Suchergebnisse

The shocking murder of Japan's former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzō Abe by a gunman motivated by anger at the politician's ties to the controversial Unification Church sparked a massive outcry that amplified long-standing anxieties about religion in Japan. This article surveys reasons for persistent tensions between a Japanese public that tends to reject self-identifying as religious and the influence of religion-affiliated organizations on Japanese politics. It also identifies Abe's assassination in July 2022 and local-level elections in April 2023 as potential beginning and end points of the latest moral panic about religion in Japan's public sphere.

This study was borne out of the need to ascertain the extent to which televangelists in Port Harcourt; deploy media content towards issues that border on socio-political development. The primary objective was to empirically determine if a correspondence exists between advocacy by televangelists and compliance by Pentecostals as manifested in Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP). The study necessitated triangulation with the Weighted Mean Score (WMS) as the basis for quantitative analysis. Findings revealed televangelism to revolve around the pastor (p), message (m) and church (c). Though an association link was found between ideologies expressed by televangelists and adoption by Pentecostals, this link only found expression in the concepts of secularism and fundamentalism. Survey also revealed a dismal rating of televangelism as regards socio-political mobilization. The chi-square test showed the x2 computed to be greater than the x2 critical thus showing a disconnect between knowledge on the potential benefits of televangelism and the deployment of such benefits towards socio-economic mobilization by televangelists. It was therefore recommended that televangelism should not be used for self aggrandizement and church growth but should complement the socio-political mobilization process. It was further recommended that a policy framework should be put in place to ensure compliance by televangelists.

Religion plays a powerful role in modern politics, and the relationship between the two is ever-changing. The governing of a state cannot be separated from the religious views of its people that affect the leaders and lawmakers of a country. Law mirrors society. This paper explores the ways that religious beliefs, practices, and communities shape and are shaped by the political expecta-tions and necessities of a nation by using examples from major world religions. Readers will be presented information regarding each religion's perception of the relationship between religion and politics and how religious adherents have upheld or opposed the relationship. Because reli-gion and politics are always changing and adapting, the foundational ideologies of the relation-ship between these two entities are continually challenged, reimagined, modified.

The main thesis of the article is that the matter of religious tolerance in the works by a concrete author shall be researched in a wider context of his worldview. An author's worldview can be reconstructed at the basis of his texts, and the consistency in the main notions' propositions can unveil the consistency of his thought. The research is based mainly on the works by one of the most prominent medieval Persian Sufi writers – Mahmud Shabistari (1288–1321). For the matter of religious tolerance is a very important part of his worldview, the research of general logic of his worldview structure will help us to see the reason of his special approach to interpret the matter of faith and infidelity. Hence, in the first part of the paper we show the propositions that link the main notions of Shabistari's worldview together and reconstruct in general the consistence of his worldview on the basis of the researched notion system. In the second part of the paper, we use the obtained results to interpret the poet's idea of the faith and infidelity relation in the context of his worldview.

"The 2011 Arab uprisings re-ignited global interest in the role that Islam and Islamist parties play in democratic transitions, especially with regard to women's lawful rights to share in governance and leadership. This book advances a theory of party religiosity to explain women's leadership across parties and countries, drawing on robust qualitative and quantitative findings from cross-national multiple cases and a case-study of Lebanon. The theory travels across 330 parties in 26 different countries - in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is powerful and generalizable with explanatory and predictive powers"--

In recent decades regulation of issues like abortion, euthanasia, same-sex unions, etc, has become in Poland an area of highly emotional political conflicts, deeply dividing democratic society. At the same time, despite significant internal tensions, against the background of most other European countries Poland is an example of a country consistently upholding human life and family based on monogamous marriage. The main aim of the text is a discussion of the role of the Catholic Church in the dynamics of the discourse on primary morality policy in Poland on the example of the debate over the legalization of euthanasia and the debate over the legalization of in vitro procedures.

This article examines the intersection of religious and sociopoliticalreform in contemporary highlands Bolivia. The case at issue is an Aymararegion, where the institutions, personnel and practices of Catholicism havelong been crucial to the production of local society. Over the lastdecades of the 20th century, a series of pastoral strategies initiated bythe Church have sought to localize Catholic practices through theempowerment of community-level catechists and, more recently, efforts toreclaim elements of Aymara culture as expressions of Catholicmeaning. These pastoral developments have overlapped with a set ofneoliberal political reforms aimed at decentralizing administrativepractices through the creation and empowerment of municipalities at thelocal level. I focus here on the experiences of one catechist to examinethe ways his career as a local agent of missionary Catholicism entangledhim directly within the sociopolitical processes being tested and stretchedby these neoliberal reforms.

This article deals with female activists of the Islamic movement in Israel and their attitudes toward the Israeli authorities and culture. It looks at the complex Muslim existence in Israel, leading to such questions as: What is their opinion about the Israeli space and how do they live as Muslims in a non-Islamic space? And what strategies do they use to bridge the gap between their religious and civic identities? The article presents three main positions of the women activists in relation to the Israeli space: the majority who want to integrate into Israeli society, the minority who reject Israeli society and want to seclude themselves in a community of an Islamic nature, and a group which takes the humanistic position where the emphasis is on the person and not their religious identity, i.e., they prefer not to emphasize their religious identity in the Israeli space, partly because they fear expressing criticism towards Israeli society, assuming that it will lead to persecution and conflicts. Female Muslim activists give a religious interpretation and act according to Fiqh al-waqi'a (a religious interpretation according to the understanding of reality) in a subjective, personal way, without any top-down guidance from the (male) leaders of the movement.

The post-war period in Lebanon brought to the open all sensitive subjects that have marked the history of Lebanon: how to avoid falling into such a crisis? How not repeating such war? How can the Lebanese society eradicate the reasons that may lead to any other war? The Lebanese crisis had challenged the Church inviting her to move from being a passive witness to an active participant in the peaceful struggle for the liberation of the Lebanese society and help the country to complete its incorrect reading of history. Can the Maronite Patriarchate have a positive role in this regard? Can the Maronite Patriarchate bring about the purifi cation of the memory in a multiconfessional country? In this paper, and after defi ning the meaning of the purifi cation of memory in the Lebanese context, we will consider the important challenges that must precede any serious and defi nitive solution to the crisis in Lebanon and how can the Lebanese Church contribute in the development of a national identity and in the building of a new state free from any kind of domination. The purpose of this paper is not to justify what has happened in the past 34 years, i.e. since the beginning of the Lebanese war, but to contribute in searching for a sustainable peace.