Diverse Christian Research Articles

Aportación del ecumenismo a la unidad de la Iglesia y de la sociedad

The article explores how ecumenism has been a key tool in promoting unity both within the Christian Church and in wider society. Through interdenominational dialogue and cooperation between diverse Christian traditions, ecumenism seeks to overcome historical and doctrinal divisions, fostering reconciliation and mutual respect. This process not only strengthens ties between churches, but also promotes a culture of peace and understanding in society, highlighting the importance of working together on social, ethical and humanitarian issues.

Lament: Measuring a Christian Meaning-Making Coping Practice

Research demonstrates that people draw on their religions in coping with difficult life circumstances, and that more religious people tend to cope better than less religious people. Lament is a religious prayer practice that constitutes a form of meaning-making coping. Here, we explicate this form of coping and, in a series of three studies with Christian participants, report on the development of a lament scale. In the first study, we develop items and test the items for clarity and for generalizability to diverse Christian groups using expert review and cognitive interviewing with participants representing five Christian groups. In the second study, we report results of exploratory factor analysis using data from primarily White and Protestant MTurk participants ( N = 303). In the third study, we report on factor stability and construct validity using data from largely White and African American Protestant and Catholic Prolific participants ( N = 346). The studies demonstrated generalizability to diverse Christian groups, a three-factor structure consistent with our theoretical formulation, good construct validity and relationships with well-being. Moderation analyses also indicated that when both Complaint and Praise are either high or low, the severity of the event is inversely related to flourishing. However, when either Complaint or Praise is high, the negative relationship between severity of the event and flourishing is ameliorated. The Lament Scale is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing lament in ways that are consistent with the conceptualization of lament as a meaning-making coping practice.

Heutagogy as a framework for Christian discipleship: the triadic role of biblical wisdom literature, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit

AbstractHeutagogy—also known as self-determined learning—empowers individuals to take charge of their personal growth by fostering proactive approaches to self-development. In a Christian context, self-enacted spiritual growth can operate within a range of personal, denominational, and/or hermeneutical understandings of discipleship. Moreover, self-determined learning transcends diverse Christian traditions, mirroring different expressions of the role and work of the Holy Spirit in capacitating Christian discipleship. This conceptual paper contributes to the literature by expounding and advocating heutagogy as an under-appreciated framework for facilitating spiritual growth. To construct its argument, the paper draws on three sources: biblical wisdom literature, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and selected expressions of the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christian believers.

The Fall of Constantinople: A Critical Analysis of Its Bearing on Islamophobia Discourse

This essay examines the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as a critical juncture for the playing out of Chrisitan-Muslim relations. Particularly, this historical moment demonstrates the significant theological schism between Orthodox and Latin Christianity that overshadowed the external threat posed by the Ottomans. The fall marked the end of the Eastern Roman Empire and highlighted the deep-rooted theological tensions within Christianity, tensions that were so profound that many Orthodox Christians preferred Ottoman rule over submission to the Latin Church. This preference stemmed from a desire to maintain theological autonomy and avoid the doctrinal compromises required by the Latin Church. The essay critically assesses the contemporary scholarship on Christian Islamophobia, arguing that it often overlooks the internal Christian divisions and portrays Christianity as a monolithic entity united against Islam. By focusing on the diverse Christian attitudes towards the Ottomans, particularly the Orthodox perspective, the essay demonstrates that the fear of theological compromise with the Latins was considered a worse fate than Muslim conquest. This analysis challenges the prevailing narratives in Islamophobia literature by highlighting the necessity of acknowledging intra-Christian tensions to fully understand the historical dynamics of Christianity and Islamophobia. Through an exploration of various Christian responses to the Ottoman threat and the subsequent establishment of the millet system, the essay advocates for a more nuanced portrayal of Christianity’s internal divisions and their impact on the construction of Christian identity and attitudes towards Islam.

“Athra,” a maternal illness in the rural Punjabi-Pakistan, as a source of stigma

In the rural Punjab region in Pakistan, some women who experience pregnancy loss are believed to suffer from athra, which is considered a major cause of childlessness. Women with athra can have several miscarriages, and they are prone to stillbirth and neonatal death. This study presents results from ethnographic fieldwork in a rural, religiously diverse Christian–Muslim community in Punjab, Pakistan. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with community members and women who had experienced athra. This study explores the perception of athra in this community, as well as the impact of a diagnosis of athra on the women affected. This study follows the model developed by Link and Phelan (2001) to explore the process through which athra is stigmatised. According to Link and Phelan (2001), stigma occurs when labelling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, and discrimination occur within an unequal power situation.

