In standard Albanian studies and Western scholarship, including both the work of religious and political activists and that of less ‘interested’ lay people, historical and textual fact-finding efforts have only confirmed and indeed perpetuated the myth that the thinking of Naim Frashëri was formed and dominated by Bektashism and that his ‘Albanianism’ had a Bektashi foundation. The author inten...

Background: The tendency for female sex workers to seek health care is highly influenced by physician attitudes and behavior. By identifying medical students' attitudes toward female sex workers and assessing their knowledge of barriers to seeking care, we can focus medical training and advocacy efforts to increase access to care and improve public health outcomes. Methods: In this cross-sectio...

Among the Victorian writers, George Eliot deserves to be a unique one. Her male pseudonym, the impugnation of Christianity as well as her nonconformist marriage achieve this stellar female novelist in British literature. Ironically, Eliot was exactly famous for describing social religion and morality of the day. Eliot’s attitude toward Christianity is dichotomous: though deeply influenced by Ch...

Recent reviews suggest that religiosity is associated with the delay of adolescent coital debut (Rostosky, Wilcox, Wright, Randall, in press; Wilcox, Rostosky, Randall, Wright, 2001). Few studies, however, have examined this association using longitudinal data to test theoretically driven models. We analyzed data from 3,691 adolescents (ages 15-21), testing the hypothesis that adolescent religi...

OBJECTIVES During recent decades, rabbis in Israel have been playing an increasing role in the consultation of patients or their families on medical issues. The study was performed to determine the attitude of physicians to rabbinical consultation by parents of sick children for purposes of basic medical decision making. DESIGN AND SETTING A questionnaire was prepared which contained question...

The Norwegian health authorities buy one third of their addiction treatment from private institutions run by organizations and trusts. Several of these are founded on religious values. The aim of the study was to investigate such value-based treatment and the patients’ experiences of spirituality and religiousness as factors of meaning-making in rehabilitation. The study was performed in an exp...

when the relationship of planets to events on earth and the birth of individuals and to parts of the body is studied; (2) divinatory astrology, when from astronomical calculations prognostications for the development of diseases or of epidemics are deduced; (3) "artificial astrology". Here tables and calendars are used without reference to or even knowledge of the philosophical background. Duri...