Archive for the ‘freedom’ Category


‘The evangelical pastors that we interviewed, ultimately chose racial reconciliation as their primary frame,’ a scholar said of study of multiracial church leaders.
[Read Full Column...]

The practice of men avoiding contact with women at work out of concens of impropriety may come at a particularly high price for evangelical working women who are excluded from male-dominated social networks that are critical to professional success, a new study indicates.
[Read Full Column...]

New studies on religious tattoos explore the relation between faith and a practice associated with sex, drugs and copious amounts of alcohol. The results are mixed.
[Read Full Column...]

The debate about whether the world is entering a more secular age and whether the growth of religiously non-affiliated people is hastening such secularization in part revolves around questions of timing. In other words, when did these trends start and what led to them?
[Read Full Column...]

Are evangelicals, even those that identify as politically conservative, that much different from everyone else? Two new studies yield results that may surprise those holding on to an image of highly religious individuals as rigid and uncaring, more concerned with judging than loving one another..
[Read Full Column...]

Making difficult parenting decisions – on issues ranging from fathers being open to parental leave to parents embracing family faith activities – may enrich a child’s life in multiple ways into young adulthood and beyond, some new studies suggest. “Religious firmness integrated with religious flexibility is more likely to result in a balanced, healthy style of religious parenting,” one study concluded.,
[Read Full Column...]

An ideal of multiracial churches is to be a sign of a day when faith transcends color and ethnicity. But are they instead increasing inequality? New findings from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project find that black and Asian pastors in multiracial churches are “standing on the doorsteps of assimilation only to be ultimately denied entrance through the door of whiteness and access to the privileges enjoyed by the white majority.”
[Read Full Column...]

Can belief in Hell, envisioned by many as a place of eternal torment, be considered a pathological fear? A study taking a systematic look at Hell anxiety found in general that individual belief in Hell was not in itself connected to any neuroses, and that most people did not display an unhealthy focus on the possibility of eternal damnation. The results suggested belief in hell “is perhaps a rational response to personal theological” beliefs.
[Read Full Column...]

People who are active members of religious groups are more likely to participate in protests, a new global study finds. And the likelihood of public protest by religious individuals is strongest in those countries that are the least democratic,
[Read Full Column...]