Significance Of Religion Research Articles

Realities and Challenges of Religion Courses in Higher Education : Focusing on the Case of Yonsei University

Christianity courses at Christian colleges and universities are often aimed at converting students. However, religious education as a ‘liberal arts education’ should prioritize ‘religious studies education.’ This differs from other types of religious education, such as ‘faith education’ or ‘spirituality/character education.’ When this ideal approach isn't feasible due to practical constraints, an alternative could be ‘spirituality/character education’ within an ‘experiential education’ context. Ultimately, religious education should strive for liberal arts principles, which is the main stream of liberal and general education. Liberal arts based religious education involves fostering religious literacy, which includes: 1) understanding the nature and significance of religion itself, as well as diverse religious traditions; 2) identifying religious elements that underlie secular events. This form of education, which requires open dialogue with other academic disciplines like the humanities and natural sciences, can serve as a type of convergence education. To achieve this goal, institutions dedicated to liberal and general education need to be established, with full administrative independence. They must operate without interference from denominational authorities, university boards, or chaplains' offices. Guarantees for the independence of administration, the status of faculty, and academic freedom are essential. Religious education that embraces an interdisciplinary approach is suitable for senior students with a broader academic background. Thus, the curriculum should be adjusted to allow senior students to take religious studies courses. Additionally, there should be a broader range of courses that explore religions other than Christianity. Furthermore, ongoing research into ‘Christianity and liberal arts studies’ as an emerging discipline is essential.

The Significance of Religion and Spirituality Among Turkish Women Surviving Breast Cancer Without Treatment: A Qualitative Study

The health of breast cancer survivors is a global concern. It is crucial to adopt a holistic approach when understanding their journey from illness to wellness in order to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible. This study focused on the experiences of Muslim women who had overcome breast cancer and were adapting to life post-treatment. Snowball sampling was used to select the participants for this qualitative study. Fifteen women who had successfully completed breast cancer treatment and been declared cancer-free were interviewed. These interviews were semi-structured, using open-ended questions to explore their experiences in-depth. The interviews were conducted by phone, and the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study identified four main themes, nine subthemes, and 41 codes. The main themes were as follows: (a) a life changed by cancer and the difficulties encountered; (b) transition from active treatment to treatment-free living; (c) coping mechanisms; and (d) future hopes and expectations. The findings highlighted the survivors’ desire to move past their experience of cancer and normalize their lives, as well as emphasizing their need for support. The participants shared detailed accounts of their journey, the obstacles they encountered during this transition, and the critical role of religion and spirituality in overcoming these challenges. Understanding and effectively managing the experiences of women after breast cancer treatment is vital not only for improving survival rates but also for facilitating their healing process.

Bad Faith and the Contours of Black Consciousness

This discussion essay examines Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness (2022) and his analysis of ethics and politics within Black political philosophy. Gordon’s interdisciplinary book weaves together film, jazz, Judaism, and Egyptology (for instance) to interrogate the limits of political liberal concepts such as liberty, justice, and equality for analyzing and addressing anti-Black racism. A central concern facing Gordon is the degree to which bad faith is ignored or underexamined in political philosophy and public debates on social justice and freedom. Exploring how the racialization of the “Black” informs competing responses to anti-Blackness among Black and non-Black communities, this essay weighs the usefulness of Gordon’s metareflective framing for understanding the tension and significance of religion and moral claims in developing theories of freedom within Black political philosophy.

Polish mental and sexual health specialists working with transgender and gender diverse persons - who are they and what is their background?

This study aimed to present the demographic and professional characteristics of Polish mental and sexual health specialists (MSHS) and their experience in clinical work with transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people. This cross-sectional study was conducted using the LimeSurvey platform. A total of 239 MSHS with a diverse professional background, at different stages of their careers, with experience of working with TGD patients, completed the survey. Participants were asked to provide demographic (e.g., gender and sexual identity) and professional (e.g., knowledge of leading standards and guidelines of care) data. Descriptive statistics were used. The mean age of participants was 39.5 years (SD 7.92) and the majority were assigned female at birth (73.2%). The sample was composed predominantly of psychotherapists (70%), then psychologists (53%), medical doctors (31%) and certified sexologists (5.9%). The majority (72%) practised in large cities (>500,000); 68.6% reported female gender identity, 24.7% a male identity and 6.3% were TGD; 63.2% were heterosexual, 12.1% homosexual, 12.6% bisexual, and 12.1% reported other sexual identity. Both the significance of religion and religious practice were significantly decreased compared to general Polish population. Most participants declared that they either do not know the basic guidelines of care for TGD people at all or know them very little. The majority of MSHS rated their professional training as insufficient. People providing clinical services to TGD patients are a professionally diverse group. There is an urgent need to expand and intensify professional training directed at MSHS on topics related to the health care dedicated to TGD people.

