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The late physicist Steven Weinberg may have had it exactly right when he said that the more comprehensible the world is, the more it may seem without point. What he [...]

THE CHRISTIAN PRESCRIPTION FOR ETERNAL LIFE IS remarkably simple. Although theologians have debated the exact articulation of this prescription since its inception, it can be summed up quite briefly; Believe [...]

From the beginning, community psychologists made many of the assumptions behind their theories and methodologies explicit, openly articulating values at the core of their discipline. As a result, community psychology's [...]

Although a variety of research projects have been conducted on the benefits of religious coping in older adults, no direct comparison between atheism and religious faith has been published. The study reported in this paper tackled this issue by interviewing two matched groups of people aged over 60 years living in southern England, one of II informants with strong atheistic beliefs, and the other of eight informants with strong religious beliefs. Five paired comparisons were undertaken to examine the role of the content of the belief system itself in coping with different negative stresses and losses commonly associated with ageing and old age. The pairs were matched for the nature of the loss or stress that the two people had experienced, but the two individuals had opposed atheistic and religious beliefs. The analyses showed that all the study participants--regardless of their beliefs--were coping well, and suggested that a strong atheistic belief system can fulfil the same role as a strong religious belief system in providing support, explanation, consolation and inspiration. It is postulated that the strength of people's beliefs and how those beliefs are used might have more influence on the efficacy of coping than the specific nature of the beliefs. Further research into the strength of belief systems, including atheism, is required to test and elaborate this hypothesis. KEY WORDS--belief systems, mental health, coping, atheism, religious belief, finitude. doi:10.1017/S0144686X09990353

Author Abstract This article discusses the use and abuse of religious beliefs and their role in divide-and-conquer strategies. Divide-and-conquer strategies are engaged to disrupt potential coalitions between and among marginalized group members, specifically sexual minority groups and people of color. Tensions between these groups have been exacerbated by the debate on same-sex marriage and comparisons between the discriminatory treatment of each group. A component of this discussion includes a brief exploration of one of the historical abuses of religious doctrine used to legitimize the marginalization of people of color and sexual minorities in the United States. For African Americans, one form of marginalization was reflected in criminalizing interracial marriage, and for members of sexual minority groups, a form of marginalization is denying group members the right to marry. The author also explores culturally competent and respectful disciplinary and clinical responses to religiously derived prejudice against sexual minority group members and people of color and discusses the implications for multicultural discourse. Keywords: religious beliefs, sexual orientation, multiculturalism DOI: 10.1037/a0017214

This study considered the nature of continuing bonds with deceased relatives in a sample of Pakistani Muslims living in the United Kingdom. Ten participants (1) were interviewed following a cultural psychology approach and transcripts were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Dreaming, talking with others about the deceased, following the deceased's example, keeping memories and mementos, and doing actions thought to help the deceased were forms of continued relationship found. These were intertwined with the process of grieving and were influenced by the family, culture, and religion. Religion was a strong influence on the prominence given by participants to finishing well and on the notion of doing actions thought to help the deceased. Cultural mores, such as the community, and collectivist ethos and the expectation that emotion would be expressed around the time of death, were found to be supportive for some but sources of tension for other participants. Expressing a continuing bond through following the deceased's example so as to make them proud or happy seemed to be reinforced by cultural roots in respect for elders. Participants gave instances of tensions in areas such as expression of emotion and communality versus individualism that arose as a result of their position between two cultural frameworks, some illustrating how assimilation into the host culture set up conflict with the expected norms of their family/ancestral culture. The study highlights how understanding different cultural and religious influences may enrich the concept of continuing bonds. DOI: 10.1080/07481180903251554

Sexual prejudice is linked to hate crimes, mental health, risk behaviors, and stigma. Few studies have examined sexual prejudice among Latinos. We surveyed 382 college students in Puerto Rico. A structural model tested whether contact and positive experiences with homosexuals, perceived similarities with peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, and religiosity were predictive of sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican young adults. Sex differences in the structural model were explored. With the exception of peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, all study variables predict sexual prejudice. No sex differences were found. Implications for decreasing sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican youth in a college setting are discussed. KEYWORDS. Sexual prejudice, discrimination, homophobia, homosexuality, gender, gay and lesbian, college, Latino, attitudes, religion

Many adult beliefs are based on the testimony provided by other people rather than on firsthand observation. Children also learn from other people's testimony. For example, they learn that mental processes depend on the brain, that the earth is spherical, and that hidden bodily organs constrain life and death. Such learning might indicate that other people's testimony simply amplifies children's access to empirical data. However, children's understanding of God's special powers and the afterlife shows that their acceptance of others' testimony extends beyond the empirical domain. Thus, children appear to conceptualize unobservable scientific and religious entities similarly. Nevertheless, some children distinguish between the 2 domains, arguably because a different pattern of discourse surrounds scientific as compared to religious entities.

