This article reports on research undertaken in 2011–2012 into the role of religion and belief in one British university. In this indicative qualitative case study, we observed six important features in relation to religion and belief: a clear divide in attitudes to the place of religion and belief between operations and curriculum; a lack of knowledge and understanding of the religious landscap...

RELIGION IS NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT to define. If, however, we adopt a functionalist view and understand religion as what grounds us by teaching us what the world is, and what our role in the world is, then it becomes obvious that traditional religions are fulfilling this role less and less, because that function is being supplanted-or overwhelmed-by other belief-systems and value-systems. Today ...

In order to measure a wide spectrum of organized and private religious, spiritual, existential and philosophical practices, the SpREUK-P (SpREUK is the German language acronym of “Spirituality/Religiosity and Coping with Illness”) questionnaire was developed as a generic instrument. To account for the fact that institutional religiosity declines, not only in Europe, and to explore the alternati...

This research project examined the extent to which an individual’s religion, or lack thereof, impacted their scores on the Individualism Collectivism Scale (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995). This study drew 205 mostly Caucasian participants, who were diverse in terms of gender, income, and education. Data were gathered via online survey, which gathered responses to a demographic for...

Well, it ’s finally happened. I’ve been attacked in the scientific literature ~Salander, 2006!. Well, just to clarify, it wasn’t a personal attack, but rather an attack of the highest and most noble order: an attack on the scientific rigor of the conceptual underpinnings of my recent work on meaning and spirituality in advanced cancer patients ~e.g., Breitbart, 2002!. To be honest, and a bit le...

Joseph Selling proposes a contemporary revision of natural law ethics, making it more person-centered. Earlier James Gustafson insisted that natural law ethics was too egoist or anthropocentric, so his work proposed theocentrism as a corrective. Richard Gula in turn proposed an ethics that centers on imitating God’s relationships. This essay combines the merits of all three with the author’s ow...

This article strives to use the institutional and discursive strategies employed by the Islamic Movement in Israel in the soccer sphere to illustrate wider theoretical arguments about setting boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the public sphere. The Islamic Movement uses an isolationist strategy, by creating the independent Islamic Soccer League. In contrast, social agents who strive to p...

Despite recent advances in the field of religion and health, meaningful findings will increasingly depend on the capacity to conceptualize "religion" properly. To date, scientists' conception of religion has been shaped by the Enlightenment paradigm. However, recent developments in philosophy make the "objectivity" of the Enlightenment paradigm problematic, if not untenable. Contrary to common ...

Naturalism and humanism have long histories in China, side-by-side with a long history of theistic belief. In this paper I will first sketch the early naturalistic and humanistic traditions in Chinese thought. I will then focus on the synthesis of these perspectives in Neo-Confucian religious thought. I will argue that these forms of non-theistic belief should be considered aspects of Chinese r...

This article presents the phenomenon of religious revival in twentieth century through a case study phenomenology at Mahidol University Salaya campus, Thailand. The principal scope this is on socio-religious construct contemporary Buddhist community campus. religion university has transformed campus into space that juxtapositions its secular academic framework.