The lived religion of grace: Exploring diverse Christian narratives.

The lived religion of grace: Exploring diverse Christian narratives.

A Multicultural, Social Justice, and Peace Intervention for Interpersonal Violence

The Creative and Expressive Arts Personal Growth Group [CAPG] is a manualized intervention for interpersonal violence related to diversity factors [IV-D]. This article presents a Trinitarian-informed adaption of CAPG for Christians impacted by IV-D [CCAPG]. A pilot study exploring CCAPG’s potential to promote peace in the clinical setting and peace education in the research environment follows. Sixteen culturally diverse Christian psychotherapists and emerging counselor educators with a history of IV-D participated in the study. Qualitative data assessed with transcendental and heuristic phenomenological analyses informed by constructivist grounded theory resulted in a preliminary understanding of how CCAPG may promote Trinitarian-based peace and peace education. Thematic findings for the clinical setting included the salience of Incarnational Leadership, Trinitarian-Based Components, and Christian Community to receiving the Peace of God. In the research setting, themes were Valuing Social Justice, Multiculturalism, and Peace and Becoming an Instrument of Peace. The paper closes with discussion, implications, and recommendations for the field.

Spiritual Formation in Theological Education: A Multi-case Exploration on Seminaries and Student Development

In recent decades, theological schools have demonstrated increased interest in educational models that not only transmit knowledge and skill to students, but also prepare them to have the character and virtue dispositions needed to successfully navigate the moral challenges that await them in future ministry settings. This shift is reflected in the most recent 2020 accreditation standards of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), which highlight the importance of “personal and spiritual formation” as a key facet to seminary programs. Research conducted by the ATS (2018) into how seminaries understood the terms “personal and spiritual formation” revealed that over 40% of seminaries do not have a formal or working institutional definition of personal and spiritual formation. While this finding may be understandable given the complexities of terms and definitions in light of diverse Christian spiritual traditions, it also highlights an area of crucial need given the centrality of spiritual formation to the mission of theological education. Accordingly, the aim of this present paper is to support work in this area and to stimulate a larger discussion into the topic of spiritual formation within the seminary context by articulating and putting forth four different institutional perspectives on the topic (from Fuller Theological Seminary, George Truett Theological Seminary, Talbot School of Theology, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School).

Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, by Gina Zurlo

<i>Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe</i>, by Gina Zurlo

Suffering with Christ: Emic christian coping and relation to well-being

Current measures of religious coping are generally etic in nature, measuring constructs across religions. Emic variables (i.e., those specific to particular religions) are often left out, which limits our ability to assess religious/spiritual coping during times of stress and adversity. Here we provide findings from three studies we conducted to develop and test an emic Christian meaning-making coping method: identifying with Christ in his suffering. We ground this construct in Christian theology, the psychology of religious/spiritual coping literature, and existing qualitative research. In the first study, we developed items and tested the items for clarity and generalizability to diverse Christian groups using expert review and cognitive interviewing with participants from five distinct Christian groups. In the second study, we conducted exploratory factor analysis using data from MTurk (N ​= ​335), which revealed a two-factor structure consistent with our theoretical formulation. In the third study, we established factor stability and construct validity using data from Prolific (N ​= ​355). Because we conceptualize identification with Christ in his suffering as a form of meaning-making coping, in this third study we also explored the relationship of the measure to well-being using incremental validity analyses. We found that identification with Christ in suffering predicted measures of well-being above and beyond the variance explained by etic religious coping measures. Collectively, these results highlight the value of emic religious measures of coping with suffering.

The Gift of Power in Methodism: Learning from Women’s Experiences of Working in Diverse Churches in England through Receptive Ecumenism

Global attention to receptive ecumenism has grown in recent years, prompting ecumenical theologians to ask, “What do we need to learn from another Christian tradition to help us address some of the wounds and weaknesses in our own?” Hitherto, much of the published work on receptive ecumenism has focused on its place in the formal ecumenical movement with little attention directed toward the grassroots. This contribution is a case study that identifies possible ecclesial learning by using receptive ecumenism to explore women’s experiences of working in diverse churches in England. It focuses on a particular example emerging from the broader research, during which Baptist women identified how the distribution of power in their churches can inhibit women’s flourishing, particularly in ministerial roles. Following the way of receptive ecumenism, after outlining the research context, I examine gifts shared by Methodist participants who spoke of positive structures of power. These, I argue, critique current practices, not only in the Baptist tradition but across diverse Christian traditions in England, providing the potential for churches to transform the way that power is distributed, especially with respect to women’s flourishing in leadership roles.

