Formal Religious Practices Research Articles

Black Internationalism as “I and I” Praxis

Black Internationalism as “I and I” Praxis

Bane or Boon? The Role of Spirituality, Religion, and Well-Being in Later Life Across Diverse Older Populations

Older adults tend to be religiously-affiliated to a greater extent than any other generational cohort (ARDA,2018; Koenig, King & Carson,2012; George et al.,2013; Nelson-Becker,2018). However, their level of engagement varies across cultural and national contexts. Complex life course trajectories related to spirituality and religion mean that these domains often interface with both challenges and a search for well-being. Individuals may align with spiritual and/or religious values to a greater or lesser extent at different periods in their lives becoming more spiritual/religious, less spiritual/religious, or differently so. These papers address diverse perspectives on spirituality, religion, and well-being using samples primarily from the UK, Europe, the US, and Canada. The first paper by Christina Victor sets context by comparing the role of religion, and spirituality in well-being across three separate older adult data sets, touching on loneliness and dementia. Holly Nelson-Becker discusses results from an online international survey of older persons who walked the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrimage regarding their motivations and learning from the experience. Michael Thomas considers the complex role of spirituality and sexuality for older LGB couples who may choose to remain in or leave their religious faith as they integrate expanding views. Keith Anderson explores perceptions of belief changes among religious and spiritual older adults across the life course. Together, these papers will address benefit and harm from formal religious practice and the advancing roles of spirituality as well as nonspirituality (the “nones”) in global societies.

Nostalgia and the ‘New Visibility’ of Religion

This article examines the role that religion plays in a sample of the lives and career journeys of eight academic staff or alumni at a British university. Using the ‘Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy’ podcast as source material, the aim is to look at the intersection between traditional and implicit conceptualisations of religion, that arise in the course of interviews that the author has undertaken, with a view to shedding light on what this says about the role that religion plays when people reminisce about their past, how this relates to contemporary religious experience for them, and whether this might be identified as an example of the ‘new visibility’ of religion. It will conclude that the way we understand the location and parameters of religion in the contemporary world needs to be re-orientated and re-framed, in the light of the presence of those less formal and structured forms of religion, which often overlap with formal religious practices, but are often articulated without reference to it.

“I Get Peace:” Gender and Religious Life in a Delhi Gurdwara

In October and November of 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, approximately 3500 Sikh men were killed in Delhi, India. Many of the survivors—Sikh widows and their kin—were relocated thereafter to the “Widow Colony”, also known as Tilak Vihar, within the boundary of Tilak Nagar in West Delhi, as a means of rehabilitation and compensation. Within this colony lies the Shaheedganj Gurdwara, frequented by widows and their families. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the intersections between violence, widowhood, and gendered religious practice in this place of worship. Memories of violence and experiences of widowhood inform and intersect with embodied religious practices in this place. I argue that the gurdwara is primarily a female place; although male-administered, it is a place that, through women’s practices, becomes a gendered counterpublic, allowing women a place to socialize and heal in an area where there is little public space for women to gather. The gurdwara has been re-appropriated away from formal religious practice by these widows, functioning as a place that enables the subversive exchange of local knowledges and viewpoints and a repository of shared experiences that reifies and reclaims gendered loss.

Scheduled Tribe Youth in India and Their Institutions: A Study of Dhumkuria

This study tries to connect with the subjugated knowledge practices of indigenous communities of India by attempting to comprehend and disseminate valuable information about one of their significant institutions called Dhumkuria. This is the name of youth dormitory of the Oraon tribal community of Jharkhand. It provided training in socio-cultural, politicoeconomic and religious grounds, along with mores of collective living. Dhumkuria encouraged learning by doing, as well as teaching while learning-to younger and from elder cohorts, simultaneously. Here, knowledge was mostly orally accumulated, education was an act of sharing skills and values for collective and harmonious living and pedagogy was dialogical and coconstructive. However, this practice was lost due to cultural changes, outmigration, impact of formal religious practices and then encouragement given by Colonial and Indian Government to formalised schools and colleges. Also, for intellectuals and knowledge brokers, working within positivistic framework, youth dormitories like Dhumkuria represented backwardness and promiscuousness. Such epistemic violence humiliated tribal communities and eroded several of their institutions and practices. Nevertheless, in the last few years there has been an attempt to resurrect pivotal tribal institutions. Hopefully, we can undo the wrong and change public perception and policies to encourage marginalised communities and their youth.

