Religious Domain Research Articles

“Serving the Lord”: Christianity, Work, and Social Engagement in China

This study examines how Chinese evangelical Protestant employees view work and the workplace, through the lens of their religion, and how they seek to influence the broader society, in a highly restrictive religious domain in China. Using the concept of everyday religion, I examined how these employees seek to integrate faith into their work and the workplace, and the issues and challenges they face in the process. While existing China-focused studies have mainly looked at the experience of the business elite and Christian bosses, I inquired into the experience of the employees, specifically the professional class. It was found that they did not see a clear boundary between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ in the workplace. At the same time, they discursively constructed a distinction between their own Christian work ethos and that of their non-Christian colleagues. This discursive self-othering was double-edged. While it enabled the Christian employees to construct a distinctive workplace and social identity, it risked resulting in them being perceived negatively by non-Christian colleagues, as belonging to a “different kind” (linglei), thus, accentuating the social gulf and tension that might have already existed between the Christian and the non-Christian employees. Most regard the workplace as an important arena for the concrete expressions of their Christian faith and values in everyday life. In doing so, they seek a moral transformation of the workplace, as a way to transform the wider society. I argue that their effort to influence their colleagues and transform the workplace culture is an important kind of unobtrusive social engagement, without open mobilization in civil society.

Prejudice Predict Support for Politicians Based on Politician’s Ideology More Than Politician’s Demographic Background

Using large samples that are nationally diverse or nationally representative (total N=44,836), this paper presents evidence that citizens’ prejudice does not usually benefit or undermine politicians who are from a particular demographic group, as many past studies assumed; instead, citizens’ prejudice is associated with support for conservative politicians and opposition to liberal politicians, regardless of politicians’ demographic background. Study 1a and Study 1b show that, regardless of the race and gender of real politicians, racism and sexism negatively predict support for liberal politicians, and positively predict support for conservative politicians. This overall pattern is experimentally confirmed in Study 2 where participants evaluate a hypothetical politician. Using data collected between 1972 and 2016, Study 3 shows that, historically, the predictive effect of racism and sexism on support for politicians in general is moderated by politicians’ perceived ideology. Study 4 addresses a limitation of Study 1-Study 3, and Study 5 extends the results for prejudice to the religious domain (i.e., prejudice towards Muslims). Together, these studies suggest that the way prejudice is related to support for a politician is primarily moderated by the politician’s political ideology, not the politician’s demographic background. Thus, this paper highlights the often-overlooked role of politicians’ ideology, clarifying theories that explain how citizens’ prejudice is translated into their political preferences.

Mainstream Religious Domain in Nepal a Contradiction and Conflict of Indigenous Communities in Maintaining the Identity, Race, Gender and Class

Mainstream Religious Domain in Nepal a Contradiction and Conflict of Indigenous Communities in Maintaining the Identity, Race, Gender and Class

Promoting Interventions to Develop Religous Identity of Secondary School Students

Adolescence is known as the transition from childhood to adulthood. In this period, the adolescent will experience many changes related to their identities in various domains of life, including the religious domain. This study aims to investigate the profiles of religious identity status of early adolescents. A total of 116 secondary school students participated in this study. Data were collected by using the Scale of Religious Identity Status. The results showed that students’ religious identity status were distributed in four categories: achievement (66%), searching moratorium (23%), foreclosure (10%), and moratorium (1%). Implications for guidance and counseling services in secondary school are discussed to promote the development of religious identity of early adolescents.

Shifting Perceptions of Orient and Occident in Nineteenth-Century Arabic Travel Writing

This study investigates the relationship between the Eastern Self and the Western Other by focusing on the influence of the French Other on the ideology of the Arab Self in modern Arabic travel literature. As a case study, the analysis has been conducted on Takhlīṣ al-Ibriz fī Talkhīṣ Paris [‘The extraction of pure gold in the abridgement of Paris’]. The 19th century, from which this source originates, is considered to be significant in terms of distinguishing modern travelogue literature from that of the medieval period, where the image of the Western Other in Arabs’ imagination dramatically changed due to colonialism. As one of the richest and most open approaches in textual analysis, the study adopts the thematic approach to shed light on the extent to which the ideological impact of the Other on the political, religious, civil and social domains of the Self can be seen in this wide-ranging travel source. The study infers that al-Ṭahṭāwī was greatly ideologically impacted by West in all of the allocated domains, as can be seen clearly in his comprehensive comparisons, descriptions and explanations. This influence is indeed what distinguishes this modern travelogue literature from the medieval ones.

