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Aims The literature review aimed to identify the barriers the Punjabi and/or Sikh community have in accessing support for alcohol addiction. Method A systematic review of the literature was undertaken of four scholarly databases, Google Scholar and grey literature on UK-based research conducted after 1980 into alcohol addiction in the Punjabi and/or Sikh community. Fourteen papers met the inclusion criteria outlined in the paper and were included in the review. Results Ten main barriers to accessing support were found; stigma, religion, lack of understanding of addiction, over reliance on a medical model of treatment and disregard of therapy, cultural implications of being a member of the Punjabi and/or Sikh community and the addiction community, gender and generational differences and a lack of government commitment to alcohol support for BME communities with a lack of culturally specific services. Conclusion Despite the many barriers explored, the role of stigma remained a powerful theme throughout often underpinning other barriers. A key recommendation across many papers was the need for culturally sensitive support services. Several areas for future research were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low utilization of household credit in developing countries may be partially due to religious considerations. In a randomized marketing experiment in Jordan, this paper estimates the effect of sharia-compliant loan features on demand for credit. To comply with Islamic law, the sharia-compliant product uses a bank fee rather than an interest payment structure, while keeping the rest of the product features very similar. Sharia-compliance increased the application rate for loans from 18 percent to 22 percent, an increase in demand that is equivalent to a 10 percent decrease in interest rates. This study also randomly varied the price of the sharia-compliant loan and finds that less religious individuals are twice as elastic with respect to price as the more religious. By comparing reasons for refusal across treatment groups, this paper estimates that survey measures that try to assess the importance of religious objections to conventional credit overestimate the importance of this type of objection by a third. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines possible mechanisms behind the spike in racially or religiously-aggravated (RR) offences after the Brexit vote. It adds to the current literature in five significant ways: (1) it provides the first Brexit-related RR hate crime comparison between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; (2) it reports on results from a national-level panel model that adds to the debate in the literature on whether pro-leave or pro-remain areas saw greater increases hate crimes; (3) it assesses the role of demographic characterises on the variation in hate crime; (4) it compares the effect of the vote with other 'trigger events'; and (5) it uses social media data to control for variation in hate crime victim and witness reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, where around 19,500 dialects are spoken, there is a great abundance of fiction quite rich in varied descriptions of old age and aging. While scholars like Pramod K. Nayar and Ira Raja have recently begun studying Indian literary texts written in English from the perspective of literary gerontology, those literary experiences of aging (which are originally in languages like Bengali, Tamil, Hindi, Oriya, etc.) are yet to be analyzed from a gerontological point of view. The present paper aims at studying the experiences of old age in 2 Indian short stories (one from Bengali Literature and another from Tamil Literature)—Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay's "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi" ("Drabomoyeer Kashibash" in Bengali) and T. Janakiraman's "The Puppet" ("Vilayattu Bommai" in Tamil). Regarding "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi," the paper interrogates the problems in the emplacement of Hindu older widows to Kashi and explores the possibilities in Drabomoyee from ecofeminist and creatural perspectives. The discussions on "The Puppet" chiefly reflect on the social exclusion of the aging bodies of people living with dementia. Through the story of Venu, the paper shows that what the society or family generally expects from the older persons suffering from dementia may not do any good to them, and may instead lead to their institutionalization and other forms of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There are communities in which hearing voices frequently is common and expected, and in which participants are not expected to have a need for care. This paper compares the ideas and practices of these communities. We observe that these communities utilize cultural models to identify and to explain voice-like events—and that there are some common features to these models across communities. All communities teach participants to "discern," or identify accurately, the legitimate voice of the spirit or being who speaks. We also observe that there are roughly two methods taught to participants to enable them to experience spirits (or other invisible beings): trained attention to inner experience, and repeated speech to the invisible other. We also observe that all of these communities model a learning process in which the ability to hear spirit (or invisible others) becomes more skilled with practice, and in which what they hear becomes clearer over time. Practice—including the practice of discernment—is presumed to change experience. We also note that despite these shared cultural ideas and practices, there is considerable individual variation in experience—some of which may reflect psychotic process, and some perhaps not. We suggest that voice-like events in this context may be shaped by cognitive expectation and trained