Uniqueness Of Religion Research Articles

Forgotten Variables in Gerontological Evaluation of Religiosity and Spirituality

Despite the fact that religiosity and spirituality are commonly cited as essential elements of physical and mental health functioning in old and very old age, the conceptualization of religiosity and spirituality continues to present a quandary in contemporary gerontological inquiry and assessment. Identification of variables that best capture and truly define religious and spiritual constructs has remained relatively inconclusive over the past few decades. Recently, there has been a renewed interest among gerontologists to identify underlying religious and spiritual variables using alternative qualitative and quantitative methods of evaluation. Such methods have been used to further disentangle and understand the uniqueness of religion and spirituality as variables for studying human aging. This symposium will be used to communicate empirical results, methodological procedures, and conceptual insights concerning the identification of understudied and under-represented variables often absent within modern gerontological inquiry of religion and spirituality. Four presentations representing qualitative and quantitative studies will be used to report key religious and spiritual variables stemming from the context of personal narrative, oral storytelling, self-improvement behavior, and the disposition to seek forgiveness. Recommendations pertaining to future gerontological inquiry in the science of religion and spirituality, as well as applications within geriatric and gerontological practice will be highlighted and discussed.

Absolutismo frente a liberalismo doceañista. El contraataque visual

Este artículo pretende identificar algunos temas dominantes de los discursos absolutistas y esbozar cómo se trasladan a imágenes para persuadir contra el liberalismo y denigrarlo. Las principales fuentes de referencia son las descripciones del ornato público en los actos en honor del rey Fernando VII en 1814 y 1823. El absolutismo se reconoce a través de la asociación de imágenes y palabras, parecidos, metáforas, símbolos y coincidencias iconográficas. El imaginario visual para lograr el objetivo absolutista puso énfasis en la primacía del rey, la retórica del vasallaje, una patria fuerte, la singularidad de la religión y la exclusión del enemigo político. Para eliminar totalmente el riesgo constitucional, se presentó el pasado como un paraíso de paz y felicidad.

Religious Pluralism and Pluralistic Religion: John Hick's Epistemological Foundation of Religious Pluralism and an Explanation of Islamic Epistemology toward Diversity of Unique Religion

the path of religious pluralism starts with the fact that our world contains a number of religious faiths having different ideas of the nature of divinity as the main and fundamental principle of religions and therefore, different and various dogmas, rites, and rituals. Despite the claim that the idea of religious pluralism is a product of modern philosophical schools, specifically new epistemological principles, I have attempted to demonstrate that what I have called “pluralistic religion,” as a part of a necessary and substantial distinction that has to be drawn between this hypothesis and John Hick’s classic theory of “religious pluralism,” is strongly rooted in the principle of “ultimate truth and uniqueness of religion,” which has one of its valid interpretations in Islamic epistemology.1 It is perhaps worth noting that this view not only does not deny the strong and unavoidable exclusivist tendency of all religions, but also tries to justify and clarify the necessity of such a tendency. Obviously, in this epistemological structure, the term exclusivism has an implication, completely distinct from the common meaning of the term, which stands contrary to the term pluralism. I also believe that this hypothesis would provide the fundamental bases for “pluralism in truthfulness” as the essential outcome of the ultimate uniqueness of religion which manifests and reveals itself in various and diverse forms. Thus, based on such an interpretation, the true claim of exclusivism in religions is considered as a complementary element for religious puralism, which refers to the various manifestations and crystallizations of ultimate truth of religion. In this paper, I begin with John Hick’s classic version of religious pluralism. According to Hick, one of the most prominent developers and defenders

The Objective Study of Religion and the Unique Quality of Religiousness

The attempt to study religion objectively (Religionswissenschaft) has been part of the academic scene in the West for a century. Such men as F. Max Mueller, Edward Tylor, W. Brede Kristenson, Raffaele Peettazzoni, and Joachim Wach worked to develop such a truly scientific study of religion. They held that a study of religious data could reveal what religious life means for people who participate in it if methods are used which prevent a superimposition of the investigator's personal value judgments. At the same time, there has been the recognition by some scholars, including some of the above, that there is something about religious life that cannot be investigated by normal empirical methods. This sense of the uniqueness of religion is symbolised in Rudolf Otto's book The Idea of the Holy, where he maintains that in order to understand religion in its innermost core, an investigator must recognise ‘a unique “numinous” category of value and of a definitely “numinous” state of mind’. Our concern here is to examine one problem arising from the claim that religious life must be studied in terms of its own intention, or category of value; and yet studied through an inductive method which allows for the distinctive character of different historical expressions of religion.