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This essay explores the spiritual crisis of postmodern man contrasting a Christian anthropology with a materialistic, mechanistic conception of human nature and being reflected in bioethics. Bioethics seeks to control general evolution via advances in biology and medical technology, but functions almost exclusively at an impersonal level. It objectifies procedures, numbers people, and addresses general states, and not persons or interpersonal relationships. Bioethics thus takes a global approach to ultra-generalized principles. When bioethics does not express itself in a religious confession or a cosmological theory, it ignores religious conceptions, and tries to rely merely on utilitarian principles and values. Such a mechanistic, one-dimensional anthropology is in essence alien to Christianity. In Orthodox vision, man's natural state is a state of grace actualized in communion with God and fellow human beings., FROM GOD TO MAN The metamorphosis of the European world from the medieval to the modern era or the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century entailed considerable mutations on the European [...]

... for be will come like a rushing stream wbich tbe wind of the Lord drives.--Isa. 59:19On a hazy afternoon in late May 1986, I wait, as I wait every [...]

Growing up in a Baptist church, it was not Easter unless we sang--including that high G note--'He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks [...]

Abstract: In recent years, a number of studies have surfaced focusing upon attrition and retention issues as they relate to emerging adult church attendance. Both researchers and practitioners have shown [...]

A FULL HUMAN LIFE IS IMPOSSIBLE without believing the testimony of others. Without such testimony we would be ignorant of almost all truths about history, geography, and the thoughts and [...]

The wisdom of the ages recommends that adults heed the spiritual examples of children. This paper explores the evidence of how our adult relationships with children can help us adults in our own spiritual growth. An examination of research on some of the ways children manifest their spirituality, including recent brain research in that area, reveals some of the ways in which children can influence their parents, caregivers and other adults to grow spiritually, especially when the gift is acknowledged and appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents debate on the leadership network in Europe, with emphasis on the relations between European Union and Russia. Topics discussed include the value of the Russian question as a basic difference between Russia's weak governance and European countries' political system, and the likeminded Godly love.

Few studies have considered how religion moderates the ways gender ideology influences heterosexual relationship outcomes. Drawing on a national random sample of American adults who report being married or living as married, we focus on the extent to which religious commitment moderates the link between gender ideology and reported relationship satisfaction, and whether this moderating effect varies across gender. We find that gender traditionalism is negatively associated with relationship satisfaction; however, interaction effects reveal that religious commitment moderates the effects of gender ideology such that the negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship satisfaction only apply to people who are less religious. Gender traditionalism, by contrast, is not negatively related to relationship satisfaction for the highly religious. Splitting the sample by gender reveals that this moderating relationship is significant for women only. Thus, while gender traditionalism is negatively related to relationship satisfaction in the main, this effect is contingent on both gender and religious commitment. Religious commitment appears to mitigate negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship outcomes, particularly for American women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arab Journal of Psychiatry is the property of Arab Federation of Psychiatrists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores how in the process of Christian conversion in Samoa by the London Missionary Society, the indigenous sacred covenant between brother and sister was transposed onto the relation between the pastor, his wife, and the congregation. I consider how far Victorian models of gender and domesticity, based on more individuated modes of personhood and the nuclear family, were promoted by foreign missionaries and whether Samoan people accepted, resisted, and transformed these models. In Samoa, women had assumed powerful statuses as feagaiga 'covenants' and as tamasa 'sacred child'. These ascriptions gave Samoan women sacred power and they were highly esteemed in their families and natal villages. What impact would Christian conversion have on this high valuation of Samoan women? And how would this transformation impact on Samoan ideas about gender and personhood? Keywords: Feagaiga, Christianity, capitalism, Samoa, personhood., INTRODUCTION The study of women's status and valuation in the wake of western contact has long been explored, particularly with regard to the important question of whether the status of [...]

As is well known, the "word" is a significant element in Ben Sira's teaching on interpersonal relationships. In this paper I will explore the use of "word" to determine if it is indeed significant in the texts on prayer. I will then show the way in which the three aspects, "word," "prayer" and "interpersonal relationships" are linked to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-six years ago, Bergin, Masters, and Richards (1987) published results from a correlational study of Allport's two religious orientations with indices of pathology and social personality traits. Curiously, Batson's quest [...]