This article explores how religion, as a meaning system, influences coping with adversity. First, a model emphasizing the role of meaning making in coping is presented. Next, religion as a meaning system is defined, and theory and research on the role of religion in the coping process are summarized. Results from the author's study of 169 bereaved college students are then presented to illustrate some of the pathways through which religious meaning can influence the coping process in making meaning following loss. Findings indicate that associations between religion and adjustment vary across time since loss, and that these associations are mediated by meaning-making coping. Finally, implications for individual and societal well-being and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Links between religion and prejudice have been interpreted to suggest that religion can both reduce and exacerbate prejudice. Here, the analysis of religion as a meaning system illuminates how religion can affect intergroup attitudes. Traditional psychological perspectives on religion and prejudice are summarized, followed by a discussion of religion and prejudice in cross-cultural and cross-religious contexts, involving varying target groups. Next, we explore possible explanatory mechanisms by proposing how four levels of meaning associated with religion--cognitive, motivational, societal, and intergroup--may both promote and attenuate prejudice. Finally, additional factors that might facilitate the paradoxical coexistence of religious egalitarian intentions with prejudiced attitudes are considered, and we speculate about the potential for religious groups to reduce prejudice within their adherents.

World events and psychological research often fail to support a relationship between religion and forgiveness. We suggest that the gap between general religious support of forgiveness and actual forgiveness by religious individuals (the religion-forgiveness discrepancy) described by McCullough and Worthington (1999) may be partly due to methodological shortcomings. We present three studies with 452 undergraduate participants to illustrate how psychometric weaknesses can obscure the relationship between religiousness and transgression-specific forgiveness. We also propose a rationalization explanation that describes how religion might justify unforgiveness. We present a pilot study of 38 undergraduate participants that demonstrates correlations between retributive and compassionate religious beliefs, and transgression-specific forgiveness. We discuss future research directions addressing the religion-forgiveness discrepancy on psychometric and theoretical levels.

Although many social scientists have assumed that religion can be reduced to more basic processes, there may be something unique about religion. By definition, religion has a distinctively meaningful point of reference, the sacred. Empirically, studies also suggest that religion may be a unique: form of motivation; source of value and significance; contributor to mortality and health; source of coping; and source of distress. These findings point to the need for: theory and research on the sacred; attention to the pluralization of religious beliefs and practices; evaluation of individual and social interventions that address spiritual problems and apply spiritual resources to their resolution; and collaboration between psychological and religious groups that draws on their unique identities and strengths.

Every human action, ranging from benevolence to inhumane violence has been justified in the name of religion, which has been a pervasive feature of human life throughout history. This article describes religion as a meaning system that is unique in centering on what is perceived as sacred, and in its special ability to address the quest for meaning. The article recommends the meaning system approach for the study of religion, suggesting that this approach can illuminate the resiliency of religion, and its complicated relations with individual and societal well-being. It describes the outline of the volume, and concludes with recommendations for research, education, and policies in the arena of religion that can facilitate well-being in the new millennium.

Background: Socio-cultural explanatory factors for mental health problems determine help seeking behaviors. The study aimed to understand the reasons mentally ill patients and their families in India choose to seek help from a religious site. Materials and methods: Persons with mental illness and their families were interviewed at religious sites using a guideline questionnaire. Issues such as significant life events, explanations for perceived abnormal behavior and reasons for choosing a specific religious site for 'treatment' were explored. Discussion: Seeking religious help for mental disorders is often a first step in the management of mental disorders as a result of cultural explanations for the illness. This behavior also has social sanctions. Key words: chronic mental illness, religious sites, qualitative study, ritualistic practices

Open-ended interviews were conducted with members of the 'Execution Team' in Louisiana in order to understand the roles, experiences, and effects of carrying out the death penalty. Fifty of a potential 52 correctional officers who work with executions were interviewed and asked to complete mental health inventories. While emphasizing the importance of security and their professional responsibilities in carrying out the death penalty, the officers stress their respect and decency toward the inmates and all others involved with the process. Although expectably reporting high incidences of exposure to trauma and death, they generally are not clinically depressed.They rely upon religious beliefs, group identity, administrative support, and their capacity to dissociate and rely on diffusion of responsibility to suppress painful emotions. Nevertheless, the officers experience conflicted feelings and frequently report having a hard time carrying out society's 'ultimate punishment.'

