Religious Reflection Research Articles

Религиозное осмысление одиночества

Религиозное осмысление одиночества

Varieties of Naturalism and Religious Reflection

Varieties of Naturalism and Religious Reflection

Sacrae litterae. Anagramatyczne wariacje na temat Virginis – Deiparae w Oraculum Parthenium Józefa Stanisława Bieżanowskiego (1668) [Sacrae litterae. Anagrammatic variations on Virginis Deiparae in Oraculum Parthenium by Joseph Stanislaw Bieżanowski

Joseph Stanislaw Biezanowski, a professor at the University of Krakow, a eulogist and poet, in the collection entitled Oraculum Parthenium (Krakow 1668) used a hundred of simple anagrams of Giovanni Battista Agnese published in Rome in 1661. These short (one-sentence) phrases, formed from the letters of the first part of the Angelic Salutation (Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus Tecum), accentuated on Mary’s immaculate purity and freedom from the stain of the original sin on the one hand and her divine motherhood on the other, thus increasing the role and the importance of Mary in God’s plan of salvation. Biezanowski used these anagrams, making each of them a motto elaborated on in his epigrammatic comment. Epigrams of the Krakow lecturer are characterized not so much by the deepening of the religious reflection, as attention to the formal aspects, the pursuit of artistry. This is reflected in the application, many times within one work, of rhetorical figures highly valued in the Baroque (antitheses, oxymorons), the chiastic structure and interspersing the punch line of the epigram with the anagram from the motto (sometimes in a modified form). Anagram not only served as an additional rhetorical decoration, highlighting the main idea of a work, but also provided a bridge integrating the entire composition. Biezanowski enclosed the anagrammatic-and-epigrammatic praise of the Virgin Mother of God by an interesting theory of the genre outlined in the preface to Pope Clement IX, whom the University of Cracow gave the collection while making efforts to proceed with the beatification of John Cantius. It combines the literary and theological reflection and in this way exalts the genre, contrary to the opinions of some seventeenth-century theorists. Biezanowski’s original approach is also evident in the change in the system of anagrams proposed originally by Agnese. In this new system Oraculum Parthenium could perform several functions: educationional, propagandistic and polemical. Above all, however, it was a poetic prayer, complementing the official Marian liturgy.

Varieties of Quest and the Religious Openness Hypothesis within Religious Fundamentalist and Biblical Foundationalist Ideological Surrounds

According to the Religious Openness Hypothesis, the religious and psychological openness of American Christians is obscured by a defensive ghettoization of thought associated with a Religious Fundamentalist Ideological Surround and can be discovered instead within a Biblical Foundationalist Ideological Surround. A test of this claim examined Religious Fundamentalism, Biblical Foundationalism, Quest, and Multidimensional Quest Scales in 432 undergraduates. Christian Religious Reflection, Religious Schema, and Religious Orientation measures clarified these two ideological surrounds. Partial correlations controlling for Biblical Foundationalism described a Religious Fundamentalist Ideological Surround that more strongly rejected Quest and that more generally displayed a failure to integrate faith with intellect. Partial correlations controlling for Religious Fundamentalism revealed a Biblical Foundationalist Ideological Surround that was more open to Quest and that offered numerous demonstrations of an ability to unite faith with intellect. These data supplemented previous investigations in demonstrating that Christianity and other traditional religions have ideological resources for promoting a faithful intellect.

Effect of Military Conflicts on the Formation of Emergency Medical Services Systems Worldwide

This article briefly reviews the evolution of medical support during wars and conflicts from ancient to modern times and discusses the effect warfare has had on the development of civilian health care and emergency medical services (EMS). Medical breakthroughs and discoveries made of necessity during military conflicts have developed into new paradigms of medical care, including novel programs of triage and health assessment, emergency battlefield treatment and stabilization, anesthesia, and other surgical and emergency procedures. The critical role of organizations that provide proper emergency care to help the sick and injured both on the battlefield and in the civilian world is also highlighted.

