Academic literature on the topic 'Bodo`s religion'

The soul is one of the topics that really attracts the attention of Muslim and Western scientists. Not a few of those who spend their time to study this problem. However, the study of the soul in the West is not based on religion. In contrast to Muslim scientists who make religion as the footing. This paper intends to discuss the concept of the soul emphasized by one of the Muslim scientists, Ibn S?n?. By using the descriptive-analysis method, this study produces three important conclusions. First, the soul is the initial perfection to make a real human being. Second, the soul is eternal and does not go along with the destruction of the body. Third, when the soul is separated from the body and is eternal, it has a degree of happiness and misery. To reveal more deeply about the nature of the soul and its existence is very important to discuss.

Doubt and unbelief were central to the ways in which ministers and theologians in post-Reformation England thought and wrote about religion. Far from signalling spiritual failure, grappling with unbelief could be an important stage in developing the faith and religious understanding of the individual believer while establishing a role for physicality and the senses. Nicholas Bownde'sThe vnbeleefe of S. Thomas the Apostle, laid open for the comfort of all that desire to beleeue(1608) suggests that unbelief was relational and that belief required not only an acknowledgement of doubt but also extensive exploration of what doubtful and unbelieving experiences involved and how they were to be overcome. Bownde's work demonstrates that this ongoing spiritual conversation could make use of important scriptural examples such as the ‘Doubting Thomas’ episode in order to elucidate intimate theological problems for contemporary believers. This process suggests that early modern religion can only be properly understood with close reference to the role of doubt, unbelief and spiritual uncertainty in religious discourse because belief itself was predicated on the logical possibility of unbelief.

At its inception, the training model in the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology (GSCP) at George Fox University was informed by the approach inaugurated at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Psychology in the 1960s. In the original model, training in Christian religion/spirituality and theology accompanied training in professional psychology. In the interim, our culture, psychological knowledge, perceived psychological needs, and training programs have changed greatly. Here we report changes in religion/spirituality (R/S) training and integration over the last two decades. We describe our current spiritual formation structure and process, and program evaluation efforts. Over the past several years the GSCP has shifted from relying mainly on a cognitive approach involving Bible and theology courses (theoretical-conceptual integration) toward a more personal-experiential approach that includes team teaching of the theology and religion courses, an individualized spiritual direction experience spread over two years, and more intentional integration of R/S and spiritual formation components throughout the program. We anticipate this may be an ongoing area for further development in coming years as we seek to meet the needs of a changing student body with greater R/S diversity and largely postmodern worldviews.

This article will look at the different conceptions of ‘home’ as narrated by Algerian Muslim women living in Ireland. It explores the dynamic processes of their self-identification(s) and their different forms of (re)creation of diasporic home(s) influenced by their religious, cultural, social and economic environment. I will use Thomas A. Tweed’s notion of ‘crossing and dwelling’ to analyse these essentialized identity constructions that become manifest in Tweed’s four ‘chronotopes’: the gendered body, the domestic home, the imagined homeland and the transnational and global cosmos. The conscious or unconscious negotiations and implications for belonging to a specific identity or community that can be observed among Algerian women in Ireland will be examined, together with the different pre- and post-migratory social, political and religious factors that influence such negotiations. This ethnographic study is the first of its kind and fills a gap in the study of Muslim migrants in Europe.

History of Medicine at the Intersection of Disciplines. Reflections on the Margins of Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. Historia – filozofia – religia [Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. History – Philosophy – Religion], ed. by S. Konarska-Zimnicka, L. Kostuch and B. Wojciechowska, Kielce 2019 The article discusses the status of the history of medicine at the intersection of disciplines, with reference to the edited volume: Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. Historia – filozofia – religia [Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. History – Philosophy – Religion] (ed. by S. Konarska-Zimnicka, L. Kostuch and B. Wojciechowska, Kielce 2019). The author focuses on the ancient idea of the unity of body and soul to draw attention to the dependence of medical practices on cultural conditions, using the example of the recipe for headache from Plato’s Charmides and the articles in Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna.

