Biblical Belief Research Articles

Religion and Climate Change Indifference: Linking the Sacred to the Social

This study seeks to identify the influence of religion on indifference toward anthropogenic climate change. This influence is conceptualized by adapting Durkheim's classic sociological model where religion serves to integrate individuals into society using sacred beliefs. We test this theory by conceptualizing and estimating a path model where climate change indifference is regressed on religion and political ideology. The study data are five cross sections from the General Social Survey over 1993 to 2018, and the results indicate indirect and direct effects of religion on climate change indifference. Second, the effects vary across religious traditions and biblical belief sets, and in some cases are oppositional. The study results are discussed in terms of religious influences on salient social questions during prior periods of US history. Finally, we describe how indifference toward the threat of climate change results from a blending of politics and religion and reflects the specific concepts that integrate individuals into a community. These conceptions have become embedded within fundamental relationships concerning how individuals understand their existential connection to a community. Because religious concepts are socially influenced, and because communities are free to reinterpret belief systems, the current relation between religious belief and climate change indifference is subject to future revision and re-interpretation.

Sexual Abuse among Conservative Anabaptists: Culture-Specific Dynamics that Increase Risk of Victimization and Silencing of Victims

How do biblical beliefs and religious-cultural teachings influence a theology of silence among conservative Anabaptists? This research explores this opening question through qualitative research, by examining the impact of theology on expectations of silence among victims of sexual abuse. Conservative Anabaptists are comprised of a range of Mennonite and Amish groups who adhere to deeply fundamental religious beliefs, various forms of separated attire including some type of head covering for women, as well as social isolation and separation from mainstream society to varying degrees. Some even restrict interactions with other conservative Anabaptists whose beliefs differ from their own. Private messages from abuse victims within conservative Anabaptist communities were used to explore how theological and religious teachings contribute to silencing victims of sexual abuse. These messages were sent to Generations Unleashed or to me directly, over the course of 10 years, beginning in November 2010. Contrasting and comparing findings with the work of various professionals offers depth to the research findings. Analyzing patterns, comparing data, and triangulating data gleaned from testimonies of these victims with existing literature gives credibility to findings in the stories and testimonies of survivors. This paper discusses the findings in these survivor testimonies and cultural beliefs and theology, compares them with existing literature, and offers useful insights for professionals who work with conservative Anabaptist survivors of abuse. [Abstract by author.]

The human being and the world as God’s creation: Present-day ethical conflicts and consequences of the doctrine of creation in the perspective of the doctrine of justification

All the medical and bioethical questions, ranging from stem cell research to converging technologies and synthetic biology, touch on the question regarding the image of human beings and their position in the cosmos, by which we are able to orient ourselves. This article argues that the biblical belief in creation and the discourse about humans as created beings by and in the image of God can still be proclaimed as a viable form of human self-interpretation in the present. The distinction between practical knowledge and knowledge of orientation may be of help here. Guidance for how to live and act is not best found in abstract principles, but rather in meaningful stories, in metaphors and symbols. On this level, too, is also where faith in creation and the certainty of our own creatureliness is located.Contribution: This article interprets the doctrine of creation by a hermeneutical theology. It analyses the interdependence between hermeneutics and criticism in the process of reinterpreting the classical propositions about the human being and the world as God’s creation and the relation of anthropology and ethics. The aim is to show what might be the contribution of Christian faith in creation to the approach of an ethics of responsibility in the field of bioethics and ecology. The specific contribution of this article to current debates on an ethics of creation is the thesis that the key to a well-balanced theological approach to all this is the Pauline doctrine of justification as interpreted by the protestant reformers.

The Crucifixion in the Qur’an: Answering Muslim’s Claims Regarding the Death of Jesus Christ

Was Jesus crucified on the cross? Did Jesus die by crucifixion? This topic generates so much emotion and conflict in Christian-Islamic dialogue as many theories have developed to prove one side of the equation. While several methods can answer Islamic objections against the biblical belief, the evidential Apologetics is the best method to provide evidence for the Christian claims. Evidential Apologetics is one of the methods that seeks to prove the truthfulness of the Christian worldview by showing historical and scientific evidences. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to use the evidential method to answer three major objections that Muslims raise against the crucifixion of Jesus: Jesus was never crucified, the swoon theory, and the substitute theory. The paper will conclude that there are surmounted historical and scientific evidences that support the event of Jesus’s crucifixion.

