Religion is often understood to play a positive role in shaping moral attitudes among believers. We assessed the relationship between church members’ levels of felt connectedness to their respective congregations and perceived similarity in personal and congregational moral values, and whether there was a relationship between these and the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing during worship. The similarity between personal and perceived congregational moral importance was correlated with feelings of closeness to one’s congregation but not by (...) the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing. Differences in moral foundations scores and in moral importance of specific issues were found between different theological traditions. These findings demonstrate that, for churchgoers, there is a relationship between the use of music or synchronous movement in a church service and feelings of social bonding and there is also a relationship between the degree to which churchgoers identify with their church community and the degree to which they believe their priorities match those of their church. Furthermore, differences in theological tradition appear to be reflected in differences in moral values. (shrink)

Everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, especially in journalism, a picture can be worth much, much more. This added value isn't always positive. Pictures can inflict lasting pain on victims of grief and tragedy. This paper by an undergraduate journalism student explores the ethical dilemmas photographers face when capturing such traumatic incidents on film and explores the lack of professional guidelines available to guide them.

Both the Scriptures and the traditions of the Christian faith can be seen to promote animal welfare and, paradoxically, also to promote the idea of nonhuman animals existing only for human use. The result is that Christians can have mixed attitudes toward animals, and comparatively few Christians actively work toward improving animal welfare. It is possible that the behavior and activities of individual Christians reflect those values most strongly and frequently expressed in Christian liturgy and worship, which may be more (...) limited than what is present in Scripture or the wider tradition. The psychological theory of reasoned action/planned behavior provides a model that can help explain how these values are translated into action. This article will report on the findings of a pilot study that explored the relationship between the style and content of Christian worship and behavior in related ethical areas and will focus on those results relating specifically to animal welfare. Statistically significant correlations were found between the inclusion of animal welfare in church worship, private prayer, and related charitable giving. Participation in certain types of worship was predictive, either positively or negatively, for giving to animal welfare charities. Based on these results, this article explores the possible reasons why liturgy can have a strong influence in forming attitudes and shaping behavior and why some liturgical styles may be more influential than others. (shrink)

Let T be an infinite pseudo-tree. In [2], we showed that the cellularity of the pseudo-tree algebra Treealg(T) was the maximum of four cardinals cT, lT, ϕT, and μT: roughly, cT is the "tallness" of T; lT is the "width" of T; ϕ is the number of "points of finite branching" in T; and μ is the number of "sections of no branching" in T. Here we ask: which inequalities among these four cardinals may be satisfied, in some sense, by (...) a pseudo-tree? We show that the possible inequalities among cT, lT, ϕT, and μT attained by pseudo-trees T are closely related to the existence of generalized Suslin trees. (shrink)

Recall that for any Boolean algebra (BA) A, the cellularity of A is c(A) = sup{|X| : X is a pairwise-disjoint subset of A}. A pseudo-tree is a partially ordered set (T, ≤) such that for every t in T, the set {r ∊ T : r ≤ t} is a linear order. The pseudo-tree algebra on T, denoted Treealg(T), is the subalgebra of ℘(T) generated by the cones {r ∊ T : r ≥ t}, for t in T. We (...) characterize the cellularity of pseudo-tree algebras in terms of cardinal functions on the underlying pseudo-trees. For T a pseudo-tree, c(Treealg(T)) is the maximum of four cardinals c\sbT, ι\sbT, φ\sbT, and μ\sbT : roughly, c\sbT measures the "tallness" of the pseudo-tree T; ι\sbT the "breadth"; φ\sbT the number of "finite branchings"; and μ\sbT the number of places where T "does not branch." We give examples to demonstrate that all four of these cardinals are needed. (shrink)

The present article highlights ethical challenges and practical solutions to the problems that arise when designing and conducting the fieldwork data collection with the members of violent youth gangs, prison inmates, and arrestees held in police cells in Nigeria. Issues related to the process of seeking approval and then implementing the research, gaining access, achieving informed consent, confidentiality, the use of interpreters, and remuneration are presented through case studies. The conclusion stresses the need for researchers to be well prepared and (...) sensitive to the research participants' community and cultural backgrounds while following ethical practices in multicultural contexts, especially in Africa and other developing nations. (shrink)