Believing in science: Linking religious beliefs and identity with vaccination intentions and trust in science during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite evidence supporting numerous scientific issues (e.g. climate change, vaccinations) many people still doubt the legitimacy of science. Moreover, individuals may be prone to scepticism about scientific findings that misalign with their ideological beliefs and identities. This research investigated whether trust in science (as well as government and media) and COVID-19 vaccination intentions varied as a function of (non)religious group identity, religiosity, religion-science compatibility beliefs, and/or political orientation in two online studies (N = 565) with university students and a Canadian community sample between January and June 2021. In both studies, vaccination intentions and trust in science varied as a function of (non)religious group identity and beliefs. Vaccine hesitancy was further linked to religiosity through a lack of trust in science. Given the ideological divides that the pandemic has exacerbated, this research has implications for informing public health strategies for relaying scientific findings to the public and encouraging vaccine uptake in culturally appropriate ways.

"None can be forgotten" religious identity/and the phenomenon of migration in the magisterium ofpopefrancisco in the time ofcovid-19

"Nobody should be forgotten!". This is the title of the weekly bulletin of the Migrants and Refugees section of the Department for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. The lockdowns related to COVID-19 have severely weakened world economies and the number of people in poverty has increased worldwide. The state of alarm generated by the international health emergency often has a negative impact on people forced to flee then country, aggravating their disorientation, their marginalization. their vulnerability, making access to essential sendees more difficult and more complex the protection of their rights. For this reason, the various Catholic actors have developed guidelines to guide local communities in possible actions aimed at helping migrants and refugees during the pandemic. Alongside the initiatives carried out to deal with the pandemic emergency, the Church underlines the need for an integral approach to the migratory question, which places the human person in all its dimensions at the center, with profound respect for his dignity and his rights, among the which stands out for religious identity.This right it's very important, both from the legal point of view, both socio-anthropological perspective, as constkutive element of personal identity and belonging factor, hi the current historical moment, a reflection on the basis of the conciliar principles and the papal magisterium. appears underline the hospitality, the service, the interreligious dialogue able to promote a "dialogical"right to protection of integral human development while respecting religious identity moving. © 2022 Iuris Universal Ediciones. All rights reserved.

In God We Trust: Community and Immunity in American Religions during COVID-19

From the systemic issues of race and class division to political partisanship and religious identity, the pandemic has affected many aspects of American social and political life. I interrogate the role that religions have played in communal identity-making during the pandemic, and how such identities shaped ideological responses, particularly in the US, stymying public health efforts to stop, or at least significantly slow, the spread of COVID-19. Drawing from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera as a historical case study, I use Garcia Marquez's depiction of religion's identity-making power during the cholera pandemic depicted in the novel as a comparison by which to understand current experiences of white Evangelical Christians in America during the current COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those who reject risk-minimizing practices such as mask wearing, quarantining, and vaccination. Drawing both from representations of Roberto Esposito's theory of immunity and community, and from Lauren Berlant's concept of "cruel optimism”, as well as sociological understandings of religion and identity, I argue that the boundary-making practices of religion and of communal and national identity are related to the complex and often contradictory set of moral practices that led many white Evangelicals to disregard public health policies surrounding COVID-19. A concurrent analysis of Garcia Marquez's novel and of current events will allow me to explore this phenomenon, as Lauren Berlant would put it, both through the historically affective aesthetic and through the affective present. © 2023 by the author.

Influence of religious coping and religious identity on post COVID-19 well-being among Chinese university students: Studies in Religion & Education

This research explored how religious coping and religious identity are related to post-pandemic well-being among Chinese university students. The brief RCOPE, Multi-Religion Identity Measure, and post-pandemic well-being scale were administered to 1739 university students. Results showed that religious coping was significantly positively related to post-pandemic well-being, while religious identity was significantly negatively related to post-pandemic well-being beyond demographic variables. The research implicated that university administrators and teachers can use the above inventories to understand religious coping, religious identity, and post-pandemic well-being among university students more comprehensively. Second, professional religious personnel such as Dharma Masters, Preachers, and Imams could promote students’ post-pandemic well-being by increasing their religiousness within legal places of worship. Third, the findings can help students understand the associations between religious coping, religious identity, and post-pandemic well-being, which may stimulate them to improve the latter by increasing their religious coping and religious identity. The significance and limitations of the present research are also discussed.