practice as well as an experiential pathway. We also suggest that researchers could explore these common features both as a way to help those struggling with psychosis, and to consider the possibility that expectations and practice may affect the voice-hearing experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychedelic-assisted therapy has attracted considerable clinical attention in the past decade for its ability to bring therapeutic benefits to patients in treatment-resistant categories. In contradistinction from other psychopharmaco-therapies, contemporary psychedelic therapists, like their predecessors, paid close attention to the 'set and setting', and argued that the mind-set of the subject and the conditions or environment of the session was as influential as the pharmacological reaction itself. In this paper, we examine how religious sounds and music were both incorporated into and strategically avoided in the early psychedelic therapeutic sessions in an effort to achieve spiritual epiphanies at peak experiences. Prominent contemporary practices, we conclude, recapitulate many of the practices of the past, relying, we argue, on aesthetic premises that could hinder the therapy's broader applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Paul Hirst was no longer working in the educational field between 2010 and 2020, echoes of his ideas resonate through the decade. I look at three examples. [1] The National Curriculum. In the 1990s Hirst had been critical of the newly introduced National Curriculum of 1988, built as it was around ten foundation subjects rather than practices of everyday life. While curricular reforms under the Labour governments of 1997–2010 came somewhat closer to his ideas, there has been a reversion since then to a subject-centred curriculum, with tests and examinations based on it much to the fore. But calls for more attention to social issues like climate change and ethnic diversity have Hirstian resonances, as have critical comments on the status quo from leading figures in politics and the inspectorate. [2] 'Powerful knowledge.' This notion, closely associated with the sociologist Michael Young, has been widely influential in educational circles since 2010. Its original definition in terms of bodies of knowledge with their own systems of concepts, is reminiscent of Hirst's celebrated and later abandoned 'forms of knowledge' theory. The paper speculates on possible biographical explanations of this commonality. [3] Teacher education. In 2017 HMCI Amanda Spielman commented on the need to improve teachers' poor understanding of curriculum theory and notes that in the past it was better. This chimes with comments of Paul Hirst in 1994, although it is not clear how far Spielman would support his view that this work should first be rooted in practical teaching experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to classical theism, the universe depends on God in a way that goes beyond mere (efficient) causation. I have previously argued that this 'deep dependence' of the universe on God is best understood as a type of grounding. In a recent paper in this journal, Aaron Segal argues that this doctrine of deep dependence causes problems for creaturely free will: if our choices are grounded in facts about God, and we have no control over these facts, then we do not control our choices and are therefore not free. This amounts to a grounding analogue of the Consequence Argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. If successful, it would have application beyond classical theism: similar concerns would apply to any view that takes our choices to be grounded in a deeper reality which is beyond our control. However, I show that the argument is not successful. Segal's Grounding Consequence Argument is so closely analogous to the Causal Consequence Argument that any response to the one provides a response to the other. As a result, if you don't think that prior causes (whether deterministic or indeterministic) undermine free will, you shouldn't think that prior grounds undermine free will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between sexuality education and religion is often framed antagonistically, especially when it comes to tensions between the teaching of sexuality education and the priorities of some religious communities. In this paper, we argue that this antagonism can be structured as much by the prevalent forms of engagement that display it (dialogue and debate), as it is by the antagonism between contrasting ethical systems. While we acknowledge the importance of debate and dialogue in the public sphere, we contend that appeals to these discursive forms in schools and classrooms can limit possibilities for rethinking engagements across sexuality education and religion. This is because of the tendency within certain manifestations of dialogue (for example, dialogical models connected to liberal political projects) to err on the side of predictability, rationality and abstraction. To address some of these limits, we draw on the recent turn to conversation in educational thinking. We think through the significance of conversation in offering a mode of engagement for students, teachers and school communities that is conditioned by the dispossession of the self and is attuned to the unpredictable, affective and contextual landscapes of shared encounters. We conclude with some thoughts on the practical implications of conversation for rethinking the role of the sexuality education teacher, practices of parental consultation and processes of policy enactment in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the Canterbury Christ Church University's first ‘Church Music and Musicians in Britain' conference held from June 20 to 23, 2017. It reports that organized principally by Chris Price, lecturer at the university and a lay clerk at Canterbury Cathedral, and David Newsholme, assistant organist at the cathedral.

