Race, religion and identity in South Africa:A case study of a charismatic congregation

This article uses a case study of a Pentecostal/charismatic congregation to explore how inclusive, overarching identities are constructed in South Africa. It explores how the congregation's culture impacts on identity formation, contestation and change. It argues that the way people construct their identities correlates with their perceived level of empowerment. It concludes that for an overarching identity to become durable, it must be accompanied by structural changes that dismantle the power imbalances embedded in old racial categories.

Religion and Transformation in South Africa? Institutional and Discursive Change in a Charismatic Congregation

A number of Christian churches in South Africa have proclaimed their commitment to reconciliation and the elimination of unjust inequalities. This study analyses how these commitments are being worked out at the micro-level of a congregation. Using an ethnographic approach, I explore how a charismatic congregation in Cape Town has changed from being nearly all-white to being more inclusive. I explore links between individual, cognitive identity change and institutional change; and consider the discourses which justify change, including their emphasis on 'unity in diversity' and 'restitution'. I outline the limitations of change, including the persistence of 'racialised' leadership structures and the discursive privileging of unity over restitution. This allows us to understand how micro-level changes take place, to explore their potentialities and limitations, and to apply these insights to other contexts.

Relationships between Religion and Two Forms of Homonegativity in Europe—A Multilevel Analysis of Effects of Believing, Belonging and Religious Practice

This paper examines relationships between religion and two forms of homonegativity
across 43 European countries using a bivariate response binary logistic multilevel model. The model analyzes effects of religious believing, belonging and practice on two response variables: a) a moral rejection of homosexuality as a practice and b) intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. The findings indicate that both forms of homonegativity are prevalent in Europe. Traditional doctrinal religious believing (belief in a personal God) is positively related to a moral rejection of homosexuality but to a much lesser extent associated with intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. Members of religious denominations are more likely than non-members to reject homosexuality as morally wrong and to reject homosexuals as neighbors. The analysis found significant differences between denominations that are likely context-dependent. Attendance at religious services is positively related to homonegativity in a majority of countries. The findings vary considerably across countries: Religion is more strongly related to homonegativity in Western than in Eastern Europe. In the post-soviet countries homonegativity appears to be largely a secular phenomenon. National contexts of high religiosity, high perceived government corruption, high income inequality and shortcomings in the implementation of gay rights in the countries’ legislations are statistically related to higher levels of both moralistic homonegativity and intolerance toward homosexuals as a group.

Gender, religion, and sociopolitical issues in cross-cultural online education

Cross-cultural education is thought to develop critical consciousness of how unequal distributions of power and privilege affect people’s health. Learners in different sociopolitical settings can join together in developing critical consciousness – awareness of power and privilege dynamics in society – by means of communication technology. The aim of this research was to define strengths and limitations of existing cross-cultural discussions in generating critical consciousness. The setting was the FAIMER international fellowship program for mid-career interdisciplinary health faculty, whose goal is to foster global advancement of health professions education. Fellows take part in participant-led, online, written, task-focused discussions on topics like professionalism, community health, and leadership. We reflexively identified text that brought sociopolitical topics into the online environment during the years 2011 and 2012 and used a discourse analysis toolset to make our content analysis relevant to critical consciousness. While references to participants’ cultures and backgrounds were infrequent, narratives of political-, gender-, religion-, and other culture-related topics did emerge. When participants gave accounts of their experiences and exchanged cross-cultural stories, they were more likely to develop ad hoc networks to support one another in facing those issues than explore issues relating to the development of critical consciousness. We suggest that cross-cultural discussions need to be facilitated actively to transform learners’ frames of reference, create critical consciousness, and develop cultural competence. Further research is needed into how to provide a safe environment for such learning and provide faculty development for the skills needed to facilitate these exchanges.

Love Thy Neighbor? Relationships between Religion and Racial Intolerance in Europe.

