Entre memórias e rupturas

Delimiting Religion

The meaning of traditional and alternative measures of religiosity in a majority Muslim context is examined using the Islamic Social Attitudes Survey (ISAS). Specifically, this article reports a test of whether traditional religiosity measures are useful in a majority Muslim context. Differences between men and women are explored as well as the extent to which demographics, schools of thought, and religious socialization are significantly correlated to religious salience and religious experience. Results suggest the need to use alternative measures of Islamic religiosity and to take gender difference into account. Islamist political affiliation and religious socialization are positively associated with religious salience and experience for women, while more traditional measures such as mosque attendance and Qur’anic reading are associated with religious salience and experience for men, even after controlling for religious sect.

The following article is a result of empirical study conducted in 2017-2018. It is focused on narratives about religious experience, an outstanding intensive experience that individual interprets as a contact with transcendent reality. The object of our study are the ways the subjective reality of religious experience is transmitted into the language of everyday communication. I have carried out a survey in order to find the respondents that believe they had a religious (mystical) experience. Next step I have conducted eight narrative interviews. For the present comparative analysis I have chosen two interviews from the corpus of collected data. The choice was designated by the respondents’ attitude to religion: an orthodox believer and a non-believer. The aim of the analysis is to compare how the respondents construct the narrative about religious experience and their identity. For this purpose I have examinde the general structure of the narratives; the notions of religious (mystical) experience and repertoires used; the categories connected to identification or opposition to social groups. All the above allows to define the implicit meaning of religious self-identification that respondents articulated. The analysis of the examples demonstrates that individual religiosity resists the formal categorization. In the analyzed narratives the mystical experience can be described beyond religious context. The respondents give negative evaluation to religious institute and understand religious tradition as a resource that can be used pragmatically along with non-religious repertoires.

The subject of this study is the methodological approach used by Aldous Huxley to study religious experience and mystical experiences. The article pays special attention to the theoretical origins of this methodology, as well as the social and cultural context of its formation. The article examines how science, philosophy, and religion of that time contributed to the formulation of Aldous Huxley's methodological approach. The author of the article examines which principles and methods formed the basis of Huxley's methodology, how the principle of objectivity of scientific knowledge with the subjectivity of personal experience is consistent in the applied approach. The article also examines his experimental use of mescaline to explore the depths of human consciousness and search for a "divine foundation", analyzes the results and limitations of Huxley's methodological approach and his contribution to understanding the nature of religious experience. This article is based on methodological approaches such as biographical and comparative historical methods, as well as an analytical study of sources and their systematization. The work used a comprehensive analysis of Huxley's texts to identify key aspects of his worldview. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that a holistic reconstruction of Huxley's methodology used by him for the study of religious experience has been carried out. Based on sources, the author shows how it developed from the late 1920s to 1960. The article analyzes not only key works, but also little-known essays and lectures, some of which have not been published in Russian. Huxley's interest in religious experience stems from personal experiences and cultural context. His methodology includes philosophical, psychological, and anthropological aspects, focusing on the phenomenology of religious experience. Huxley conducts a comparative analysis of various religious traditions, identifying common features and a universal spiritual reality. He strives to integrate scientific methods with mystical ones based on critical analysis, facts and experimentation. In theoretical analysis, he juxtaposes binary categories such as body-mind and religion-magic, emphasizing the importance of bodily experience in spiritual enlightenment. Also, as an important conclusion, the strengthening of the body-oriented principle in understanding religious and mystical experience in the last decade of the thinker's life should be noted.

A number of empirical studies have shown the continuous lack of adherence and the growing autonomy of the population regarding religious institutions. This article reflects on the kind of relationship between deinstitutionalisation and religious experience based on the following hypothesis: the evident decline in religious institutions does not necessarily lead to the disappearance or the weakening of religious experience; rather, it runs simultaneously with a process of individualisation. Our aim is to provide empirical evidence of such transformations; therefore, we do not get involved in speculations, but take into account the contributions of scholars concerning three key terms integrated in the conceptual framework of “religious experience’’: “experience of God”, “God image”, and “institutional belonging”. We analysed 39 in-depth interviews with a qualitative approach; interviews were conducted during the years 2016–2018 amongst Evangelical and Catholic populations in three Latin American cities (Córdoba, Montevideo, and Lima) and in the city of Bilbao (Spain). These interviews clearly indicate a growing autonomy from the religious institution, while evidencing a rich range of experiences of God and a great diversity of God representations. In both cases, they point to processes of individualisation of believers who elaborate their own religious experience in a personal and complex way.

