God Versus Party: Competing Effects on Attitudes Concerning Criminal Punishment,National Security,and Military Service

We explore how images of God interact with political party to predict attitudes concerning the appropriate role of government in both criminal punishment and national security. Using the second wave of the Baylor Religion Survey (2007), we analyze the extent to which beliefs regarding God's moral judgment moderate the influence of party affiliation on opinions about the death penalty, fighting terrorism, punishing criminals, serving in the military, and U.S. involvement in the Iraq War. Specifically, we find that Democrats who believe in a judgmental God tend to support more conservative policies. In fact, attitudes converge such that the effects of party membership are erased if rival partisans both believe in a judgmental moral authority.     

The Powerful Other: How Divine Control Shapes the Relationship Between Personal Control and Psychological Distress

In the sociological study of mental health, the sense of personal control represents a core psychological resource, but some studies document a curvilinear association between personal control and depressive symptoms. This body of research is largely secular in orientation, even though research also demonstrates that some individuals believe in an involved and engaged Powerful Other (e.g., God). We evaluate if such beliefs moderate the relationship between personal control and depression. Using data from the 2005 Work, Stress, and Health Study in the United States (N = 1,791), we first demonstrate that the sense of personal control has an overall curvilinear association with depression, in line with previous research. Then, we document that divine control beliefs modify this association such that the curvilinear association is found primarily among individuals with low levels of divine control. By contrast, among those who more strongly endorse divine control, we observe no relationship between personal control and depression. We situate our findings in the differing and complicated perspectives on the implications of religious beliefs for psychological resources and well‐being.     

宗教研究的认知科学新取向

宗教认知科学是新近出现的从认知和进化的角度研究宗教的分支学科。主要有认知副产物和社会适应两种理论。认知副产物理论认为宗教信仰是人类认知倾向的副产物;社会适应理论认为宗教信仰促进群体的团结合作,是一个精巧的社会适应机制,有助于群体的自然选择。两种理论引发了系列的实验研究,由于宗教认知科学仍处于理论研究向实证研究的过渡阶段,未来需统一概念,加强实验范式的建立,更多地借助认知科学的方法和工具开展实证研究。     

The im-possibility of secular critique: The future of religion's memory

The legacy of secular critique, with its Greek, Christian, Kantian, modernist traces, constitutes an aporetic law (or contradiction). That law is this: a critical legacy, if it is critical, can affirm and sustain itself only by trying to separate it from itself (from the very crisis that it is). The legacy or history of ‘religion’ is always a history of such critique. Such a legacy always anticipates critiquing itself, its memory (of whatever kind – racist, sexist, colonialist, nationalist). Such a legacy of critique is always a legacy of crisis. However, the crisis of such a legacy cannot be resolved, because critique, as kairos/krisis (critical/decisive moment), can admit of no resolution. Yet the (secular) history of religion, if it is ever historical, can only be a history of such aporetic critique. Such an aporetic critique will be the heritage of religion's im-possible ¹ ?1. I write the word impossible/impossibility with and without a hyphen. When I hyphenate im-possible, I do so to remain true to Derrida's use of it. The im-possible is irreducible to either possibility or impossibility. Sometimes Derrida also writes the word without hyphenating it, but he still implies such irreducibility. future. It is an im-possible future because it will always be a promise, a promise to separate it from itself, a promise that will remain always deferred, always to come. Today, the promise of this secular critique is (in) democracy with its sovereign ‘decisive’ politics. We can no longer simply critique the (future) legacy of religion, understood this way. To do so is to fulfil that legacy's own messianic wish. This is the aporetic limit of secular critique. To think at the limits of the legacy of the critique of religion is to think the very question of the (secular) history of ‘religion’ and its others, that is, ‘religions’.     

Toward the Scientific Study of Polytheism: Beyond Forced‐Choice Measures of Religious Belief

This article argues that zero‐sum, forced‐choice approaches to measuring religious belief do not work well outside of the Abrahamic world. Positive‐sum approaches to measuring religious beliefs (in the plural) are better suited to the study of polytheistic societies. Using results from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2011 Taiwan, we demonstrate that in a polytheistic society like Taiwan, religious belief is not zero sum. We also contrast our results with those of the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS), and seek to show that our positive‐sum approach to measuring religious beliefs can help us better understand the disparate causes and consequences of different religious beliefs in polytheistic societies. The challenge of Christocentrism in quantitative studies of religion is also discussed.     

