Digital Commons Network^™

Alex Bradley, Carl Milofsky

Northern Ireland Archive

Bradley is a psychotherapist based in a religious NGO. His talk primarily involves general comments and observations about the events of Bloody Sunday, sectarian conflicts in general, and values statements from Bradley offered in response to student questions about the conflict in Northern Ireland. He continues to talk about the White Oak Center in Donegal, which is a residential treatment center that in this account it heavily concerned with treating alcohol abuse. The tape shifts to talk about Bradley's work treating trauma experiences related to the Troubles. He began working in the Catholic community but then was asked to work …

The Potential Role Of Spirituality In Conducting Field Research: Examination Of A Model And A Process, Michael Maher

The Qualitative Report

The Cognitive-Experiential Tri-Circle is a model developed by the author to explain the relationship between conducting field research and reflecting on beliefs, including spiritual beliefs. His sample included graduate students, faculty, and friends of the university who participated in field research trips to Cuba through Loyola University Chicago. The basic assumption of the model is that "self," "beliefs," and "experience" are related in such a way that "depth" applies to each equally in a field research experience. Depth of experience for the self leads to depth of belief for the self . Reflection tools that encourage depth of belief for …

The Evangelical Movement In Ecuador, Steve Grosz

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Religion And Animals: A Changing Scene, Paul Waldau

State of the Animals 2003

For protections to evolve to include nonhuman species, religions— through their leaders, their institutions, and above all their believers— must take seriously the important role that they have played, and certainly will continue to play, in humans’ engagement with the lives beyond our species line. Religions have such a central role in the transmission of basic images and values regarding living beings that, without their help, the problem of the species line will not be solved in this century. A central question for this century is whether influential religious institutions will continue to convey images that radically and absolutely dismiss …

Addressing Fundamentalism By Legal And Spiritual Means, Dan Wessner

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Religion and Humane Global Governance by Richard A. Falk. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 191 pp.

Gender and Human Rights in Islam and International Law: Equal before Allah, Unequal before Man? by Shaheen Sardar Ali. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000. 358 pp.

Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women edited by Courtney W. Howland. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 326 pp.

The Islamic Quest for Democracy, Pluralism, and Human Rights by Ahmad S. Moussalli. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. 226 pp.

Gender Bias In The Roman Catholic Church: Why Can't Women Be Priests?, Cheryl Y. Haskins

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Images Of Slavery In The Early Church: Hatred Disguised As Love?, Kimberly Flint-Hamilton

Journal of Hate Studies

The Ardoyne neighborhood is not a place a tourist would want to visit. Its streets today are the front lines of what some would classify as a religious holy war, and are the regular backdrop for violent scenes of masked demonstrators, burning cars, and heavily armed soldiers and riot police. Guard towers, walls topped with barbed wire, armored cars, and helicopters are part of daily life in this area, but this neighborhood is not in the Middle East. Rather, it lies far to the north in Belfast, Northern Ireland, part of industrialized Western Europe. Here, row upon row of run-down …

Building Peace In Northern Ireland: Christian Reconcilers In An Economy Of Hate, Eric Getty

Journal of Hate Studies

The Ardoyne neighborhood is not a place a tourist would want to visit. Its streets today are the front lines of what some would classify as a religious holy war, and are the regular backdrop for violent scenes of masked demonstrators, burning cars, and heavily armed soldiers and riot police. Guard towers, walls topped with barbed wire, armored cars, and helicopters are part of daily life in this area, but this neighborhood is not in the Middle East. Rather, it lies far to the north in Belfast, Northern Ireland, part of industrialized Western Europe. Here, row upon row of run-down …

Darwin, Design, And Disestablishment: Teaching The Evolution Controversy In Public Schools, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The controversy over teaching evolution in public schools is once again hot news. Ever since the Supreme Court decided in 1987 that Louisiana could not constitutionally require teachers to give equal time to teaching creation science and evolution, critics of evolution have adopted a variety of new strategies to change the way in which public schools present the subject to their students. These strategies have included teaching evolution as a "theory" rather than as a fact, disclaiming the truth of evolutionary theory, teaching arguments against evolution, teaching the allegedly nontheistic theory of intelligent design instead of creationism, removing evolution from …

Rhythm And Movement In Ghana:Healing Through Dance Through Generations, Naima Penniman

African Diaspora ISPs

Rhythm and Movement in Ghana: Healing through Dance and through Generations is an odyssey into the potential of dance for social healing. The motivation for this study was to explore the role of artistic expression and positive cultural revival as a force for healing collective trauma. This project was aimed at understanding, in particular, the power and potential of Ghanaian dancing and drumming tradition: the important role is has played throughout the people's history as a vehicle for commune with the spiritual, a medium for release and expression, a force for social solidarity, and a tool for healing; and to …

