Faith Groups Research Articles

How do chronotype and sleep patterns impact young athletes' aerobic performance during Ramadan intermittent fasting?

Ramadan observance has been practiced by many faith groups and cultures worldwide. Mo-reover, recently, it has been adopted as a natural alternative to promote public health. During Ramadan, our circadian rhythm can be altered. This study investigates how athletes' chronotype and sleep patterns impact aerobic fitness during Ramadan intermittent fasting. A prospective cohort design with repeated measurements was adopted. We measured the chronotype, maximal Oxygen Uptake as a measure of aerobic performance, and sleep patterns before and during Ramadan intermittent fasting. Then we explored the correlation among these variables. 50 amateur athletes (Mean age = 17.22 years SD = 1.15) from Morocco participated in this study. The maximal Oxygen Uptake was measured with the 20-m shuttle-run test. The chronotype was assessed by the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. The sleep timing was assessed by Sleep Timing Question-naire. We also assessed sleep quality with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. We examined the difference between variable means before and during Ramadan, also considering chronotype and sleep patterns of participants. The results showed a significant decrease in sleep quality and maximal Oxygen Uptake during the Ramadan Intermittent Fasting. Also, we found a significant correlation between the chronotype, time in bed and time spent asleep. However, chronotype and sleep quality did not affect maximal Oxygen Uptake during the Ramadan intermittent fasting. Sleep and chronotype do not influence physical performance during Ramadan Intermittent Fasting. More research is needed to identify the leading cause of the drop in aerobic performance.

The Efficacy and Limits of Pilgrimage as Therapy for Depression

Western notions of pilgrimage produce images of religious adherence to known beliefs and their ritual expressions. Definitions of pilgrimage have expanded in recent decades to embrace treks to sites unattached to the sacred landscapes of traditional faith groups. Along with this expansion of meanings and practices has come a wider acceptance of travel for psychological transformation. Tourism can be argued as a modulated form of pilgrimage and traditional journeys of faith overlapping with instances of entirely secular tourism. Another purpose of pilgrimage can be as a therapeutic practice for those suffering from depressive disorders and related conditions. Its efficacy as therapy, along with its limits, are discussed in clinical and personal contexts with a view to including religious as well as secular perspectives. The pragmatics of such therapy are mapped against current trends in treatment.

Exploring the Value of Special Religious Education in Multifaith Australia among Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Baha’i

This article analyses the value of religious education in Australian government schools, including the contribution of the combination of Special Religious Education/Instruction (SRE/RI) and General Religious Education (GRE) to contemporary society. It is based on qualitative, grounded research with 58 interviews representing the six major faith groups in Australia—Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and Baha’i, as well as drawing on McCrindle’s quantitative and qualitative data in an unpublished report co-written with the authors. The findings show that SRE contributes to values education, religious identity development and health and wellbeing. The SRE classes multiculturalise the schools and provide support to students who experience religious bullying in schools.

Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom

Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom

Pharmacy teams could visit community and faith groups to cut health inequalities, says Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Engaging with local community or faith groups can help pharmacy teams understand their local populations better, a strategy paper published by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) says. ‘Tackling health inequalities: delivering accessible pharmaceutical care for everyone‘, published on 11 January 2023, sets out how pharmacy teams can help deliver accessible pharmaceutical care for everyone in […]

From Grassroots to the UN — The Role of Faith in Climate Action

The role of faith-based organizations, as well as secular organizations engaging with faith actors, has gained significant momentum. Faith actors have been not only internalizing the spiritual connections to the environment, but also contributing to policy discussions at international conventions through the United Nations (UN) and other multilateral organizations. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing the world today, and it is an issue that requires a global response. While governments and policymakers have a crucial role to play, the issue of climate change is also the one that touches on the values and beliefs of individuals, communities, and faith groups. In this paper, we will explore the role that faith and religion can play in addressing climate change at the grassroots level and within the UN, using the Faith for Earth Initiative as a global example and the Green Anglicans movement in Southern Africa at the local level. Both local and global actions are necessary to achieve the aspirations of the people in fighting climate change, adapting to its impact, and bringing the voices of ethics and values to environmental policymaking as these actions are inseparable. At the local level, impacts of global decisions are felt but also implemented and in turn such practices can inform global decision-making. This paper demonstrates the lessons learnt, challenges, and opportunities for such local and global engagements.

Partnership Between Psychiatrists, Faith Leaders Untapped Key to Expanding Reach of MH Care

Partnership Between Psychiatrists, Faith Leaders Untapped Key to Expanding Reach of MH Care

How do Muslim service users, caregivers, and community members in Malappuram, Kerala, use their faith to address the challenges associated with mental ill health?