This introduction to the 'Spaces of Irish Catholicism' Roundtable argues that applying the concept of 'space' to nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism has the potential to offer significant new insights to our understandings of Irish Catholicism and the lives of ordinary Irish Catholics, but also to Victorian Studies and religious history more generally. In particular, it contends that the nature of Irish Catholicism in the later nineteenth century was such that examining its many different spaces offers a valuable means of enacting Peter Andersson's plea to uncover the 'backstage' of the Victorian period. In describing the eight diverse papers that comprise the Roundtable, the introduction argues that a previously identified dichotomy between the 'poetics of space' and the 'politics of space' within the religious realm may need to be rethought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the global number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, it is not strange that COVID-19 disease is a reminiscent of concepts such as death and affliction with a serious disease. Furthermore, it might remind people of issues such as the reason(s) for occurrence of deplorable events in the universe, the meaning of life, individuals' duties toward themselves and others, the relationship between the nature and human beings, and individuals' relationship with a higher being (in case there is a belief in a higher being), i.e. the subjects spirituality deals with. The constructive or destructive role of each of religious and non-religious spiritual systems at the time of crises are observed more clearly than ever. The present paper addresses roles which spiritual systems might play in facing the COVID-19 disease crisis, considering different areas of spiritual well-being and the possibility that spiritual systems might be affected by perceived challenges during a pandemic. Because of the problems interfering with overcoming COVID-19 pandemic and the risk of next waves of its epidemics and pandemics, it is necessary for health policy-makers to use all available capacities and capabilities to counteract the disease, including using both internal motivations (such as spiritual beliefs which prohibit hurting oneself and others and which emphasize performing social responsibilities) and external ones (e.g. regulations) to cope with it. It makes sense for public health officials in different countries to use more actively the potential of those spiritual systems that support COVID-19 public health recommendations, as a culturally based intervention and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the ability of some brain dead bodies to maintain homeostasis with the help of artificial life support actually imply that those bodies are living human organisms? Or might it be possible that a brain dead body on life support is a mere collection of still-living cells, organs and tissues which can coordinate with one another, but which lack the genuine integration that is the hallmark of a unified human organism as a whole? To foster further study of these difficult and timely questions, a Symposium on the Definition of Death was held at The Catholic University of America in June 2014. The Symposium brought together scholars from a variety of disciplines-law, medicine, biology, philosophy and theology-who all share a commitment to the dead donor rule and to a biological definition of death, but who have differing opinions regarding the validity of neurological criteria for human death. The papers found in this special issue are among the fruits of this Symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I address a complex of challenges around religiously grounded ethical ideas in education, the public sphere and public institutions, focussing on the question of LGBTQ+ rights education and an exemplary conflict over this topic in Birmingham, England, in 2019. I argue that it is important, both theoretically and practically, to approach the issue, not just as a conflict between religious and liberal/secular world views, but also as a product of relatively rapid historical change in moral understandings, which has not been equally distributed in the populations that are affected by it. I revisit (1) the genealogy of current liberal conceptions on marriage, sexuality and partnership; (2) Paul Rabinow's pluralist notion of 'the contemporary' and (3) the clashing vulnerabilities of groups involved in contemporary conflicts over religion and sexual identity, to offer historically and socially sensitive tools for both theoretical and practical renegotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

STUDY QUESTION: Does the interdiction of sexual intercourse during Nativity and Lent fasting periods have any effect on when babies are conceived in Romania, in the 20th century? SUMMARY ANSWER: Based on date of birth records from the 20th century, Lent had a greater effect than the Nativity fast on conception within the Eastern Orthodox (ORTHD) population. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Seasonality of births (and therefore of conception) is affected by geographical factors (latitude, weather, day-length). Other demographic, economic and socio-cultural characteristics (education, ethnicity, religion) have been proved to have an influence on conception. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: The analyzed data consists of registered daily birth records for a long time series (35 429 points = 365 (days/year) x 97 years + 24 leap years), with 24 947 061 births in Romania over the period 1905-2001. The data were obtained from the 1992 and 2002 censuses. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: Based on the reported birth date of each person, the estimated date of conception is computed using a standard gestation period of 280 days. The population was grouped into two categories (ORTHD and Non-Orthodox (NORTHD)) based on religious affiliation. Data analysis is performed in the same manner for both groups. Preliminary data analyses regarding seasonal variations in conception are considered first. Econometric models are applied and tested. The dependent variable in these models is the calculated date of conception, while the independent variables are: (i) religious affiliation; (ii) dates of Nativity and Lent fasts (the latter varies slightly from year to year); (iii) rural versus urban residence; (iv) length of day-light; (v) non-working days and (vi) trend. The models are tested for validity using analysis of variance while the regression coefficients are tested by the Student t-test. