World religion and fake news: A pedagogical response in an age of post‐truth

This article describes a pedagogical response to teaching world religions courses in a post‐truth age. The course assignment and its application, utilized in both online and in‐person formats, bridge student academic pursuits with religious traditions, require students to engage with source‐based journalism, and extend beyond the classroom into many of the contemporary politics encroaching upon the humanities fields. Related to the first, the objective of the assignment is for students to discover that religiosity permeates multiple sectors, both private and public, corresponding with student career paths. As a result, students discover that religion is relevant to their academic pursuits and that they must consider the possibilities of how religion might integrate with their career choices. Regarding the second objective, the assignment develops student digital media literacy skills as a form of civic education that challenges the current political attacks on journalism and factuality. Last, this exercise acknowledges the realities facing many humanities programs across the country and offers this assignment as a way of engaging with those issues within the classroom. See as well, published in this issue of the journal, three short companion essays by Sarah L. Schwarz, Jonathan R. Herman, and Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, each of which analyzes this pedagogical strategy for their particular teaching contexts.     

Summary report of the British Academy project on ‘Forced Migration,Religious Diplomacy and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World’

This review article provides an overview of the British Academy Project on ‘Forced Migration, Religious Diplomacy and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World’ (January–December 2018), research questions, methodology, main findings and policy recommendations. The project compared the ways in which religious communities engaged with forced displaced populations in Eastern Europe and former Soviet states, with a particular focus on Serbia and Ukraine, collected a dataset on ‘Eastern Orthodoxy and Human Security’ and organised two workshops in Belgrade and Kyiv.     

产品空间位置、价格音节长度对消费者价格感知的影响

本研究采用实验法考察了视听单通道及双通道下产品空间位置与价格音节长度对消费者价格感知的潜在影响。结果发现,呈现在空间右侧以及以较长音节播放的产品使得被试的价格感知升高;短音节条件下,个体对空间右侧产品的价格感知显著高于空间左侧,长音节条件下两侧则无显著差异;相对于单通道刺激呈现,视听通道呈现信息一致时出现信息冗余效应,个体判断的速度更快,验证了共激活模型假设,视听不一致条件下的速度降低则支持了预测编码模型。     

Using Expressive Arts in Online Education to Identify Feelings

The authors of this article present two creative teaching activities to illustrate how online counselor education can use expressive arts to promote awareness of how one feels. Included is a discussion of this awareness of feelings, the downside of expressing feelings, creative arts in counselor education, and how counselor education can promote feeling experiences. Two examples of expressive arts are offered with a brief discussion.     

Functions of Identity in the Context of Being a Student: Development and Validation of the Functions of Student Identity Scale

A promising approach to the understanding of identity is the identity functions framework. However, its developmental specificities associated with adolescence remain unexplored. The aim of this study was to develop and test a new measure of the functions of identity as they relate to being a student. Consistent with the theoretical framework, an exploratory analysis with a subsample of high school students revealed five identity functions. A confirmatory analysis with a second subsample found that a higher-order model incorporating these five subscales demonstrated good fit to the data. A bifactor model and statistical indices indicated that it is appropriate to interpret a total student identity score using this instrument. The five subscales, and total scale, demonstrated good convergent validity with a measure of academic behavioral change. These preliminary results suggest that this new instrument presents good psychometric properties and that it is a suitable assessment instrument for the measurement of students’ processes and outcomes. For example, its associations with academic performance stages of changes suggest that this instrument will be useful for identifying students at risk for poor academic trajectories.     

The Mechanism of the Emergence of Nihilism from the View of Intentional Tenacity

This paper sets forth the reasons why Nietzsche thought nihilism to be inevitable from the perspective of the tenacity of the intentional. Through distinguishing two ordered intentional states—first-order and high-order—and two kinds of objects respectively, the paper illustrates that it is impossible to find a new ultimate value to replace Christian values when Nietzsche announced “the death of God.” Inspired by Nietzsche’s thoughts, the paper concludes by briefly discussing the possibility of comparing Confucian and Nietzsche’s ideas concerning nihilism.     

