Religious Virtues Research Articles

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THEISTIC BELIEF

Theism is often supposed to be distinguished from atheism by the heavy weight of metaphysical belief that it carries. This paper argues that this is not as illuminating a way of distinguishing the theist's from the atheist's outlook as is often supposed. The key divergence consists not so much in matters of theoretical belief or philosophical argument as in practical differences in affective response and in the adoption of certain models for living. Two characteristically religious virtues, humility and hope, and two distinctively religious responses, awe and thanksgiving, are discussed in order to illustrate this. The paper's conclusion, while not denying a cognitive core to theism, argues that warranted assent to the metaphysical truth of God's existence cannot be a precondition for theistic hermeneusis and praxis.1

The Steamboat Springs High School Ski Band 1935–2005

Nestled at the foot of the Zirkel and Sarvis Creek Wilderness areas in northwest Colorado sits the picturesque resort town of Steamboat Springs. The largest town in Routt County, Steamboat Springs has a population of approximately 10,000 residents. (1) Cattle and sheep ranching, together with hay and wheat farming, have been major economic sources for many years. (2) No activity, however, provides as much economic support to contemporary Steamboat Springs as tourism. The primary reason tourists flock to Steamboat Springs is an activity that has been integral to the lives of generations of Routt county residents: skiing. In 1914 Carl Howelsen organized a Winter Carnival as a means to promote skiing and celebrate the winter season. The week-long festival continues to this day and has become a major part of the town's culture. Taking place during the second week of February, the carnival features ski races, ski jumping, chariot racing, street events, a shovel race, dog sled pulls, skijoring, and fireworks. None of these events, however, can rival in attention and uniqueness the high school band's performance in the Diamond Hitch Parade, which traditionally takes place on the last day of the carnival. Every year since 1935 members of the Steamboat Springs High School band put on red wool uniforms, get out plastic mouthpieces, lubricate their instruments with no-freeze valve oil, attach shortened Nordic skis to their boots, and ski down Lincoln Avenue to the delight and amazement of hundreds of people. Literature Review It is possible that Steamboat Springs High School is not the only school in the country that has a novelty-type ensemble that performs on a regular basis. However, a search of several databases (ERIC First Search, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, International Index to Music Periodicals, Dissertation Abstracts International, and Music Index) did not return any literature concerning novelty bands in public school music programs. In order to formulate a perspective from which to learn more about the unique Steamboat Springs high school ski band, the following literature review examines school band history and and the relationship between public school music ensembles and their communities. School Bands and Community Relations--A Brief History During the late-nineteenth century, outdoor professional band concerts led by such conductors as Sousa, Pryor, Conway, Liberati, and Creatore helped increase public interest in band music. The events became popular throughout the United States, but instrumental music had yet to reach the public schools. (3) At that time most public school music programs were limited to vocal music. (4) Lee's detailed account of music education and rural reform shows how, at the turn of the twentieth century, music began to be viewed as an important social tool because it promoted discipline and religious virtue. (5) After 1900 university teachers and rural reformers began organizing music education in rural schools and communities. With these new music education programs came community performances by local children. The growth of instrumental music in the schools was rapid during the 1920s and 1930s, driven in large part by instrument, uniform, and publishing companies. (6) By the mid-1930s, music education in the Steamboat Springs schools included a high school band and one of the most unique ensembles in the country. School Culture Morrison examines cultural themes such as identity, transmission, social dimension, organizational hierarchy, traditional song, and traditional performance practices. (7) He believes that student performing ensembles offer students an opportunity unlike any other in the schools for celebrating both diversity and unity. According to Morrison, school ensembles are guardians of their own specific culture, and he argues that the most formal manifestation of ensemble membership occurs at performances when members wear uniforms and present themselves to the public. …

Religious luck and religious virtue

Following Linda Zagzebski's discussion of the paradoxical implications of moral luck for Christian morality, I explore the role of religious luck in two accounts of divine election – that of Paul the Apostle and that of the sixteenth-century Jewish thinker, Rabbi Judah Loeb of Prague. On both accounts, special religious status is conferred unrelated to the deserts of the beneficiary. What sense does it make to ascribe religious worth to someone if it simply came his way? Both accounts appeal to the notion of religious virtue to answer this question. On Rabbi Judah's account, like ethical virtues, religious virtues inhere within the essence of their bearer and thus belong to him necessarily; on Paul's they are accidental, a matter of luck. Thus Paul's account, more than Rabbi Judah's, suffers from the paradox troubling Zagzebski.

