In the wake of the Faith-Based Initiative in the USA, substantial research has resulted in an increased awareness of religious congregations and faith-based organizations as welfare service providers. The next frontier appears to be the role of relig...
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a faith scale for young children. Data were collected from 424 young children, who had not yet entered elementary school, with their parents rating their faith level. Sixty-five preliminary questio...
Topic: This review explores the important issue of the ‘institutional sustainability’ (IS) of faith-based development organizations (FBDOs) providing microfinance services to the poor in the developing world. IS has often been equated wit...
The culture of provision of adult religious education and faith development, whereby talks or courses are made available at parish level and/or in formal educational settings, has undoubtedly dominated the Irish scene for many years. The low level of...
The teaching of the Bible emphasizes the importance of prayer for Christians’ faith and spiritual growth, particularly during times of trial and difficulty. Through prayers, Christians enable their spiritual experience of continuous transformat...
This paper explores the issue of project sustainability through an analysis of the experiences of a Faith-Based Development Organisation (FBDO) in Bo, Sierra Leone. The FBDO in question was approached by members of their local Catholic Women Associat...
The complex interwoven crises of climate disruption and biodiversity loss demand not only rapid technological innovation for sustainable development but also major shifts in consumption and behaviour, implying a need for responses rooted in ethical v...
Nigeria is both a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, with Islam and Christianity being the dominant religions. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is therefore an institution that the Muslim segment of the country can readily identif...
With 85% of this planet’s population adhering to a religion, faith communities are the largest transnational civil society actors in the world. This accords them a major role in societal processes, aincluding current global challenges as spelle...
This qualitative study employs the framework of Schlossberg’s Transition Theory to offer readers an introduction into recently-conducted research on ex-felons transitioning into, through, and out of higher education within the context of the Co...
In this article, we highlight the contributions of the findings from a branch of the American Families of Faith national research project that pertain to positive religious and spiritual development in youth. We present detailed findings from six pre...
In this contribution, we explore youngsters’ positionality regarding religion and present an example to facilitate them to ‘research’ their own beliefs and their affective commitments to their faith. We start with a short general introduction in Fowl...
Insufficient attention has been paid to the interface between religion, business and development, allowing assumptions and stereotypes to abound. This paper takes a broadly conceptual and sociological approach to the development potential of the Evan...
While the concept of sustainable development has a history of more than 50 years now, with origins dating back to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, it would take the publication of the influential 1987 report of the World C...
This paper reports on the development of a novel 10-item scale that measures beliefs about aging as well as religious-based beliefs about aging. The Religious Beliefs and Aging Scale (RBAS) shows acceptable internal consistency (α = 0.74) and i...
The Way of St. James in Spain is the main European pilgrimage route. Currently, it is a cultural, tourist, monumental, spiritual, and sports route. For this reason, the paper aims to discuss the concept of the “Polysemy of The Way”, by an...
Social science and religious studies scholars should endeavor to broaden theories, methods, and samples to be more inclusive. Therefore, we have conducted an “equity audit” of the American Families of Faith (AFF) project. We evaluated the...
Missionary development organizations across all denominations are vital to providing quality inclusive education in developing countries, often being the only providers of quality education for marginalized people. Research conducted by Misean Cara s...
A significant challenge facing leaders of Catholic schools in Ireland today is to ensure an appreciation for, and understanding of, the Catholic identity of the school among members of staff. A first aim of this research project was to create a ‘vita...
This essay introduces the special issue, provides criteria for evaluating spiritual exemplars, presents a case study to illustrate how spiritual exemplars can extend our knowledge of spiritual development, and makes important distinctions between typ...
This paper examines one example of a spiritual hero, Abraham Lincoln, to reflect on issues about spiritual development, to connect spiritual development to character, and to indicate in what ways moral and religious development define and promote spi...
Providing food security has traditionally been an important motive for development cooperation. At the same time, agriculture also has a major impact on the environment, which in turn threatens food production itself. This article argues that the ten...
Gentrification and subsequent displacement are common problems in cities, and result in the removal of poor communities and communities of color from urban areas as they move to cheaper locations in the metropolitan region. Here we describe a communi...
This article explores the following question: Given the Roman Catholic Church’s present-day teaching on catholicity, how can St. John Henry Newman’s historically conscious, imaginative view of catholicity assist Catholic Christians today in understan...
In this article, I argue that the research field of religion and development and diaconal studies, the study of Christian social practice, share a common subject of inquiry: the social impact of religion. The field of religion and development investi...