Evangelical Protestantism, Politics, and the Environment: When and How Do Biblical Beliefs Matter?

Literature on environment-related outcomes highlights the role of political and religious factors—in particular, political orientation, party affiliation and biblical beliefs. Less is known about how these factors independently and interactively shape attitudes towards policy and environmental behaviors including how political factors may be moderated by religious beliefs. Using structural equation modeling and data from the 2010 GSS, we find that in the United States political orientation and party affiliation independently affect willingness to pay for the environment and to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. Biblical beliefs have no effect on behaviors, but strongly influence willingness to pay. Moreover, biblical beliefs moderate the effects of political orientation: the more politically conservative biblical literalist are the more willing they are willing to pay for the environment. We conclude with a discussion of these surprising results by calling for more intersectional approaches to environment-related behaviors and attitudes.

Christianity and Climate Change Adaption: Sea-level Rise and Ritualising Village Relocation in Fiji

Development studies are ambivalent about the relationship between climate change adaption and Pacific Christianity. Biblical belief about Noah’s covenant and the End Times are understood to undermine risk perception, while church membership is seen to threaten cross-denominational cooperation, hampering adaptive capacity. Yet the communicative reach and charismatic authority of Pacific churches remains the envy of development specialists working on climate change. This focus on belief and institutional reach, however, neglects how Christian ritual practice can orientate and stabilise faith communities. Drawing on fieldwork in rural Fiji investigating village migration due to coastal flooding from sea-level rise, this paper shows how ritual practice strengthens community resilience when responding to climate change. In Vunidogoloa, villagers employed the Old Testament myth of Exodus to (re)create ritual responses to vent the emotional/spiritual trauma of leaving their ancestral home. Whereas in the nearby village Vunisavisavi, such ritual responses have been lacking and village relocation remained problematic.

Demystifying Nursing Theory: A Christian Nursing Perspective.

How does nursing theory apply to nursing practice? Nursing theory can explain the why and how of nursing practice, guide nursing interventions, and provide a framework for measuring outcomes. This article briefly explains nursing theory, provides examples for applying theory to nursing practice, and proposes questions for examining the consistency of nursing theories with Christian perspectives. A helpful table illustrating grand, middle-range, and situation-specific theories and their application to nursing practice and research, along with references, is provided online as supplemental digital content. Three caring theories are analyzed from biblical beliefs.

Maritime navigation, energy security, and peace dividend: Exploring the historic developments of the Dead Sea conveyance project

ABSTRACTThe Dead Sea has attracted a wide range of interest over the last 160 years. Colonization, political aspirations, maritime navigation, energy security, desalination, biblical beliefs, Zionism, and regional peace dividends; all of these topics have been a motivation to explore the feasibility of building a seawater conveyance to the Dead Sea. The highlight of these ambitious quests was a vision of a waterway that would connect the three basins: the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea, and the Red Sea. The three phases of history around this Dead Sea project plan are reviewed in this article.

Biblical beliefs in the shaping of modern nations

The ideology and culture of modern nations and nationalism have been profoundly influenced by two traditions that reach back into the ancient world, the biblical and the classical. Here, the focus is on the particular contribution of the Hebrew Bible to the political ideals of modern nationhood. Modern Western nations, unlike non-Western and ancient nations, are distinguished by their quest for territorial integrity and sovereignty, citizenship, legal standardisation, cultural homogeneity and secular education, while modern nationalism is a pro-active, ideological movement that seeks to ‘build’ autonomous, unified, distinctive and ‘authentic’ nations out of ethnic populations deemed by some members to constitute actual or potential ‘nations’. While modern European nations emerged out of the matrix of Christianity, as Adrian Hastings argued, it was the political model and ideals of community found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christianity adopted (while rejecting the Jews) and which the New Testament lacked, that so often provided the dynamic of modern nationalism and the values of modern Western nations. Chief among these were the Pentateuchal and prophetic narratives of Exodus, Covenant, Community of Law (Torah), the holiness of a ‘chosen people’, the messianic role of sacred kingship and the dream of fulfilment in the Promised Land. These ideals did not fully come into their own until the Reformation. In this period, state elites expressed growing national sentiments and biblical texts were being rendered into the vernacular, while a more rigorous biblical form of ‘covenantal nationalism’ emerged in early modern Netherlands, Scotland and England, taking the narrative of the deliverance of the Israelites as its starting point. In the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the novel cults of ‘Nature’, ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Human Perfectibility’ secured an opening for neo-classical political ideas in the formation of nations. But it was the biblical ideals of liberation, Covenant, election and promised land that provided the basic model of the modern nation and nationalism in Europe, from the French Revolution, and German and East European nationalisms to the Hebraic Protestant nationalism of Victorian Britain. To a large extent, the modern age owes to the Jewish Bible its fundamental vision of a world divided into distinctive and sovereign territorial nations.