Developing Statistical Machine Translation System for English and Nigerian Languages


 
 
 
 The global demand for translation and translation tools currently surpasses the capacity of available solutions. Besides, there is no one-solution-fits-all, off-the-shelf solution for all languages. Thus, the need and urgency to increase the scale of research for the development of translation tools and devices continue to grow, especially for languages suffering under the pressure of globalisation. This paper discusses our experiments on translation systems between English and two Nigerian languages: Igbo and Yorùbá. The study is setup to build parallel corpora, train and experiment English-to-Igbo, (), English-to-Yorùbá, () and Igbo-to-Yorùbá, () phrase-based statistical machine translation systems. The systems were trained on parallel corpora that were created for each language pair using text from the religious domain in the course of this research. A BLEU score of 30.04, 29.01 and 18.72 respectively was recorded for the English-to-Igbo, English-to-Yorùbá and Igbo-to-Yorùbá MT systems. An error analysis of the systems’ outputs was conducted using a linguistically motivated MT error analysis approach and it showed that errors occurred mostly at the lexical, grammatical and semantic levels. While the study reveals the potentials of our corpora, it also shows that the size of the corpora is yet an issue that requires further attention. Thus an important target in the immediate future is to increase the quantity and quality of the data.
 
 
 
 

Expanding Intake Assessment to Incorporate Spirituality Using Five Functional Tasks

Conducting an intake assessment that investigates a client's spiritual and religious domain is essential when integrating spirituality into counseling. However, there is a paucity of scholarly literature surrounding how to effectively incorporate spirituality and religion into the intake process. This article explores the nature of spiritual assessment through a synthesis of the relevant literature. The authors introduce 5 functional tasks that serve as a guide for the effective integration of spirituality and religion into the intake process.

Initiatives interreligieuses et gouvernance locale : les cas de Barcelone et de Turin

Many European local governments are seeking out ways to encourage interreligious initiatives. This article focuses on the cases of Barcelona and Turin. Both cities are pioneering new forms of governance of the religious field in Southern Europe, while also being a source of inspiration for other cities. The article traces the genealogy of the institutional collaboration between interreligious actors and local governments, and develops a typology to examine how interreligious groups intervene in both cities’ public sphere. The article shows the crucial role of Catholic intellectuals and also of the celebration of the Olympic Games in fostering local dynamics of cooperation between municipalities and religious actors. The article concludes by arguing that the increasing securitarization of the religious domain in both cities have transformed the active involvement of interreligious groups in local governance into a process of domestication of the religious field.

Dancing the Word:

ABSTRACTPraise dance is a Christian movement genre, popular among churchgoing women of color in the United States, characterized by the use of interpretive dances as vehicles of liturgical worship, testimony, and evangelism. Combining spiritual and artistic disciplines, including techniques derived from ballet and modern dance, black female praise dancers embody the gospel and cultivate religious authority in ways that reinforce orthodox norms while elevating creative skills and aesthetic sensibilities normally found outside the purview of religious tradition. Such efforts, and the challenges and opportunities they entail, demonstrate how the movement of cultural forms between secular and religious domains influences ritual innovations and the terms in which they are authorized. They also show how gendered conceptions of embodiment and power may be reimagined.

PEMILIHAN BAHASA PADA MASYARAKAT ETNIK MADURA DI DESA PATEMON, KECAMATAN PAKUSARI, KABUPATEN JEMBER

This research is motivated by the pluralism of Madurese ethnic society in Patemon village, subdistric of Pakusari, Jember. This social condition makes a multilingual society. In a certain situation, the society have to choose the language that will be used. This research has some purposes to know the form of language choice and the underly in factors. This research uses qualitative method. The resercher collected the data through observation, questionnaire, and interview. This tecnique of analilysis is done through tree stages: data reduction process, data display, and conclusion. The results of this research include the language choice in the family, neighboardhood, religion, govermental, and transaction domain. The language choice result in the family domain most of the informants use Madurese language in enjâ’-iya level. In household domain the languge choice of the informants are mostly use enjâ’-iya and engghi-enten level of speech. The religious domain most of the informants use engghi-enten level of speech. In the govermental domain the language choice are mostly Indonesian language. In the transacsion domain, the language choice are mostly use enjâ’-iya level of speech. Factors that determine language choice are psychological factors, habits, social status, education, kind of social relations, age, ethnic similarities or differences, and politeness in language.