Transcendence techniques and psychobiological mechanisms underlying religious experience

In this paper the author explores the process by which the combined influence of specific cultural factors and individual transcendence techniques activates psychobiological mechanisms that, in turn, trigger the appearance of special states of consciousness, namely religious trance. Most of these religious and spiritual experiences rationalize a threat common to all cultures, namely the risk of losing one's Ego.

The activation of individual transcendence techniques paraphrases denial defence mechanisms insofar as it involves avoidance of the external reality to preserve homeostasis. The mentioning in psychoanalytic terms of a ‘death instinct’ (i.e. a drive opposite to the attachment/life instinct) as a possible source of detachment/transcendence phenomena is still worth considering.

The Freudian example of ‘the cotton-reel mother’, whom the child could make disappear and then reappear again, is a powerful one of the phenomenon of detachment dynamics.

Cross-cultural research on the varieties of trance shows that Altered States of Consciousness can be induced by both collective and personal rituals that allow the subject to reach the altered states of consciousness by making the whole world appear or disappear in fantasy. While some of the highest forms of supernatural experience, such as ecstasy, mysticism and the communion with the Absolute, engender enough social approval to allow to believe that such experiences mitigate or prevent mental disorders, when the supernatural experiences occur in bizarre features they are indicators of a clear psychopathology.

The perspective of transcultural psychiatry offers the best method of outlining the great ethnographic variety of these experiences and, subsequently, making a comparative analysis of the links that exists among culture, psychopathology and the supernatural in a given situation.

From a clinical point of view, it becomes increasingly clear that psychiatrists need expertise to draw clinical inferences based on the specific patient's culture and his psychopathological presentation, especially when the patient's life history is characterized by the multi-faceted activity of transcendence techniques.     

Church service roles and anticipated support among older Mexican Americans

The purpose of this study is to see how feelings of anticipated support arise in church. Anticipated support refers to the belief that coreligionists will provide assistance in the future if the need arises. This model contains the following hypothesis: (1) people who affiliate with conservative Protestant congregations will be more deeply committed to their faith, (2) individuals who are more committed to their faith will attend church more frequently, (3) people who go to church more often will be more likely to occupy church service roles, (4) those who occupy church service roles will feel more highly valued by their coreligionists, (5) individuals who feel they are valued highly by fellow church members will receive more emotional support from them, and (6) people who receive more emotional support at church will have stronger anticipated support beliefs. Data from a nationwide survey of older Mexican Americans support these hypotheses.     

Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization,by Hans G. Kippenberg,trans. Brian McNeil,Stanford University Press: Stanford,CA, 2011, viii + 286 pp. ISBN 978 0 8047 68726, US$70 (cloth); ISBN 978 0 8047 6873 3, US$21.95 (paperback)

The author argues in this paper that the ‘state effects’ generated by religious movements – even those operating at the margins of societies – require us to consider anew the impact of religious movements on state formation. In Sri Lanka, for instance, evangelicals are a minority. Yet their practice of proselytizing to new audiences was considered ‘unethical,’ generating opposition that was directed not only at them, but also at ruling elites for failing to stem what was seen as an intrusion of incompatible ‘Western’ ideals. Instead of considering how such Christian movements seek to ‘take over’ the functions of the ‘state’ as has been the experience in the United States and parts of Latin America, the author illustrates in this article why it makes more theoretical sense to ask how their activities impinge upon the conceptual frameworks through which the ‘state’ is imagined.     

The interior and the abject: uses and abuses of the female in the middle ages

In this paper I argue that during the High Middle Ages definitions of the female as distinct from the life led by women played a crucial role in defining social boundaries and solidifying new systems of power. I suggest that there were two female figures that were crucial to these definitions: the mother and the virgin. While the mother image was invoked to describe the internal functioning of the Christian community, the virgin metaphor drew the external boundaries and defined the Christian community's relation to the non‐Christian other.     

十六大以来党中央对马克思主义宗教观的新认识和新观点

十六大以来,以胡锦涛为总书记的中央领导集体,从构建社会主义和谐社会的总体战略出发,提出了建立和谐宗教关系的理论;强调要充分发挥宗教在促进社会和谐方面的积极作用,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;进一步明确了宗教工作在党和国家工作中的地位,要求加强和改善党对宗教工作的领导,形成了对宗教问题的新认识和新观点。