In 2001 the first international conference on religion and the Internet was held at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Religious Encounters in Digital Networks brought together researchers from around the world to discuss their studies of religion online. In the concluding session the conference organisers made a call for “more serious research” and reflection into emerging expressions re...

Even though explaining mental foundations of culture and cultural foundations of mental life has always been one of the ultimate objectives of collective social sciences, there seemed little hope of developing a natural science of culture until the recent interdisciplinary attempts called cognition and culture. What sets the new approach apart is its focus on understanding the relationship betw...

this paper tries to study the complex relationship between religion, popular culture and the internet. the internet not only prepares some facilities for religion, but also it’s a site for a new interaction between religion and popular culture. first, the paper points out five features of the internet which help to extend and promote the religious communication in the cyberspace: 1. deterritori...

Andrei Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity Icon in Cultural Context, in The Trinity-Sergius Lavr in Russian History and Culture Readings in Russian Religious Culture, Deacon Vladimir Tsurikov, ed., vol. 3, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2006, 99-122.

We tested the hypothesis that more frequent exposure to multiword phrases results in deeper entrenchment of their representations, by examining the performance of subjects of different religiosity in the recognition of briefly presented liturgical and secular phrases drawn from several frequency classes. Three of the sources were prayer texts that religious Jews are required to recite on a dail...

People often perceive important and improbable life outcomes as "meant to happen," that is, predetermined and inevitable. In 4 studies, we constructed diverse measures of such fate attributions and examined the cultural correlates of this attributional tendency, focusing on ethnic culture and religious affiliation differences. Independently of ethnic culture, Christians were found to endorse fa...

Previous research into the religious life of Roma in Serbia has mostly been based on questionnaires and surveys of sociologists of religion on their religious (current connection to religion and church) and confessional (belonging to a religion) self-identification, on the ritual celebration of two religious-ethnic holidays: Vlasuljica (January 14, St. Basil) and Đurđevdan (May 6, St. George), ...

Introduction This chapter considers social patterns that contribute to shaping the position of women in Arab societies today. It focuses on the impact of two central sources of influence: cultural and especially religious heritage and Arab intellectual production. Culture plays a pervasive role in composing the social context of women's position in the Arab world, and religious interpretations ...