The Implicit Image of God: God as Reality and Psychological Well‐Being

Research has widely demonstrated that religiosity is related to psychological well‐being even in situations of severe illness. To assess religious beliefs, explicit measures have generally been used. In this study, we measured the belief that God is reality as opposed to myth or abstraction by using an implicit technique (the Single Category Implicit Association Test). The study was carried out in Italy, where a large majority of the population is Catholic, and the prevailing image of God is that of a compassionate and supportive father. Participants were cancer patients identifying themselves as believers. As expected, the automatic belief that God is reality (vs. abstraction) was related to beneficial outcomes: lower reported psychophysical anxiety symptoms and a weaker use of avoidance strategies to cope with stress. Thus, also, automatic religious beliefs may affect feelings and behaviors.     

What kind of tensions are involved in the pedagogical use of religious narratives? Perspectives from Finnish Evangelic Lutheran and Islamic religious education

Abstract

In this article, we examine how narratives of religious traditions are used as resources in religious education (RE) and compare practices from Evangelic Lutheran religious education (LRE) and Islamic religious education (IRE) in Finnish public schools. The sacredness of narratives from holy books entails that there can be contestations over their pedagogical use, and teachers need to negotiate the possible tensions between the pedagogical aims of liberal RE and the integrity of the holy narratives. The research data consists of interviews with teachers of LRE (n = 4) and IRE (n = 5) as well as classroom observations. The results of qualitative content analysis show that teachers use narratives as pedagogical resources when teaching about and from religion. However, tensions occurred between the ideals of student-centred, experiential and creative learning, on one hand, and respecting the sacredness of the narratives, on the other. We also present teachers’ ways of negotiating the tensions as well as some differences between LRE and IRE in the pedagogical use of narratives.     

Sense of Divine Involvement and Sense of Meaning in Life: Religious Tradition as a Contingency

This study examines the association between sense of divine involvement and sense of meaning in life. Then it proceeds to assess how this association varies by religious tradition. Using a random and national sample from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, this study finds that sense of divine involvement is associated with greater odds of having a sense of meaning in life. In addition, religious affiliation modifies this association. Specifically, the positive association between sense of divine involvement and the odds of having a sense of meaning in life is observed only among evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics, but not among other religionists and religious nones. I discuss how the results make contributions to knowledge about the link between religious beliefs, religious tradition, and mental health.     

Positive Loss and Tragic Memory: On the Preservation of Community

Theologies of disaster have to recognize exceptional disasters in the framework of a general human exposure to vulnerability, while engaging in the formation of human and religious resilience. Resilience is about “bouncing back and forward” in and through precautionary and self‐adaptive responses to disasters. Drawing up a distinction between personal tragedies and socially shared disasters, the basic argument is that the reconnection of disrupted communities lies at the center of both tragedy and disaster. This article describes a post‐secular theology of tragedy and disaster that mainly stays in a vernacular language, referring to basic assumptions of the gospel while refraining from using the heavier repertoires of Christian doctrine.     

Exploring the relationship between religious fundamentalism,life satisfaction,and meaning in life

This study explored the relationship between life satisfaction, meaning in life, and religious fundamentalism among 420 participants (28.8% male, 88.4% African, 8.4% White) residing in the Gauteng province of South Africa. A cross-sectional quantitative survey design was followed. Data were collected using the Meaning in Life questionnaire and the Satisfaction with Life scale, and analysed by means of latent variable modelling. Results indicated that meaning in life acted as a mediator between religious fundamentalism and life satisfaction. This suggests that in some cases, fundamentalist religious attitudes might be adaptive in that it provides its adherents with a clear framework of meaning and definite answers to life's existential uncertainties.     

Legal and Ethical Implications of Using Religious Beliefs as the Basis for Refusing to Counsel Certain Clients

This article addresses potential legal and ethical implications of lawsuits that have been brought when counselors and counseling students have used their religious beliefs as the basis for refusing to counsel lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual clients. Four lawsuits are reviewed, issues relevant to the cases are identified, and implications for counselor educators and counseling students are discussed.     

A New Culture of Learning: Digital Storytelling and Faith Formation

How has the “new culture of learning” begun to transform us, and in what ways might the faith formation practices of religious communities be impacted by the shift? Recent research funded by the MacArthur Foundation lays an empirical basis for recognizing shifts in learning brought about by widespread access to digital technologies. The implications of that research, in turn, pose widespread challenges to the work of faith formation in contemporary communities of faith. Communicative theologies may be best poised to engage these challenges through the practices of digital storytelling.     

Selecting among extraordinary informants

In our reply to the commentaries by Jacqui Woolley and Rebekah Richert, we discuss the following: (1) possible effects that religious educations have on individual differences and (2) how older children may construe mind‐readers.     

Better Never to Have Been Born

The pro‐life paradox, as I call it, begins with a single claim endorsed by many American Christians: infants and young children are innocent in the sight of God because they cannot yet take responsibility for their spiritual well‐being. With this in mind, I argue that pro‐life believers have unwittingly fallen victim to a theological paradox in which their attempts to save the earthly lives of unborn children make it theoretically possible for said children to die an eternal death. On the one hand, many Christians trust in an eventual spiritual reckoning where God will separate the “sheep” from the “goats” (see Matthew 25:31–46), ushering the former into heaven while damning the latter to hell. However, those who cannot yet repent and seek salvation are not blamed for their spiritual failings. If they die, they go to heaven because they are too young and intellectually immature to know any better. But if dead children are spiritually blameless, then abortion practitioners have perversely and paradoxically saved millions of unborn souls by removing human volition (and thus damnation itself) from the equation and by making it possible for the unborn to experience the joys of heaven without the temptations of earth.     

A response to the proposed ELCA inter‐religious policy statement

In this solicited essay, an undergraduate Interfaith Scholar and Interfaith Studies minor at Concordia College responds to the ELCA proposed interreligious policy statement. In this essay, I will contend that the policy statement beautifully articulates our Lutheran commitment to accompany our neighbors by envisioning a world in which God celebrates all forms of diversity. Moreover, by framing our vocation in the context of relational theology, the document lays the groundwork for mutual understanding that prioritizes service to the neighbor over proselytization.