This article seeks answers to the perplexing phenomenon: the increasing widespread youth religiosity in contemporary China. How is it possible for young people to acquire such religiosity in a society where the state vigorously opposes religion through its policy and practice? Using data from my own and others’ field observation and investigations, I show that in the past two decades, religious...

Developmental theories suggest that children initially conceptualize God in concrete, anthropomorphic terms. In contrast, recent research has found that from early on, children recognize God as a being radically different from humans. Previous research has been limited to studies of Christian children. The present study questioned children and adults raised in a religious tradition (Church of J...

BACKGROUND International guidance for advance care planning (ACP) supports the integration of spiritual and religious aspects of care within the planning process. Religious leaders' perspectives could improve how ACP programs respect patients' faith backgrounds. This study aimed to examine: (i) how religious leaders understand and consider ACP and its implications, including (ii) how religion a...

Religion's fundamental involvement with questions of disease, health, and medicine has given rise to concepts making substantial contributions to the field of bioethics. The purpose of this article is to examine such ongoing contributions in a general way, and then to review how the issue of whether medical technology should be used to prolong life might be approached from the standpoint of sev...

The problem of respecting the patients' religious-based decisions seems to play increasingly important role in medical practice. Most probably it happens because: (i) bioethical standards accentuate the principle of the respect for autonomy (the departure form medical paternalism) and (ii) the contacts between people belonging to different religious traditions are becoming more and more frequen...

The changes are of many different kinds. In the religious realm, the role of the Lutheran folk church that formerly was very influential in many parts of society has changed. The differentiation of society in Modernity diminished the immediate significance of religion outside a narrow religious sphere. Today one can see an increasing interest in religion but this does not mean a return to the r...

The research explores three interrelated theological problems – human suffering as encountered during the eruptions of the Soufrière Hills Volcano on Montserrat, the inadequacy of existing Protestant religious traditions on Montserrat to cope with the crisis situation, and the weaknesses of recommended models of pastoral care inherited from Western Christianity. The latter two concerns became o...

It is unclear whether the development of ‘‘Western’’ psychology and psychiatry, in the last century or so, has overall actually been good for our mental health. The article argues that a deficiency has been the lack of attention paid by these disciplines, to the spiritual component of the Self. There are, however, psychologies’’ developed within religious traditions, which integrate the spiritu...