Religiosity and Ways of Coping With Sport Injuries Among Christian Athletes

Although research evidence supports religiosity’s predominantly positive mental and physical health benefits to patients coping with varied health problems, there are few studies exploring the influence of religiosity on coping with sport injuries among athletes identifying with specific religions. This study examined the relationships between religiosity and the use of religious and non-religious ways of coping with sport injuries by athletes affiliated with diverse Christian denominations. Within a concurrent mixed methods design, adult athletes (N = 88) responded to an online survey asking about several religiosity factors, their most serious or challenging sport injuries, and their ways of coping with those injuries. Quantitative results showed that religious commitment correlated with specific religious beliefs and behaviors, positive religious ways of coping predominated over negative, and religious commitment fully mediated the relationship between athletes’ Christian denominations and their use of positive, but not negative, religious ways of coping with sport injuries. Thematic template analysis of qualitative data similarly revealed that religious ways of coping with sport injuries were predominantly positive in valence and benefitted physical and mental rehabilitation and recovery processes. Christian athletes relied on both religious and non-religious coping sources during their sport injury recoveries, and their ways of coping centered on their personal and religious identities. These results support that holistic care models encompassing sport psychology, sports medicine, and sports ministry should adapt intervention and treatment plans to accommodate personal religiosity and build on positive and adaptive religious ways of coping with sport injuries when working with religiously committed Christian athletes.

WOMEN DEPICTION AND TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES IN BIBLICAL AND SELECT CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN JOS

Gender roles are defined based on different expectations that people have of others based on their sex, societalvalues and beliefs about gender, which give cues about what sort of behaviour is appropriate for what sex. Extant literature show stereotypical gender roles in politics and diverse professional circles that mostly indicate women as subservient and dependent on men and men as chauvinists. What remains uncertain is the level with which Christian communities understand and interpret biblical gender roles and appropriate them. This study investigates select Christian sects in Jos to determine the depiction and assigning of gender roles within their communities and ascertain how societal and biblical values and beliefs determine how the female gender is particularly perceived and treated in the communities. A quasi-experimental and survey approach is adopted using interviews, questionnaires and observations amongst the clergy and laity of diverse Christian sects to elicit information on gender roles in Christian communities and the data subjected to critical discourse analysis from the Discourse Historical Approach of Ruth Wodak. The study offers profound insight into how women roles are constructed and deconstructed in religious hierarchy on the basis of sameness and the construction of differences and exclusion.

Negotiating Intersectional Identities in a Christian Student Organization

Researchers have suggested that student group involvement during college is beneficial for students on various academic and psychosocial measures. Most research has not focused on how different student groups provide different environments and support that impact students’ experience. This ethnography focuses on one Christian student organization to explore how students draw boundaries around intersecting identities and how they affect students’ experience within the organization. The findings suggest that although the organization expressed intentions of welcoming diverse Christian students, they were unaware and unequipped to interact with diverse students. This study highlights the need for further research to differentiate how different groups offer students a different experience and function as systems of oppression. Additionally, this study shows the importance of institutions in equipping students and student groups to prepare them to interact and include diverse populations. Although student groups may be beneficial, it is crucial to consider which students feel the most welcomed to reap the benefits.

