Ya Ali madad:
Beautiful synopsis our Tariqa and Traditions from a blessed Khoja Ismaili.
I may wish to add to the last line.
Donate generously & Meditate immensely, we cannot leave that God/Ali/MHI to do that for us.
Jamatkhana Attendance
Religious Attendance and Cause of Death over 31 Years
Doug Oman, Ph.D.⇑
Human Population Laboratory, Public Health Institute Berkeley, California
John H. Kurata, Ph.D.
Human Population Laboratory California Department of Health Services, Berkeley
Direct reprint requests to: Doug Oman, Ph.D., Human Population Laboratory, 2151 Berkeley Way, Annex 2, Berkeley, CA 94704-1011, e-mail: DougOman@post.Harvard.edu
William J. Strawbridge, Ph.D.
Richard D. Cohen, MA
Human Population Laboratory, Public Health Institute Berkeley, California
Abstract
Objective: Frequent attendance at religious services has been reported by several studies to be independently associated with lower all-cause mortality. The present study aimed to clarify relationships between religious attendance and mortality by examining how associations of religious attendance with several specific causes of death may be explained by demographics, socioeconomic status, health status, health behaviors, and social connections.
Method: Associations between frequent religious attendance and major types of cause-specific mortality between 1965 and 1996 were examined for 6545 residents of Alameda County, California. Sequential proportional hazards regressions were used to study survival time until mortality from circulatory, cancer, digestive, respiratory, or external causes.
Results: After adjusting for age and sex, infrequent (never or less than weekly) attenders had significantly higher rates of circulatory, cancer, digestive, and respiratory mortality (p < 0.05), but not mortality due to external causes. Differences in cancer mortality were explained by prior health status. Associations with other outcomes were weakened but not eliminated by including health behaviors and prior health status. In fully adjusted models, infrequent attenders had significantly or marginally significantly higher rates of death from circulatory (relative hazard [RH] = 1.21, 95 percent confidence interval [CI] = 1.02 to 1.45), digestive (RH = 1.99, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.98 to 4.03), and respiratory (RH = 1.66, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.92 to 3.02) mortality.
Conclusions: These results are consistent with the view that religious involvement, like high socioeconomic status, is a general protective factor that promotes health through a variety of causal pathways. Further study is needed to determine whether the independent effects of religion are mediated by psychological states or other unknown factors.
http://ijp.sagepub.com/content/32/1/69.abstract
Doug Oman, Ph.D.⇑
Human Population Laboratory, Public Health Institute Berkeley, California
John H. Kurata, Ph.D.
Human Population Laboratory California Department of Health Services, Berkeley
Direct reprint requests to: Doug Oman, Ph.D., Human Population Laboratory, 2151 Berkeley Way, Annex 2, Berkeley, CA 94704-1011, e-mail: DougOman@post.Harvard.edu
William J. Strawbridge, Ph.D.
Richard D. Cohen, MA
Human Population Laboratory, Public Health Institute Berkeley, California
Abstract
Objective: Frequent attendance at religious services has been reported by several studies to be independently associated with lower all-cause mortality. The present study aimed to clarify relationships between religious attendance and mortality by examining how associations of religious attendance with several specific causes of death may be explained by demographics, socioeconomic status, health status, health behaviors, and social connections.
Method: Associations between frequent religious attendance and major types of cause-specific mortality between 1965 and 1996 were examined for 6545 residents of Alameda County, California. Sequential proportional hazards regressions were used to study survival time until mortality from circulatory, cancer, digestive, respiratory, or external causes.
Results: After adjusting for age and sex, infrequent (never or less than weekly) attenders had significantly higher rates of circulatory, cancer, digestive, and respiratory mortality (p < 0.05), but not mortality due to external causes. Differences in cancer mortality were explained by prior health status. Associations with other outcomes were weakened but not eliminated by including health behaviors and prior health status. In fully adjusted models, infrequent attenders had significantly or marginally significantly higher rates of death from circulatory (relative hazard [RH] = 1.21, 95 percent confidence interval [CI] = 1.02 to 1.45), digestive (RH = 1.99, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.98 to 4.03), and respiratory (RH = 1.66, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.92 to 3.02) mortality.
Conclusions: These results are consistent with the view that religious involvement, like high socioeconomic status, is a general protective factor that promotes health through a variety of causal pathways. Further study is needed to determine whether the independent effects of religion are mediated by psychological states or other unknown factors.
http://ijp.sagepub.com/content/32/1/69.abstract
The article below highlights how deinstitutionalization and politicization of faith and what that entails in terms of attendance in congregations, have harmed the working class whites.
The Bad Faith of the White Working Class
Extract:
"I’m hardly alone in benefiting from that faith. Research suggests that children who attend church perform better in school, divorce less as adults and commit fewer crimes. Regular church attendees even exhibit less racial prejudice than their nonreligious peers. The M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber found that for many of these traits, this relationship is causal: It’s not just that privileged kids who attend church skew the data, but that attending services produces good character.
These benefits apply broadly, across a range of faiths, so the phenomenon appears unrelated to doctrine or place. Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad’s medium-size evangelical church — my first real exposure to a sustained religious community — that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together. The church even collected money to help families in need and established a small school and home for single expectant mothers.
Despite these benefits, church attendance has fallen substantially among the members of the white working class in recent years, just when they need it most. Though working-class whites earn, on average, more than working-class people of other ethnicities, we are in a steep social decline. Incarceration rates for white women are on the rise, white youths are more likely than their peers from other groups to die from drug overdoses and rates of divorce and domestic chaos have skyrocketed. Taken together, these statistics reveal a social crisis of historic proportions. Yet the white church — especially the evangelical church that claims the most members — has seemingly disappeared."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opini ... inion&_r=0
The Bad Faith of the White Working Class
Extract:
"I’m hardly alone in benefiting from that faith. Research suggests that children who attend church perform better in school, divorce less as adults and commit fewer crimes. Regular church attendees even exhibit less racial prejudice than their nonreligious peers. The M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber found that for many of these traits, this relationship is causal: It’s not just that privileged kids who attend church skew the data, but that attending services produces good character.
These benefits apply broadly, across a range of faiths, so the phenomenon appears unrelated to doctrine or place. Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad’s medium-size evangelical church — my first real exposure to a sustained religious community — that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together. The church even collected money to help families in need and established a small school and home for single expectant mothers.
Despite these benefits, church attendance has fallen substantially among the members of the white working class in recent years, just when they need it most. Though working-class whites earn, on average, more than working-class people of other ethnicities, we are in a steep social decline. Incarceration rates for white women are on the rise, white youths are more likely than their peers from other groups to die from drug overdoses and rates of divorce and domestic chaos have skyrocketed. Taken together, these statistics reveal a social crisis of historic proportions. Yet the white church — especially the evangelical church that claims the most members — has seemingly disappeared."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opini ... inion&_r=0
Young people who attend religious services less likely to view porn
Psychology PhD student Kyler Rasmussen and sociology prof Alex Bierman examine impact of religion on pornography consumption habits
https://www.ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/20 ... -view-porn
A new study authored by University of Calgary researchers in the Journal of Adolescence examines the pornography viewing habits of adolescents and observes the way in which religious attendance significantly tempers such actions.
The study, conducted with data collected between 2003 and 2008 which surveyed adolescents on their pornography usage into young adulthood (between the ages of 13 to 24), shows that pornography consumption increases sharply with age, especially among males (although there is some increase with females too). However, these age-based increases in pornography viewing are lower among those who attend religious services.
“We were able determine that there is a barrier effect at play wherein religious social control encourages adolescents to view less pornography over time,” says Kyler Rasmussen, lead author of the study and a PhD student in the Department of Psychology.
“This increase in pornography consumption as adolescents get older isn’t as drastic among those who attend religious services. We can see that religious attendance is a factor in shaping the trajectories of pornography viewing in adolescents.
“Some might see it as a vindication of the role of religion, in that it can shape the behaviour of young adolescents in a positive way,” Rasmussen adds.
Survey data drawn from U.S. study on American youth and religion
The data collected for this project was obtained from the National Study of Youth and Religion, a research project spearheaded by sociology professors at the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The nationally representative telephone survey of 3,290 English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers and their parents was designed to investigate the influence of religion and spirituality on American youth.
Rasmussen came across this publicly available data and was drawn to the one question in the survey, which, to his knowledge, had never been properly explored: focusing on the pornography viewing habits of adolescents.
At the time, Rasmussen was taking a course on social statistics with Alex Bierman, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology. He asked Bierman to be his co-author on the study, applying the methodology of social statistics to the available data on porn usage among adolescents.
Understanding porn consumption an important question for society
A study of pornography consumption among adolescents is one of crucial importance, says Bierman, because this age bracket represents a critical time in a person’s social and sexual development. While educated opinions may vary on the potentially harmful effects of pornography consumption among adults, with adolescents, certain red flags must be raised.
“At this stage in life, when individuals are learning about sexuality and sexual relationships, do we want them learning these things from a source that has been known to often reinforce detrimental and misogynistic stereotypes?” asks Bierman. “That may not be healthy.
“Therefore, trying to understand the influences that shape porn usage and its trajectory with age is an important question for our society.”
So, what is it about attending religious services that would help steer adolescents away from viewing pornography?
“People in religious communities learn that there are expected patterns of behaviour,” says Bierman. “It may be the notion of a divine significant other who watches over them and there may also be a social support component. When you become integrated within a moral community where pornography is used less often and is, in fact, discouraged, this may shape and deter pornography usage. There’s a kind of social control function at play.”
Bierman notes that the data collected for this study was gathered between 2003 and 2008 and since that time, pornography has only become more prevalent in our society of social media and smartphones.
'More free access to pornography than ever before'
“There’s more free access to pornography online than ever before,” he says. “We probably underestimate the extent to which pornography is available to adolescents.”
While the research would seem to be a testament to the positive influence of religion on adolescents, Rasmussen feels that the study’s ramifications might reach beyond that.
“I think it’s important to try and figure out what it is about religiosity that steers these adolescents away from pornography,” says Rasmussen.
“Let’s see if we can figure that out and apply it outside of a religious context. Clearly, there are people who aren’t religious who still don’t want their children watching pornography and being influenced by it. So if we can take those aspects of religion that are working and apply them in a family setting or a secular setting, that might be really worthwhile.”
The pressures of our rapidly growing global population are driving unprecedented changes in our social, political, cultural and natural systems. The University of Calgary’s Human Dynamics in a Changing World research strategy is addressing our need to understand how we adapt to rapid change, to ensure our security and quality of life.
[/b]
Psychology PhD student Kyler Rasmussen and sociology prof Alex Bierman examine impact of religion on pornography consumption habits
https://www.ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/20 ... -view-porn
A new study authored by University of Calgary researchers in the Journal of Adolescence examines the pornography viewing habits of adolescents and observes the way in which religious attendance significantly tempers such actions.
The study, conducted with data collected between 2003 and 2008 which surveyed adolescents on their pornography usage into young adulthood (between the ages of 13 to 24), shows that pornography consumption increases sharply with age, especially among males (although there is some increase with females too). However, these age-based increases in pornography viewing are lower among those who attend religious services.
“We were able determine that there is a barrier effect at play wherein religious social control encourages adolescents to view less pornography over time,” says Kyler Rasmussen, lead author of the study and a PhD student in the Department of Psychology.
“This increase in pornography consumption as adolescents get older isn’t as drastic among those who attend religious services. We can see that religious attendance is a factor in shaping the trajectories of pornography viewing in adolescents.
“Some might see it as a vindication of the role of religion, in that it can shape the behaviour of young adolescents in a positive way,” Rasmussen adds.
