Teaching the Devout Student: Faith and Scholarship in the Classroom

Increasing numbers of college students enrolling in religion courses in recent years are looking to develop their religious faith or spirituality, while professors of religion want students to use and appreciate scholarly tools to study religion from an academic perspective. Some scholars argue that it is not possible to satisfy both goals in the classroom, while authors in this journal have given suggestions on how to bridge the gap between faith and scholarship. I argue that such authors are correct and that, in my experience, historical‐critical methods can help devout students understand the original texts in their own religion better, comprehend why changes in interpretation have occurred over time, and appreciate the values in religions other than their own. Not all devout students are comfortable with an academic study of religion, but many can attain a more mature faith by such an approach.     

Justice and the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions1

The prospect of dangerous climate change requires Humanity to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. This in turn raises the question of how the permission to emit greenhouse gases should be distributed and among whom. In this article the author criticises three principles of distributive justice that have often been advanced in this context. He also argues that the predominantly statist way in which the question is framed occludes some morally relevant considerations. The latter part of the article turns from critique and advances a new way of addressing the problem. In particular, first, it proposes four key theses that should guide our normative analysis; and, second, it outlines how these four theses can be realised in practice.     

Necessity of origins and multi-origin art

The Necessity of Origins is the thesis that, necessarily, if a material object wholly originates from some particular material, then it could not have wholly originated from any significantly non-overlapping material. Several philosophers have argued for this thesis using as a premise a principle that we call ‘Single Origin Necessity’. However, we argue that Single Origin Necessity is false. So any arguments for The Necessity of Origins that rely on Single Origin Necessity are unsound. We also argue that the Necessity of Origins itself is false. Our arguments rely on a thesis in the ontology of art that we find plausible: Multi-Work Materialism. It is the thesis that works of art that have multiple concrete manifestations are co-located with those manifestations.     

Recurrent motifs as resonant attractor states in the narrative field: a testable model of archetype

At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recurrent myths and folktale motifs (Jung 1956, 1959, para. 99). But the archetype remains controversial as an explanation of recurrent motifs, as the existence of recurrent motifs does not prove that archetypes exist. Thus, the challenge for contemporary archetype theory is not merely to demonstrate that recurrent motifs exist, since that is not disputed, but to demonstrate that archetypes exist and cause recurrent motifs. The present paper proposes a new model which is unlike others in that it postulates how the archetype creates resonant motifs. This model necessarily clarifies and adapts some of Jung's seminal ideas on archetype in order to provide a working framework grounded in contemporary practice and methodologies. For the first time, a model of archetype is proposed that can be validated on empirical, rather than theoretical grounds. This is achieved by linking the archetype to the hard data of recurrent motifs rather than academic trends in other fields.     

Native Americans and Alcohol: Past,Present, and Future

Native Americans have higher rates of alcohol use, frequency of use, and increased rates of fetal alcohol syndrome, compared with other ethnic groups (J. Hisnanick, 1992; P. A. May, 1996; J. M. Wallace et al., 2003). High prevalence rates of alcohol misuse among Native Americans must be understood in light of their unique history, which has resulted in trauma and exposure to many risk factors for problem alcohol use. Many risk factors have been identified in the general population; however, only some of these risk factors have been examined among Native American populations. The unique history and world view of Native Americans mean that, often, risk factors operate differently from the way they do in other populations. The authors discuss interventions and promising treatments.     

Age differences in cognitive performance: A study of cultural differences in Historical Context

Ethnicity and cultural experience can affect neuropsychological performance, but they are rarely assessed in historical context. Attention measures are considered strongly biologically determined and therefore potentially culture‐fair. In this study, we assessed the cross‐cultural equivalence of Spanish and English versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; Reitan, 1958, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 8, 271–276) and the Brief Test of Attention (BTA; Schretlen et al., 1996, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 10, 80–89) in two large samples of Americans (N = 203) and Spaniards (N = 213), divided into younger and older subgroups. The older Spaniards lived under Franco's political regime (1936–1975), whereas the Americans never experienced such repression. Overall, TMT performance was culture‐sensitive, whereas BTA performance was not. However, when both groups were stratified by age, cultural differences in TMT performance were restricted to older participants, suggesting that historical experience across generations might have contributed to the observed differences in cognitive performance. Even such basic cognitive processes as attention, working memory, and resource sharing might be shaped to some degree by historical experiences that contribute to cultural differences.     