The Effects of Resiliency on University Students’ Happiness : Religious Faith Stands as a Moderator

It is argued that resiliency may contribute to one’s happiness and life effectiveness, while religious faith may strengthen the effects arising from the interchange of those variables. To confirm these assumptions, a study was conducted on a group of students consisting of 506 public and private university students in Sabah, Malaysia, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the participants, 405 (80%) were females, 100 were males (19.8%), and one did not reveal their gender. The mean age was 21.71 (SD = 4.52). The study revealed that resiliency accounted for 6 percent of the variance on happiness and 18 percent of the variance on life effectiveness. However, faith did not show any moderation effects on resiliency as a cause of happiness. In terms of its effect on students’ life efficiency (e.g., time management, emotional control, and social competence), resiliency accounts for 18 percent of the variance on life effectiveness. As to the interaction between resiliency and faith in relation to the quality of life, the study revealed a significant interaction between them, a result that explained an additional 1.6 percent in the variance in life effectiveness. This indicates that strong religious faith could enhance students’ resiliency and contribute to a better life (e.g., managing time, controlling emotion, higher motivation, and competence in social situations), particularly during the pandemic. Therefore, valuing and practicing one’s religious faith, regardless of the religious background, is a powerful tool in boosting students’ flexibility in the face of academic and nonacademic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prevalence and factors associated with belief in COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in Indonesia: A cross-sectional study

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of belief in COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and its associated factors. Methods: Due to mobility restriction, this study was conducted cross-sectionally via online platforms. The included factors were age, gender, religious identity, marital status, education level, occupation, and living with health workers. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between belief in COVID-19 vaccine with the predictors. Results: A total of 5 397 responses were taken into analysis. The prevalence of belief in COVID-19 vaccine efficacy was 62.3%. Whereas factors associated with belief in COVID-19 vaccines were being in the age of 45-54 (aOR 1.767;95% CI 1.219-2.562), 55-64 (aOR 1.703;95% CI 1.219-2.562), and >64 (aOR 2.136;95% CI 1.128-4.047), completing education until the secondary level (aOR 1.354;95% CI 1.111-1.650), working as health practitioners (aOR 2,353;95% CI 1.655-3.344), and living with health workers (aOR 1.278, 95% CI 1.079-1.514). All religious identities including Muslim (aOR 2.447;95% CI 1.183-5.062), Protestant (aOR 3.615;95% CI 1.703-7.677), Catholic (aOR 4.486;95% CI 2.015-9.987), and Hindu (aOR 3.286;95% CI 1.410-7.655) showed significant association with belief in COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. Conclusions: A high prevalence of belief in COVID-19 vaccine efficacy was evident. Since vaccine compliance is determined by an individual's risk-benefit perception, this study emphasizes the need of raising awareness of the benefits of COVID-19 immunization.

I am a Muslim and Asian Woman in the United Kingdom: Living Comfortably in an Uncomfortable Situation

Utilizing an autoethnographic stance and method, this article is based on my experiences as a Malaysian postgraduate student in the United Kingdom. I draw upon my memories of dealing with Islamophobia and xenophobia while living there, as a Muslim and Asian woman. Anti-Asian sentiment and xenophobia can be experienced in many forms, ranging from feelings of discomfort to verbal insults and direct confrontation. As a visible Muslim and Asian woman, I reflect upon my own experience as a victim of verbal abuse on different occasions. This article offers an intersectional perspective taking into account interconnected and overlapping factors, such as gender, ethnicity and religion, to examine the multilayered issues and challenges as an international student. I highlight the challenges in expressing and negotiating my intersectional identities while living temporarily abroad. Therefore, this article is important to raise awareness about Islamophobia as well as inadvertent or deliberate xenophobia towards Asian communities.

'The Core of My Work Is in Being with People Who Do Not Practise Faith in Any Way': The Self-Perception of Czech Hospital Chaplains *

The article focuses on the understudied topic of contemporary hospital chaplaincy in the Czech Republic, its development, and the current issues this work is dealing with. Based on a study conducted among Czech hospital chaplains affiliated with the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, the Roman Catholic Church, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, and the Church of Seventh Day Adventists, the article examines the experiences of Christian providers of spiritual care in the secularised environment of a hospital and sheds light on how they perceive their work and role. Two waves of interviews were conducted among thirteen hospital chaplains, male and female, and subjected to an applied thematic analysis. This produced four thematic areas that the article explores in detail: (1) the localisation of the chaplaincy within the hospital, (2) the chaplains' methods of working with patients, (3) the chaplains' relationships with other hospital personnel, and (4) the self-identification of the hospital chaplains. The results of this research revealed that the secularised environment of the Czech Republic is a crucial factor that affects the work of chaplains in several ways, but their role in the hospital has at the same time developed in ways that are separate from their religious affiliation, as the understanding dialogue they engage in with patients forms a core part of their work.