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: All models are statistically valid (P<0.01); all regression coefficients for the ORTHD group are valid (P<0.01, except for rurality between 1990 and 2001, with P<0.05). The data analysis indicates smaller standard error bars on the parameters for the ORTHD group as compared with the NORTHD group. The conclusion is that religious affiliation is an important factor in date of conception. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: The data do not refer to all births during the analyzed period, but only to those persons still alive at the 1992 and 2002 censuses. The date of conception was estimated assuming 280 days for gestation, which is a medically accepted time interval but will undoubtedly vary. However, the primary independent variables (Lent and Nativity fast at 48 and 40 days, respectively) are long enough to overlap the uncertainty in the conception date following the sexual intercourse event. We also must assume that the religious affiliation of the parents is well defined, based on the information given by their offspring at census time, and is the same for both parents. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: Our findings are consistent with other studies, which show differences between religious groups on date of conception, although we reach different conclusions regarding the influence of weather on fertility in Romania. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S): B.V.I., M.A. and G.R. have no competing interests to declare. There is no connection to the current paper, but C.H. declares that (i) he is currently conducting a research titled 'Chronic Diseases' Direct Costs within the Romanian Health System' funded by Local American Working Group; (ii) his wife is employed to a Romanian company (A&D Pharma) that does business in the pharmaceutical sector. This paper is a part of G.R. and M.A. scientific activities in COST Action TD1210. This work by C.H. was co-financed by the European Social Fund through project number POSDRU/1.5/S/59184. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many of the pioneers of present-day bioethics came from religious and theological backgrounds, the recent controversy about the role of religion in bioethics has elicited much attention. Timothy Murphy would ban religion from bioethics altogether. Much of the ado hinges on conflicting understandings of just what bioethics is and just what religion is. This paper attempts to make more explicit how the fields of bioethics and religion have been understood in this context, and how they should not be understood. We begin by looking at bioethics as a field: its origins, purpose, scope, and its methods. We then examine the notion of religion, looking especially at its importance for bioethics. Humanity is not just Homo sapiens but also Homo religiosus. Religion is more than a code of ethics; it gives insight into many of the foundational matters of bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Existing research has documented rising hostility to Muslims in Western countries, but has been much less clear about what drives such sentiments or exactly what sort of "other" Muslims are understood to be. Our interest is in the cultural construction of Muslims as a problematic or incompatible "other." We explore the extent, content, and correlates of such views. Building from recent work in critical race theory and the study of cultural boundaries in national belonging, we argue that Muslims are distinct in being culturally excluded on religious, racial, and civic grounds at the same time. Using nationally representative survey data with specially designed measures on views of Muslims and other groups, we show that nearly half of Americans embrace some form of anti-Muslim sentiment, and that such views are systematically correlated with social location and with understandings of the nature of American belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent interpretations of religious change in modern Britain have stressed the importance of a sudden and abrupt 'sexual revolution' during the 1960s. The role the Churches played in bringing about their own demise remains a point of debate, particularly in the case of the Catholic Church. This article attempts to move beyond existing historical disputes over a 'religious crisis' and whether it was rooted in 'internal' causes (problems within the Church) or 'external', secular developments. It explores the way sexual knowledge was discussed and disseminated by Catholic authorities during this decade of perceived cultural transition, drawing on the previously unpublished papers of the Papal Commission for Birth Control 1963-5 and the training manuals of the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (CMAC). These sources offer a unique insight into the often problematic task of reconciling Catholic thought with the discourses of 'sexual liberation'. While the central hierarchy's continued opposition to women's contraceptive autonomy has understandably dominated historical attention, the material presented here suggests that Catholic understandings of female sexuality were not universally at odds with the intellectual infrastructure of a 'sexual revolution'. On the question of female sexual pleasure, progressive Catholic authorities in both the Papal Commission and the CMAC made fervent efforts to engage with contemporary scientific modes of understanding. Perversely, this approach served to neglect certain aspects of corporeal and emotional experience, thereby limiting the case for meaningful doctrinal change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background While the potential buffering effects of spirituality are well established