Mainstream Religions Research Articles

Alexander's Eastern Campaigns for Religious Change in the Mediterranean Region

Alexander's Eastern Expedition was one of the most brilliant expeditions in the world's military history. Although Alexander's Eastern Expedition brought profound disasters to the people of Eurasia and Africa, the process of accompanying the Eastern invasion objectively made the spread of Greek culture to the East and the process of infiltration of Oriental culture into Greek culture. At that time, religion and culture were inseparable under the system of the unity of church and state. As a result of the dispersal and fusion of primitive religions during this period, the mainstream religions that determined the values of the majority of the world's people in later times were formed, thus influencing the course of human civilization.

Socioeconomic determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance.

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the relative importance of the set of socioeconomic characteristics of population on collective decision on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. We apply cross-section OLS methods to the municipal-level non-survey data for 145 municipalities in Serbia, on the COVID-19 vaccination rate and socioeconomic characteristics of the population, to evaluate the determinants of cross-municipal variation in vaccine uptake decision. Using the estimated coefficients from the OLS regressions, we apply the standardized beta method to evaluate the relative importance of each factor. Vaccine acceptance in municipalities rises with the average level of education (especially in the female population), age and employment, while being negatively linked to religiosity of people and the proportion of rural population. We also find some evidence on the positive impact of the overall trust in government. Education level has the single largest impact, shaping around 37% of (explained) variation in the vaccination rate across municipalities, a rise in the proportion of people with higher degree by 1% being associated with increase in vaccination rate by 0.36%. Age of population explains 21%, urban-rural structure 13% and religiosity 11% of variation in vaccine acceptance, while employment status and trust in government each explain around 9% of variation in vaccine uptake across municipalities. Effective vaccination promotion strategy should be focused on younger, less-educated, unemployed cohorts, as well as on rural areas and should involve representatives of mainstream religions. Fostering education and strengthening trust in government are some of the key structural factors that may promote efficient collective behaviour in this respect.

Unequal Land: Towards Full Recognition of Indigenous People’s Religious Rights

Indigenous people face disparate treatment regarding religious free-exercise claims in the United States court system. Specifically, courts misconstrue native religious practices and hold native religious practitioners to a higher standard of proof than practitioners of mainstream religions in their free-exercise claims. This Article analyzes the history of oppression of indigenous people in the United States and the congressional intent to remedy such oppression through legislation. Further, this Article argues that despite Congress’s efforts to remedy the oppression of indigenous peoples, courts still utilize a problematic analysis of indigenous free-exercise claims. To resolve the inconsistent treatment between native and mainstream religious practitioners, this Article argues that courts should do three things when analyzing an indigenous free-exercise claim: (1) presume indigenous peoples suffer subjective harm from the government action at issue; (2) apply the law through an anti-subordination lens; and (3) broadly construe the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Influence of Institutional Factors and Perception of Climate Change on Carbon Reduction Behavior in Taiwan Temples

In Asian countries where Buddhism and Taoism are mainstream religions, incense burning is a daily practice. Taiwan has the largest religious population in the world, and the ritual culture, especially in Minnan, hinders carbon reduction and impacts the environment negatively. In previous studies, the temple's carbon-reducing behaviors have not been dealt with seriously. Thus, we explored the relationship between the public and the temple's carbon-reducing behaviors under internal and external pressure using institutional theory to understand the public recognition of reducing the use of incense, gold paper burning, and firecrackers. We conducted an integrated analysis of the public's perception of climate change and carbon reduction behavior of temples using institutional theory, a strategy model. The results provide a basis for decision-making and suggestions for government agencies, academics, and companies in environmental protection and can be used to enhance the awareness of environmental protection caring for nature, and sustainable development in Taiwan.

Ancestral Rites, Clans and Cultures of Khambus of Khambuwan

The aim of this study is to investigate the khambus of Nepal with the focus on the ancestral rites clan and culture. The Khambu Rais or Rais are one of the most ancient indigenous ethnolinguistic groups of Nepal. who used to live in wallo kirant and majh kirant for particular reason. khambus are nature worshippers. Culture is something that people actively create, and it soon helps to shape a population’s sense of self. The myths, tales, shared origin, and cultural history helped to validate and solidify the group’s identity. In this article, stated about khambus and their traditional culture and rituals, despite the fact that they currently incorporate various mainstream religions and rituals. Khambuwan is called majh Kiratand wallo Kirat. khambus called Kirat Rai. Kirata is a generic term for Mongoloids and thus was used in numerous Sanskrit and classical texts as well as some Indian epigraphs. ‘Rai’ is a derivative of Raja. This title is said to have been conferred on the Khambu chiefs by Prithivinarayan shah after the Gorkha conquest of Khambuwan, Although the Khambu are typically thought of as a single organization, a look at their background would show that they actually consist of countless smaller groupings known as thars. Based on their social structure. The Khambu are examined for their differences and similarities in this essay. The Khambu society’s cultural facets can be revealed by an effort to comprehend the intricate nature and operation of the thars and rituals. This study, Philosophy. Uses interpritivism because it retains the purpose of understanding and interpret a research perspective on the sources and factor about khambu society and it’s culture and clan. Nature of Sources of data will be qualitative. Fact will be analysis by primary and secondary sources. Finding of this essay is khambu are still existence with unity in diversity clan by culture.

