Relationship stigma and Black-White interracial marital satisfaction: the mediating role of religious/spiritual well-being

Although the percentage of Black-White interracial marriage continues to increase in the United States, research is limited related to the impact of stigma on these couples and the processes that influence their responses to negative racial experiences. In the current study, the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation model was used as a theoretical foundation to investigate the relationship between stigma and couple satisfaction among Black-White interracially married couples, along with the potential mediating role of religious/spiritual well-being. A community sample of 180 interracially married individuals responded to surveys assessing their experiences of stigma due to being a member of an interracial couple, religious/spiritual well-being, and couple satisfaction. The analysis revealed that relationship stigma was negatively associated with couple satisfaction, and religious/spiritual well-being mediated the relationship between these two variables. To conclude, recommendations for intervention and prevention in the lives of Black-White interracial couples are offered.     

Positive aspects of voice-hearing: a qualitative metasynthesis

Voice-hearing occurs in clinical and non-clinical samples, and the role of spiritual and cultural frameworks of understanding for percipients has received increased attention. This review aimed to identify and synthesise the existing qualitative literature relating to positive aspects of voice-hearing experiences, and to make recommendations based on these findings for clinical practice and future research. Qualitative papers that included positive aspects of voice-hearing were identified by undertaking a systematic search of six electronic databases, resulting in 22 papers. The quality of each paper was assessed and the meta-ethnographic approach was used to extract and synthesise the data. Six themes were identified relating to voices providing safety and protection, guidance, creating psychological and emotional well-being, providing companionship, facilitating personal growth and development, and connecting hearers to religious or spiritual belief systems. The findings suggest positive aspects of voice-hearing that may have clinical and research implications.     

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.     

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.     

Psychiatry and religion: consensus reached!

ABSTRACT

In December 2015 the Executive Committee of the World Psychiatric Association accepted a position statement on spirituality and religion in psychiatry. In this contribution the author will (briefly) sketch the background of the development of this position statement, and the criteria it needs to fulfil. The aim of the final result will be explained, and some desiderata with regard to its future will be expressed. The full text of the Position Statement as it has been published in World Psychiatry (February 2016) is added as appendix (permission granted by the editor).     

From darkness to light: children speak of divine encounter

Abstract

Studies have shown that children share both positive and dark spiritual experiences. The former dominates the literature but whilst the need to address the dark side of spirituality has been raised it has not, as yet, been dealt with as widely as the more positive aspects. This paper draws on an empirical study with 44 children aged 8–11 who were interviewed in school after visiting a sacred space. Three key themes arising from their conversations are covered in this paper: divine encounter; physical feelings and fear. It is argued that the most appropriate way of understanding these phenomena is to draw on different fields and disciplines, notably although not exclusively, theology, psychoanalysis, psychology and neuroscience. The paper concludes that it is important to recognise both the light and dark and the blurred boundaries between them, in addition to different ways of perceiving them, in order to understand the whole child.     

Taking a children’s rights perspective on children’s spirituality

Abstract

The right to spiritual development has had little attention in public educational policy. This is more challenging, considering the fact of increasing religious diversity and the focus on spirituality and religion in that context, as well as the way the spiritual is mentioned in documents on children’s rights. This article traces the development from the first documents on the rights of the child and responses to these documents. It is argued that educational policy and practice should pay more attention to the way children’s spirituality is included in the documents. This is an issue of general education as well as of moral philosophy. The article concludes with a claim: spiritual development is a matter of survival and flourishing as human beings, and considering this in the framework of children’s rights could mean exploring spiritual sources in one’s own faith as well as in other faiths.     

Cultivating Christians: North American family cultures and religious identity formation

North American Christian families face many challenges as they try to live faithfully in an intercultural, multi-religious, secularising world, particularly with regard to the formation of religious identity in children. Answering the question of how children become Christian is more complicated today than it was for previous generations because adults cannot assume that the Christian vestiges of a civil religion will be sufficient to help children embrace a robust sense of themselves as God’s beloved and called people in a divinely created world. Thus, this essay explores what social science research and theological reflection might offer religious leaders as frameworks and tools for encouraging family cultures that cultivate young Christians, focusing particularly on strategies for sharing religious language, communicating beliefs and values, modelling spiritual practices, encountering symbolic images, and participating in congregational life.     

SCIENCE,SPIRITUALITY, AND AYAHUASCA: THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUAL ONTOLOGIES IN THE ACADEMY

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences.