Introduction [1] There is an ongoing debate in the field of religion and film studies about whether or not film makes a unique contribution to our understanding of religion. Since most religion and film scholars are concerned about the representation of religion on the silver screen, only a few scholars who are interested in something more than how religion is portrayed in the movies carry out ...

233 Last year saw the posthumous publication of Stephen Jay Gould’s last volume, The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister’s Pox (Gould, 2003) with the subtitle ‘Mending and minding the misconceived gap between science and the humanities’. The two protagonists were chosen to represent metaphorically a stereotypical disparity between two different ways of ‘knowing’ or looking at nature. The hedgeho...

Despite recent advances in the field of religion and health, meaningful findings will increasingly depend on the capacity to conceptualize "religion" properly. To date, scientists' conception of religion has been shaped by the Enlightenment paradigm. However, recent developments in philosophy make the "objectivity" of the Enlightenment paradigm problematic, if not untenable. Contrary to common ...

Similarity of religious beliefs and practices among friends, or network-religion autocorrelation, is a common aspect of many social networks. Network-religion autocorrelation is important because it strengthens plausibility structures (Berger 1967), or the combination of beliefs and strong social ties to others who share those beliefs. Plausibility structures support sacred umbrellas (Smith 199...