Survey data drawn from U.S. study on American youth and religion
The data collected for this project was obtained from the National Study of Youth and Religion, a research project spearheaded by sociology professors at the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The nationally representative telephone survey of 3,290 English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers and their parents was designed to investigate the influence of religion and spirituality on American youth.
Rasmussen came across this publicly available data and was drawn to the one question in the survey, which, to his knowledge, had never been properly explored: focusing on the pornography viewing habits of adolescents.
At the time, Rasmussen was taking a course on social statistics with Alex Bierman, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology. He asked Bierman to be his co-author on the study, applying the methodology of social statistics to the available data on porn usage among adolescents.
Understanding porn consumption an important question for society
A study of pornography consumption among adolescents is one of crucial importance, says Bierman, because this age bracket represents a critical time in a person’s social and sexual development. While educated opinions may vary on the potentially harmful effects of pornography consumption among adults, with adolescents, certain red flags must be raised.
“At this stage in life, when individuals are learning about sexuality and sexual relationships, do we want them learning these things from a source that has been known to often reinforce detrimental and misogynistic stereotypes?” asks Bierman. “That may not be healthy.
“Therefore, trying to understand the influences that shape porn usage and its trajectory with age is an important question for our society.”
So, what is it about attending religious services that would help steer adolescents away from viewing pornography?
“People in religious communities learn that there are expected patterns of behaviour,” says Bierman. “It may be the notion of a divine significant other who watches over them and there may also be a social support component. When you become integrated within a moral community where pornography is used less often and is, in fact, discouraged, this may shape and deter pornography usage. There’s a kind of social control function at play.”
Bierman notes that the data collected for this study was gathered between 2003 and 2008 and since that time, pornography has only become more prevalent in our society of social media and smartphones.
'More free access to pornography than ever before'
“There’s more free access to pornography online than ever before,” he says. “We probably underestimate the extent to which pornography is available to adolescents.”
While the research would seem to be a testament to the positive influence of religion on adolescents, Rasmussen feels that the study’s ramifications might reach beyond that.
“I think it’s important to try and figure out what it is about religiosity that steers these adolescents away from pornography,” says Rasmussen.
“Let’s see if we can figure that out and apply it outside of a religious context. Clearly, there are people who aren’t religious who still don’t want their children watching pornography and being influenced by it. So if we can take those aspects of religion that are working and apply them in a family setting or a secular setting, that might be really worthwhile.”
The pressures of our rapidly growing global population are driving unprecedented changes in our social, political, cultural and natural systems. The University of Calgary’s Human Dynamics in a Changing World research strategy is addressing our need to understand how we adapt to rapid change, to ensure our security and quality of life.
[/b]
The Jamat Khana As A Source Of Cohesiveness In The Ismaili Community In Kenya
This study concentrates on and examines the role of the institution of the jamat khana as a major source of cohesiveness in the Ismaili community in Kenya. The Ismailis first settled in the country at the end of the 19th century, and established the jamat khana as the foremost communal institution. This institution has hitherto been an unexplored area of enquiry, and it is maintained and demonstrated through purposive intervi ws and a randomized survey that the close-knit nature of the community is primarily due to the jamat khana , This is so because the jamat khana acts as a central focus for ssential religious as well as ess ntial social functions. Owing to a lack of indepth studies on any of the varied aspects of the Ismaili community in Kenya, and because of a marked scarcity of historical documents on the subject, the conolusions reached in this study depend extensively on the survey that was carried out. Reference has been made to several sociological studies which diseuse different ways of aChieving cohesiveness among people in any given society. The soundness of same of these bypotheses has been verified in this study. The major findings do indicate that the cohesion of the Ismaili community springs from "the fund ntal belief in an ever living imam pressed and realized in a practical form in the jamat khana, through the observance of regular ceremonies and the consequent interaotion between individuals Inspite of the observation made that the level of individual commitment differed conciderably and consequently, determmed variance in indiVidual peroeptions ardattitudes, the Ismail! oommunity as a whole is distinctive :ih.maVing a very strong degree of cohesiveness which derives primarily from the jamat khana.
URI
http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xml ... 6789/26843
Collections
-College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) [20357]
http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/26843
This study concentrates on and examines the role of the institution of the jamat khana as a major source of cohesiveness in the Ismaili community in Kenya. The Ismailis first settled in the country at the end of the 19th century, and established the jamat khana as the foremost communal institution. This institution has hitherto been an unexplored area of enquiry, and it is maintained and demonstrated through purposive intervi ws and a randomized survey that the close-knit nature of the community is primarily due to the jamat khana , This is so because the jamat khana acts as a central focus for ssential religious as well as ess ntial social functions. Owing to a lack of indepth studies on any of the varied aspects of the Ismaili community in Kenya, and because of a marked scarcity of historical documents on the subject, the conolusions reached in this study depend extensively on the survey that was carried out. Reference has been made to several sociological studies which diseuse different ways of aChieving cohesiveness among people in any given society. The soundness of same of these bypotheses has been verified in this study. The major findings do indicate that the cohesion of the Ismaili community springs from "the fund ntal belief in an ever living imam pressed and realized in a practical form in the jamat khana, through the observance of regular ceremonies and the consequent interaotion between individuals Inspite of the observation made that the level of individual commitment differed conciderably and consequently, determmed variance in indiVidual peroeptions ardattitudes, the Ismail! oommunity as a whole is distinctive :ih.maVing a very strong degree of cohesiveness which derives primarily from the jamat khana.
URI
http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xml ... 6789/26843
Collections
-College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) [20357]
http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/26843
The article below discusses the broader social value and benefits for people to rejoin the congregations and hence stem the decline of the Church in America.
Save the Mainline
Excerpt:
But I won’t ask for that (or maybe my papal paymasters are too threatened by the Latter-day Saints to let me). Instead I’ll just say: Liberals, give mainline Protestantism another chance.
Do it for your political philosophy: More religion would make liberalism more intellectually coherent (the “created” in “created equal” is there for a reason), more politically effective, more rooted in its own history, less of a congerie of suspicious “allies” and more of an actual fraternity.
Do it for your friends and neighbors, town and cities: Thriving congregations have spillover effects that even anti-Trump marches can’t match.
Do it for your family: Church is good for health and happiness, it’s a better place to meet a mate than Tinder, and even its most modernized form is still an ark of memory, a link between the living and the dead.
I understand that there’s the minor problem of actual belief. But honestly, dear liberals, many of you do believe in the kind of open Gospel that a lot of mainline churches preach.
If pressed, most of you aren’t hard-core atheists: You pursue religious experiences, you have affinities for Unitarianism or Quakerism, you can even appreciate Christian orthodoxy when it’s woven into Marilynne Robinson novels or the “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
You say you’re spiritual but not religious because you associate “religion” with hierarchies and dogmas and strict rules about sex. But the Protestant mainline has gone well out of its way to accommodate you on all these points.
I appreciate that by staying away from church you’re vindicating my Catholic skepticism of that accommodation … but really, aren’t you being a little ungrateful, a little slothful, a little selfish by leaving these churches empty when they’re trying to be exactly the change you say you wish Christianity would make? I know you don’t worry about hellfire. But you do worry, presumably, about death: Would some once-weekly preparation really hurt?
Finally, a brief word to the really hardened atheists: Oh, come on. Sure, all that beauty and ecstasy and astonishing mathematical order is because we’re part of a multiverse or a simulation or something; that’s the ticket. Sure, consciousness and free will are illusions, but human rights and gender identities are totally real. Sure, your flying spaghetti monster joke makes you a lot smarter than Aquinas, Karl Barth, Martin Luther King. Sure.
Just go to church, guys. The mainline churches’ doors are open. They need you; America still needs them.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opin ... d=45305309
Save the Mainline
Excerpt:
But I won’t ask for that (or maybe my papal paymasters are too threatened by the Latter-day Saints to let me). Instead I’ll just say: Liberals, give mainline Protestantism another chance.
Do it for your political philosophy: More religion would make liberalism more intellectually coherent (the “created” in “created equal” is there for a reason), more politically effective, more rooted in its own history, less of a congerie of suspicious “allies” and more of an actual fraternity.
Do it for your friends and neighbors, town and cities: Thriving congregations have spillover effects that even anti-Trump marches can’t match.
Do it for your family: Church is good for health and happiness, it’s a better place to meet a mate than Tinder, and even its most modernized form is still an ark of memory, a link between the living and the dead.
I understand that there’s the minor problem of actual belief. But honestly, dear liberals, many of you do believe in the kind of open Gospel that a lot of mainline churches preach.
If pressed, most of you aren’t hard-core atheists: You pursue religious experiences, you have affinities for Unitarianism or Quakerism, you can even appreciate Christian orthodoxy when it’s woven into Marilynne Robinson novels or the “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
You say you’re spiritual but not religious because you associate “religion” with hierarchies and dogmas and strict rules about sex. But the Protestant mainline has gone well out of its way to accommodate you on all these points.
I appreciate that by staying away from church you’re vindicating my Catholic skepticism of that accommodation … but really, aren’t you being a little ungrateful, a little slothful, a little selfish by leaving these churches empty when they’re trying to be exactly the change you say you wish Christianity would make? I know you don’t worry about hellfire. But you do worry, presumably, about death: Would some once-weekly preparation really hurt?
Finally, a brief word to the really hardened atheists: Oh, come on. Sure, all that beauty and ecstasy and astonishing mathematical order is because we’re part of a multiverse or a simulation or something; that’s the ticket. Sure, consciousness and free will are illusions, but human rights and gender identities are totally real. Sure, your flying spaghetti monster joke makes you a lot smarter than Aquinas, Karl Barth, Martin Luther King. Sure.
Just go to church, guys. The mainline churches’ doors are open. They need you; America still needs them.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opin ... d=45305309
Douthat’s Wager: Go to Church, Even If You Don’t Believe
If you are a secular liberal who made your twice-yearly trip to church on Easter Sunday, you took an important step toward improving your life, your political philosophy, and your community, according to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. The next step is to go back, not just at Christmas, but every Sunday from now on.
Douthat’s Easter Sunday column was, in his words, an “implausible proposal” aimed at helping post-Christian readers fill a gap in their lives while helping their former churches fill their pews. Mainline churches—the long-established, theologically liberal denominations that in the twentieth century were closely associated with white American political power—have been aging and dwindling as younger Christians either join nondenominational evangelical churches or disaffiliate from religion altogether. Half of American Presbyterians are age 59 or over; half of atheists and agnostics are under 34.
Douthat’s argument takes seriously the fact that religion is a social phenomenon, a way that humans negotiate public life and manage the “effervescence” of collective experience. He writes that church groups are better for dating than Tinder and that “Thriving congregations have spillover effects that even anti-Trump marches can’t match.” (Douthat doesn’t consider the effect his proposal would have on revenues at brunch restaurants.)
Even if it is true that American liberalism would flourish if it returned to the churches, the prospects for that happening are slim. The biggest reason people have left the mainline is not sociological. It’s theological. People simply don’t believe what the churches teach about God. No social or material inducement may make a difference. In that sense, secular liberals are more sincere about belief than are adherents to the prosperity gospel, which promises riches to the faithful.
The argument Douthat makes is similar to one made by another conservative Catholic, the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, more than 350 years ago. The argument known as Pascal’s Wager is the idea that it’s better to believe in God than not, because even if the odds in favor of God’s existence are pretty remote, the cost of belief is relatively low and the potential benefit is enormous. Likewise, the benefit of not believing is low compared to the potential cost, if indeed God does exist and consigns unbelievers to eternal hellfire. So if you’re unsure about God, act as if you believed, because “Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.”
Douthat adapts Pascal’s case to a more secular age by bracketing belief. For the sake of his argument, it doesn’t matter if there’s such a thing as heaven or hell. The benefits of religion are all right here on earth. Just go to church, meet people, celebrate the holidays, learn about morality, bury the dead, and give to the poor. It will make you and everyone else better off here and now. It will even make you a better, more committed liberal.
