Many college students in the United States arrive on campus with exposure to both traumatic events and typical negative life events, as well as varying levels of emotional wellness. One way that students may seek out help is through spiritually suppo...
Previous research has documented broad benefits of spiritual intervention programs, including improved spirituality and ameliorated mental health symptoms. However, long-term follow-up examinations of such interventions have yet to be conducted. This...
21 March 2024
Background: Current reports suggest a positive association between spirituality and quality of life (QoL) in elders. While most studies are qualitative studies and there has been little validation in quantitative studies using scales to measure spiri...
Older adults living with dementia experience progressive decline, prompting reliance on others for spiritual care and support. Despite a growing interest in studying persons living with dementia (PLwDs), empirical evidence on the spiritual needs of P...
This study explores the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and loneliness in the United States, using the 2018 General Social Survey to assess their interactions against a backdrop of declining traditional religious affiliation and a ris...
In an increasingly secular and pluralistic age marked by declining religious affiliation and rising individualized spiritual pursuits, accompanied by soaring mental health issues, the need for psychologically grounded perspectives on spiritual health...
The study examined the associations between religiosity, spirituality, and happiness in 354 outpatients suffering from neurological disorders. After accounting for severity of cognitive decline, physical activity level, depression severity, and demog...
A review of the contemporary Australian church reveals a spiritual malaise in which passive learning has become the main staple for many church members or attendees. This sense is heightened by demographic trends over the last fifty years that reflec...
Current trends within both religious and secular communities suggest that contemporary times mean that people spend more time alone than with others. Community engagement in general has been declining, while religious and spiritual community engageme...
Building on a movement within the sociology of religion to better situate studies of spirituality in relation to contexts, practices, and power relations, the current study examines shifts in spiritual practice associated with “deconstruction&r...
The seemingly paradoxical contrast between an expected decline of religion in the public domain and an increase of the importance of religiosity and spirituality in people’s lives, led Peter Berger to revisit his prophecy about secularisation [...
Contemporary religiosity is undergoing profound transformation, shaped by postsecular and postmodern dynamics. Amid global declines in institutional affiliation, religious and spiritual tourism has emerged as a salient expression of evolving faith. P...
In order to measure a wide spectrum of organized and private religious, spiritual, existential and philosophical practices, the SpREUK-P (SpREUK is the German language acronym of “Spirituality/Religiosity and Coping with Illness”) questionnaire was d...
This paper examines postsecularism, magic and disenchantment in the West with an emphasis on Wicca. Following a discussion of postsecularism, it provides a critical overview of the Weberian notion of disenchantment which describes the decline in magi...
This article examines the situation of religion in the context of contemporary neoliberalism. I argue that neoliberalism is a symptom of a fatal crisis in modern liberalism, which is brought about by geophysical planetary limits to growth. The concep...
The accelerating pace of urbanization and population growth has increasingly disrupted the relationship between the built environment and nature, contributing to a decline in individuals’ psychological and spiritual well-being. Religious buildi...
This essay will draw from the classical Greek notions of cosmopolis and cosmopolitanism—world citizenship—as a heuristic for contemplating the question of contemporary participation in a wholly good global society. The first part of this...
4 January 2022
Background: The “Holistic Care Program for Elderly Patients to Integrate Spiritual Needs, Social Activity and Self-Care into Disease Management in Primary Care” (HoPES3) examines the implementation of a spiritual history (SH) as part of a...
Religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles have been robustly linked to negative outcomes, such as greater psychological distress, reduced well-being, and difficulty finding meaning in life. R/s struggles, however, do not inevitably lead to decline. Man...
“If it wasn’t for the women” is a common refrain in Black Church culture, made most popular by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes’ sociology of religion work in the 1990s. As conversations grow around a perceived disconnection from the ch...
The vast and growing challenges for human health and all life on Earth require urgent and deep structural changes to the way in which we live. Broken relationships with nature are at the core of both the modern health crisis and the erosion of planet...
As the rate of affiliation to Christian identity continues to decline in Aotearoa New Zealand (only 49 percent of the population said they were Christian in the last census), public space has become more receptive to other forms of religiosity. In pa...
Is liberation theology dead or in decline? This article analyzes factors that have led to that perception and provides evidence to the contrary. It demonstrates that the theology has survived multiple attempts by certain sectors of both church and st...
Despite predictions of decline, religion has featured prominently in the public sphere and the media since the events of 11 September 2001. Previous research on media and religion in Australia post-September 11 has focused largely on its negative imp...
28 February 2023
Commonly reported in dementia, neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), cognitive decline, and sleep disturbances indicate dementia progression. With the growing dementia burden, identifying protective factors that may slow dementia progression is increasing...