Political Language of the Church in the Post-Soviet Period

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Pilihan Bahasa Generasi Muda di Destinasi Wisata di Bali


 
 
 Bali is one of the tourist destinations in Indonesia. Among areas that are frequently visited by the tourists are, Kuta, Sanur, and Ubud. For that reasons, many people in the regions participate in the tourism activities. It cannot be denied that many languages are involved in the areas so that the society of the parts becomes bilinguals or even multilingual. Based on such linguistic situation, this study aims at nding language use and choice in family, neighbor, education and religion domains.The data were in the form of spoken data collected from young people at di erent tourist destinations such as Sanur, Kuta, and Ubud. A qualitative method applied in this study. In spite of the facts, the result of the research shows that the Balinese language is still preferred as the means of communication among the young people both in a family, neighbor, and religious domains.
 
 

Približavanje sociološkom pristupu religiji u uvjetima hrvatskog društva

Seeking an answer to key theoretical questions, the author attempts to come up with an “applicable” model in line with analytical approaches to the structure of the religious or atheistic consciousness. Laying down its essential constitutive elements and dimensions the author treats them on the same theoretical and methodological level, “positioning" them in their social embedment and reading them in respect of their particularities and importance within the social setting under consideration. With these guidelines the author determines the religious experience and the religious consciousness. Traditional, experiental and rational elements are spread out over an even field wherein it is possible to fathom the roots of religious belief. In this context, a challenging field of social research opens up for investigating the relativising elements not only within the process of the manifestation of religion on the individual and group level but within the process of its transformation, the intensity of its action and, above all, in the socail consequences of the widest spectre.All the challenges we have met in investigating the religious phenomenon draw attention to a preoccupation with either theoretical apriorism or with matriculated empiricism. The overcoming of this state of affairs necessitates the investigation of the specific relation of worldly (social-political) and spiritual (religious) factors, especially in the national and religious domains. With this in mind the author draws the reader’s attention to the rural and urban religious landscape. The investigation carried out in the article can produce a fruitful response, a critical réévaluation of “unqucstionable”theoretical premises.

Sikh Women Diaspora in Malaysia: The Reality of their Role and Status in the Religious Domain

This article aims to examine how the Sikh women diaspora from two generations exercised their rights within the religious domain in Malaysia. Sikhism has a unique world view of gender ideology; from a gender perspective, God is symbolically described as a husband to all of humanity, whereby all humans, irrespective of gender, are perceived as having the status of wives to God. Since the Sikh religion focuses on the concept of the spirit rather than the physical body; therefore, the position of God and mankind should be cognized from the viewpoint of transformation of spirit. Most significantly, every human being, be they male or female, is held in equal importance, with each individual being conferred the same position, status, rights and opportunity to live this life as God has ordained. In fact, tenets of life that define practices as being praiseworthy, or to be avoided, are not gender specific. This makes the philosophy of gender equality of the Sikh religion particularly interesting and worthy of academic scrutiny. To what extent is it true that women have equal status with men? The authors discovered that patriarchal cultural practices have clearly dominated Sikh women’s views about their roles in daily life, as well as in the perception of their own status. This article concludes with specific recommendations to uplift and strengthen gender equality among the Sikh community in the religious domain.

Ruling on Rituals: Courts of Law and Religious Practices in Contemporary Hinduism

The Indian Constitution posits a separation between a secular domain regulated by the State, and a religious domain in which it must not interfere. However, courts of law are regularly called upon to resolve a multiplicity of issues related to religion, and their decisions may have a far-reaching impact on religious conceptions and practices. The judicial process requires that standardized, clear-cut definitions of many notions (such as “religion” itself, or “worshipper,” “custom,” “usage,” “religious service,” “religious office,” “religious honor,” etc.) be established in order for them to be manageable within a legal context. Moreover, even though a religious domain may be distinguished from a secular one and protected from State intervention, there are litigations concerning civil rights that involve religious issues on which civil courts may therefore have an explicit duty to rule. Interventions such as imposing legal definitions or deciding on religious matters on which civil rights depend are systemic in character and intrinsic to “modern” law itself. In this they do differ from any explicit policy of state secularism or the no less explicit reformist will of some judges, which may change according to the historical period or to their personal dispositions. This paper comments on several judgments from the upper courts of India chosen from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, with a view to discussing the disputed limits of this judicial intervention and the resulting entanglement between law and religion.