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/douthats- ... 4-84570085
If you are a secular liberal who made your twice-yearly trip to church on Easter Sunday, you took an important step toward improving your life, your political philosophy, and your community, according to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. The next step is to go back, not just at Christmas, but every Sunday from now on.
Douthat’s Easter Sunday column was, in his words, an “implausible proposal” aimed at helping post-Christian readers fill a gap in their lives while helping their former churches fill their pews. Mainline churches—the long-established, theologically liberal denominations that in the twentieth century were closely associated with white American political power—have been aging and dwindling as younger Christians either join nondenominational evangelical churches or disaffiliate from religion altogether. Half of American Presbyterians are age 59 or over; half of atheists and agnostics are under 34.
Douthat’s argument takes seriously the fact that religion is a social phenomenon, a way that humans negotiate public life and manage the “effervescence” of collective experience. He writes that church groups are better for dating than Tinder and that “Thriving congregations have spillover effects that even anti-Trump marches can’t match.” (Douthat doesn’t consider the effect his proposal would have on revenues at brunch restaurants.)
Even if it is true that American liberalism would flourish if it returned to the churches, the prospects for that happening are slim. The biggest reason people have left the mainline is not sociological. It’s theological. People simply don’t believe what the churches teach about God. No social or material inducement may make a difference. In that sense, secular liberals are more sincere about belief than are adherents to the prosperity gospel, which promises riches to the faithful.
The argument Douthat makes is similar to one made by another conservative Catholic, the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, more than 350 years ago. The argument known as Pascal’s Wager is the idea that it’s better to believe in God than not, because even if the odds in favor of God’s existence are pretty remote, the cost of belief is relatively low and the potential benefit is enormous. Likewise, the benefit of not believing is low compared to the potential cost, if indeed God does exist and consigns unbelievers to eternal hellfire. So if you’re unsure about God, act as if you believed, because “Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.”
Douthat adapts Pascal’s case to a more secular age by bracketing belief. For the sake of his argument, it doesn’t matter if there’s such a thing as heaven or hell. The benefits of religion are all right here on earth. Just go to church, meet people, celebrate the holidays, learn about morality, bury the dead, and give to the poor. It will make you and everyone else better off here and now. It will even make you a better, more committed liberal.
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/douthats- ... 4-84570085
Drive-In Jesus
When I tell someone I’m from Florida, I usually receive a smirk and a crack about the internet meme “Florida Man” in response. I get it. Florida is a weird place full of flip- flops, alligator-skinned old ladies and bad tattoos, but when people mock it I can’t help getting defensive. To me, there’s so much more under that kooky surface. The state is a jumbled, sensitive place of untamable wilderness and inherent complexity.
I found myself back living in Florida not long ago and wanting to make a film that took on that idiosyncrasy. Driving from my parents’ house on the A1A highway along the east coast, I stumbled upon the Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church. At first the idea of sitting in a car to go to church seemed deranged to me. What could be more vacant of spirituality and human connection than going to church sealed off in the most alienating of American inventions, your car?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opin ... dline&te=1
When I tell someone I’m from Florida, I usually receive a smirk and a crack about the internet meme “Florida Man” in response. I get it. Florida is a weird place full of flip- flops, alligator-skinned old ladies and bad tattoos, but when people mock it I can’t help getting defensive. To me, there’s so much more under that kooky surface. The state is a jumbled, sensitive place of untamable wilderness and inherent complexity.
I found myself back living in Florida not long ago and wanting to make a film that took on that idiosyncrasy. Driving from my parents’ house on the A1A highway along the east coast, I stumbled upon the Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church. At first the idea of sitting in a car to go to church seemed deranged to me. What could be more vacant of spirituality and human connection than going to church sealed off in the most alienating of American inventions, your car?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opin ... dline&te=1
Happiness Is Other People
Excerpt:
Spiritual and religious practice is slowly shifting from a community-based endeavor to a private one, with silent meditation retreats, mindfulness apps and yoga classes replacing church socials and collective worship. The self-help industry — with its guiding principle that the search for happiness should be an individual, self-focused enterprise — is booming, with Americans spending more than $1 billion on self-help books a year to help guide them on their inner journeys. Meanwhile, “self-care” has become the new going out.
But while placing more and more emphasis on seeking happiness within, Americans in general are spending less and less time actually connecting with other people. Nearly half of all meals eaten in this country are now eaten alone. Teenagers and young millennials are spending less time just “hanging out” with their friends than any generation in recent history, replacing real-world interaction with smartphones.
And it’s not just young people. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey shows that the average American now spends less than four minutes a day “hosting and attending social events,” a category that covers all types of parties and other organized social occasions. That’s 24 hours a year, barely enough to cover Thanksgiving dinner, and your own child’s birthday party.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opin ... eople.html
Excerpt:
Spiritual and religious practice is slowly shifting from a community-based endeavor to a private one, with silent meditation retreats, mindfulness apps and yoga classes replacing church socials and collective worship. The self-help industry — with its guiding principle that the search for happiness should be an individual, self-focused enterprise — is booming, with Americans spending more than $1 billion on self-help books a year to help guide them on their inner journeys. Meanwhile, “self-care” has become the new going out.
But while placing more and more emphasis on seeking happiness within, Americans in general are spending less and less time actually connecting with other people. Nearly half of all meals eaten in this country are now eaten alone. Teenagers and young millennials are spending less time just “hanging out” with their friends than any generation in recent history, replacing real-world interaction with smartphones.
And it’s not just young people. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey shows that the average American now spends less than four minutes a day “hosting and attending social events,” a category that covers all types of parties and other organized social occasions. That’s 24 hours a year, barely enough to cover Thanksgiving dinner, and your own child’s birthday party.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opin ... eople.html
The article below which is about the role of the Church in society has a lot of parallels with the function of Jamat Khanas. In the spirit of deriving strength from pluralism it is worthy of reflection.
Living, Loving and Dying in Church
LA VERNIA, Tex. — It’s important to know that in Wilson County in Texas, site of the horrific shooting that killed 26 people at the First Baptist Church on Sunday, life revolves around the schools and the churches. It’s a rural county of five small towns, and the biggest industry is cattle ranching. It is also a place where schools don’t plan anything on Wednesday nights because that is a church night.
I am the pastor at La Vernia United Methodist Church, seven miles west of Sutherland Springs, where the shooting occurred. Everyone here knew someone associated with the First Baptist Church. One of the dead was a parent whose child was in the 4-H club with a child in our program. Another victim was a lifelong friend of one of my parishioners; they graduated from La Vernia High 38 years ago. People from my congregation had attended Bible study at First Baptist or worked with its members on a mission project.
The idea that such a thing would happen in a sacred space, a place where families are supposed to be safe, has angered many people. Churches are places where the spirit of God is felt, where the presence of God is very real, where manners are expected and vulgarity is shunned. The church is where we, with all our faults and failures, come into the presence of the divine to find grace, to find peace, to rest in the arms of the Lord. The church is a sanctuary in the literal sense of the word, set apart, safe, protecting. All this was shattered.
Things like this don’t happen in small towns like ours. Those who moved to the country to protect their family from the perceived dangers of the city were especially shaken.
Almost every family here identifies with a church. In some cases, it’s more a matter of a family tradition than active participation. But for weddings and funerals, it is usually the “family church” that’s called. Even so, families go to different churches as they find activities that fit their needs. The Boy Scouts at the Methodist church. Soccer at the Roman Catholic church. Lions Club meetings at the Church of Christ.
One church has a clinic while another has a day care and still another a weekly lunch for the elderly. The churches work together to run a food bank, sponsor blood drives, and hold community worship services on Thanksgiving and Good Friday.
In our community, there is a deep, solid, underlying faith in God, even if it doesn’t manifest itself in church attendance every week. Immediately after the shooting the churches started receiving and making offers of help. They rushed meals to those grieving and to the emergency workers. They were called on to help fund funerals and host a blood drive. Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, nondenominational — it didn’t matter. Christ commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and the churches are where the people come together to serve in ways bigger than each of us can serve individually.
A church in Wilson County is a community center where good people strive to do good for fellow human beings. A church in Wilson County is a home for extended family to share their lives. A church in Wilson County is a place where we come to mourn losses, grieve the death of a friend or relative, celebrate the joys of life and love. A church in Wilson County is a place where we connect with the God who loves us, watches over us, and, in the end, welcomes us home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/opin ... d=45305309
Living, Loving and Dying in Church
LA VERNIA, Tex. — It’s important to know that in Wilson County in Texas, site of the horrific shooting that killed 26 people at the First Baptist Church on Sunday, life revolves around the schools and the churches. It’s a rural county of five small towns, and the biggest industry is cattle ranching. It is also a place where schools don’t plan anything on Wednesday nights because that is a church night.
I am the pastor at La Vernia United Methodist Church, seven miles west of Sutherland Springs, where the shooting occurred. Everyone here knew someone associated with the First Baptist Church. One of the dead was a parent whose child was in the 4-H club with a child in our program. Another victim was a lifelong friend of one of my parishioners; they graduated from La Vernia High 38 years ago. People from my congregation had attended Bible study at First Baptist or worked with its members on a mission project.
The idea that such a thing would happen in a sacred space, a place where families are supposed to be safe, has angered many people. Churches are places where the spirit of God is felt, where the presence of God is very real, where manners are expected and vulgarity is shunned. The church is where we, with all our faults and failures, come into the presence of the divine to find grace, to find peace, to rest in the arms of the Lord. The church is a sanctuary in the literal sense of the word, set apart, safe, protecting. All this was shattered.
Things like this don’t happen in small towns like ours. Those who moved to the country to protect their family from the perceived dangers of the city were especially shaken.
Almost every family here identifies with a church. In some cases, it’s more a matter of a family tradition than active participation. But for weddings and funerals, it is usually the “family church” that’s called. Even so, families go to different churches as they find activities that fit their needs. The Boy Scouts at the Methodist church. Soccer at the Roman Catholic church. Lions Club meetings at the Church of Christ.
One church has a clinic while another has a day care and still another a weekly lunch for the elderly. The churches work together to run a food bank, sponsor blood drives, and hold community worship services on Thanksgiving and Good Friday.
In our community, there is a deep, solid, underlying faith in God, even if it doesn’t manifest itself in church attendance every week. Immediately after the shooting the churches started receiving and making offers of help. They rushed meals to those grieving and to the emergency workers. They were called on to help fund funerals and host a blood drive. Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, nondenominational — it didn’t matter. Christ commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and the churches are where the people come together to serve in ways bigger than each of us can serve individually.
A church in Wilson County is a community center where good people strive to do good for fellow human beings. A church in Wilson County is a home for extended family to share their lives. A church in Wilson County is a place where we come to mourn losses, grieve the death of a friend or relative, celebrate the joys of life and love. A church in Wilson County is a place where we connect with the God who loves us, watches over us, and, in the end, welcomes us home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/opin ... d=45305309
The science behind why choir-singing is good for you
Whether amateurs or professional, young or old, people all across Canada are coming together to sing — and science suggests it's doing them even more good than you might first suspect.
There are 28,000 choirs that gather in schools, churches, and community spaces throughout the country. Research done for advocacy group Choral Canada suggests 3.5 million Canadians currently lend their vocal cords to a choir.
"All those moments of singing together with other people created in me a feeling of peace, a feeling of unity, a feeling of belonging, and connection that otherwise in the world is challenging," Hussein Janmohamed, a PhD in choral music, told the CBC's Kathryn Marlow of his choir experiences.
Daniel Levitin, psychology professor at McGill University and author of This is Your Brain on Music, says group singing isn't just good for the soul — it's good for the body.