ABSTRACT Our aim was to explore the role religion and spiritual beliefs play in dealing with the challenges associated with mental ill health among the Muslim community in Malappuram, Kerala. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with patients of Islamic faith diagnosed with a mental health condition (n = 10) in urban (Ponnani) and rural (Vailathur) area of Malappuram, a Muslim majority district in Kerala, their family carers (n = 8) and community members (n = 6). Four key themes were derived, namely (1) Attribution to supernatural factors, (2) Relying on “God’s will”, (3) Prayer, and (4) Traditional healing. Faith was seen to be a prerequisite for any treatment, including modern medicine, to work. Even within a single faith group there can be considerable variation in belief and practice, with more pious participants disapproving of the reliance on local traditional healers and belief systems, highlighting the value of paying attention to the detail of local beliefs and practices.

Opening the curtains: Adaption of transparency policy for eliminating in confidentiality of the faith groups

Transparency policies, which have become increasingly important in recent years, have become one of the most important implementation tools of accountability, especially for public administrations. The main purpose of this study is to examine a public policy that can be planned to be implemented in Turkish public administration under the leadership of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA). In the public policy literature, policy transfer and adoption processes are considered a quick solution for developing countries. Because developing countries have two important constraints, such as time and resources, to produce a solution. The adoption process of the policy that is planned to be implemented in Turkey, compared to the transparency policies in faith group services carried out by the UK public institutions, is the focus of this study. Although belief groups are important for the spread of civil society, they can cause certain social and political problems. It is not possible to produce qualified solutions to these problems by ignoring belief groups or making them illegal with a radical approach. The principle of transparency in public policies plays a key role in solving the problems encountered in civil society. This case study and content analysis will both provide the PRA with a theoretical assessment of its transparency policy and provide a roadmap for academics to work on different public policies.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Caring for Pentecostal Patients.

People of the Pentecostal faith are a grouping of Protestant Christians. Pentecostals are a growing group not only in the United States, but also worldwide. This article focuses on the Pentecostal beliefs and spiritual practices in North America and their implications in the clinical environment. As the population of this faith group continues to grow, palliative care clinicians will need a basic understanding of the values and practices of Pentecostal spirituality and its potential impact on goals-of-care discussions. This article offers 10 recommendations for clinicians to better understand and support Pentecostal patients and families. These overarching concepts of Pentecostal faith and practices are presented as a point of initiation for further exploration of the support that may be needed, and not as a comprehensive guide.

Religion and Sexuality: A Qualitative Study on the Perceptions of Believers and Non-Believers

In human life, bio-psycho-socio-cultural and theological explanatory factors for the sexuality are determinative factors and have an effect on sexual feelings, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors. Religion is still seen as an important predictor of thoughts and attitudes about human sexuality. The aim of this research is to assess the perceptions of believers in different religions and faith groups and non-believers who different nationalities around the world, about sexuality which is based on qualitative data. The data have been analyzed by using interpretative phenomenological analysis as a qualitative research technique. Participants' views about sexuality were collected by both face-to-face and web-based surveys with an open-ended questionnaire created by the researcher as a qualitative data collection methodology and strategy. In this exploratory qualitative study, open-ended responses of the participants, have different nationalities such as Japanese, Scottish, Indian, Pakistani, Caucasian, Irish, Arabic Asia, Dutch, Portuguese and French, 13 (72%) male and 5 (28%) female, (n=18) regarding their thoughts and attitudes about sexuality such as dating, marriage, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, virginity, pornography, homosexuality have been analyzed. In conclusion, this qualitative study provides information about the personal perceptions of the participants in small-sample of different types of believers and non-believers regarding the relationship between religion and sexuality. The results indicate that (a) personal religious beliefs have a great effect on thoughts and attitudes about sexuality in different belief systems; (b) Muslim participants have more conservative orientations about sexuality than other covered religious groups and non-believers.

Mental health and spiritual well-being in humanitarian crises: the role of faith communities providing spiritual and psychosocial support during the COVID-19 pandemic

Across the globe, people’s reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns highlighted, and continued to stress, the relevance of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in responding to crises, including in low-income and emergency settings. They also demonstrated the importance of faith practices and communities of faith as core needs and important coping mechanisms for many affected people in times of crisis. Drawing on data collected by World Vision International, the world’s largest child-focused humanitarian and development organisation, in the course of its response to COVID-19 in 70 different countries, this article explores the ways in which faith groups and faith leaders responded to the perceived needs of their communities. While keen to offer psychosocial support to people suffering anxiety and fear in the context of the crisis, this has often been integrated with spiritual support. Analysing their work from the framework of a rights-based approach to mental health, we conclude that they did contribute to psychosocial support through their MHPSS, in part through their provision of spiritual care. However, spiritual well-being should not be conflated with psychosocial well-being. While faith groups play an important role in MHPSS, their primary role is to offer spiritual care.

