Secular Settings Research Articles

Secularity, Agape and Religious Education ‐‐ A Critical Appreciation of the Work of J. W. D. Smith

J. W. D. Smith (1899‐1987), was one of the leading religious educationists in Britain in the post‐Second World War period. His early interest in psychology and his work in ecumenical and missionary education during the ‘thirties convinced him of the vital role of religion in personal development. His most influential book, ‘Religious Education in a Secular Setting’ (1969) advocated an approach to religious education in state schools which aimed to assist children and young people to achieve mature personal development through knowledge and experience of Christian love. Although the biblical orientation and apologetic character of the book's curriculum suggestions made it out of tune with the times, it remains an important contribution to the philosophy of religious education

Prosocial and aggressive behaviours of preschoolers at play in secular and church‐based day care

The frequency of prosocial and aggressive behaviors during free play was observed for 40 children (20 boys and 20 girls, 3.5 to 4.5 years) in two types of centers, secular and church‐based. The research question at issue was whether moral philosophy in the two church‐based centers would result in the occurrence of more prosocial and fewer aggressive behaviors during free play compared to frequencies found for two secular centers. Among males in both types of settings the frequency of both prosocial and aggressive behaviors during free play showed no differences as a function of attending secular or church‐based centers. However, girls showed significantly more prosocial behaviors, four times as many as males in the church centers and twice as many as males in the secular centers. Aggressions of males were twice as frequent compared to females in the church settings, and three times as frequent in the secular settings. Thus, any effects of church‐based versus secular settings may be confounded by different...

The Effect of Religiosity on Secular and Ascetic Deviance

Abstract Basing their ideas on the distinction between ascetic and secular ethical standards as originally suggested by Middleton and Putney (1962), Burkett and White (1974) claim that only where secular values are ambiguous in defining an activity as wrong is the effect of religiosity expected to have any salient impact on inhibiting deviance. That is, non-ascetic behaviors such as premarital sex and substance use, which are not consistently disapproved of in secular settings, are more likely than personal or property crimes to be affected by religiosity. This paper explores Burkett and White's (1974) ideas with survey data on self-reported delinquency and substance use from a sample of 3,065 male and female adolescents in grades seven through twelve in three midwestern states. The results, based on a logistic regression analysis, indicate that the deviance inhibiting impact of religiosity is more generalizeid than Burkett and White (1974) suggest.

The augmented secular equation method for calculating spectra of van der Waals complexes. Application to the infrared spectrum of Ar–HCl

The recently proposed secular equation–perturbation theory (SEPT) procedure for calculating spectra of van der Waals molecules is tested on the strongly anisotropic system Ar–HCl. It is found to be more accurate than other available approximate schemes, but the convergence with respect to basis set size is slow. An alternative method, which uses the perturbation correction from a SEPT calculation to augment the original secular equation basis set, is then proposed and tested, and is found to converge considerably faster. This method is then used to calculated spectroscopic properties for various excited states of Ar–HCl, and the results are compared with the recent experimental data of Marshall et al.(J. Chem. Phys., 1985, 83, 4924) and Ray et al.(J. Chem. Phys., 1986, 84, 1171).

"I can't get it out of my Mind": (Augustine's Problem)

In his Confessions, SaintAugustine tortured himself over the significance of his lusty thoughts and impulses, which so offended his religious sensibilities and his more spiritual conception of himself. Were those thoughts truly his? Were they in any sense his responsibility? Were they in his control, or were they not? This was Augustine's problem, and it still consists of a set of questions that can be applied to the whole world of mental phenomena, from intelligent deliberation and decision making to random thoughts and feelings. In a number of journal articles and books, have tried to emphasize the voluntariness of much of what we have traditionally been taught to think of as the passive part of our mental life. In particular, have tried to argue that emotions are best construed not as physiological reactions and their consequent sensations (the Jamesian thesis) but rather in terms of judgments and, as judgments, within the realm of the voluntary. Like all philosophical theses, this is subjected to considerable qualification, most obviously concerning the central concept of judgment, but also concerning the sense in which emotions and judgments are, and are not, within our control. Needless to say, nowhere claim that one can normally have any emotion at will, but neither am willing to tolerate that too-facile view of emotions as wholly beyond our control, allowing them to function as the excuses so evident in such statements as I couldn't help it; was furious. In between those extremes, we face Augustine's problem: to what extent are one's emotions one's own? Professor Robert C. Roberts takes up Augustine's problem with a more secular set of examples, in order to challenge my view that emotions are judgments and, as such, within the realm of the voluntary. He argues, for example, that the nagging thought of my house burning down, which he takes to be an instance of fear, must be distinguished