As part of a large-scale inquiry into the religious and moral orientations of Dutch secondary school students, they were questioned about their religious and moral socialisation at home. More specifically the students were asked how important their religious and moral socialisation is/was to their parents. On the basis of the data thus acquired this paper explores differences in the importance attached to religious and moral socialisation by children in religious and nonreligious families and in churchgoing and non-churchgoing families. As expected, in both religious and churchgoing families the religious socialisation of children is deemed more important than in nonreligious and non-churchgoing families. Two rather unexpected results were that, firstly, moral socialisation was deemed more important in religious and churchgoing families than in their secular counterparts; and, secondly, religious and churchgoing parents considered certain aspects of their children's moral socialisation more important than related aspects of their religious socialisation. Apparently, children's moral socialisation is not only rated more highly in religious and church-affiliated than in secular environments, but in the former it is rated above their religious socialisation. This is a remarkable finding, which is discussed from the perspective of cognitive and evolutionary psychology in the final section of this paper.

This article examines the relationship between sexual orientation and religious experience of men from early adolescence to adulthood. Data have been obtained from an online survey of 1,042 males who were part of a larger sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) persons who are current or former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints (LDS, Mormon). While early religious experience was essentially identical to that of heterosexuals, the gap between religious norms and experience widened as these men moved through early and mid‐adulthood. Those who married did so at a later age, and experienced a high rate of divorce. Continued participation, integration, and conformity to LDS ideals was not attributable to faith in, or a departure from, fundamental doctrinal belief. Instead, the responsible variable was sexual orientation, measured by the Kinsey Scale scores across behavior, attraction, and identity. For those near the exclusively homosexual end of the spectrum, the failure to change sexual orientation after intense effort over many years resulted in loss of belonging, belief, and participation, along with increased negative emotions and a sense of mistreatment.

This study investigated the efficacy of a self study programme designed to teach nurses about how to talk with patients about spirituality, and to identify factors predicting this learning. Furthermore, the study investigated whether there were differences in learning between students and practicing clinicians, and between those in a religious or non-religious institution. Although USA and UK accrediting bodies mandate nurses learn how to assess and support patient spiritual health, there is a paucity of evidence to guide educators regarding how to teach spiritual care to nurses. Indeed, it is unknown if aspects of spiritual care can be taught using formal approaches. A pretest-posttest pre-experimental design was used to study how attitude toward spiritual care, ability to create empathic verbal responses to expressed spiritual pain, personal spiritual experience, and knowledge about communication for spiritual caregiving changed from before to after programme completion. Study participants, 201 nursing students and RNs, independently completed the mailed self-study programme (i.e. workbook with supplemental DVD) and self-report study instruments (i.e. Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, Spiritual Care Perspective Scale-Revised, Response Empathy Scale, Communicating for Spiritual Care Test, and Information about You form). Significant differences were seen between the before and after scores measuring attitude, ability, spiritual experience, and knowledge. An interaction effect of time between students and registered nurses for both spiritual care attitude and personal spiritual experience was observed. Findings suggest learning occurred for both students and RNs, regardless of whether they were at a religious institution or not. Relevance to clinical practice. These data indicate that this self-study programme was an effective approach to teach nurses about how to converse with patients about spirituality.