in the general population, how spirituality affects those in extremely high-stress occupations like the military and law enforcement is less clear. Aims This paper explores the possibility that spiritual influences may operate differently among military veterans than other people. It specifically proposes that attendance at religious services is an especially important buffer for combat veterans. Methods This study engaged in a secondary analysis of 74 480 respondents from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for the years 2013–17. The respondents were split into four groups; veterans with combat experience before September 2001, veterans with combat experience since September 2001, veterans with no combat experience and non-veterans. Results The likelihood of mental illness decreased in the general population along three different measures of religion; the importance of religion, friendships that shared religious beliefs and attendance at religious services. The relationship was weak and disappeared when controls for non-religion variables were included. A major exception was combat veterans, for whom the religious effects were limited to attendance at services, and the effect survived with the addition of non-religion control variables. Conclusions Mental health professionals, chaplains, pastoral counsellors and clergy need to recognize that among the therapeutic benefits of religious attendance and recognize the value of the religious rituals as ends in themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is developing an ethical and sustainable organ donation and procurement system based on voluntary citizen donation. The gift-of-life metaphor has begun to dominate public discussion and education about organ donation. However, ethical and legal problems remain concerning this "gift-of-life" discourse: In what sense are donated organs a "gift-of-life"? What constitutes the ultimate worth of such a gift? On whose authority should organs as a "gift-of-life" be donated? There are no universal answers to these questions; instead, responses must be compatible with local cultural values. This paper argues that from a Confucian point of view, organs should be viewed as a gift from the donor's family, and that final dispositional authority should also rest with the donor's family. The worth of such a "gift" rests on the virtue of ren, the origin of which is family love. Ultimately, I will argue that a family-based consent model for deceased organ donation is not merely justified, but morally required in the Chinese cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do elections affect citizens? This paper shows that elections can have an impact in an area where researchers least expect it: an individual's religious life. It does so by drawing on psychologists' theory of compensatory control and testing whether individuals' reported religious behaviors and beliefs fluctuate with their chosen political party's fortunes. Both an originally collected panel data set and over-time cross-sectional data reveal that Democrats (Republicans) are more likely to report attending religious services and praying when Republicans (Democrats) control the White House. Rates of reported religious behaviors then decline when a copartisan is president. The results demonstrate political identities' strength and ability to influence nonpolitical behaviors, even those thought to be stable and impervious to politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although biobanks have become fundamental to many research centers and contribute to medical development, they generate many ethical and legal issues that may discourage patients from donating. Materials and Methods To understand patients' perception of ethical and legal issues related to biobanks we conducted a survey among 548 Polish patients with cancer. Results While 93.1% of patients with cancer declared themselves willing to donate biospecimens left over after a medical procedure to a biobank, most opted for one-time consent or study-specific consent, blanket consent being less frequently preferred. Many patients believed that future use of previously collected tissues require second contact. Most patients preferred pseudonymization over anonymization of the data, and supported donors' right to withdraw informed consent at any given moment. Finally, while personal health information was the most expected form of compensation for donation, most patients suggested that all parties, including the biobank concerned, the sponsors of the research, and the donors, should own the rights to cancer tissues donated and profit from the biobank research. Patients' opinions on the ethical and legal issues related to biobank research were associated with age, sex, religiosity, education level, and place of residence. Conclusions Since biobanks generate ethical and legal issues related to informed consent, data protection and storage, as well as the sharing of biosamples, tissue ownership, and profit sharing, that may discourage patients from donation, when asking a patient for a donation, healthcare professionals should communicate in a donor-centered manner and address patients' ethical and moral concerns related to donation and offer resources to help manage these concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way of life where measures and strategies to adapt and adopt have become normative. In a recent correspondence, the author explores the adaptation of the Last Rites within the pandemic. On this note, the paper explores another sacrament that has also adapted and has adopted new ways to deal with a strong restriction against in-person meetups and gatherings. The sacrament of Confession provides a venue for people to seek healing and counseling. While face-to-face and confessional confessions are still disallowed, the Church has found ways to adapt the sacrament within the context of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a conceptual geography of the collision between the traditional Christian family, grounded in an experience of God, and the banality of its secular counterpart. Throughout the analysis, I appeal to an objective, fully