Goal Selection for Counseling with Potentially Religious Clients by Professional and Student Counselors in Explicitly Christian or Secular Settings

Research findings suggest that (a) “religious” clients are less likely to benefit from counseling (more dropouts, less beneficial change) than “nonreligious” clients and (b) successful counseling usually results in value changes by clients. It was hypothesized that both of these findings might be due to secular and religious counselors setting different goals for potentially religious clients. In this study, counselors in explicitly Christian or secular settings, on professional or student levels (n = 96), completed questionnaires rating their goals for a fictitious client who denied the importantce of religion, ignored it, acknowledged it responsibly, or acknowledged it but acted bizzarely. The work setting accurately predicted the values of the counselors. Counselors, regardless of setting, responded differentially to clients who perceived the importance of religion differently. Christian counselors were significantly more concerned with spiritual issues and viewed spiritual goals as more important than did secular counselors. Findings suggest that, although both secular and Christian counselors are sensitive to perceptions of individual clients, the value system of the counselors will likely be reflected in the treatment goals they prefer.

The Bar Mitzvah Program in Israel–Teaching Judaism in Secular Settings

The Bar Mitzvah Program in Israel–Teaching Judaism in Secular Settings

New roots for old

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJ.W.D. Smiththe author of Religious Education in a Secular Setting (SCM Press 1969), a new and revised edition of which is now published (1975) by the St Andrews Press, Edinburgh, under the title Religion and Secular Education.

The Hot Madness of Four O'Clock in Fitzgerald's "Absolution" and Gatsby

THE HOT MADNESS OF FOUR O'CLOCK IN FITZGERALD'S "ABSOLUTION" AND GATSBY Robert A. Martin University of Michigan As early as the summer of 1922, Fitzgerald began thinkingabout the novel that was to become The Great Gatsby. In July, he wrote his editor, Maxwell Perkins, that in his next novel he wanted "to write something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."1 During the summer of 1923, he completed nearly three chapters of an early version and bythe timehe again resumed work on it in the spring of 1924, "he discovered," writes Henry Dan Piper, "that his conception of the story had changed so radically that he felt obliged to begin it all over again."2 In April, 1924, Fitzgerald wrote Perkins that "much of what I wrote last summer was good but it was so interrupted and ragged and, in approaching it from a new angle, I've had to discard a lot of it—in one case 18,000 words (part of which will appear in the Mercury as a short story). . . . This book [The Great Gatsby] will be a consciously artistic achievement and must depend on that as the first books did not."3 In the June, 1924 issue of The American Mercury 6,000 words of the discarded manuscript appeared with the title of "Absolution," and a few weeks later Fitzgerald wrote in reply to a letter from Perkins, "I'm glad you liked 'Absolution.' As you know it was to have been the prologue of the novel but it interferred with the neatness of the plan."4 While nothing of Fitzgerald's "plan" for the novel appears to have survived, there clearly was one and his correspondence with Perkins indicates that from the first draft to the final galley proofs, Fitzgerald planned Gatsby with an exceptional amount of care. Although there has been an extraordinary amount of critical commentary devoted to The Great Gatsby, relatively few critics have approached the structural relationship between "Absolution" and Gatsby internally. A textual comparison of the two works, however, indicates that some of the original links that would have tied "Absolution" to Gatsby as prologue to novel are still visible beneath the surfaces and that the two works are, in fact, linked by numerous parallels that reflect Fitzgerald's original conception of the novel as an extended treatment of Jimmy Gatz's metamorphosis and career as Jay Gatsby. Studies in American Fiction231 Given Fitzgerald's comment in a letter to a John Jamieson in 1934 that although "Absolution" was intended to be "a picture" of Gatsby's early life, "I cut it because I preferred to preservethe sense ofmystery,"5 his first conception of the novelcan be seen through the surface details of the 1924 revision. The first thing, perhaps, to be said about"Absolution" is that it contains all the elements of style, structure, and narrative method that Fitzgerald would subsequently abandon as he revised his original manuscript to accommodate his "new angle" of approach. In addition to discarding the prologue and compressing the events into a single summer, he changed the setting from the Midwest to the East; the time from the 1880's to the 1920's; the narrative point-of-view from the third person to the first and the chronology from a straight forward to a broken time sequence. Fitzgerald's "new angle," therefore, permitted him to concentrate more fully on whatJames E. Millerhas called "his art of 'magic suggestiveness' "e through a compression of time and events. The second thing to be said about "Absolution" is that, as Robert Sklar has observed, "in outline most of The Great Gatsby is there."7 Although Fitzgerald continued to revise Gatsby through the final galley proofs, several obvious parallels remain. Rudolph Miller is clearly the young Jimmie Gatz whose disillusionment within the religious setting of "Absolution" anticipates the disillusionment of Jay Gatsby within the secular setting of the novel. Both Rudolph Miller and Jay Gatsby have their origins in "the Minnesota-Dakota country,"8 and both have insignificant fathers who greatly admire James J. Hill. While Rudolph's father appears as the local freight agent, Gatsby's parents are "shifdess and...