Obiora Ike and the Challenge of Development in Africa

African philosophers such as Olusegun Oladipo, Lansana Kieta, Kwama Nkrumah and Kanu Ikechukwu proposed to revisit the semantic of the word “development”. From their viewpoint, instead of seeing economic growth as the DNA of development, we should actualize the notion as rather aiming at the universalities of cultures, which could ensure progress and development. Further aspects such as a) the worldview of the Bantu, b) the distribution of resources in large national giant nations as Nigeria, and c) faith-based organization and development with Obiora Ike, justify a closer reading of the concept. It shows that people-oriented development is better adapted to Africa than abstract concepts, which may not include strong reference to the African traditions and belief systems. Sustainable and integrative development should include all major faith groups, which are all part of development, understood as a social and economic investment with social responsibility and faith.

The Use of Kierkegaard as a Stimulus for Autoethnographical Journal Writing

Kierkegaard wrote extensively, often focusing on his own struggles aligning his Christian faith with the organized structures of the church he was familiar with. His belief was that each individual was responsible for understanding and giving meaning to their own life as opposed to subscribing to a collective position held by the wider society or a faith group. He showed awareness of the impact of more widely held views on those of the individual who found themselves outside of societal norms. Kierkegaard explored his own thoughts and responses to the world around him through the act of journaling. This focus on a unique individual understanding of the world explored through personal writing appears to complement the broader methodological approach of autoethnography. Looking at a brief overview of four fundamental themes of Kierkegaard’s personal writing drawn from Kierkegaard’s journals, parallels are drawn with autoethnographical written pieces. Suggestions are made for how Kierkegaard’s approach to his own personal writing could be of use to autoethnographers, specifically those who use journaling as a process for writing.

Restoring the ethics of the common good in the South African pluralistic society

The idea of the common good is missing in politics today. Fighting for political ideology and self-interest has replaced finding solutions to problems or practising the ethics of public interest. We urgently need to create a new social contract with proper implementation of the values set out in the national Constitution. This study was undertaken from a reformed ethical perspective, with special emphasis on the ethics of the common good. Methodologically, in researching this article, the author was guided by two related questions: how do ideas, beliefs and norms form? What happens in society to let these norms shape our actions? Conducting research guided by these questions has helped the author to understand that for many communities, stability is maintained by rules, norms, beliefs, convictions and worldview as located in tradition and culture. It is institutions such as those outlined here that still guide attitude and behaviour in the majority of cases. While being sensitive to these institutions and the role they play, through policy and legislation, under constitutional supremacy, the Constitution has become the primary guide and source for community stability.Interdisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article brings the disciplines of theology, politics and governance together in defining the ethics of the common good in contemporary South African politics. It proposes that the moral prerequisite for solving the deepest problems our country now face is a commitment to the ethics of the common good. By definition, this will require the engagement and collaboration of all the ‘stakeholders’ – government, businesses, civil society groups, faith groups and especially young people.

Green groupoids of 2-Calabi–Yau categories, derived Picard actions, and hyperplane arrangements

We present a construction of (faithful) group actions via derived equivalences in the general categorical setting of algebraic 2-Calabi–Yau triangulated categories. To each algebraic 2-Calabi–Yau category C \mathscr {C} satisfying standard mild assumptions, we associate a groupoid G C \mathscr {G}_{ \mathscr {C} } , named the green groupoid of C \mathscr {C} , defined in an intrinsic homological way. Its objects are given by a set of representatives m r i g C mrig\mathscr {C} of the equivalence classes of basic maximal rigid objects of C \mathscr {C} , arrows are given by mutation, and relations are given by equating monotone (green) paths in the silting order. In this generality we construct a homomorphsim from the green groupoid G C \mathscr {G}_{ \mathscr {C} } to the derived Picard groupoid of the collection of endomorphism rings of representatives of m r i g C mrig\mathscr {C} in a Frobenius model of C \mathscr {C} ; the latter canonically acts by triangle equivalences between the derived categories of the rings. We prove that the constructed representation of the green groupoid G C \mathscr {G}_{ \mathscr {C} } is faithful if the index chamber decompositions of the split Grothendieck groups of basic maximal rigid objects of C \mathscr {C} come from hyperplane arrangements. If Σ 2 ≅ i d \Sigma ^2 \cong id and C \mathscr {C} has finitely many equivalence classes of basic maximal rigid objects, we prove that G C \mathscr {G}_{ \mathscr {C} } is isomorphic to a Deligne groupoid of a hyperplane arrangement and that the representation of this groupoid is faithful.