A War Of Words: Halo Songs Of Abuse Among The Anlo Ewe, Corinna Campbell

African Diaspora ISPs

Sticks and stones will break my bones but words can never hurt me. Nearly every American child is taught the phrase. The Anlo Ewe of Ghana, however, have more reverence for the damaging potential of language. Their songs of abuse, or halo, are at once an artistic medium, a social control , and a source of humor and entertainment. At the same time they are a form of verbal warfare, with victims and casualties the same as in any other type of war. This mode of communication is at times beautiful and profound, yet because of the damage it can …

Nothing Is Written: Fundamentalism, Revivalism, Reformism And The Fate Of Islamic Law, Hamid M. Khan

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part of any Muslim's effort to return to their religious past usually involves an invocation of Islamic law, or what has been termed the Shari'ah. This Note intends to cursorily examine Islamic law-where it was, and where it is going. More specifically, this Note will examine a growing fracture within the Islamic community and how a fissure among so-called fundamentalists will ultimately influence an understanding of Islamic law.

Protestant Perspectives On Informed Consent (Particularly In Research Involving Human Participants), James F. Childress

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines Protestant positions on informed consent/refusal regarding the use of human subjects in research. Primarily focusing on the work of Paul Ramsey, a Protestant scholar in science and ethics, the article describes the relationship between the God-man covenant and man-to-man covenants and the consequences thereof. Exploring the line between what Ramsey calls "charity" and "justice," the article finds differences between therapeutic and nontherapeutic research and who may participate with or without consent.

Informed Consent Without Autonomy, Daniel P. Sulmasy

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay explains why and how the Roman Catholic basis for informed consent is different from the secular basis. It argues that the Catholic basis, which is rooted in "natural law," is the better model for society to adopt. The author explains that the secular view is rooted in the belief that patient autonomy must never be violated but the Catholic view is based on human dignity, which simply requires doctors to allow patients to exercise their free will within moral limits. This view allows doctors to override patients' decisions if those decisions are morally wrong or irrational.

Implicit Religion And The Curvilinear Relationship Between Religion And Death Anxiety, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Debate over the relationship of religion to death anxiety has included the opposing views of Malinowski, who held that religion lessened death anxiety, and Radcliffe-Brown, who argued that religion increased death anxiety. Homans' theoretical synthesis of these viewpoints was tested by Leming, who concluded that the empirical relationship was curvilinear, meaning that both high and low religious involvements resulted in low death anxiety while middle-range attachments did not.

Reconsideration of this result argues that the presence of death anxiety is not dependent upon social learning, and that either high or low levels of theism leads to the resolution of anxiety …

No Place To Die: The Poetics Of Roadside Sacred Places In Mexico, Daniel Raymond Weir

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Roadside death memorials are a response to the sudden, tragic death of a loved one; and are appearing with increasing regularity in developed and developing countries across the globe. In Mexico, however, wayside memorials and shrines of religiosity are a centuries-old tradition. This work, an effort to understand why the exact location of a person’s death is so important that a sacred place must be created where no place is intended, is basic and exploratory research. A multi-method, and cross-disciplinary case study, based upon the author’s fieldwork in Mexico, produces massive data and constitutes a robust explanatory triangulation. A geographic …

Christian Identity: An American Heresy, David Ostendorf

Journal of Hate Studies

Christian Identity is a belief system so strange, indeed bizarre, that most Americans who know anything about it dismiss it outright and relegate those who believe it to the quaint and quirky fringes of the nation’s religious subcultures.

How seriously, for example, can one take the notion that God created Adam as a white man and that other races are sub-human? Or the belief that the lost tribes of Israel traversed Europe, landed in Great Britain, and crossed the Atlantic to inherit—as white Christian racialists—the promises of God? Or that Jesus came only to reach out to and save this …

How To Talk About Religion, James Boyd White

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

It is of enormous importance to learn to talk about religion well, if only for the obvious political and practical reason that religious divisions, both within nations and among them, are olten intractable and bitter, and mutual understanding very difficult to attain

Mapping 'New' Geographies Of Religion: Politics And Poetics In Modernity, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article reviews geographical research on religion in the 1990s, and highlights work from neighbouring disciplines where relevant. Contrary to views that the field is incoherent, I suggest that much of the literature pays attention to several key themes, particularly, the politics and poetics of religious place, identity and community. I illustrate the key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in these areas, and suggest various ways forward. These 'new' geographies emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the 'officially sacred'; different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in different historical and place-specific contexts; different geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population …

Legal Ethics And Jurisprudence From Within Religious Congregations, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The Rabbis of the Talmud were a community for moral discernment—a community commissioned by God to interpret the Word of God. Their story is theology. Michael Scanlon, a modem Roman Catholic thinker, assumes such a theology and adds anthropology.

