Religious Training Research Articles

How Religious Studies is Taught in Japan

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Teaching and Learning Theology and Religion at the University of Botswana

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Teaching Religion in Brazil, in Public Schools and Confessional Colleges

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Prospects for Religious Studies in Turkey

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses. Wendy Wiseman taught Humanities courses at Ozyegin University in Istanbul from 2008‐2013, taught Religious Studies at Indiana University the following year, and returned to Istanbul to teach at Beykent University. Burak Kesgin is Chair of Sociology at Beykent University, with a focus on political economy and sociology of religion.

Teaching Church History in Global Perspective in New Zealand

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Teaching Religious Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Teaching Religious Studies to Undergraduate Non‐Majors at Seoul National University, South Korea

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

The Basic Courses for the Study of Religions at the University of Southern Denmark

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Teaching Religion Around the World: A Modest First Glimpse

AbstractThis essay introduces a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). The central question uniting this collection is whether religious studies is a unified and global pedagogical field, and this introduction teases out salient continuities and discontinuities driven by broad cultural and political contexts. These essays are published together with this introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

Religion, Education, and Religious Education in Irish Schools

AbstractThis essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.

A Jesuit Missionary in Eighteenth-Century Sonora: The Family Correspondence of Philipp Segesser ed. by Raymond H. Thompson, and: Early History of the Southwest through the Eyes of German-Speaking Jesuit Missionaries: A Transcultural Experience in the Eighteenth Century by Albrecht Classen (review)

A Jesuit Missionary in Eighteenth-Century Sonora: The Family Coirespondence of Philipp Segesser. Edited by Raymond H. Thompson. Translated by Werner S. Zimmt and Robert E. Dahlquist. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2014. Pp. xxxix, 336. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-8263-5424-2.)Early History of the Southwest through the Eyes of German-Speaking Jesuit Missionaries: A Transcultural Experience in the Eighteenth Century. By Albrecht Classen. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2013. Pp. xi, 216. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-7391-7784-6.)Over the last quarter-century the methodologies of ethnohistory have enriched the one-dimensional histories of colonial missions in the Americas. The vision of Catholic missions as a frontier institution that advanced the boundaries of civilization among unlettered and barbarous peoples, reified in Herbert E. Bolton's phrase rim of Christendom, has given way to complex histories of the native peoples as historical actors whose calculus for survival under the demands of colonialism included permanent or itinerant residence in the consolidated pueblos that were established under the auspices of the missions. Whether in the arid lands of northern New Spain, the woodlands of Nouveau France, or the interior lowlands of South America, histories focused on the missions or that employed missionary texts from different religious orders increasingly reveal complex stories of cultural encounter fraught with tensions and conflicts.What is needed to complete these culturally nuanced interpretations of mission history are ethnographies of the missionaries themselves. The two books under review here contribute to that effort for the Society of Jesus while they draw on an extensive bibliography devoted to the literary and scholarly works by Jesuits who served in different parts of the Americas and Asia. Works that highlight the Jesuits' contributions to cartography, medicine, astronomy, and natural history include John W. O'Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, eds., The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773 (Toronto, 1999); Karl Kohut and Maria Cristina Torales Pacheco, eds., Desde los confines de los imperios ibericos: Los jesuitas de habla alemana en las misiones americanas (Frankfurt, 2007); Maria del Carmen Anzures y Bolanos's scholarly edition of Juan de Esteyneffer, Florilegio Medicinal (Mexico, 1978); and Guillermo Zemeno Padilla, Cartas edificantes y curiosas de algunos Jesuitas del siglo XVII: travesias, itinerarios, testimonios (Mexico, 2006). Equally important, Theodore Treutlein's translations of selected German Jesuits' writings into English, including Philipp Segesser (1689- 1762), Ignaz Pfefferkorn (1725-98), and Joseph Och (1725-73), contributed to our knowledge about the missions, their indigenous neophytes, and the missionaries who served them.Raymond H. Thompson's well-researched edition of Segesser's letters written to his family over more than four decades provides a rich new source for scholars who work on the colonial mission enterprise in the Iberian borderlands and the Jesuits' early-modern global network in the shadow of the Counter-Reformation. The collection includes seventy-six letters that were conserved by the Segesser family and deposited in the Lucerne State Archive, of which forty-one letters were written from different locations in Europe during Segesser's religious training, and thirty-five are penned from New World areas such as Cuba, central Mexico, and Sonora. …