Quantifying the effects of religious distance on trade misinvoicing

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of religious distance on trade misinvoicing, using bilateral data from 87 countries over the period 1990–2018. Trade misinvoicing refers to the combined occurrence of export under-invoicing and import over-invoicing. Religiosity is utilized as a measure of personal trust in God and adherence to religious values and principles. To capture religiosity, a composite index is constructed, considering three components: the number of religious adherents, the significance of religion, and religious service attendance. The empirical findings reveal that countries with greater religious distance exhibit reduced trade misinvoicing. Within the three dimensions of religiosity, belief and the importance of religion act as deterrents to trade misinvoicing, while religious service attendance is found to facilitate such misinvoicing. Furthermore, the effects vary across different types of misinvoicing, time periods, and sectors.

Academic Cheating: The Significance of Religion

The role of cheating religion in academic cheating is the focus of this study. This study included 137 Fajar University Makassar students who attended lectures during the Covid-18 outbreak. In this investigation, saturated samples were used. Questionnaires were used to gather the data, which was then analyzed using path coefficient analysis using the Smart PLS tool. The result of this study is that academic pressure effects academic cheating behavior; opportunity does not influence academic cheating behavior; rationalization influences academic cheating behavior; capacity to influence academic cheating behavior; ethics According to the findings of multigroup study, religiosity is modest and reduces academic cheating, but not significantly. Religious students are more likely to avoid academic cheating while being under less pressure in terms of opportunity, talent, justification, and ethics. At Fajar University Makassar, there are several ways to prevent academic cheating, including conducting outreach activities about cheating and its consequences, informing students that cheating will be caught and announced, and ensuring that students do not work in an unsatisfactory manner. fraud, demonstrating that any fraud would be penalized, educating kids to write without cheating, and encouraging them to conduct ethically.

Expert Assessments of the Religious Process in Modern Kazakhstan

In modern Kazakh society, the role and significance of religion as a social institution has been rethinking for three decades. The article presents expert perceptions and assessments of the modern religious process in Kazakhstan, which are reconstructed and interpreted in the context of sociological monitoring data conducted by the authors. The features of expert perception and understanding of the religious process are revealed. A SWOT analysis was carried out, recommendations for the implementation of state policy in the field of religion were conceptualized, taking into account the secular type of state and religious diversity.

On the Significance of Religion in Violence Against Women and Girls, by Elisabet le Roux and Sandra Iman Pertek

On the Significance of Religion in Violence Against Women and Girls, by Elisabet le Roux and Sandra Iman Pertek

Palliative Professionals' Views on the Importance of Religion, Belief, and Spiritual Identities toward the End of Life.

Abundant literature has argued the significance of religion, belief, and spirituality at the end of life. This study aims to add to this literature by exploring palliative professionals’ views in this area. By means of an in-depth interviewing method, this paper reports data from 15 hospice and palliative care professionals. Participants were recruited from five hospice and palliative care organisations, and the data were managed and analysed with thematic analysis and NVivo (version 11). This study found three main reasons that make religion, belief, and spirituality important for patients and their loved ones when facing imminent death: the sense of comfort and security, meaning making, and closure. These reasons are not independent from one another, but complementary. This paper offers some implications for practice and concludes with a call for further research.

Religion in the Age of Migration

ABSTRACT There has been little research on the significance of religion in migration studies. The objective of this article is twofold: first, to explain religion as a complexly intertwined concept within migration discourses; second, to examine the implications of various terminologies such as Islamism, political Islam, and the politicization of Islam in the modern world within a broad migration framework. We have chosen 11 respondents from different countries by snow-ball technique to interview. The paper argues that religion becomes crucial to people's migratory experiences, aiming to construct a theoretically informed link between religion and migration. The study emphasizes the significance of international standards in ensuring migrants’ ‘religious rights’ in host countries. The interesting thing is that migrants bring their religious beliefs, practices, and way of life with them, enriching destination countries by exposing them to new cultures and fostering social cohesiveness via peaceful coexistence.

Love thy neighbour? Religion and ethnoracial boundaries among second-generation West African youth

ABSTRACT Immigration scholars and religious studies scholars have explored generational changes in religiosity. Less clear is the significance of religion in the lives of Black immigrant second-generation youth. Moreover, while there is research on intraracial boundary-negotiations between Black Americans and Black immigrants in the United States, it is rarely discussed in the context of religion. Drawing on interviews with seventy one second-generation West African teenagers in New York City, this paper explores the role of religion in the integration of Black immigrant second-generation youth. I find that religion is a primary tool through which ethnoracial boundaries are maintained between the children of West African immigrants and their Black American counterparts. I spotlight three means through which religion matters for ethnoracial boundaries: congregational demographics, religious codes of conduct and Islamophobia. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that religion is a key component of second-generation ethnoracial identity-formation.

