Journal of Empirical Theology最新文献

The article aims to examine religious activity in Christian churches. In order to achieve this goal, religious activity is defined through religious practices such as church attendance, prayer, and Bible reading. The data used in the article are taken from a survey of growing churches (hereafter referred to as KK2020, n=350), in which nine Estonian growing churches participated. The main comparative base is the sociological survey on religion “On Life, Faith and Religious Life” (EUU2020, n=1000), conducted in Estonia. As a result of the analysis, the article presents an overview of religious activity indicators for growing churches, ordinary churches, and the adult Estonian population and compares growing churches of different denominations. Based on the results, it can be hypothesized that religious activity of church members and minister has positive influence on church growth.

This article investigates the formation of meaningful pastoral care relationships by chaplains with older people with dementia in nursing homes. The study responds to the recently highlighted need for theological exploration of wellbeing by providing a theological analysis of how a meaningful pastoral care relationship is formed from chaplains’ perspectives. The study employs thematic analysis of ten interviews to uncover core themes. These include the embodied aspects of pastoral care, which highlight the non-verbal dimensions of pastoral care; emotional support, emphasizing the chaplains’ role in providing comfort and empathy; interpersonal relations, detailing the dynamics between chaplains, older people with severe dementia, and the care environment; and supporting the personal relationship with God, underscoring the individual’s religious and spiritual connections. This research contributes to understanding how theological considerations inform pastoral care practices, offering insights into the nuanced religious and spiritual needs of older adults with dementia within a nursing home setting.

In this article, the relationship between Dutch Reformatorian youth’ religious characteristics and their personality traits (measured with the Big Five) is at the centre. It is based on research in which 1568 Reformatorian youth participated, who had enrolled as first-year students in a Reformatorian Vocational Training College. These prospective students have filled in a standard assessment questionnaire, which included the Big Five personality questionnaire; to this, the researchers had added an extra questionnaire regarding their religious characteristics. The conclusions from this study are that among these students a limited number of indications was found for a relationship between religious characteristics and the Big Five personality traits (FFM). By and large, moderate, positive relationships were shown between variables of the Religion List and the personality traits of openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness, whereas there were no relationships between religious variables and emotional stability and small relationships between religious variables and extraversion. Rather than orthodox religious views, it was the salience of faith (being intrinsically religious and using religion as a coping strategy) that showed relationships with the personality traits.

As research on religion and spirituality at healthcare institutions gains momentum, there is still scarce knowledge pertaining to Muslim patients’ spirituality living in the West. In this article, I present and discuss the results from my qualitative study of 12 Muslim patients diagnosed with COVID-19 at Danish hospitals.

Based on the empirical data, using thematic analysis, the major emergent theme ‘meaning-making’ is subjected to investigation. This is done by bringing relevant Islamic theological terms into the conversation. The aim of this study is to understand how critically ill Muslim patients relate to religion and spirituality in their meaning-making processes.

I argue that there is both a theocentric and anthropocentric worldview prevalent amongst Muslim patients in the meaning-making process and what glues the two worldviews together is a ‘relational spirituality’.

In times of increasing polarisation and fragmentation in societies, the ability to form a judgement gain in importance. Judgement competence is, therefore, one of the key competencies that students at German schools should develop. In RE, however, teachers often avoid addressing religious conflicts that disrupt social cohesion. This is due to the circumstance, that it is widely undefined in RE didactics, what is to be learned and tested in terms of judgement competence. Moreover, there is limited knowledge on how to empirically measure such competence.