Varieties of openness in Tehran and Qom: psychological and religious parallels of faith and intellect-oriented Islamic religious reflection

This study examined whether faith and intellect-oriented religious reflection would be polarised in Iranian Muslins as they appear to be in American Christians. Iranian students at a university in Tehran and at an Islamic seminary in Qom responded to Faith and Intellect-Oriented Islamic Religious Reflection measures along with scales recording various forms of religious commitment and psychological openness. Both types of religious reflection and the Intrinsic Religious Orientation predicted greater Integrative Self-Knowledge, Openness to Experience, and Need for Cognition and also interacted in ways suggesting complexity in Muslim thought. Comparisons between Tehran and Qom students supported the same conclusion. The Quest Religious Orientation had limited relevance for understanding Muslim commitments. The Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientation predicted greater and the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation predicted lower psychological openness. These data contrasted with previous evidence of polarisation in the religious reflection of American Christians. They also argued against any simple equation of Muslim commitments with cognitive and religious rigidity.

The vantage point of disinterested inquiry

In this paper I shall discuss some central problems concerning the method of philosophy in D. Z. Phillips' contemplative philosophy of religion. The article focuses on following two interrelated questions: (a) In what sense does Phillips' descriptive philosophy “leave everything as it is?” and (b) How does Phillips understand the relation between personal and philosophical? This paper will discuss some of the principal comments and criticisms linked with these two questions in the recent discussion on Phillips' thought. It is widely thought that Phillips' philosophical accounts of religious beliefs are prescriptive rather than descriptive. I will show that adopting a Wittgensteinian descriptive approach in philosophy of religion does not mean that a philosopher starts from religious believers' own reflections concerning the meaning of their beliefs and practices. Neither does it mean that philosophers simpliciter accept religious practices as they are. In addition, I will try to show that although the contemplative approach in philosophy of religion has a relativistic flavour, there is no reason to connect it with radical relativism or perspectivism. Nevertheless, the distinction between the philosophical and the personal is not clear-cut in Phillips' thought.

Educational context of Berdyaev's personalism

Educational context of Berdyaev's personalism Berdyaev is with his considerations of man rated among multitude of personalists who view man in subtle philosophical - religious reflection. In his philosophical reflection, human personality materializes in transcendence which is an essential part of human being and which characterizes whole world of human experience. Personality is not only any general substantial designation but it is a manifestation of man's uniqueness. Maieutic change of man's thinking and acting is clearly teleologicaly oriented to the creation of Kingdom of God on this earth, in cooperation with the holy Personality. Berdyaev's personalism presents precious contribution to the discourse on philosophy of education about inner certainty of purpose.

Biblical Foundationalism and Religious Reflection: Polarization of Faith and Intellect Oriented Epistemologies within a Christian Ideological Surround

Among other things, the Ideological Surround Model (ISM) argues that greater objectivity can be achieved through an empiricism that brings emic religious and etic social scientific perspectives into formal dialog. In this project, 421 undergraduates responded to a Christian Religious Reflection Scale along with an etic Religious Fundamentalism and an emic Biblical Foundationalism scale. Christian Religious Reflection proved to be polarized with Faith and Intellect Oriented factors correlating negatively. Faith Oriented Reflection, Religious Fundamentalism, and Biblical Foundationalism displayed negative linkages with Quest and Openness to Experience. Intellect Oriented Reflection was incompatible with Christian commitments and predicted higher Quest and Openness to Experiences. Statistical controls for the etic language of Religious Fundamentalism demonstrated that the emic language of Biblical Foundationalism could support both Faith and Intellect Oriented epistemologies and was not incompatible with Quest or Openness to Experience. Participants displayed higher scores on Biblical Foundationalism than on Religious Fundamentalism. These data illustrated how a dialogical empiricism can promote objectivity.

Bizancio en el siglo VII: entre historia y profecía. notas en torno a los sucesos del año 626

We try to study in this article, within a critical time in the history of the Byzantine Empire, that is, 6 th to 9 th Century, a particular aspect in relationship with changes operate in the Byzantine mentality, in his historical and religious conceptions. Indeed, in the middle of a generalized crisis of insecurity, the Byzantine population turned toward religion, depositing their trutst in the supernatural protection of the Empire and its capital. At the same time, we see how the historiographical work loses consistency, taking its place religious reflections within a general picture of mystical panegyrics and eschatological effervescence. In another way, when you think that the end of the world is imminent, no makes sense write history, but does it have the interpretation of the prophecies in regard to the second coming of the Messiah. This is a turning point in the configuration of the Byzantine mentality.

