Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Influence Of Religion On Immigration Public Opinion, Olga Alvertos

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This study explores the ways in which the religious beliefs of individuals influence their opinion on immigration and immigration related policy. While seemingly separate topics, the two are interwoven through variables such as party affiliation, education level, and age. Previous studies show a clear correlation between frequent attendance of religious services and positive views on immigration and related policies. This topic has yet to be explored in depth and with reference to frequency of religious attendance. Using ANES data, my goal with this research is to determine if a strong attachment to religion affects public opinion of immigration policy and …

The Impact Of Short-Term Mission Trips On Religiosity And Motivations For Helping In College Students, Patricia Minerva Cepeda-Russell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There is an abundant amount of research on the negative aspects of short-term mission trips; however, there is a lack of literature that reflects the religiosity of college students and studies using religious assessments for the specific age range of 18-25. The current research intends to answer the following three questions: Does going on short-term mission trips make a difference in religiosity in the lives of college students who participate? What is the mean difference in religiosity practices between college students that participated in short-term mission trips compared to those that did not? What are the motivating factors that lead …

Beliefs And Their Byproducts: The Impact Of Religiosity And Political Ideology On Attitudes Toward Covid-19, Vaccines, And Climate Change, Philip Goodrich

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Several studies have indicated that an individual’s level of religiosity impacts their views toward science and scientific phenomena. Moreover, research shows that these views can also be impacted by an individual's political affiliation and ideology. In this research paper, I examine the relationship between one’s religiosity and political ideology and their attitude toward the novel corona virus (COVID-19), vaccines, and climate change. Using data from the 2021 Chapman University Survey of American Fears, I find that while religiosity plays a role in one’s attitudes toward these three scientific phenomena, the greatest correlation stems from one’s political ideology. In other words, …

Religious Racial Socialization: The Approach Of A Black Pastor At An Historic Black Baptist Church In Orange County, California, Shandell S. Maxwell

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This case study explored and developed the religious racial socialization (RRS) approach of a Black Baptist pastor in Orange County, California. The aim was to assess how the pastor’s direct messages about race influenced and transformed members’ racial and social views and actions and examined the message alignment between what the pastor said and what church members and the leadership team heard. This study took a multimethod exploratory approach, examining multiple sources of data gathered from a Likert scale members’ survey, leadership team interviews, and archival materials. To support triangulation of the data, a word query and emergent thematic analysis …

Islamic Labeled Firms: Revisiting Dow Jones Measure Of Compliance, Ahmed Elnahas, Ghada Ismail, Rwan El-Khatib, M. Kabir Hassan

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

Billions of dollars, across 131 countries, are invested in Islamic law‐compliant funds that are often promoted as consistent with the spirit and overall objectives of Islam (Maqasid Al‐Sharia), thereby indicating they are more socially responsible, less risky, and less prone to failure. The empirical results of this study indicate that Shariah‐compliant firms identified by the Dow Jones do not have higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores, lower risk, or lower likelihood of failure than non‐compliant firms. We address endogeneity using the instrumental variable (IV) approach and selection bias using propensity score matching (PSM). Our results are similar when using the …

Pro-Life And Pro-Choice: What Shapes The Debate Over Abortion In America?, Kevin S. Ganjon

Student Publications

The topic of abortion in the United States of America is one that is surrounded by immense political controversy, particularly surrounding the legality of the practice. While some individuals believe in varying levels of freedom of choice, many others believe that the overall practice is unjust and wrong in most, or all circumstances. What are some of the underlying factors that may shape an individual’s stance on abortion? This research paper examines various significant factors such as religiosity, level of education, and age with regards to their potential correlation with an individual’s stance on abortion. By examining this data, this …

Catholicism And Politics In A Fallen World: Understanding Human Imperfection As Relates To Political Institutions, George J. Doyle

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

This thesis is composed of two primary parts, each involving discussion of Catholicism and political life. Part I critiques Thomas Aquinas’ theory of government in light of his theory of nature, with an emphasis on original sin as a defining attribute of the human person. The section concludes with an argument in favor of democracy rooted in Aquinas’s theory of human nature, as well as an understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in light of the claims made in this part of the thesis. Part II contains a political science study assessing factors that contribute to party identification …

The Path To God Is Through The Heart: Metaphoric Self-Location As A Predictor Of Religiosity, Adam K. Fetterman, Jacob Juhl, Brian P. Meier, Andrew Abeyta, Clay Routledge, Michael D. Robinson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Metaphors linking the heart to warm intuition and the head to cold rationality may capture important differences between people because some locate the self in the heart and others locate the self in the head. Five studies (total N = 2575) link these individual differences to religious beliefs. Study 1 found that religious beliefs were stronger among heart-locators than head-locators. Studies 2 and 3 replicated this relationship in more diverse samples. Studies 4 and 5 focused on questions of mediation. Heart-locators believed in God to a greater extent partly because of empathy-related processes (Study 4) and partly because they tended …