Based on case studies and qualitative interviews conducted with 40 stakeholders in five SMEs, or so called Anatolian tigers, in Turkey, this article has explored what collective spirituality and Turkish Islamic business ethics entail and how they shape organizational values using diverse stakeholder perspectives. The study has revealed six emergent discourses around collective spirituality and Islamic business ethics: Flying with both wings; striving to transcend egos; being devoted to each other; treating people as whole persons; upholding an ethics of compassion; and leaving a legacy for future generations. These discourses are organized around three themes of collective spirituality, respectively: Transcendence, connectedness, and virtuousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, interreligious encounters occur through internet communication. The debate on the influence of internet communication on interreligious encounters is characterized by a contradiction between the theory of cyber-balkanization on the one hand and the theory of networked religion on the other. However, neither theory is contextualized and neither can therefore explain why an interreligious encounter results in either interreligious conflict or mutual understanding. In this article, a contextualized approach to the implications of internet communication for interreligious relationships is advocated. The authors show that contextualization on the level of the openness of the religious group is too one-dimensional. Therefore, a contextual reception model on the level of the situation is developed to explicate the possible attitudinal and behavioral positions within an online interreligious encounter. This model can be used to investigate the implications of internet communication for interreligious relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores some of the tensions that are created from the entanglement of religion and human rights and offers a possible response to these tensions in the context of religious education in conflict-troubled societies. It is suggested that a historicised and politicised approach in religious education in conjunction with human rights education perspectives can promote three important aims: taking power relations between peoples, societies and cultures as sources of problematising the meaning(s) and consequences of both religion and human rights; developing a teaching and learning process in and through which the emphasis is not on identification with religious or cultural identity, but rather a process through which new and productive ways of relationality with the ‘other’ are developed; and, encouraging students to interrogate moralistic discourses of religion or human rights that often prevent the enactment of friendship, compassion and shared fate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

INTRODUCTION Pope Benedict begins the third chapter of his encyclical Caritas in Veritate with the following words: Charityin truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present [...]

Abstract: This paper seeks to develop biblical/theological foundations for relational Christian formation by connecting and identifying the compatibility between relational Christian formation and that of the term 'helper' as seen [...]

Abstract: The 'one another' (allelon) imperatives found in the New Testament provide a way for Christians to more accurately explain and understand how 'the whole body, being fitted and held [...]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Running in circles: How false spirituality traps us in unhealthy relationships. By Kim V. Engelmann. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 2007. 136pp. $13.00 paper Kim Engelmann, pastor of caring ministries [...]

This study examined Agape love in couple relationships among randomly-sampled, telephone-surveyed adults currently involved in a romantic relationship. Agape refers to other-centered, altruistic love and is one of the six styles of love from John Lee's (1973) theory of love styles. The results showed that age, religiosity, and relationship satisfaction were positively correlated with Agape. People with more education reported lower Agape love scores than did less educated people. Men reported a higher level of Agape love than did women when controlling for age, education, religiosity and relationship satisfaction. KEYWORDS. Education, genders, love styles, relationship satisfaction, religiosity