Discerning Ethics: Diverse Christian Responses to Divisive Moral Issues

Discerning Ethics: Diverse Christian Responses to Divisive Moral Issues

Христианские церкви и антиидентистская революция

The article analyzes the ideological contradictions of liberal democracy, or neoliberalism (antiidentism), and traditionalism (identism) on the example of Christian churches. Antiindentism considers traditional religiosity to be hostile: it should be reformed to conform to neoliberal values, and it should be banished from public space. At the same time, antiidentism does not want to eliminate religion, because it is one of the identities that have to be redone like other human identites. The article examines anti-Christian movements (like the “Black Lives Matter”) as well as conservative and liberal movements within various confessions. The authors emphasize that the antiidentist demands are based on the Christian values of respect for any person, for women and men, regardless of anything, for humane methods of raising children, mercy for any categories of people, regardless of their sexual orientation, etc. On the other hand, the demands of antiidentists go far beyond Christian principles and even common sense (not to quote inconvenient passages of the Bible, to change the rules of church life and the appointment of clergy). The article proposes a classification of confessions by direction and by territorial feature, depending on specifics of divisions based on the attitude to antiidentism (American Churches, the Catholic Church, Lutherans and Anglicans as well as diversity of Orthodox churches that are also touched by the antiidentist wave). The authors conclude that the Christian churches, despite the existence of liberal factions, are primarily a traditionalist force in modern politics. Because of fundamental ideological differences, the consolidation of diverse Christian forces is a difficult task. However, there is some progress in this direction. Evangelicals, traditional Catholics, who make up the majority of the Catholic Church, as well as the majority of Orthodox Christians, are a serious political and, what perhaps more important, ideological force.

Word-formative nest with the apex of Christ in the language picture of the world of Ukrainians

The article discusses the example of a word-formative nest with the apex of Christ. It analyses the role of word-formation in the formation of the language picture of the world of Ukrainians. The word-formative nest fi xes the word-forming segment of the semantic space of the Christ concept of the sacred conceptual sphere. Despite the fact that the anthroponomies as vertices of word-formation nests do not exhibit derivational productivity in the Ukrainian language, the word-formation nest with the apex of Christ has a branched structure: in the three stages of derivation, 25 derivatives of diff erent parts of the language, created in diff erent ways, have been certifi ed. This is due to the semantics of the vertex word of the nest, the importance of the concept named by it, in the perception of Ukrainians, in their culture of belief. In the linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians, Christ – Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the God-man, the incarnate God, the Savior, the Teacher, the Creator of the new religion. Such a broad semantic spectrum determines the activation of the derivation possibilities of the base word and the verbalization of word-formative means by a number of conceptual components. An analysis of the word-formative nest with the apex of Christ has shown that the word-formative dimension in the language picture of the world of Ukrainians, along with the universal conceptual components inherent in many diverse Christians, also has a number of individual-language derivational means of categorizing the world.

A qualitative inquiry into the experience of sacred art among Eastern and Western Christians in Canada

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact.

Diakonin och omsorgen om vårt gemensamma hem -en könskritisk analys

This article takes its starting point in a recent tendency to include care for creation in the interpretation of diaconia as a ministry of the Christian church. Among those who argue for a renewed care for our neighbor and for the earth as our common home, we find such diverse Christian leaders as Pope Francis and the bishops of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The article relates these arguments to a feminist discussion on the present crisis of welfare and care in the Western world. Both social care and ecological systems are exhausted in a system where care and reproductive work is subordinated to market oriented goals of growth and increased consumption. In order for the understanding of diaconia to integrate a responsibility not only in relation to needy human beings, but also to ecological systems that are under serious threat, the article argues for the importance of relating to this wider discussion on the crisis of care within feminist social theory. Feminist social theory may thus enrich theology in order to guard social care as a basic aspect of a global eco-system.

Parallel Spaces of Migrant (Non-)Integration in Singapore: Latent Politics of Distance and Difference Within a Diverse Christian Community

ABSTRACT This paper explores how the spatial practices of churches can lead to the (non-)integration of migrant communities. Whilst churches bring migrants and non-migrants together in space and time, so too can they cause them to become divided along ethnic, national, linguistic and/or class-based lines. In such cases, migrants can become integrated into a community of other migrants, which can discourage integration into the church-at-large, or into society more generally. These practices of (non-)integration give rise to parallel spaces of Christian praxis that can lead to the reproduction of distance and difference between (and within) migrant and non-migrant communities. To illustrate these ideas, we draw on 106 in-depth interviews conducted between November 2017 and February 2018 with Christian migrants from six Asian countries currently living in Singapore, with Singaporean Christians, and with Singapore-based church leaders. The data reveal how the integrative potential of Christianity can be undermined (or negated) by the spatial exclusion of migrant communities within places of religious praxis. To conclude, we highlight the need for research to explore the ways in which religious groups may contribute to the (non-)management of ethno-national diversity in the contemporary world.