Theological and Cultural Construction: Resilience Strategies of the To Sallang Minority in A Multicultural Society

To Sallang is a term addressed to minority Muslims who live in Toraja. Even though they are a minority, they can live side by side, without losing their Islamic identity. This research aims to find out To Sallang's resilience strategy to survive among the mainstream religions and customs of the Toraja people who are predominantly Christian. In addition, it also aims to explore religious aspects that can strengthen To Sallang community to survive and adapt to a multicultural society. Data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation. The research results show that To Sallang manages to maintain their social identity as a native of Toraja descent, as well as negotiate personal identity as a Muslim community by adapting their genius and creative assimilation to universal religious values and local wisdom (indigenous knowledge). Through theological concepts such as fitrah-sunnatullah (natural law), hablum min al-nas (social interaction), hurmatu al-takrim (respect and honor), and al-ma'ruf (values of goodness and wisdom that are rooted in the traditions of society) synchronized with local wisdom values such as sikamali (love-miss each other), siangga' (mutual respect), and siangkaran (help each other), To Sallang can present a comprehensive picture of religiosity that accommodates religious aspirations with cultural characteristics. To Sallang strategy could be the best practice and reference to build religious and cultural co-existence since they can survive with their Islamic identity and local wisdom to live together in a multicultural society. It can also be a blueprint for religious and cultural harmony in overcoming potential conflicts caused by ethnic and religious differences.

Implicit and Explicit Spirituality in the Lives of Transgender and Gender Expansive Older Adults

ABSTRACT Religion and spirituality for transgender and gender expansive people (whom we refer to collectively as trans) are complicated by mainstream religions’ history of stigmatizing and marginalizing sexual and gender minorities. We conducted an interpretive content analysis of biographical interviews with 88 trans older adults from across the United States, applying six tenets of spiritual psychotherapy to their life narratives. Our findings suggest that some trans older adults’ spirituality is experienced both implicitly and explicitly. Implicit spirituality reflects the ways in which meaning, purpose, and connection in one’s life are nurtured with respect to one’s gender identity. Explicit spirituality reflects the process of consciously renegotiating one’s spiritual beliefs and religious practices to validate one’s gender identity and place in society. This knowledge is potentially helpful for gerontological social workers who seek to nurture trans people’s spirituality and well-being as they age.

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

Socio-religious Practices of Kalang Shaman: Symbol of Minority People's Resistance in Indonesia

Three possibilities can occur when religion enters a society already having its own culture and traditions: acceptance, rejection, and adjustment. This study analyzed the socio-religiosity of the Kalang people, a minority ethnic group in Kendal, following the arrival of Islam into their lives. Highlighting how they practiced their worship and presented their identity in the majority of Muslim society, the research was focused on the socio-religious practices of the Dukun Kalang as a representation of Kalang people and unveiled her critical roles in the Kalang socio-cultural system, such as leading every ritual activity, and being a source of knowledge about Kalang teachings and other mystical information about ancestral spirits. Using the qualitative method, it was found that the Kalang shaman's religiosity model symbolized the way of religion without losing faith in indigenous culture and traditions. This spiritual adaptation model, in the perspective of symbolic interaction, can be interpreted as a form of resistance and as a strategy to maintain the cultural identity of the minority amid the threat of extinction due to the penetration of major ideologies, including mainstream religions.

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Ďábel v zeleném

This article deals with the ecological and environmental tendencies of the two largest Satanic groups in the Czech Republic. It first recapitulates the connection between mainstream religions and ecology. It then describes the absence of Satanism in major scholarly publications and uncovers a strong link between Satanism and ecology/animal rights. The text illustrates this in the words of Anton LaVey, Peter H. Gilmore, and several Satanic organi­zations including the Church of Satan, Temple of Set, Dragon Rouge, The Satanic Temple, and others. The article concludes by looking for ecological tendencies in the teachings of the two largest Satanic groups in the Czech Republic – the local version of LaVey’s Church of Satan and the Czech-influenced Community of Satan. Finally, the text briefly mentions the main research findings of these groups and concludes by showing them in relation to Bron Taylor’s model of dark green religions.