Not All R & R Is Good: Religiosity And Racism Within Charles Dickens’S And Wilkie Collins’S The Perils Of Certain English Prisoners, Emma Judd

Student Works

In their 1857 collaborative Christmas novella, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins present various instances of blatant and unabashed racism on the island of Silver-Store. From nearly the beginning, the story’s narrator, Gill Davis, notes, “I have stated myself to be a man of no learning, and, if I entertain prejudices, I hope allowance may be made. I will now confess to one. It may be a right one or it may be a wrong one; but, I never did like Natives, except in the form of oysters” (12). This racist attitude is not …

Buddhism Co. Ltd? Epistemology Of Religiosity, And The Re-Invention Of A Buddhist Monastery In Hong Kong, Junxi Qian, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article re-theorises the relationships between secularity and religiosity in modernity. While geographers have recognised that the secular and the religious are mutually constituted, this article pushes this theorisation further, arguing that the religious and the secular are in fact hybrid constructs that embrace simultaneously the sacred and profane, the transcendent and the immanent. Albeit the significant advancement in disrupting enclosed epistemologies of secular modernity, relatively less work has sought to theorise the possibility of religion as a hybrid operating at the secular–religious interface. Focusing on the ways in which a non-Western religion, Buddhism, performs entangled relationships between religiosity and …

Assessing Religious Orientations: Replication And Validation Of The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex (Crc) Model, Steven L. Isaak, Jesse R. James, Mary K. Radeke, Stephen W. Krauss, Keke L. Schuler, Eric R. Schuler

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex (CRC) model is a structural model of religious orientation that was designed to help organize and clarify measurement of foundational aspect of religiousness. The current study successfully replicated the CRC model using multidimensional scaling, and further evaluated the reliability, structure, and validity of their measures in both a university student sample (Study 1) and a nationally representative sample (Study 2). All 10 subscales of the Circumplex Religious Orientation Inventory (CROI) demonstrated good reliability across both samples. A two-week test-retest of the CROI showed that the subscales are stable over time. A confirmatory factor analysis of the CROI …

The Relationship Between Religious Commitment And Bible Literacy In Suburban New York And New Jersey Christian High School Juniors And Seniors, Pradeep Emmanuel Stephen

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This correlative study explored the relationship between the religious commitment of junior and senior Christian high school students and their level of Bible literacy as indicated by their respective scores on the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) and Assessment of Bible Knowledge Test (ABKT). Using a non-parametric Spearman’s rho statistic for a correlation test, the study fills a gap in the literature by analyzing the strength of the relationship between students’ levels of Bible literacy and outcomes on the specific religiosity subscales on the DUREL instrument, including Organizational Religious Activity (ORA), Non-Organizational Activity (NORA) and Intrinsic Religiosity (IR). A non-random …

Black Lives, Sacred Humanity, And The Racialization Of Nature, Or Why America Needs Religious Naturalism Today, Carol W. White

Faculty Journal Articles

Embedded in persistent representations of people of African descent as inferior beings or subpar humans are problematic notions of animality, race, and nature in the U.S., or a lethal combination of intimately conjoined white supremacy and species supremacy. Confronting these processes is a model of African American religious naturalism, which presupposes human animals’ deep, inextricable homology with each other and with other natural processes. Building on the ideas of Anna J. Cooper, W. E. B. du Bois, and James Baldwin, this model of religious naturalism emphasizes humans as sacred centers of value and distinct movements of nature itself where deep …

Relationship Of Religiosity And Spirituality To Hazardous Drinking, Drug Use, And Depression Among Sexual Minority Women, Laurie Drabble, Cindy Veldhuis, Barth Riley, Sharon Rostosky, Tonda Hughes

Faculty Publications

Using data from Wave 3 of the Chicago Health and Life Experiences of Women (CHLEW) study (N = 699), we explored whether religiosity and spirituality were associated with risk of hazardous drinking, drug use, and depression among sexual minority women (SMW; i.e., lesbian, bisexual) and possible differences by race/ethnicity. Participants were more likely to endorse spirituality than religiosity, and endorsement of each was highest among African American SMW. We found no protective effect of religiosity or spirituality for hazardous drinking or drug use. An association initially found between identifying as very spiritual and past-year depression disappeared when controlling for help-seeking. …

