and nonfictional media, transgender individuals have become a staple of the media landscape. Nonetheless, the general public has been slow to warm to transgender individuals and the rights of this community of people. The present study explored the audience reception to Caitlyn Jenner's coming out interview with Diane Sawyer. Examining Twitter conversations as part of a social television experience, this paper focuses on the types of words and phrases used in response to the interview, the themes that were present in the conversation, and the opinion leaders who helped to shape the discussion. Co-occurrence of themes was also explored. Results indicated an overwhelmingly positive response from live tweeters watching Jenner's coming out interview, led by a small but influential group of celebrities and media personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Perez Hilton. Top themes included support, gender, journey to truth, family drama, and bravery. The results are positioned within an exploration of the social nature of television viewing and reception of transgenderism by mainstream audiences.     

Changing Worship Practices in American Congregations

Worship is the core activity of American congregations and the primary way people experience religion collectively in the United States. We use data from the National Congregations Study (NCS), notably including data from the fourth wave, collected in 2018–19, to examine two key trends in worship practices among American religious congregations. First, the trend toward more informal and enthusiastic worship identified in earlier NCS surveys continues into 2019. Showing no signs of having reached a plateau, a more informal worship style has increased in prevalence across every major American religious tradition. Second, recently developed communication technologies have permeated congregations’ worship services in ways that change the collective experience. Collected on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCS-IV data on worship and technology provide a baseline for future examinations of worship changes caused by the pandemic, and a window into congregations’ technological preparedness for a world in which it is not safe to gather.     

Test-Taking Behaviors by Hypertensive and Normotensive Individuals

Systematic ratings were made on the Tulane Test-Behavior Scale of the global and integrated behaviors observable for hypertensive and normotensive subjects as they worked to complete a battery of neuropsychological tests—the degree of attention and effort displayed, for example, self-confidence and self-criticism. The results for 82 subjects (41 subject pairs matched for age, race, and education) revealed substantial and consistent differences between groups. Early, mild hypertensive subjects (unmedicated) displayed significantly less optimal behaviors than did normotensive controls. These may be best understood as subtle functional consequences of the abnormal physiological state imposed on the brain by a chronically elevated blood pressure, just as the functional disruptions of reduced kidney filtration fraction or minor abnormalities of the electrocardiogram appear early in the course of the disorder for other target organs. Certain testable implications of this hypothesis are discussed.     

Popular culture fandoms,the boundaries of religious studies,and the project of the self

The starting point of this paper will be studies that view popular culture as religion. First, I examine a selection of recent works that argue certain popular culture communities—namely, music subcultures, sports, and television and celebrity fandoms—look like, act like, and indeed are religions for participants. Methodologically, the studies under examination proceed by starting with a definition of religion and then looking for parallels between the pop culture fandom and the definition. I suggest that popular culture as religion scholarship is at best creative, always problematic, and tends toward what Samuel calls ‘parallelomania’. In the second part of the paper, I use the studies under examination, as well as original research, to argue that contemporary fandoms are better understood as late modern ‘projects of the self’, affiliational choices that act to establish self-identity and community in a time period when these things are not given, but reflexively made and remade.     

Churched Ibiza: Evangelical Christianity and Club Culture

In this article, I trace the shifting theorisation of religious conflict to argue that religious conflict in the USA is shaped by a dialectic of religious and secular movements. Church-sect theory, which was originally a class-based theoretical framework, was appropriated by the rational choice approach in the sociology of religion, which instead privileged competition in a religious marketplace. Ernst Troeltsch described divisions between church and sect, but H. Richard Niebuhr demarcated a denominational divide in the USA based on class, region, ethnicity and race. In the 1980s, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter observed that the differences in the US were no longer necessarily between denominations but could occur within denominations. For them, what had become known as the Culture Wars were based on a conflict between religious liberals/progressives and religious conservatives/orthodox. This conflict is shaped by a dialectic of secular and religious movements and counter-movements.     

Contributing Factors That Influence the Elderly in Their Attitudes Toward Euthanasia

ABSTRACT

By using a cross-sectional survey, this research study examines the ethical dilemma of euthanasia among a sample of 329 community-based elderly persons, diverse in culture and religious affiliation, from two types of environments: 216 from 15 different community sites and 113 who are home-bound. The study defines euthanasia and, utilizing analyses of data from empirical studies and population polls, explains the factors that influence attitudes toward euthanasia among the elderly: life satisfaction, health, education, religiosity, and living arrangements. These contributing factors are statistically measured at the p ≤ .05 level of significance by a variety of tests: ANOVA, correlation, and regression analysis.

Findings in the covariate analysis show the major contributing factors to be life satisfaction and religiosity, which have a strong impact upon attitudes toward euthanasia among the elderly, whereas the correlation and regression analyses indicate religiosity alone as the major contributing factor. The results of the multiple regression analysis show that 11 percent of the variance is explained among all the variables and 6 percent of this variance is explained by the variable total religiosity, which has the most effect on attitudes toward euthanasia. The implications of these findings provide insight into intervention in social services for the elderly within congregational and community settings that will enhance the quality of life for the elderly as they continue to “age in place.”     

Ministry with the Confused Elderly

Clergy and lay visitors often encounter the confused elderly, yet most seem to find it difficult to understand the relevance of their ministry to such persons. Many confused seniors have been active participants in their church or synagogue and have significant faith experiences. However, once they become confused, they are often seen as disruptive in services of worship and unreachable with the current tools of ministry. Thus, older adults who have Organic Brain Syndrome often become disenfranchised from the active life of their religious congregation. This article will summarize the findings of a study that culminated in the development of a model approach to ministry that combines the concepts of sensory stimulation, reality orientation, and worship to provide a focal point for ministry with the confused elderly. Once learned, this technique can be used successfully by anyone who is comfortable with leading worship. It can be applied in many settings, but is particularly useful in long-term care institutions.     

Celebrity and Political Psychology: Remembering Lennon

This article is a contribution toward the task of constructing a distinctive political psychology and social theory of celebrity. The article begins by noting some recent approaches to the analysis of mass communications in political theory, and moves to consider what these theories mean for the conceptual analysis of celebrity. A substantive example of the political construction of celebrity is given in a case study of the ex-Beatle, John Lennon—specifically, the social drama surrounding his death in 1980. A number of issues, ranging from the denial of death in modernity to the multiplex modes of cultural remembering, are discussed as they relate to celebrity.