Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Liberal Religious Youth“

Recent headlines suggest that Americans, and American youth in particular, are growing more liberal in their attitudes about social and moral issues. Do these trends suggest that the oft discussed “culture wars” are nearing an end? We examine this possibility by asking whether younger generations of religious and secular Americans do indeed espouse more liberal attitudes about sociomoral issues than their counterparts in older generations. We focus specifically on differences within and across religious groups in attitudes about four issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and the environment. We are especially interested in comparing generational differences in attitudes about high profile, “old-line” wedge issues (abortion and same-sex marriage) in the culture wars with newer, lower profile issues (stem cell research and the environment). Using the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey, we find that religious youth are generally not more liberal than older religious individuals.

The liberal Protestant denominations, long the most influential of America's mainline religious bodies, have suffered serious membership losses since the late 1960s. The principal sources of the losses are in the failure of the children of members to remain affiliated; this failure has been traced to a value shift that began among college-educated youth in the 1960s. Although this shift caught the liberal churches by surprise, their leaders contributed to the intellectual climate that made it possible. This climate was created in the 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr in his critique of the optimistic religious liberalism of his day as the self-serving ideology of the bourgeoisie. As an alternative he urged theology to recover a sense of the sinful and tragic side of life and urged Christians to support the struggles of oppressed peoples. Although these themes profoundly affected liberal Protestant leaders, they failed to attract most lay people. In the 1950s Protestant intellectuals began mounting a frontal assault on the popular piety of the laity. This assault, which eventually extended even to theistic belief itself, was thematically similar to secular intellectuals' critiques of American culture and institutions, which were later embodied in an exaggerated form in the youth rebellions of the 1960s. If the liberal churches are to recover their strength and cultural influence they will have to make liberal Christianity more relevant and compelling to its own constituency.

Abstract: Scholars are increasingly concerned that youth political apathy is a risk to liberal democracy. The issue of youth apathy is particularly pronounced in East-Central Europe—a region that has recently experienced sharp democratic decline. Across the EU member states of East-Central Europe, the share of youth that report complete disinterest in politics has doubled in the last decade. This is not an artifact of youth dissatisfaction with their nation's democracy. Rather, it is explained by ideological cross-pressures. East-Central Europe's apathetic youth hold a unique set of values that do not map onto party platforms. Unlike older generations, they are profoundly pro-EU and embrace certain aspects of liberalism, including gay rights. They are also significantly less religious. However, they are increasingly unfriendly toward immigration and multiculturalism. Compared to their politically engaged peers, East-Central Europe's apathetic youth also value democratic governance less. If they were to be politically mobilized, there is little reason to believe they would stabilize liberal democracy.

Indonesia’s socio-religious context hindered by youth radicalism issue, which later formulated as the use of illegitimate actions as a mean to express their restlessness. Contra-Radicalism then existed as a preventive discourse with Positive Youth Engagement as one of its’ concrete actions. This research elaborates Kultum Pemuda Tersesat (KPT), an alternative religious youth engagement with popular comedy formats as an approach. By using qualitative content analysis method, this research had three key findings which are [1] KPT based its’ engagement with “Islam Cinta” which has a liberal-progressive tendency to counter radicalism discourse with its’ Islamic-conservative tendency. [2] KPT adjusted itself with the trend by utilizing social media to create an emancipate engagement spaces for youth. [3] KPT offered comedy as an alternative approach in religious engagement for youth. Though potential, KPT’s effectiveness for countering radicalism in Indonesia require a further study.

This paper reports data from a study of young Catholic activists. They were concerned about the expansion of Islamist populism in democratic Muslim-majority Indonesia. They actively built inter-faith coalitions with local liberal Muslim youth groups and with pan-national Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest independent Islamic organisation in the world. Islamist populism prioritises religious identity over the national identity of citizenship. In framing their citizenship activism against the current tide of Islamist populism, the informants in our study selectively engaged aspects of Catholic theology. They articulated their religious identity as coterminous with a nationalist identity centred on multi-faith tolerance and harmony. That discourse in itself refutes a key principle of Islamist populism in Indonesia, which argues for primordial entitlement.

Justification related to integration of expanded spiritually and religious component in the system of higher school’s culturological and theological formation is given in this paper. This approach’s relevance is determined by need of carrying out a program related to the studying of bases of religious culture and spiritual ethics as necessary component of pupils’ encyclical liberal arts education, increase of cultural, philosophy and psychological-pedagogical competence of future teachers of humanitarian disciplines, and also optimization related to moral education of modern youth as a whole. As the chosen position argumentation the author offers the factual material promoting the best understanding of importance and more objective assessment related to a role of spiritual and theological component in educational process.

AbstractIn the years between World War I and World War II in the United States, public and religious educators engaged in an extended struggle to define the appropriate nature of character education for American youth. Within a post-war culture agonizing over the sanctions of moral living in the wake of mass violence and vanishing certitudes, a group of conservative educators sought to shore up traditional values through the construction of morality codes defining the characteristics of the “good American.” At the same time, a group of liberal progressive educators set forth a vigorous critique of these popular character education programs. This article analyzes the nature of this liberal critique by looking at one leading liberal spokesperson, George Albert Coe. Coe taught at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, and used his platform in these institutions to forge a model of character education derived from the combined influences of liberal Protestantism and Deweyan progressive education. Coe posited a two-pronged vision for American moral education rooted in the need for both procedural democracy (collaborative moral decision making) and a democratic social order. Utilizing this vision of the “democracy of God,” Coe demonstrated the inadequacies of code-based models, pointing in particular to the anachronism of traditional virtues in a world of social interdependence, the misguided individualism of the virtues, and the indoctrinatory nature of conservative programs. He proposed that youth be allowed to participate in moral experimentation, adopting ideals through scientific testing rather than unthinking allegiance to authoritative commands. Expanding the meaning of morality to include social as well as personal righteousness, he also made character education a vehicle of social justice. In the end, I contend that Coe's democratic model of character education, because of its scientific epistemological hegemony and devaluing of tradition, actually failed to promote a truly democratic character.

Abstract The central question in this article is: ‘Are committed young Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and humanists in the Netherlands and Flanders intolerant towards other groups?’ To answer this question, we analyse survey data and interviews collected in this research population. We first look at intergroup attitudes, which mainly show a pluralist approach towards the plurality of worldviews. Subsequently, we discuss the levels of religiocentrism and perceived intergroup threat among these young people. Finally, we search the interviews for practical examples concerning interviewees’ willingness to accept a plurality of worldviews in the public square. Although liberal values are dominant, much depends on the specific topic and how it is presented in the media. Generally, interviewees are tolerant towards other worldviews.

The article presents the results of foreign studies of gender ideology of students for a number of valuable social demographic variables. In the first part of publication the studies describing dynamics of gender ideology in various countries are analyzed. In the process of modernization of the Eastern Asia (China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan), India and Indonesia female population is involved in work outside of home, a trend of egalitarianisation of gender relationship and spreading of families with two breadwinners. During transition from socialist to liberal states in the countries of the Eastern Europe the impact of religious conservative family’s values on the youth is less significant than that of Western ideas of individualization and permissiveness. In the developed countries (USA, Europe, Australia, Canada) gender revolution resulted in diversity of gender ideologies. At least in the European countries five models are fixed empirically: egalitarian, egalitarian essentialism, intensive parenthood, moderate conservative ideology. The second part of article presents the analysis of studies of attitudes of students in areas of gender and marriage and family relationships carried out in various countries that established that gender and religious identity are the major differentiating variables. The other characteristics such as urban rural origin, structure of parents' family, coeducation and separate education are less significant. The attitudes of the youth concerning social roles of males and females and future marriage are changing effected by peers, mass culture and personal experience. The conclusion is derived that in spite of more conservative attitudes of male youths factually in all countries, a slow convergence of views of male and female youths among well-educated strata. The denominational membership remains the main differential factor

Abstract Human rights are the cornerstones of modern liberal democracies, but this does not mean that they can be taken for granted. Human rights need the support of the people. But how willing are people to support them? This question points to the problem of the legitimacy of human rights. This research paper focuses on judicial human rights such as freedom from torture, the rights of accused persons and the inviolability of the home. A quantitative, empirical survey was carried out among 2,244 German youth in the age group of 16 years, and this paper explores what attitudes these young German respondents have towards the rights referred to above. The assumption is that several other factors influence attitudes towards judicial rights; the paper considers human dignity, which is a constitutional right in Germany, but also religious beliefs, personality traits and society’s socio-political perception. The findings show that only two judicial rights (freedom from torture and the inviolability of the home) are positively valued by the respondents. From all predictors included in the research survey, the two strongest are sex (being female) and a low degree of authoritarianism. The comparison of religious groups shows that Muslims differ strongly from Catholics, Protestants and non-religious youth.

Based on qualitative research, this article aims to shed some light on the criticism of the functioning of French society by youths of North African origin influenced by a Salafist reading of Islam. The arguments put forward, which draw largely on a religious theme, must be taken seriously. However, the references to a “Salafised” world of meaning are not exclusive and they coexist with an attachment to other, more liberal values. We will therefore endeavour to determine whether the criticism expressed generates separatist attitudes or whether it leads to individual and collective strategies founded on a dual cultural allegiance. Without denying the ambivalences or weaknesses, it is necessary to accurately clarify the identity constructs and social trajectories of the working-class youths studied here.

Abstract Drawing on Yun Ch’iho’s Diary, and outlining some of the ideological and transnational aspects of a Protestant, bourgeois consciousness that emerged in Korea at the turn of the last century, this article presents a critical reassessment of liberalism, Protestant Christianity, and the type of free laborer that bourgeois Protestants like Yun Ch’iho wanted to create. As a pious liberal, Yun Ch’iho led efforts to establish civic and religious organizations that sought to construct a free conscience that would form and maintain public opinion. This was a militant agenda in the sense that, like the evangelical teachers he met in Shanghai and at Emory College, Yun wanted to build public pressure to dismantle the Confucian political order. As a Protestant entrepreneur of free men, Yun sought to “kill the Korean.” This militant, liberal agenda aimed to discipline and embody new desires, especially among youth, to produce the free laborer, and to render the extraction of profit as a form of exchange.

Interventions for the early sexual problem in adolescents require proper measurement of sexual intentions. The adolescent sexual intention scales have been widely used by researchers in the West. However, those scales are not very suitable for adolescents in eastern cultures such as Indonesia. As a religious society, Indonesian people have different sexual expectations from liberal western society. Religious teachings and societal norms shape sexual beliefs that reflect semi-restrictive sexual socialization. Thus, sexual intention measurement that represents the sexual beliefs of the subject under study becomes important. Therefore, this two-steps study aims to develop and validate the Youth Sexual Intention Scale (YSIS). In the first step, qualitative elaboration resulted in 27 themes of adolescent sexual beliefs, which turned into 31 items according to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In the second step, we selected 396 students using the cluster random sampling technique. We investigated 2 methods of validity, content validity using CVI and construct validity using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The content validity examination proved that all scale items had high validity (CVI = .93). Meanwhile, the CFA showed that the data was fit for the model (Chi-square 819,420, P <.001, RMSEA = .056, CFI = .978, TLI = .972). The CFA groups items into 4 dimensions, namely, sexual attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and sexual intentions. The reliability test shows an Alpha coefficient of .854. We conclude that 26-items YSIS is a valid and reliable instrument to measure belief-based youth sexual intentions (15–18 years) in religious culture.

AbstractThe international growth of Pentecostalism has seen a rush of congregations in Africa, many of which have tapped into a range of both local and global trends ranging from neo-liberal capitalism to tele-evangelism to youth music. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this discussion focuses on the main Johannesburg congregation of a grouping of churches that have successfully engaged with aspects of socio-economic transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. Such engagement has involved conspicuous alignment with aspects of contemporary South African society, including an acceptance of broader policy projects of the nation state. I argue that the use of a variety of symbolic and thematic elements of a secular nature in the Sunday services of this church reminds and inspires congregants to consider wider social perspectives without challenging the sacred realm of faith.

Abstract This article aims at understanding how, in a global era, young people have appropriated interreligious advocacy, through the study of the Interfaith Tour (IFT). This program, created in 2012 in France, aims to provide every two years four or five young people of different beliefs (atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish) with the opportunity to go a world tour, followed by a tour round France (to share the discoveries made during the trip with the French public). Most of IFT’s objectives overlap those of adult interreligious movements. The program seeks to convince that religious differences do not represent a threat, but a richness, and that they do not prevent people from cooperating for the common good. There are also more specific goals, such as the empowerment of youth, seen as an age group that is too often not well represented in the higher echelons of society and interreligious organizations. The originality of IFT’s advocacy lies in the means used, notably the intensive use of the resources of liberal globalization, even though the young people who participate in IFT have an ambivalent relationship with such liberal globalization.

The article presents the results of a three-year sociological study of the causes of social tension among the youth in Kuban as a polyethnic region. Based on the results of the survey of high school students, university students and young workers, the authors consider the youth’s attitudes to the current government, priorities of state policy, events in Ukraine and Syria, assess the state of interethnic relations in the North Caucasus and the role of Cossacks in Kuban. The article emphasizes that the inconsistency of worldviews and attitudes of the Kuban youth to these issues increased in 2017, i.e. the potential for conflicts on national and political grounds increased, which lead to the growth of social activity of participants in both patriotic actions and social protests. Today, the rejuvenation of social protests is obvious for more and more schoolchildren and teenagers take part in them. There is a growth of both the youth support for state patriotism and radical anti-state protests, and in general the number of the youth indifferent and detached from social processes declines. There is a danger of polarization and radicalization of the youth and accumulation of latent conflict potential. The state patriotic education aiming to ensure the traditional value of sacrifice for the country is eroded by the propaganda of liberal individualism and consumerism which deny such a value; the promotion of volunteerism and mutual aid comes into conflict with the ideas of leadership and competitiveness, and the values of interethnic and inter-religious friendship and respect - with the ideas of interethnic and interfaith tolerance. The return to traditional values proclaimed by the state faces the westernization trends, which determines the youth’s worldview inconsistency.