Why Biblical Scholars Should Study Aramaic Bowl Spells

This study analyses the unique contributions of Jewish incantation texts and categorically examines the bowl spells according to three types of biblical citation: words of power, contextual citations and thematic citations. The bowl spells represent some of the earliest attestations of biblical passages not found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and display formal features useful for reconstructing linguistic and manuscript developments in pre-Islamic Judaism. Furthermore, the biblical citations in these texts shed light on the social location of biblical knowledge and attendant beliefs in the power of the Hebrew text to bring about practical ends.

Religious Beliefs And Wealth Accumulation

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">One of the more interesting findings in the research on household wealth is the relationship between religion and wealth accumulation. In contrast to previous studies that use denominational affiliation, we use a more precise measure of religious belief constructed from responses to survey questions regarding interpretation of the Bible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regression results indicate that households with more literalist Biblical beliefs have lower net worth overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additional analysis using quantile regression reveals that this relationship holds only for the upper half of the wealth distribution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no relationship at lower levels of wealth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, while more literalist households are less likely to have an investment account or to have ever received an inheritance, they are more likely to own a home and to have a positive net worth.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

Contrasting Views on Physicians in Tobit and Sirach

This article examines the complex medical situation that lies behind two opposing attitudes about the consultation of physicians and the use of medicines found in the books of Tobit and Sirach. The thesis of this article is that Tob. 2.10 reflects a situation that has emerged due to the experimental stage of pharmacology during the third and second centuries BCE. Sirach 38.1-15, being an indirect response to Tobit’s criticism of secular medicine, attempts to reconcile the medical arts with the biblical belief that God is the only healer (Exod. 15.26). By means of discussion on bodily treatment, both authors venture to construct medical consciousness among the Jewish circles of Second Temple period.

Religion and Attitudes Toward Same‐Sex Marriage Among U.S. Latinos*

Objectives. This study examines links between multiple aspects of religious involvement and attitudes toward same-sex marriage among U.S. Latinos. The primary focus is on variations by affiliation and participation, but the possible mediating roles of biblical beliefs, clergy cues, and the role of religion in shaping political views are also considered.Methods. We use binary logistic regression models to analyze data from a large nationwide sample of U.S. Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Forum in late 2006.Results. Findings highlight the strong opposition to same-sex marriage among Latino evangelical (or conservative) Protestants and members of sectarian groups (e.g., LDS), even compared with devout Catholics. Although each of the hypothesized mediators is significantly linked with attitudes toward same-sex marriage, for the most part controlling for them does not alter the massive affiliation/attendance differences in attitudes toward same-sex marriage.Conclusions. This study illustrates the importance of religious cleavages in public opinion on social issues within the diverse U.S. Latino population. The significance of religious variations in Hispanic civic life is likely to increase with the growth of the Latino population and the rising numbers of Protestants and sectarians among Latinos.

Science knowledge and biblical literalism

Biblical literalists are often described as scientific illiterates, but little if any empirical research has tested this claim. Analysis of a sixteen-item battery from the 2008 US General Social Survey revealed that literalists possess less science knowledge than those with other views of Scripture, but that much of this deficit can be attributed to demographic factors and unequal educational attainment. The marginal direct effect of biblical belief suggests that literalism is not incompatible with knowledge of science and, therefore, the best avenue for increasing science knowledge among literalists may be to foster interest in science and design science courses to attenuate any perceived conflict between science and religion.