RESUMENLa historia del cristianismo no se entiende sin el complejo fenómeno mariano. El culto mariano ha afianzado la construcción de identidades colectivas, pero también individuales. La figura de la Virgen María estableció un modelo de conducta desde cada contexto histórico-cultural, remarcando especialmente los ideales de maternidad y virginidad. Dentro del imaginario católico, la Europa contemporánea ha estado marcada por la formación de una cultura aparicionista que se ha generadoa partir de diversas apariciones marianas que han establecido un canon y un marco de interpretación que ha alimentado las guerras culturales entre secularismo y catolicismo.PALABRAS CLAVE: catolicismo, Virgen María, cultura aparicionista, Lourdes, guerras culturales.ABSTRACTThe history of Christianity cannot be understood without the complex Marian phenomenon. Marian devotion has reinforced the construction of collective, but also of individual identities. The figure of the Virgin Mary established a model of conduct through each historical-cultural context, emphasizing in particular the ideals of maternity and virginity. Within the Catholic imaginary, contemporary Europe has been marked by the formation of an apparitionist culture generated by various Marian apparitions that have established a canon and a framework of interpretation that has fuelled the cultural wars between secularism and Catholicism.KEY WORDS: Catholicism, Virgin Mary, apparicionist culture, Lourdes, culture wars. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAlbert Llorca, M., “Les apparitions et leur histoire”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des religions, 116 (2001), pp. 53-66.Albert, J.-P. y Rozenberg G., “Des expériences du surnaturel”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 145 (2009), pp. 9-14.Amanat A. y Bernhardsson, M. T. (eds.), Imagining the End. Visions of Apocalypsis from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2002.Angelier, F. y Langlois, C. (eds.), La Salette. Apocalypse, pèlerinage et littérature (1846-1996), Actes du colloque de l’institut catholique de Paris (29- 30 de novembre de 1996), Grenoble, Jérôme Million, 2000.Apolito, P., Apparitions of the Madonna at Oliveto Citra. Local Visions and Cosmic Drama, University Park, Penn State University Press, 1998.Apolito, P., Internet y la Virgen. Sobre el visionarismo religioso en la Red, Barcelona, Laertes, 2007.Astell, A. W., “Artful Dogma: The Immaculate Conception and Franz Werfer´s Song of Bernadette”, Christianity and Literature, 62/I (2012), pp. 5-28.Barnay, S., El cielo en la tierra. Las apariciones de la Virgen en la Edad Media, Madrid, Encuentro, 1999.Barreto, J., “Rússia e Fátima”, en C. Moreira Azevedo e L Cristino (dirs.), Enciclopédia de Fátima, Estoril, Princípia, 2007, pp. 500-503.Barreto, J., Religião e Sociedade: dois ensaios, Lisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, 2003.Bayly, C. A., El nacimiento del mundo moderno. 1780-1914, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2010.Béjar, S., Los milagros de Jesús, Barcelona, Herder, 2018.Belli, M., An Incurable Past. Nasser’s Egypt. Then and Now, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2013.Blackbourn, D., “Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany”, en Eley, G. (ed.), Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930, Ann Arbor, The University Michigan Press, 1997.Blackbourn, D., Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.Bouflet, J., Une histoire des miracles. Du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, Seuil, 2008.Boyd, C. P., “Covadonga y el regionalismo asturiano”, Ayer, 64 (2006), pp. 149-178.Brading, D. A., La Nueva España. Patria y religión, México D. F., Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015.Brading, D. A., Mexican Phoenix, our Lady of Guadalupe: image and tradition across five centuries, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.Bugslag, J., “Material and Theological Identities: A Historical Discourse of Constructions of the Virgin Mary”, Théologiques, 17/2 (2009), pp. 19-67.Cadoret-Abeles, A., “Les apparitions du Palmar de Troya: analyse anthropologique dun phenómène religieux”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 17 (1981), pp. 369-391.Carrión, G., El lado oscuro de María, Alicante, Agua Clara, 1992.Chenaux, P., L´ultima eresia. La chiesa cattolica e il comunismo in Europa da Lenin a Giovanni Paolo II, Roma, Carocci Editore, 2011.Christian, W. A., “De los santos a María: panorama de las devociones a santuarios españoles desde el principio de la Edad Media a nuestros días”, en Lisón Tolosana, C. (ed.), Temas de antropología española, Madrid, Akal, 1976, pp. 49-105.Christian, W. A., “Religious apparitions and the Cold War in Southern Europe”, Zainak, 18 (1999), pp. 65-86.Christian, W. A., Apariciones Castilla y Cataluña (siglo XIV-XVI), Madrid, Nerea, 1990.Christian, W. A., Religiosidad local en la España de Felipe II, Madrid, Nerea, 1991.Christian, W. A., Religiosidad popular: estudio antropológico en un valle, Madrid, Tecnos, 1978.Christian, W. A., Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.Clark, C., “The New Catholicism and the European Culture Wars”, en C. Clark y Kaiser, W. (eds.), Culture Wars. Secular-Catholic conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 11-46.Claverie, É., Les guerres de la Vierge. Une anthropologie des apparitions, Paris, Gallimard, 2003.Colina, J. M. de la, La Inmaculada y la Serpiente a través de la Historia, Bilbao, El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, 1930.Collins, R., Los guardianes de las llaves del cielo, Barcelona, Ariel, 2009, p. 521.Corbin, A. (dir.), Historia del cuerpo. Vol. II. De la Revolución francesa a la Gran Guerra, Madrid, Taurus, 2005.Coreth, E. (ed.), Filosofía cristiana en el pensamiento católico de los siglos XIX y XX. Tomo I: Nuevos enfoques en el siglo XIX, Madrid, Encuentro, 1994.Coreth, E. (ed.), Filosofía cristiana en el pensamiento católico de los siglos XIX y XX. Tomo II: Vuelta a la herencia escolástica, Madrid, Encuentro, 1994.Cunha, P. y Ribas, D., “Our Lady of Fátima and Marian Myth in Portuguese Cinema”, en Hansen, R. (ed.), Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on. Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery, Jefferson, McFarland, 2011.D’Hollander, P. y Langlois, C. (eds.), Foules catholiques et régulation romaine. Les couronnements de vierges de pèlerinage à l’époque contemporaine (XIXe et XXe siècles), Limoges, Presses universitaires de Limoges, 2011.D´Orsi, A., 1917, o ano que mudou o mundo, Lisboa, Bertrand Editora, 2017.De Fiores, S., Maria. Nuovissimo dizionario, Bologna, EDB, 2 vols., 2006.Delumeau, J., Rassurer et protéger. Le sentiment de sécurité dans l’Occident d’autrefois, Paris, Fayard, 1989.Dozal Varela, J. C., “Nueva Jerusalén: a 38 años de una aparición mariana apocalíptica”, Nuevo Mundo, Mundos Nuevos, 2012, s.p.Driessen, H., “Local Religion Revisited: Mediterranean Cases”, History and Anthropology, 20/3 (2009), pp. 281-288.Driessen, H., “Local Religion Revisited: Mediterranean Cases”, History and Anthropology, 20/3 (2009), p. 281-288.González Sánchez, C. A., Homo viator, homo scribens. Cultura gráfica, información y gobierno en la expansión atlántica (siglos XV-XVII), Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2007.Grignion de Montfort, L. M., Escritos marianos selectos, Madrid, San Pablo, 2014.Harris, R., Lourdes. Body and Spirit in the Secular Age, London, Penguin Press, 1999.Harvey, J., Photography and Spirit, London, Reaktion Books, 2007.Hood, B., Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable, New York, HarperOne, 2009.Horaist, B., La dévotion au Pape et les catholiques français sous le Pontificat de Pie IX (1846-1878), Palais Farnèse, École Française de Rome, 1995.Kselman, T., Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth Century France, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1983.Lachapelle, S., Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853-1931, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, 2011.Langlois, C., “Mariophanies et mariologies au XIXe siècles. Méthode et histoire”, en Comby, J. (dir.), Théologie, histoire et piété mariale, Lyon, Profac, 1997, pp. 19-36.Laurentin, R. y Sbalchiero, P. (dirs.), Dictionnaire des “aparitions” de la Vierge Marie, Paris, Fayard, 2007.Laycock, J. P., The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015.Levi, G., La herencia inmaterial. La historia de un exorcista piamontés del siglo XVII, Madrid, Nerea, 1990.Linse, U., Videntes y milagreros. La búsqueda de la salvación en la era de la industrialización, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2002.Louzao, J., “La España Mariana: vírgenes y nación en el caso español hasta 1939”, en Gabriel, P., Pomés, J. y Fernández, F. (eds.), España res publica: nacionalización española e identidades en conflicto (siglos XIX y XX), Granada, Comares, 2013, pp. 57-66.Louzao, J., “La recomposición religiosa en la modernidad: un marco conceptual para comprender el enfrentamiento entre laicidad y confesionalidad en la España contemporánea”, Hispania Sacra, 121 (2008), pp. 331-354.Louzao, J., “La Señora de Fátima. La experiencia de lo sobrenatural en el cine religioso durante el franquismo”, en Moral Roncal, A. M. y Colmenero, R. (eds.), Iglesia y primer franquismo a través del cine (1939-1959), Alcalá de Henares, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, 2015, pp. 121-151.Louzao, J., “La Virgen y la salvación de España: un ensayo de historia cultural durante la Segunda República”, Ayer, 82 (2011), pp. 187-210.Louzao, J., Soldados de la fe o amantes del progreso. Catolicismo y modernidad en Vizcaya (1890-1923), Logroño, Genueve Ediciones, 2011.Lowenthal, D., El pasado es un país extraño, Madrid, Akal, 1998.Lundberg, M., A Pope of their Own. El Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Church, Uppsala, Uppsala University, 2017.Maravall, J. A., La cultura del Barroco, Madrid, Ariel, 1975.Martí, J., “Fundamentos conceptuales introductorios para el estudio de la religión”, en Ardèvol, E. y Munilla, G. (coords.), Antropología de la religión. Una aproximación interdisciplinar a las religiones antiguas y contemporáneas, Barcelona, Editorial Universitat Oberta Catalunya, 2003.Martina, G., Pio IX (1846-1850), Roma, Università Gregoriana, 1974.Martina, G., Pio IX (1851-1866), Roma, Università Gregoriana,1986.Martina, G., Pio IX (1867-1878), Roma, Università Gregoriana, 1990.Maunder, C., “The Footprints of Religious Enthusiasm: Great Memorials and Faint Vestiges of Belgium´s Marian Apparition Mania of the 1930s”, Journal of Religion and Society, 15 (2013), s.p.Maunder, C., Our Lady of the Nations: Apparitions of Mary in Twentieth-century Catholic, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016.Mínguez, R., “Las múltiples caras de la Inmaculada: religión, género y nación en su proclamación dogmática (1854)”, Ayer, 96 (2014), pp. 39-60.Moreno Luzón, J., “Entre el progreso y la virgen del Pilar. La pugna por la memoria en el centenario de la Guerra de la Independencia”, Historia y política, 12 (2004), pp. 41-78.Moro, R., “Religion and Politics in the Time of Secularisation: The Sacralisation of Politics and the Politicisation of Religion”, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6/1 (2005), pp. 71-86.Multon, H., “Catholicisme intransigeant et culture prophétique: l’apport des Archives du Saint Office et de l’Index”, Revue historique, 621 (2002), pp. 109-137.Osterhammel, J., The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014.Oviedo Torró, L., “Natural y sobrenatural: un repaso a los debates recientes”, en Alonso Bedate, A. (ed.), Lo natural, lo artificial y la cultura, Madrid, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, pp. 151-166.Pelikan, J., María a través de los siglos. Su presencia en veinte siglos de cultura, Madrid, PPC, 1997.Perica, V., Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.Rahner, K., Tolerancia, libertad, manipulación, Barcelona, Herder, 1978.Ramón Solans, F. J. y di Stefano, R. (eds.), Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2016.Ramón Solans, F. J., “A New Lourdes in Spain: The Virgin of El Pilar, Mass Devotion, National Symbolism and Political Mobilization”, en Ramón Solans, F. J. y di Stefano, R. (eds.), Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2016, pp. 137-167.Ramón Solans, F. J., “La hidra revolucionaria. Apocalipsis y antiliberalismo en la España del primer tercio del siglo XIX”, Hispania, 56 (2017), pp. 471-496.Ramón Solans, F. J., La Virgen del Pilar dice... 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V., Realidades, Barcelona, Imprenta Moderna, 1906.Walker, B., Out of the Ordinary Folklore and the Supernatural, Utah, Utah State University Press, 1995.Walliss, J., “Making Sense of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 9/1 (2005), pp. 49-66.Warner, M., Tú sola entre las mujeres: el mito y el culto de la Virgen María, Madrid, Taurus, 1991.Watkins, C. S., History and the Supernatural in Medieval England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.Weber, M., Ensayos sobre sociología religiosa, Madrid, Taurus, 1983.Weigel, G., Juan Pablo II. El final y el principio, Barcelona, Planeta, 2011.Werfel, F., La canción de Bernardette, Madrid, Palabra, 1988.Zimdars-Swartz, S. L., Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje, Princenton, Princeton University Press, 2014.