In this article, the term “radicalisation” is discussed as a process that appears to be a defensive and reactionary response of various individuals suffering from social, economic, and political forms of exclusion, subordination, alienation, humiliation, and isolation. To that effect, the article challenges the mainstream understanding of radicalisation. In doing so, the work concentrates on the elaboration of reactionary radicalisation processes of self-identified Muslim youth and self-identified native youth residing in Europe. The main reason behind the selection of these two groups is the assumption that both groups are co-radicalizing each other in the contemporary world that is defined by the ascendance of a civilizational political discourse since the war in the Balkans in the 1990s. Based on the findings of in-depth interviews conducted with youngsters from both groups in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, the work demonstrates that the main drivers of the radicalisation processes of these two groups cannot be explicated through the reproduction of civilizational, cultural, and religious differences. Instead, the drivers of radicalisation for both groups are very identical as they are both socio-economically, politically, and psychologically deprived of certain elements constrained by the flows of globalization and dominant forms of neo-liberal governance.

Religious actors and religious language are not absent from the Arab revolutions, but a striking feature of these movements is that they depart from Islamist identity politics, which tended to portray the problems of the Arab world as the result of Muslims’ betrayal of their religious identity. Slogans referencing Islam are remarkably few, even in contexts like Egypt where Islamist movements are an important organized political force. Similar to many Islamist activists, the youth who initiated these movements are exasperated by growing economic inequalities. Unlike the former, however, they do not feel the need to frame this issue in religious terms, but rather mobilize universal notions such as democracy, freedom, justice, and equality. This is the case even in societies with sharp religious divides such as Bahrain, where the overwhelmingly Shiʿi demonstrators oppose a Sunni-dominated regime. Regardless of whether the uprisings will succeed in achieving a genuine regime change, new political movements are likely to emerge that focus on political freedom and the reduction of social inequalities rather than projects maintaining Islam as a solution. The question remains whether this trend simply went unnoticed by the majority of the scholarly community working on the Middle East or whether it is something that emerged in the dynamics of the uprisings themselves. Either way, the phenomenon must now be analyzed. Does it mean a decline of the Islamist ideology? Will it permit an empowerment of existing liberal political movements? Of trade unionism? What does it reveal about the integration of the Middle East within global political trends?

Abstract The diverse and well-researched essays in this book make an appealing argument that a real revolution has started in the region and that, early setbacks and reverses notwithstanding, a transition from authoritarianism to democracy has begun. To that end, Gerges, in his introduction to the volume, characterizes the Arab uprisings of 2011 as a revolutionary moment, one that carries within it the seeds of a desperately needed change in the Arab world. Nevertheless, the continued attachment of Arab populations to tribe, clan, and sect currently exceeds the commitment of youth across the Arab world to democratic change. Further, the rise of religious extremism has arrested the direction of protest so that there seems to be at least an equal, if not an ascendant movement to turn Arab societies backwards toward an assumed glorious past rather than to allow it to drift toward a more secular liberal model that Islamist extremists associate with decadent Western societies.

The article proves the hypothesis that F.M.Dostoevsky’s novel The Raw Youth expresses the conception of history directed against the model proposed by L.N.Tolstoy in his War and Peace. Tolstoy maintains that the course of history is determined by the spontaneous interactions of elementary biological powers acting within individuals and within nations; he firmly rejects the idea that individuals can influence history by means of their rational will. In his novel The Raw Youth, Dostoevsky defends totally contrary position: only few “higher personalities” can immediately influence history by means of their great ideas, among which the religious ones play especially important role. The article shows that Dostoevsky’s critique had probably an impact on Tolstoy; as a result, in his late religious teaching, he adopted the position which he had previously rejected. Now he thinks that only few “best people” living in the strong compliance with the Jesus Christ’s doctrine direct society towards the way of spiritual perfectness and thus they determine the course of history. This general model of historical development of society can be named as “spiritual Empire” which is contrary to the accepted western liberal tradition generated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Within the model of “spiritual Empire”, the aim of the development is represented with the more and more spiritual unity of people and with the fact that everybody serve to the highest values (the creation of culture); such society should be ruled by the “highest personalities” who achieved the highest spiritual development and influence the society rather with the help of their spiritual authority than by means of the material power.

Coke Studio Pakistan is a decade-long music reality show featuring collaborations between pop, classical and local folk musicians. Sponsored by Coca-Cola and displaying a state-of-the-art production, it aims to bring local and old-school musicians and repertories to the Pakistani urban youth while disseminating a positive image of Pakistan. This occurs in the context of the efforts of Pakistani entrepreneurs and artists towards their insertion into the global market while overcoming the country’s negative international reputation due to religious violence. This article analyses Coke Studio Pakistan under the lens of neo-liberal nationalism, characterizing it as a nation-branding effort that uses music to make a representation of Pakistan that complies with Coca-Cola’s corporate goals and with the agendas of a sector of Pakistani artists. A quantitative and network analysis of the show reveals which artists, genres, regions and cultural groups the show privileges or overlooks. A qualitative study of the show’s communicational strategy and of the discourses of its creators and sponsors complements the quantitative analysis. This article explores the complexities of a nationalist model of multicultural citizenship promoted by the private sector, including issues of cultural representation, corporate agendas, class relationships, responsiveness to audiences’ demands and international politics.

Intolerance was often pinned on communal societies such as Indonesia because it uses a liberal-secular tolerance perspective which is identical to Western Christian society. If the perspective is shifted, for example using communal tolerance, the communal community will also practice the opposite, tolerance. This paper is intended to reveal and analyze how the Muslim community in the Nagari KH which is considered the majority practices tolerance on a community scale in the context of religious moderation towards the Christian minority in the Nagari. In addition, it also analyzes why the model's tolerance can occur. This research is qualitative research that relies on interview data from elements of the nagari government, penghulu, youth leaders, religious leaders and adherents of Islam and Christianity from both communities. The data is reinforced by document data including journals and research reports that are relevant to the research topic. The results show that community tolerance as a form of religious moderation has been practiced by the Muslim community of KH in the socio-economic and religious realms. In the socio-economic aspect, community tolerance appears in the form of openness to business, buying and selling and ownership of land and houses. While in the religious realm it is limited to individual and family worship at homes. The ambivalence of tolerance practiced by the Muslim community of KH is rooted in the ambivalence of Minangkabau culture on a macro level and the ambivalence of the geographical position of Nagari KH on a micro basis. Minangkabau cultural ambivalence collides and synthesizes matrilineal customs and matrilineal Islam. Meanwhile, the ambivalence of being a coastal area is at the same time bordering on darek. Both have given birth to an inclusive attitude towards immigrants in the socio-economic realm and exclusive when it comes to communal worship.

Intolerance was often pinned on communal societies such as Indonesia because it uses a liberal-secular tolerance perspective which is identical to Western Christian society. If the perspective is shifted, for example using communal tolerance, the communal community will also practice the opposite, tolerance. This paper is intended to reveal and analyze how the Muslim community in the Nagari KH which is considered the majority practices tolerance on a community scale in the context of religious moderation towards the Christian minority in the Nagari. In addition, it also analyzes why the model's tolerance can occur. This research is qualitative research that relies on interview data from elements of the nagari government, penghulu, youth leaders, religious leaders and adherents of Islam and Christianity from both communities. The data is reinforced by document data including journals and research reports that are relevant to the research topic. The results show that community tolerance as a form of religious moderation has been practiced by the Muslim community of KH in the socio-economic and religious realms. In the socio-economic aspect, community tolerance appears in the form of openness to business, buying and selling and ownership of land and houses. While in the religious realm it is limited to individual and family worship at homes. The ambivalence of tolerance practiced by the Muslim community of KH is rooted in the ambivalence of Minangkabau culture on a macro level and the ambivalence of the geographical position of Nagari KH on a micro basis. Minangkabau cultural ambivalence collides and synthesizes matrilineal customs and matrilineal Islam. Meanwhile, the ambivalence of being a coastal area is at the same time bordering on darek. Both have given birth to an inclusive attitude towards immigrants in the socio-economic realm and exclusive when it comes to communal worship.

The subject of the article is the problem of the crisis of the Russian education system and, above all, the ideology and general methodology of teaching in the field of humanities. The purpose of the study is to formulate the main directions of reforming the education system and new principles as part of the author's methodology of training courses for higher education in the conditions of Russia's withdrawal from the Bologna process and the formation of a national educational system. The modern education system is the result of many trends in the development of society - and above all secularization, the separation of science from religion and the development of the positivist nature of scientific knowledge. The crisis of modern education is a manifestation of the crisis of positivist science and the global crisis. Rus-sia was the first in the world among non-Muslim countries to publicly declare the re-jection of liberal principles of social structure. Digital education carries significant risks to the physical and spiritual health of the youth and society. With all its ad-vantages, it needs a radical reform and strict state and public control. The fundamental reform of education in Russia should be aimed at scrapping the liberal ideology and formal quantitative methods of evaluating the results of the education process. The ap-peal to national traditions, mentality and, above all, to the achievements of traditional religions and centuries-old folk morality should compensate for the inevitable negative side effect of the technological side of education. The paper proposes a new methodol-ogy – moral and religious neo-institutionalism, containing three main principles – sys-tem, balance and morality. The latest practical result of its implementation is the launch of the publication of the INFRA-M publishing house of a series of books "Rus-sian University Textbook on Economics and Management" intended for master's de-gree (advanced level). Among them is the textbook "Economic theory. Russian Eco-nomics" - took the first place in the international academic course "Academus" in the nomination "Economics and Management".

AbstractLike elsewhere in Africa, local forms of Islam are being challenged by a number of new reformist and revivalist forms of Islam, influenced to some degree by a global Islamic revival but shaped by particular local histories and politics. This has caused some friction, especially as the regime in place seeks to manipulate these tensions for political benefit. Central to this struggle are the young men who have studied Islam abroad and who challenge the established truths of the traditional religious authorities; these authorities in turn accuse 'the youth' of bringing foreign, 'Arab' ideas and politics to Zanzibar. However, the kind of Islamic revival taking place in Zanzibar is far from radical or violent, and it is not appropriate to pose the present situation in terms of global Salafism versus local Sufism. In fact, Islamic revivalists often coin their critique of the state in terms of human rights and good governance and provide an alternative modernity that simultaneously challenges and articulates secular, liberal forms of modernity. Islamic revival critiques what is perceived as society's moral disorder and the state's inability to deal with new global challenges. Hence the present paper explores how global trends in Islam—but also global discourses on human rights and good governance—influence the current modes of Islamic revival in Zanzibar. With a heavily restricted political field, Islam can be a means of critiquing society without getting involved in politics. However, the government and the traditional religious authorities perceive this revivalism as a threat to the status quo and attempt therefore to politicise the struggle, accusing Islamic movements of fundamentalism and terrorism. It is within this political environment that Islamic revival must navigate.

Purpose of the study: The article analyzes the modern concepts of sexual education of students, among which the most widespread is religious, hygienic, the concept of contraceptive training, the concept, and program of "content training" causes, as well as the fact of the existence of different models of sexual education of youth (restrictive, (repressive, restrictive-protective), permissive (liberal) and the model of the "golden mean"). Methodology: The study used a theoretical analysis of existing statistics gained by different countries. Leading scientists of based on the statics believe that until young people develop a deep understanding of the nature and importance of family and marriage, discussion with adults (even educators) about the process of puberty, its difficulties, sexually transmitted diseases, unconventional forms of sexual behavior and similar topics needed. Main findings: The methodology of ambushing the statistical vigor is encouraged by the humanities and the science-realistic ideas and concepts, we know that you can find more information about how to learn more about the statutory article of the article. In this regard, some models were established. According to the study, neither of the introduced models is worse or better than the other. Social Implications: a modern outlook on the interpretation of gender issues and the prediction of future youth in the theory and practice of sexual education in the EU countries. In the permissive model, at first glance, sexual behavior is placed on a par with all other behaviors and is therefore dependent on general laws of social and ethical regulation. Originality/Novelty of the study: modern trends of sexual education of student youth in EU countries are generalized and strengthening the socio-cultural context of sexual education content. The main difference of this work with the works was already done, is that this study mainly categorizes models through which different behaviors could be studied, and also evaluates the models.

<p><em>My Confession</em> (1829) of P.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;Vyazemsky, one of the most important historical, literary and autobiographical documents of the 19th century, has never been the subject of independent study. Its focus of attention is the period of the Prince&rsquo;s civil service in Warsaw, which predetermined not only the formation of his ideas of liberalism and constitutionalism, but also the collapse of his career as a civil servant in 1821. The article makes an attempt to identify the main formal-meaningful constants of<em> My Confession</em>. As a result of the study, the immediate motif and reasons for the prince's resort to confession, his addressee, the main goal and discursive practices are identified. The author of the article states that <em>My Confession</em> does not contain religious connotations; its main content is the consistent presentation of events, facts, thoughts, feelings (in the form in which they appear in the mind of the Prince almost a decade later), as well as the exposure of the libels of ill-wishers and the restoration of a good name. It is noted that the general autobiographical confessional strategy of Vyazemsky determines both the author&rsquo;s repentance of the political &ldquo;errors&rdquo; of liberal youth and the exposition / propaganda of liberal views due to active auto-citation; at the same time, the fundamental attitude towards veracity is combined with the so-called &ldquo;Political correctness&rdquo; (allowing conscious silence about certain events, facts, persons in order to avoid knowingly lying).</p>

Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin was born on 15 September 1936 in Jerusalem, the son of journalist and religious scholar Schalom Ben-Chorin (formerly Fritz Rosenthal) and artist Gabriella Rosenthal, the couple having moved from Germany to Palestine in 1935. He graduated with a BA in Bible and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and was ordained as a rabbi by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 1964. He served initially as a rabbi in Israel in Ramat Gan, then in Manchester Reform Synagogue, Jackson's Row (1977–81), and from 1981 to 1996 at the Har El congregation in Jerusalem, which he had helped to establish with his father and stepmother, and which became the ‘mother community’ of today's Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ). During this period, he established the Israeli Progressive Youth Movement and guided the ‘garin’ which established the second Reform kibbutz in the Arava, Kibbutz Lotan. He has written that ‘wanderlust’ led him to become the rabbi of Or Chadash congregation in Zurich (1997–2007) and subsequently Berlin's Pestalozzi Strasse Liberal synagogue from 2009 to 2015, and to a small congregation in St Gallen in Switzerland where he served until his death.