This article examines relationships between religion and racial intolerance across 47 countries by applying multilevel modeling to European survey data and is the first in-depth analysis of moderation of these relationships by European national contexts. The analysis distinguishes a believing, belonging, and practice-dimension of religiosity. The results yield little evidence of a link between denominational belonging, religious practice, and racial intolerance. The religiosity dimension that matters most for racial intolerance in Europe is believing: believers in a traditional God and believers in a Spirit/Life Force are decidedly less likely, and fundamentalists are more likely than non- believers to be racially intolerant. National contexts also matter greatly: individuals living in Europe’s most religious countries, countries with legacies of ethnic-religious conflict and countries with low GDP are significantly more likely to be racially intolerant than those living in wealthier, secular and politically stable countries. This is especially the case for the religiously devout.

Northern Ireland: Religion and Transitional Justice

The right to practice religion is recognised as one of the universal liberties transitional justice interventions are designed to defend, and religion is often mentioned as one of the cultural factors that impact on local transitional justice practices from below. Many human rights cases of abuse, however, are motivated by religious extremism and the association of religion with conflict has largely a discouraged reflection on its positive contribution to transitional justice. This field is undeveloped and the little work that elaborates its positive role is descriptive. This paper theorises the relationship between religion and transitional justice and develops a model for understanding its potential role that better allows an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. The model is applied to original research conducted on ex-combatants in Northern Ireland, and concludes that only in very limited circumstances can religious actors make a telling contribution to transitional justice.Understanding what these circumstances are is the purpose of the model developed here.

Appropriate Polypharmacy and Medicine Safety: When Many is not Too Many

The use of multiple medicines (polypharmacy) is increasingly common in middle-aged and older populations. Ensuring the correct balance between the prescribing of ‘many’ drugs and ‘too many’ drugs is a significant challenge. Clinicians are tasked with ensuring that patients receive the most appropriate combinations of medications based on the best available evidence, and that medication use is optimised according to patients’ clinical needs (appropriate polypharmacy). Historically, polypharmacy has been viewed negatively because of the associated medication safety risks, such as drug interactions and adverse drug events. More recently, polypharmacy has been identified as a risk factor for under-prescribing, such that patients do not receive necessary medications and this can also pose risks to patients’ safety and well-being. The negative connotations that have long been associated with the term polypharmacy could potentially be acting as a driving factor for under-prescribing, whereby clinicians are reluctant to prescribe necessary medicines for patients who are already receiving ‘many’ medicines. It is now recognised that the prescribing of ‘many’ medicines can be entirely appropriate in patients with several chronic conditions and that the risks of adverse drug events that have been associated with polypharmacy may be greatly reduced when patients’ clinical context is taken into consideration. In this article, we outline the current perspectives on polypharmacy and make the case for adopting the term ‘appropriate polypharmacy’ in differentiating between the prescribing of ‘many’ drugs and ‘too many’ drugs. We also outline the inherent challenges in doing so and provide recommendations for future clinical practice and research.

Presbyterian Religion, Historiography and Ulster Scots Identity, c. 1800 to 1914

The links between Presbyterians in Scotland and the north of Ireland are obvious but have been largely ignored by historians of the nineteenth century. This article addresses this gap by showing how Ulster Presbyterians considered their relationship with their Scottish co-religionists and how they used the interplay of religious and ethnic considerations this entailed to articulate an Ulster Scots identity. For Presbyterians in Ireland, their Scottish origins and identity represented a collection of ideas that could be deployed at certain times for specific reasons – theological orthodoxy, civil and religious liberty, and certain character traits such as hard work, courage, and soberness. Ideas about the Scottish identity of Presbyterianism were reawakened for a more general audience in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the campaign for religious reform and revival within the Irish church, and were expressed through a distinctive denominational historiography inaugurated by James Seaton Reid. The formulation of a coherent narrative of Presbyterian religion and the improvement of Ulster laid the religious foundations of a distinct Ulster Scots identity and its utilization by unionist opponents of Home Rule between 1885 and 1914.