Reviewed by: Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing religious awakenings in eighteenth-century New England by Douglas L. Winiarski Shelby M. Balik Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing religious awakenings in eighteenth-century New England By Douglas L. Winiarski. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. If ever there were a topic that has received more than enough scholarly attention, the Great Awakening should be it. The story of Old Lights and New Lights, of Edwards and Whitefield, is so familiar, and has been examined from so many angles, that it cannot possibly merit new attention and a fresh look—or can it? In this epic study of the Great Awakening in New England, Douglas Winiarski reinterprets the revivals and reframes them as a popular insurgency: one in which the people, inspired by new religious styles and experiences, seized control of a region's religious culture and refashioned it to suit their own sensibilities. In doing so, he shows that there is much more to these well-studied revivals than historians have thus far appreciated. By telling the story from the bottom up, Winiarski argues forcefully and convincingly that the Great Awakening was more disruptive, more revolutionary and more cataclysmic than we have fully understood. To tell how revivalism transformed New England, Winiarski explores the region's spiritual life through the eyes and words of its laity. He sets the stage by examining the region prior to revival, when "godly walkers" adhered to a culture structured by Reformed theology, mutual duty and the desire for individual salvation—all of which convinced New Englanders to exert themselves spiritually to avoid sin and corruption (29). Churchgoers used a "vocabulary of Christian obligation" to express their commitments to each other, but there were fissures beneath this tidy landscape of well-ordered congregations and households (40). Believers' anxiety over their spiritual states permeated their religious professions, and theological conflicts began to wear down the safe perimeters of churched towns. Before long, waves of revivalism stirred up dissent and eroded the theological foundations on which New Englanders had built their communities. Jonathan Edwards' Northampton revivals preceded George Whitefield's New England tours, and many historians have argued that Edwards' style was better-suited to New England's town-church heritage, but Winiarski shows that it was really Whitefield who caused an irreparable break with the puritan past. By introducing new preaching styles and theologies, Whitefield set fire to the region; he and others in his vein led hearers to criticize their churches, demand emotional fulfillment from their faith and even question the validity of conversions that they no longer took to be authentic. The people who were attracted to this new religious sensibility increasingly embraced the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which had faded in importance in Congregational worship but now came to define revivalism. The Holy Spirit imbued believers with mysticism and catalyzed individualistic religious experiences, far different from the religion of communal ties that had prevailed before. Under the Holy Spirit's influence, believers saw visions, responded to conversions with bodily spasms, and divined their own interpretations of the Bible and other sacred books. Ministers like Jonathan Edwards, who had promoted the revivals, now cautioned that with no guiding authority, it would be impossible to know what was God's work and what was Satan's. But the awakened laity seemed to know the difference. Increasingly confident in their convictions, this "radicalized cohort of new converts" asserted the authenticity of their miraculous experiences and shouted down ministers (in person and in print) who cautioned against error (281). Increasingly, the laity claimed independence from religious authority, and their idiosyncratic spiritual impulses destroyed the foundations of puritan communalism. They did not do so without inspiration. First Whitefield, and then charismatic leaders like James Davenport and Daniel Rogers, along with small armies of itinerants, encouraged ordinary men and women to upend religious authority and disrupt peaceful (and complacent) congregations. But then the laity took the lead. In Winiarski's telling, ordinary believers declared war on the old order by confronting opponents of revivalism, claiming the authority to judge the authenticity of others' religious experiences, and insisting on the right to exhort...

This paper discusses the role spiritual experience has played in regard to individuals’ affiliation to Swami Muktananda’s Siddha Yoga; that is, individuals’ spiritual experience prior to their affiliation with Siddha Yoga. This study shows that individuals’ prior spiritual experience eventually became integrated into their conversion motif (this does not deny that other attractions or influences were not involved, just that this paper focuses on prior spiritual experience). For the participants in this study, prior spiritual experience appeared, in retrospect, as almost a calling or their ‘Road to Damascus.’ When participants in this study reported having spiritual experience prior to involvement in Siddha Yoga, it was both a positive revelation and also something at times overwhelming and difficult to place in everyday experience or the dominant religious traditions. It was also a powerful and transformative experience which, more that 30 years later, is still a significant aspect of their continuing spiritual journey and personal narrative. For the individuals in this study, their prior religious experience appeared, even for a time, to have found a context in the framework of Siddha Yoga.