By analyzing the changes in people's brain activity when they sing together, he's come to the conclusion that feelings of belonging and mood elevation are biologically ingrained to surface with communal singing.
More...
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/blogs/the-scien ... -1.4594292
Whether amateurs or professional, young or old, people all across Canada are coming together to sing — and science suggests it's doing them even more good than you might first suspect.
There are 28,000 choirs that gather in schools, churches, and community spaces throughout the country. Research done for advocacy group Choral Canada suggests 3.5 million Canadians currently lend their vocal cords to a choir.
"All those moments of singing together with other people created in me a feeling of peace, a feeling of unity, a feeling of belonging, and connection that otherwise in the world is challenging," Hussein Janmohamed, a PhD in choral music, told the CBC's Kathryn Marlow of his choir experiences.
Daniel Levitin, psychology professor at McGill University and author of This is Your Brain on Music, says group singing isn't just good for the soul — it's good for the body.
By analyzing the changes in people's brain activity when they sing together, he's come to the conclusion that feelings of belonging and mood elevation are biologically ingrained to surface with communal singing.
More...
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/blogs/the-scien ... -1.4594292
Religious Service Attendance, Marriage, and Health
https://ifstudies.org/blog/religious-se ... nd-health/
Considerable research over the last two decades has been devoted to the relationship between religious participation and health and well-being. Our research on this topic at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health links religious service attendance to a number of better health outcomes, including longer life, lower incidence of depression, and less suicide. Our work also indicates that religious service attendance is associated with greater marital stability—or more specifically, with a lower likelihood of divorce.1
We are not the first to study the relationship between religious service attendance and the likelihood of divorce. In fact, a number of studies have found similar results: namely, that those who attend religious services are about 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce than those who do not.2
One of the critiques of this research is the possibility that those who may be contemplating divorce may be more likely to stop attending religious services. In our research, by looking at the timing of changes in religious service attendance, we were able to control for this possibility, and the results persisted: those who attended religious services were 47 percent less likely to subsequently divorce. Our study consisted only of women, but other studies have looked at both men and women, and the results are once again similar. Our study also focused on middle-aged and older women, but again, other studies have examined younger men and women with similar results.3 The effects of religious attendance on divorce seem to be fairly widely applicable.
Why might religious service attendance protect against the likelihood of divorce? More research into the precise mechanisms is still needed, but a number of factors seem like logical possibilities that should be investigated further.
Religious teachings often indicate that marriage is something sacred—that an important bond is created in the exchange of marriage vows. Attending religious services reinforces that message.
Religious teachings also discourage or censure divorce to varying degrees across religious traditions, which may lead to lower rates of divorce; moreover, religious traditions also often have strong teachings against adultery, which is one of the strongest predictors of divorce.
Religious teachings often place a strong emphasis on love and on putting the needs of others above one’s own. This may also improve the quality of married life and lower the likelihood of divorce.
Religious institutions often provide various types of family support, including a place for families to get to know one another and build relationships, programs for children, marital and pre-marital counseling, and retreats and workshops focused on building a good marriage. Religious communities can provide important resources for a healthy marriage.
Finally, other research indicates that religious service attendance is associated with a number of other positive results (see figure below). For example, our research at Harvard indicates that regular religious service attendance is associated with a lower risk of dying over a 16-year follow-up and also a lower incidence of depression.4 Additional research finds that religious service attendance is associated with greater levels of meaning in life and greater levels of happiness.5 These things are generally associated with greater marital satisfaction and a lower likelihood of divorce. So religious service attendance, by improving other aspects of life, may also indirectly support marriage.
updatedvanderweelefigure
Source: See footnotes 1 and 4.
What are the implications of this research? Religion is, of course, not principally about promoting physical health or decreasing the likelihood of divorce, but about communion with God. However, it turns out that the pursuit of this goal also has profound implications for numerous other aspects of life, including health and marriage. Religion might be understood as the pursuit of complete human well-being: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. Religion is about both communion with God and the restoration of all people to their intended state of complete wholeness and well-being. The evidence suggests that it can indeed accomplish both.
The communal aspect of religious attendance does seem to be important. With the various health outcomes, it appears to be religious service attendance—rather than self-assessed spirituality or private practice—that matters the most. Something about the communal religious experience is powerful. Again, in the case of marriage stability, religious communities may provide important teaching about the sacred nature of marriage, extra support for families and children, and a sense of community with shared values. These things don’t necessarily arise with solitary spirituality.
People, of course, do not become religious just for health reasons or to avoid divorce, but for those who already consider themselves religious, service attendance can provide a critical support. Religious practice, whether communally or between spouses, is powerful. Indeed, other research suggests that shared family religious activities and praying together are likewise associated with greater relationship satisfaction and greater levels of trust.6 Shared religious activities like praying together may help couples deal with stress, and allow them to focus on shared beliefs and hopes for the future, and deal constructively with problems in their relationship. Thus, for those who already consider themselves religious, both religious service attendance and joint prayer may be vital resources for strengthening marriage and trust, and for promoting happier, healthier, and fuller lives.
Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health and a faculty affiliate of the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
1. Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religion and health: a synthesis,” in J.R. Peteet, and M.J. Balboni (eds.), Spirituality and Religion within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Available at: http://pik.fas.harvard.edu/files/pik/files/chapter.pdf
2. P. R. Amato and S.J. Rogers, “A longitudinal study of marital problems and subsequent divorce,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 59 (1997): 612-624. See also: W.J. Strawbridge, S. J. Shema, R. D. Cohen, and G. A. Kaplan, “Religious attendance increases survival by improving and maintaining good health behaviors, mental health, and social relationships,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 23, no. 1 (2001): 68–74. See also: W. Bradford Wilcox, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
3. Ibid.
4. S. Li, M. Stamfer, D.R. Williams, and T.J. VanderWeele, “Association between religious service attendance and mortality among women,” JAMA Internal Medicine, 176, no. 6 (2016): 777-785. See also: S. Li, O.I. Okereke, S.C. Chang, I. Kawachi, and T.J. VanderWeele, “Religious service attendance and lower depression among women - a prospective cohort study,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Published online July 8, 2016.
5. N. Krause, RD Hayward,“Religion, meaning in life, and change in physical functioning during late adulthood,” Journal of Adult Development, 19 (2012): 158-169. See also: C. Lim and RD Putnam, “Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction,” American Sociological Review, 75 (2010): 914-933.
6. W. Bradford Wilcox, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also: C.G. Ellison, A.M. Burdette, and W.B. Wilcox, (2010), “The couple that prays together: race and ethnicity, religion, and relationship quality among working-age adults,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 72 (2010): 963-975. See also: N.M. Lambert, F.D. Fincham, D.C. Lavallee, and C.W. Brantley, “Praying together and staying together: couple prayer and trust,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4 (2012): 1-9.
********
Religious Faith and the Family: An Interview with Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox
Bradford Wilcox is a professor of sociology and the lead author of a recently released report entitled The Ties that Bind: Is Faith a Global Force for Good or Ill in the Family? As part of my research on the psychology of meaning, I study religious beliefs and practices, so I was curious to learn more about the research in this new report. Below is an interview I conducted with Dr. Wilcox for Quillette about the report and his broader work on marriage and family.
* * *
Quillette Magazine: I’ll start by asking you to answer the question posed in the title of your report. Is faith a global force for good or ill in the family?
Bradford Wilcox: In the main, religion is a force for good in the families we examined in this report—from 11 countries ranging from Mexico to Canada, from the United States to Ireland. Partners who attend religious services together tend to do better than their secular peers and their peers in nominally religious, or religiously mixed, relationships. They are more likely to report higher-quality relationships marked by greater satisfaction, commitment, attachment, and stability, for instance. Men and women who share a faith are also significantly more likely to say they are “strongly satisfied” with their sexual relationship. The effects are especially large for women here, with women in such jointly religious relationships being about 50 percent more likely to be strongly satisfied with their sexual relationship, compared to women in other relationships.
More...
https://quillette.com/2019/05/23/religi ... rd-wilcox/
https://ifstudies.org/blog/religious-se ... nd-health/
Considerable research over the last two decades has been devoted to the relationship between religious participation and health and well-being. Our research on this topic at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health links religious service attendance to a number of better health outcomes, including longer life, lower incidence of depression, and less suicide. Our work also indicates that religious service attendance is associated with greater marital stability—or more specifically, with a lower likelihood of divorce.1
We are not the first to study the relationship between religious service attendance and the likelihood of divorce. In fact, a number of studies have found similar results: namely, that those who attend religious services are about 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce than those who do not.2
One of the critiques of this research is the possibility that those who may be contemplating divorce may be more likely to stop attending religious services. In our research, by looking at the timing of changes in religious service attendance, we were able to control for this possibility, and the results persisted: those who attended religious services were 47 percent less likely to subsequently divorce. Our study consisted only of women, but other studies have looked at both men and women, and the results are once again similar. Our study also focused on middle-aged and older women, but again, other studies have examined younger men and women with similar results.3 The effects of religious attendance on divorce seem to be fairly widely applicable.
Why might religious service attendance protect against the likelihood of divorce? More research into the precise mechanisms is still needed, but a number of factors seem like logical possibilities that should be investigated further.
Religious teachings often indicate that marriage is something sacred—that an important bond is created in the exchange of marriage vows. Attending religious services reinforces that message.
Religious teachings also discourage or censure divorce to varying degrees across religious traditions, which may lead to lower rates of divorce; moreover, religious traditions also often have strong teachings against adultery, which is one of the strongest predictors of divorce.
Religious teachings often place a strong emphasis on love and on putting the needs of others above one’s own. This may also improve the quality of married life and lower the likelihood of divorce.
Religious institutions often provide various types of family support, including a place for families to get to know one another and build relationships, programs for children, marital and pre-marital counseling, and retreats and workshops focused on building a good marriage. Religious communities can provide important resources for a healthy marriage.
Finally, other research indicates that religious service attendance is associated with a number of other positive results (see figure below). For example, our research at Harvard indicates that regular religious service attendance is associated with a lower risk of dying over a 16-year follow-up and also a lower incidence of depression.4 Additional research finds that religious service attendance is associated with greater levels of meaning in life and greater levels of happiness.5 These things are generally associated with greater marital satisfaction and a lower likelihood of divorce. So religious service attendance, by improving other aspects of life, may also indirectly support marriage.
updatedvanderweelefigure
Source: See footnotes 1 and 4.
What are the implications of this research? Religion is, of course, not principally about promoting physical health or decreasing the likelihood of divorce, but about communion with God. However, it turns out that the pursuit of this goal also has profound implications for numerous other aspects of life, including health and marriage. Religion might be understood as the pursuit of complete human well-being: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. Religion is about both communion with God and the restoration of all people to their intended state of complete wholeness and well-being. The evidence suggests that it can indeed accomplish both.
The communal aspect of religious attendance does seem to be important. With the various health outcomes, it appears to be religious service attendance—rather than self-assessed spirituality or private practice—that matters the most. Something about the communal religious experience is powerful. Again, in the case of marriage stability, religious communities may provide important teaching about the sacred nature of marriage, extra support for families and children, and a sense of community with shared values. These things don’t necessarily arise with solitary spirituality.
People, of course, do not become religious just for health reasons or to avoid divorce, but for those who already consider themselves religious, service attendance can provide a critical support. Religious practice, whether communally or between spouses, is powerful. Indeed, other research suggests that shared family religious activities and praying together are likewise associated with greater relationship satisfaction and greater levels of trust.6 Shared religious activities like praying together may help couples deal with stress, and allow them to focus on shared beliefs and hopes for the future, and deal constructively with problems in their relationship. Thus, for those who already consider themselves religious, both religious service attendance and joint prayer may be vital resources for strengthening marriage and trust, and for promoting happier, healthier, and fuller lives.
Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health and a faculty affiliate of the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
1. Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religion and health: a synthesis,” in J.R. Peteet, and M.J. Balboni (eds.), Spirituality and Religion within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Available at: http://pik.fas.harvard.edu/files/pik/files/chapter.pdf
2. P. R. Amato and S.J. Rogers, “A longitudinal study of marital problems and subsequent divorce,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 59 (1997): 612-624. See also: W.J. Strawbridge, S. J. Shema, R. D. Cohen, and G. A. Kaplan, “Religious attendance increases survival by improving and maintaining good health behaviors, mental health, and social relationships,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 23, no. 1 (2001): 68–74. See also: W. Bradford Wilcox, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
3. Ibid.
4. S. Li, M. Stamfer, D.R. Williams, and T.J. VanderWeele, “Association between religious service attendance and mortality among women,” JAMA Internal Medicine, 176, no. 6 (2016): 777-785. See also: S. Li, O.I. Okereke, S.C. Chang, I. Kawachi, and T.J. VanderWeele, “Religious service attendance and lower depression among women - a prospective cohort study,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Published online July 8, 2016.
5. N. Krause, RD Hayward,“Religion, meaning in life, and change in physical functioning during late adulthood,” Journal of Adult Development, 19 (2012): 158-169. See also: C. Lim and RD Putnam, “Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction,” American Sociological Review, 75 (2010): 914-933.
6. W. Bradford Wilcox, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also: C.G. Ellison, A.M. Burdette, and W.B. Wilcox, (2010), “The couple that prays together: race and ethnicity, religion, and relationship quality among working-age adults,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 72 (2010): 963-975. See also: N.M. Lambert, F.D. Fincham, D.C. Lavallee, and C.W. Brantley, “Praying together and staying together: couple prayer and trust,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4 (2012): 1-9.
********
Religious Faith and the Family: An Interview with Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox
Bradford Wilcox is a professor of sociology and the lead author of a recently released report entitled The Ties that Bind: Is Faith a Global Force for Good or Ill in the Family? As part of my research on the psychology of meaning, I study religious beliefs and practices, so I was curious to learn more about the research in this new report. Below is an interview I conducted with Dr. Wilcox for Quillette about the report and his broader work on marriage and family.
* * *
Quillette Magazine: I’ll start by asking you to answer the question posed in the title of your report. Is faith a global force for good or ill in the family?
Bradford Wilcox: In the main, religion is a force for good in the families we examined in this report—from 11 countries ranging from Mexico to Canada, from the United States to Ireland. Partners who attend religious services together tend to do better than their secular peers and their peers in nominally religious, or religiously mixed, relationships. They are more likely to report higher-quality relationships marked by greater satisfaction, commitment, attachment, and stability, for instance. Men and women who share a faith are also significantly more likely to say they are “strongly satisfied” with their sexual relationship. The effects are especially large for women here, with women in such jointly religious relationships being about 50 percent more likely to be strongly satisfied with their sexual relationship, compared to women in other relationships.
More...
https://quillette.com/2019/05/23/religi ... rd-wilcox/
Jamatkhanas: Spaces of Community, Places of Belonging
Rizwan Mawani
2016, Ismaili United States of America
Islamic Studies,
Islam,
Community,
Religious congregations and monastic orders,
Ismailism
This short article looks at the Ismaili jamatkhana's role in creating and building community in the contemporary era. It explores the space's first appearance asking questions of its history and pre-history in South Asia as well as in other regions where Ismailis can be historically traced.
The article can be downloaded at:
https://www.academia.edu/39870223/Jamat ... view-paper
Rizwan Mawani
2016, Ismaili United States of America
Islamic Studies,
Islam,
Community,
Religious congregations and monastic orders,
Ismailism
This short article looks at the Ismaili jamatkhana's role in creating and building community in the contemporary era. It explores the space's first appearance asking questions of its history and pre-history in South Asia as well as in other regions where Ismailis can be historically traced.
The article can be downloaded at:
https://www.academia.edu/39870223/Jamat ... view-paper
The Grace and Blessings of Jamatkhanas in our Lives
A Jamatkhana is a designated space for Shia Ismaili Muslims to gather and perform tariqah practices, such as supplicatory prayers - du‘a, meditative sessions of remembrance - zikr, and the recitation of devotional poetry, such as ginans and qasidas.
The word Jamatkhana is a combination of two words. The term Jamat means community or congregation, and the term khana, means house or place. Jamatkhana therefore means a place where the community gathers. It is a designated space for Shia Ismaili Muslims to perform tariqah practices, such as supplicatory prayers - du‘a, meditative sessions of remembrance - zikr, and the recitation of devotional poetry, such as ginans and qasidas.
Jamatkhanas are places of peace and tranquillity, of prayer and contemplation, of hope and upliftment, of humility, and of spiritual enlightenment. It is a space where we are further able to nurture and strengthen our personal relationship and spiritual bond with our Imam. When we are facing hardships, pain and suffering, we often attend Jamatkhana and supplicate to our mushkil kusha - the remover of difficulties - for solace, comfort and fortitude to overcome our troubles.
The Qur’an also refers to the sanctity and nobility of spaces of worship. In Sura An-Nur, we are told:
Allah’s Light is lit in houses, which Allah has allowed to be exalted, and that His Name should be remembered in them. He is glorified in them in the mornings and in the evenings by men [and women] who are not distracted … from the remembrance of Allah, performing prayers and the giving of charity.
The Jamatkhana is looked on as one such space where the Imam’s nur - light - is always present. When we enter this elevated space, we are encouraged to be conscious of his presence at all times, and to leave behind the distractions of the material world. We are then able to open ourselves up to the blessings of his Divine Light. The spiritual energy within the Jamatkhana space heals and nourishes our souls. And praying together - as a congregation - enables us to support and uplift each other in spiritual unity.
Jamatkhanas also act as hubs of social engagement, unity and brotherhood. Within this space, we educate ourselves and grow intellectually, while reinforcing our ethics and values and thereby reaffirming our identity as Shi‘a Ismaili Muslims. It is also here that we mark important events in our life cycle, such as birth, marriage and death. Jamatkhanas improve our quality of life and truly are a wonderful grace and blessing from Imam-e-Zaman, touching and impacting all dimensions of our lives.
It is Mawlana Hazar Imam’s hope that Jamatkhanas are not only spaces of happiness and spiritual intimacy, but they ought to play a larger role in the life of the Jamat, and the communities in which we live - opening channels of communication and opportunities for relationship-building. In a speech in 2003 at the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre in Dubai, Mawlana Hazar Imam said:
“At a time when the search for mutual understanding remains essential to assuring peace and stability, the creation of spaces that will enable that search becomes a greater imperative than ever. It is my humble prayer that, when built, the Ismaili Centre in Dubai will be a place for contemplation and search for enlightenment, where people come together to share knowledge and wisdom. It will be a place of peace, of order, of hope and of brotherhood, radiating those thoughts, attitudes and sentiments which unite, and which do not divide, and which uplift the mind and the spirit.”
https://the.ismaili/mozambique/itreb-mz ... -our-lives
A Jamatkhana is a designated space for Shia Ismaili Muslims to gather and perform tariqah practices, such as supplicatory prayers - du‘a, meditative sessions of remembrance - zikr, and the recitation of devotional poetry, such as ginans and qasidas.
The word Jamatkhana is a combination of two words. The term Jamat means community or congregation, and the term khana, means house or place. Jamatkhana therefore means a place where the community gathers. It is a designated space for Shia Ismaili Muslims to perform tariqah practices, such as supplicatory prayers - du‘a, meditative sessions of remembrance - zikr, and the recitation of devotional poetry, such as ginans and qasidas.
Jamatkhanas are places of peace and tranquillity, of prayer and contemplation, of hope and upliftment, of humility, and of spiritual enlightenment. It is a space where we are further able to nurture and strengthen our personal relationship and spiritual bond with our Imam. When we are facing hardships, pain and suffering, we often attend Jamatkhana and supplicate to our mushkil kusha - the remover of difficulties - for solace, comfort and fortitude to overcome our troubles.
The Qur’an also refers to the sanctity and nobility of spaces of worship. In Sura An-Nur, we are told:
Allah’s Light is lit in houses, which Allah has allowed to be exalted, and that His Name should be remembered in them. He is glorified in them in the mornings and in the evenings by men [and women] who are not distracted … from the remembrance of Allah, performing prayers and the giving of charity.
The Jamatkhana is looked on as one such space where the Imam’s nur - light - is always present. When we enter this elevated space, we are encouraged to be conscious of his presence at all times, and to leave behind the distractions of the material world. We are then able to open ourselves up to the blessings of his Divine Light. The spiritual energy within the Jamatkhana space heals and nourishes our souls. And praying together - as a congregation - enables us to support and uplift each other in spiritual unity.
Jamatkhanas also act as hubs of social engagement, unity and brotherhood. Within this space, we educate ourselves and grow intellectually, while reinforcing our ethics and values and thereby reaffirming our identity as Shi‘a Ismaili Muslims. It is also here that we mark important events in our life cycle, such as birth, marriage and death. Jamatkhanas improve our quality of life and truly are a wonderful grace and blessing from Imam-e-Zaman, touching and impacting all dimensions of our lives.
It is Mawlana Hazar Imam’s hope that Jamatkhanas are not only spaces of happiness and spiritual intimacy, but they ought to play a larger role in the life of the Jamat, and the communities in which we live - opening channels of communication and opportunities for relationship-building. In a speech in 2003 at the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre in Dubai, Mawlana Hazar Imam said:
“At a time when the search for mutual understanding remains essential to assuring peace and stability, the creation of spaces that will enable that search becomes a greater imperative than ever. It is my humble prayer that, when built, the Ismaili Centre in Dubai will be a place for contemplation and search for enlightenment, where people come together to share knowledge and wisdom. It will be a place of peace, of order, of hope and of brotherhood, radiating those thoughts, attitudes and sentiments which unite, and which do not divide, and which uplift the mind and the spirit.”
https://the.ismaili/mozambique/itreb-mz ... -our-lives
Why You Can’t Meet God Over Zoom
Virtual services are inadequate — but I keep going.
When our congregation, Church of the Savior, moved to online services some nine months ago, our family tried to keep things normal. We had the children dress in nice Sunday clothes, though we would be watching via screen instead of entering a sanctuary. We arranged the chairs in the living room to look like pews. We tried to follow along, bowing at the right times and crossing ourselves at the right moment.
Anyone who has ever attended a religious service (or any event) with children knows it is a constant struggle to get them to sit still, pay attention and not distract those around them. Every Sunday in the pew is a battle of wills. But if in-person services were a skirmish, online church is war.
My family is a group of outliers. Just 33 percent of Americans attend religious services weekly. As for the rest of the country, about one-third make their way to a place of worship somewhere between a couple of times a month and a few times a year. The final third attend rarely, if at all. But no matter where one falls on that spectrum, the pandemic has changed the way we experience religion.
After that first Zoom church week, our family abandoned the church clothes and makeshift pews. Everyone’s attention lagged.
Maybe it was screen fatigue. My children have Zoom school. As a professor, I have Zoom teaching. With my wife deployed, we have a Zoom marriage and, now, Zoom church. Something had to give.
In July, researchers at Barna, a group dedicated to studying faith and culture, found church attendance in America had dropped significantly during the pandemic. I’m not surprised. I, too, have gone through periods where I couldn’t stomach a Zoom service. Instead, we open our Book of Common Prayer and worship as a family.
And yet this is what we’ve got — lest we simply shut down these services until the church can gather without restriction.
It is true that Zoom religious services are fundamentally inadequate. This is not a criticism of the clergy and lay leaders who have put in tremendous creative effort. In a sense it is an indictment of the very idea of what we look for in church, and a chance to realign our perspective. That is because even in-person services are, in a sense, inadequate. Everyone who has come to follow a religion knows of that initial season of zeal. People are excited and energetic about their newfound faith; the services seem transcendent. But that feeling often fades and becomes something else.