Previous research has linked parental religiosity to a number of positive developmental characteristics in young children. This study introduces the concept of selective sanctification as a refinement to existing theory and, in doing so, adds to a sm...
This article addresses the question of how religious narrative identity and subjective religiosity change over the course of 15 years. The cases portrayed are deconverts who have changed their religious affiliations multiple times. It was carved out...
This paper discusses the types, faith attributes, development characteristics, and limitations of Christian social organizations in China. China’s religious social service organizations mainly include four types of organizations: associations, privat...
This paper argues for the appreciation of Filipino folk religiosity as part of cultivating authentic faith expressions among Filipinos. It presents historical, anthropological, sociocultural, and theological views on significant folk religious groups...
Many pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers are isolated and under-connected to communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their social change work, helping them to ground their organizing in their faith lives. There is...
Faith-based actors are often recognised as contributors to both conflict and peace. However, their work to prevent violent conflict, rather than bring an end to or recover from it, is largely unexplored. This is despite the growth of conflict prevent...
Recent U.S. policy regarding faith-based organizations (FBO) envisions “partnerships with government” that include both financial and non-financial relationships. This paper explores the current nature of a three-way partnership among faith communiti...
Efforts to enlist small faith-related organizations as partners in public service delivery raise many questions. Using community social service networks as the unit of analysis, this paper asks one with broader relevance to nonprofit sector managers:...
Religion often is conceived as the sine qua non of the human, thus imbedding religious activity implicitly even within our cosmopolitical globalization processes and secular political concepts. This depiction of the human as ever-religious raises a h...
This paper considers the legacy of the historic contribution of faith communities to education for the employment rights of teachers in schools with a religious character. The contribution of faith communities to state education was originally reflec...
This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads...
Religious commitment is a significant factor for the development of strengths of character. Previous studies have confirmed that for religious people, it is not religious affiliation but religious orientation that has influenced positive outcomes. Th...
The process of moving away from faith in God has taken place in Europe with varying dynamics in individual countries at least since the end of the Second World War. In Poland, secularisation slowed down significantly during the Communist period; howe...
Flourishing refers to a state of optimal well-being and life satisfaction, while the Light Triad traits—Kantianism, Humanism, and Faith in Humanity—represent a prosocial and benevolent approach to interpersonal relationships. This study e...
Scrutinizing the literature of a modern religious movement this article argues that postcolonial theory can effectively be brought to the analysis of religions and religious writing. The case study focuses on the way in which colonialism impacted the...
In the United States, Christianity’s customs, calendar, and behaviors have long influenced scholarship on what religion looks like. Is this template useful for studying other religions, such as Neopaganism? Neopaganism is a set of earth-based,...
In the following, we characterize the contemporary conservative Evangelical movement as an example of contentious politics, a movement that relies on both institutional and noninstitutional tactics to achieve political outcomes. Examining multiple in...
Healthcare chaplaincy in the National Health Service (NHS) has rapidly changed in the last few years. Research shows a decline of people belonging to traditional faith frameworks, and the non-religious patient demographic in the NHS has increased swi...
The cinema of the Dardenne brothers represents a new kind of cinema, one that challenges a number of our conventional ways of thinking about the distinction between religion and secularism, belief and unbelief. Their films explore the intricacies of...
Hitler had a noble purpose (to save the world) and a strong faith in the laws of Nature as he understood Nature. He was, then, a spiritual person, though his spirituality was pathological and destructive. Here, the example of Hitler, his faith, and h...
28 June 2012
Public health emergency planners can better perform their mission if they develop and maintain effective relationships with community- and faith-based organizations in their jurisdictions. This qualitative study presents six themes that emerged from...
This paper develops a model that advances our understanding of how social enterprises respond to the complexity of a constellation of multiple, often competing goals, referred to here as institutional logics. Introducing a religious logic to the reco...
The Nigerian social, public, political and religious landscapes have changed significantly over time with the emergence and proliferation of Pentecostal megachurches. The majority of these churches are structured and characterized with a peculiar mis...
It is widely accepted that the transition from youth to adulthood in western industrialized societies brings with it a series of tensions and dilemmas in terms of identity formation. One of the areas where such formational issues often manifest thems...
The theme of the current Special Issue, ‘Faith in Action: Examining the Power and Purpose of a Public Theology in Contemporary Society’, leaves a lot of scope for definition. Here, the theme is addressed via the lens of the public life an...
of 10