Veiling In Fear Or In Faith? Meanings Of The Hijab To Practicing Muslim Wives And Husbands In The United States, Zahra Alghafli, Loren Marks, Trevan Hatch, Andrew Rose

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Muslim practice of wearing the hijab—the veiling and covering of a woman’s head and body. More specifically, this study aims to present insiders’ perspectives regarding the personal understandings of the hijab among 20 wives and 20 husbands (n = 40) in religious Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in the United States. Qualitative analysis yielded three emergent themes: (1) The hijab as a symbol of religious commitment; (2) The hijab as a tool of protection, rather than oppression, for women and families; and (3) Two different views of Muslims’ reasoning behind the hijab. These …

A Bounded Affinity Theory Of Religion And The Paranormal, Joseph O. Baker, Christoper Bader, F. Carson Mencken

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We outline a theory of bounded affinity between religious experiences and beliefs and paranormalism, which emphasizes that religious and paranormal experiences and beliefs share inherent physiological, psychological, and ontological similarities. Despite these parallels, organized religious groups typically delineate a narrow subset of experiences and explanatory frames as acceptable and True, banishing others as either false or demonic. Accordingly, the theory provides a revised definition of the “paranormal” as beliefs and experiences explicitly rejected by science and organized religions. To demonstrate the utility of the theory, we show that, after controlling for levels of conventional religious practice, there is a strong, …

0836: M. Homer Cummings Papers, 1909-1968, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The 31 boxes in this collection contain the following materials by Cummings: college examination papers; sermons and radio addresses; newspaper columns; letters; poems (single copies, booklets, and a spiral-bound book); and songs (single copies, booklets, song books, printing plates, and recordings). There are also letters written to him; newspaper articles about him and his family; materials from the Literary and Bible Training School and McCrum Slavonic Training School (Rev. and Mrs. Cummings’ alma maters); song books and vinyl records from his collection; and various miscellaneous items.

To view materials from this collection that are digitized and available online, search the …

Fatalism, Diabetes Management Outcomes, And The Role Of Religiosity, Vincent Berardi, John Bellettiere, Orit Nativ, Slezak Ladislav, Melbourne Hovell, Orna Baron-Epel

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

This study aimed to determine whether fatalistic beliefs were associated with elevated levels of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and to establish the role of religiosity in this relationship. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on a sample of 183 Jewish adults with diabetes visiting a large medical center in northern Israel. Self-administered questionnaires assessed level of religiosity, fatalistic beliefs, diabetes management behaviors, and demographic/personal characteristics; laboratory tests were used to measure HbA1c. Multivariate regression indicated that fatalism was significantly associated with HbA1c (β = 0.51, p = 0.01). The association was no longer statistically significant after including self-reported religiosity in the …

Losing Hope: Mental Health And Religious Service Non-Attendance In Australia, Edward Kyle Waters, Helena Mary Millard, Zelda Doyle

Health Sciences Papers and Journal Articles

Religious beliefs and practices are related to mental health. Many individuals report a religious affiliation, but do not have specific religious beliefs or practices such as attending religious services. These non-attendees are often assumed to resemble the non-religious, but are poorly studied. This study explored the demographic characteristics and mental health outcomes associated with being a non-attendee using data from a nationally representative Australian sample. Non-attendees were more likely to be non-Christian than attendees at religious services. They had worse mental health than both non-religious individuals and attendees, especially compared to the non-religious. Whether non-attendance is a result of or …

Religiosity And Social Problems Among Muslim Adolescents In Southern Thailand, Suhaimee Sateemae, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Mahsoom Sateemae

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Substantial commentary has been written about the historical context of the Malay-Muslim minority in the deep south of Thailand. Much of the recent scholarship on the Malay-Muslim minority of Thailand has focused on the ongoing ethnic insurgency in southern Thailand, the region’s troubled history of annexation, and its relevance to Thailand’s political landscape. However, there is little empirical research on the Malay-Muslim population itself, although it is assumed that expressions of their religious identity are a fundamental aspect of collective identity formation. In an effort to fill this gap, this study explored perceptions of religiosity and risk behavior among Muslim …

What Influences Opposition To Gay Marriage?, Nick Fernandes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

There has been a lot of discussion in news media about religious opposition to gay rights. To test these claims, I set out to compare religiosity (as defined by how frequently a given respondent attends religious services) with support for gay rights (in this case, defined as support for gay marriage or civil unions). I also sought to compare the effects of religious denomination on support for gay marriage. In comparing all these variables, I found that religiosity does have a strong impact on support for gay marriage. However, I found that religious denomination (with the exception of moderate Protestants …

The Influence Of Religiosity And Adult Attachment Style On Marital Satisfaction Among Korean Christian Couples Living In South Korea, Dae Woon Cho