DeLillo's Ignatian Moment: Religious Longing and Theological Encounter in Falling Man

In his 2007 novel Falling Man, Don DeLillo depicts New York City, in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, as a place in which nearly everyone seems to be experiencing some form of religious longing. Still, for almost all of DeLillo's characters, religious longing remains disconnected from any formal religious practice or any community of faith. The most significant exception is the book's main character, Lianne Glenn, who struggles to return to Catholicism, partly through her memory of an encounter in college with the theology of Sèren Kierkegaard, partly through her work with a writing group of Alzheimer's patients, and partly through her memories of her father's rigidly traditional Catholicism. Lianne's discovery of a more questioning Catholicism continues the preoccupation in DeLillo's fiction with the struggle for spirituality and morality in a contemporary America. More specifically, it also clarifies the growing significance in his recent work of the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola.

Influence of religiosity on 12-step participation and treatment response among substance-dependent adolescents.

Religious practices among adults are associated with more 12-step participation which, in turn, is linked to better treatment outcomes. Despite recommendations for adolescents to participate in mutual-help groups, little is known about how religious practices influence youth 12-step engagement and outcomes. This study examined the relationships among lifetime religiosity, during-treatment 12-step participation, and outcomes among adolescents, and tested whether any observed beneficial relation between higher religiosity and outcome could be explained by increased 12-step participation. Adolescents (n = 195; 52% female, ages 14-18) court-referred to a 2-month residential treatment were assessed at intake and discharge. Lifetime religiosity was assessed with the Religious Background and Behaviors Questionnaire; 12-step assessments measured meeting attendance, step work (General Alcoholics Anonymous Tools of Recovery), and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)/Narcotics Anonymous (NA)-related helping. Substance-related outcomes and psychosocial outcomes were assessed with toxicology screens, the Adolescent-Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale, the Children's Global Assessment Scale, and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Greater lifetime formal religious practices at intake were associated with increased step work and AA/NA-related helping during treatment, which in turn were linked to improved substance outcomes, global functioning, and reduced narcissistic entitlement. Increased step work mediated the effect of religious practices on increased abstinence, whereas AA/NA-related helping mediated the effect of religiosity on reduced craving and entitlement. Findings extend the evidence for the protective effects of lifetime religious behaviors to an improved treatment response among adolescents and provide preliminary support for the 12-step proposition that helping others in recovery may lead to better outcomes. Youth with low or no lifetime religious practices may assimilate less well into 12-step-oriented treatment and may need additional 12-step facilitation, or a different approach, to enhance treatment response.

The experience of palliative patients and their families of a family meeting utilised as an instrument for spiritual and psychosocial care: A qualitative study

BackgroundThis study explores the experience of palliative patients and their family members of a family meeting model, utilised as an instrument for the provision of spiritual and psychosocial care. In doing so the study embraces a broad understanding of spirituality which may or may not include formal religious practice and a concept of psychosocial care that includes: social and emotional well-being, communication, self esteem, mental health and adaptation to illness. The meeting of spiritual and psychosocial needs is considered to be an important aspect of palliative care.MethodsThis qualitative study, philosophically underpinned by hermeneutic phenomenology, investigates the participatory experience of palliative care patients and their significant family members of such a family meeting. People registered with two large metropolitan palliative care services, who met selection criteria, were referred by medical staff. Twelve of the 66 referred took part in family meetings which also included significant others invited by the patient. A total of 36 family members participated. The number of participants of individual family meetings ranged from two to eleven. After the family meeting every participant was invited to take part in an individual in-depth interview about their experience of the meeting. Forty seven interviews were conducted. These were audio recorded and transcribed.ResultsData analysis, utilising Ricoeur's theory of interpretation, revealed seven main themes: personal experience of the meeting, personal outcomes, observation of others' experience, observation of experience and outcomes for the family unit, meeting facilitation, how it could have been different and general applicability of the family meeting. Throughout these themes were numerous references to aspects of the web of relationships which describe the concept of spirituality as it is defined for the purpose of this study.ConclusionsThe findings indicate the potential of the type of family meeting reported for use in the spiritual and psychosocial care of people receiving palliative care and their families. However further research is needed to explore its application to more culturally diverse groups and its longer term impact on family members.

Religiosity As a Protective Factor Against HIV Risk Among Young Transgender Women

