Spiritual Commitment Research Articles

'You Are Not Alone, We've Got You': Power Plays, Devotion, and Punishment on Healthy Eating and Pro-Eating Disorder Websites.

Healthy eating (HE) and pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) websites are popular sources of dietary and weight loss information, social support, and lifestyle inspiration. However, the discursive styles and language used by authors/moderators and users of these two site genres have not been widely studied or compared. Forty-three HE websites and twenty-four pro-ED websites were analysed using Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis. Findings indicate that sites share common characteristics in terms of power relations played out by authors, 'successful' dieters, and those attending these sites. These power plays encourage moral and spiritual commitment to the care of one's body, with authoritative language used to support readers' loyalty and adherence to dietary plans. On HE sites, medicinal properties were attributed to 'clean' or 'pure' foods, whereas pro-ED sites conveyed their importance for weight reduction. Healthy eating sites were largely entrepreneurial, promoting products or themselves. Pro-eating disorder sites typically featured discussions of bodily disgust, the chastisement of others, and self-discipline in the name of 'Ana', such that dieting came to be framed as part of a devotional, often punitive, body project. On both sites, morality discourses were gendered around the thin female body and the 'ideal mother', with occasional praise for muscular male bodies. Our findings indicate how transitioning from healthy eating preoccupations to eating disorders may be facilitated by normalising discussions about restrictive dieting and the shaming of bodies, overseen by self-appointed diet 'experts' and 'buddies' online.

Da'wah Based Spiritual Counseling: The Urgency of Spirituality Development for Correctional Inmates in Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Kelas I Cirebon

This research was motivated by the trend of the increase of problems experienced by correctional inmates which prompted the need for guidance and counseling services, especially preaching-based spiritual counseling services. Da'wah-based spiritual counseling exists as a form of moral and spiritual commitment and responsibility in helping inmates as individuals who need assistance. This research aims to obtain a comprehensive analytical review of preaching-based spiritual counseling in Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Kelas I Cirebon which can be used to develop the spirituality of the correlational inmates. A qualitative research approach was used with library research methods by summarizing various relevant research results regarding spiritual counseling which can be used narratively in developing new theories and complementing previous theories regarding preaching-based spiritual counseling. This research obtained results in the form of an intervention mechanism for preaching-based spiritual counseling services at the Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Kelas I Cirebon to help inmates alleviate emotional suffering and develop spiritual well-being. Da'wah-based spiritual counseling in developing the spirituality of the inmates is provided through therapeutic ritual-personal activities which are carried out through five stages, namely centering and grounding, assessment, gathering energy, directing the energy, and gratitude and closure.

Associations among fetal heart rate patterns and mothers’ spiritual health and forgiveness

Objective: Studies have shown that spiritual commitment and positive personality traits such as forgiveness are considered a factor in effective adaptation to stressful problems and events and stress reduction. This study was to associations among fetal heart rate (FHR) patterns and mothers’ spiritual health and forgiveness in women referring to Maternity Hospital Affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: This study is a correlational study, which was performed on pregnant women referring to selected hospitals with a sample size of 200 pregnant mothers in 2016. After receiving written consent from qualified individuals, a general information questionnaire, medical history, spiritual health, and forgiveness were recorded. Then, data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and Chi-square test in SPSS software, version 22. Results: The mean age of the participants was 28.92 years, with a gestational age of 37–31 weeks. The mean spiritual health was 102.64 (14.61) and 133.2 (16.99). 31.5% of mothers' spiritual health was average, 68.5% their spiritual health was estimated to be high. Twenty-five percent had a moderate level of forgiveness and 75% had a high level of forgiveness. According to the Chi-square test, there is a significant relationship between spiritual health and forgiveness with normal FHR patterns (P = 0.001). Conclusion: The majority of pregnant women had a high score of spiritual health and forgiveness, and there was a statistically significant relationship with the normal FHR. It is suggested that implementing a spirituality-based care program that promotes spirituality and positive personality traits can be a good way to reduce maternal anxiety and regular FHR.

