How does religion shape the nature of insurgency? Do Islamist insurgents fight differently from those with secular aims, like national selfdetermination? Do they select different types of targets, use different military strategies, respond to different types of incentives? Scholarly attention to the role of religion in civil and interstate war has increased in recent years, but there remains li...

Religiosity has long been known to promote volunteering in the US and elsewhere. Despite the growing body of research examining religious correlates of volunteering, however, few studies have focused on whether and how religious attitudes affect volunteering. With data from the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II), 2004–2006, we examine the influences of religious attitudes, name...

This article presents an overview of both the processes and the results of an international, interdisciplinary, and interreligious feminist study of "good sex" that resulted in a volume by the same name. We argue that religion (including its secular equivalent, i.e., global capitalism) remains a powerfully influential cultural force that shapes people's lives, in general, and sanctifies their b...

Children in the United States come to distinguish historical from fictional story figures between the ages of 3 and 5 years, guided by the plausibility of the story events surrounding the figure (Corriveau, Kim, Schwalen, & Harris, 2009; Woolley & Cox, 2007). However, U.S. children vary in their reactions to stories that include fantastical events. Secular children with no religious education t...

The courts have so far consistently refused to view misconduct by clergy counselors as constituting clergy malpractice. However, they have increasingly come to view it as a breach of fiduciary duty. More recently, they have also begun to differentiate between the secular and religious aspects of clergy counselors' work. The case discussed in this article (Sanders v. Casa View Baptist Church) pr...

“Awesome” is one of the most highly desirable experiences for tourists. This study investigates how tourists’ awe emotion is induced when tourists visit sacred mountains and how the awe experience influences their satisfaction. A survey is administrated at a famous sacred mountain in China—Mount Emei. Results reveal that the awe experience is more elicited by the perceived vastness of natural e...

Introduction. This paper deals with secular, spiritual, and religious existential concerns during severe illness. Materials and Methods. Qualitative research interviews were made before and after surgery with women who underwent final diagnostics, surgery, and chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. By applying a phenomenological-hermeneutic text interpretation methodology the findings were systematic...

The battle for public opinion in the Islamic world is an ongoing priority for U.S. diplomacy. The current debate over why many Muslims hold anti-American views centers around whether individuals dislike “who Americans are” with respect to fundamental aspects of culture and government, or “what Americans do” policy-wise in international affairs. We propose, instead, that Muslim anti-Americanism ...

The theory of ritual presented in this article is based on the notion “territory.” Ritual performance encompasses a set of techniques to affect the identity of participants: away from individuality and by communal demarcation of a symbolic territorial model in space or time. The form of ritual is seen as autonomous, i.e. as relatively independent of meaning. As a set of identity-affecting techn...

Since the publication of the Third Edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services in 1995, the principle of cooperation has become the primary lens through which potential partnerships, mergers or joint ventures between Catholic health care organizations and secular health care organizations have been assessed. Directive 70 stipulates that “Catholic health car...