scholarly journals To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding

Open Mind ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Neil Van Leeuwen ◽  
Kara Weisman ◽  
Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious People ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Diverse Cultures

Abstract Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief.

God and the Green Divide

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Baugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity

American environmentalism historically has been associated with the interests of white elites. Yet religious leaders in the twenty-first century have helped instill concern about the earth among groups diverse in religion, race, ethnicity, and class. How did that happen and what are the implications? Building on scholarship that provides theological and ethical resources to support the “greening” of religion, God and the Green Divide examines religious environmentalism as it actually happens in the daily lives of urban Americans. Baugh argues that the spread of religious environmentalism in the United States has relied not simply on the “ecological dimensions” of scriptures, theology, and religious traditions, but also on latent assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. By carefully examining negotiations of racial and ethnic identities as central to the history of religious environmentalism, this work complicates assumptions that religious environmentalism is a direct expression of theology, ethics, or religious beliefs.

Baptists and their polarizing ways: Transnational polarization between Southern Baptist missionaries and Brazilian Baptists

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-174
Author(s):  
Joao Chaves ◽  
C. Douglas Weaver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern Baptists ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Southern Us ◽  
Radical Movement

Polarization in Baptist life has a long history. Baptists have had polarized relations with other competing religious groups and with themselves. Baptist focus on freedom, dissent, conscience, local church independence, among other foundational principles, render Baptists prone to diversity and disagreement. Diversity, salted by the absolute certainties of religious belief, easily translates into polarization. Triumphalism, fundamentalism, and other types of ironic dogmatisms formed in the context of freedom have produced polarized beliefs. Those religious beliefs, however, cannot be separated from the interplay of sources of power: class, gender, and race. In the context of the United States, a discussion of Baptists cannot be separated from these power components, especially matters of race. Significantly, if not surprisingly, Baptists exported their racial, triumphalist identity and commitments abroad in their missionary endeavors. Brazilian Baptists, for example, heard the gospel from Southern Baptists, but they heard that gospel in a racialized form that was captive to Southern US racist culture. Southern Baptists shared the gospel, but they also resisted efforts by native Brazilians in The Radical Movement to indigenize their faith.

The link between coronavirus, anxiety, and religious beliefs in the United States and United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Rigoli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Stressful Event ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Impact

Research has shown that stress impacts on people’s religious beliefs. However, several aspects of this effect remain poorly understood, for example regarding the role of prior religiosity and stress-induced anxiety. This paper explores these aspects in the context of the recent coronavirus emergency. The latter has impacted dramatically on many people’s well-being; hence it can be considered a highly stressful event. Through online questionnaires administered to UK and USA citizens professing either Christian faith or no religion, this paper examines the impact of the coronavirus crisis upon common people’s religious beliefs. We found that, following the coronavirus emergency, strong believers reported higher confidence in their religious beliefs while non-believers reported increased scepticism towards religion. Moreover, for strong believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus threat was associated with increased strengthening of religious beliefs. Conversely, for non-believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus thereat was associated with increased scepticism towards religious beliefs. These observations are consistent with the notion that stress-induced anxiety enhances support for the ideology already embraced before a stressful event occurs. This study sheds light on the psychological and cultural implications of the coronavirus crisis, which represents one of the most serious health emergencies in recent times.

scholarly journals Anxiety- and Health-Related Quality of Life Among Patients With Breast Cancer: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of China and the United States

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jin You ◽  
Qian Lu ◽  
Michael J. Zvolensky ◽  
Zhiqiang Meng ◽  
Kay Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
State Anxiety ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Chinese Patients

Purpose Literature has documented the prevalence of anxiety and its adverse effect on quality of life among patients with breast cancer from Western countries, yet cross-cultural examinations with non-Western patients are rare. This cross-cultural study investigated differences in anxiety and its association with quality of life between US and Chinese patients with breast cancer. Methods Patients with breast cancer from the United States and China completed measures for anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) and quality of life (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast). Results After controlling for demographic and medical characteristics, Chinese patients reported higher levels of trait and state anxiety than US patients. Although there was an association between anxiety and quality of life in both groups of patients, the association between state anxiety and quality of life was stronger among Chinese patients than among US patients, with the association between trait anxiety and quality of life the same between the two cultural samples. Conclusion These findings suggest that anxiety and its association with quality of life among patients with breast cancer varies depending on cultural context, which reveals greater anxiety and poorer quality of life among Chinese patients compared with US patients. This suggests greater unmet psychosocial needs among Chinese patients and highlights the need to build comprehensive cancer care systems for a better quality of life in Chinese populations.

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