The female’s body is something that very dangerous if it is not controlled. Different views of stereotypes and negative labels are given to women. In fact, women serve as commodities and a capitalist political instrument through beauty and sexuality often addressed to women and occur under the hegemony and dominance of certain rulers who are to control commodities and politicization over the female’s body. The correlation of female's body control with their environment raises a women's movement in need of religion in which all activities and movements of women must be based on several alternatives of life ethics that must be held like having to cover ‘aurat’, while working in a safe environment, and others. If the respectable women are able to survive and understand the feminine authenticity of the self as a counterweight to the masculinity that has been produced in general and all areas of public life.

Ancient beliefs such as astral projection, human possession, abduction and other similar are not only universal, taught by all religions, but also used as premises for core believes/expectations, such as after-life, eternal damnation, reincarnation, and many others. Transferring Consciousness to a Synthetic Body is also a feature of interest in our actual knowledge, both religious as for science. If immortality were an option, would you take it into consideration more seriously? Most people would probably dismiss the question since immortality isn’t a real deal to contract. But what if having eternal life was a possibility in today’s world? The possibility of the transfer of human consciousness to a synthetic body can soon become a reality, and it could help the world for the better. Thus, until recently, the subject was mostly proposed by religion(s) and saw as a spiritual [thus, not ‘materially real’ or ‘forthwith accomplishable’] proposal therefore not really fully engaged or trust if not a religious believer. Now, technology is evolving, and so are we. The world has come to a point where artificial intelligence is breaking the boundaries of our perception of human consciousness and intelligence. And with this so is our understanding about the ancient question ‘who are we?’ concerning consciousness and how this human feature sticks to our body or it can become an entity beyond the material flesh. Without being exhaustive with the theme's development [leaving enough room for further investigations], we would like to take it for a spin and see how and where the religious and neuroscience realms intersect with it for a global, perhaps holistic understanding. Developments in neurotechnology favor the brain to broaden its physical control further the restraints of the human body. Accordingly, it is achievable to both acquire and provide information from and to the brain and also to organize feedback processes in which a person's thoughts can influence the activity of a computer or reversely.