In his work on a Welsh border village, Ronald Frankenberg showed how cultural performances, from football to carnival, conferred agency on local actors and framed local conflicts. The present article extends these themes. It responds to invocations of ‘community cohesion’ by politicians and policy makers, decrying the failure of communal leadership following riots by young South Asians in northern British towns. Against their critique of self-segregating isolationism, the article traces the historical process of Pakistani migration and settlement in Britain, to argue that the dislocations and relocations of transnational migration generate two paradoxes of culture. The first is that in order to sink roots in a new country, transnational migrants in the modern world begin by setting themselves culturally and socially apart. They form encapsulated ‘communities’. Second, that within such communities culture can be conceived of as conflictual, open, hybridising and fluid, while nevertheless having a sentimental and morally compelling force. This stems from the fact, I propose, that culture is embodied in ritual, in social exchange and in performance, conferring agency and empowering different social actors: religious and secular, men, women and youth. Hence, against both defenders and critics of multiculturalism as a political and philosophical theory of social justice, the final part of the article argues for the need to theorise multiculturalism in history. In this view, rather than being fixed by liberal or socialist universal philosophical principles, multicultural citizenship must be grasped as changing and dialogical, inventive and responsive, a negotiated political order. The British Muslim diasporic struggle for recognition in the context of local racism and world international crises exemplifies this process.

Статья посвящена отдельным проблемам развития общественной мысли народов Южной и Юго-Восточной Азии. Специфика этих регионов, носящих отпечаток индуистской, буддистской и конфуцианской традиций, определила особую специфику формирования так называемых «идеологий массового действия» в период капиталистических трансформаций XX века. Умеренные либералы и радикалы, начиная с конца XIX — начала XX века, вместе добивались национального освобождения, ликвидации тирании, гражданских прав. Но при этом в течение длительного времени (вплоть до окончания Второй мировой войны) духовные лидеры были против массовой вооруженной борьбы из-за непредсказуемых результатов, опасности анархии и неизбежности кровопролития. В национальном, преимущественно либеральном сознании господствовали представления о необходимости подготовки народа к независимому бытию (в колониях — через экономическое и культурное развитие с помощью метрополии, в зависимых странах — через реформы всесторонней модернизации общества), о важности национального единения, достижимого через воспитание в народе патриотического сознания, чувства национальной общности, и распространения современного образования. Считалось необходимым переформатирование демократических традиций там, где эти традиции были, на современный лад и стимулирование развития политической активности в менее развитых обществах. При этом региональная специфика, включая культурные и религиозные традиции их населения, состояла в более высокой толерантности к колониальным структурам, чем, например, в мусульманском мире или даже на католических Филиппинах. Однако под давлением обстоятельств уже в первой половине XX века довольно широкое распространение получило представление о допустимости и даже необходимости в ряде случаев массовых насильственных действий для достижения национальных целей. Националистическая молодежь попадала под влияние анархического террора и революционного экстремизма в Европе и России. После Второй мировой войны процесс радикализации движения за независимость, прогрессивное развитие и социальную справедливость завершился крахом колониальной системы, но в то же время создал новые формы зависимости. The article is devoted to certain problems of the development of social thought of the nations of South and Southeast Asia. The specifics of these regions, bearing the imprint of Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian traditions, determined the specificity of the formation of the so-called “ideologies of mass action” during the period of capitalist transformations of the 20th century. Starting from late 19th and early 20thcentury, moderate liberals and radicals together sought national liberation, the elimination of tyranny, and civil rights. But at the same time, for a long time (until the end of World War II), the spiritual leaders were against mass armed struggle because of unpredictable results, the danger of anarchy and the inevitability of bloodshed. The national, predominantly liberal consciousness was dominated by ideas about the need to prepare the people for independence (in the colonies, through economic and cultural development with the help of the mother nation, and in dependent states, through reforms and comprehensive modernization of society), about the importance of national unity, achievable through formation people’s patriotic consciousness, a sense of national community, and development of modern education. It was considered necessary to modernize democratic traditions where they had existed and to stimulate the development of political activity in less developed societies. At the same time, the regional specifics, including the cultural and religious traditions of their population, consisted in a higher tolerance for colonial structures than, for example, in the Muslim world or even in the Catholic Philippines. However, already in the first half of the 20th century, the circumstances led many to the idea of admissibility and in some cases even necessity of mass violent actions in order to achieve national goals. Nationalist youth were influenced by practices of anarchist terror and revolutionary extremism in Europe and Russia. After the Second World War, the process of radicalization of the movement for independence, progressive development and social justice ended with the collapse of the colonial system, but at the same time created new forms of dependence.

NEGOTIATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN AMERICA: Past, Present, and Future by Greg Cootsona. New York: Routledge, 2020. 206 pages + index. Paperback; $44.95. ISBN: 9781338068537. *In Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future, Greg Cootsona examines the history of religion and science in America in the context of emergent adulthood. He begins with Alfred Whitehead's claim that religion and science are the two strongest cultural forces within American culture, with the future of America being dependent upon the cultivation of a positive relationship between them. Much of the book is a historical exploration of the relationship between religion and science in American culture framed by the categories put forth in Ian Barbour's Issues in Science and Religion: conflict, co-existence, dialogue, and integration--although Cootsona chooses to collapse dialogue into integration. While he finds Barbour's typology helpful, Cootsona sees the need for new categories to better reflect the experience of millennials living within the pluralism of the twenty-first century. *Cootsona argues that Protestantism, as the dominant religious force within American culture, contributed to the conflict/co-existence approaches to science and faith throughout much of American history. This situation has now given way to a religious pluralism that makes new forms of integration possible. However, given the increased secularity of millennials and emergent adults, which Cootsona supports with Pew research, the National Study of Youth and Religion, as well with his own qualitative research, this new form of integration is less about a robust dialogue between science and religion, and more about the manifestation of a tolerant individualism seeking to avoid conflict. According to Cootsona, "As Americans become less conventionally religious, they also become less personally conflicted with science" (p. 163). This explains why Barbour's typology needs to be reworked--as emergent adults disassociate from organized religion, the categories that frame the relationship between science and religion must change. For Cootsona, emergent adults are "religious bricoleurs" who need better maps to frame the conversation in order to discover new trajectories. *The first two-thirds of the book represent the author's version of the map. He divides American history into sections, tracing the relationship between religion and science from Newton to Barbour, with a final chapter focusing on future possibilities. In this way, he models the mapping needed for the future of the religion/science discussion. He provides an insightful historical narrative that describes developments within the religion/science relationship, ending with contemporary models of Barbour's typology--Stephen Jay Gould (co-existence), Richard Dawkins (conflict), and Francis Collins (integration). The final chapters explore the shifting religious experience of contemporary American culture that has seen a decline in religious affiliation, the rise of spirituality, and a new cultural and religious pluralization. Cootsona's historical narrative provides a helpful snapshot of the complicated relationship between religion and science in America. His interdisciplinary focus offers an important lens for interpreting the historical events and movements, providing a helpful model of the mapping that he believes is necessary for emergent adults living in a pluralistic culture, to better engage the conversation. There are, however, a few critiques to consider. *Cootsona's portrayal of Barth's theology follows a predictable, but unfortunate, trajectory. He refers to Barth's opposition to "natural theology" in a way that suggests a lack of concern for science. A close reading of Church Dogmatics Book III, however, shows how Barth views the incarnation as the basis for affirming and encouraging scientific exploration. For Barth, this is not merely co-existence, as Cootsona seems to suggest; instead, it is the instance that the revelation of God's love for the world in Jesus Christ affirms every opportunity to learn more about God's good creation through scientific inquiry. Barth writes to his niece, *"Thus one's attitude to the creation story and the theory of evolution can take the form of an either/or only if one shuts oneself off completely either from faith in God's revelation or from the mind (or opportunity) for scientific understanding" (Karl Barth Letters: 1961-1968). *Barth embraces evolutionary theory, but he strongly opposes any form of human knowledge morphing into a dominant ideology. Cootsona's dismissal of Barth misses an opportunity for a much more robust theological engagement of science that moves beyond a "two books" paradigm, to an integrative approach. Barth's concern with natural theology is in opposition to ideology wherever it is found--be it religion or science. Both liberal theology and fundamentalism are guilty of fostering unhealthy ideological paradigms that short-circuit dialogue. This is central to the conflict with science within contemporary white evangelicalism as they are much more concerned with maintaining political power and social status than having honest discussion about faith and science. The evangelical opposition to science--including issues related to the current pandemic--has less to do with theology or science, and more to do with ideological forces that maintain the cultural status quo. The politics of science and religion, which Cootsona alludes to in his account of the Scopes trial, deserves much more attention. *Finally, there is the absence of contemporary scholarship that might support his project. While Charles Taylor is Canadian, his monumental work A Secular Age provides important insight into the rise of secularity in the West, including American culture. Taylor demonstrates how the shift in social imaginary that results from the Reformation creates the cultural conditions in which the scientific revolution and the rise of fundamentalism are possible. A primary focus of his work is to explore the conditions that lead to the current emphasis of spirituality over traditional forms of religion, which is the experience of emergent adulthood. Similarly, both J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology) and Ilia Delio (The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love) offer important insights for the faith and science conversation that address the contemporary experience of emergent adults in America. *Overall, Cootsona's book is an important contribution to the conversation about science and religion. He provides a creative interdisciplinary approach that helps religious communities as they engage scientific questions. As a practical theologian, this interdisciplinary approach, along with his desire to articulate new models for an increasingly pluralistic and secular American culture, provides important steps toward the cultivation of meaningful conversations between religion and science. *Reviewed by Jason Lief, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Northwestern College, Orange City, IA 51041.

The implementation of reforms in Saudi Arabia met with both support and resistance. A significant part of the youth, pro-government “liberals”, and those elites that rejected the former feudal pyramid system stood in favor of the reforms. Among the opponents were jihadist extremists, some of the members of the “dominant tribe” of the House of Saud, who were losing their power and income associated with the previous system of corruption, some part of the Wahhabi corporation, religious police, theologians, some part of the business that flourished due to state subsidies and the absence of taxes and control over expenditures and incomes. Among the opponents were also conservatives from the middle and lower strata, dissatisfied with the granting of greater rights to women. The regime’s international image was spoiled by the assassination of opposition leader Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However, the firm course of the kingdom aimed at protecting, above all, the national interests of the country and the refusal to obey the dictates of the United States in matters of oil prices was highlighted by a demonstrative rapprochement with China and neutrality in the confrontation between Russia and the collective West. Saudi Arabia looked for and found its place in the changing world-system.

Abstract: It is often assumed that the 1967 Arab-Israeli War led to the "wholesale conversion of the Jews to Zionism," as Norman Podhoretz famously phrased it. This "conversion" is equally, if often less explicitly, said to coincide with the end of the era of Jewish marginality in the U.S. and West more broadly, as Jews of European descent were half-included, half-conscripted, into normative structures of whiteness, class ascension, and citizenship. While this epochal shift in Jewish racial formation and political allegiance is undeniable especially in the context of large Jewish secular and religious institutions, at the time this "conversion" was seen as anything but inevitable. Many Jewish liberals, including Irving Howe, Seymour Lipset, and Nathan Glazer, and reactionaries such as Meir Kahane, saw Jewish overrepresentation and hypervisibility in New Left organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society, the Youth International Party, and the Socialist Workers Party as a sign that Jewish youth rejected Zionism as well as the Jewish rise into the middle class. That retrospectively we see Jewish racial formation and political alignment after 1967 as a fait accompli often relies on the erasure not only of mass Jewish participation in the New Left, but also the erasure of the New Left's anti-imperialist political commitments, including critique of expansive Israeli militarism and the settler colonial assumptions underlying Zionism. Looking at memoirs, pamphlets, histories, and original interviews with Jewish participants in the New Left, this article excavates the political alignments of Jewish New Left activists, exploring opposition to the U.S.'s new support of the Israeli state as well as the changing Ashkenazi Jewish racial assignment. Rather than finding Third World and Black Power critiques of Israel antisemitic, it was precisely the Jewish New Left's politics of international and multiracial solidarity that encouraged their support for Black Power critiques of Zionism. In this way, Jewish members of the New Left also attempted to critically challenge their own whiteness, aligning support for Israel after 1967 with support for the racial and economic structures of militarism and capitalism at home.

The fall of elected Egyptian President Morsi is likely to reverberate into the future throughout the Arab World. It pits the growing large communi- ty of Islamic-committed citizens (just under 60 percent in Egypt according to Pew Center surveys) and frustrated youth wanting participatory govern- ance and legitimate freedoms against military autocrats, their business and judicial associates, and hereditary rulers in the region who wish to maintain the status quo against the bedrock Islamic principle of representative govern- ance. Tunisia leads the way in providing a to-date successful transition post- ‘Arab Spring’ to an alternative vision favouring the welfare of its citizens. This is a consequence of the flexibility and willingness of Islamists there to work together in coalition with other groups even secularists. Egypt displays the beginning of an epic struggle that will unlikely end until some form of partici- patory governance is achieved through civil disobedience. President Moham- mad Morsi managed the passage of a new constitution (presently suspended) under strong opposition but was unable to project a ‘democratic’ image or resolve the country’s economic problems. He also failed to embrace inclusive- ness even to work closely with other Islamic forces – the Salafists and the AlAzhar institution. Chief of the armed forces, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi however, in rebelling against his civilian commander, is attempting to restore the pre-Arab Spring status of covert military rule. He successfully drew initial support from the Salafists and liberals but can no longer assume their backing. Shaykh AlAzhar in openly supporting al-Sisi has compromised the erstwhile high regard held for Al-Azhar in the Muslim world.