Why do some students want to be actively involved as peer educators,while others do not? Findings from NoTrap! anti-bullying and anti-cyberbullying program

The present study aims to explore if students who voluntarily decide to become peer educators in an anti-bullying program differ from their classmates who don’t take on this role. 524 Italian students (age 13–18; males = 57%), completed self-report questionnaires at the pre-test measure of the NoTrap! anti-bullying program. In a following step, 118 of them voluntarily decided to become peer educators. Probit regression separate for gender, showed that male peer educators have a higher level of victimization, perceived support from friends and prosocial behaviour. On the other hand, female peer educators are characterized by a higher level of defending behaviours. These findings may guide further investigation about the role of peer educator in regards to bullying and cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs.     

An activist religiosity? Exploring Christian support for the Occupy movement

While Christian involvement in progressive social movements and activism is increasingly recognized, this literature has rarely gone beyond conceptualising religion as a resource to consider instead the ways in which individual activists may articulate their religious identity and how this intersects with the political. Based on ten in-depth interviews with Christian supporters of the London Occupy movement, this study offers an opportunity to respond to this gap by exploring the rich meaning-making processes of these activists. The article suggests that the location of the Occupy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral was of central importance in bringing the Christian Occupiers’ religio-political identities to the foreground, their Christianity being defined in opposition to that represented by St Paul’s. The article then explores the religio-political meaning-making of the Christian Occupiers and introduces the term ‘activist religiosity’ as a way of understanding how religion and politics were articulated, and enacted, in similar ways. Indeed, religion and politics became considerably entangled and intertwined, rendering theoretical frameworks that conceptualise religion as a resource increasingly inappropriate. The features of this activist religiosity include post-institutional identities, a dislike of categorisation, and, centrally, the notion of ‘doings’—a predominant focus on engaged, active involvement.     

Religion,ethnicity, and citizenship: the role of Jain institutions in the social incorporation of young Jains in Britain and the United States

The on-going importance of religion as a marker of identity among young South Asians has provoked reflection on the relationship between religion and citizenship in the aftermath of events such as 9/11 and 7/7. In general, European and American scholarship highlights different perspectives on the role of religion in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children. In this article I explore how religion shapes identity and citizenship among young Jains, a group that experiences successful socio-economic integration and material success in Britain and the United States. This qualitative comparative analysis of Jain institutions which are oriented towards young Jains reveals the ways in which the intersection of transnational circulation of religious ideas and actors, national integration regimes, migration histories, and the place of religion in specific contexts shapes religious identities, religious group boundaries, and religious discourses in different ways. Different Jain religious assemblages affirm views of religion in the United States as having a positive role in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children, but point to a more neutral role for religion in the incorporation of middle-class young Jains in Britain.     

Cyber-apostasy: its repercussions on Islam and interfaith relations*

In relations between Islam and the West, apostasy has been an issue of perennial contention. Although the Qur’ānic perspective on apostasy is ambiguous, the ?adīths and later Islamic legal thought prescribe harsh sanctions against apostasy, making repudiation of Islam extremely difficult, if not impossible, in the Muslim world. Such a coercive approach contravenes the Western value of freedom of conscience and the correlative right to religious freedom. Moreover, the rise of a parallel form of Islam—online- or cyber-Islam—has complicated the issue of apostasy even further. For countless Muslims worldwide, this parallel expression of their religion, although virtual, is even more ‘real’ than its offline, analogue expression. In this new Islamic expression, freedom of conscience can indeed be exercised. Online dissent, even to the point of engaging in ‘cyber-apostasy’ and encouraging others to do likewise, has given rise to a new level of reciprocity between Islam and other religions interacting with it in the ‘marketplace of religions’, thus opening a new chapter in the history of Islamic interaction with other faiths in the contemporary world.