Beyond Secularization and Post-Secularity—Joseph Ratzinger’s and Józef Tischner’s Concept of a Breakthrough

The inspiration to write this article was provided by the assessment made by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: man of the Western civilization is undergoing a deep spiritual crisis. Therefore, conversion, a breakthrough, or spiritual renewal is absolutely necessary. Without this renewal, humanity will become a victim of its own thinking, wanting and acting. As I search for a philosophical description of the breakthrough postulated by Benedict XVI, I refer to the original philosophical and religious thought of Polish philosopher Józef Tischner, who presents the question of the breakthrough at the anthropological-axiological level, where he exposes the issue of interpersonal correlation. The basis for the permanent existence of this correlation is man’s ethical awareness grounded in the ethic of dialogue. This grounding is particularly important, because it is a guarantee for overcoming internal and external threats to the existence of a religious community. Tischner presents the issue of this grounding against the background of the secularization of Western society. By distinguishing relative secularization from radical secularization, Tischner provides an insightful analysis of the phenomenon of the apparent and the true sacrum. For a real breakthrough, only the true sacrum, which Tischner believes to appear at the level of the Christian sanctum, is of primary importance. He understands sanctum as holiness grounded in goodness. It is holiness that is the real key to overcoming man’s multiple crises at the level of his thinking and religious life, at the level of both his private and social life. The presence of sanctum in human life constitutes, in Tischner’s view, the very core of the breakthrough and an expression of the important significance of religion in both individual and social human life. According to Tischner, it is owing to the presence of sanctum, i.e., that which is absolutely good, that man does not have to fall into the trap of post-secular thinking. For post-secularity, as Tischner believes, seeks ways to overcome the tension between the secularized world and the world of religion only in renouncing, for epistemic reasons, the absolutization of secular reason. In his opinion, however, this is not enough for believers and non-believers to follow a common path of cultivating the heritage of universal principles and values, historically expressed mainly in religious life. Only the capacity for selfless kindness can serve as the basic condition for both believers and non-believers to understand and preserve this heritage.

Understanding Conflicts with Religious Dimensions in their Transnational Interrelations

Jihadist terror attacks in Europe, religious sectarianism in Syria, Iraq, regional power politics of Saudi Arabia and Iran, tensions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bosnia: While those phenomena emerge within their own distinct social, political, economic, and cultural context, they also interrelate with another to varying degrees. Accordingly, local socio-political issues intersect with religion and foster dynamics that transcend into the national, regional and international realm, where they intersect anew with further dynamics. With social processes increasingly transcending the geographical and political boundaries in most regions of the world, conflict dynamics do not remain unaffected. A growing transnational interplay seems to concern conflicts with religious dimensions in particular. After all, most religions claim universal truths. This paper sketches a theoretic approach to describe a conflict with religious dimensions and the transnational dynamics that underlie it. In order to do so, it introduces a concept of religious practice which allows to both grasp the subjective significance of religion for the believer and to describe transnational processes.

‘Compulsory Independence’: Irish Nationalist Images of Empire and Republic after the Birth of Independent German-Austria, 1919–1922

Abstract After 1918, the birth of independent small states in Central Europe was a common point of reference in Ireland. This article aims to provide a more complex understanding of Irish images of postwar Austria, highlighting the coexistence of some elements of Austria’s imperial legacy and new characteristics of the independent small state. Irish commentators focused heavily on the newly drawn borders in Central Europe, including the redistribution of nationalities, which was considered a significant factor in the formulation of identities in the newly independent, self-declared nation-states. This article discusses how Irish intellectuals, journalists, and politicians connected the issues of changing borders and the ethnic composition of Austria to actual Irish problems, especially in relation to the question of (greater German) unity. In addition, this article also explores how the significance of religion in Irish national identity determined perceptions of postwar Austria. Catholicism came to symbolize more than the everyday religion of the majority of the Irish population, and it manifested itself in Irish perceptions of the wider world, including the small successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Religiosity and Customer Experience: a Study of the Nigerian Hospitality Industry

The effect of religiosity on customer experience has engendered a lot of debate in the existing literature. This study examines the effect of religiosity on customer experience among the three major religious groups in the hospitality sector in Nigeria. The study is premised on the dimensions of religiosity, which are religious knowledge, orientation, commitment and affiliation. Employing the survey research design, 544 customers in the hospitality industry who cut across the three main religions in Nigeria were sampled. The study employed the PLS-SEM tool in the analysis of data. The PLS-SEM analysis shows that religiosity (t-value=134.668) is a significant determinant of customer experience in the hospitality sector. The findings further reveal that there is no significant difference in customer experience among the three main ethnic groups in Nigeria. Practical Implication: It is inferred from the study that firms should pay attention to religiosity in order to give the customers an exciting experience. More attention should be paid to the customers’ religious orientation and knowledge. The role and significance of religion as relating to religious, affiliation, commitment, orientation and knowledge of the customers should not be ignored by firms in the provision of goods and services which will bring about better service encounter