Folkelige og sociale bevagelser. Nyere forskningsretninger og kvalitative forstaelser[Popular and Social Movements. Recent Research Approaches and Qualitative Interpretations]By Vagn WahlinHowever fascinating Grundtvig himself is as a central figure in 19th century Denmark, we, the citizens of the Third Millennium, have to ask why and how he is also interesting today and how his word, work and influence spread. Part of the answer to that fundamental question lies in the fact that he was the right man at the right place at the right time, with the right tidings to tell some clergymen and many peasant farmers on their dominant, middle size, family farms that they were the core of the nation. But part of the answer is to be found in the fact that his followers managed to elevate him to the influencing position as an inspirer and prophet of a broad popular movement that lasted for generations after his death. This popular, national and Christian movement of the Grundtvigians interacted in the social and political development of more than a hundred years with the other broad popular and ideological movements of Denmark such as the Labour Movement, the more Evangelical movement of the Home Mission, the Temperance movements, the Suffragists and women’s organizations, the associations of the world of sport, the political and youth organizations, etc. They were all active on the local level and soon also on the national level and, from the 1880s and onwards, established more firm organizations and institutions to deal with practical matters such as schools, boy scouts, community houses, soccer stadiums, magazines, newspapers, political associations, trade unions, as well as organized economic and anticapitalistic activities by co-operative dairies, breweries, slaughterhouses, export companies etc. As long as the agrarian sector of society (until around 1960-1970) dominated the national export to pay for the large import of society, that pattern of popular movements, also in the urban industry, influenced most of Danish history and life - and is still most influential in today’s post-modern society.During absolutism (1660-1848), organized social activities and associations were forbidden or strictly controlled. Yet a growing and organized public debate appeared in Copenhagen in late 18th century, followed by literary and semi-political associations amongst the enlightened, urban bourgeoisie. Around 1840 the liberals had organized themselves into urban associations and through newspapers. They were ready to take over the power of the society and the state, but could only do so through an alliance with the peasant farmers in 1846 followed by the German uprising in 1848 by the liberals in Schleswig-Holstein.In Denmark there existed a rather distinct dividing line - economic, cultural, social and in terms of political power - between two dominant sectors of society: Copenhagen, totally dominant in the urban sector, in contrast to the agrarian world, where 80% of the population lived.In the urban as well as in the agrarian sectors of society, the movements mostly appeared to be a local protest against some modernization or innovative introductions felt as a threat to religious or material interests - except for a few cases, where the state wanted an enlightened debate as in the Royal Agrarian Society of 1769. Whether the said local protesters won or lost, their self organization in the matter could lead to a higher degree of civil activity, which again could lead to the spread of their viewpoints and models of early organization. The introduction of civil liberties by the Constitution of 1849 made it more easy and acceptable for the broad masses of society to organize. However, with the spread of organizations and their institutions in the latter part of the 19th century, an ethical and social understanding arose that the power of the organized citizens should be extended from the special or vested interests of the founding group to the benefit of the whole of society and of all classes.So everybody who contributes positively, little or much, to the upholding and development of Danish society should be benefited and embraced by the popular movements. Around 1925 the Labour Movement as the last and largest in number and very influential had finally accepted that ethical point of view and left the older understanding of the suppressed army of toiling and hungry workers. The people, the ‘folk’, and the country of all classes had then been united into ‘Danmark for folket’ (a Denmark o f by and fo r the people).So while a social movement may be an organization of mere protest or vested interests or a short-lived phenomena, a ‘folkelig bevagelse’ (popular movement) became what it was at first - in the understanding of the majority of the Danes, but not in the eyes of the 19th century bourgeois and landowner elite - a positive label. It is still so today, though it is now questioned by many of the more internationally-minded members of the new elite. The word ‘folk’ in the term ‘folkelig bevagelse’ is so highly valued that nearly all political parties of today have included it in their names. For the majority of people, Danish and popular and movements stand for the organized societal activity of those who accept the language, history, culture including religion, landscapes, national symbols, etc. of Denmark and who incorporate all this as a valid part of their self-understanding just as they actively take part in the mutual responsibility for their fellow countrymen. This general attitude is most clearly demonstrated when it is severely breached by some individual or group.With the addition of the Church and the Christian dimension, we have what is the essence of Grundtvig’s heritage. Without this source of inspiration, the popular movements up to a generation ago would have been different and perhaps of less importance, and without the popular movements, Grundtvig’s influence would have been less important in Denmark of the last hundred years. We may best understand this as a process of mutual dependency and of a mutual societal interaction.

Purpose This is a methodological proposal that describes the access to information as a starting point, and the importance of access to information as the backbone for the values of investment with the notion of culture as shared beliefs, supported by information to communicate and provide awareness about issues related to environmental policy that is consistent with sustainable development. Data collection is done from census data of Cikarawang population, observation and in-depth interviews with informants of community leaders. Constructive theory constructs to identify the diversity of existing construction of and placing in the consensus. The goal of this methodology is to produce an informed and knowledgeable construction of, which simultaneously improving continuously. Constructivists do not intend to predict and control the real world and divert it but to reconstruct the world at the point of its existence: in the mind of the people of the community in Cikarawang village. The view of the importance of cultural institutions and traditional knowledge should not be ignored in reaching the target of practical dissemination of information regarding environmental policy should be conducted for further study the model of and the model for the construction of the constructed. The use of application in documenting myths and rituals of Cikarawang people is enabling the access of information of the people in learning the culture and language of Cikarawang. Moreover, it is the way to reach the goal of sustainable environment for the next generations. Design/methodology/approach The goal of this methodology is to produce an informed and knowledgeable construction of, which simultaneously improved continuously. Constructivists do not intend to predict and control the real world and divert it but to reconstruct the world at the point of its existence: in the mind of the constructor. In the process related to two aspects, : hermeneutic and dialectical. Aspects of individual construction of hermeneutic describe as compare and contrast to the dialectical aspects of individual construction of, so that each respondent was entered into the construction of another and entirely fused. Findings The access of information on asri to face global warming is to demonstrate the hybridity and syncretism of this everyday locality and to show how this global sense of place is a progressive sense of place which avoids defensive and exclusionary definitions of place and culture because they cannot be sustained in a world where understanding a place means understanding its connection to other places. However, the youths of Cikarawang are likely to self-identify, as liberals are also more supportive of progressive domestic social agenda than older generations. They are less overtly religious than the older generations. Research limitations/implications The access of information, is about trying to establish the existence of the collectivity by defining what makes it a community – isolating national characteristics, defining crucial historical moments or significant places. None of these implies that these meanings can be fixed. There might be useful to think of nations as projects which are never fully achieved. There are always alternative accounts which are being given, and alternative interpretations being made from different positions. Climate information needs to be made in accordance with the local context and activities of both of the content, format, timing and distribution (dissemination). Practical implications The undetermined that perceived lack of locals trying to understand the information about weather and climate change are delivered by using technology need to engage their participation to identify and develop adaptation and mitigation strategies. Knowledge about the weather and how to overcome it is also myths about the environment containing taboo and prohibition as well as the annual harvest ritual. Digital technology using application is the nearest object to individual youngsters to access information openly and individually. Access of information using apps and internet is bridging the issues of climate change, myths and rituals about environment, and generation gaps. Social implications The behavior of young people of Generation X are not heeding the ban in the experience of their ancestors. It is not only because of their belief in myth depleted but also in the absence of respected elders. Person figures which are respected as wise men or local leaders to be role models. In the past, knowledge and cultural information are presented, preserved, generated down to future generations. Nowadays, information about climate, weather, cultural knowledge in agriculture, irrigation, daily life, ritual, myth, and kinship is no longer simply rely on figures but the media that they believe in. Originality/value It is an interdisciplinary research of global knowledge, memory and communication. Digital technology-based application as the system to support access of information and the effort of documentation on community myths and rituals of remote people may affect on sustainable local wisdoms which protect and sustain the environment to be inherited to next generations. Web, private social networks, wikis and blogs are becoming important corporate tools for communication, collaboration and information-sharing. It is a way of young people in this Generation X most familiar in such as interactive, collaborative, managing knowledge, and managing global system and bridging generation gaps.

This article analyzes the proposal of Catholic education designed by the clergy and laity of the city of Puebla, in Mexico, between 1870 and 1900, as attested in hemerographic sources. The purpose of this analysis is to comprehend the regional conflicts and debates around youth education during the ‘Porfiriato’ by emphasizing the confessional perspective. The work focuses both on the founding of schools and on Catholic discourses about basic and normal education in order to delve into the cultural wars between the faithful and liberals in Mexico during the second half of the 19th century. I argue that, between 1870 and 1900, the clergy, the religious orders and, to a lesser extent, the laity of Puebla promoted a proposal for Catholic education as a response to the secular education promoted by the liberal regime. I conclude that Puebla’s Catholic Church developed a project of educational, social, and ecclesial renewal that promoted a formation of the youth that sought to combine scientific advances with a solid religious formation and a Mexican patriotic identity.

Abstract Research about the faith of young people (by which I mean Millennials and Generation Z) has suggested that they are increasingly non-denominational or denominationally fluid, with a method of choosing churches that is in line with neo-capitalist consumerism. This has created a focus of completely reimagining the church to appeal to young people. This paper, by tracing the historical interdenominational and ecumenical student movements, explains that young people tend to understand their denominational identity differently depending on their evangelical or theologically liberal/progressive stance. Yet neither stream alligns to this reductive post-denominational rhetoric that removes ecumenical and theological sophistication from young people. By using the case study of the United Reformed Church Youth (thereafter urc Youth), which consists of a broadly theological and politically liberal group of 14–26-year-olds, I argue that young people are ecumenically aware and value being integrated into larger denominational structures.

Democracy and frequent changes of government in Kyrgyzstan contribute to the spread of various religious movements in the country. Social processes, political shifts and the spread of radical religious ideas among young people emphasize the relevance of this study. The purpose of this article is to assess the impact of Kyrgyzstan's religious policy on the religious consciousness of contemporary youth. The study used general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization, historical and critical, comparative, dialectical, as well as empirical methods of surveys and questionnaires. The study showed that the religious policy of Kyrgyzstan is characterized by democracy and liberalism, based on the secular nature of the state. Kyrgyzstan is a multi-confessional country, with more than 30 religions. The vast majority of Kyrgyzstan's population are Sunni Muslims, and the second most common religious denomination is Orthodox Christianity. Since 1991, Kyrgyzstan has witnessed a process of Islamization, and non-traditional religious movements, both Islamic and other religious doctrines, have also penetrated and gained popularity in the country. The state's liberal policy in the field of religion facilitates the penetration of non-traditional religious organizations from abroad into Kyrgyzstan. Young people are particularly susceptible to new religious movements. This phenomenon can lead to the spread of radical religious ideas among the youth of Kyrgyzstan. In this regard, the state should pay closer attention to the policy in the field of religion. The practical value of the work is determined by the fact that its results can be useful in further research on this issue.

Abstract The family and denominational factors influencing intergenerational religious transmission have been examined in a substantial body of work. Despite research identifying religious ideology as a salient aspect of American religion, however, its role in religious transmission remains unexplored. In this study, I use the National Study of Youth and Religion to test whether children’s worship attendance and centrality of faith in young adulthood differ based on whether their parents identify as religiously liberal, moderate, conservative, or none of these. I further test whether the strength of the relationship between parent and child religiosity differs between ideological groups. The primary finding is that religious transmission is stronger among children of religious conservatives than for any other group, while the other groups do not differ significantly from one another. These differences in transmission are largely explained by religious conservative parenting approaches, congregational involvement, and most importantly, more intensive religious socialization.

Modern people have cut themselves off from the sacred and imaginative realties and live in secular and measurable time. They live in a world described by Max Weber in terms of disenchantment. In Muslim society, many Muslims are not detached from reality; rather, they live in an enchanted world, a world of spirits and forces. This creates tensions between secular liberal and traditional views of life. In this sense, the young people strives to take a certain place and role in that society; they try to know themselves in society, to determine their personalities’ limits, to find out ‘who they are, what they believe, what they value and connect, what their aim should be, in short, what their place in society is’. In this research, the identity, religious life and behavior of Muslim young people, religious resilience, and accordingly religious changes and transformations have been examined along with religious potential. To be resilient, a person must be able to change, and to adapt to new circumstances. Thus, the paper explores that the Turkish youth may have new religious perceptions and different identity structures depending on the color of the time. The effect of different cultures and social changes and the new social manifestations that develop depending on this situation can be effective on the way to the transformation of religious identities. İn the first step, this paper is exploring the questions: ‘how does religion affect young people's recognition and evaluation of themselves and life? The next step is to research how Muslim youth can help people experiencing resilience to be strengthened, and how they can be strengthened as they exercise a religiosity and their identity. The paper could help to find out how religious faith can have in enabling people to overcome difficulty by giving them faith to hold on to life and find meaning and purpose, as well as by providing a supportive network of people. The data were obtained from semi-structured interviews which were conducted with 30 students of Şırnak University in Turkey. İt includes participants’ accounts of their process of making meaning of the world, their evolving understanding, perceptions, experiences and identity situations. Nevertheless, literature survey method has chosen to support and enhance the quality of the research. The qualitative research method was adopted as an interpretative paradigm. The data shows that; the relationship between the individual and religious belief and identity motivation is related to inhomogeneous results and factors. Young people create their own identity, which is mixed, and bricolage. Each individual has different conceptions and different motivations regarding religious identity. In this sense, religiosity and identity is fed by different social and psychological dynamics; in general, it seems to be related to time, space and socialization processes.

AbstractThe debates at the nexus of migration and gender often focus on the supposedly diverging ideals Muslims and Christians have about gender. Migrant femininities and masculinities are framed in contrast to liberal, Western values and they undermine the efforts for more gender equality in Western societies. Only a few studies have addressed non-Muslim migrants' construction of, and their perceptions of, the femininities and masculinities of others. To fill this gap, we present the findings of a qualitative social research project where 43 young people aged 16 to 29 shared with us their perceptions regarding gender ideals. In our analysis, we utilize theories developed within women's studies and critical men and masculinities scholarship and adopt an intersectional lens to investigate how young first- and second-generation migrants in Berlin with roots in different world regions imagine their own and others' ideals of masculinity and femininity. Like non-migrant youth, our research participants want their life partnerships to be based on gender equality. Contrary to this, their ideals of femininity and masculinity embrace traditional gender roles, and they mirror the racialized relations in German society. We do not argue that the migrant youth's gender ideals are significantly shaped by their ethnic or religious belonging, and thus they do differ from those of non-migrant youth. However, racial othering is relevant for these migrants' images of their life partners and should be taken under consideration while designing specific policies aimed at increasing levels of gender equality in multi-diverse societies.