This article presents a multilevel framework for understanding religion as operating simultaneously at individual, interactional, and institutional levels. Drawing on the multilevel theory of gender as a conceptual parallel, it synthesizes existing p...
Christian monasticism has an ancient land-based foundation. The desert fathers and later reform movements appealed to the land for sustenance, spiritual metaphor, and as a marker of authentic monastic identity. Contemporary Roman Catholic monastics w...
12 April 2022
Along with the aging of the population and miniaturization of family structure, the problem of the left-behind elderly has become more and more prominent in China. According to the Report on the family development in China (2015) released by the Nati...
For decades, the Catholic monastic tradition has been defined by demographic decline and the closure of monasteries. And yet, new religious groups have emerged that have cultivated their own take on the monastic tradition, while old monasteries have...
This article challenges the conventional wisdom about the reported decline of Christianity and Protestantism in the U.S. and the rise of the “nones” among Latinos. It does so by cross-examining the growth of the “nones” (those...
Bhutan’s current constitution draws upon the historical dual system of religious-civil governance under the monarchy (previously Abbot-king) embodying the Mahayana Buddhist concept of Boddhisatva-leadership. Bhutan’s democracy includes an...
The traditional mainline and evangelical churches in Canada, as in most western countries, are either in decline or static. Taken as a measure of the future, the prospects for Christianity in Canada, and more broadly the West, are bleak. Post-Christi...
In contemporary Korea, particularly within the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, temple revenue relies on two primary sources: donations and production activities. With declining religious participation, donations alone are no longer sufficient for tem...
Indigenous knowledge in the UNESCO Global Geoparks represents an important emerging research topic. This study investigates aspects of the indigenous environmental knowledge in the southern part of the aspiring Rio Coco Geopark (Nicaragua) and its po...
Rapid urbanization has profoundly impacted regional ecosystem services. However, most current studies have not paid enough attention to the implicit quality-of-life dimensions of urbanization, and few studies have been published on the dynamic intera...
Dimensions of religion contribute in different ways to the in general protective effect of religiosity and spirituality (R/S) against suicidality. Few studies have included a substantial number of dimensions, and even fewer a follow-up, to clarify th...
In recent years, the debate on non-religion has gained prominence in the sociology of religion, making it one of the most interesting areas for further reflection on (post)secularization. Drawing on the key works on the subject, this article adopts a...
During fieldwork in Ladakh in July–August 2018, three authors from Asian studies, anthropology, and religious studies backgrounds researched “multiple Buddhisms” in Ladakh, India. Two case studies are presented: a Buddhist monastery festival by the D...
Sacred groves are an age-old and world-wide phenomenon, traditionally consisting of forest zones, protected by people based on their spiritual relationship with the deities or ancestral spirits believed to reside there. India alone counts nearly 50,0...
After the decline of water transportation along the Grand Canal, the integration of urban development and the preservation of cultural heritage along the canal has become imperative. This paper takes the titled landscape as its research perspective a...
Investigating the later stages of life, this study aims to outline a specific personal context shaped during this phase, approached from various perspectives: theological, medical, psychological, and social, each highlighting distinct challenges. The...
Objectives: Although robust associations between aspects of religiousness/spirituality (R/S) and physical health have been established, little systematic information is available about federal funding support for this area of research. To address thi...
Indigenous top-priority fruit trees, like Vangueria infausta subsp. infausta. Burch (wild medlar), are essential for food security, climate resilience, and biodiversity. However, they remain underutilized due to limited documentation and integration...
John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies has often been interpreted as a lament for the decline of institutional Christianity in twentieth-century America. Instead, in this essay, it is argued that the novel dramatizes the metamorphosis of the...
Local ecological knowledge (LEK), including but not limited to the use of wild food plants, plays a large role in sustainable natural resource management schemes, primarily due to the synergy between plants and people. There are calls for the study o...
The relationship between religiosity and educational attainment is an important question in the sociology of religion literature. It is widely contested whether the natural outgrowth of the spreading rational worldview and the increase of educated pe...
The spread of COVID-19 created a state of emergency all over the world and played a big role in the decline of the mental health of citizens. The context of the workplace became an important variable in the impact of the lockdown on individuals. In t...
The paper assesses local people’s perceptions on the impact of drought on wetland ecosystem services and the associated household livelihood benefits, focusing on the Driefontein Ramsar site in Chirumanzu district, Zimbabwe. Field data were obtained...
Reflections on the evolution of the state of the art in the study of religion, society, and politics in Latin America over the last five decades begin with a critical assessment of the conventional wisdom of fifty years ago, as conveyed in texts and...
In order to improve sustainability and design adequate management strategies in threatened tropical forests, integrated assessments of the use of ecosystem services are needed, combining biophysical, social, and economic approaches. In particular, no...
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