Decolonizing African Christian Spirituality

Africa is mired in problems and has been so for a very long time. In their attempts to rescue the situation, our forefathers took upon themselves the task of decolonization. Although this process began in earnest in the early 1960s, it has since stalled. Today there are few Africans, either in the secular realm or in religious orders, who dare to speak about decolonization. It is as if the continent is in a coma, its attendants paralyzed. We all seem to have reached the conclusion that the current worldview, provided by the neo-conservatives in Washington and London, is an unassailable universal, a definitive and final creed. This paper is an attempt to break the deadlock of the world’s current commitment to a monoculture. Focusing on the religious domain, in particular prayer, and using historical and critical methods, I argue that African Christians are alienated from their cultural beliefs, and as such their quest for meaning in life is eschewed. I maintain that the spirituality of individualism characterising Christianity is detrimental to Africa and as such it has to be replaced by the ‘spirituality of community’, which is grounded in African traditions and cultures. I conclude by suggesting that if African people want to find meaning in their life and existence here on earth, then they must do so by looking very carefully into their own cultures and traditions, and not disappear into alien cultures, or into some mono-cultural hybrid we witness today.

The Retreat Argument

Some philosophers and scientists argue that as science progresses the religious domain shrinks ever more. They see the advance of science as an argument against religion and for naturalism. In what follows I construct the argument that is tacit in this line of reasoning and criticize it.

Indonesian Religion as a Hybrid Media Space: Social Dramas in a Contested Realm

AbstractThe popularity of social media in Indonesia, along with the rise of political Islam, is changing the ways in which people engage with religious matters in the country. In this article, we deploy post-Bourdieuan field theory to explore Indonesia’s religious domain as a ‘hybrid media space’ – a social space mediated by old and new media agents interacting to produce viralized forms of public communication. We undertake this exploration through three viral controversies, or ‘social dramas’, triggered by a perceived breach of the religious space’s order. All three dramas involved political Islamists in contention with various political actors, namely the Muslim senator Fahira Fahmi, the West Sumatran atheist Alexander Aan, and the then governor of Jakarta, ‘Ahok’. These examples shed light on the current state of Indonesia’s religious space and its multiple mediations, as well as taking field theory into new communicative and religious terrain.

Formality and Informality Dimensions of Language Use by Chinese Speakers in Sarawak

This study examined the influence of formality on language choice by Chinese speakers for the religious, transaction, education and employment domains. A survey was conducted on 300 Chinese speakers in Kuching, Sarawak (150 Foochow, 150 Hokkien). The participants were presented with at least one formal and one informal situation in the four selected domains and asked to indicate the main language used. The results showed that for the religious domain, formality does not influence the language choice, and the Chinese speakers spoke mainly Mandarin, some English and a little of either Hokkien or Foochow for informal discussions on the religious text, talking with the priest or monk, and praying. As for the transactions domain, the use of Bahasa Malaysia transcends the formality of interactions. The Chinese speakers rely on Mandarin and some Chinese vernacular languages when interacting in the market, food court, shops and when using public transport services but Mandarin usage lessens and there is a corresponding increase in English usage, indicating that English is associated with formality. In the education domain, interestingly it is Mandarin which is not influenced by formality dimensions but there is a clear pattern of decreasing use of Bahasa Malaysia and increasing use of English in more formal interactions involving teachers, as contrasted with genera workers and administrative staff. In the employment domain, English is mainly used for meetings but in interactions with colleagues of the same hierarchical status, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia are main languages used with colleagues from the same and different ethnic groups. The study shows a functional differentiation of languages for the Chinese speakers on an incline of formality of domains of language use but it is only clear for English which is seen as a formal language. Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia are unaffected by formality in some domains but in other domains they represent the less formal languages. The underlying factors for this disparity will be discussed.

The Left and the Church in Greece: The ambiguity of political and religious domain relationships

The occupation of government power by a leftist party in Greece (in January 2015) has formed a new political landscape and given rise to new political expectations after a long period of administration by the so-called system parties. The left-wing party, SYRIZA, was voted by Greek citizens as a new political force that could bring new policies, as it had the ambition to solve the country’s economic problems, bring social justice and tackle the severe humanitarian crisis caused by the recent long economic crisis. Regarding the religious field, the fixed aim of leftist parties was the separation between the State and the Church, which would lead to the full independence of the State from any religious or ecclesiastical influence, as well as the seizure of church assets by the State, the obligation for the clergy’s payroll to be covered by the Church, and similar demands regarding many other issues that shape the relationship between the State and the Church in Greece. This paper investigates especially the relationship between SYRIZA and the Church of Greece during the one-year period of the left-wing government, through the official discourse and political practices of the governing leftist party. For this purpose, the left-wing government’s political practices and stance towards the “religious issue,” as they are expressed by the party’s official press medium, the Avgi newspaper, are analyzed.