Morgan Clarke, Islam and new kinship: reproductive technology and the shariah in Lebanon

Islam and new kinship presents a thoughtful and nuanced analysis of Islamic legal responses to issues raised by assisted reproductive technologies. Although the author conducted extensive fieldwork in Lebanon, which serves as the central case study in the book, the discussion addresses religious reflections and legal opinions in diverse locales, including Syria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, among others. The most significant theme, of several that run unevenly through the book, involves the process of Islamic legal reasoning in the face of popular and medical concerns with reproductive technologies. Clarke engages in a thorough and captivating assessment of the numerous fatwas issued in the context of global Islamic legal scholarship concerning medical ethics, in particular, medically assisted conception. The author’s argument derives from extensive interviews and correspondence with religious authorities of various ‘confessions’ (Sunni, Shi’i, Druze, Maronite Christian, Greek Orthodox) in several countries: Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah and his associates as well as the head of the Sunni courts in Lebanon, representatives of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Khamene’i of Iran, and Grand Ayatollah Sayyid ‘Ali al-Sistani, based in Najaf, Iraq. This very abbreviated list does not do justice to the impressive interview and archival data that form the basis of the book. What readers may find most interesting is the process of legal reasoning made apparent in the discussion of the permissibility of various technological interventions such as donor eggs or sperm, or gestational surrogacy. One question of interest involves the hierarchy of juridical authority (Whose fatwas are authoritative? And how do individuals with particular personal interests select among possible learned jurists known for specific legal stances?) Not only does Cont Islam (2012) 6:93–94 DOI 10.1007/s11562-010-0133-8

"Papa, ich segne Dich auch."

Children challenge their parents to their own religious reflection, to rituals and interpretations also within families. Practical experiences of religious communication within families show up how parents could become competent in religious communication with their children. For a molded parent-child-communication all-days suitable ways of making perceivable and of expressing the practice of God within families must be developed.

When Were We Persons? Why Hominid Evolution holds the Key to Embodied Personhood

In this paper I want to ask whether human evolution as such might provide us with important links to theological anthropology and thus to a positive and constructive way of appropriating Darwinian thought for Christian theology. From a more philosophical point of view I am asking whether Darwin's perspective on human evolution can help us move forward to more constructive, holistic, notions of self and personhood? I will argue in this paper that in the history of hominid evolution we find surprising answers to the enduring question of what it means to be a self, a human person. In fact, what we now know about key aspects of hominid evolution affirms and confirms what Darwin argued for as crucial aspects of humanness. To this end I want to consider the problem of human evolution and its potential impact on theological anthropology by tracking a number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood that were all of great significance for Darwin: the evolution of sexuality, the evolution of music and language, the evolution of morality, and the religious disposition. I will then argue that the evolution of these crucial aspects of human personhood converge of the issue of the moral sense, or morality, which then might give us an interesting, if not intriguing, transversal connection of religious belief and theological reflection. My argument will then unfold by specifically focusing on two important questions: first, what do we learn from evolutionary history about the evolution of morality and moral awareness in humans? and second, what do we learn from evolutionary history about the way we construct our moral codes and our ethical systems? The evolution of morality is, of course, closely related to the evolution of religion, with which I have not dealt with in this paper.

The Problems of the Implementation of the Idea of ​​Creationism in the National and State-Making of Ukraine

One of the important problems of the modern nation-building and state-building in Ukraine is the insufficient inclusion of the creative potential of the Ukrainian national spirit in it, which, in turn, is caused by its weak orientation to self-knowledge by the means of philosophical and religious reflection. Considering that the main characteristic of the human spirit is its active-creative character, that is, its focus on both self-creation and self-perfection, and on the transformation of the surrounding reality, it is advisable to consider how the Christian idea of ​​creationism models the world-view and outlook of the Ukrainian national spirit . His decision largely depends on the incorporation of the collective will and mind of the Ukrainian into building a democratic state on the principles of truth, humanism, justice and good.

The Anglican Imagination of Matthew Arnold

AbstractThis essay is an attempt to write Matthew Arnold into the narrative of Anglican thought in the nineteenth century. Overviews of general religious thought in the Victorian era give an appropriate nod to Arnold, but the institutional histories of the Anglican Church have not acknowledged his contributions to defining Anglican identity. In many ways, this is quite understandable: Arnold broke with much of traditional Christian doctrine. But, and just as significant, he never left the Church of England, and in fact he was an apologist for the Church at a time when even part of the clergy seemed alienated. He sought to expand the parameters of permitted religious opinion to include the largest number of English Christians in the warm embrace of the national Church. The essay concludes that the religious reflections of Arnold must be anchored in an Anglican context.