A faith-based environmental approach for people and the planet: Some inter-religious perspectives on our Earth-embeddedness

For most people on our planet, spiritual values are vital in driving communitarian behaviour. It is becoming increasingly clear that a lasting and effective social commitment must consider cultural, sociological and religious dimensions. In particular, the current environmental crisis has demonstrated how effectively religious communities have mobilised to respond to climate change. With their emphasis on wisdom, social cohesion and interrelationships, religions can be a strategic player in ensuring effective integral human development. The ecological crisis is not just an ethical dilemma but an ontological and theological matter that demands both a new way of thinking and a new way of being. Think differently and act differently! The United Nations (UN) and many governments are increasingly recognising the vital contribution of religious leaders and organisations in political processes, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, hypostasised in the Faith Plans for People and Planet programme, representing the most prominent and boldest environmental initiative to date by the global faith community. Contribution: Today we realise that a combination of science and spirituality can engage and empower an array of stakeholders from different cultural and religious backgrounds. This article addresses the question of an integrated ecology by selecting appropriate and recent literature from mainstream religions and the subsequent interpretation and application.

Religio-cultural perspectives and their contributions to the historical development of education and the civilization of nations

This treatise ruminates on the religio-cultural perspectives of education which undoubtedly consist the summit and fulcrum of education. This perspective of education, which is usually neglected and denigrated by some educationists, occupies a central place in the life and being of humanity because culture and religion are of the essence of man. These two all-essential elements of man’s social environment are definitive of the personality and identity of man as a member of a given human society. Hence, they constitute the foundations of formal, semi-formal and informal education. The main objective of this treatise is to deductively demonstrate that culture has been crucial to the historical development of education globally. The methods adopted in this study is the expository analytic and the hermeneutical methods. With the aid of the expository method, this study reveals that education, culture and religion are intrinsically related and they essentially impact the social life of man. The research demonstrates that cultural and religious beliefs of peoples or nations have inexorably shaped their philosophies and conceptualization of education. Based on the findings of this critical analysis, the study concludes that the history and development of education cannot be plausibly recounted and substantiated if the contributions of major world cultures and mainstream religions are not considered. Therefore, the researcher recommends that curriculum studies and planning must necessarily integrate cultural and religious factors in order to make such studies existentially and pragmatically relevant to the social ethos, needs and historical challenges of the society.

Rethinking Religion in Chinese Society——Comment on Religion in Chinese Society

In the 1990s, foreign sociological theories of religion were introduced into China on a large scale, and a large number of excellent translations appeared. However, many scholars have found that the research theories and research results in many translations are difficult to explore the religious phenomenon in Chinese society. The publication of Yang Qingkun’s book "Religion in Chinese Society" can be said to have created a new chapter in the study of Chinese society and religion. Yang creatively regarded religious organizations and religious phenomena in Chinese society as "divergent religions", which roughly summed up the essential characteristics and manifestations of religions in Chinese society. This book comprehensively and systematically studies the relationship between religious entities, religious ceremonies, and grassroots society in Chinese society. His research involves the growth and development of Chinese mainstream religions in rural communities, trying to break free from Western definitions of religion. It is a pioneering work to study Chinese religion from a sociological perspective. From the perspective of social structural functionalism, it is important to study the formation, characteristics and relationships of "divergent" religions in our country. This paper briefly reviews Yang's works, and explores the formation of rural social order with the help of Yang's research vision and research methods on Chinese social religion.

Freedom of Religion in post-secular Australia

Habermas coined the term post-secularism to reflect a time period in which religions are given a more central part in social and political life. Even if there is more openness to religion, many religious groups would claim that Western societies are nevertheless still dominated by secularism and want to ensure that freedom of religion and belief remain protected and promoted. This article explores the recent Australian Religious Freedom Review as a case study of the social tension between freedom for and from religion to argue that we might have moved beyond a post-secular sphere in this country. In this phase, what is meant by freedom of religion has shifted from a focus in having all religious groups being able to freely practice their faith to a focus by some mainstream religions to remain free to discriminate on the basis of their faith.

