In Ethics in the Sanctuary, Margaret Battin argues that traditional evangelism, directed to promoting religious belief, practice, and affiliation, that is proselytizing, is morally questionable to the extent that it involves unwarranted paternalism in the interests of securing other-worldly benefits for potential converts. I argue that Christian evangelism is justified in order to make the this...

BACKGROUND International guidance for advance care planning (ACP) supports the integration of spiritual and religious aspects of care within the planning process. Religious leaders' perspectives could improve how ACP programs respect patients' faith backgrounds. This study aimed to examine: (i) how religious leaders understand and consider ACP and its implications, including (ii) how religion a...

The movement of people from one country to another and the subsequent settling of migrants in host communities diversely affect all parties in relocation processes. Directly or indirectly, both migrant and their host communities respond differently to the worldviews of the migrants and the socio-cultural contexts of the host communities. While the religious beliefs of people appear to be the le...

1. Introduction In a scene in " The Importance of Being Earnest " Oscar Wilde pinpoints an array of properties of religious ritual systems that cognitive theorizing about religious rituals, viz., the theory of religious ritual competence, has subsequently systematized (Lawson and McCauley 1990; McCauley and Lawson 2002). To the amusement of hundreds of audiences, Wilde's play also identifies a ...

Positive and negative religious coping strategies and their relation with posttraumatic stress (PTS), psychological distress, and posttraumatic growth (PTG) were examined in the context of Hurricane Katrina. Positive religious coping was hypothesized to be associated with PTG, whereas negative religious coping was hypothesized to be associated with PTS and psychological distress. Low-income mot...

Article history: Received 9 November 2015 Received in revised form 1 February 2016 Accepted 5 February 2016 Available online 18 February 2016 In three samples of Christian undergraduate students (n=43, n=115, n=73), we investigated the relative influence of Christian religious identification and intergroup disgust sensitivity (ITG-DS; an affect-laden individual difference variable reflecting re...

In ‘secular’ Western societies, religious topics permeate media texts of books, films, series and games and such texts even inform several religious-spiritual movements. Critically expanding on theories about ‘fiction-based religion’, ‘invented religion’ or ‘hyper-real religion’, this article studies if, how and why players of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of...

Religious entities play significant roles in the current refugee/ forced migration crisis. These roles include innovative and experience based ideas to address broken aspects of the humanitarian system, overall advocacy on behalf of refugees and migrants based on humanitarian and spiritual principles, direct action in refugee camps and communities, action in communities that refugees and migran...

In different cultures, pregnancy, birth and motherhood are perceived as spiritual events through their miraculous processes and create an ideal context for spiritual enrichment. However, studies on spirituality and birth are at very early stages. The purpose of this study was to understand the facilitators and barriers of the unborn child spiritual care in Iranian women. Twenty-two mothers with...

A meta-analysis of data from 42 independent samples examining the association of a measure of religious involvement and all-cause mortality is reported. Religious involvement was significantly associated with lower mortality (odds ratio = 1.29; 95% confidence interval: 1.20-1.39), indicating that people high in religious involvement were more likely to be alive at follow-up than people lower in...