The Rabbis assume and Scanlon describes a community for ethical discernment. It is a perception—somewhat empirical, somewhat theological—that is important and neglected for lawyers in academic jurisprudence and in religious legal ethics. My argument here is that what lawyers should do about "ethical dilemmas" in professional practice can be discerned in the sort of community the Talmud describes, and Scanlon describes, …

The Free Exercise Of Religion: Lukumi And Animal Sacrifice, Fred M. Frohock

Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies Occasional Papers

No abstract provided.

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

The "Good Will" Religions : A Comparative Study Of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity And Islam, Mary Ellen Fieseler

Honors Capstones

Religion had its inception in man's ignorance and fear of the world around him. It was a path toward satisfying man's quest for the signifance of life. As this path was pursued, the meaning and value humans ascribed to the world evolved, forming the various religions of the world. During the greatest of all religious eras, 800 to 500 BCE, India, China, Persia and Israel all imparted into human thought and practice a new god-concept, a fundamental conception of benevolent good will, and accompanying this new god-concept were changes in the religious rules that determined human conduct. This research outlines …

Doing Theology In The City, Paul Fitzgerald

Special Topics, General

The task of theology is often a lonely endeavor. The hush of the library or the archives, the still of the chapel, and the quiet discipline of one's desk are places where theological research and writing unfold, most often in solitary concentration. The classroom on the protected college campus or seminary, the academic conference in large hotels, and even the cherished conversation in the homes of colleagues do open the theologian to other minds and hearts so that theories and insights may be tested in dialogue. However, these exchanges are often located in affluent social contexts which cannot reveal the …

Common Schools And The Common Good: Reflections On The School-Choice Debate, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Thank you very much for this timely and important discussion on school choice, religious faith, and the public good.

First things first—Steven Green is right: The Cleveland school-voucher case is headed for the Supreme Court. And I am afraid that Mr. Green is also correct when he observes that the question whether the First Amendment permits States to experiment with meaningful choice-based education reform will likely turn on Justice O'Connor's fine-tuned aesthetic reactions to the minutiae of Ohio's school-choice experiment.

Putting aside for now the particulars of the Cleveland case, though, I would like to propose for your consideration a …

Religious Faith And Mental Health Outcomes, Thomas G. Plante, Naveen K. Sharma

Psychology

In this chapter we review recent research regarding the relationship between religious faith/spirituality and mental health outcomes, as well as provide directions for future research and discussion. The specific aspects of mental health and illness that we focus on include well-being, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and schizophrenia. We also briefly discuss research pertaining to religious faith and personality disorders, eating disorders, somatoform disorders, and bipolar disorder.

Developing A Contextual Theology In Melanesia With Reference To Death, Witchcraft, And The Spirit World, Neville R. Bartle

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Sulochana R. Asirvatham, Corinne Ondine Pache, John Watrous

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This book gathers essays that are all, in one way or another, connected with ancient Greek and Roman religions. The essays cover a wide range—both chronological and geographical—of religious discourse and practice from Classical Athens on to seventeenth-century America via medieval Europe. Thus, there is no attempt at comprehensiveness. Rather, we hope that these essays will serve to problematize some common distinctions that readers generally bring to the study of ancient Greek and Roman religion and its legacy—such as the distinctions between Greece and Rome, Greco-Romans and barbarians, pagans and Christians, religion and politics, and religion and magic, to name …

Fame And Latter-Day Saint Youth: Value Conflicts And The Interpretive Audience, Shellie M. Frey

Theses and Dissertations

Fame is a paradoxical issue: a phenomenon that is both embraced and shunned simultaneously in American culture and particularly within many religious institutions. Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), for instance, discourage its members (particularly the youth) from seeking out fame as well as famous individuals as role models. Yet they also incorporate positive rhetoric about fame as well in terms of famous LDS people, landmarks or groups. Furthermore, various aspects of the LDS Church (worldwide televised conferences, widely distributed books written by Church leaders, etc.) are highly mediated, thus, integrated with a public venue …

A Brazilian Challenge To Lewis's Explanation Of Cult Mediumship, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Recruitment into peripheral possession trance cults has been explained as attempts to compensate for socio-economic deprivation and jural impotence. This model, best developed by I.M. Lewis, is reviewed and its predictions tested against two types of Brazilian data. Firstly, national census figures of religious affiliation are compared with measure of socio-economic stress for a diachronic analysis. A second, synchronic analysis involves 62 respondents in Rio de Janeiro who completed questionnaires on socio-economic status, cultic affiliation, and perceptions of stress and gender inequality. The results offer only weak support for Lewis's original model, which may therefore profit from supplementation from other …