canonical, binding standpoint: the God's-eye perspective of Orthodox Christianity. The Christian family is not rightly understood as a culturally and historically conditioned social construction, created by a set of individuals, each seeking one's own particular account of self-satisfaction. This paper embraces the Orthodox Christian recognition that the marital relationship should orient the couple, and their children, towards God and salvation. Everything, including the sexual union of husband and wife, as well as the conceiving and raising of children, is to be done in a way that is compatible with approaching holiness. Christians know that the family is a sacramental relationship forged with the blessing of God and only properly oriented towards Him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent correspondence published in this journal, the author calls for spiritual interventions for the living and the dead that be considered by the medical community especially in the time of COVID-19. This paper further elaborates on the need to consider the death and burial practices of bereaved families of patients who died of COVID-19 with strict observance of health protocols. Death and burial practices are significant moments in finding meaning for bereaved families in accepting the demise of their loved ones during this pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recently published correspondence to the editor of this journal, the authors have called for a need to address the risk and dangers of preparing of funeral directors in handling the dead. This paper provides an urgent appeal to the medical community to include the issue of religious or spiritual interventions for the living and the dead. However, a question is raised: what kind and form of spiritual or religious interventions can the religious leaders come up with? The most immediate need is to provide care for those infected by the COVID-19, providing assistance in their healing process and giving spiritual support to the bereaved family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I revisit the arguments from Paul Ramsey's famous bioethical work, Patient as Person: Explorations in Medical Ethics. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Patient as Person, it is worth returning to Ramsey's arguments against the sale of human organs. In particular, my aim is to put Ramsey's work in conversation with more recent work in favor of the sale of organs to see if it holds up after a significant amount of time has passed and after the field of bioethics has changed. I take up concepts of consent and repugnance, as well as dignity, and argue that Ramsey's considerations are still relevant today. I am especially interested in specific critiques of his view from a philosopher in favor of the sale of organs, Mark Cherry. I argue that Cherry's primary critique of Ramsey, that the notion of repugnance is not sufficient to counter the liberty interests of others, especially in light of the grave need for organs, is successful, but that we should turn to arguments from Ramsey for a better understanding of the morally problematic nature of organ sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Paul Ramsey's Patient as Person nears, this paper aims first to reintroduce Ramsey's work and suggest its continuing fruitfulness. It also underscores aspects of Ramsey's work that are important for the essays on more particular topics that follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Jacques Derrida provides a compelling rebuttal to a secularism that seeks to exclude religion from the public sphere. Political theorists such as Mark Lilla claim that religion is a source of violence, and so they conclude that religion and politics should be strictly separated. In my reading, Derrida's work entails that a secularism of this kind is both impossible (because religion remains influential in the wake of secularization) and unnecessary (because religious traditions are diverse and multivalent). Some attempt to contain the disruptive force of religion by excluding it from the public sphere, but Derrida argues that one may endure instability for the sake of something more important than safety. Although Derrida admits that religion is dangerous, he demonstrates that it is nevertheless an indispensable resource for political reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on immigration have frequently overlooked the importance that religion plays in the lives of migrants. Filipinos living in Japan (now its third largest ethnic group) identify heavily as Roman Catholic, for which they use existing church structures to teach their children about being Filipino. Using religious institutions to teach culture has not gone unchallenged, especially within the Filipino-Japanese household. This paper delineates the cultural politics involved within the Japanese-Filipino household among Filipinos, their Japanese husbands and in-laws and exposes the habit of Japanese to defer authority to teachers and classmates instead of supporting the Filipino mothers' culture. Key to Japanese hegemony is the role that time-allotment plays in controlling children's activity. The education system commands wide support within the Japanese household to the extent that demand for long hours of extracurricular practice functions as a paradigmatic expression of Japanese culture. Children's entrance into elementary school is marked by an aggregate reduction in time that only increases as they age. Middle age Filipino mothers attending church alone is the result of an educational policy that obstructs the time foreign parents can spend with their children teaching them about forms of education alternative to those found in the public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on 2015 conference "Good impressions" on research project "Music printing in German-speaking lands: from the 1470s to the mid-16th century" which will held from June 28-30, 2018. Topics discussed include material presence of the printed music book, dichotomy between the influences of commerce and religion on musical print culture and extensive sales and distribution of polyphonic music.

