Introduction: Although many homebound older adults cope well using various resources, including religious coping strategies, some experience prolonged and unresolved psychosocial distress resulting in biological disruptions, such as hypercortisolism and increased inflammation, which are suggested mechanisms of decreased executive function. Purpose: To examine relationships of religious coping, ...

The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) is a measure of the centrality, importance or salience of religious meanings in personality that has been applied yet in more than 100 studies in sociology of religion, psychology of religion and religious studies in 25 countries with in total more than 100,000 participants. It measures the general intensities of five theoretical defined core dimensions...

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOSITY AND RELIGIOUS COPING TO STRESS REACTIVITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING by Andrew M. Ward A significant body of research has identified the deleterious effects of stress on psychological well-being (e.g., Tataro, Luecken, & Gunn, 2004). Religiosity and religious coping have been identified as variables that may impact a person’s experience with stress (Ano & ...

The creation and use of metaphors is an indispensable element of our mental skills and our ability to use language. Modern studies of metaphor underline its almost unlimited range. Perceived this way, a metaphor is not only a rhetorical figure occurring in poetical language and in several different specific types of discourse. The ability to create and use metaphors is used in everyday and scie...

On 22 February 2011, Christchurch New Zealand (population 367,700) experienced a devastating earthquake, causing extensive damage and killing one hundred and eighty-five people. The earthquake and aftershocks occurred between the 2009 and 2011 waves of a longitudinal probability sample conducted in New Zealand, enabling us to examine how a natural disaster of this magnitude affected deeply held...

The aim of the author's own research was: (a) defining the level of meaning in life and the level of religious experience (God's presence and God's absence) in groups of students with high and low levels of conscience sensitivity and (b) showing the connection between meaning in life and the level of religious experience (God's presence and God's absence) in groups of students with high and low...

Cognitive theories of religious experience, while helpful in explaining some aspects of spirit possession, do not provide a means of accounting for the experience of mediums whose ordinary selves are ‘absent’ during possession rituals. Using the late nineteenthcentury medium, Mrs Piper, as a case study, I argue that hypnosis provides a means of inducing involuntary experiences similar to those ...

Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece, The wind in the willows, contains a classic description of a religious experience as Ratty and Mole come face-to-face with the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This chapter draws on Happold’s identification of seven characteristics of mystical experience, as amplified by the Francis-Louden Mystical Orientation Scale, to test whether Ratty and Mole’s experience can be p...

The value of a person’s life work is difficult to discern, much less to evaluate or to become a source of wisdom, if we reflect upon that work from the limited perspectives of our own experience or the dominant religious and educational theories of the day. Oral history provides a way to listen to another closely, to analyze that person’s life and work in relation to a larger context, and to dr...

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 conceptualiz...