The Sexual Orientation of Panji : Cultural Construction in Intermediation

The Panji love scenes from (1) Br. 126 manuscript in Jawi characters of Hikayat Panji Kuda Semirang, (2) Sastrawinata’s story book Panji Semirang published by Balai Pustaka, and (3) the comic book Panji Semirang by R. A. Kosasih, chronologically shows intermediation as a non-direct adaptation that represents the cultural construction that shifts the meaning, from a hidden signs of transgenderism to the domination of heterosexual orientation. The phenomena is connected with the fact that from early modern times (15th to 18th century) to second half of early modern period (17th to 18th century) in the region, there is the process where gender pluralism met the domination of mainstream religions and modern science, which marginalized and suppressed the former to the edge of normality. As transgender subculture still exists as an ideological struggle, the study of local genius should be done with a consciousness to contest the hegemonic discourse.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Peace efforts in Palestine are continuous and failing. In order to explain the failed peace attempts, experts draw different conclusions. Thomas Getman, member of a private consulting group specializing in international affairs, explains the conflict in terms of Christian Zionism, a religious doctrine prominent in the United States, and its detrimental role in the peace process. While social justice manifests itself in the cultural practices of traditional, mainstream religions, Christian Zionism ignores the rights-based approach to theology, and it perpetuates myths (Getman). Dennis Ross, the principle informant in the Israeli-Arab conflict under the Bush and Clinton administrations, blames a number of factors. He explains, “The lack of public conditioning for peace, the reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side’s grievance and needs, the inability to confront comfortable myths, the difficulty of transforming behavior and acknowledging mistakes, the inherent challenges of getting both sides ready to move at the same time, the unwillingness to make choices, and the absence of leadership, especially among Palestinians, are all factors that have made peace difficult to achieve” (Ross 14). Ultimately, Ross says that it is “myths that prevent all sides from seeing reality and adjusting to it” (Ross 14). The failed peace efforts can be better understood by combining the two stances. Due to the stronghold Christian Zionism has held on United States politics, the Christian Zionist narrative has upheld peace talks in Israel-Palestine and disrupted the process.

Religion, classification struggles, and the state’s exercise of symbolic power

The capacity to classify social groups legally is a central characteristic of modern states. Social groups, however, often resist the classificatory schemas of the state. This raises the following question: how do modern states exercise symbolic power in social fields beset by acute classification struggles? While existing scholarship has demonstrated that states exercise symbolic power, there has not been a concomitant effort to systematize and theorize the various strategies through which they do so. This article addresses this lacuna through examining classification struggles centered on a number of “heterodox” religious groups that have historically been perceived as deviant from mainstream religions. Specifically, it looks at Falun Gong in China, Mormons in the United States, and Baha’is in Egypt. The analysis draws attention to three strategies through which states exercise symbolic power: coercive classification, wherein the deviant group is forcibly fixed as such in law; juridical normalization, whereby the deviant group is allowed to enter the mainstream by shedding “problematic” ritual practices; and legal erasure, whereby the deviant group is kept out of the official classificatory system so that it becomes a legal non-entity. In summary, this article both identifies the religious field as a critical domain in which states of various ideological orientations exercise symbolic power and deploys this analysis to identify distinct strategies through which they do so.

세계 주요 종교사상의 존재의 대둥지 (The Great Nest of Being) 고찰: 대순사상과 비교하여

‘The Great Nest of Being (The Great Chain of Being)’ is a key ontological concept in Perennial Philosophy. The Great Nest of Being shows the depth of the world’s religions that have existed historically, and in this context, they represent holarchies of existence and consciousness. This paper examines the nests of various beings in order to grasp the depths of the world’s mainstream religions, and reveals that the great nest of being that appear in the Daesoon Thought has the characteristic of synthesizing other nests that have emerged previously in history. According to Perennial Philosophy, the differences among different religions in regards to ultimate reality are not differences in reality but merely differences in semantics. In other words, these differences are only ‘different expressions of the same ultimate reality.’ Thus, linguistically, ultimate reality in the great nest of being can be summarized as the ‘same in what is signifié (signified, 記意)’ and ‘different in the signifiant (signifier, 記標).’ As stated in a preceding study; however, ultimate reality in Daesoon Thought is both transcendent and personal, as well as intrinsic and impersonal. This fact is specifically stated in the Four Tenets (4大 宗旨) of Daesoon Thought. In other words, the Tenets of Daesoon implicitly acknowledge not only the concepts of reality and the direction that emerges from the base of existence in existing systems of religious thought, but also can encompass the ideologies of those systems of religious thought. Considering the four quadrants as the Kosmos (AQAL), it encompasses a universal ideology. Therefore, the tenets of Daesoon Thought encompass the same significance (meaning) of the major systems of religious thought throughout the world in regards to ultimate reality and provide a clue to the solution to the presence of different signifiers (signs).

Management of Sacred Heritage Places in Tanzania: A Case of Kuumbi Limestone Cave, Zanzibar Island

The use and management of sacred sites that are still in use provide challenges to site managers since visitors fail to abide by rules established for the sacred area. In this study, it was revealed that there are ritual practices, strict taboos and customary laws put in place to control access to cave areas which are regarded as sacred to the locals. The habit of visitors not adhering to the established regulations when visiting caves and their areas have created a disconnection between people and their traditional religions and actually caused some of them to join mainstream religions such as Islam. The article proposes measures to be adopted by the antiquities authority, and other heritage managers in Zanzibar and Tanzania, in general, to provide the best practice for cave visitors and enable the communities to continue using the caves as a crucial part of their religious life without any molestations.