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the influential scholar of Islam and reformer of the modern comparative study of religion, provoked controversy in arguing that one cannot understand a religion without studying persons, or persons without studying their faith. Scholarship has largely neglected his further claim that faith cannot be adequately known except in the context of friendship, understood as a mode of love. Here, I explain Smith's notion of love as constitutive of rationality and discuss how it emerges out of his critique of the norms of objectivity and impersonality long thought to be characteristic of the natural sciences. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of Smith's notion of love to the contemporary study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Philanthropy enjoys a unique position in human relations. Issues related to philanthropy have constantly caught the attention of man throughout human history. The concept of philanthropy and its issues have been time and again reviewed and deliberated upon by scholars and intellectuals. Philanthropy is a capacious word. Writing an article on it, or even authoring a book for that matter, would not suffice to discuss all problems surrounding it, as this requires comprehensive research and ample time. However, among the issues directly associated with philanthropy is that of governance, that is, the manner in which the state treats its citizens, and the degree to which the statesmen respect and stand for human dignity in relation to their subjects. This paper examines the ethical ideals in the practice of Imam Ali particularly as illustrated in his letter to Malik al-Ashtar, and demonstrates the philanthropic principles that statesmen ought to observe vis-à-vis their subjects from the viewpoint of the Imam. Being just with people, consulting them in matters related to the society, being open to criticism, fighting against institutionalised discrimination, being answerable to the masses, establishing peace and security in the society, and the like, are among some philanthropic principles given by Imam Ali which shall be reflected upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to bodies has transformed the study of religion in the past thirty years, aiding the effort to overcome the discipline's Protestant biases by shifting interest from beliefs to practices. And yet much of this work has unwittingly perpetuated an individualist notion of the religious subject. Although religionists are now well aware that bodies cannot be studied apart from the social forces that shape them, all too often the religious subject stands alone in a crowd, participating in communal rituals, subject to religious authorities and disciplinary practices, but oddly detached from intimate relationships. In this article, I first argue that the turn to the body was motivated by what it appeared to reject: theoretical questions about subjectivity. I then seek to challenge prevailing trends by arguing that these same theoretical insights should now prod us to attend to the import of intimacy and personal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relationships among family, gender ideology, and religion appear more heterogeneous and tenuous than family scholars have expected, with conservative religious belief not necessarily translating into conservative familial behavior. In this article, I suggest the perspective of structured ambivalence as a theoretical framework for better understanding how religion may affect family life. I discuss conceptual and methodological issues as well as recommendations for future research on the religion-family connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and facilitates compliance to authority's request for revenge among individuals with high dispositional submissiveness (Saroglou, Corneille, & Van Cappellen, 2009). The present experiment examines another key social influence issue: the effect of religious priming on informational conformity. Participants primed with subtle religious or control cues were asked to complete a numeric estimation task. In this task, they were left free to use or disregard numeric estimates allegedly provided by peers for reporting their own numeric decision. Results revealed that participants assimilated their estimates to that of their peers more after religious than control priming, at least for participants scoring higher on dispositional submissiveness. This finding adds to current research concerned with the impact of religious priming in social cognition and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies Stryker's identity theory ([1980] 2003) to the survey interview to examine the bias in self-reports of socially desirable behavior, using religious service attendance as an example case. An extended model, one that includes a novel intrapersonal level of commitment as an influence on identity importance, which, along with intensive and extensive interpersonal commitments, is posited to influence identity salience. The model is fitted to data from the 1998 General Social Survey (Davis and Smith). Findings suggest that the survey interview may be viewed by the respondent as an opportunity to exhibit a socially desirable identity by claiming more frequent or more recent behavior, regardless of the level of inter- or intrapersonal commitments. A path for this systematic error is discussed through the respondent's level of identity importance. Venues for future work are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review examines the role of religion, for better and worse, in marital and parent–child relationships according to peer-reviewed studies from 1999 to 2009. A conceptual framework of relational spirituality is used (a) to organize the breadth of findings into the 3 stages of formation, maintenance, and transformation of family relationships and (b) to illustrate 3 in-depth sets of mechanisms to delve into the ways religion shapes family bonds. Topics include union formation, fertility, spousal roles, marital satisfaction and conflict, divorce, domestic violence, infidelity, pregnancy, parenting children, parenting adolescents, and coping with family distress. Conclusions emphasize moving beyond markers of general religiousness and identifying specific spiritual beliefs and practices that prevent or intensify problems in traditional and nontraditional families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post 9/11 era, there is growing interest in the complex relationship between religion, economics, finance, politics, law, and social behavior. This has brought with it a disagreement on how to investigate the impact of religiosity, whether religion affects the economic, political, and social outlook of countries or whether these factors affect religiosity? In other words, should religion be viewed as a dependent or an independent variable? In this paper we ask what we believe to be the precursor question to such linkages, namely, do self-declared Islamic countries, as attested by membership in the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference), embrace policies that are founded on Islamic teachings? We believe that only once this question is addressed can one begin to estimate how Islam adherence to Islam may affect economic, political and social behavior. In the first part of the paper we present what we believe should be the characteristics and scaffolding of an "Islamic" country. We base our depiction on the Quran, and the life, practices and sayings of the Prophet Mohammad — the two principal channels that provide Muslims with the road map. In the second part, we develop an index to measure the "Islamicity" of Islamic and non-Islamic countries. This IslamicityIndex (or I2) measures 208 countries adherence to Islamic principles using four sub-indices related to economics, legal and governance, human and political rights, and international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book of Ecclesiastes has frequently been mischaracterized as a cynical or pessimistic work. Instead, this article recommends Ecclesiastes, following Eunny P. Lee, as contributing to pastoral theology through its embodied and pragmatic theology of enjoyment in which practices of joy revitalize the human spirit. However, there are some who are unable to experience satisfaction. The absence of reflection on this problem in Ecclesiastes scholarship is considered the starting point of pastoral theology, and is addressed by a turn to the frequently misunderstood passage in 7:16–18, bringing it into conversation with the topographical model of the human person developed by Freud. At the same time, the interpersonal aspects of enjoyment found in Ecclesiastes critique Freud by suggesting how the fragmented parts of self-experience can be held together in an interpersonal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the concept of human security introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which emphasizes territorial security of national states and the spiritual insecurity from other states' threat of violence. It looks into the importance of protection against forces that are intended to cause harm and conflict and the connections between relations that produce a sense of spiritual insecurity. It also explores the significance of an assessment of one's interpersonal relationships including social factors such as families, communities, and organizations emerging from the said relations.