From Yahweh to Yahoo!: the religious roots of the secular press

Presenting religion as journalism's silent partner, From Yahweh to Yahoo! provides a fresh and surprising view of the religious impulses at work in the typical newsroom by delving into the largely unexamined parallels between religious and journalistic developments from the 'media' of antiquity to the electronic idolatry of the Internet. Focusing on how the history of religion in the United States has been entwined with the growth of the media, Doug Underwood makes the case that American journalists are rooted in the nation's moral and religious heritage and operate, in certain important ways, as personifications of the old religious virtues. Journalists believe they are serving a cause higher than the commercial goals of their news organizations, Underwood contends.He traces the influence on the press of the biblical prophets' complaints about moral corruption, the calls for reform arising out of the Protestant Reformation, and the principles that drove the muckraker and Social Gospel campaigns of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. Underwood argues that one must see the profession of journalism in terms of its religious character to understand the tensions at work in today's media. He explores the forces that have pushed journalists away from identifying themselves with religion, yet notes the reverential way in which they approach such secular topics as science, technology, and psychology. His wide-ranging discussion includes the press' formulaic coverage of spiritual experience, its failure adequately to cover new and non-Christian religions in America, and the complicity of the mainstream media in launching the religious broadcasting movement.

Speech intelligibility in the community mosques of Dhaka City

A mosque facilitates a Muslim community through different religious activities like congregational prayers, recitation and theological education. Speech in a mosque usually generates through bare voice though sound amplification system is also applied. Since no musical instrument is used in any liturgy, a mosque involves only speech acoustics. The community mosques of Dhaka city, the densely populated capital of Bangladesh, are usually designed and constructed by common people inspired from religious virtues. Seeking consultancy for acoustical design is almost never done. As an obvious consequence, there is a common crisis of speech intelligibility in different mosques, except those saved for their smaller volume and other parameters generated by chance. In a very few cases, a trial and error method is applied to solve the problem. But in most of the cases, the problem remains unsolved, putting the devotees in endless sufferings. This paper identifies the type and magnitudes of the prevailing crisis of speech intelligibility of these community mosques through instrumental measurements and questionnaire survey. This paper is also intended to establish certain research rationale and hypothesis for further research, which will propose certain parameters in acoustical design for mosques of Dhaka city in particular and of Bangladesh in general.

Civic Virtues vs. Market Values in the Balkans

The great dreams of dissidents for civil society as a guarantee for a just life confront many economic, social, and political dilemmas. This state of affairs worsened in the Balkans following the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia, Initially, the resolution of all problems was associated with market values, while ascribing only secondary importance to civic virtues, A market economy depends on civil society, but market values do little for strengthening civic virtues in the region, leading to a vicious circle of rudimentary civic virtues and an underdeveloped economy. The growing non-governmental sector within civil society remains an artificial appendage, since it relies heavily on international financing and is likely to disappear if this support ceases for any reasons. The only probable way out of this predicament is for citizens not to abandon the ideal of civic, classical, and religious virtues, and be hopeful despite current conditions.

Opposing censorship in the public schools: religion, morality, and literature

In the past several years, hundreds of challenges a year to books used in public schools have been reported across the nation. Most of these have come from the Religious Right. This book confronts the attacks on public education and commonly used literature books by challenging the religious assumptions, the biblical interpretations, and the intimidation tactics of the Religious Right. Part I counters the claims of these censors by presenting opposing views on democracy, secular humanism, religion, the Bible, morality, and the purposes of literature. In Part II, six books frequently taught in high school classes are analyzed. Edwards shows why they have been challenged by the Religious Right, and presents a case for their moral and religious virtues as well as their literary worth. The book differs from other anti-censorship works because it deals primarily and directly with the religious and moral aspects that educators often tend to avoid. This book offers teachers and school administrators scholarly conterarguments that can help confront with literature challenges from the Religious Right.