Abstract This paper explores responses to COVID-19 by the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai in Japan. Sōka means ‘value-creation’, but what kind of ‘value’ was created amidst a global pandemic? So-called ‘new religions’ in the context of Japan are typically presumed to embody a ‘flight from the human world’ into the exotic and remote. SG’s response, however, encouraged people to stay very much within a ‘human-bound world’. How did SG differ compared to other popular responses in Japan that drew on yōkai (or ‘spirits’) for comfort in defeating the soon objectified virus ‘monster’? SG may be well-built for responding to disaster in its extensive grassroots networks and its daily newspaper to provide information. Responding with a renewed focus on study, chanting and outreach also highlights, however, how the meaning of ‘hope’ and ‘well-being’ were generated by internal change while structurally working to realise the SDG s as part of more long-term solutions.

Nikos Kazantzakis� Captain Michales is a freedom fighter in nineteenth century Crete. Patrick White�s Voss is a German explorer in nineteenth century Australia. Two men struggling for achievement, their disparate social contexts united in the same fundamental search for meaning. This thesis makes comparison of these different struggles through thematic analysis of the texts, examining within the narratives the role of food, perceptions of body and soul, landscapes, gender relations, home-coming and religious experience. Themes from the novels are extracted and intertwined, within a range of theoretical frameworks: history, anthropology, science, literary and social theories, religion and politics; allowing close investigation of each novel�s social, political and historical particularities, as well as their underlying discussion of perennial human issues. These novels are each essentially explorations of the human experience. Read together, they highlight the commonest of human elements, most poignantly the need for communion; facilitating analysis of the individual and all our communities. Comparing the two novels also continues the process of each: examining the self both within and outside of the narratives, producing a new textual self, arising from both primary sources and the contextual breadth of such rewriting.

