Despite its rapid rise as leader of the religious broadcasting industry, Jim Bakker's "PTL Club" (People That Love) has experienced numerous financial problems. In 1979, three former PTL vice-presidents charged that the club was diverting thousands of dollars in donations for missionary projects to the club's general fund to pay bills.…

Research on the attitudes of heterosexual churchgoers is extensive. However, very little empirical information is available about the attitudes held by gay and lesbian Christians. In the current study, it was hypothesized that gay and lesbian Christians, unlike their heterosexual peers, would demonstrate desire for and acceptance of social…

Western civilization constitutes a perennial conflict of spiritualities derived from comprehensive world views that are contradictory and irreconcilable. These world views are the vertical view of Judeo-Christian supernaturalism, and the horizontal view of Greco-Roman naturalism. The Judeo-Christian view holds that reality includes and transcends…

Religious symbol systems have the capacity to bring into place superordinate constructions of reality. One interesting construction of reality has been developed by the Unity School of Christianity, organized in the second half of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most successful of organized groups within the American New…

It has been suggested that current measures used in investigating religion are a mixture of questions concerning values, beliefs, and behaviors and are mixed in their factorial purity. Another difficulty is that there is a relative lack of research on different religions and their specific beliefs. The present study utilized a scale of homogeneous…

Comparison of Catholic biography in the 1950s and 1980s highlights prominent titles and publishers. Biographies as a segment of history of the Church in the United States, the author's writing of the biography of DuBourg, and the history of DuBourg's three decades in the American Catholic Church are noted. (EJS)

Religion has played a dominant role in the lives of people all over the world. It is a widespread and significant social force in human societies. This study examined the degree of religiosity among Muslims, Christians, and Hindus and its effects on dependency and self-esteem. Subjects (N=300) were college students divided evenly among each of the…

A critical analysis of the quadrennial ministry studies within Methodism over the years is presented. The 1944 and 1948 ministry studies were sociological and demographic. A 1952 study was the first try by the Methodist Church to work on definitions and theological understanding of the ministry. In 1960, there was a study of ministry and a…

Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) schools, which provide an alternative to state-supported and other church schools, began in the United States, but their growth in Australia has been rapid. In 1977, there was only one ACE school in Australia, but by 1982 there were 10. The schools, which are committed to Christian fundamentalism, are run by…

Many theorists have argued that western Christianity and Islam affect political culture in different ways, and that western Christianity is more conducive to the rise of a democratic culture than is Islam. This paper argues that the difference between Christianity and Islam in terms of the type of political culture they encourage, is largely…

This paper focuses on the concept for Christian education to be permeated with great moral and ethical teaching. Character education can be the tool for that necessary teaching if consistent with Biblical teaching. There is great demand for the teaching of morality in all schools today, yet is the intention in Christian schools really to teach…

Through its symbolism, law, and toponyms, the Bible exerts a strong influence on Western society. Consequently, geography of the Bible--a study of how people responded to God in such a geographic setting and how people responded to the challenge of an adverse environment--constitutes a legitimate academic field. Such a study has the specific…

The linkage of the formal structures of higher learning in Islam and the development of higher education in the Medieval West is discussed. Recent findings indicate a transference of instructional methodology and even some organizational forms from Islamdom to the Christian West during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Islamic models of higher…

The purpose of this paper is to link several sets of ideas in personality theory to each other and to Christian theology; link several sets of ideas in personality theory and cultural anthropology to each other and to Christian theology; and demonstrate that various social phenomena are not the domain of any particular social or behavioral science…

This handbook was prepared for the guidance of participants in a workshop designed to help teach Greek Orthodox lay persons the basic elements for creating religious retreats. Part 1 of this document teach Greek Orthodox lay persons the basic elements for creating religious retreats. Part 1 of this document defines the meanings of the terms…