Piety: Lending a Hand to Euthyphro

Many philosophers take the point of Plato's Euthyphro to be an indictment of attempts to ground morality in religion, specifically in the attitudes of a deity or deities. It has been argued cogently in recent essays that Plato's case is far from conclusive. This essay suggests instead that the Euthyphro can be read more narrowly as raising critical questions about a specific religious virtue, Piety. Then it presents the ingredients of a reply to those questions. The reply proceeds by suggesting that one need not accept the standards of definition used by Plato, and that one can provide an explanation of what Piety is by embedding Piety in a more comprehensive picture of the human, the divine, and the relations between the two. The picture makes use of a doctrine of divine sovereignty and a doctrine concerning love between God and humans.

Secular virtue and Christian religious virtue in renaissance humanism: Moral norms vs. realpolitik

Secular virtue and Christian religious virtue in renaissance humanism: Moral norms vs. realpolitik

Religion in American Higher Education: A Disappearing Force

The two books reviewed for this essay discuss the erosion of religion as a force in American higher education. Secularization approaches the issue from a historical, analytical perspective with a plea for the importance of religion’s cultural view on campus issues. Exiles proposes that objectivism is only one approach in the search for knowledge and, further, that students would be better served if faculty members adhered to traditional religious virtues—faith, humility, self-denial, charity, and friendship.

POR QUÉ SON NECESARIAMENTE INÚTILES LAS VIRTUDES ESPECÍFICAMENTE RELIGIOSAS

The moral value of Religion could be doubtful from an utilitarian evaluative standpoint. J. S. Mill analysis about that question in Utility of Religion is well-known.However Hume's similar study in his Enquiry Concerning the Principies of Morals is not known in the same degree. There Hume writes that we consider something a virtue when (1) it is useful to others; (2) it is useful to the subject himself; (3) it is immediately agreeable to others; or ( 4) it is immediately agreeable to the person himself. But, if everything which is useful or agreeable must be considered a virtue, onthe contrary everything useless or disagreeable must be a vice. That is the case with Cristian, monkish, or religious virtues, or «vices»?, in general terms.

PIETAS AND THE ALIMENTA ITALIAE

Pietas is the Roman virtue which describes the concern and respect of the father for his children, or the state for its citizens. The Roman state was informed by religious values and traditional virtues. The Alimenta Italiae is the first known nutrition program for children initiated by the emperor Nerva (96-98 A.D.) and expanded by the emperor Trajan (98-117 A.D.). The scheme worked in this fashion: The state, in order to support agriculture made available to farmers low interest loans, however, the interest on the loans was repaid directly to municipalities which were obliged to use the money to provide food and necessities for poor children. The scheme ultimately came to cover thousands of children in Italy and was widely acclaimed. "Alim. Italiae" appears frequently on the coins of Trajan proclaiming the program to the known world. Despite much blather about traditional virtues, there is no positive family policy in this country. However, we do have a new agricultural policy which is to liquidate dairy herds lest the land be flowing with milk if not honey. Here, in one of the wealthier provinces failure to thrive is endemic. At the Brockton Hospital it is rare that a child is not hospitalized with the diagnosis of nonorganic failure to thrive. "Quo usque tandem abutere patientia nostra?"; loosely translated with apologies "Gimme a break."

The Social Sources of Mormonism

Since the very beginnings of Mormon history, non-Mormon historians (and “anti-Mormon” polemicists) have traced the sources of the religion in one way or another to some conception of New England. The conceptions have been as varied as the writers themselves: New England has been the land of both enthusiasm and rational religion; of educated, enlightened Yankees and of credulous, antiintellectual Yankees; of a culture east of the Hudson and of a culture extending across the northern half of the United States; a region of people with great civic and religious virtue but also a people noted for deception, cunning, and hypocrisy. The problem of the New England Mind has never been settled, but all writers have assumed that at one time or another western New York, the supposed birthplace of Mormonism, was a “frontier” of New England.