Structural Equation Model for Nursing’s Spiritual Commitment, Religious Adaptation, and Their Relationship to Quality of Life and Burnout

Background: Religious adaptation and spiritual commitment are considered common strategies in order to deal with traumatic conditions. It has been argued that spiritual commitment has an impact on burnout levels, and both directly influence the quality of life. Objectives: The aim of the present study was to investigate relationships between spiritual commitment and religious adaptation, different dimensions of burnout, and quality of life in a sample of health professionals. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional survey. A model, including pathways between spiritual commitment, religious adaptation dimensions, and quality of life with variables of burnout as mediators, has been developed. This data survey was conducted on 556 nurses and midwives from emergency, intensive care and resuscitation, and psychiatry units, in addition to maternity departments, in four different university hospitals and 12 regional hospital centers in Morocco. Measures regarding religious adaptation and spiritual commitment, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and quality of life variables were used to test the present study’s model employing structural equation modeling techniques. Data collection was performed from March 2018 to February 2019. Results: The goodness of fit statistics confirmed an improved model with burnout dimensions as mediators between spiritual commitment, religious adaptation, and quality of life dimensions. Conclusions: The above-mentioned findings suggest that health professionals using strategies in order to reduce burnout might report better mental and physical health. Direct relationships were observed between dimensions of burnout with adaptation strategies and quality of life.

RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND MENTAL HEALTH AMONG SCIENTISTS DURING THE PANDEMIC: A FOUR‐COUNTRY STUDY

AbstractA vast body of research shows largely positive associations between religiosity/spirituality (R/S) and positive well‐being outcomes. Such research has examined religious communities and general populations, but little is known about the relationship between R/S and well‐being among scientists, who typically tend to be less religious than the general public. Drawing on nationally representative survey data on physicists and biologists in India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States (N = 3442), this study examines whether the relationship between R/S and mental health holds for scientists, particularly during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that net of statistical controls, higher levels of religious and spiritual commitment are associated with significantly higher levels of well‐being and lower levels of psychological distress. Overall, the results indicate that a positive relationship between R/S and mental health holds even for scientists. The study's findings have implications for future analysis of the relationship between R/S and the well‐being of people working in other professions.

Vroulike mistiek, praktiese devosie en die Kaapse piëtisme, 1700–1860

Feminine mysticism, practical devotion, and Cape Pietism, 1700–1860. In the last phase of the Middle Ages, medieval piety and mysticism converged in the movement called Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion). In the last decades of the fourteenth century, the Modern Devotion arose as a new religious movement in the northern Low Countries, and had a major influence upon religious life in Europe. It was particularly popular with women; but until now, there has been little research on the role of women in this movement. From the late seventeenth century, Dutch pietism manifested as a hybrid form of Protestant spirituality, with a transconfessional appeal and emphasis on personal piety. Bernard of Clairvaux influenced first-generation Reformers like John Calvin and authors of the Modern Devotion, and a century later, a strong resurgence of influence by Bernard and Modern Devotion authors from the Low Countries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this influence was exported to the Cape of Good Hope and the pioneering communities on the South African frontier. The study of the ego texts of pietistic feminine authors, reveals the strong impact of Roman Catholic spirituality of the Modern Devotion on feminine members of the petit bourgeoisie in South African pioneering communities. In this article, the spiritual commitment of feminine authors at the Cape and on the South African frontier, like Catharina Allegonda van Lier, Louisa Thom, Hester Venter, Dorothea Goosen and Susanna Smit to the tenets of the Modern Devotion, is investigated against the background of Dutch pietistic spirituality in the period 1700 to 1860.Contribution: This research is a pioneering contribution to the corpus of knowledge available on the Modern Devotion, and its influence on Reformed theology. It focuses on the influence exerted by the Modern Devotion on the religious views of feminine Reformed Pietists in South Africa in the period 1700–1860.

The Use of Souls: Souriau and Political Spirituality

The body is at the heart of critical and phenomenological concerns, yet it is the soul that is increasingly under pressure. As we are being stripped of our structures of commonality, we need a renewed concept of political spirituality. My aim is to enrich Simondon’s concept of spirituality as transindividuality through Souriau’s transmodal architectonics. My argument proceeds in two steps: (i) I emphasize the precarious and communal modality of «having a soul», defining it as a possession without ownership and demonstrating its inseparability from the problems of intensive variation and discontinuity. (ii) I then argue that Souriau is inspired by Leibniz’s disjunction between the ontic soul and the relational body, which holds the key to an account of spiritual commitment that exceeds the union of corporeal and psychical existences insofar as it invents a new common use for them.