两宋史事易学的演变与发展特征

援史释《易》成为宋儒解《易》的常用方式,虽然此种注《易》方式并不始于宋代,但大量用史在宋代易学阐释中表现的尤为突出。究其原因,当与宋代儒学复兴、史学发展以及宋代士人的政治观念有着密切的联系。北宋与南宋的史事易学又呈现出明显的不同,北宋援引史事是出于解说义理的需要,而南宋则用史事解证卦爻辞,直接将《周易》视为一部极具历史借鉴及指导意义的经典。南宋卦卦有史的《周易》阐释并不是一朝一夕形成的,而是北宋援引史事以证易理的继承与发展。     

The beneficial effects of prosocial spending on happiness: work hard,make money,and spend it on others?

Previous research has shown that the way people spend their money is as important to happiness as how much money people earn. Specifically, it has been shown that spending money on others contributes more to an individual’s happiness than spending money on oneself. In the present study, we investigated this effect and examined the role of the money’s origin. Students were randomly assigned either to spend a small amount of money on themselves or to spend the money on others. Moreover, half of the participants received the money as a wage, whereas the other half received the money as a windfall. The results replicated previous research indicating that prosocial spenders report greater happiness than do selfish spenders. However, the happiness effect was unaffected by the source of the money (i.e. wage vs. windfall). Implications for well-being and happiness are discussed.     

Memory and identity among post-Soviet Evangelical Christians–Baptists in contemporary Ukraine

Evangelical Christians–Baptists (ECBs) are a prominent denomination in contemporary Ukraine. They survived persecution by Soviet state atheism and are meeting the challenges of postcommunist freedom. They provide good ground for a case study on how religious communities preserve their collective memories and identities when times and conditions change. In this paper, based on various sources produced by churches and religious organisations, I analyse the ways in which ECBs maintain and reflect upon their collective memories and reinvent their traditions. Particularly I focus on historical narratives and commemorations. I argue that the ECBs develop their collective memories in transnational, local and personal perspectives. They are eager to see the history of their community as an inalienable part of the national history of Ukraine, but also consider themselves as both rooted in Russian culture and heirs of a European Protestant tradition. The main values in the core of their memory discourse are holiness, spirituality, suffering for faith and survival of the community in a hostile society. Celebrations of faith heroes and martyrs are especially popular among those who belong to the former underground wing of this denomination. A more recent trend is the celebration of the history of local congregations. As ECBs perceive threats to their traditional way of life from the West and the national liberalism of today, they become more fundamentalist and persistent in its preservation and protection. Ultimately, in order to defend their cultural space from ‘immoral’ influences, they have become more politically active and have contributed to conservative and anti-liberal agendas on the national level in Ukraine.     

Religious competence and individuality: three studies in the Roman Empire

Abstract

The theme of individuality and individualisation in religious contexts in the fairly remote past is perhaps best viewed as a heuristic device whose main value, at least in the context of Graeco-Roman history, is to question the excessive dominance of a model of religious action as essentially collective, which is perhaps proximately Durkheimian but in the Classical field goes back ultimately to early scholarship on ancient Judaism. Terminology is a basic problem in this context. Religious individuality can be defined as the construction of personal religious achievement or the practice of mastery defined by sui generis rules. In the case of the Roman Empire, five types of such achievement have been suggested: pragmatic; moral; competitive; representative; or exemplary/ reflexive. All these distinguishable types of individuality are linked, at least indirectly, to the complex and highly differentiated social, political, economic and moral structures of the Empire. Specifically religious individuation emerges only with the development of religion as a distinctive field of (social) action and thus the possibility of specifically religious distinction. If sustained over the long term, any such achievement is to be seen as individualisation under ancient conditions. This article briefly explores three types of religious distinction based on a conviction and lived practice of such individualised competence: the figure of the Weberian mystagogue in his Mediterranean forms; the figure of the practitioner skilled in Graeco-Egyptian ‘magic’; and the idealised figure of Pythagoras as projected by Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean life (c.300 CE).