Although Thomas Luckmann was at the origin of secularization theory, which is considered to have finally lost its relevance in the early 1990s, some parts of his theory of religion are still of interest. This paper focuses on the transcendence concept, which is assumed to be crucial for Luckmann’s theory of religion and remains a relevant resource for the study of religion today. The text advances and substantiates the thesis that explicitly or implicitly, three types of transcendence can be found in Lukman’s theory of religion. The description of the anthropological transcendence focuses on the transcending of the human organism to the social world. The explication of this process leads us to the conclusion that the condition for the possibility of religion is the property of the organism to construct gradients of importance before any reflection on this importance. The description of phenomenological transcendence focuses on the process of “shrinking” of the experience of the transcendent underlying religion: from religions of “great” transcendence (world religions), to religions of “medium” or even “little” transcendence (privatized religions). The discussion of this type leads to the idea that religious experience does not disturb the course of everyday life, but is a condition of it, and that although any experience can be the basis of religion, there must be a way of selecting experiences that have a higher probability of being experienced religiously. The description of sociological transcendence focuses on the process of internalization and reconstruction of self-evident “ultimate” socially objectified significances (socio-historical a priori) transcendent to the individual and underlying their everyday life. In this sense, the process of privatization of religion suggests that the practice of “choosing” a private religion is part of, rather than a condition of, a system of “ultimate” significance. Understood in this way, Lukman’s theory of transcendence allows us to look at some relationships important for the sociology of religion from a different angle. For example, the relationship between religion in the public and private sphere, the relationship between religious and everyday experience, and the relationship between the functional boundaries of religious and secular institutions.

Feminist philosophy of religion is a tool for the development of justice in theory as well as practice. As such, it claims to root itself in women's experience: not ‘religious experience’ narrowly defined, but the standpoint of women's lives. Yet until now efforts to develop theology from women's expenence have largely fallen back into traditional sources of religious knowledge. A consideration of standpoint theory enables a more radical grounding in women's expenence as the source of religious knowledge. The work of Luce Ingaray may be considered as one such attempt, seeking to build a philosophy of religion on die basis of a female gendered divine as the horizon of becoming.