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of religious commitment, spirituality and adult attachment style on marital satisfaction among South Korean Christian couples living in South Korea. Three hundred sixty nine South Korean Christian couples from nine Presbyterian churches in Seoul, Dejeon, Daegu, Gumi, and Busan participated in this research. The current study evaluated the psychometric utility of the Spiritual Assessment Scale (SAS) and investigated the relationships among religiosity (religious commitment and spirituality), attachment style (anxious and avoidant attachment) and marital satisfaction. For the psychometric evaluation of the SAS, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted for the …

0816: First Presbyterian Church Of Huntington Records, 1890-2008, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains the records of the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington from the 1890s to the early 2000s. Most of the collection falls between 1930 and 2002. Within the collection are administrative records such as minutes, registers, and accounting records; photographs of members, non-members, former members, church functions; scrapbooks of sanctuary renovations, church functions, and miscellaneous ephemera; newspaper clippings; an international collection; histories of the First Presbyterian Church; a large collection of lantern slides; and other various items.

To view materials from this collection that are digitized and available online, search the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington, 1890-2008 here.

Parent-Child Dynamics And Emerging Adult Religiosity: Attachment, Parental Beliefs, And Faith Support, Kathleen C. Leonard, Kaye V. Cook, Chris Boyatzis, Cynthia N. Kimball, Kelly S. Flanagan

Faculty Journal Articles

Parental religiosity has been shown to predict child and adolescent religiosity, but the role of parents in emerging adult religiosity is largely unknown. We explored associations among emerging adult religiosity, perceived parental religiosity, perceived similarity to mother's and father's religious beliefs, parental faith support, and parental attachment. Participants were 481 alumni of two Christian colleges and completed surveys online. Emerging adult religiosity (measured by Christian orthodoxy and intrinsic religiosity) was high and similar to parents' religiosity. Perceived similarity to parents' religious beliefs, faith support, and attachment to fathers predicted emerging adult religiosity. However, parental religiosity alone was a weak predictor …

Priming God-Related Concepts Increases Anxiety And Task Persistence, Tina M. Toburen, Brian P. Meier

Psychology Faculty Publications

Research on the relationship between religiosity and anxiety has been mixed, with some studies revealing a positive relation and other studies revealing a negative relation. The current research used an experimental design, perhaps for the first time, to examine anxiety and task persistence during a stressful situation. Christians and Atheists/Agnostics/Others were primed with God-related or neutral (non-God related) concepts before completing an unsolvable anagram task described as a measure of verbal intelligence. The results revealed that the God-related primes increased both task persistence and anxiousness, which suggests that experimentally induced God-related thoughts caused participants to persist longer on a stressful …

Do Spirituality And Religiosity Help In The Management Of Cravings In Substance Abuse Treatment?, Sarah J. Mason, Frank P. Deane, Peter Kelly, Trevor P. Crowe

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of spirituality, religiosity and self-efficacy with drug and/or alcohol cravings. A cross-sectional survey was completed by 77 male participants at an Australian Salvation Army residential rehabilitation service in 2007. The survey included questions relating to the participants’ drug and/or alcohol use and also measures for spirituality, religiosity, cravings, and self-efficacy. The sample included participants aged between 19 and 74 years, with more than 57% reporting a diagnosis for a mental disorder and 78% reporting polysubstance misuse with alcohol most frequently endorsed as the primary drug of concern (71%). Seventy-five percent …

0494: Huntington W.Va. First Congregational Church, 1872-1932, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Minutes, membership lists, deeds, and other documents related to the running of the Huntington, West Virginia First Congregational Church from 1872-1932.

0376: United Brethren In Christ. Huntington W.Va. Circuit Collection, 1871-1917, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Primarily membership rolls of church of rural Cabell County. Churches in circuit include Milton, Mercer's Bottom, Green Bottom, Nine Mile, Z. Warner Chapel and Cabell School House.

0256: Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints, Charleston Wv, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Minute books and roll and record books of the Young Men's and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association, handbooks for Bee-Hive girls and minutes of Sunday evening branch meetings.

0257: Martha Elizabeth Carpenter Miller Collection, 1898-1962, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The majority of this collection consists of the handwritten and typed poetry of Martha Carpenter Miller. Many of the poems underwent multiple edits and rewrites, and her notes and corrections to her poems are included in this collection. The collection spans the years 1898-1962, with the bulk of the material from the 1930s-1950s. Miller wrote extensively, and the collection includes poems and partial poems, ideas, and short verses written on scrap paper, envelopes, paper towels, carboard, postcards, and various other types of paper. At the time of processing, original order was largely unknown. In organizing the materials, there were occasionally …