The articles explores internal and external factors explaining the emergencе of the islamist terrorism on the French soil as well as the modalities of the French authorities’ fight with it. In connection with the fact that most terrorists were born and grew up in France, special attention is paid to the problem of the Muslim community, the largest in Europe. An objective contradiction is noted between the desire of the majority of Muslims to preserve religious traditions and de facto atheistic French society. Coupled with the problems of poverty and social exclusion, this creates favorable conditions for the activities of Islamic fundamentalists, including militant, who seek to radicalize Muslim youth and promote the idea of jihad. The attempts of the authorities to oppose them with «French Islam», which would be compatible with the liberal «republican values» and the secular State, are showed. Measures to prevent radicalization of young Muslims are considered. At the same time, the article analyzes the efforts of the authorities to prevent terrorist attacks with the help of security structures, by tightening control over citizens, mobilizing local governments, forming a «culture of security» throughout the whole society. The fight of France against jihadism outside of its borders, namely in the Sahel region in Africa, is touched upon.

Malaysia is well known to the world audience as a multicultural nation and a country dominated by religious beliefs, including religions such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism. However, over the years, Malaysia has been doing its rounds in the papers for its strict rules over the denial of human rights for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. In 2015, Malaysia’s ex–Prime Minister Najib Razak openly declared his take on the LGBT community by equating them to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and claiming that both are ‘enemies of Islam’. Whereas Islamic religious authorities have made clear their stance on LGBT communities, the Malaysian Consultative Council on Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) has taken a much-blanketed approach on the matter. The group is against any violent attack against, harassment or intimidation of and threat to the LGBT community, but the very essence of this stand is oxymoronic, as they have not done anything to prevent such incidents from taking place either. Sikhism has a liberal perspective on acceptance, regarding aspects such as gender, race, ethnicity and age, to name a few, that one would interpret it is an LGBT-friendly religion. Hence, this article is a humble attempt at understanding the Malaysian Sikh youths’ perspectives on the ever-growing branches of sexual identity. This article will add to the literature on Sikhs’ attitudes towards homosexuality, especially in Southeast Asia.

The article analyzes the reasons for the students’ protests that took place in three universities of pre-revolutionary Ukraine: St. Vladimir University in Kyiv, Novorossiysk University in Odessa and Kharkiv University. As a rule, students’ riots arose due to those restrictive and prohibitive measures of the ruling regime which the radical part of the students described to be purely discriminatory. The leadership of the Ministry of National Education and the trustees of the universities persistently tried not to allow for effective elements of student self-government, even when they concerned educational, cultural or charitable areas. The paper also reveals the factors that led to the politicization of students’ unrest, including that explained by changing the social composition of students and limiting the autonomous status of universities, especially after the enactment of the Statute of 1884 which rejected the corporatism. It was emphasized that the students’ protests were quite varied, and the demands also ranged from too radical to moderate. As a rule, it depended on the presence of the group of students who took the leading role during the actions, but could take both extreme and liberal positions. The emphasis is placed on the inconsistency, a certain chaos of the governmental actions, the presence of conservative rather than liberal-minded people among the teaching staff. This situation left students’ groups without the advice of experienced people, except for a small group of sympathizers of privat-docents. The article proves that the unnecessary extremes that were allowed in the speeches and demands by students’ groups, and not only by governmental agencies were explained by the insufficient social maturity of the youth. In particular, the students’ attitude to the professoriate, on the one hand, was quite understandable when they evaluated teachers of different status in terms of not only professionalism but also moral and ethical qualities. On the other hand, the unreasonable subjectivity was allowed when students, without sufficient grounds, considered granting a doctorate to a particular teacher to be illegal. It is noteworthy that the main reason for such censoriousness of students was often the professors’ high demands at the exams. It is important that the change in the social composition of university students with the predominance of so-called commoners, who had mostly low fortunes, exacerbated the situation. After all, the vast majority of students from low-income families were ashamed to admit this fact understanding their dependence on the charitable actions of the government. Therefore, there was a certain dualism: students like these were satisfied with the governmental financial and material assistance, but the regime's restrictive actions pushed them to resist. It was found that the vast majority of students tried not to insist on purely political demands, as the radicals did. To a large extent, the nature of the requirements was formed by the ratio of the number of so-called “white-collars” – students of the active minority and the passive majority. Therefore, their composition was significantly different depending on the university. Thus, students' perception of the importance of corporate events, which, in their opinion, would allow them to implement the socio-political ideals inherent to the 70-80s of the XIX century, was not identical in three universities as well as among individual students’ groups. In addition, we should not forget about the multinational, multi-religious composition of students of pre-revolutionary Ukraine. After all, not only the management of educational institutions, but also the gendarmerie police monitored closely the behavior of “Ukrainophiles”, as well as Catholic and Jewish students. From the point of view of the regime's guards, they were the most dangerous part of the students for the authorities. It is also noted that a certain part of student activists with radical protest views were no longer satisfied with the events during which purely cultural and educational demands were made. Besides, some public organizations, the leftist SRs and anarchists intensified their agitation among the students, using, not without abuse, the expansiveness and age-specific enthusiasm, recklessness of the youth. Furthermore, the authorities generally used force and illicit measures in their actions, refusing even to establish voluntary societies to help low-income students. In terms of comparability, great attention is paid to the active work of students’ societies that existed with the permission of the authorities, wall newspapers, almanacs published by student activists, which took place at Charles University in Prague. The process of students' growing critical attitude to teachers is traced, in particular to those, who in their eyes, did not correspond to the concept of carriers of “reasonable and eternal”. It is emphasized, that such frustration largely accumulated the protest feelings of students, undermining their former faith in the noble educational mission carried out at universities. It is stated that the reason for the large number of leaders heading the students’ movement from medical faculties was their better awareness of the state affairs in the field of health care: excessive mortality, especially of infants and children under 5, insufficient domestic medical system. At the same time, it has been proven that the active assessment of professorial competence was not always objective, since it was more often about teachers’ socio-political face, rather than professionalism. It is important that the 70s of the XIX century became a certain watershed between the two stages of students’ address: liberal-restrained and politically-radicalized. At the same time, the strengthening of students’ protests in the 80s was based on measures aimed at limiting the autonomy of universities and denying them corporatism. The emphasis is placed on the inconsistency of government actions, the presence of a greater number of liberal teachers in course of time, including full professors, but still on the predominance of the conservatives whose loyalty to the current government was beyond doubt. It meant that the abyss that had separated the majority of the students from the teaching staff was only widening. It is also noted that among the students there existed a group of those who did not support permanent confrontations with the teachers or university leadership. Not unreasonably, they believed that radical and often inconsiderate students’ actions only worsened the prospects for resolving the aggravating problems of university life.