If bodies and physical spaces are really means by which we attempt to encounter God on earth, something immeasurable is lost when worship goes virtual. This loss becomes all the more acute during the holiday season, a time when churches are usually filled with candles, flowers and flowing vestments. Instead, the choir stalls and pews will be largely empty.
W.E.B. Dubois is famous for describing the Black church as “the preacher, the music and the frenzy.” That is true enough as a sociological analysis, but to members of the congregation there is a fourth element to that mix: finding God’s own presence among them.
There are few things more powerful than being in the presence of a Black gospel choir, its lead singer clapping and moving in rhythm testifying to the power of God. There are moments when the choirs and the preachers who follow can lift an entire congregation and transport it. They can fill the despairing with hope and the fearful with the courage to demand justice.
These days, instead of choirs, we mumble along trying to harmonize with a virtual worship leader.
In the months of pandemic worship, I have come to recognize that religious services, by their very nature, cannot fulfill what they promise. Services attempt to usher finite people into the presence of someone we believe is infinite. What hymn or sermon can capture that? We are chasing the wind. There are fits and starts, hints of something at the edge of our perception, but not the thing itself.
Humans disappoint, especially those we expect to share our beliefs and values. We see other believers fail to display the deep love for one another and the stranger that is commended in our sacred texts. We witness others compromise our deepest values, sacrificed for access to power. Integrity seems in short supply. We attend services where the people are unfriendly, the sermons aren’t great and the music is a struggle. Instead of encountering the transcendent, we bump against the limits of human talent.
These frustrations, large and small, cause some to check out on religion in much the same way that people have checked out on Zoom services. And yet, why did roughly a third of Americans trudge off to services week in and week out before the pandemic? Why do some of us continue to log on during it?
We stay because attendance is not about what the church gives us; it is our way of offering something to God. It is a small rebellion, a way of saying that there is more to life than simply the acquisition of more. It is an attempt to become the kind of people who live lives of charity and service.
The very inadequacy of church services, Zoom and otherwise, is a reminder we do not come into churches to encounter a life lesson on how to raise our children or to learn to be good Americans, whatever that means. Our aim is much more audacious. We are attempting to encounter God and, in so doing, find ourselves, possibly for the first time.
One recent weekend we gathered once more for Zoom church. My wife logged on from her military outpost and I logged on with the kids. I settled into my role at tech support. Two of the younger kids lingered on the couch happily coloring. As I followed along in the service, something surprised me. I looked up from the computer and saw my daughter standing in the middle of the living room. Her tender, beautiful voice resounding throughout the space. She was singing. I found myself ushered into the presence of something that defies description.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Virtual services are inadequate — but I keep going.
When our congregation, Church of the Savior, moved to online services some nine months ago, our family tried to keep things normal. We had the children dress in nice Sunday clothes, though we would be watching via screen instead of entering a sanctuary. We arranged the chairs in the living room to look like pews. We tried to follow along, bowing at the right times and crossing ourselves at the right moment.
Anyone who has ever attended a religious service (or any event) with children knows it is a constant struggle to get them to sit still, pay attention and not distract those around them. Every Sunday in the pew is a battle of wills. But if in-person services were a skirmish, online church is war.
My family is a group of outliers. Just 33 percent of Americans attend religious services weekly. As for the rest of the country, about one-third make their way to a place of worship somewhere between a couple of times a month and a few times a year. The final third attend rarely, if at all. But no matter where one falls on that spectrum, the pandemic has changed the way we experience religion.
After that first Zoom church week, our family abandoned the church clothes and makeshift pews. Everyone’s attention lagged.
Maybe it was screen fatigue. My children have Zoom school. As a professor, I have Zoom teaching. With my wife deployed, we have a Zoom marriage and, now, Zoom church. Something had to give.
In July, researchers at Barna, a group dedicated to studying faith and culture, found church attendance in America had dropped significantly during the pandemic. I’m not surprised. I, too, have gone through periods where I couldn’t stomach a Zoom service. Instead, we open our Book of Common Prayer and worship as a family.
And yet this is what we’ve got — lest we simply shut down these services until the church can gather without restriction.
It is true that Zoom religious services are fundamentally inadequate. This is not a criticism of the clergy and lay leaders who have put in tremendous creative effort. In a sense it is an indictment of the very idea of what we look for in church, and a chance to realign our perspective. That is because even in-person services are, in a sense, inadequate. Everyone who has come to follow a religion knows of that initial season of zeal. People are excited and energetic about their newfound faith; the services seem transcendent. But that feeling often fades and becomes something else.
If bodies and physical spaces are really means by which we attempt to encounter God on earth, something immeasurable is lost when worship goes virtual. This loss becomes all the more acute during the holiday season, a time when churches are usually filled with candles, flowers and flowing vestments. Instead, the choir stalls and pews will be largely empty.
W.E.B. Dubois is famous for describing the Black church as “the preacher, the music and the frenzy.” That is true enough as a sociological analysis, but to members of the congregation there is a fourth element to that mix: finding God’s own presence among them.
There are few things more powerful than being in the presence of a Black gospel choir, its lead singer clapping and moving in rhythm testifying to the power of God. There are moments when the choirs and the preachers who follow can lift an entire congregation and transport it. They can fill the despairing with hope and the fearful with the courage to demand justice.
These days, instead of choirs, we mumble along trying to harmonize with a virtual worship leader.
In the months of pandemic worship, I have come to recognize that religious services, by their very nature, cannot fulfill what they promise. Services attempt to usher finite people into the presence of someone we believe is infinite. What hymn or sermon can capture that? We are chasing the wind. There are fits and starts, hints of something at the edge of our perception, but not the thing itself.
Humans disappoint, especially those we expect to share our beliefs and values. We see other believers fail to display the deep love for one another and the stranger that is commended in our sacred texts. We witness others compromise our deepest values, sacrificed for access to power. Integrity seems in short supply. We attend services where the people are unfriendly, the sermons aren’t great and the music is a struggle. Instead of encountering the transcendent, we bump against the limits of human talent.
These frustrations, large and small, cause some to check out on religion in much the same way that people have checked out on Zoom services. And yet, why did roughly a third of Americans trudge off to services week in and week out before the pandemic? Why do some of us continue to log on during it?
We stay because attendance is not about what the church gives us; it is our way of offering something to God. It is a small rebellion, a way of saying that there is more to life than simply the acquisition of more. It is an attempt to become the kind of people who live lives of charity and service.
The very inadequacy of church services, Zoom and otherwise, is a reminder we do not come into churches to encounter a life lesson on how to raise our children or to learn to be good Americans, whatever that means. Our aim is much more audacious. We are attempting to encounter God and, in so doing, find ourselves, possibly for the first time.
One recent weekend we gathered once more for Zoom church. My wife logged on from her military outpost and I logged on with the kids. I settled into my role at tech support. Two of the younger kids lingered on the couch happily coloring. As I followed along in the service, something surprised me. I looked up from the computer and saw my daughter standing in the middle of the living room. Her tender, beautiful voice resounding throughout the space. She was singing. I found myself ushered into the presence of something that defies description.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The Space of Prayers: Relationship Between Prayer and Spirituality
BY ISMAILIMAIL POSTED ON AUGUST 7, 2021
By: Sadruddin Noorani, Chicago, USA
Muharram 1443 – 8th August 2021
The Jamatkhana and its relationship with prayer
For Ismaili Muslims, it is the jamatkhana that provides the space for congregational prayers and rituals. The word jamatkhana means communal house or communal gathering place or assembly hall. The Persian word khana means house or place. From the moment we enter the prayer hall, we acknowledge its special status by acknowledging the presence of God. When many of us leave the prayer hall, we often stand at its threshold, some offering personal prayers while others bowing their head in sajda. All of these are personal rituals, ways in which our bodies and our minds acknowledge that the space we are in is sacred.
In this way, the place of worship is a space that invites a sacred encounter, a connectedness with the Divine as well as a center of learning. When we pray at home, whether reciting our salat, or du’a or tasbih, or hamd, or naat, or a qasida, we are invoking Allah’s name through our breath, our words, our intentions and our thoughts. When this happens in a group, such as within the family or in congregation with the jamat, both the space in which we pray, and our spiritual sensitivity is heightened. Praying together not only builds a sense of community, but it also affects the space in which we pray.
The Holy Qur’an says: “(This lamp is found) in the house which God has permitted to be exalted, and His name to be remembered therein, where He is glorified in the mornings and the evenings.” (24:36).
Religious spaces require us to be humble in the face of the Divine. They are, in certain ways, the court of the Beloved, the place where we wait patiently to meet the Divine. When the jamatkhana also acts as a social and educational space, it is easy for us to forget that it is also a sacred space. Every ritual that takes place within a place of worship such as the jamatkhana, masjid, church, synagogue or a temple, reinforces and acknowledges the presence of the Divine.
The most impactful rituals are often ones in which we unite our bodies and words in singular actions. However, these are often always the most difficult to understand and give meaning to because they draw upon sacred vocabularies and ancient actions. One way to help us navigate these is not to look at rituals in isolation, but rather as an interconnected conversation. When our foreheads touch the ground in sajda during du’a or when we recite the namaz, we acknowledge our humility before Allah (swt) and submit our allegiance to Him alone. This is the same ground our hands touch, and later bring to our faces when we recite the Shahada serving as an additional reminder, to each of our senses, of this humility. Our rituals are very much intertwined and linked. And it is up to us to derive ‘meaning’ from these – meaning that is relevant and personal to us, not just meaning that is given to ritual by others. For meaning can equally be personal as much as it is communal.
Film detailing the inspiration, design, and construction of the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Centre, Khorog, Tajikistan. Source: the.ismaili (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiC0D6o977E
In this way, the jamatkhana can be understood not only as a space or religious gathering for the Ismaili Muslim community, but also a place where ritual becomes meaningful and where we have the potential to encounter the Divine. But the Divine can only be encountered if we acknowledge that the presence of the Divine is here, in our midst, and act accordingly. One way to do this is to perform our rituals with appropriate intention (niyyah) and an open heart. In doing so, we are drawn closer to the Divine and the Divine is drawn closer to us. The Holy Qur’an reminds us that Allah is closer to us than our jugular veins. Our rituals allow us to feel His presence and to feel solace and comfort in it.
Jamatkhana and the Majlis
The term majlis comes from the Arabic word jalasa meaning “to hold a session” or “sit down.” The plural of majlis is majalis. Given its broad meaning, the word majlis is used in many different ways. In many Arab countries, majlis ash-shura is the term used for parliament. Amongst some Shia Muslim communities, the term majlis is most often used for gatherings or assembly that surround the month of Muharram and commemorate the tragedy of Karbala. For Ismailis of the Fatimid period, it was the name given to gatherings of wisdom and knowledge presided over by the da’is and the Imams. For Ismailis of Indian Subcontinent origins, the term majlis has become associated with a special gathering held in addition to the daily congregations, for additional prayers, devotion, supplication and spiritual benefit.
Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo Source: the.Ismaili- Ayeleen Ajanee Saleh
It is said that the members of the Ikhwan al-Safa in the period of 9th Ismaili Imam Mawlana Taqi Muhammad (a.s) (790-843) formed a sort of “personal lodge,” for those who lived in the Lower Mesopotamian River port of Basra. Their philosophical majalis took place on three evenings each month at the start, middle and sometimes between 25th and the end of the month. They also celebrated three major majalis during each year in their lodge, i.e., Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Eid-e Ghadir. They also held special majalis, each one every twelve days.