The current chapter examines the relationship between religion/spirituality (R/S) and medicine through the psychological lens of a religious coping framework. This relationship is considered at the theoretical, patient, caregiver, and care team levels. The R/S beliefs, practices, and coping strategies of patients, informal caregivers, and health care providers in the context of illness is then discussed. A large body of research demonstrates the important role of R/S in how patients and caregivers understand and cope with illness. Similarly, many health care providers view illness and their clinical care through a R/S lens and believe that attending to patients’ spiritual needs is part of their professional role. The chapter concludes with a brief review of psycho-spiritual interventions in medical populations.

The contributors to Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and transformation of social relationships and political and economic power. Among other topics, the essays examine the dynamics of religious and racial identity among Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals; the significance of cloth coverings in Islamic practice in northern Nigeria; the ethics of socially engaged hip-hop lyrics by Black Muslim artists in Britain; ritual dance performances among Mama Tchamba devotees in Togo; and how Ifá practitioners from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the United States join together in a shared spiritual ethnicity. From possession and spirit-induced trembling to dance, the contributors outline how embodied religious practices are central to expressing and shaping interiority and spiritual lives, national and ethnic belonging, ways of knowing and techniques of healing, and sexual and gender politics. In this way, the body is a crucial site of religiously motivated social action for people of African descent. Contributors. Rachel Cantave, Youssef Carter, N. Fadeke Castor, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Casey Golomski, Elyan Jeanine Hill, Nathanael J. Homewood, Jeanette S. Jouili, Bertin M. Louis Jr., Camee Maddox-Wingfield, Aaron Montoya, Jacob K. Olupona, Elisha P. Renne

This chapter starts defining spirituality as a transcendent realm of reality, which is considered sacred, and religion as the institutional or communal aspect of that spirituality. Then, it explores whether and how issues relating to religion and spirituality (R/S) are relevant to the mental health of individuals. A large body of evidence is presented and discussed showing that R/S remain and probably will continue to be relevant in the contemporary world, and that R/S have marked and usually positive effects on mental health. Ethical concerns regarding approaching R/S in clinical care are addressed, arguing that this approach must be patient-centred. An evidence-based, and ethically sound, bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach is proposed. In summary, in respect to the evidence available and the R/S beliefs, behaviours and values of most of the world’s population, it is not only appropriate but a scientific and ethical duty to integrate R/S into mental health research, training, prevention, and clinical practice.

Abstract While Christians have always debated “practical” issues like ordination of women, freeing of slaves, and marriage-like unions for gay and lesbian people,1 they have also always treated embodiment as one of the “highest” concerns of their intellectual discourse, from the election of Israel to the incarnation of God and the resurrection of the dead. Put another way, theology has used one set of terms—creation, election, incarnation, resurrection—while ethically charged postmodern discourse uses another—embodiment, race, gender, orientation. Theologians such as Karl Barth tell us that ethics and high theology ought to be closely related,2 and anthropologists of religion such as Clifford Geertz tell us similar things about ethos and worldview, or social and intellectual practices.3 Yet only too rarely do Christian ethicists connect doctrines such as incarnation, election, and resurrection with race, gender, and orientation.4 My constructive proposals attempt to renegotiate ethos and worldview in Christianity by reference to the central symbols that connect them—where ethos includes the practices of marriage (or lack thereof) for straight, gay, and lesbian people; worldview includes what Christians believe about the world, signally dogmatics (“a critical native model”5); and the central symbol is the body of Christ enacted in the sacraments. Marriage and the Eucharist (as well as baptism and monastic vows) tell Christians what bodies are for before God, or what they mean, by incorporating them into the body of Christ.

This chapter focuses on religion and the works of art commissioned during and after the epidemic. The strategies adopted by Church and state in Florence were seen as vital to placate the wrath of God, one of the main causes of plague. Indeed, there was close collaboration between Church and state, as each shared the common aim of employing the power of local saints and images to intervene with the wrathful deity. Secular and ecclesiastical authorities also shared similar concerns for public health, by limiting direct participation of the majority of the population in major processions. Official devotion and major processions centred on three major ecclesiastical sites: the Cathedral; SS. Annunziata, which housed the city's main miraculous shrine; and S. Marco, where the body of St Antonino was kept in an elaborate crystal casket. Belief in the power of religion during plague is reflected by the importance placed on artistic patronage in each of these three churches during and following the epidemic. As during previous epidemics, the 1630s plague led to a lasting legacy of commissions of new chapels, altarpieces, frescoes, costly silver candlesticks, and humble ex-voti, reflecting that plague in Florence, as elsewhere, led to the enrichment of churches.

