Definitions of cultural competence often refer to the need to be aware and attentive to the religious and spiritual needs and orientations of patients. However, the institution of psychiatry maintains an ambivalent attitude to the incorporation of religion and spirituality into psychiatric practice. This is despite the fact that many patients, especially those from underserved and underprivileg...

Scrupulosity involves obsessive religious doubts and fears, unwanted blasphemous thoughts and images, as well as compulsive religious rituals, reassurance seeking, and avoidance. This article provides a comprehensive review of the nature of scrupulosity, including (a) a detailed clinical description, (b) information about how to differentiate scrupulosity from normal religious practice, (c) cro...

How much accommodation does your practice have to make for employees' religious beliefs? Recent court decisions offer guidance.

This month’s issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is a special issue devoted entirely to the ethics of infant male circumcision—an elective surgical practice that is currently performed on around a third of the world’s male population. The last time the Journal ran a symposium on this issue was in 2004, and there has been relatively scant discussion of the practice in the ethical literature s...

This article analyzes the politics of preaching in Turkey in the last decade by focusing on the appointment of women as preachers and vice-muftis by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a state institution established for the protection of secular foundations through religious service. It asks what happens when women wearing headscarves become civil servants and give religious...

Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs) are vital tools that religious organizations pervasively utilize in the United States of America (USA) to shape social issues, influence social policy and participate in governance. This paper articulates the different methods of deploying ICTs by religious organizations toward social justice and human development in the USA from historical to c...

The relationship between religious obligations and female genital cutting is explored using data from Burkina Faso, a religiously and ethnically diverse country where approximately three-quarters of adult women are circumcised. Data from the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey are used to estimate multilevel models of religious variation in the intergenerational transmission of fema...

Social workers in diverse community practice settings recruit and work with volunteers from religious congregations. This article reports findings from two surveys: 7,405 congregants in 35 Protestant congregations, including 2,570 who were actively volunteering, and a follow-up survey of 946 volunteers. It compares characteristics of congregation volunteers and nonvolunteers.Volunteers tended t...

BACKGROUND Patients' religious commitments and religious communities are known to influence their experiences of illness and their medical decisions. Physicians are also dynamic partners in the doctor-patient relationship, yet little is known about the religious characteristics of physicians or how physicians' religious commitments shape the clinical encounter. OBJECTIVE To provide a baseline...

Historic social study that aims to describe the circumstances of creation of the Union of Brazilian Religious Nurses (UBRN); to analyze the strategies of the religious nurses in their seek for space in nursing area; to comment the importance UBRN for education area and nursing practice. Primary sources: written documents and oral report; secondary sources: books, articles, thesis and dissertati...