Strategies of action and marginalised identities in Pop Culture Paganism and Magic

<p>In this thesis I will argue that marginalised individuals are highly represented in the Pop Culture Paganism and Magic community, because it is a religious movement which encourages participants to use the cultural symbols that populate the media for religious meaning-making. The availability of media symbols for this purpose is important for marginalised individuals, who do not access the same ‘traditional’ religious resources or symbols as other individuals in society due to the sense of exclusion which arises from their marginality, but still seek religious meaning-making.</p>

Strategies of action and marginalised identities in Pop Culture Paganism and Magic

<p>In this thesis I will argue that marginalised individuals are highly represented in the Pop Culture Paganism and Magic community, because it is a religious movement which encourages participants to use the cultural symbols that populate the media for religious meaning-making. The availability of media symbols for this purpose is important for marginalised individuals, who do not access the same ‘traditional’ religious resources or symbols as other individuals in society due to the sense of exclusion which arises from their marginality, but still seek religious meaning-making.</p>

Open Access Religious Resources for your Students

Open Access (OA) journal collections can add diversity and breadth to a library’s theological resources. I discussed my experience of creating a collection of over 800 OA religion journals in the OCLC Knowledge Base. For OCLC member libraries, these titles may be added to their library catalog. For other libraries, these titles are available through the Open Access Digital Theological Library. We considered OA materials from majority world regions and languages such as Spanish and Korean. The proceedings include a list of OA collections and a bibliography. There was time for questions and sharing experiences.

The culture of the body in the media space of postmodern society

According to M. Fforde, the era of postmodernity is characterized by a form of cultural collapse, as it reveals many phenomena indicating that contemporary humans are on the path towards ‘desocialization.’ This process represents an overall cultural shift as well as changes in the existing anthropological paradigms. This paper is dedicated to an analysis of the issue of religion as social capital in conditions of increasing societal risks. We work with an hypothesis that sociopathological phenomena are rather determined by cultural and secularization factors. In our article, we argue that desocialization is closely connected with current secularization processes, as well as with the progression of a materialistic view of man in compliance with the models and theories of postmodern anthropologies. We propose that the ongoing social enthropy in the form of desocialization should be dealt with holistically, i.e.,by analyzing the utilization (or the lack thereof) of religious resources for human and social flourishing.

Politeness in Social Justice Texts of the New Testament and Nahjul- Balagh

God sends prophets and messengers to make justice prevail on the planet and threaten oppressors who take people’s rights away to humiliate them. Divine books given to prophets and messengers show how a just society can be built where people save their dignity and live a secured life. This study deal with politeness as a pragmatic strategy in such texts. The present study is going to analyze 16 texts in two religious resources. The theme of these texts deals with social justice in the New Testament and Nahjul-Balagha. The adopted model is that of Leech’s (1983) politeness. It aims to find out the politeness maxims in the New Testament and Nahjul-Balagha of social justice texts. The study aims to reveal the similarities and differences in their implying politeness maxims.

The Role of Personal, Social and Religious Resources in Caregiving Stress

This study puts personal, social, and religious resources as a stress buffer for caregivers. The limitation of personal, social, religious resources have a detrimental effect on the mental health of caregivers of a family member with schizophrenia (hereinafter referred to as People with Schizophrenia, or PwS). Following the caregiving stress process theory, this study aims to clarify not only the role of personal and social resources but also the religious ones. For this purpose, in-depth interviews with a life history method were done to twenty (20) caregivers of PwS. The result shows that personal resources like coping mechanism management (for example, by doing a positive comparison with others and reducing the expectations on the PwS) would help to perceive the role of a caregiver more positively. Meanwhile, social resources like social support were received by the caregivers from their significant others (family members) and similar others (support group). Social support was received in the form of emotional support, caregiving help, and instrumental aid. Religious resources in the form of religious coping were also used as a buffer for the stress that came from caregiving. This was done by positive religious coping, such as asking for help from God during difficult times, involving God in everything they do, and surrendering themselves to God to get the strength to face life problems. These three resources (personal, social, religious) were needed by the caregivers so they can preserve their mental health.

Ethnic and religious identity as a client’s resources in working with a psychologist

This article is a part of series of articles, and demonstrates positive dynamics of psychological work within the framework of a specific case activity based on Ingush culture and religious values. In the first article of the series “Multicultural approach in psychological counseling: ethnoreligious aspect (analysis of case)”, using the example of father-daughter relationship, we described the content of the process of psychological counseling, performed considering ethno-cultural and spiritual characteristics of a client. In the second article, “Consulting in the client’s ethno cultural and spiritual context (case analysis)”, the process of culturally oriented counseling is revealed on the example of the Father-Son relationship. The results of the study revealed that the multicultural competence of a therapist, based on the use of ethno-religious resources, serves as a bed for a high level of trust from a client and displays a professional approach based on the use of ethno-religious resources in therapeutic work. This article describes the process of culturally oriented counseling on the example of a woman treated on the basis of analysis of her attitude to the fact of her missing husband.