Along with water levels and weather patterns, global climate change impacts the human ecology of religious traditions as well. People in many parts of the world are struggling to make the connection between religious worldviews they have trusted for ages to orient them and a world whose climate seems to be suddenly turning upside-down. An especially striking example of the changing cultural and physical climate can be found in the rural Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayas, where the effects of meteorological changes are compounded by the rapid advance of capitalist modernity. This paper examines how villagers interpret these dramatic changes in a religious register and attempt to counter the climatic disturbances through ritual actions. Their responses reveal a strong commitment to older ritual mechanisms and religious beliefs, alongside growing doubts about human and divine agency, as well as their traditional holistic understanding of the natural and supernatural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on quantitative analysis of a nationally representative sample of 1,589 self-reported eligible blood donors in the United States, this paper investigates how religion influences giving the gift of life. I find significant positive effects for both organizational and subjective dimensions of religion. The reasons these dimensions promote this generous act vary, however. Religious service attendance works entirely through religious ties. These ties, in turn, influence various established channels of donation, including solicitation to donate, which not only has a direct effect on giving, but also indirect effects through moral norms and willingness to donate. In addition to its impact on these ties, religious group involvement encourages blood donation through exposure to messages about helping others. Finally, the impact of religious salience operates through the belief that "it is better to give than to receive" as well as religious ties. The implications of these findings for both the literature on blood donation and the larger scholarship on religion and generosity are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent U.S. military engagements in the Middle East have drawn public attention to the thorny issue of religion in the armed forces but the scholarship on religion in the military lags far behind these developments. Scholars have not developed a coherent research program around the challenges that religion faces in the armed forces or the religious issues that soldiers, commanders and military institutions grapple with on a daily basis. This papers seeks to initiate a scholarly conversations about the roles and effects of religion in the armed forces. I propose exploratory hypotheses that touch on some key themes that such a research program might cover, at three levels of analysis. At the institutional level, scholars should interrogate the relationship between religious norms and constitutional challenges in society and in the military. At the unit level, research should explore the impact that chaplains and group rituals have on unit morale. At the individual level, this research program should initiate a comprehensive investigation of the effects of individual religious practices on the mental health of soldiers and, in turn, the impact that participation in combat has on soldiers' religiosity. These illustrative hypotheses are far from exhaustive and should be regarded as invitations for future exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on identity formation of majority religion in the context of intentional, political processes of change in state-church relations during the 20th century. Particular focus is given on the majority church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. It also examines how various actors interact to achieve their goals in processes of institutional change and the application of governance to majority religion.

Sociologists of religion have had much to say about the social structures impacting religious belief and practice but surprisingly little to say about the physical structures that both shape and constrain religious communities of nearly all traditions. In this paper, we present four arguments for the sociological study of religious buildings. Although we rely heavily on social theory to make these arguments, we also draw on empirical evidence from religious buildings in Guatemala and the United States in order to illustrate our arguments regarding the impact of buildings on religious groups and the communities in which they are located. We close with suggestions for research questions that could contribute both to the field of sociology of religion and the wider discipline of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers often desire to become better versions of themselves. Reflecting this interest in self-improvement, the marketplace offers consumers a wide range of products and services that promise to improve or better the consumer in some way. But, in a world with unlimited opportunities to spend one's time and money, what influences whether consumers will invest in products that enable self-improvement? We demonstrate that the degree to which God is salient has a negative effect on individuals' preferences for consumption choices with self-improvement features compared to equally attractive options that do not include such features. We propose that this is because thoughts of God activate a greater sense of being loved for who you are ("loved 'as-is'"), making self-improvement a lower priority. We demonstrate this basic effect across several experiments as well as archival data, provide process evidence through mediation and moderation, and address alternative explanations. We also identify important boundary conditions: God salience is less likely to decrease interest in self-improvement products when consumers do not believe in God, and when God is considered to be a punishing (vs. loving) entity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent correspondence suggested that taking home ashes and launching digital Lenten ashes filters are non-traditional yet creative ways for the Catholic Church to perform the ritual practice in celebrating Ash Wednesday. These creative practices are deemed as necessary so that the Catholic community can celebrate the liturgical celebration while ensuring public health. With this, we propose in this paper practices that can be done during the holy week so that the spread of the coronavirus will be mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay takes as its starting point Paul Strand's call to synthesize a 'new religious impulse' to counter the theotechnical drive that was the main concern of his 1922 essay 'Photography and the New God'. 'Some may grind their teeth at such prose', Alan Trachtenberg once noted about Strand's call, while others have taken it to be a misguided Bergsonism, and others still have cast it as the first, vague reach for what would later emerge as a 'mawkish' romantic socialism. This paper risks a different tack: first, by working to take Strand's theological impulse seriously and on its own terms; second, by working to reconcile that impulse with his later political convictions and those of the larger critical, political tradition stemming from Hegel's foundational theory of the state as an 'actual God'; and, third, by considering the implications of such a theopolitical reconciliation for us now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented is given to the U.S. President Jimmy Carter's relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in his diplomatic efforts in negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel during the late 1970s, with a particular focus on the influence of evangelicalism on Carter's relationship with them. Carter's perspective on the role that faith played in the 1978 Camp David Accords is discussed.