Introduction Discourses of queer youth suicide regularly represent non-heterosexual young men as vulnerable and as victims who are inherently without strategies for coping with adversity (qv. Rasmussen; Marshall; Driver 3). Alternatively, queer youth are sometimes marked as fundamentally resilient, as avid users of tools of resilience and community such as the internet (Smith & Gray 74; Wexler et al. 566; Hillier & Harrison; Bryson & McIntosh). In the latter approach, protective factors are typically presented as specific to queer youth (e.g., Russell 10), therefore also minoritising and essentialising resilience. Both approaches ignore the diversity of queer young lives and the capacity for a subject to be both vulnerable and resilient—concepts which need to be unpacked if we are to further our understanding of minority lives. Significantly, both approaches also ignore the fact that growing up occurs in a series of transitions, cultural encounters and circumstantial changes. Queer (LGBT) youth are neither all victims and vulnerable, nor are they all self-reliant and resilient. Recent research has indicated that non-heterosexual youth continue to have a higher rate of suicide and self-harm (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide), although this is by no means indicative that vast numbers of LGBTI require support, intervention or preventative measures throughout all aspects of the transition into adult life. This article has two objectives, both of which are best addressed together in order to come at an understanding as how best to frame approaches to queer youth suicide as an ongoing social concern. Firstly, to ask what human, psychological and subjective ‘resilience’ might be said to mean in the context of public discourses of queer youth suicidality, and secondly to ask what a concept of ‘resilience’ does for queer youth identity in terms of relationality. Neither objective, of course, can be met alone in a short article—the purpose here is to open thinking on the topic in ways that question normative assumptions about the conditions of queer youth in the context of liveable lives and the positioning of resilience as reliant on normative accounts of identity. The article begins with a brief overview of the different uses of resilience in the context of broad social representations of queer youth. It goes on to discuss the It Gets Better video site which aimed to produce resilience among predominantly bullied queer youth by ‘imparting hope’. Some remarks on the relationship between identity, sexuality, sociality and resilience will conclude. Resilience and the Queer Youth Subject Developed by Crawford Holling in the 1970s, the concept of resilience was used to describe the capacity of a system to “absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables” (Holling 14). In terms of ecology and the physical sciences, the notion of resilience operates within an assumption that future events will not be known but will be unexpected, thereby requiring a capacity to accommodate those events whatever form they take (21). When later used in the psychological sciences, the term resilience likewise assumes disruption and uncertainty in lived experience, requiring a resilient subject to be capable in both learning and adaptation. In the context of queer youth, resilience, then, can be applied to mean an adaptation to new situations which exacerbate vulnerability to suicidality for those who are positioned to seek escape from intolerable emotional pain or the perception of life as unliveable (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide 10, 148). Resilience in this use presumes that, for example, bullying has a detrimental causal relationship with suicidality when it newly occurs if the subject does not have the capacity to adapt and incorporate it into everyday life. Bullying, however, is generally related to suicide only by virtue of its ongoingness rather than it being a sudden shift in social relations. Striking about much of the discourse of resilience in the psychological sciences is that the concept of resilience presumes a unitary subject who is a subject prior to relationality and sociality (e.g. Leipold & Greve; Singh et al.; Smith & Gray). Resilience is thus seen as a capacity to cope with adversity as if adversity arises prior to the subject rather than being a form of relationality that conditions the subject. In that context, the queer youth subject is understood in essentialist terms, whereby sexual subjectivity is represented simultaneously as both a norm and abnormal, and is a factor of subjectivity that is understood to pre-exist sociality. That is, the queer youth subject is queer before relationality with others, thereby before the kinds of relationalities that might demand resilience. An alternative is to understand queer youth not as vulnerable because they are queer, but as subjects constituted in the (inequitably distributed) precarity of corporeal life in sociality, and thereby already formed in (inequitably distributed) resilience to the sorts of shifts, changes and adversities that shift one from an experience of vulnerability to an experience of a life that is unliveable (Butler, Precarious Life; Frames of War). Approaching queer youth suicide from a perspective not of risk but through the simultaneous fostering and critique of resilience opens the possibility of providing solutions that aid younger persons to resist suicidality as a flight from intolerable pain without articulating the self as inviolable and thereby losing the ethical value of the recognition of vulnerability. The question, then, is whether such critique can be found in sites of resilience discourse in relation to queer youth. Queer Youth and It Gets Better The video blogging site It Gets Better (http://www.itgetsbetter.org) was begun by columnist Dan Savage in response to a spate of reported queer student suicides in September/October 2010 in the United States. The site hosts more than a thousand video contributions, many from queer adults who seek to provide hope for younger persons by showing that queer adulthood is markedly different from the experiences of harassment, bullying, loneliness or surveillance experienced by queer youth in school and family environments. This is among the first widely-available communicative media form to address directly queer youth on issues related to suicide, and the first to draw on lived experiences as a means by which to provide resources for queer youth resilience. The fact that these experiences are related through video-logs (vlogs) provides the texts with a greater sense of authenticity and a framework which often addresses youth directly on the topic of suicidality (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide). Savage’s intention was to produce resilience in queer youth by imparting ‘hope for young people facing harassment’ and to create ‘a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that … it does indeed get better’ (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/). Hope, in this context, is represented as the core attribute of queer youth resilience. The tag-line of the site is: Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/). Hope for the future is frequently presented as hope for an end to school days. In the primary video of the site, Dan Savage’s partner Terry describes his school experiences: My school was pretty miserable … I was picked on mercilessly in school. People were really cruel to me. I was bullied a lot. Beat up, thrown against walls and lockers and windows; stuffed into bathroom stalls. . . . Honestly, things got better the day I left highschool. I didn’t see the bullies every day, I didn’t see the people who harassed me every day, I didn’t have to see the school administrators who would do nothing about it every day. Life instantly got better (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/) Such comments present a picture of school life in which the institutional norms of secondary schools that depend so heavily on surveillance, discriminative norms, economies of secrecy and disclosure permit bullying and ostracisation to flourish and become, then, the site of hopelessness in what to many appears at the time as a period of never-ending permanency. Indeed, teen-aged life has often been figured in geographic terms as a kind of hopeless banishment from the realities that are yet to come: Eve Sedgwick referred to that period as ‘that long Babylonian exile known as queer childhood’ (4). The emphatic focus on the institutional environment of highschool rather than family, rural towns, closetedness, religious discourse or feelings of isolation is remarkably important in changing the contemporary way in which the social situation of queer youth suicide has been depicted. The discourse of the It Gets Better project and contributions makes ‘school’ its object—a site that demands resilience of its queer students as the remedy to the detrimental effects of bullying. Here, however, resilience is not depicted as adaptability but the strength to tolerate and, effectively, ‘wait out’, a bullying environment. The focus on bullying that frames the dialogue on queer youth suicide and youth resilience in the It Gets Better videos is the product of a mid-2000s shift in focus to the effects of bullying on LGBT youth in place of critiques of heterosexism, sexual identity, coming out and physical violence (Fodero), regularly depicting bullying as directly causal of suicide (Kim & Leventhal 151; Espelage & Swearer 157; Hegna & Wichstrøm 35). Bullying, in these representations, is articulated as that which is, on the one hand, preventable through punitive institutional policies and, on the other, as an ineradicable fact of living through school years. It is, in the latter depiction, that experience for which younger LGBT persons must manage their own resistance. In depicting school as the site of anti-queer bullying, the It Gets Better project represents queer youth as losing hope of escape from the intolerable pain of bullying in its persistence and repetition. However, the site’s purpose is to show that escape from the school environment to what is regularly depicted as a neoliberal, white and affluent representation of queer adulthood, founded on conservative coupledom (Cover, “Object(ives) of Desire”), careers, urban living, and relative wealth—depictions somewhat different from the reality of diverse queer lives. The shift from the school-bullying in queer youth to the liberal stability of queer adulthood is figured in the It Gets Better discourse as not only possible but as that which should be anticipated. It is in that anticipation that resilience is articulated in a way which calls upon queer youth to manage their own resiliency by having or performing hopefulness. Representing hope as the performative element in queer youth resilience has precedence as a suicide prevention strategy. Hopelessness is a key factor in much of the contemporary academic discussion of suicide risk in general and is often used as a predictor for recognising suicidal behaviour (Battin 13), although it is also particularly associated with suicidality and queer teenagers. Hopelessness is usually understood as despair or desperateness, the lack of expectation of a situation or goal one desires or feels one should desire. For Holden and colleagues, hopelessness is counter to social desirability, which is understood as the capacity to describe oneself in terms by which society judges a person as legitimate or desirable (Holden, Mendonca & Serin 500). Psychological and psychiatric measurement techniques frequently rely on Aaron T. Beck’s Hopelessness Scale, which utilises a twenty-question true/false survey designed to measure feelings about the future, expectation and self-motivation in adults over the age of seventeen years as a predictor of suicidal behaviour. Beck and colleagues attempted to provide an objective measurement for hopelessness rather than leave it treated as a diffuse and vague state of feeling in patients with depression. The tool asks a series of questions, most about the future, presenting a score on whether or not the answers given were true or false. Questions include: ‘I might as well give up because I can’t make things better for myself’; ‘I can’t imagine what my life would be like in ten years’; ‘My future seems dark to me’; and ‘All I can see ahead of me is unpleasantness rather than pleasantness’. Responding true to these indicates hopelessness. Responding false to some of the following also indicates hopelessness: ‘I can look forward to more good times than bad times’; and ‘When things are going badly, I am helped by knowing they can’t stay that way forever’ (Beck). While these questions and the scale are not used uncritically, the relationship between the discursive construction through the questions of what constitutes hopelessness and the aims of the It Gets Better videos are notably comparable. The objective, then, of the videos is to provide evidence and, perhaps, instil hope that would allow such questions to be answered differently, particularly to be able to give a true response to the last question above. Hallway Allies liaison support group, which operates across university campuses and high schools to prevent bullying, stated in this representative way in the introduction to their video contribution: ‘Remember to keep your head up, highschool doesn’t last forever’ (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/video /entry/5wwozgwyruy/). Or, as Rebecca in the introductory statement of another video contribution put it: You may be feeling like this pain will last forever, like you have no control, it’s dark, oppressive and feels like there is no end. I know – I get it. but I promise … hang in there and you’ll find it … Wait – you’ll see – it gets better! (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/video/entry/wxymqzw3oqy/). As can be seen, such video examples respond to a discourse of hopelessness aligned with the framework exemplified by Beck’s scale, prompting queer youth audiences of these videos to imagine a future for themselves, to understand hope in temporal terms of future wellbeing, and to know that the future does not necessarily hold the same kinds of unpleasantness as experienced in the everyday high school environment. Sexual Identity, Resilience and the Normative Lifecycle In the It Gets Better framework, resilience is produced in the knowledge of a queer life that is linear and patterned through stages in relation to institutional forms of belonging (and non-belonging). That is, a queer life is represented as one which undergoes the hardship of being bullied in school, of leaving that institutional environment for a queer adulthood that is built on a myth of safety, pleasure, success and a distinctive break from the environment of the past (as if the psyche or the self is re-produced anew in a phase of a queer lifecycle). Working within a queer theoretical and cultural understanding of identity, sexual subjectivity can be understood as constituted in social and cultural formations. Overturning the previously-held liberal notion of power as the power which represses sex and sexualities, Foucault’s History of Sexuality provided queer theory with an argument in which power, as deployed through discourse and discursive formations, produces the coherent sexual subject. This occurs historically and only in specific periods. In Foucault’s analysis, homosexual identities become conceivable in the Nineteenth Century as a result of specific juridical, medical and criminal discourses (85). From a Foucauldian perspective, there is no subject driven by an inner psyche or a pre-determined desire (as in psychoanalysis). Instead, such subjectivity occurs in and through the power/knowledge network of discourse as it writes or scripts the subject into subjectivity. Canonical queer theorist Judith Butler has been central in extending Foucault’s analysis in ways which are pragmatic for understanding queer youth in the context of growing up and transitioning into adulthood. Her theory of performativity has usefully complexified the ways in which we can understand sexual identity and allowed us to overcome the core assumption in much queer youth research that heterosexual and homosexual identities are natural, mutually-exclusive and innate; instead, allowing us to focus on how the process of subject formation for youth is implicated in the tensions and pressures of a range of cultural, social, organisational and communicative encounters and engagements. Butler projects the most useful post-structuralist discussion of subjectivity by suggesting that the subject is constituted by repetitive performances in terms of the structure of signification that produces retroactively the illusion of an inner subjective core (Butler, Gender Trouble 143). Queer identity becomes a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience, and is the resultant effect of regimentary discursive practices (16, 18). The non-heterosexual subject, then, is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are formed as recognisable identity performances in the context, here, of a set of lifecycle expectations built through a vulnerable queer childhood, being bullied, attaining hope, leaving school and fruition in queer adulthood. Resilience, in the It Gets Better discourse, then, is seen to be produced in understanding the stages of a normative queer life. An issue emerges for how queer youth suicide is understood within this particular formation that posits non-heterosexuality as the problematic source of suicidality emerges in the assumption that the vulnerability to suicidal behaviours for queer youth is the result singularly of sexuality, rather than looking to the fact that sexuality is one facet of identity – an important and sometimes fraught one for adolescents in general – located within a complex of other formations of identity and selfhood. This is part of what Diana Fuss has identified as the “synecdochical tendency to see only one part of a subject’s identity (usually the most visible part) and to make that part stand for the whole” (116). This ignores the opportunity to think through the conditions of queer youth in terms of the interaction between different facets of identity (such as gender and ethnicity, but also personal experience), different contexts in which identity is performed and different institutional settings that vary in response and valuation of non-normative aspects of subjectivity, thereby allowing a vulnerability not to be an attribute of being a queer youth, but to be understood as produced across a nuanced and complex array of factors. While the very concept of resilience invokes both an individualisation of the subject and a disciplinary regime of pastoral care (Foucault, Abnormal), queer youth in the It Gets Better discourse of hope are depicted multiply as: Inherently vulnerable and lacking resilience as a result of an essentialist notion of sexual orientation.Constituted in a relationality within a schooling environment that is conditioned by bullying as the primary expression of diverse socialityFinding resilience only through a self-managed and self-articulated expression of ‘hope’ that is to be produced in the knowledge that there is an ‘escape’ from a school environment. What the discourse of that which we might refer to as “resilient hopefulness” does is represent queer youth reductively as inherently non-resilient. It ignores the multiple expressions of sexual identity, the capacity to respond to suicidality through a critique of normative sexual subjectivity, and the capabilities of queer youth to develop meaningful relationships across all sexual possibilities that are, themselves, forms of resilience or at least mitigations of vulnerability. At the same time, “resilient hopefulness” is produced within a context in which a normative sociality of bullying culture is expressed as timeless and unchangeable (rather than historical and institutional), thereby requiring queer younger persons to undertake the task of managing vulnerability, risk, resilience and identity as an individualised responsibility outside of communities of care. Whether the presentation of a normative lifecycle is genuinely a preventative measure for queer youth suicidality is that which suicidologists and practitioners must test, although one might argue at this stage that resilience is better produced through a broader appeal to social diversity rather than the regimentation of a queer life that must ‘wait in hope’ for a liveability that may never come. References Battin, Margaret Pabst. Ethical Issues in Suicide. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Beck, Aaron T., Arlene Weissman, Larry Trexler, and David Lester. “The Measurement of Pessimism: The Hopelessness Scale” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42.6 (1974): 861–865. Bryson, Mary K., and Lori B. MacIntosh. “Can We Play ‘Fun Gay’?: Disjuncture and Difference, and the Precarious Mobilities of Millennial Queer Youth Narratives.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23.1 (2010): 101-124. Butler, Judith. 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Previous studies contend that Philippines is still a ‘collectivist’ society (Cf. Hofstede Center; Cukur et al. 2004:613-634). In this collectivist or community-oriented society, individualism is not something that is highly valued. Being ‘individualistic’ is often associated to being narcissistic, loner, asocial, selfish, etc. However, one may ask whether the youth in the Philippines are not spared from this insidious culture of individualism, notwithstanding the seemingly dominant collective and communitarian character of the society. Although the overwhelming poverty is still the main problem in the Philippines, where according to Wostyn (2010:26) “only the wonderland of movies gives some respite to their consciousness of suffering and oppression”, the Filipino youth of today are also exposed to the consumeristic values of the ‘city’ and are not spared from the contradictions and insecurities posed by the pluralistic society. They are citizens of an increasing social and cultural pluralism characteristic of many liberal societies. Is it possible that individualism may also exist within this culture, especially among the younger generation? Is individualism slowly creeping in as caused by their exposure and easy access to modern technology, to higher education, mobility, interactions with other cultures, etc. Would this individualistic tendency have any influence on their religious beliefs, especially their belief on salvation? What would be the implications and challenges of these findings to the families in the Philippines? These are the questions we wish to answer in this study. 