The attitudes of religious group leaders towards xenotransplantation: A focus group study.

Clinical trials of xenotransplantation (XTx) may start in coming years. Religious views have been mentioned as possible barriers to XTx acceptance. While there have been reports on perspectives of theologians in regard to XTx, no report has studied the perspectives of community religious leaders.A focus group was conducted with a sample of members of the following faith groups: Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Qualitative content analysis was performed to identify interpretive themes.Four themes emerged. Participants were receptive to the idea of XTx and expressed no religious barriers to accepting a pig xenograft as a lifesaving therapy but did express certain concerns.Religious leaders accept the idea of XTx and do not see it as contradictory to their beliefs. However, some concerns were raised. Future studies addressing these concerns and exploring the potential role of religious leaders in educating the community on XTx are needed.

237.4: Diversity in Organ Donation in Scotland - Improving Awareness in Black and Ethnic Minority Groups

There is a continued imbalance between the need for organ transplants in Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME)communities in Scotland and the availability of suitable organs with the right blood and tissue type resulting in healthcare inequalities. Currently over 31% of transplant waiting lists in the UK are represented by BAME patients, only 7% of deceased donation are from BAME patients, 75% of opt outs are BAME patients with 70% of BAME families refusing to consent to donation of their deceased relatives. Kidney Research UK along with the Scottish Government and NHS Blood and Transplant have championed the cause of equality of access to information for all faith and cultural groups and their communities to have an understanding of what organ donation means to them. With the change of legislation in Scotland (March 2021) it was even more imperative that people from all backgrounds were made aware that their faith and beliefs can be recorded on the organ donor register. Despite the pandemic, innovative solutions were found on how best to ensure information could be shared not only with local communities but include education for health care staff. The project used the digital platform to host a total of 13 webinars separately with the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities and one with Interfaith Scotland. Webinars have been held with medical students and the British Medical Association and Café Scientifique. Participation in webinars for nursing staff, staff working in NHSBT and doctors in training have also helped to inform healthcare workers about faith and cultural needs of diverse communities. Engagement with local media such as community radio (Awaz FM and Radio Ramadan) and digital magazines such as Asian Voice have aided the dissemination of information. These initiatives have resulted in positive outcomes with quantity and tone of media coverage, number of events and followers. people at local cultural events, schools and religious places. We have revised Faith leaflets for the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faiths with contributions from not just faith leaders but members of the community to ensure accuracy, comprehensibility and accessibility. We are continuing to engage with MSPs from ethnic backgrounds via online meetings to encourage conversations about donation not just amongst their constituents but also in Parliament.While it is difficult to actually quantify the tangible impact on organ donor registrations, continued engagement since 2015 in Scotland with commitment from NHSBT (hosting Scotland s very first Faith seminar in June 2015) has resulted in an increase in BAME opt ins from 5.8% to 7.8% in 2019-2020 In summary we have harnessed the reach, impact and value of digital and social media platforms to continue this vital piece of work during a pandemic.

Sectarian Traitors? Factors that Supported and Thwarted Conversion among Baptist Communities under Two Regimes in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract In the late Russian Empire, and later Soviet Ukraine, aspects of Baptist doctrine and communal life earned Baptists the suspicion of their Orthodox neighbors and of state and ecclesiastical authorities. Depending on the dynamics of change, the perceived foreign origins of Baptism, their advocacy of pacificism, and their understandings of morality and transformation were either viewed favorably and allowed these communities to grow through conversion. Or, the same attributes earned Baptists the wrath of state and Church authorities and led to repression. This article analyzes how and why the threat posed by a minority faith group changed over time and how these communities adapted.

Old Calendaristsʼ Religious Minority in Romania - Contribution to the Study of the History and Cultural Heritage

For centuries, Romania has been the center of numerous national, ethnic, and religious communities, each with its own cultural and religious organizations. The Christian faith group found in this country includes legally protected religious communities, marked by specific features such as perception of time, symbolism of space, patterns, as well as beliefs, rituals, and customs. The paper presents the religious minority of old calendarists in Romania, which emerged within the Romanian Orthodox Church at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of disputes over the use of the liturgical calendar. Fundamental issues associated with the Gregorian and Julian calendars, the history of old calendarists in Romania, and the churches currently using the Julian calendar in their liturgical practice in Romania are addressed. Additionally, the article presents key artifacts of the tangible cultural heritage of old calendarists. The analysis is based on qualitative methodology, including the results of field studies conducted in Romania during the period of 2010-2020.