Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts when talking about ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-Cultural Study on ‘Spirituality’ includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to the concepts ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in each research context. Results show (...) that ‘spirituality’ is used as a broader concept than ‘religion’. Regarding religion, semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ groups agree on semantics attributed to spirituality but differ from the ‘neither spiritual nor religious’ group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated ‘spiritualities’. (shrink)

Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts when talking about ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-Cultural Study on ‘Spirituality’ includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to the concepts ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in each research context. Results show (...) that ‘spirituality’ is used as a broader concept than ‘religion’. Regarding religion, semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ groups agree on semantics attributed to spirituality but differ from the ‘neither spiritual nor religious’ group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated ‘spiritualities’. (shrink)

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished (...) via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism. (shrink)

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished (...) via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism. (shrink)

The ritual handling of serpents remains an unnoticed cultural form for the explanatory aims and theoretical insights desired by cognitive scientists of religion. In the current article, we introduce the Hood and Williams archives at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that contains data culled from Hood’s 40-plus year career of studying serpent handlers. The archives contain hundreds of hours of interviews and recordings of speaking in tongues, handling fire, drinking poison, and taking up serpents by different congregants and congregations. (...) The archive remains a rich but untapped source of data for building, testing, and refining cognitive theories of ritual in general, and serpent handling in specific. We connect Hood’s work to current cognitive theories and engage critically with research on the social functions of ritual. Finally, we discuss several further reasons to pay more attention to SHS communities and practices in cognitive theories of ritual. (shrink)