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The use of the term authenticity in the social science literature can be rather eclectic at best and unscrupulous at worst. (Vanini, 74)We live in an age of authenticity, according to Charles Taylor, an era which prizes the finding of one’s life “against the demands of external conformity” (67–68). Taylor’s argument is that, correctly practiced, authenticity need not result in individualism or tribalism but rather a generation of people “made more self-responsible” (77).Philip Vanini has surveyed the turn toward authenticity in sociology. He has parsed the word authenticity, and argued that it has been used in three ways—factual, original, and sincere. A failure to attend to these distinctives, mixed with a “paucity of systematic empirical research” has resulted in abstract speculation (75). This article responds to Taylor’s analysis and Vanini’s challenge.My argument utilises Vanini’s theoretical frame—authenticity as factual, original, and sincere—to analyse empirical data gathered in the study of recent religious innovation occurring amongst a set of (“alternative worship”) Christian communities in the United Kingdom. I am drawing upon longitudinal research I have conducted, including participant observation in digital forums from 1997 to the present, along with semi-structured interviews conducted in the United Kingdom in 2001 and 2012.A study of “alternative worship” was deemed significant given such communities’s interaction with contemporary culture, including their use of dance music, multi-media, and social media (Baker, Taylor). Such approaches contrast with other contemporary religious approaches to culture, including a fundamentalist retreat from culture or the maintenance of a “high” culture, and thus inherited patterns of religious expression (Roberts).I argue that the discourse of “alternative worship” deploy authenticity-as-originality as essential to their identity creation. This notion of authenticity is used by these communities to locate themselves culturally (as authentically-original in contemporary cultures), and thus simultaneously to define themselves as marginal from mainstream religious expression.Intriguingly, a decade later, “alternative worship” was appropriated by the mainstream. A new organisation—Fresh Expressions—emerged from within the Church of England, and the Methodist Church in Britain that, as it developed, drew on “alternative worship” for legitimation. A focus on authenticity provides a lens by which to pay particular attention to the narratives offered by social organisations in the processes of innovation. How did the discourse deployed by Fresh Expressions in creating innovation engage “alternative worship” as an existing innovation? How did these “alternative worship” groups, who had found generative energy in their location as an alternative—authentically-original—expression, respond to this appropriation by mainstream religious life?A helpful conversation partner in teasing out the complexity of these moves within contemporary religious innovation is Sarah Thornton. She researched trends in dance clubs, and rave music in Britain, during a similar time period. Thornton highlighted the value of authenticity, which she argued was deployed in club cultures to create “subcultural capital” (98-105). She further explored how the discourses around authenticity were appropriated over time through the complex networks within which popular culture flows (Bennett; Collins; Featherstone; McRobbie; Willis).This article will demonstrate that a similar pattern—using authenticity-as-originality to create “subcultural capital”—was at work in “alternative worship.” Further, the notions of authenticity as factual, original, and sincere are helpful in parsing the complex networks that exist within the domains of religious cultures. This analysis will be two-fold, first as the mainstream appropriates, and second as the “alternative” responds.Thornton emerged “post-Birmingham.” She drew on the scholarship associated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, glad of their turn toward popular culture. Nevertheless she considered her work to be distinct. Thornton posited the construction of “taste cultures” through distinctions created by those inside a particular set of signs and symbols. She argued for a networked view of society, one that recognised the complex roles of media and commerce in constructing distinctions and sought a more multi-dimensional frame by which to analyse the interplay between mainstream and marginal.In order to structure my investigation, I am suggesting three stages of development capture the priority, yet complexity, of authenticity in contemporary religious innovation: generation, appropriation, complexification.Generation of Authenticity-as-OriginalityThornton (26, italics original) writes:authenticity is arguably the most important value ascribed to popular music … Music is perceived as authentic when it rings true or feels real, when it has credibility and comes across as genuine. In an age of endless representations and global mediation, the experience of musical authenticity is perceived as a cure both for alienation … and dissimulation.Thornton is arguing that in this manifestation of youth culture, authenticity is valued. Further, authenticity is a perception, attached to phrases like “rings true” and “feels real.” Therefore, authenticity is hard to measure. Perhaps this move is deliberate, an attempt by those inside the “taste culture” to preserve their “subcultural capital,”—their particular sets of distinctions.Thornton’s use of authentic slides between authenticity-as-sincerity and authenticity-as-originality. For example, in the above quote, the language of “true” and “real” is a referencing of authenticity-as-sincerity. However, as Thornton analysed the appropriation of club culture by the mainstream, she is drawing, without stating it clearly, on both authenticity-as-sincerity and authenticity-as-originality.At around the time that Thornton was analysing club cultures, a number of Christian religious groups in the United Kingdom began to incorporate features of club culture into their worship services. Churches began to experiment with services beginning at club times (9.00 pm), the playing of dance music, and the use of “video-jockeying.” According to Roberts many of these worshipping communities “had close links to this movement in dance culture” (15).A discourse of authenticity was used to legitimise such innovation. Consider the description of one worship experience, located in Sheffield, England, known as Nine o’Clock Service (Fox 9-10, italics original).We enter a round, darkened room where there are forty-two television sets and twelve large video screens and projections around the walls—projections of dancing DNA, dancing planets and galaxies and atoms … this was a very friendly place for a generation raised on television and images … these people … are doing it themselves and in the center of the city and in the center of their society: at worship itself.This description makes a number of appeals to authenticity. The phrase “a generation raised on television and images” implies another generation not raised in digitally rich environments. A “subcultural” distinction has been created. The phrase “doing it themselves” suggests that this ‘digital generation’ creates something distinct, an authentic expression of their “taste culture.” The celebration of “doing it for themselves” resonates with Charles Taylor’s analysis of an age of authenticity in which self-discovery is connected with artistic creation (62).The Nine o’Clock Service gained nationwide attention, attracting attendances of over 600 young people. Rogerson described it as “a bold and imaginative attempt at contextual theology … people were attracted to it in the first instance for aesthetic and cultural reasons” (51). The priority on the aesthetic and the cultural, in contrast to the doctrinal, suggests a valuing of authenticity-as-originality.Reading Rogerson alongside Taylor teases out a further nuance in regard to the application of authenticity. Rogerson described the Nine o’Clock Service as offering “an alternative way of living in a materialist and acquisitive world” (50). This resonates with Charles Taylor’s argument that authenticity can be practiced in ways that make people “more self-responsible” (77). It suggests that the authenticity-as-originality expressed by the Nine o’Clock Service not only appealed culturally, but also offered an ethic of authenticity. We will return to this later in my argument.Inspired by the Nine o’Clock Service, other groups in the United Kingdom began to offer a similar experience. According to Adrian Riley (6):The Nine O’clock Service … was the first worshipping community to combine elements of club culture with passionate worship … It pioneered what is commonly known as “alternative worship” … Similar groups were established themselves albeit on a smaller scale.The very term “alternative worship” is significant. Sociologist of religion Abby Day argued that “boundary-marking [creates] an identity” (50). Applying Day, the term “alternative” is being used to create an identity in contrast to the existing, mainstream church. The “digitally rich” are indeed “doing it for themselves.” To be “alternative” is to be authentically-original: to be authentically-original means a participant cannot, by definition, be mainstream.Thornton argued that subcultures needed to define themselves against in order to maintain themselves as “hip” (119). This seems to describe the use of the term “alternative.” Ironically, the mainstream is needed, in order to define against, to create identity by being authentically-original (Kelly).Hence the following claim by an “alternative worship” organiser (Interview G, 2001):People were willing to play around and to say, well who knows what will happen if we run this video clip or commercial next to this sixteenth century religious painting and if we play, you know, Black Flag or some weird band underneath it … And what will it feel like? Well let’s try it and see.Note the link with music (Black Flag, an American hard core punk band formed in 1976), so central to Thornton’s understanding of authenticity in popular youth cultures. Note also the similarity between Thornton’s ascribing of value in words like “rings true” and “feels real,” with words like “feel like” and “try and see.” The word “weird” is also significant. It is deployed as a signifier of authenticity, a sign of “subcultural capital.” It positions them as “alternative,” defined in (musical) distinction from the mainstream.In sum, my argument is that authenticity-as-originality is present in “alternative worship”: in the name, in the ethos of “doing it themselves,” and in the deploying of “subcultural capital” in the legitimation of innovation. All of this has been clarified through conversation with Thornton’s empirical research regarding the value of authenticity in club culture. My analysis of “alternative worship” as a religious innovation is consistent with Taylor’s claim that we inhabit an age of authenticity, one that can be practiced by “people who are made more self-responsible” (77).Mainstream AppropriationIn 2004, the Church of England produced Mission Shaped Church (MSC), a report regarding its future. It included a chapter that described recent religious innovation in England, grouped under twelve headings (alternative worship and base ecclesial communities, café, cell, network and seeker church models, multiple and mid week congregations, new forms of traditional churches, school and community-based initiatives, traditional church plants, youth congregations). The first innovation listed is “alternative worship.”The incoming Archbishop, Rowan Williams, drew on MSC to launch a new organisation. Called Fresh Expressions, over five million pounds was provided by the Church of England to fund an organisation to support this religious innovation.Intriguingly, recognition of authenticity in these “alternative” innovations was evident in the institutional discourse being created. When I interviewed Williams, he spoke of his commitment as a Bishop (Interview 6, 2012):I decided to spend a certain amount of quality time with people on the edge. Consequently when I was asked initially what are my priorities [as Archbishop] I said, “Well, this is what I’ve been watching on the edge … I really want to see how that could impact on the Church of England as a whole.In other words, what was marginal, what had until then generated identity by being authentic in contrast to the mainstream, was now being appropriated by the mainstream “to impact on the Church of England as a whole.” MSC was aware of this complexity. “Alternative worship” was described as containing “a strong desire to be different and is most vocal in its repudiation of existing church” (45). Nevertheless, it was appropriated by the mainstream.My argument has been that “alternative worship” drew on a discourse of authenticity-as-originality. Yet when we turn to analyse mainstream appropriation, we find the definitions of authenticity begin to slide. Authenticity-as-originality is affirmed, while authenticity-as-sincerity is introduced. The MSC affirmed the “ways in which the Church of England has sought to engage with the diverse cultures and networks that are part of contemporary life” (80). It made explicit the connection between originality and authenticity. “Some pioneers and leaders have yearned for a more authentic way of living, being, doing church” (80). This can be read as an affirmation of authenticity-as-originality.Yet MSC also introduced authenticity-as-sincerity as a caution to authenticity-as-originality. “Fresh expressions should not be embraced simply because they are popular and new, but because they are a sign of the work of God and of the kingdom” (80). Thus Fresh Expressions introduced authenticity-as-sincerity (sign of the work of God) and placed it alongside authenticity-as-originality. In so doing, in the shift from “alternative worship” to Fresh Expressions, a space is both conflated (twelve expressions of church) and contested (two notions of authenticity). Conflated, because MSC places alternative worship as one innovation alongside eleven others. Contested because of the introduction of authenticity-as-sincerity alongside the affirming of authenticity-as-originality. What is intriguing is to return to Taylor’s argument for the possibility of an ethic of authenticity in which “people are made more self-responsible” (77). Perhaps the response in MSC arises from the concern described by Taylor, the risk in an age of authenticity of a society that is more individualised and tribal (55-6). To put it in distinctly ecclesiological terms, how can the church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic be carried forward if authenticity-as-originality is celebrated at, and by, the margins? Does innovation contribute to more atomised, self-absorbed and fragmented expressions of church?Yet Taylor is adamant that authenticity can be embraced without an inevitable slide in these directions. He argued that humans share a "horizon of significance" in common (52), in which one’s own "identity crucially depends on [one’s] dialogical relations with others" (48). We have already considered Rogerson’s claim that the Nine o’Clock Service offered “an alternative way of living in a materialist and acquisitive world” (50). It embraced a “strong political dimension, and a concern for justice at local and international level” (46). In other words, “alternative worship’s” authenticity-as-originality was surely already an expression of “the kingdom,” one in which “people [were] made more self-responsible” (77) in the sharing of (drawing on Taylor) a "horizon of significance" in the task of identity-formation-in-relationships (52).Yet the placing in MSC of authenticity-as-sincerity alongside authenticity-as-originality could easily have been read by those in “alternative worship” as a failure to recognise their existing practicing of the ethic of authenticity, their embodying of “the kingdom.”Consequent ComplexificationMy research into “alternative worship” is longitudinal. After the launch of Fresh Expressions, I included a new set of interview questions, which sought to clarify how these “alternative worship” communities were impacted upon by the appropriation of “alternative worship” by the mainstream. The responses can be grouped into three categories: minimal impact, a sense of affirmation and a contested complexity.With regard to minimal impact, some “alternative worship” communities perceived the arrival of Fresh Expressions had minimal impact on their shared expression of faith. The following quote was representative: “Has had no impact at all actually. Apart from to be slightly puzzled” (Interview 3, 2012).Others found the advent of Fresh Expressions provided a sense of affirmation. “Fresh expressions is … an enabling concept. It was very powerful” (Focus group 2, 2012). Respondents in this category felt that their innovations within alternative worship had contributed to, or been valued by, the innovation of Fresh Expressions. Interestingly, those whose comments could be grouped in this category had significant “subcultural capital” invested in this mainstream appropriation. Specifically, they now had a vocational role that in some way was connected to Fresh Expressions. In using the term “subcultural capital” I am again drawing on Thornton (98–105), who argued that in the complex networks through which culture flows, certain people, for example DJ’s, have more influence in the ascribing of authenticity. This suggests that “subcultural” capital is also present in religious innovation, with certain individuals finding ways to influence, from the “alternative worship” margin, the narratives of authenticity used in the complex interplay between alternative worship and Fresh Expressions.For others the arrival of Fresh Expressions had resulted in a contested complexity. The following quote was representative: “It’s a crap piece of establishment branding …but then we’re just snobs” (Focus group 3, 2012). This comment returns us to my initial framing of authenticity-as-originality. I would argue that “we’re just snobs” has a similar rhetorical effect as “Black Flag or some weird band.” It is an act of marginal self-location essential in the construction of innovation and identity.This argument is strengthened given the fact that the comment was coming from a community that itself had become perhaps the most recognizable “brand” among “alternative worship.” They have developed their own logo, website, and related online merchandising. This would suggest the concern is not the practice of marketing per se. Rather the concern is that it seems “crap” in relation to authenticity-as-originality, in a loss of aesthetic quality and a blurring of the values of innovation and identity as it related to bold, imaginative, aesthetic, and cultural attempts at contextual theology (Rogerson 51).Returning to Thornton, her research was also longitudinal in that she explored what happened when a song from a club, which had defined itself against the mainstream and as “hip,” suddenly experienced mainstream success (119). What is relevant to this investigation into religious innovation is her argument that in club culture, “selling out” is perceived to have happened only when the marginal community “loses its sense of possession, exclusive ownership and familiar belonging” (124–26).I would suggest that this is what is happening within “alternative worship” in response to the arrival of Fresh Expressions. Both “alternative worship” and Fresh Expressions are religious innovations. But Fresh Expressions defined itself in a way that conflated the space. It meant that the boundary marking so essential to “alternative worship” was lost. Some gained from this. Others struggled with a loss of imaginative and cultural creativity, a softening of authenticity-as-originality.More importantly, the discourse around Fresh Expressions also introduced authenticity-as-sincerity as a value that could be used to contest authenticity-as-originality. Whether intended or not, this also challenged the ethic of authenticity already created by these “alternative worship” communities. Their authenticity-as-originality was already a practicing of an ethic of authenticity. They were already sharing a "horizon of significance" with humanity, entering into “dialogical relations with others" that were a contemporary expression of the church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic (Taylor 52, 48). ConclusionIn this article I have analysed the discourse around authenticity as it is manifest within one strand of contemporary religious innovation. Drawing on Vanini, Taylor, and Thornton, I have explored the generative possibilities as media and culture are utilised in an “alternative worship” that is authentically-original. I have outlined the consequences when authenticity-as-originality is appropriated by the mainstream, specifically in the innovation known as Fresh Expressions and the complexity when authenticity-as-sincerity is introduced as a contested value.The value of authenticity has been found to exist in a complex relationship with the ethics of authenticity within one domain of contemporary religious innovation.ReferencesBaker, Jonny. “Alternative Worship and the Significance of Popular Culture.” Honours paper: U of London, 2000.Bennett, Andy. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place. New York: Palgrave, 2000.Cronshaw, Darren, and Steve Taylor. “The Congregation in a Pluralist Society: Rereading Newbigin for Missional Churches Today.” Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 27.2 (2014): 1-24.Day, Abby. Believing in Belonging. Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011.Collins, Jim, ed. High-Pop. Making Culture into Popular Entertainment. Oxford: Blackwells, 2002.Cray, Graham. Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Culture, London: Church House Publishing, 2004.Featherstone, Mike. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage, 1991.Fox, Matthew. Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996.Guest, Matthew, and Steve Taylor. “The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Innovations in New Zealand and the UK.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6.1 (2006): 49-64.Howard, Roland. The Rise and Fall of the Nine o’Clock Service. London: Continuum, 1996.Kelly, Gerard. Get a Grip on the Future without Losing Your Hold in the Past. Great Britain: Monarch, 1999.Kelly, Steven. “Book Review. Alt.Culture by Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wice.” 20 Aug. 2003. ‹http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/books/cult.html›.McRobbie, Angela. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.Riley, Adrian. God in the House: UK Club Culture and Spirituality. 1999. 15 Oct. 2003 ‹http://www.btmc.org.auk/altworship/house/›.Roberts, Paul. Alternative Worship in the Church of England. Cambridge: Grove Books, 1999.Rogerson, J. W. “‘The Lord Is here’: The Nine o’Clock Service.” Why Liberal Churches Are Growing. Eds. Ian Markham and Martyn Percy. London: Bloomsbury T & T, 2006. 45-52.Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Taylor, Steve. “Baptist Worship and Contemporary Culture: A New Zealand Case Study.” Interfaces: Baptists and Others. Eds. David Bebbington and Martin Sutherland. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2013. 292-307.Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures. Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: UP New England, 1996.Vanini, Philip. “Authenticity.” Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. Ed. Dale Southerton. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011. 74-76.Willis, Paul E., et al. Common Culture. Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young. Milton Keynes: Open UP, 1990.

