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Intrinsic Religiousness And Religious Coping As Life Stress Moderators For Catholics Versus Protestants, Lisa Smith, Crystal Park, Lawrence Cohen

Lisa Smith

Two prospective studies were conducted to test the stress-moderating effects of intrinsic religiousness and overall religious coping on the depression and trait anxiety of Catholic and Protestant college students. Both studies found a significant cross-sectional interaction between controllable life stress and religious coping in the prediction of Catholics' depression, with religious coping serving a protective function at a high level of controllable negative events. Both studies also found a significant prospective interaction between uncontrollable life stress and intrinsic religiousness in the prediction of Protestants' depression; the relationship between uncontrollable stress and depression was positive for low intrinsic Protestants, flat for …

Blaming It On God: Considerations When Presented With Supernatural Explanatory Entities, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

If the presence of an anthropologist at a fieldsite indicates that there exist unknowns, then for that anthropologist off-handedly to dismiss informant responses as irrelevant, inadequate, or otherwise poor explanations for observed phenomena is an intellectually arrogant, if not dangerous act.

What then does the anthropologist do with statements that "god willed it" and "the spirits did it"? To dismiss them without good reasons is to be guilty of intellectual condescension; but what constitutes a "good reason," either to reject or to accept such testimony? This essay seeks to consider just such "good reasons," to see if they are as …

Dream Interpreters In Exile: Joseph, Daniel, And Sigmund (Solomon), Ken Frieden

Ken Frieden

The biblical Joseph and Daniel have much in common with SigmundFreud, for all three experienced the powerlessness of exileand later attained the power they lacked by interpreting dreams. Unableto control historical destiny, exilic Jews have characteristicallyreinterpreted events, texts, and dreams; the interpretive successes ofJoseph, Daniel, and Sigmund at once reflect and defy the Jewish condition.Although Freud made every effort to distance himself from hisancient forerunners, The Interpretation of Dreams indirectly responds tothem.While many adepts at dream interpretation appear in the Bible,in the Talmud, in the Sifer Chassidim, and in other Judaic sources,Joseph, Daniel, and Sigmund have special significance. Joseph is …