One way to think about majalis in our Ismaili tradition is to categorize them into different types. For example, there are majalis associated with festivals and events such as, Milad-un Nabi, Yawm-e Ali, Shab-e Miraj, Laylat al-Qadr, Eid-e-Ghadir, and Chandraat, to name a few. These celebratory occasions provide opportunities for the community to come together and participate in special prayers and devotion as well as to reflect upon ideas specifically relevant to each of these festivals. In addition to festivals, we have majalis that are centered on specific themes considered important in the Ismaili tariqah. For example, Baitul-Khayal, which specifically focuses on promoting a commitment to personal spiritual search for the enlightenment through regular practice of meditative prayer or bandagi during pre-dawn hours.
There are also other majalis which focus on the core Muslim ethic of voluntary service allowing a symbolic offering of years of service to Allah and His Creation. Many of these service majalis that are with us today, began as requests by the community to the Imam-of-the-Time. The historical background to this is as under: the 46th Imam Mawlana Hasan Ali Shah (a.s), Aga Khan I (1804-1881) migrated to India from Iran in the mid-19th century. Around the same time the community began to move from towns and villages to urban centers and to settle in cities such as Bombay and Karachi. As followers became more knowledgeable about the history of the Imamat, many expressed a desire to serve the Imam personally as had happened in the past when Imams lived in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Persia and elsewhere. It was not possible to allow many followers, who came forward, to serve the Imam in person. The Imam graciously agreed to allow followers who wished to do so, to symbolically present to the Imam a number of years of voluntary service by becoming members of service majalis.
Maputo Jamatkhana in the district of Alto Maé (archive photo-Ismailimail)
Over time, special ceremonies such as prayers, tasbihs, bandagi, munajat, qasidas manqabat and ginans, etc., became associated with some of these majalis, by which an individual can submit to the Divine and protect himself/herself against the materialism of secular life and many other challenges of daily life.
At times, the Imam would also graciously bless newly enrolled members to the majlis with in-person mulaqaat from time to time and provided special guidance to those present.
The example of selfless services of the Companions of the Prophet and the followers of the Imams have been incorporated symbolically in different majalis in the Ismaili tariqah.
Let us reflect and ask ourselves: What is the impact of praying together in congregation as a community and how does it affect our personal individual journeys? We have been blessed by the grace of God Almighty with opportunities, such as the majalis to gather together, to offer prayers and to demonstrate our gratitude and devotion to our Creator.
Previous post: https://ismailimail.blog/2020/08/19/sad ... t-19-2020/
https://ismailimail.blog/2021/08/07/the ... rituality/
BY ISMAILIMAIL POSTED ON AUGUST 7, 2021
By: Sadruddin Noorani, Chicago, USA
Muharram 1443 – 8th August 2021
The Jamatkhana and its relationship with prayer
For Ismaili Muslims, it is the jamatkhana that provides the space for congregational prayers and rituals. The word jamatkhana means communal house or communal gathering place or assembly hall. The Persian word khana means house or place. From the moment we enter the prayer hall, we acknowledge its special status by acknowledging the presence of God. When many of us leave the prayer hall, we often stand at its threshold, some offering personal prayers while others bowing their head in sajda. All of these are personal rituals, ways in which our bodies and our minds acknowledge that the space we are in is sacred.
In this way, the place of worship is a space that invites a sacred encounter, a connectedness with the Divine as well as a center of learning. When we pray at home, whether reciting our salat, or du’a or tasbih, or hamd, or naat, or a qasida, we are invoking Allah’s name through our breath, our words, our intentions and our thoughts. When this happens in a group, such as within the family or in congregation with the jamat, both the space in which we pray, and our spiritual sensitivity is heightened. Praying together not only builds a sense of community, but it also affects the space in which we pray.
The Holy Qur’an says: “(This lamp is found) in the house which God has permitted to be exalted, and His name to be remembered therein, where He is glorified in the mornings and the evenings.” (24:36).
Religious spaces require us to be humble in the face of the Divine. They are, in certain ways, the court of the Beloved, the place where we wait patiently to meet the Divine. When the jamatkhana also acts as a social and educational space, it is easy for us to forget that it is also a sacred space. Every ritual that takes place within a place of worship such as the jamatkhana, masjid, church, synagogue or a temple, reinforces and acknowledges the presence of the Divine.
The most impactful rituals are often ones in which we unite our bodies and words in singular actions. However, these are often always the most difficult to understand and give meaning to because they draw upon sacred vocabularies and ancient actions. One way to help us navigate these is not to look at rituals in isolation, but rather as an interconnected conversation. When our foreheads touch the ground in sajda during du’a or when we recite the namaz, we acknowledge our humility before Allah (swt) and submit our allegiance to Him alone. This is the same ground our hands touch, and later bring to our faces when we recite the Shahada serving as an additional reminder, to each of our senses, of this humility. Our rituals are very much intertwined and linked. And it is up to us to derive ‘meaning’ from these – meaning that is relevant and personal to us, not just meaning that is given to ritual by others. For meaning can equally be personal as much as it is communal.
Film detailing the inspiration, design, and construction of the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Centre, Khorog, Tajikistan. Source: the.ismaili (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiC0D6o977E
In this way, the jamatkhana can be understood not only as a space or religious gathering for the Ismaili Muslim community, but also a place where ritual becomes meaningful and where we have the potential to encounter the Divine. But the Divine can only be encountered if we acknowledge that the presence of the Divine is here, in our midst, and act accordingly. One way to do this is to perform our rituals with appropriate intention (niyyah) and an open heart. In doing so, we are drawn closer to the Divine and the Divine is drawn closer to us. The Holy Qur’an reminds us that Allah is closer to us than our jugular veins. Our rituals allow us to feel His presence and to feel solace and comfort in it.
Jamatkhana and the Majlis
The term majlis comes from the Arabic word jalasa meaning “to hold a session” or “sit down.” The plural of majlis is majalis. Given its broad meaning, the word majlis is used in many different ways. In many Arab countries, majlis ash-shura is the term used for parliament. Amongst some Shia Muslim communities, the term majlis is most often used for gatherings or assembly that surround the month of Muharram and commemorate the tragedy of Karbala. For Ismailis of the Fatimid period, it was the name given to gatherings of wisdom and knowledge presided over by the da’is and the Imams. For Ismailis of Indian Subcontinent origins, the term majlis has become associated with a special gathering held in addition to the daily congregations, for additional prayers, devotion, supplication and spiritual benefit.
Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo Source: the.Ismaili- Ayeleen Ajanee Saleh
It is said that the members of the Ikhwan al-Safa in the period of 9th Ismaili Imam Mawlana Taqi Muhammad (a.s) (790-843) formed a sort of “personal lodge,” for those who lived in the Lower Mesopotamian River port of Basra. Their philosophical majalis took place on three evenings each month at the start, middle and sometimes between 25th and the end of the month. They also celebrated three major majalis during each year in their lodge, i.e., Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Eid-e Ghadir. They also held special majalis, each one every twelve days.
One way to think about majalis in our Ismaili tradition is to categorize them into different types. For example, there are majalis associated with festivals and events such as, Milad-un Nabi, Yawm-e Ali, Shab-e Miraj, Laylat al-Qadr, Eid-e-Ghadir, and Chandraat, to name a few. These celebratory occasions provide opportunities for the community to come together and participate in special prayers and devotion as well as to reflect upon ideas specifically relevant to each of these festivals. In addition to festivals, we have majalis that are centered on specific themes considered important in the Ismaili tariqah. For example, Baitul-Khayal, which specifically focuses on promoting a commitment to personal spiritual search for the enlightenment through regular practice of meditative prayer or bandagi during pre-dawn hours.
There are also other majalis which focus on the core Muslim ethic of voluntary service allowing a symbolic offering of years of service to Allah and His Creation. Many of these service majalis that are with us today, began as requests by the community to the Imam-of-the-Time. The historical background to this is as under: the 46th Imam Mawlana Hasan Ali Shah (a.s), Aga Khan I (1804-1881) migrated to India from Iran in the mid-19th century. Around the same time the community began to move from towns and villages to urban centers and to settle in cities such as Bombay and Karachi. As followers became more knowledgeable about the history of the Imamat, many expressed a desire to serve the Imam personally as had happened in the past when Imams lived in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Persia and elsewhere. It was not possible to allow many followers, who came forward, to serve the Imam in person. The Imam graciously agreed to allow followers who wished to do so, to symbolically present to the Imam a number of years of voluntary service by becoming members of service majalis.
Maputo Jamatkhana in the district of Alto Maé (archive photo-Ismailimail)
Over time, special ceremonies such as prayers, tasbihs, bandagi, munajat, qasidas manqabat and ginans, etc., became associated with some of these majalis, by which an individual can submit to the Divine and protect himself/herself against the materialism of secular life and many other challenges of daily life.
At times, the Imam would also graciously bless newly enrolled members to the majlis with in-person mulaqaat from time to time and provided special guidance to those present.
The example of selfless services of the Companions of the Prophet and the followers of the Imams have been incorporated symbolically in different majalis in the Ismaili tariqah.
Let us reflect and ask ourselves: What is the impact of praying together in congregation as a community and how does it affect our personal individual journeys? We have been blessed by the grace of God Almighty with opportunities, such as the majalis to gather together, to offer prayers and to demonstrate our gratitude and devotion to our Creator.
Previous post: https://ismailimail.blog/2020/08/19/sad ... t-19-2020/
https://ismailimail.blog/2021/08/07/the ... rituality/
Re: Jamatkhana Attendance
As received...
TALIKA MUBARAK
Worth reading:
A very very rough translation for those whose language is not indic of Abualy waez clip (posted below) on *Talika*:
When Maula is far from us He sends us *Talika*. The day that *Talika (Farman)* arrives, consider that day as if Maula has arrived Himself.
Don't consider Talika as a common thing, example: *some people ask oh what was in the Talika*, they reply *oh not much just blessings*.
You say it was nothing just blessings.
Do you know for these blessings Nabis used to thirst waiting for it, Rasool and prophets used to cry to have these blessings, sages(bagats) have desires in their hearts for these blessings, and you say oh it's nothing just blessings.
This blessings is the biggest thing. The day Talika arrives in Jamatkhana.... have you ever seen Maula in Jamatkhana?
Have you experienced it? If have keep it in your hearts. But you should have this type of experience.
There are those spiritual children of Maula that actually see Maula in Jamatkhana.
They see Him wearing Hat or types of clothes He is wearing or where He is standing or walking around, it smells beautiful when He leaves, have you seen Maula?
You need those eyes to see Him.
Imam Sultan Mohammed Shah (ISMS) says in Farman do you want my deedar? Come to morning prayers, those who come to morning Jamatkhana, they receive my deedar.
He is sitting in Jamatkhana even now, but He is visible to few. You Need to have enthusiasm(interest). You need to give training to your eyes with enthusiasm.
When you enter Jamatkhana you say *Hai Zinda - Qayam Paya* meaning that
*He is alive and ever present here*, but you have not tried to experience His presence. Try to develop your conscious(awareness ) and try to see Maula in Jamatkhana. But if on the first day you say I don't see Him and sit down then you have already accepted defeat, then this will not work. But if you really truly have hope and want to see Maula then one day, maybe in a few days, few weeks, 6 months, 12 months, but one day your heart will see Him. Don't feel sad if you don't see Him right away, keep trying and if you with your heart truly want see Maula, then you will see Maula in Jamatkhana, even in every Jamatkhana.
Alhamdulillah
TALIKA MUBARAK
Worth reading:
A very very rough translation for those whose language is not indic of Abualy waez clip (posted below) on *Talika*:
When Maula is far from us He sends us *Talika*. The day that *Talika (Farman)* arrives, consider that day as if Maula has arrived Himself.
Don't consider Talika as a common thing, example: *some people ask oh what was in the Talika*, they reply *oh not much just blessings*.