The weeping sermon: persuasion, binding and authority within the Gülen-movement

One of the remarkable aspects of the weekly meetings (sohbet) organised by the followers of Fethullah Gülen is the so-called weeping sermon. The visual depiction of the weeping sermon, where Fethullah Gülen bursts into tears, after which his followers intensively weep during a certain period, hardly reveals the implications of the ritual. Weeping sermons are not just emotional performances, or modes of enchantment. They are part of a larger mediating practice common in the Gülen movement. It has persuasive qualities in three regards: (1) participating in a weeping sermon is a form of bodily moral attunement. It is part of a broader trajectory of religious training and disciplining and enhances spiritual and pious competence. (2) The total ritual including preparations has implications for the internal binding between followers and the forming of community. And (3) the ritual reconfirms and reproduces religious authority. We argue that the specific features of the sessions and the ways in which followers are involved in them, demonstrate how religious knowledge production, authorisation and ritual practice are inextricably linked to one another and come together in the sermon.

Études de psychologie linguistique : Le Style oral rythmique et mnèmotechnique chez les Verbo-moteurs

Marcel Jousse (1886‐1961) was at once a Jesuit priest, an artillery officer in the Great War and a research professor in the major Parisian institutions. He was a student of Marcel Mauss in anthropology, of Levy‐Bruhl in ethnology and sociology and of Pierre Janet in psychopathology. Jousse is also a disciple of Bergson’s philosophy. He used the knowledge of his masters, of his religious training and his military training to build the foundations of a new science and, above all, a new method: the anthropology of geste1 and rhythm. This vibrant and dynamic anthropology is primarily a praxis.

Focal cortical thickness correlates of exceptional memory training in Vedic priests.

The capacity for semantic memory—the ability to acquire and store knowledge of the world—is highly developed in the human brain. In particular, semantic memory assimilated through an auditory route may be a uniquely human capacity. One method of obtaining neurobiological insight into memory mechanisms is through the study of experts. In this work, we study a group of Hindu Vedic priests, whose religious training requires the memorization of vast tracts of scriptural texts through an oral tradition, recalled spontaneously during a lifetime of subsequent spiritual practice. We demonstrate focal increases of cortical thickness in regions of the left prefrontal lobe and right temporal lobe in Vedic priests, in comparison to a group of matched controls. The findings are relevant to current hypotheses regarding cognitive processes underlying storage and recall of long-term declarative memory.

Recognition and redefinition of theoretical challenges in religious and moral upbringing and training: force and upbringing

Human is the result of upbringing and needs upbringing more than any other creature; therefore, the most valuable human affair is upbringing. Regarding the influence of force on upbringing whether about ourselves or others, at first, it is enough to answer this question that what the meaning of force is and whether it has middle point or extravagance and wastage. Can it have stages and levels or be mild? When can we benefit from force in upbringing? Are upbringing and force external factors or internal ones? The main purpose of present study is to answer the question that whether we can use force as an influential method in upbringing? It is clear from this question that force is recommended in some cases and refused in some others and must be applied based on the age and proper condition; therefore, attention to these points pave the way for reaching upbringing goals. Methodology of this study was qualitative and researches, papers, texts, lectures and books which relate to force were studied to answer the research question.

Psychologists and Clergy Working Together: A Collaborative Treatment Approach for Religious Clients

Positive religious engagement has numerous benefits for individuals struggling with mental health difficulties. There is, however, a dearth of literature addressing ways that secular psychologists can engage a client’s religious belief system in a manner that allows the positive benefits of the client’s religious and/or spiritual involvement to be experienced within therapy without requiring religious knowledge or theological training by the psychologist. The following article proposes a collaborative treatment model composed of distinct interventions functioning in a cooperative, coordinated manner. Discussion is also given to principles that aid psychologists in coordinating psychological and spiritual interventions into a coherent and cooperative treatment process.

Education in the Arab Countries. from the Depth of Centuries to Our Days

The process of acquiring knowledge and the methods of acquiring it through education and upbringing has a long history in the Arab world. In the pre-Islamic period it meant getting practical skills and relevant knowledge for surviving in the conditions of nomadic life. The main method of transferring knowledge was home education, imitation of the actions of adults and instructions of the elders. The adoption of Islam, at the time of prophet Mohammad, knowledge was presented in the form of divine revelation - Koran. The task of education changed towards learning the scriptures and truths of the new doctrine, spiritual and physical perfection of young people with the aim of their active participation in the spread of Islam. Among the ways of getting an education in that period, along with domestic education and private tutorials, there were two-level religious schools and military training. With the development and strengthening of the Arab Khaliphate, the educational system was perfected and there emerged pedagogical science. The schools of new type - madrasah - taught theological as well as secular subjects. The modern system of education in many Arab countries copies that of their former metropolies. Thus, the system of primary and secondary education in the countries of Maghreb described in the article, was formed under the influence of the French educational system, although in certain cases it takes into account specific national features.