The Nonviolence Conundrum: Political Peace and Personal Karma in Jain and Hindu Traditions

Debates on war and peace within Jain and Hindu traditions revolve around the fear of incurring individual bad karma from violence, potentially inhibiting the individual’s journey to spiritual liberation. Generally, the religious culture of both Jain and Hindu traditions elevates nonviolence to one of the highest moral principles. Jainism embraces ahiṃsā (non-harming) as the central doctrine, and Hindu traditions exalt non-harming as one of the highest disciplines and virtues (dharma). However, a personal spiritual commitment to nonviolence creates tension with the humanistic value of striving for an ethic of social justice and peace. Maintaining social harmony sometimes requires confrontation or targeted violence. It is not surprising that while both traditions laud ahiṃsā for personal peace, they also deliberate on the challenge of using necessary violence to maintain an orderly society. Despite sanctioning limited violence (hiṃsā) in acute situations, various texts and myths express a general suspicion for using war or other aggressive methods to solve social and political problems.

Hrišćanska inspiracija u savremenoj srpskoj poeziji

The subject of our research in this paper are aspects of religious spirituality in contemporary Serbian poetry. First, we give an overview of poetic, ideological and cultural characteristics of poetic production in the last three decades, with certain value categorizations. We then direct our attention to the individual poetics of poets born in the seventies and eighties, whose poetry has a proven presence of Christian inspiration. Our goal is to establish a literary-historical and culturally distinct poetic flow and situate it within the History of Modern and Contemporary Serbian literature, predominantly secular. The focus of our analysis is not exclusively quotes, narratives or motifs from the Bible and patristic literature. We examine how Christian (Serbian-Byzantine and Western-Christian) spirituality participates in the formation of an individual poetic view of the world, as well as poetic spirituality that manifests itself through poetic images, expressions and figures. We are interested in the work of the religious consciousness of our poets in shaping their artistic, moral and value attitudes towards the phenomena of our epoch, but also towards the culture to which they belong. Therefore, we analyse the cultural models that these poets embrace in their poetry, as well as the humanistic messages that they place within their immanent poetics. We come to the conclusion that male and female poets, with their poetic and spiritual commitment, have taken the risk of deciding to give up poetry as a form of social engagement, aware in advance of the burden of the alternative and the minority.

La mélancolie marotique. Sur une rime du Psaume 137

Marot’s Psalm paraphrases have been widely hailed as a major poetic achievement in French Renaissance poetry. Although Marot wants to stay as close as possible to his biblical source, his rendering of Ps. 137 stands out due to some of its metrical features and tone, as shaped by the initial rime aquatiques-melancoliques, which is totally absent from earlier translations. Far from being ornamental, such an innovative move imparts a new reading to the text, reworking some of its features while thoroughly rephrasing the expression of loss that pervades the entire poem. Engaging in a close exegetical reading of the text, the article aims at showing how Marot achieves to convey a deeper poetic meaning in addressing one of the most violent, excruciating songs of the Psalter, thus turning its bitter harshness into a meditative piece of sorts and a genuine masterpiece, testifying to both his spiritual commitment and his aesthetic position.

Strengthening Spiritual Leadership in Preserving Religious Culture and Local Wisdom in Madrasah

This study focused on applying spiritual leadership behavior, religious culture, and local wisdom preserved and its implications on students' character at MTs Sunan Kalijaga Pamekasan Madura. It used a qualitative approach based on phenomenology type. This study found that spiritual leadership behavior in preserving religious culture and local wisdom is reflected by making divine and prophetic values as the foundation of his leadership vision, the spiritual commitment shown in thought, speech, and action, dedicating his efforts as worship. Religious culture leads to individual and social piety through the habituation of reading the Qur'an, praying together, and sympathizing with orphans and poor people. Preserved local wisdom is closely related to Islamic traditions in Madura, such as tatele', Ashura' celebrations, istighatsah, and the Islamic culture of hadrah banjari. This preservation impacts the affective dimension and the growth of student behavior by vertically and horizontally religious values. The spiritual commitment becomes dedication values as a form of worship and empowering personnel by jihad and good service.

