The Metamorphosis of Written Devotion in the Age of Vatican II (c. 1948–c. 1998) in Hungary—Guestbooks in Hungarian Marian Shrines

This article presents the Hungarian manifestations of a written devotional practice that emerged in the second half of the 20th century worldwide: the rite of writing prayers in guestbooks or visitors’ books and spontaneously leaving prayer slips in shrines. Guestbooks or visitors’ books, a practice well known in museums and exhibitions, have appeared in Hungarian shrines for pilgrims to record requests, prayers, and declarations of gratitude. This is an unusual use of guestbooks, as, unlike regular guestbook entries, they contain personal prayers, which are surprisingly honest and self-reflective. Another curiosity of the books and slips is that anybody can see and read them, because they are on display in the shrines, mostly close to the statue of Virgin Mary. They allow the researcher to observe a special communication situation, the written representation of an informal, non-formalised, personal prayer. Of course, this is not unknown in the practice of prayer; what is new here is that it takes place in the public realm of a shrine, in written form. This paper seeks answers to the question of what genre antecedents, what patterns of behaviour, and which religious practices have led to the development of this recent practice of devotion in the examined period in Hungarian Catholic shrines. In connection with this issue, this paper would like to draw attention to the combined effect of the following three factors: the continuity of traditions, the emergence of innovative elements and the role of the church as an institution. Their parallel interactions help us to understand the guestbooks of the shrines.

Churchgoing and Christian Ethics: an Empirical Study among 13- to 15-Year-Old Students in England and Wales

This study explores the connections between churchgoing and two fields of Christian moral values (sex-related and substance-related) among 23,714 13- to 15-year-old students in England and Wales who self-identified as either Christian or as of no religion. Bivariate crosstabulation identifies clear patterns of association. Multiple regression analyses confirm that the associations persist after controlling for personal factors (sex and age) and for psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism). Multiple regression analyses also suggest that additional variance is explained when two aspects of intrinsic religiosity are added to the model (personal prayer and belief in God) and that much of the variance accounted for by churchgoing is mediated through these aspects of intrinsic religiosity. These findings illuminate the connection between the Christian community and communities of moral values.

Ego States and the Image of God in Personal Prayer: Psycholinguistic Analysis

Introduction. The results of theoretical substantiation and empirical study of personal prayer in the context of an interdisciplinary approach, which combines, on the one hand, the basic ideas and positions of the theory of transactional analysis and Ego states according to E. Bern, on the other hand, the ideas and techniques of modern psycholinguistics are describes and interprets in the article. It is substantiated that such an approach makes it possible to constructively supplement the basic metaphysical, spiritual, theological understanding of prayer with its full-fledged scientific analysis. Methods & Techniques. The sample of Ukrainian respondents of different ages and social status, self-identified as «Christians», according to the «Techniques of Studying Religious Activity» (D. Smirnov), is divided into four subgroups: the lowest, the lowest than the average, the highest than the average and the highest level of religious activity. Each was offered two related tasks («My Prayer» and «God’s Answer») with special instructions, after which the texts of personalized prayers as discourses of two «Ego states» were received and analyzed. In the context of the psycholinguistic direction of the study, the method of predicative text analysis was used (А. Leontiev, T. Dridze, N. Zhinkin). For the sake of clarification, the qualitative data was supplemented by a quantitative content analysis method using the «Textanz» computer software (version 2.4.2.0). And the results were summarized and compared in the context of four previously separated subgroups of respondents. Results. It is theoretically substantiated that prayer as a religious discourse should be considered not only in the context of broad social cognition and interaction, but also as a component of self-knowledge, self-understanding, self-construction of Personality. It has been empirically established that in the process of personal prayer as a reference to God with certain requests, thanksgiving, repentance and praise, the harmonious communicative transaction «Child»/«Father» is most often implicated (31.45% persons). So, for almost a third of the surveyed God, God is definitely a loving Father. However, disharmonious, conflicting transactions of various types – «Child» / «Parent», «Child» / «Adult», «Adult» / «Adult», are found quite frequently (approximately 40% persons). Conclusions. The results are viewed as one of the consequences and manifestations of the current crisis of the whole society, when, in the context of chronic and global distrust of any authority, centuries-old sacral values are also partially negated, and God begins to be perceived as an indifferent «Father» or an too liberal «Head».

The Use of Devotional Objects in Catalan Homes during the Late Middle Ages

The purpose of this article is to study domestic devotion in Catalonia in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, based on the information provided by numerous post-mortem inventories and texts written by coetaneous spiritual authors such as Ramon Llull, Francesc Eiximenis and Saint Vincent Ferrer. Among the objects recorded in the inventories, pieces of furniture and devotional objects laypeople and clergymen used in their pious practices as “material” aid for personal prayer stood out. They were in keeping with the strong visual culture that pervaded the Late Middle Ages. There were retables, oratories and images of religious themes. However, the inventories also listed lesser known but equally recurring objects such as paternosters and Agni Dei. Painted cloths depicting religious scenes that decorated the homes of numerous wealthy Catalan-Aragonese families at that time were also present. Spiritual books such as books of hours and psalters, biblical texts, Legenda Aurea, etc., were mentioned as well. They were part of the incipient libraries of the laity in the Late Middle Ages.

Religion and Tolerance of Minority Sects in the Arab World

Does religious behavior always promote hostility toward members of other faiths? This article suggests that the relationship between personal religious behavior and religious tolerance is not so simple. Even in the Arab World, frequently cited as a center of religious piety and intolerance, different forms of religious behavior have markedly different effects on attitudes toward minority sects. Using both observational and experimental data from across the Arab World as well as an original nationally representative survey conducted in Lebanon in 2013 and 2014, I argue that while communal religious practice does indeed tend to promote intolerant attitudes, personal prayer has precisely the opposite effect. These findings indicate that the traditional assumption that piety invariably leads to intolerance should be rethought. Even in one of the most sectarian environments in the world, private religious behavior can have a substantial pro-tolerance effect.