Diversity, Religion and Tolerance: Young Adults’ Views on Cultural and Religious Diversity in a Multicultural Society in Iceland

The aim of the article is to introduce and discuss findings related to cultural and religious diversity and tolerance from a quantitative study on young people’s life views and life values in Iceland. The article addresses findings on the attitudes of young people in Iceland toward cultural and religious diversity and the significance of religion. It explores whether there is a difference in the attitudes of participants by gender, age, whether they belong to a religious organization, their residence in Iceland and the education of their parents. The findings are useful for educational as well as social policy.

Religion, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Expediters or Hindrances for Global Peace

The purpose of the study was to examine the validity of the argument indicating that the religious nature of the terrorist groups accounts for the increase in the violence of terrorist acts today. The study also intended to explore the relationship between terrorism and religion and to address whether or not there has been interrelatedness between religion and terrorism. Another purpose was to explore the scope of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and to examine how religion was exploited to disseminate terrorism and eradicate global peace and how the possession of WMD could influence global peace. The study employed a meta-analysis of literature which pointed out the significance of religion and the controversy as to whether or not religion triggered terrorist violence. Incidents such as 9/11, the 2005 London underground attack, Paris attack, and 2019 attack in New Zealand were analyzed to serve the purposes of the study. The findings showed the main triggers and incentives behind the terrorist attacks waged in the name of religion. Overall, the findings of the study emphasized the influence of religion on terrorism, and vice versa. The study rendered conclusions that delved into infamous attacks and recognized terrorism as caused by religion or perceptions fogged by media and stereotypes.

The baptism of Poland in historiography and the historical consciousness of the poles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Polish national identity has long been caught up with questions of Christianity and Catholicism, with some scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries arguing that a turn to Christianity in the tenth century was a turn away from a more glorious non- Christian identity and that ties with Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy was a betrayal of a Slavic heritage. The question of whether Catholicism has helped or hindered Poland is much debated and Polish history is read through the lens of this controversy, which itself is a product of Polish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has tended to downplay the significance of religion in political and social life and sought to understand Polish relationships with Germans and Russians. Appreciating this means that the question about when Poland became Christian admits of no straightforward answer.

Religious component of ethnocultural development of polyetnic region of Chernivtsi oblast

In this article the author considers territorial differences in the formation of the religious component of ethnocultural development of Chernivtsi oblast, which is distinguished by its ethnical contact, polyethnicity and transboundariness. Its territory is home to more than 130 ethnic groups, and Ukrainians, Romanians and Moldovans border on densely populated areas. Also unique is the fact that there are two historical and geographical regions of Ukrainians – Northern Bukovina and Northern Bessarabia, as well as parts of the Romanian historical and geographical region – Dorogoy region. In the territory of Northern Bukovina, namely in its mountainous parts, the population belongs to the ethnographic group – Hutsuls, who formed and preserved their ethnic culture. The years of Ukraine’s independence have been marked by complex transformational processes that happened in many spheres of society: changes in state institutions, political system, property issues, ethnocultural development of the regions, and so on. The moral principles and priorities of both society as a whole and the individual began to differ significantly from the values ​​of the previous generation. There have been radical changes in the religious sphere, as an integral part of the life of any society, one of the important social institutions of the Ukrainian people. The functions and social significance of religion have changed to some extent. Thus, S. Zdioruk defines the social significance of religion "not only by its spiritual or metacultural influence, but also by active political, social and economic activities both in the process of ethnogenesis and the creation and development of the state." This usually indicates the importance of taking into account the religious factor in the formation of regional development, including ethnocultural, which is the basis for the development of tourism, arts, culture and other sectors of the economy. The article deepens the theoretical and methodological principles of socio-geographical study of ethnocultural development, analyzes the religious component, traces the influence of territory formation and other historical factors on the formation of religious space, its material and spiritual component.

Arguing Religion in Environmental Judicial Review Before the Indonesian Constitutional Court: Exploring an Alternative Approach

Indonesia, an archipelagic nation-state, faces multiple environmental challenges, including climate change. In the search for solutions, the significance of religion in Indonesian constitutional jurisprudence and politics led to the realization that constitutional arguments can be made based on religious doctrine and values to enforce environmental rights and duties – an alternative approach to environmental judicial review already observed in other Muslim-majority countries. This paper argues that the same can be achieved with constitutional arguments on the right to religious freedom before the Indonesian Constitutional Court, and with Islamic NGOs leading the charge. Arguments and outcomes of past religious freedom cases before the Court, how NGOs shape constitutional review, as well as Islamic environmentalism will inform the evaluation of the plausibility and strategy of the alternative approach in Indonesia.