Sportski/fudbalski klub "Hajduk" Niš 1938-1977.g

The sports life of a city is worth as much as the effort and other hardships invested in its duration, but also as much as the collective memory is ready to reach in the search for knowledge of such and such a life dedicated to sports. Years of existence, the number of awards and recognitions, are not the only measure of the quality of a sports team. The degree of spiritual commitment necessary for the club to function, ready to deal with all good results and adversity, is crucial. With this story, we want to draw attention to one such phenomenon and a sports organization that, neither in duration nor in recorded results, has not bounced back from the environment in which it exists, but with her energy and indomitable spirit, ultimately with the name "Hajduk", she left a memory and a trace in the hearts of contemporaries, which hardly anyone will be able to erase.

Stress in Athletes’ Lives

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article On Mental Health, People, and PlacesFull AccessStress in Athletes’ LivesEzra E. H. Griffith, M.D.Ezra E. H. GriffithSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:28 Sep 2021https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.34In recent months, there has been intense discussion about the connection between competitive sport and mental health. The commentary, focused in large part on the stress endured by elite athletes, has coincided with major international sports events. We have had, almost in back-to-back fashion, the French Open tennis tournament, the Tour de France cycling event, the European 2020 soccer championship, and the Olympics in Japan. Naomi Osaka, a world-famous tennis champion, made the news because of her unwillingness to face the pressure of yet another news conference at the French Open. Some bystanders thought she should respect her obligation to face the public because she had committed to doing so. Others agreed the journalists were offensive. At the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles, the American star gymnast, evoked similar conflicting responses when she withdrew from events, citing health matters.At the European soccer championship, France was eliminated by Switzerland. The match went into overtime and then to a penalty shootout. Kylian Mbappe, a superstar for France, missed his penalty. That outcome sent France’s players to the showers and home in disgrace. Mbappe apparently apologized to his fans for what sports writers called a failure. More sympathetic supporters urged him to keep his head up, as the day after the match would mark the debut of a new season. The three athletes I have mentioned illustrate well the stress of competitive athletics.We follow elite athletes and how they fare on the different terrains of performance. Their annual income and lifestyle, especially in major sports, always attract our attention. Their bodies and minds serve as models of biomedical wonderment for physicians like us. Their capacity for concentration, the sacrifices they make, and their commitment teach us much about what they endure daily.There are other features of sports that put excitement in our lives. Some years ago, my hospital organized a tournament of bed racing. We closed a street. Different divisions in the facility took a bed, decorated it, named it, and oiled its wheels. An employee, not weighing too much, volunteered to ride in the bed. A team of amateur athletic runners pushed each bed. We all spread the word about the event. The bed-race tournament was on. Every bed had its supporters. I was amazed at how much organized effort was put into this event. We had so much fun that I forgot to ask where the idea had originated. Athletics, competition, and team spirit came together and reawakened the slumbering youth in all of us, even in the bystanders.With these wonderfully positive notions about competitive sports so present in our culture, how did the idea take root that elite athletes are the very incarnation of perfection and are obliged to meet public expectations? We must know that they make mistakes from time to time in what they do, and anxiety haunts the best of them. While performances may be breathtaking, consistently flawless performance is hard to sustain. So, why this mourning and weeping over the mistakes of our athletes and their inability to cope well with stress at every event? Why not just console and encourage them when they are facing loss, injury, and disappointing performances?I still recall the early years in elementary school running after a soccer ball on the playground without quite knowing what to do with it. Eventually, the running was accompanied by thoughtful preparation and strategy. I remember the contentment of belonging to a group, the sense of accomplishment, learning about leadership when I captained the team, feeling the admiration of bystanders when I scored a goal. I also learned about losing in the context of competition and about the pain of a torn muscle during excessive effort.We should urge sports enthusiasts to stop pretending that the elite athlete owes them continual brilliant performances. We should remonstrate with coaches who never prepare a substitute for the day that the star center forward on the soccer team will be unable to play. We know that sports can be pleasurable enough to evoke a kind of loyalty from fans that borders on spiritual commitment. We recognize sports’ service as antidote to the drudgery of daily life. Still, creating an idealistic vision of athletics misleads us all. There is risk in the act of living, and that includes sports. ■Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D., is professor emeritus of psychiatry and African American Studies at Yale University. ISSUES NewArchived

Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course

Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course

Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course

Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course

Introduction

Introduction Roy Scranton I WON'T WASTE YOUR TIME with another litany of doom. Yes, statisticians at the University of Washington recently estimated there's a 95 percent chance the planet will exceed 2 degrees Celsius warming. Yes, current trajectories for CO2 emissions match the IPCC's worst-case scenarios, which predict we'll reach global temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius or more by 2100, perhaps as early as 2061. And yes, leading ecologists and biologists have warned us that we face "a ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health, and climate-disruption upheavals (including looming massive migrations) and resource conflicts this century." But let's be honest: such abstractions have never seemed quite real. What does seem real are names like Dixie, Bootleg, August Complex, Caldor, Lionshead, Beachie Creek, Holiday Farm, and Hayman as forests across the American west turn into energy, pluming stored carbon into the sky, bloodying the sun half a continent away. Yet by what name do we call more than 400 million acres of burning Siberian taiga, releasing more carbon dioxide in three months than Germany does in a year? What sense can be made of the vast planetary transformation we euphemistically call "climate change" will only be apparent in the aftermath, to whatever survivor is lucky enough to find themselves picking through the charred rubble of a civilization so many of us publicly despise yet just as desperately cling to. But to get from here to there could take a hundred years—or a thousand—so even that comfort, the idea that someone will bear witness and rebuild, remains an abstraction. Meanwhile, here we are in the midst of it—or as Frank Kermode called it, the "middest"—with no better option than to keep stumbling backward into the future. Our dilemma: that we must see without sight, imagine without vision, hope without hope, and somehow persist even as we are consumed with grief and terror. [End Page 616] Grief and terror—or grief and error. The latter are two of the main themes of the last book from perhaps one of our last great "nature writers," Barry Lopez, who died from cancer in December 2020, after fleeing the Holiday Farm Fire, which took his home, his workshop, and his archive. That book, Horizon, tracks a lifetime of crossing beyond the limit of the known, in spite of the grief that inevitably arises and in spite of the fear of having gone awry that inevitably dogs the explorer's steps, all the more when, after five hundred years of Baconian scientific extraction and racialized colonial exploitation, we can no longer distinguish between exploring and oppressing. In this special issue, dedicated to the climate crisis and those being destroyed and changed by it, and dedicated as well to the memory of Barry Lopez, pride of place goes to Thoreau scholar Laura Walls, who traces the intellectual development of Lopez's lacerating, spiritual commitment to alterity, through Lopez's writerly encounters with Trappist monk Thomas Merton and the American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. We are also proud, humbled, and lucky to be publishing, for the first time and with the cooperation of Lopez's partner Debra Gwartney, a talk he gave in 1996 as part of the Three Rivers Lecture Series in Pittsburgh, where he discusses, with his characteristic passion and precision, just what exactly he sees the writer doing, or being able to do, in a time of precarity, dispossession, and ecological crisis—which, it's easy to forget, has been "our time" now for decades. "The best definition I ever encountered of what it meant to be a storyteller in a human society," Lopez writes, his voice echoing off the page, "is a translation of … the Inuktitut word for storyteller: isumataq. It means: the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself." Lopez's avowed hope, as a writer in nature, was that in connecting "the interior landscape of the individual mind together with the shared exterior landscape of the physical earth, it is possible [End Page 617] to create a useful and enduring pattern of factual or emotional truth." It is our hope and luck, as editors and guest...

Eschatological Awareness without Apocalyptic or Millenarian Expectations: Facing the Future in the Ottonian World (from the 10th to the Early 11th Century)

Abstract This article reconstructs the perception of the future in Ottonian culture by investigating a variety of sources produced within the chronological and geographical framework of the Roman–Germanic Empire (Germany, Italy, and Lotharingia) at the time of Saxon kings and emperors (919–1024). Traditional scholarly interest in end times at the turn of the first millennium is here intertwined with a more recent transdisciplinary perspective that focuses on the notion of contingency. Ottonian sources provide evidence of how a real concern about historical contingencies, which affect this-worldly future events, could coexist with an eschatological awareness that induced patterns of thought and behavior in view of eternal salvation, in connection with the belief that the last age of the world had already begun long ago. This belief, not to be confused with speculations about the imminence of the end, should be properly understood and contextualized, and a clear distinction among eschatology, apocalypticism, and millenarianism is therefore required. Although each Ottonian author had a particular approach toward the future, influenced by various circumstances and different authorial intentions (doctrinal reflection, pastoral responsibilities, devotion, political reasons, rhetorical purposes, and propaganda), the analysis of these sources reveals an appropriation of Augustinian themes and teachings that seems to have been widespread, deep, and genuine. What emerges is a complex picture of how prominent Ottonian authors conceived and coped with the future, passing from the cosmic to existential dimension, from spiritual commitment to ordinary business, and from the uncertainty of terrestrial future to the transcendent certainty of the Last Things.