‘Lewis on the way’ describes the many images of C. S. Lewis—the author and the man. He was a Christian writer, religious and social philosopher, teacher, conversationalist, and general man of letters; he was imaginative and rational, authoritative and familiar, witty though intellectually severe, combative and mild, certain yet somehow restrained, defiant and unfashionable while also gregarious, good-humoured, and popular to the point of being charismatic. It concludes that his personal influence upon millions of people is deep, significant, and abiding, and his personality and life continue to arouse interest. His many voices have produced a trenchant body of work that includes hallmarks of its many types, remains relevant, and invites commentary.

Abstract AIDS forces us to confront our mortality, the limits of modern medicine, and the contours of our compassion.1 How we respond is a measure of our society, as well as a reflection of our values and priorities. As a fundamentally death-denying society, our response has been hampered by denial and shaped by faith that a technological fix will make the AIDS epidemic go away. Technology is our new religion, our “modern” way to deal with death. As novelist Don Delillo has one of his characters in White Noise put it to another who is worried about death: you can deny it, you can put your faith in religion, or you could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other It ‘s what we invented to conceal the terrible secret of our decaying bodies. But it ‘s also life, isn ‘t it? It prolongs life, it provides new organs for those that wear out. New devices, new techniques every day. Lasers, masers, ultrasound. Give yourself up to it.... They ‘ll insert you in a gleaming tube, irradiate your body with the basic stuff of the universe. Light, energy, dreams. God ‘s own goodness.

In 1922 and 1923, fundamentalists had high hopes that they could impose their standards on some major northern denominations. Fundamentalists were strongest in the Northern Baptist Convention and in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. At the Northern Baptist Convention meeting in 1922, they hoped to have the body adopt a traditional creedal statement. But the move was soundly defeated. In 1922 Harry Emerson Fosdick, a modernist Baptist filling a Presbyterian pulpit, preached, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” That set off a heated controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Conservative William Jennings Bryan narrowly lost election as moderator for the 1923 General Assembly. But the assembly reaffirmed the five-point Presbyterian essential doctrines. Clarence McCartney, a leading conservative preacher, answered Fosdick in a sermon, “Shall Unbelief Win?” J. Gresham Machen issued Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, arguing that traditional Christianity and modernism were really two different religions.

The paradoxes of evolution are considered from the perspective of self-organization theory. The S-elements having several modalities, and this circumstance will help to understand why evolution is happening exactly this way. The evolution does not stop at the formation of human of a modern type. Slight changes in the human body and huge changes in his mind have occurred; the evolution markers should be defined. Behavior is another aspect of evolution. A simple criterion for determining psychological types may be the relative development of channels of human-environment interaction. The way of interaction determines preferential needs, motivations, and patterns of behavior, what, in turn, determines social structure and place of a specific human in it. Here a reservation is necessary - of course, the ideology, origin, historical and other circumstances are of great importance, after all, a particular human may have two or more dominant channels, but his inclinations will still determine his social behavior.

Abstract High on their pillars, Christian stylites present us with an image of religion in action which still challenges our ideas of sainthood and the human body. For forty years, their founder, Simeon, stood on a pillar where he was said to have dislocated three joints in his spine, lost his eyesight three times, ruined his feet by binding them, and ruptured his stomach, ‘so that his attendants even said, “the affliction of his stomach is more severe than that of his feet “. ‘ Where is the Christianity in the solitary life of these old men, destroying their bodies on pillars above human contact? Yet crowds flocked to them from the highest and lowest social classes; greater churches of stone grew up round the pillars which we can still see, not just at Simeon ‘s Qalat Seman but on the bleak upper slopes of the Marvellous Mountain, less than twenty miles from Antioch, where a second stylite, Simeon the Younger, stood for much of the sixth century. We know of nearly fifty stylites between Simeon ‘s death in 460 and the eleventh century; by 900 their numbers had dwindled but the living reality continued until the mid-nineteenth century, amazing visitors and still drawing criticism from contemporaries.