This paper examines the sociological component of the urban community-based professional education programs at New York Theological Seminary (NYTS), focusing on the auxiliary Master of Professional Studies program offered at Sing-Sing Prison. NYTS serves urban poor and socially marginal populations and is the only seminary in the country to require social theory and social research methods course work. Explored is the simultaneous use of social theory and sacred texts as teaching tools and intervention strategies in the educational and personal transformation processes of men incarcerated for violent crimes. A survey of NYTS Sing-Sing alumni further documents the impact of the MPS program and facilitates our conclusion that community faith-based corrections can be transforming encounters as demonstrated, by one important measure, in a low recidivism rate. KEYWORDS Community religion, methodology, prison inmate, social theory

The present investigation is one of the first theoretical studies of young persons entering boot camp. The sample in the present study consists of 326 males, aged 15 to 24 years, in the only boot camp in Arkansas. The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of religiosity within a hypothesized theoretical model with reciprocal relationships of drug use among boot camp inmates. This model is tested with two-stage least squares regression, and all hypothesized relationships, with two exceptions, are supported. The findings show that attachment to caregivers is inversely related to associations with peers who engage in illicit behavior, whereas being abused by an adult is positively related to these associations. These associations have inverse reciprocal relationships with religiosity and secular beliefs, and are positively related to use of excuses for illicit acts, which are positively related to drug use. Drug use increases with advances in age and among white persons (versus persons of color), and use of drugs has positive reciprocal relationships with selling illicit substances and carrying a gun. Conceptual and practice implications of the study are discussed. KEYWORDS Boot camp, religion, drugs, delinquency, juvenile

Social scientific accounts of inmate behavior, generally, and inmate religious behavior, particularly, have, by and large, failed to account for the critical questions raised by philosophical hermeneutics and linguistics. This paper uses insights from key figures in each discipline as foci in investigating the methods criminologists employ in reporting what inmates say about the carcereal experience. These methods are mainly found to magnify the voice of the report writers to such a degree that often inmates themselves do not speak. KEYWORDS Evaluation methodology, religion, inmates, hermeneutics, linguistics

In a qualitative study of twenty adult ex-offenders, all having served lengthy sentences for serious crimes, the authors found that religiosity and strong expressions of shame played a prominent role in their ability to live productive lives after the prison experience. Those who have reintegrated into the community were compared with individuals who either committed new crimes or violated the conditions of their parole. KEYWORDS Shame, prison, religion, reintegration, inmate, forgiveness

This paper discusses the reasons for inmate religious involvement in the correctional environment. Participant observation and seventy individual interviews were employed to gather the ethnographic data in two large maximum-security prisons located in the northeast United States. Content analysis and constant comparison methods were used to develop analytic categories and to compare results across research sites and between denominational groups. It was revealed that inmates practice religion for a variety of reasons depending on the sincerity of their intentions. The results introduce insight into why inmates practice religion in prison, provide valuable information for those who administer religious programs, and are shown to be theoretically linked with findings of prior research conducted in the correctional environment. KEYWORDS Ethnography, religion, inmate, meaning, social support, prison

A theory of religious conversion, social attachment, and social learning guides this study of prison religion and its influence on the rehabilitation of adult male offenders. The study found the religious involvement of inmates in a large medium/maximum security prison in South Carolina was extremely varied and extensive. During a one-year period 49% of the incarcerated men (779 out of 1,579) attended at least one religious service or program. Over 800 religious services or meetings, across many different denominations and religious groups, were held during the year. Two prison chaplains, four inmate religious clerks and 232 volunteers who donated about 21,316 hours of work to the prison (the equivalent of 11 full-time paid positions) made this high level of programming possible. The estimated yearly cost of these religious services was inexpensive at between $150 to $250 per inmate served; in contrast, other effective correctional programs cost around $14,000 per person. Controlling for a number of demographic and criminal history risk factors, logistic regression found an inverse relationship between intensity of religious involvement and the presence or absence of in-prison infractions. As religious involvement increased the number of inmates with infractions decreased. The findings of the study provide greater insight into the nature of religion in prison setting and support the view that religion can be an important factor in the process of offender rehabilitation. KEYWORDS Religious conversion, social attachment, social learning, prison religion, offender rehabilitation