A Profession of Blended Beliefs: English at a Christian Liberal Arts College

In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990), Ernest L. Boyer challenged the prevailing belief that the most significant work of higher education involved research and publication. Calling for new categories of scholarship—including the activities of discovery, integration, application, and teaching—Boyer emphasized the need for a more complete and pluralistic understanding of the academy, one curiously consistent with the aims of a Christian liberal arts college. As one who teaches English at such a place, I possess a composite of beliefs regarding my profession and my institution—beliefs not perceived as compatible by some. This essay is an examination of these beliefs and how they, in fact, interface. In the English department at Wheaton, our primary educational aim proves to be different from that of a public university: the formation of whole and effective human beings through imitatio Christi, the pedagogic integration of Christian faith and humanistic learning. Eschewing indoctrination and superficial biblical belief, we require students to engage controversial theoretical perspectives and difficult life questions, resulting in the freedom for self-critical participation in a community, a language, and a Book. This exposition concludes with a consideration of belief versus bullshit, advocating Michael Bérubé's approach for “critical pluralism.”

Is it Really Red vs. Blue? Politics, Religion, and the Culture War Within

Popular media accounts have suggested there is a culture war raging between residents in red and blue states. Conversely, recent scholarship challenges that position and finds most Americans are not engaged in a culture war, but rather hold moderate positions on controversial social issues. Using public opinion data from the American National Election Study, we attempt to shed further light on the culture war debate. Our findings indicate that there are significant divisions between citizens who hold a literal interpretation of the Bible and those who do not. We conclude that a culture war does not rage between red and blue state residents as popular media accounts often portray; however, there is evidence of polarization within red and blue states with biblical beliefs at the center of this division.

Biblical Criticism and Religious Belief

Abstract Moberly discusses John Barton's Nature of Biblical Criticism and takes issue with Barton's portrayal of theological interpretation as hostile to the values of biblical criticism. After showing how Barton misrepresents theological interpretation, not least because of a failure to do justice to the changing frames of reference of critical scholarship, Moberly extends the discussion to include the preunderstandings that interpreters inevitably bring to the Bible in ways analogous to how one reads a classic; the way in which appreciation of deep literature relates to personal maturity; and the way in which theological dogma, rightly understood, can make truer one's perception of reality.

Are There Religious Variations in Marital Infidelity?

Although previous scholarship has examined the relationship between religious involvement and a wide range of family outcomes, the relationship between religion and extramarital sexual behavior remains understudied. The authors investigate how religious affiliation, participation, and biblical beliefs explain differences in self-reported marital infidelity. This study examines data from the 1991-2004 General Social Surveys and finds that religious factors are associated with the likelihood of marital infidelity. Both church attendance and biblical beliefs are associated with lower odds of self-reported infidelity. Additionally, the authors find substantial denominational variations in the odds of marital infidelity, particularly among those who strongly affiliate with their religious group.

RESEARCH: Sanctification of Parenting: Links to Corporal Punishment and Parental Warmth Among Biblically Conservative and Liberal Mothers

A growing body of research has examined links between religious beliefs and parenting practices. This study used the theoretical construct of sanctification to examinethe degree to which parenting holds spiritual significance and meaning for parents and whether sanctification is related to parenting behaviors. Seventy—fourmothers completed questionnaires measuring sanctification of the parenting role, a biblical conservatism scale, and measures of parenting practices. Greater sanctificationof parenting was associated with less use of verbal aggression and, to some extent, increased parental consistency. Biblical conservatism moderated the link betweensanctification and (a) use of corporal punishment and (b) positive parent—child interactions. Specifically, greater sanctification of parenting was tied to decreasedcorporal punishment by mothers with liberal biblical beliefs but related to more use of corporal punishment among conservative mothers; greater sanctification was tiedto increased positive mother—child interactions by mothers with conservative biblical views but did not alter the uniformly high rates of positivity reported by liberal mothers.Findings are integrated with theoretical work on sanctification and existing empirical research on religion and parenting.

The Virgin Mary in Cathar Thought

The central Middle Ages in western Europe witnessed both a significant growth in the cult of the Virgin Mary and the rise of the dualist heretical movements known as the Cathars. Whilst the Cathars' dualism meant they denied any role for the Virgin Mary in the incarnation, nevertheless they often assigned her an important place in their beliefs. This article explores the considerable affinities which existed between contemporary orthodox doctrines and heretical teachings on Mary and, through a case study of the Disputatio inter catholicum et paterinum hereticum, examines the close relationship between anti-Cathar polemic, orthodox biblical exegesis and heretical belief.