The sacred values of a community are critical in understanding cultural conflict. When an attempt is made to trade a sacred value with a secular good, it evokes feelings of anger (tabootradeoff) but less so when that sacred value is traded off with another sacred value (tragic). Previous work has shown that participants who expressed sacred values for an issue were more resistant to taboo than ...

This article surveys the beliefs concerning the supernatural characteristics and powers of sacred trees in Israel; it is based on a field study as well as a survey of the literature and includes 118 interviews with Muslims and Druze. Both the Muslims and Druze in this study attribute supernatural dimensions to sacred trees which are directly related to ancient, deep-rooted pagan traditions. The...

A growing body of research is beginning to identify characteristics that influence or are related to helping professionals’ integration of clients’ religion and spirituality (RS) in mental health treatment. This article presents Namaste Theory, a new theory for understanding the role of mental health practitioners’ RS in clinical practice. Using Glaser’s (2008) formal quantitative grounded theo...

The emergence of the religious nones can create pedagogical challenges due to the multifarious and institutionally disaffiliated nature of this classification. Thus, this article supplies a potential pedagogical technique by revisiting Peter Berger’s sacred canopy metaphor. We submit that the religious nones can be understood functionally and structurally by employing “sacred metaphors” based o...

Th is chapter reviews a body of research on sacred values and cultural confl ict. Research conducted in the West Bank, Iran, Indonesia, and India reveals that when people transform a resource, idea, or activity into a sacred value, normative approaches to dispute resolution may fail. In a series of experiments, the authors fi nd that off ering material incentives to encourage people to compromi...

To utilize the notion of a sacred and a profane is to suggest an explanation and ordering of the world encountered that looks back to the Judeo-Christian traditions often claimed as the foundations of Western society. The term " sacred and profane " , bound together often as a figure of speech, suggests the defining differences between a number of oppositions: good and evil, Godly and Godless o...

‘‘Our land is sacred, and not tradable.’’ ‘‘Jerusalem is not up for discussion.’’ ‘‘As a matter of principle, I will not give that crook a dime!’’ ‘‘Human life cannot be given a dollar value.’’ Each of these statements suggests that the actor places a sacred value on some issue. But, what does sacred mean? One possible answer is that it is a constraint and that the issue is truly not open for d...

Special sites or areas that have one or more attributes which distinguish them as somehow extraordinary, usually in a religious or spiritual sense, are called sacred places. They tend to evoke a feeling of some awesome, mysterious, and transcendent power that merits special reverence and treatment. Sacred groves are stands of trees or patches of forest that local communities conserve primarily ...

The northern Ethiopian landscape is dotted with small patches of church forests that are religious centers for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC). These sacred groves are what remain of the once vast tropical Afromontane dry forest. Herein we review the landscape pattern of sacred groves in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and their local scale nutrient status at two sites, Zahara and ...