Religious Teaching in a Secular Setting

Religious Teaching in a Secular Setting

Shorter Notice: Religious Education in a Secular Setting. By J. W. D. Smith. SCM Press, 1969. 125 pp. 16s; Religion and Slow Learners: A Research Study. By K. E. Hyde. SCM Press, 1969. 126 pp. 30s

Shorter Notice: <scp>Religious Education in a Secular Setting</scp>. By J. W. D. Smith. SCM Press, 1969. 125 pp. 16s; <scp>Religion and Slow Learners</scp>: A Research Study. By K. E. Hyde. SCM Press, 1969. 126 pp. 30s

Traditional Values of Ghanaian Children

RECENT social developments in Ghana provide a variety of opportunities for the study of socio-cultural change. Traditional institutions are deliberately being changed, and the attempt is being made to alter old values and attitudes. Ghana's political leaders have persistently criticized and attacked the traditional institutions and values of hereditary chieftainship, ethnic and regional solidarity, and magico-religious sanctions for custom. In their place, they are trying to substitute achieved status, territorial and national solidarity, industrialization, urbanization, and rationality. In part because of Ghana's position of leadership in the movement toward independence and self-rule in Africa, furthermore, these changes have come widely to be held as a model by many Africans living in territories still governed by Europeans. For many Ghanaians, however, these secular ideologies, largely acquired from Western culture, appear to be little understood or appreciated. It is the purpose of this research to ascertain to what extent one segment of the population has accepted certain secular social values and rejected traditional values. The estimated population of Ghana in 1958 was just over four and one half million people, of whom 15,000 were non-Africans. Of this population, not more than ten percent lived in the five areas designated as urban in this study; Accra, Cape Coast, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, and Tamale. Accra, the capital and largest city, had about 200,000 inhabitants. The subjects selected for this study were students in the oldest secondary school in Ghana, located six miles from Accra. All of the students in Form 2 participated. These students served as an interesting focus for changing cultural values because most of them received their early socialization in a traditional setting of village or semi-urban environment, with complex extended family patternings. On the basis of intellectual ability, they were chosen from approximately 18,000 eligible candidates to receive college preparatory training. As adolescents they had been placed in a secular setting, urbanized, with secondary school contacts. In a few years when they have finished all of their schooling, it is expected that some of them will become the leaders of their country. The students were between the ages of 12 and 16 years, 13 years being the mean. There were 61 boys and 33 girls; 39 were from urban areas, 55 from rural areas. Some were children of prominent citizens living in Accra, some were of uneducated, obscure parents living in remote villages of the Northern Region. The children were asked on two separate occasions to tell stories. In the first time period they were asked: Write the story that you like best. It can be a story you have heard at home, or while playing with other children, or in