Introduction As street protests and clashes between citizens and authorities in places as different as Ferguson, Missouri and Hong Kong in autumn 2014 demonstrate, everyday life in many parts of the world is characterised by conflicting and competing sets of cultural norms, values, and practices. The idea that groups create cultures that stand in contrast to “mainstream” or “dominant culture” is nothing new—sociology’s earliest scholars sought cultural explanations for social “dysfunctions” such as anomie and deviance. Yet our interest in this article is not about the problems that marginalised and non-normative groups face, but rather with the cultures that are created as part of dealing with those problems. Milton Yinger begins his 1982 book, Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down, by contrasting multiple perspectives on countercultures. Some thinkers have characterised countercultures as not only a mundane feature of social life, but as a necessary one: Countercultures and the many types of intentional communities they commonly create are not social aberrations. For thousands of years there have been attempts to provide alternatives for the existing social order in response to the perennial grounds for dissent: hierarchy and privilege […,] disgust with hedonism and consumerism […, and] a decline in the quality of life. (Yinger, Countercultures 1) Others, however, have discursively delegitimised countercultures by characterising them as something in between naiveté and unschooled arrogance. Speaking specifically about hippies in the 1960s, Bell argued that the so-called counter-culture was a children’s crusade that sought to eliminate the line between fantasy and reality and act out in life its impulses under a banner of liberation. It claimed to mock bourgeois prudishness, when it was only flaunting the closet behavior of its liberal parents. It claimed to be new and daring when it was only repeating in more raucous form […] the youthful japes of a Greenwich Village bohemia of a half century before. It was less a counter-culture than a counterfeit culture. (xxvi-xxvii) If Bell is at all right, then perhaps countercultures may be better understood as subcultures, a term that may not require the idea of opposition (but see Gelder; Williams, Subcultural). To tease this distinction out, we want to consider the value of the counterculture concept for the study of oppositional subcultures. Rather than uncritically assuming what counter means, we take a more analytical view of how “counter,” as similar to other terms such as “resistant” and “oppositional,” has been articulated by social scientists. In doing this, we focus our attention on scholarly works that have dealt explicitly with group cultures “that sharply contradict the dominant norms and values of the society of which that group is a part” (Yinger, Countercultures 3). The Relationship between Counterculture and Subculture Many scholars point to the Chicago School of sociology as developing the first clear articulation of subcultural groups that differed clearly from mainstream society (see for example, Gelder and Thornton; Hannerz, E.; Williams, Youth). Paul G. Cressey, Frederic Thrasher, and later William Foote Whyte each provide exemplary empirical studies of marginal groups that were susceptible to social problems and therefore more likely to develop cultures that were defined as problematic for the mainstream. Robert Merton argued that marginalised groups formed as individuals tried to cope with the strain they experienced by their inability to access the cultural means (such as good education and good jobs) needed to achieve mainstream cultural goals (primarily, material success and social status), but Albert Cohen and others subsequently argued that such groups often reject mainstream culture in favour of a new, alternative culture instead. Within a few years, conceptual distinctions among these alternative cultures were necessary, with counterculture and subculture being disambiguated in American sociology. Yinger originally employed the term contraculture but eventually switched to the more common counterculture. Subculture became most often tied either to the study of religious and ethnic enclaves (Mauss) or to deviance and delinquency (Arnold), while counterculture found its currency in framing the cultures of more explicitly political groups and movements (see for example, Cushman; George and Starr). Perhaps the clearest analytical distinction between the terms suggested that subculture refer to ascribed differences based upon socio-economic status, ethnicity, religion (and so on) in relation to the mainstream, whereas counterculture should refer to groups rooted in an explicit rejection of a dominant culture. This is similar to the distinction that Ken Gelder makes between subcultures based upon marginalisation versus non-normativity. Counterculture became best used wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture. (Yinger, Contraculture 629) Even at that time, however, such a neat distinction was problematic. Sociologist Howard S. Becker demonstrated that jazz musicians, for example, experienced a problem shared in many service occupations, namely that their clients did not possess the ability to judge properly the value of the service rendered, yet nevertheless sought to control it. As a consequence, a subculture emerged based on the opposition of “hip” musicians to their “square” employers’ cultural sensibilities. Yet Becker framed their experiences as subcultural rather than countercultural, as deviant rather than political (Becker 79-100). Meanwhile, the political connotations of “counterculture” were solidifying during the 1960s as the term became commonly used to describe aspects of the civil rights movement in the US, hippie culture, and the anti-Vietnam or peace movement. By the end of the 1960s, subculture and counterculture had become analytically distinct terms within sociology. Cultural Studies and the Class-ification of Counterculture The reification of subculture and counterculture as ontologically distinct phenomena was more or less completed in the 1970s through a series of publications on British youth cultures and subcultures (see Hall and Jefferson; Hebdige; Mungham and Pearson). The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in particular expended a great deal of collective mental energy theorising the material base upon which cultures—and in particular spectacular youth subcultures such as mods and punk—exist. As with Marxist analyses of culture more generally, class was considered a key analytic variable. In the definitive theoretical statement on subculture, Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, and Roberts argued that “the most fundamental groups are the social classes, and the major cultural configurations will be […] ‘class cultures’” (13). Subcultures were thus seen as ideological reactions to the material conditions experienced and made meaningful within working class “parent culture.” This is what made youth subcultures sub—a part of the working-class—as well as cultural—the process of expressing their structural position. Given the Marxist orientation, it should go without saying that subcultures, as working-class youth cultures, were seen as naturally in a state of conflict with bourgeois culture. But that approach didn’t account well for counter-currents that emerged from within the middle-class, whose relationship with the means of production was markedly different, and so the concept of counterculture was appropriated to describe a distinctly middle-class phenomenon. The idea that counterculture represented an overtly political response from within the dominant culture itself fitted with work by Theodore Roszak and Frank Musgrove, and later Yinger (Countercultures) and Ulf Hannerz, who each defined counterculture through its political and activist orientations stemming from a crisis within the middle-class. To further differentiate the concepts, the CCCS dismissed the collective aspect of middle-class resistance (see Clarke et al., 58-9, for a list of phenomena they considered exemplary of middle-class counterculture), describing it as more “diffuse, less group-oriented, [and] more individualised” than its working-class counterpart, the latter “clearly articulated [as] ‘near’ or ‘quasi’-gangs” (Clarke et al. 60). And whereas subcultures were centred on leisure-time activities within working-class environments, countercultures were concerned with a blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure. This conceptualisation was problematic at best, not least because it limits counterculture to the middle-class and subculture to the working class. It also gave considerably more agency and consequence to middle-class youths. It seemed that countercultures, with their individualist tendencies, offered individuals and groups choices about what and how to resist, as well as some expectations for social change, while subculturalists, locked within an unfortunate class position, could only resist dominant culture “at the profoundly superficial level of appearances” (Hebdige 17). Beyond the Limits of Class Cultures By 1980 cultural studies scholars had begun disassembling the class-basis of subcultures (see for example, G. Clarke; McRobbie; Griffin). Even though many studies still focused on stylised forms of opposition, subcultural scholarship increasingly emphasised subcultures such as punk as reflecting a more explicitly politicised resistance against the dominant or mainstream culture. Some scholars suggested that “mainstream culture” was used as a contrastive device to exaggerate the distinctiveness of those who self-identity as different (see U. Hannerz; Copes and Williams), while others questioned what subcultures could be seen as existing independently from, or in assumed opposition to (see Blackman; Thornton). In such cases, we can see a move toward reconciling the alleged limits of subculture as a countercultural concept. Instead of seeing subcultures as magical solutions and thus inevitably impotent, more recent research has considered the agency of social actors to overcome social divisions such as race, gender, and class. On the dance floor in particular, youth culture was theorised as breaking free of its class-binding shackles. Along with this break came the rhetorical distancing from CCCS’s definitions of subculture. The attempted development of “post-subculture” studies around the Millennium focused on consumptive behaviours among certain groups of youths and concluded that consumption rather than opposition had become a hallmark of youth culture broadly (see Bennett, Popular; Huq; Muggleton). For these scholars, the rave and club cultures of the 1990s, and others since, represent youth culture as hedonistic and relatively apolitical. “Post-subculture” studies drew in part on Steve Redhead’s postmodern approach to youth culture as found in The Clubcultures Reader and its companion text, From Subcultures to Clubcultures (Redhead). These texts offered a theoretical alternative to the CCCS’s view of oppositional subcultures and recognition that subcultural style could no longer be understood as a representation of ideological strain among working-class youths. Carried forward in volumes by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl,,among others, “post-subcultural” scholarship criticised prior subcultural research for having objectified/reified mainstream/subcultural boundaries and authenticities, echoing Gary Clarke’s remark that the sharp distinction between us and them “rests upon [subculturalists’] consideration of the rest of society as being straight, incorporated in a consensus, and willing to scream undividedly loud in any moral panic” (71). Instead, the mixtures of punk, mod, skinhead and/or hippy styles among club-goers signalled “entirely new ways of understanding how young people perceive the relationship between music taste and visual style…revealing the infinitely malleable and interchangeable nature of the latter as these are appropriated and realised by individuals as aspects of consumer choice” (Bennett, Subcultures 613). Reincorporating the Counter into Subculture Studies The postmodern focus on cultural fluidity, individuality, and consumption highlights to some extent the agency that individuals have to make choices about the cultures in which they participate. To be sure, the postmodern and post-subculture critiques of class-based subculture studies were quite influential in the development of more recent subcultural scholarship, though not necessarily as they were intended. Much of the theoretical rhetoric of post-subculture scholarship (over-)emphasised heterogeneity, contingency, and play, which drew attention away from the collective identities and practices that continue to characterise many subcultures and groups. Fortunately, other scholars over the last decade have been critical of that approach’s failure to deal with perennial concerns related to participation in alternative cultural groups, including consumption (Buckingham), voice (Bae and Ivashkevich), education (Tuck and Yang), and group affiliation (Pilkington), among others. We want to follow this trajectory by explicitly reiterating the continuing significance of the “counter” aspects of subcultures. Two trends in social theory are exemplary in this reiteration. The first trend is a growing interest in re-theorizing resistance to refer to “a contribution to progressive transformations and radical changes in social and cultural structures” (Johansson and Lalander) rather than to a set of styles and practices through which working-class youth impotently rage against the machine. Resistance is qualitatively different from rebellion, which is often framed in terms of unconscious or irrational behaviour (Raby); resistance is first and foremost intentional. Subcultures articulate resistance to mainstream/dominant culture and may be measured across several continua, including passive to active, micro to macro, covert to overt, individual to collective, and local to global (see Williams, Resistance; E. Hannerz). Participants in countercultures see themselves as being more critically aware of what is happening in the world than the average person, believe that they act on that critical awareness in their thoughts, words, and/or deeds, and electively detach themselves from “involuntary or unconscious commitments” (Leary 253) to mainstream culture, refusing to uncritically follow the rules. The concept of resistance thus gives some momentum to attempts to clarify the extent to which members of alternative cultures intentionally break with the mainstream. The links between resistance and counterculture are explicitly dealt with in recent scholarship on music subcultures. Graham St John’s work on electronic dance music culture (EDMC), for example, offers a complex analysis of resistant practices that he conceptualizes as countercultural. Participation in EDMC is seen as more than simple hedonism. Rather, EDMC provides the scripts necessary for individuals to pursue freedom from various forms of perceived oppression in everyday life. At a more macro level, Madigan Fichter’s study of counterculture in Romania similarly frames resistance and political dissent as key variables in the articulation of a counterculture. Some recent attempts at invoking counterculture seem less convincing. Noting that counterculture is a relatively “unpopular term in social scientific research,” Hjelm, Kahn-Harris, and LeVine nevertheless proceed to theorize heavy metal as countercultural by drawing on the culture’s “transgressive” (14) qualities and “antagonistic […] attempts to shock and provoke [as well as] those occasions when metal, by its very presence, is shocking” (15). Other studies have similarly articulated “countercultures” in terms of behaviours that transgress mainstream sensibilities (see for example, Arthur and Sherman; Kolind). It is debatable at best, however, whether hedonism, transgression, or provocation are sufficient qualities for counterculture without concomitant cultural imperatives for both resistance and social change. This leads into a brief comment on a second trend, which is the growing interconnectedness of social theories that attend to subcultures on the one hand and “new” social movements (NSMs) on the other. “Traditional” social movements, such as the civil rights and labour movements, have been typically organised by and for people excluded in some way from full rights to participate in society, for example the rights to political participation or basic economic protection. NSMs, however, often involve people who already enjoy full rights as members of society, but who reject political and economic processes that injure them or others, such as marginalised groups, animals, or the environment. Some movements are contentious in nature, such as the Occupy-movement, and thus quite clearly antagonistic toward mainstream political-economy. NSM theories (see Pichardo), however, also theorize the roles of culture and collective identity in supporting both opposition to dominant processes and strategies for alternative practices. Other NSMs foster lifestyles that, through the minutiae of everyday practice, promote a ground-up reaction to dominant political-economic practices (see Haenfler, Johnson, and Jones). Both contentious and lifestyle movements are relatively diffuse and as such align with traditional conceptualisations of both subculture and counterculture. NSM theory and subcultural theories are thus coming together in a moment where scholars are seeking distinctly cultural understandings of collective lifestyles of resistance and social change. Conclusion Recent attempts to rephrase subcultural theory have combined ideas of the Birmingham and Chicago Schools with more contemporary approaches such as social constructivism and new social movements theory. Together, they recognise a couple of things. First, culture is not the determining structure it was once theorised to be. The shift in understanding subcultural groups as rooted in ascribed characteristics—being naturally different due to class, ethnicity, age, or to location (Park; Cohen; Clarke et al.)—to one in which subcultures are intentional articulations created by people, highlights the agency of individuals and groups to create culture. The break with realist/objectivist notions of culture offers promising opportunities for understanding resistance and opposition more generally. Second, the “counter” continues to be relevant in the study of subcultures. Subcultural participation these days is characterised as much or more by non-normativity than by marginalisation. As such, subcultures represent intentional protests against something outside themselves. Of course, we do not mean to suggest this is always and everywhere the case. 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