Preface to the Second Edition. From the Preface to the First Edition. 1. Religion in Psychological Perspective. The Prevalence and Scope of Religion. Religion in Action. Psychological Questions about Religion. What is Religion? Religion as Reconnection. Personal and Social Religion. Religious Function and Religious Content. The Variety of Religious Behaviors. How do Psychologists Handle the Problem of Defining Religion? Dimensions of Religious Commitment: Logical and Descriptive. Religious Belief (The Ideological Dimension). Religious Practice (The Ritualistic Dimension). Religious Feeling (The Experiential Dimension). Religious Knowledge (The Intellectual Dimension). Religious Effects (The Consequential Dimension). The Dimensions in Combination. Status and Utility of the Multidimensional Schema. Psychological Approaches to Religion. Complementary Viewpoints within Psychology. Where do we Look for the Processes Underlying Religiousness? Relevance of the Possible Bases of Religion. Is the Psychology of Religion Valid? Is Religion Unique? Implications of the Various Positions. Approach and Plan of the Book. Orientations. Limitations. Organization. 2. Historical and Theoretical Developments. The Early Period: An Impressive Start. Starbuck and the Either-Or Philosophy. James. The Middle Period: Factors Contributing to the Decline. Theoretical Interlude. Classical Theories and Their Questions. Some Stimuli to Current Research. The Contemporary Period: The Reemergence of the Field. Indicators of the Trend. Is Psychology of Religion Influencing General Psychology? Reasons for the Trend. 3. Research in the Psychology of Religion. Philosophy of Science for Psychology of Religion. Tensions Between Psychology and Religion. The Nature of Psychological Science. Multiple Accounts of Religious Behavior. Influence of the Post-Modernism Movement. The Role Psychology Can Fulfill. Methods of Researching Religion. Strategies and Methods. Measuring Religion. 4. Religious Development in Children. Psychological Research on Religious Development. The Nature of Childhood Religion. Perception, Language, and the Meaning of Symbols: Cognitive Mechanisms. Family, Social Context, and Personal Needs: Social Learning and Attachment Processes. Cognitive Factors in Moral Development. Piaget's 2 Stages of Moral Reasoning. Piaget's 3 Stages of Cognitive Development. Kohlberg's 6 Stages of Moral Judgment. Stages of Religious Development. Elkind's Stage Theory. Research on Religious Stages. Religious Stages in Prayer. Research Possibilities and Questions. 5. Religious Development Through the Lifespan: Adolescence and Adulthood. Religion in Adolescence. How Religious are Adolescents? Global Measures of Religiousness. Doubt. Secret Doubt and Hidden Observers. Models of Lifespan Religious Development. Development of Religious Judgment: The Double Helix Model. Stages of Faith Development. Sequence of Motives: Religion as Used, Lived, and a Quest. Are Stage Models Valid?: An Assessment. Psychological Processes Prompting Adolescent Religious Development. Paradox. Cognitive, Social, and Personal Factors. Religion and Spirituality in Adulthood and Old Age. How Religious are Adults and the Aged? Baseline Data on Religion and Spirituality. Age-Trajectory Data. Spirituality and Functional Religious Development. Research Possibilities and Questions. 6. Religious Conversion and Persuasion. Prevalence and Definition of Conversion. Popular Opinion. The Prevalence of Conversion. The Definition Issue. Conversion Processes. Sudden and Gradual Conversion. Conversion Process Models. Lofland and Stark's Step Model of Conversion. Motives are Important: Glock's Expansion of Sect-Church Theory. The Relief Effect and Group Processes. The Conversion-as-Creativity Analogy. A Systemic Stage Model. Choice and the Cause of Conversion. Psychological Issues in Conversion. Religion as Crutch. Role of Emotions. The Convertible-Type Issue. The Ripe-Age Issue. Conversion as Attitude Change. Some Current Issues Pertaining to Cults. What is Cultic? Snapping and Brainwashing. Research Possibilities and Questions. 7. Religion and Experience. Relations between Religion and Experience. Experience: The Bottom Line. Ordinary and Extraordinary Experience. Experiential Responses to Religion. Phenomenological Descriptions of Becoming Religious. Conversion, Values, and Purpose in Life. Religious and Mystical Experience. The Common Core Thesis and the Problem of Language. Theories of Religious Experience. What Facilitates Religious Experience? Research Possibilities and Questions. 8. Religious Orientation, Attitudes, and Behavior. Religion and Morally Relevant Attitudes. Living One's Religion vs. Using It. Religious Orientation and Prejudice. Religious Orientation and Subjective Experience. Tentative Conclusions about the Intrinsic-Extrinsic Constructs. Religion and Social Behavior. The Good Samaritan Experiment: Evidence for Situational Factors in Helping. The Rescuers: Evidence for Personal factors in Helping. Religion and Negative Behavior. Does Religion Predict Significant Moral Behavior? Re-Evaluating the I-E Research: Quest and Fundamentalism. Religion-as-Quest. Has I-E Outlived Its Usefulness? Authoritarianism and Fundamentalism. Research Possibilities and Questions. 9. Religion, Health, and Well-Being. Impressions of Religion and Psychopathology. Religious Material in Psychic Disturbance. Relativity of Mental Health. Religion and Normal Personality. Early Childhood Factors. Authoritarianism and Dogmatism. Suggestibility and Hypnotizability. Intelligence and Achievement. Summary. Religion, Mental and Physical Health, Abnormality, and Well-Being. Religion and Mental Health. Physical Health. Fear of Death. Spiritual Well-Being. Counseling. What Conclusions Can be Drawn? Research Possibilities and Questions. 10. Evaluation and New Directions. General Evaluation. Areas and Issues. Cross-Topic Themes. Directions for Development. References. Name Index. Subject Index.

This study examines the religious experiences of African Americans who make up the reversal of the Great Migration. While scholars have studied the role of religion in the Great Migration, we know less about how religion matters in the movement’s reversal. I use the framework of conjunctural action to elaborate the role of spirituality and religious institutions among contemporary black southbound migrants. Drawing on 127 qualitative interviews with black interregional migrants to Charlotte, North Carolina, I show how some blacks interpret their moves through faith and draw on ties to religious institutions for support. But not all black migrants interpret their moves through faith or seek support from religious institutions. These migrants’ lack of engagement often reflects their concerns about intra-group marginalization rather than an absence of spiritual belief. These findings illuminate micro-level processes of internal migration, and they show continuities but also changing dynamics in African American religious life.

In this article, I respond to the problem of engaging with religious experience in health care environments. In particular, I illuminate the relational aspects of religious experience in the context of stroke rehabilitation by providing a commentary on data gathered from existing qualitative research and personal narratives in the acute and rehabilitation phases of stroke recovery. In so doing, I address the necessary balance of empathy and alterity in the art of resonant listening. I also provide some critical reflections on interdisciplinary approaches to engaging with religious experience with reference to a largely overlooked group of health care professionals-hospital chaplains.