Eksistensi Pasraman Dalam Menanamkan Nilai Moral Bagi Umat Hindu

Bali Island as a foreign tourist destination, aware or not possible to be affected by the interaction with tourists who come to Bali and cause acculturation of foreign culture with local culture. Acculturation of positive culture enriches local culture while the influence of negative foreign culture can damage, mencedrai and even shift the existence of local culture, for that the necessary antidote to negative foreign culture through education in pasraman. The aim of this study. describe the existence of pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha Penarungan Village, Buleleng Regency; Describe the implementation of education in Pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha; Penarungan Village, Buleleng Regency; Describing the planting of moral education in the Brahma Vidya Samgraha Penarungan Village, Buleleng Regency. This research uses descriptive-qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. The findings in this study of the existence of Pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha are an acculturation of the education system that is the traditional education system and the modern or contemporary education system. The implementation of ceremonies (rituals) through the routine of making ceremonial facilities carried out in pasraman. Conclusion: Pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha is a type of non-formal education acculturated with the education system of Color Dormitory Dharma with the transformation of the upanisad learning model based on vedic culture; Pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha conducts adult learning (andragogy) with teaching programs in accordance with the level of basic education, middle level education and primary level of education, by applying a varied upanisad learning model; Pasraman Brahma Vidya Samgraha implements moral values ​​in Pasraman as a spiritual commitment through the mutual assistance activities of the sisya in the process of making ceremonies and conducting ceremonies in Pasraman.

Moral and spiritual aspects in counseling: Recent development in the West

<p class="AbstrakAGC"><span lang="NL">This paper aims to explore the moral and spiritual dimensions of counseling. Since professional counseling has developed in the West, the cultural identity and individualistic orientation of identity has entered the counseling profession. Recently a surge of interest in spirituality and religion has been noted with several treatments focused on a new approach to counseling. The new approach shows that spirituality in life is central to individuals, families and communities. Therapists examine the relationship between spirituality and general psychological health. Secular and religious professionals recognize the paradigm shift from illness to health and from individualism to collectivism. Counseling that develops from the premise of such a therapist must be free of value. The emergence of an integrated perspective with religious and spirituality counseling views has resulted in a fundamental conflict with the prevailing professional value system. Counselors still want to avoid the role of a moralist. The controversy also relates to the firmness one wants, the therapist attaching moral and spiritual dimensions while advocating certain values. Psychotherapy, as a moralistic company, requires modification in its training program. Therapists need to change their orientation, namely as scientists with deep moral or spiritual commitment. Clients need and demand reorientation like this. This profession has a claim to respond to the needs of its clients and it cannot ignore the impetus that arises in practice.</span></p>

Fetishized nature or life-giving breath? Religion as Skill in Climate Change

"Anthropogenic climate change and unsustainable modes of production, consumption and lifestyles represent one of the most demanding challenges facing Earth, our home and humanity. Therefore religious belief, faith communities and spiritual commitment are highly needed to prepare the ground for what has been described as the necessary “great transformation”. To achieve this transformation, we need a new climate narrative and iconography, supported by a broad alliance of local and trans-local social forces. Religion has a significant role to play in this mobilization. This article begins by depicting several reasons that religion is a crucial driving force in the needed great transformation. Secondly, it will offer a sketch of what Christian ecotheology of the Life-Giving Spirit, and resisting the powers of fetishization of money, technology and power, might have to offer in this context. Following the older paths of animism, fetishism and faith in the Spirit perform along contradictory logics. The challenge for an ecological pneumatology, which wants to drink from its own classical wells, is to resist the authority of life-threatening concepts of animation and overcome the power of fetishization."