This overview situates the essays and studies in this collection in the current cultural and religious context of faith-based initiatives from the White House and from a number of religious groups that affect the justice and correctional system in the U.S. The paper creates a unity among the articles by organizing them around four different but interconnected levels of inquiry concerning the relationship between religion, the community and offender rehabilitation. First, questions of intelligibility such as, what is it? Second, questions of troth such as, is it so? Third, questions of ethics such as, is it good? Fourth, religious questions such as, is it loving? By exploring some of the answers to these questions by the authors, the paper shows how the collection of articles advances our knowledge about the relationship between religion, the community, and offender rehabilitation. In addition, the insights of the authors help to reframe the current public debate about whether there is a positive role for faith-based programs in the justice system to a debate about how to foster and ensure the authenticity of that role. KEYWORDS Religion, faith communities, rehabilitation of offenders, faith-based initiatives

Recent research has shown the beneficial effects of religious activity for individual health and well-being among older adults. The purpose of this article is to determine whether breaking the norms of the religious group can have deleterious consequences for individual mental health and whether this effect is exacerbated by frequent service attendance. To test these ideas, the authors used two waves of data collected from a sample of older adults (age 65 and over) living in central North Carolina. Using only sample members who reported an affiliation with a Baptist denomination, the authors tested whether attending services more often and living in rural areas were associated with a smaller likelihood of alcohol use. The authors further tested whether the use of alcohol in this sample was associated with higher counts of depressive symptoms. The results indicate that older Baptists who lived in rural areas and who attended services more often were less likely to use alcohol. It was also found that alcohol use had no effect on depressive symptoms. One exception to this latter finding was that among rural Baptists who rarely attended religious services, using alcohol was associated with more depressive symptoms.

Most older people in the West still lead conventional lifestyles and practice traditional forms of religion. For most of the elderly who belong to modern societies, religion has a positive effect. This was revealed by a study of the interconnections between religion and old age in the West. The study also considered current trends where New Age thinking has resulted in the establishment of quasi-religious movements, as well as the regrouping of religions to combat the challenges posed by the modern or post-modern society.

The positive effect of religion, whether organized, non-organized or subjective, on the health and life satisfaction of Black Americans is validated using a parsimonious theoretical model. Religiosity is also found to vary among blacks depending on their marital status, educational attainment, income, region, urbanicity, and more particularly, age and gender. Collectively and individually, therefore, religion plays an important part in the life course of Black Americans.

Abstract This article discusses the psychological demands made of children and young people raised in religious communities who are expected to conform to the beliefs of their parents and elders, [...]

Characterological and situational factors that may contribute to loneliness were explored in 153 mature Australian women, comprising 70 women religious matched for age with 83 women who did not belong to a religious congregation. Each subject completed a questionnaire containing measures of emotional and social loneliness, personality, social network, and cognitive processes. For these women, aspects of personality, social network, and cognitive processes predicted loneliness. In addition, women religious reported higher levels of emotional loneliness than women from the comparison group. Although there was a difference in the extent of loneliness between women religous and other mature women, the groups were, in fact, more similar than different. The findings support a characterological rather than a situational explanation of loneliness.

Changes from 1993 to 1997 in a homeschooling population in a rural midwestern area were examined. The number of families involved in homeschooling, and consequently the number of children involved in homeschooling, appear to have increased over time. The families appear to be becoming somewhat more diverse in religious affiliation, location, and age ranges of children. However, the families continue to represent stable marriages that are usually affiliated with a relatively conservative or evangelical Protestant denominational group.

ONE DAY IN 2004 I WAS SITTING IN A coffee shop in Berkeley, California, when I had a bout of sneezing. I was startled when my sneezes elicited a chorus [...]

ABSTRACT. In a sample of New Zealand university students, the author extended earlier research into the relationship between self-esteem and intergroup discrimination. He found no support for the hypothesis that [...]

I take up the challenge of why false beliefs are better than 'cautious action policies' (target article, sect. 9) in navigating adaptive problems with asymmetric errors. I then suggest that there are interactions between supernatural beliefs, self-deception, and positive illusions, rendering elements of all such misbeliefs adaptive. Finally, I argue that supernatural beliefs cannot be rejected as adaptive simply because recent experiments are inconclusive. The great costs of religion betray its even greater adaptive benefits--we just have not yet nailed down exactly what they are. doi:10.1017/S0140525X09991245

Thanks From a Christian I just read with great interest Phil Mole's article, 'Blame It On the Jews' (Vol. 10, No. 3). If there is one thing I can reasonably [...]

Since socialism's decline, abortion has become a divisive political issue in East Central Europe, just as it is in the United States. Questionnaires administered to college students in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the United States between 1991 and 1994 assessed the importance of religious identification, degree of religious feelings and participation, desired number of children, and gender role attitudes as predictors of approval of abortion for reasons of personal choice. Multiple regression indicated that these variables best predicted level of approval of abortion in Slovenia. The strong link between gender role attitude and abortion approval that emerged in the Slovene 1993 data is discussed in relation to the changing social and political contexts.