Recently, quality of life studies among patients with HIV/AIDS have shown high levels of life satisfaction. Spiritual and religious factors may contribute to these positive outcomes. We interviewed 19 patients with HIV/AIDS in order to understand better the role of religious-spiritual biographies and orientations in quality of life, and found four patterns to describe the ways in which past exp...

What is ‘religious identity’ and how may schooling impact upon it? In this paper, I present an elementary theory of religious identity construction and negotiation, drawing upon the theoretical framework that emerged from extensive fieldwork as part of a study of adolescent Christians, Jews and Muslims in England undertaken for my DPhil at the University of Oxford. I suggest that a conception o...

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature o...

Background In order to minimize the possibility of unsuccessful dental extraction procedure due to dental anxiety, there are several approaches that can be used, including music intervention. Objective The objective of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of classical and religious Islamic music on reducing dental anxiety. Materials and methods Two hundred and twenty-five musl...

In order to understand differences in suicide rates between the countries affiliated to the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), the present paper investigates whether there is a relationship between the existence of religious sanctions and aggregate national suicide rates as reported to the World Health Organization. Through their participation in this study, 49 IASP nation...

This study aims to (a) examine the roles of knowledge, distrust in medical professionals, information sources, and 2 dimensions of religiosity (i.e., religious activity and religious belief) in influencing willingness to participate (WTP) in cancer clinical trials and to (b) compare the results for Caucasians and African Americans in order to inform future recruitment. An online survey was fiel...

BACKGROUND Higher levels of religious involvement are modestly associated with better health, after taking account of other influences, such as age, sex and social support. However, little account is taken of spiritual beliefs that are not tied to personal or public religious practice. Our objective was to develop a standardized measure of spirituality for use in clinical research. METHOD We ...

Religious fundamentalism is a distinctive set of beliefs and behaviour pattern in most modern religious communities. It is a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy among the believers to preserve the authenticity of their identity based on doctrines, beliefs and practices from a sacred past. This religious identity becomes the exclusive basis for a reimagined political and s...

Existing neuroimaging studies have shown that religion, as a subjective culture, can influence self-referential processing. However, the time course of this impact remains unclear. The present study examined how Christians process their own names, the name of their religious leader (i.e., Jesus), and a famous person's name (i.e., Yao Ming). Behavioral and EEG data were recorded while the partic...

This paper will focus on the geopolitical interpretation of religion in international relations. This dimension has historically related religion to politics and politics among nations. More specifically we will analyze the use of religion as a legitimating instrument of political violence, with special focus on the violence emanating from Islamic extremism and terrorism. History of humanity is...