New religious formations as a form of modern massive culture

Let us analyze the latest religious entities (for example, non-Christian charismatic communities) in the paradigm context of mass culture, and find out the place and role of modern religiosity among the cultural phenomena of today. In order to answer the question: "Can new religious entities be considered a form of mass culture?", One should first of all analyze briefly the phenomenon of mass culture, its nature, its genesis, the tasks it solves, the methods it uses, and its practical manifestations. Since "mass culture" is a term used in contemporary cultural studies, the question in this perspective has not yet become an object of religious reflection.

Dreaming of China in Eighteenth-Century France

In eighteenth-century France, knowledge of the Far East improves while still remaining fragmentary and incomplete. The Jesuits' Lettres edifiantes et curieuses (Edifying and Curious Letters), and especially the great work by one of their members, Fr Du Halde, Description de la Chine (Description of China), 1735, contribute to the advance of knowledge, and the number of works on China and Japan grows constantly over the century, as can be seen in the tables of two periodicals, the Annee and the Memoires de Trevoux, which give a wide circulation to summaries of these texts. Here is a significant continuity in this mass of material, which often extends a type of thought dating back to the previous century. What is at stake in treating the subject changes, however, in the eighteenth century. The Far East is no longer the prerogative of erudite circles but is used to provide an entire society with a critical scrutiny of Western institutions. In a sense, this tendency contributes to masking Asian realities rather than unveiling them. Montesquieu's Persian becomes Chinese for Voltaire (and later Indian). De la gloire, ou Entretien avec un Chinois (Of Glory, or A Conversation with a Chinaman), 1741, invites the French to relativize their ideas on civilization, religion and history, while the Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) uses the Chinese to criticize the Catholic religion. Later, Ange Goudar's L'Espion chinois (The Chinese Spy), 1773, is written in the same critical vein: inspired by Montesquieu's Persian Letters and Goldsmith's Chinese Letters, 1762, it represents a violent attack on Western society, its political regime and social organization. In the area of political or religious reflection, the Chinese world often seems like an almost Utopian model, heightening the denunciation of Europe as corrupt and in thrall to absurd traditions. The Far East, if it is used above all in the context of largely religious and historical thought, also provides the matter to re-examine all of Western art over the century: literature, theatre, music, painting, gardens. Some examples will be studied, notably in the press, the theatre and the novel, with the aim of identifying the stereotypes present in these texts and of determining whether literature looks as favorably on the Orient as does philosophy.

Healthy Questing and Mature Religious Reflection: Critique, Antecedents, and Relevance of Attachment Theory?

Gordon Allport (1950) suggested that a willingness to reflect upon and question one's beliefs was a component of mature religiosity. Subsequently, the construct and measurement of quest was developed by Batson and colleagues. There has been much helpful research based on the Batson Quest Scale but also debate surrounding the psychometric properties of the scale, and attempts to develop other questing measures. However, there has been little attempt to develop a broad, theoretically based understanding of mature religious reflection, especially in view of the plurality of religions in the global context. This paper (1) analyses the nature and limitations of Batson's quest construct; (2) examines the need for a broader understanding of religious reflection in a pluralistic religious context; (3) justifies a developmental perspective based in attachment theory for an understanding of defensive and non-defensive religious reflection; and (4) presents some research implications of a developmental attachment-questing perspective.

The Nature and Structure of Muslim Religious Reflection

Muslims are often stereotyped as having rigid, fundamentalist attitudes. To date, studies have not examined the degree to which Muslims endorse a questing approach to religion, thus displaying openness to the exploration of religious practices and beliefs. A sample of 123 Australian Muslims and 74 Malaysian Muslims completed questionnaires including measures of: questing, as measured by Batson and Schoenrade's 12-item Quest scale (1991b) and Altemeyer and Hunsberger's 16-item Quest scale (1992); conservative religious belief, as measured by the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992); and Muslim religious reflection, as measured by a newly developed and validated measure named the Islamic Reflection Scale (IRS). The psychometric properties of the IRS are reported with associations between the other religious measures. Findings are discussed in terms of levels of Islamic openness and questing, and implications of a targeted measure of Muslim Religious Reflection for understanding the ...

Emergence in theological perspective: A corollary to professor Clayton's Boyle Lecture1

Emergence in theological perspective: A corollary to professor Clayton's Boyle Lecture1