Young transgender women (YTW) face many challenges to their well-being, including homelessness, joblessness, victimization, and alarming rates of HIV infection. Little has been written about factors that might help in preventing HIV in this population. Our objective was to examine the role of religion in the lives of YTW and its relationship to HIV risk. This study is derived from baseline data collected for an HIV prevention intervention. A convenience sample of YTW aged 16-25 years from Chicago were recruited consecutively and completed an audio computer-assisted self-interview. Logistic regression models were used to evaluate the relationship between sexual risk taking (sex work, multiple anal sex partners, unprotected receptive anal sex), alcohol use, formal religious practices (service attendance, reading/studying scripture), and God consciousness (prayer, thoughts about God). A total of 92 YTW participated in the study, their mean age being 20.4 years; 58% were African American, 21% white, and 22% other. On multivariate logistic regression, alcohol use was significantly associated with sexual risk in both models, with adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 5.28 (95% confidence intervals [CI]: 1.96-14.26) in the Formal Practices model and 3.70 (95% CI: 1.53-8.95) in the God Consciousness model. Controlling for alcohol use, it was found that Formal Practices was significantly associated with sexual risk (OR = .29, 95% CI: .11-.77), but God Consciousness was not (OR = .60, 95% CI: .25-1.47). Among YTW, formal religious practices may attenuate sexual risk-taking behaviors and therefore HIV risk. Further research is needed to explore the role of the religion in the lives of YTW as a protective asset.

The economics of regional variation in religious attendance

Developments in modelling the demand for religion have identified both religious human capital and religious market structure as fundamental determinants of levels of formal religious practice. In this paper, these theories are confronted with survey data drawn from 163 regions across 16 countries. Although there are clearly political, historical and other country specific factors that affect levels of participation in organized religion, estimates from modified logit regression equations demonstrate the empirical significance at the regional level of variables suggested by recent innovations in the economics of religious behaviour.

Spiritual Experience, Religious Orientation, and Self-Reported Behavior

This study found evidence to support the validity of the revised Spiritual Experience Index (Genia, 1997) as an instrument to gauge spiritual experience within a developmental framework. The Spiritual Experience Index's Spiritual Support subscale is related to engaging in formal religious practices, having God consciousness, and having an intrinsic orientation to religion. The Spiritual Openness subscale is related to, but also distinct from, quest orientation. Spiritual openness tended to be inversely related to involvement in formal religious practices among conservative Christians. There was evidence to support Genia's (1997) developmental spiritual typology of growth-oriented, transitional, dogmatic, and underdeveloped.

Jewish Responses to AIDS

ABSTRACT Theoretically, Judaism treats AIDS, an illness, with compassion. Yet because of its link to homosexuality, AIDS and its stigma are often concealed. Neither homosexuality nor AIDS can be fully concealed, even by those who most denounce them, nor can they be completely open, even by those who most fully accept them. The implications of rejection and acceptance (a continuum) are discussed. In spite of the biblical rejection of homosexuality, The Gay Synagogue offers the most meaningful support to those who suffer from AIDS and to their loved ones. Paradoxically, the most successful programs are those adhering to the formal religious practices which provide the basic structure to every Jewish synagogue.

A Survey of Chinese Anomalous Experiences and Comparison with Western Representative National Samples

Random samples of dormitory residents at three colleges in Xi'an, People's Republic of China, were polled regarding frequency of deja vu, night paralysis, extrasensory perception, communication with the dead, out-of-body experience, and belief in a sixth The Chinese students (N = 314) revealed incidence of these experiences, and faith in a sixth sense, equivalent to, or higher than those found in Western populations. Since Chinese students engage in no formal religious practices, this finding suggests that such experiences are not totally a product of religious faith, but are universal in some sense.

Disease at the crossroads: Towards a history of therapeutics in Bulozi since 1876 [1

This article advances two different types of argument. The first is general and attaches to the fundamental methodology of African history. It derives from the observation that it is extremely difficult to learn much reliably about intellectual history in tropical Africa and that this is largely because of the pervasiveness of manipulation, both conscious and unconscious, in the sorts of data typically available (for example those relating to formal religious practices) through the sorts of technique typically practised (archival research mingled with a greater or lesser degree of direct observation). The article suggests how and why a study of medical cosmology may be a particularly reliable medium in which to perceive the centrally important principles of a culture. The second type of argument is specific and addresses the nature of therapeutic practice and belief in western Zambia (central Africa) over the last century. Three converging perspectives are offered: one presents an abstracted analysis of theories of disease; the second offers a brief narrative of medical pluralism in Bulozi since 1876: the last gives a tentative sketch of the changing epidemiological history of the country during the same period. Together they argue that the introduction of allopathic therapy has not falsified belief in the pre-existing systems of diagnosis and explanation, but that therapeutic systems of radically differing conceptual origin can and do coexist. However, if the colonial century brought new sorts of therapy, evidence is adduced to suggest that it has also brought new patterns of disease. The first two of these converging perspectives are supported in part by three different types of case history, illustrated in each of the three Appendices. The way in which these data are employed illuminates the methodology which underpins the first, general, argument of the paper: that studies of medical theory and practice, especially in the taxing circumstances of a non-Western society, are reliable guides to the nodes of culture and are therefore to be preferred as first steps when little or nothing is known about intellectual history.