You say it was nothing just blessings.
Do you know for these blessings Nabis used to thirst waiting for it, Rasool and prophets used to cry to have these blessings, sages(bagats) have desires in their hearts for these blessings, and you say oh it's nothing just blessings.
This blessings is the biggest thing. The day Talika arrives in Jamatkhana.... have you ever seen Maula in Jamatkhana?
Have you experienced it? If have keep it in your hearts. But you should have this type of experience.
There are those spiritual children of Maula that actually see Maula in Jamatkhana.
They see Him wearing Hat or types of clothes He is wearing or where He is standing or walking around, it smells beautiful when He leaves, have you seen Maula?
You need those eyes to see Him.
Imam Sultan Mohammed Shah (ISMS) says in Farman do you want my deedar? Come to morning prayers, those who come to morning Jamatkhana, they receive my deedar.
He is sitting in Jamatkhana even now, but He is visible to few. You Need to have enthusiasm(interest). You need to give training to your eyes with enthusiasm.
When you enter Jamatkhana you say *Hai Zinda - Qayam Paya* meaning that
*He is alive and ever present here*, but you have not tried to experience His presence. Try to develop your conscious(awareness ) and try to see Maula in Jamatkhana. But if on the first day you say I don't see Him and sit down then you have already accepted defeat, then this will not work. But if you really truly have hope and want to see Maula then one day, maybe in a few days, few weeks, 6 months, 12 months, but one day your heart will see Him. Don't feel sad if you don't see Him right away, keep trying and if you with your heart truly want see Maula, then you will see Maula in Jamatkhana, even in every Jamatkhana.
Alhamdulillah
What Churches Offer That ‘Nones’ Still Long For
This is the fifth and final newsletter in a series about Americans moving away from religion. Read part one, part two, part three and part four.
I started this series because I felt that the rise of “nones” — Americans who say they have no formal religious affiliation — was one of the biggest, most complicated and most misunderstood changes in society in the past half-century. And my sense was that the subject had been discussed mostly among people who had strong, polarizing opinions about this change: either atheists who cheered it or the religiously observant who decried it.
As I started my reporting, my own feelings about the rise of nones were somewhat ambivalent; I’m Jewish and still have a strong cultural identity, but I’m not observant. I don’t miss shul and have little desire to return, yet I feel a bit heartsick about not passing down Jewish rituals with more consistency for my children.
After months of reading about this massive change, and having had quite a few deep and very moving conversations with some of the over 7,000 readers who responded to my initial call-out about becoming less religious over time, the one aspect of religion in America that I unquestionably see as an overall positive for society is the ready-made supportive community that churchgoers can access.
When I say “churchgoers,” of course, I mean those who attend a church, temple, mosque, gurdwara, friends meeting or any of the many traditional houses of worship in America. The idea of community connects them all.
“Community” was mentioned in over 2,300 reader responses. As the reader Julie Prado, 50, from Washington State, wrote to me: “I was raised Pentecostal and went to church three or more times a week, so I desperately miss the community. It was where my friendships came from. I have very few friends now.” Prado told me she isn’t part of a church because she hasn’t found one that fully affirms gay people or believes as strongly as she does in the separation of church and state. “I have joined groups that are fighting for these things,” she said, like Christians Against Christian Nationalism, but they don’t provide the same kind of social fabric that her church did.
I asked every sociologist I interviewed whether communities created around secular activities outside of houses of worship could give the same level of wraparound support that churches, temples and mosques are able to offer. Nearly across the board, the answer was no.
Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College, put it this way: “I can go play soccer on a Sunday morning and hang out with people from different races and different class backgrounds, and we can bond. But I’m not doing that with my grandparents and my grandchildren.” A soccer team can’t provide spiritual solace in the face of death, it probably doesn’t have a weekly charitable call and there’s no sense of connection to a heritage that goes back generations. You can get bits and pieces of these disparate qualities elsewhere, he said, but there’s no “one-stop shop” — at least not right now.
That doesn’t mean Americans can’t or don’t cobble together their own support networks and senses of meaning without organized religion; clearly, many do. But the group of Americans who are moving away from religion in the most significant percentages may have the hardest time building community from scratch, because they are often shortest on time and resources. As I noted in part four of this series, every demographic group in the United States is becoming less religious, but groups that are overrepresented among people with no religion in particular are those without high school diplomas, who are single, who don’t have children and who earn less than $50,000 a year.
This trend complicates, if not contradicts, the commonly held notion that religion is most deeply rooted among everyday working Americans and less among the chattering class. But as Ryan Burge explains in “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going,” data from the comprehensive Cooperative Election Study show that in America, “those with the lowest level of education are more likely to say that they have no religious affiliation than those with the highest level of education.”
In his book, Burge, a pastor and a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, disaggregates the umbrella category of nones into three groups: atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particulars.” Atheists believe there is no God, agnostics are open to the possibility, but not convinced, that God or gods exist, and “nothing in particulars” don’t align themselves with any specific faith tradition.
And Burge has a helpful way of roughing out the terrain: “If all the nones were represented by just five people, one of them would be an atheist, another one would be agnostic and three of them would be nothing in particulars.”
He writes that “32 percent of those who did not earn a high school diploma identified as nones — the highest percentage of any educational level” and “while half of the overall population of the United States earns less than $50,000 per year in household income, 60 percent of the nothing in particulars earn less.” He notes that “nothing in particulars are one of the most educationally and economically disadvantaged groups in the United States today, while atheists and agnostics enjoy much higher levels of economic success.”
What this suggests to me, and to the scholars I’ve spoken to over the past few months, is that there’s a substantial group of Americans who are grappling with societal pressures on multiple fronts. Americans who are “further down the socioeconomic ladder” are lonelier than their more economically well-off counterparts. Americans with lower levels of education have higher mortality rates. And those are some of the same Americans who are alienated from religious institutions, even if many of them still believe in God.
As the authors of “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?,” all of whom are pastors, write:
In our opinion, America is largely built for a specific type of person. If you belong to a nuclear family, graduate from college, and have children after marriage, America’s institutions tend to work better for you. If you get off that track (or never started on it), the U.S. is a more difficult place in which to thrive.
They go on to say that church culture can feel unwelcoming and even shaming to people who are struggling financially or have family structures outside of the model they describe. What’s more, they write:
Modern American churches are financially incentivized to target the wealthy and create a space where those on track feel comfortable. Biblical hospitality, though, is so much more than just throwing money at a problem, and the net result is that the average American church is not truly hospitable to the less fortunate, making them feel like outsiders in our midst.
Many readers who replied to my query mentioned leaving churches that rejected them during their divorces. Others talked about being constantly hit up for money they couldn’t afford to donate.
I’d like to see faith communities do a better job of including people who aren’t on that, if you will, ordained track. Not because I think people need to be religious to live good lives — I don’t believe that — but because almost everyone needs community to flourish. As the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, whom I spoke to for this series and who wrote “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” has been preaching for decades, increasing social isolation is bad for all of us.
As Carson Curtis, 36, who lives in Arizona, wrote about missing a general sense of community from attending church, “Being socially atomized is hard on the spirit.”
Burge told me a story about his church that illustrated organized religion at its best. He described a section of the service where they asked for “prayers of the people,” where members of the congregation would describe a tough situation and ask for prayers. A young man, probably in his early 20s, with a baby, said he had just lost his job and wouldn’t make rent that month, and asked if the congregation would pray for him. Burge said an older man in the congregation went up to the young man after the service and said, “Son, if you need a job, you can come work for me tomorrow.” While that might sound like a scene from a Frank Capra movie, church really does wind up being one of the few places that people from different walks of life can interact with and help one another.
At the same time, examples of that kind of grace don’t erase the damage that is sometimes done in the name of religion. Americans of all backgrounds are clearly in the midst of a profound shift away from trusting many different kinds of institutions beyond just religious ones, and sometimes there are good reasons behind this lack of trust. There is a lot of pain and alienation fueling many people’s rejections of their religious upbringings: I’ve heard so many stories of racial prejudice, misogyny and outright abuse over the course of my reporting. That is a betrayal and a failure.
This shift is ongoing and gaining speed. After talking to readers searching for fresh answers to life’s eternal questions, I believe that there is potential for new kinds of meaningful, lasting communities to be created in the coming years that have nothing to do with organized religion as we know it. I’m eager to see what comes next, because I believe that out of this evolution, Americans can create something nurturing that is also suited to modern life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opin ... unity.html
Experiences of the Jamatkhana Stories of the East African Jamat
Book:
Delving into the captivating story of Ismaili communities in the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Aliaa Remtilla offers a compelling social narrative as seen through the lens of her own family. Across these lands, Jamatkhanas evolved as sacred spaces of piety, practice and social gathering, reflecting the aspirations and communal spirit of the Ismaili Jamat. As the Ismaili diaspora spread, Jamatkhanas remained essential focal points in new lands, providing strength, succour and solace in changing times.
The author charts her rediscovery of the origins of the East African Jamats, the emergence of community infrastructures and the building of Jamatkhanas during the Imamats of Mawlana Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, and Mawlana Shah Karim al-Husayni, Aga Khan IV. Recounting journeys of migration, including under the very challenging circumstances of the Ugandan expulsion and Tanzanian exodus, she invites readers to explore the evolving role of Jamati institutions that continue to support the Ismaili community.
This illustrated rendering of East African Ismaili history from the 19th century to the present day spotlights the rich heritage of Jamatkhanas as pillars of the Ismaili community. It will appeal to Ismailis worldwide, weaving together stories of faith, resilience and unity.
Available to order now via your ITREB.
(ITREBs may place orders directly by contacting us.)
https://www.iis.ac.uk/publications-list ... amatkhana/
Delving into the captivating story of Ismaili communities in the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Aliaa Remtilla offers a compelling social narrative as seen through the lens of her own family. Across these lands, Jamatkhanas evolved as sacred spaces of piety, practice and social gathering, reflecting the aspirations and communal spirit of the Ismaili Jamat. As the Ismaili diaspora spread, Jamatkhanas remained essential focal points in new lands, providing strength, succour and solace in changing times.
The author charts her rediscovery of the origins of the East African Jamats, the emergence of community infrastructures and the building of Jamatkhanas during the Imamats of Mawlana Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, and Mawlana Shah Karim al-Husayni, Aga Khan IV. Recounting journeys of migration, including under the very challenging circumstances of the Ugandan expulsion and Tanzanian exodus, she invites readers to explore the evolving role of Jamati institutions that continue to support the Ismaili community.
This illustrated rendering of East African Ismaili history from the 19th century to the present day spotlights the rich heritage of Jamatkhanas as pillars of the Ismaili community. It will appeal to Ismailis worldwide, weaving together stories of faith, resilience and unity.
Available to order now via your ITREB.
(ITREBs may place orders directly by contacting us.)
https://www.iis.ac.uk/publications-list ... amatkhana/
Re: Jamatkhana Attendance
My Beloved Spiritual Children,
This is a day of great happiness for me to be able to visit this new Jamatkhana and Centre. It is the first occasion which I have had to visit these premises and, as you know, every day there are new Jamatkhanas being built around the world, but I am not able to visit them all as they are built. But I want you to know that in my heart, and in my thoughts, and in my prayers, the day you attended Jamatkhana the first time, in this building, was a day of special happiness for me. (Dhaka, Bangladesh September 17, 2013)
This is a day of great happiness for me to be able to visit this new Jamatkhana and Centre. It is the first occasion which I have had to visit these premises and, as you know, every day there are new Jamatkhanas being built around the world, but I am not able to visit them all as they are built. But I want you to know that in my heart, and in my thoughts, and in my prayers, the day you attended Jamatkhana the first time, in this building, was a day of special happiness for me. (Dhaka, Bangladesh September 17, 2013)