Many religious and spiritual movements mobilize to establish sacred fields which influence everyday life in multiple social domains. Because these devout groups operate across many institutional fields, scholars of religiously motivated movements are uniquely poised to contribute to scholarship on multiinstitutional politics and on how institutional change can be initiated and influenced by external cultural movements. In this paper, I bring attention to how religious movements can mobilize through unobtrusive political tactics which build upon extant social structures in multiple institutional fields, rather than through contentious tactics which are the focus of most movement research. Based on prior scholarship on religious movements and my own research, I identify how religious movements can expand through unobtrusive, nonconfrontational tactics such as “discursive politics,” developing a “state within a state,” “burrowing into” targeted organizations, and “assimilating into” mainstream organizations. These mechanisms identified in religious movement scholarship contribute to underdeveloped areas of scholarship at the intersection of social movement mobilization, organizational change, and field development, and provide a platform upon which future research can build. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on a large cache of letters to John and Frances Gunther after the death of their son as well as memoirs and fiction by bereaved parents, this essay challenges the assumptions of secularization that infuse histories of twentieth-century American medicine. Many parents who experienced the death of children during the postwar period relied heavily on religion to help make sense of the tragedies medicine could not prevent. Parental accounts included expression of belief in divine intervention and the power of prayer, gratitude for God's role in minimizing suffering, confidence in the existence of an afterlife, and acceptance of the will of God. Historians seeking to understand how parents and families understood both the delivery of medical care and the cultural authority of medical science must integrate an understanding of religious experiences and faith into their work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on (Filipino) people and religion, science and government an interactive approach against COVID-19 pandemic. Topics include the religious denominations play a vital role in strengthening the spiritual well-being, the virtue of hope and placing one's mind in God is significant to experience calmness amid uncertainties, and the religious leaders should still make some consideration when their actions, as guided by their beliefs.

This study addresses a metrological muddle: attempts to determine the metrical equivalence of the Baghdādī raṭl, a measure for coins, commerce, and religious requirements during the Abbasid and Mamluk eras. Western writers Sauvaire and Hinz interpreted the measure of the widespread Baghdādī raṭl by determining a metric equivalent around three grams for the building block of the silver dirham weight. Islamic scholars, however, proposed three different dirham amounts for this raṭl and noted that there were two different ways of determining the standard ratio of the dirham to the dinar. These scholars applied the Baghdādī raṭl of their day to determine the weights of two earlier measures, the ṣāʿ and the mudd from the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. The study of Islamic era metrology has received little critical attention, apart from the field of numismatics, since the work of Walther Hinz, last updated in 1970. I provide a prolegomenon for the need to reread both earlier Muslim authors and the seminal works of Don Vasquez Queipo, Henri Sauvaire and others. Suggestions for approaching the interpretation of Islamic era weights and measures are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining how race and ethnic locations shape perceptions of the police is well-established. Yet there is little research examining how religion shapes individuals' experiences with police. This study examines the influence of race and religion on U.S. adults' reported experiences with police harassment due to their religion. We find that, independent of race and ethnicity, Muslim adults are significantly more likely to report police harassment due to their religion. Race and ethnicity moderate this effect, with Muslim adults identifying as Black or as Middle Eastern-Arab-North African (MENA) significantly more likely than White Muslim adults to report religion-based police harassment. We find that, independent of religion , adults identifying as Black or as MENA are significantly more likely to report religion -based police harassment when compared to White individuals, a finding that is explained by these individuals' greater reports of race -based police harassment. That is, exposure to police harassment based on race is more likely to make an individual perceive harassment based on their religion as well. These findings highlight the intersectional nature of individuals' social locations more broadly and the importance of addressing these multiple locations if we are to address the social problem of police harassment and victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might religion influence consumer behavior in the marketplace? The present research proposes that failure and subsequent firm recovery efforts represent a domain that may be particularly sensitive to religion. Specifically, we demonstrate that religion salience promotes a more positive response to failure when accompanied by recovery. This effect is due to heightened forgiveness, a religious value held by many major world religions, which is triggered by signals of firm repentance. In a series of eight studies, theorizing is extended to the moderating roles of both religiosity (with implications for the religion–forgiveness discrepancy) and recovery content (comparing apology vs. compensation) and evidence of generalizability across several major religious affiliations is provided. This research highlights the importance of religion salience to marketers operating in failure–recovery contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]