Meeting Again: Reflections on Strange Encounters 20 Years on

This special issue, which was unfortunately delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. Since its publications in 2000 the book has been cited nearly 4000 times across various disciplines and while there have been other influential texts within ethnic and racial studies, Strange Encounters has become a seminal text for those exploring the experience of difference in racialized, sexist, and heteronormative societies.This introduction briefly contextualizes Strange Encounters within broader theories of strangers (Marotta 2017). Firstly, I explore strangeness as an intra-subjective and intersubjective condition. The intra-subjective mode conceives of strangeness in relation to an internal other, while the intersubjective usually highlights interactions with strangers who are othered because of their ethnic, racial, sexual, gender and religious identity. Secondly, I consider the recent universalization thesis that speaks to a general existential/ontological condition of otherness. Finally, I investigate the scholarship on the stranger that contends that the experience of strangeness brings with it greater insights. As demonstrated below, Ahmed critically speaks to many of these perspectives through her critique of the fetishization of the stranger.

REONTOLOGIZATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE LIQUID AND GLOBAL WORLD

In this article, I intend to highlight the fact that the realities that are being recorded at the morphological level of contemporary societies (the phenomenon of migration, wars, the dynamics of mobility and communication, the economic pace, the health crisis generated by Covid-19) are bringing to the fore the redefinition of religious identity. What is undeniably clear is that Western societies have become an ethnic and religious mosaic, a diversity that requires specific regulations in terms of norms in order to avoid conflict. However, this ethno-religious diversity also calls for an interpretation of the relationship between identities. The aim of my analysis is to argue as to whether or not religious identity is an inflexible, immobile reality, static in its representativeness towards and in relation to other identities representing different religious cultures. In this respect, I will insist on the role that migration plays in the construction of religious identity. Is religious identity decomposing in the context of the liquid flow of global society? Are the boundaries of such an identity, as structures of individual, social, cultural validation, desubstantiated in the daily experience of religious diversity and in the dynamics of current societal transformations?Alternate :Dans cet article, j'entends souligner le fait que les réalités qui s'enregistrent au niveau morphologique des sociétés contemporaines (le phénomène de migration, les guerres, les dynamiques de mobilité et de communication, le rythme économique, la crise sanitaire générée by Covid-19) mettent au premier plan la redéfinition de l'identité religieuse. Ce qui est indéniable, c'est que les sociétés occidentales sont devenues une mosaïque ethnique et religieuse, une diversité qui nécessite des régulations spécifiques en termes de normes afin d'éviter les conflits. Mais cette diversité ethno-religieuse appelle aussi une lecture des relations entre les identités. Le but de mon analyse est d'argumenter pour savoir si l'identité religieuse est ou non une réalité inflexible, immobile, statique dans sa représentativité envers et par rapport à d'autres identités représentant différentes cultures religieuses. A cet égard, j'insisterai sur le rôle que joue la migration dans la construction de l'identité religieuse. L'identité religieuse se décompose-t-elle dans le contexte du flux liquide de la société mondiale? Les frontières d'une telle identité, en tant que structures de validation individuelle, sociale, culturelle, sont-elles infondées dans l'expérience quotidienne de la diversité religieuse et dans la dynamique des transformations sociétales en cours?Alternate :În acest articol îmi propun să evidenţiez faptul că realităţile care se înregistrează la nivelul morfologic al societăţilor contemporane (fenomenul migraţiei, războaiele, dinamica mobilităţii și comunicării, ritmul economic, criza de sănătate generată). de Covid-19) aduc în prim plan redefinirea identităţii religioase. Ceea ce este incontestabil clar este că societăţile occidentale au devenit un mozaic etnic și religios, o diversitate care necesită reglementări specifice în ceea ce privește normele pentru a evita conflictele. Cu toate acestea, această diversitate etno-religioasă necesită și o interpretare a relaţiei dintre identităţi. Scopul analizei mele este de a argumenta dacă identitatea religioasă este sau nu o realitate inflexibilă, imobilă, statică în reprezentativitatea ei faţă de și în relaţie cu alte identităţi care reprezintă diferite culturi religioase. În acest sens, voi insista asupra rolului pe care îl joacă migraţia în construirea identităţii religioase. Se descompune identitatea religioasă în contextul fluxului lichid al societăţii globale? Graniţele unei astfel de identităţi, ca structuri de validare individuală, socială, culturală, sunt desubstanţiate în experienţa zilnică a diversităţii religioase și în dinamica transformărilor socie ale actuale?

Religion in the First Year of the Pandemic: Shi'i Jurisprudence on Covid-19 in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Iran forced considerable changes in many parts of Iranians' personal and social lives, including their religious lives, as health-related precautions affected places of worship. The pandemic has also been an important issue for Iranian religious authorities, for whom overseeing sacred spaces and mass rituals constitute an important element of strengthening the nation's religious identity and legitimizing political power. This article examines the positions of Shi'i clerics toward various problems arising from the Covid-19 pandemic in its early phases, based on fatwas and other public statements.