Inheritance, Heritage, and the Disinherited: Ambiguities of Religious Pedagogy in the Moroccan Public School

This article investigates how Moroccan public high‐school students experience religious pedagogy. Probing the linguistic ideology that underpins their religious training, the article exposes the ambiguities inherent in educational Arabization, a project set on safeguarding the state's sacredness while mediating an agenda of indigenous modernization. Student skepticism toward the state's moral authority indicates that religious pedagogy must be explored through the lenses of process and approximation with an attention to paradoxes, ironies, and unanticipated outcomes.

When the Sisters Said Farewell: The Transition of Leadership in Catholic Elementary Schools by Michael P. Caruso (review)

Reviewed by: When the Sisters Said Farewell: The Transition of Leadership in Catholic Elementary Schools by Michael P. Caruso Roseanne McDougall SHCJ When the Sisters Said Farewell: The Transition of Leadership in Catholic Elementary Schools. By Michael P. Caruso S.J. Lanham, MD: R&L Education, 2012. 170170 pp. $24.95. As a short study, this delightful, substantive book traces the nineteenth-century roots of Catholic education in the United States and demonstrates how both the influx of nearly eight million Catholic immigrants and the Nativist movement directed against them created the momentum for the establishment of Catholic schools, particularly in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and other urban centers. While the main points of this book correspond to major historical developments, the author illustrates these points with carefully researched individual case stories. For example, the reasons for controversy over Catholics' required reading of the King James version of the Bible in Philadelphia in the 1840s are explained. In turn, the cases are described in such clarity combined with simplicity that one gets the sense of almost having been there. Through Caruso's narration, the reader learns why the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 both mandated the establishment of a Catholic school in every parish where feasible and also strongly urged parents to send their children to these schools. Having established the historical context for the Catholic parochial school system, the book then focuses on (1) the search for a most precious resource, qualified teaching and administrative personnel (the sisters), (2) the implications of Vatican II for those same personnel and thereby for the schools, and (3) the consequent transition to lay teaching and administrative personnel, with the hope of maintaining the schools as vibrant centers of Catholic life into the future. While the focus of the book is on the schools, the author comments early on that "The sisters reached out not only to Catholics but to all people of goodwill; for many Americans they were the face of Catholicism in the United States." Drawing upon correspondence between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Sisters of St. Louis in Ireland, Caruso delineates the sometimes intricate process of negotiation which led to the mutual decision that a given religious congregation of sisters would teach in a particular parish. Thus, the book sheds light on relatively little-known internal aspects of the staffing of the schools. Further, while many would have assumed that the sisters were academically prepared to teach, Caruso delineates the struggle for professional teacher education, and highlights the mentoring process whereby a more experienced sister was assigned to provide direction in teaching for younger sisters. He points to the ingenuity of the sisters who, in addition to completing degrees, spent additional time in collaborating through the mentoring process. In what may be a seminal insight, Caruso also describes some strong similarities between the setting of the novitiate where the sisters received their religious training on the one hand, and the school where the sisters provided education to children on the other. Hence, the discipline and habits (no pun intended) in which the sisters were themselves formed had implications for the sometimes memorable style they later exercised in the classroom and school. The concluding chapters of the book offer the author's insights towards the legacy of the schools, including possible roles the sisters might continue to play. The book is well-researched and contains two appendices, one of letters and another with titles of pertinent documents. It will have genuine appeal for anyone associated with Catholic elementary schools in the United States due to the rich variety of perspectives it offers. Roseanne McDougall SHCJ La Salle University Copyright © 2013 American Catholic Historical Society

Catechesis in a Multicultural Church

c a t e c h e s i s i n a m u l t i c u l t u r a l c h u r c h 27 Eva Lumas, D.Min., a Sister of Social Service, is a consultant and instructor of religious education across the country. She teaches at The Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, CA, and has initiated the development of several religious education guidebooks and training programs for the African-American Catholic Community. Catechesis in a Multicultural Church