As research on hospital experiences of religious minorities in the Global North increases, we still have scarce empirical knowledge about the role of religion and spirituality during crisis situations in hospitals. This study poses the following question: How do Muslim patients hospitalized with a severe disease express gratitude and how can it be interpreted? This was performed through a qualitative empirical method where twelve patients (eight males and four females) were interviewed at Danish hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. A thematic analytical approach was used to interpret and discuss the results. This study found that gratitude is channeled in different directions (God, family, and hospital staff). Patients express <i>shukr</i>, an Islamic theological concept, which means to thank, praise, and commend a benefactor—humans and God—in the Muslim worldview. Ultimately, <i>shukr</i> recognizes a blessing—especially its point of origin—and the response humans need to make for the act of Divine benefaction. Hence <i>shukr</i> for patients is not just a positive emotion but also a practice and a virtue with relational implications.
Theophilus Effah-Manu, Isaac Boaheng, Nathan Iddrisu Samwini
The Adinkra Symbols of the Akan of Ghana are traditional symbols that are ideographical illustrations of sayings, faith, philosophies, thoughts, and values. The Adinkra symbols aid them in socially relating with members of the community and religiously with Nyame (God). The low level of literacy in the continent among others makes the adoption and use of symbols for theological discourse very appropriate. Symbolic theology involves the use of symbols to communicate biblical truths. This study collected data through literature research using secondary sources such as books, articles, and dissertations. The study also administered a structured questionnaire to 110 Christians and 20 Clergy belonging to different denominations. The Theological reflections on the selected symbols showed a convincing correlation between the symbols and the biblical truths. The results from the fieldwork also confirmed the literature: 35% of Christians indicated that the selected symbols were good for Christian use while another 15% said it was good for African Christians. 75% of the clergy also indicated that the symbols were good for Christian use, 47% also said it was very useful and another 47% indicated it was most useful for their line of duty as clergy. The paper seeks to make a case for African Symbolic Theology as a branch of ethno-theology through ethno-hermeneutics. This is on the basis that symbols occupy a huge space in the epistemology and religious space of the people.
The theory of rational motives admits several models, including those of Morel, Beilinson, Ayoub, and Voevodsky. An open question has been the equivalence of Voevodsky's Nisnevich-based $\mathrm{DM}(S, \mathbb{Q})$ with the others, which was only known over excellent and geometrically unibranch base schemes. In this paper, we prove that $\mathrm{DM}(S, \mathbb{Q})$ is equivalent to Morel/Beilinson/Ayoub's rational motives over any quasi-excellent base scheme $S$. Our main technical result is a stable motivic equivalence between the plus part of free $\mathbb{Q}$-linear spectrum $\mathbb{Q}[\mathbb{S}]$ and the motivic rational Eilenberg MacLane spectrum $\mathbf{H}\mathbb{Q}$. This equivalence is established whenever Ayoub's motives $\mathrm{DA}(S, \mathbb{Q})$ satisfies h-descent. As a byproduct, we partially confirm Voevodsky's conjecture that the formation of motivic rational Eilenberg Maclane spectrum $\mathbf{H}\mathbb{Q}$ is stable under base change between any quasi-excellent scheme.
Scholars are increasingly recognizing that the concept of "religion" has evolved in its meanings over the centuries and that its contemporary use as a means of sorting cultures around the world is a product of relatively recent European interests. One response to this issue has been to propose that scholars should understand "religion" as a heuristic device, that is, as a tool invented in western modernity but not as a concept that names a transhistorical and transcultural reality that has existed "out there" in the world before the term was invented. In this paper, I clarify and critique the heuristic sense of the term. I argue that the costs of a heuristic understanding are severe and that an alternative, realist understanding of the concept is better. On this realist view, a "religion" names a form of life based on belief in superempirical realities, whether or not the term "religion" was known to those practicing it.
Prophecy, prophet(s) and prophesying were usual religious and spiritual phenomena in ancient Israel which do pose challenges for the contemporary church. Sending of divine messages or revelation to the covenant people through the chosen spokespersons were part of deity and human transactions. The violent and crazy act of the prophet in the course of relating the messages of the divine has posed certain apprehensions and was often a source of fear in the people. Such manner of display by prophets is often done as a way to authenticate and make their oracles look as though they are original. The methodology employed in this brief study is an exegetical word study of key concepts and words as used in biblical texts and its applicability in African Initiated Churches. The researcher additionally employed a comparative approach on Ancient Israel and African Initiated Churches. The study discovered that in biblical times, ecstatic prophecy at times involved violence, crazy displays and emotional outbursts. Similarly, among the African Initiated Churches such practices are still employed with all the privileges and dangers attached to them. In the process of receiving or/and delivering divine messages, a state of ecstasy might be expressed by the recipients of the messages.
Andrej Dujella, Matija Kazalicki, Vinko Petričević
A set of $m$ distinct nonzero rationals $\{a_1, a_2,\ldots, a_m\}$ such that $a_i a_j+1$ is a perfect square for all $1\le i <j \le m$, is called a rational Diophantine $m$-tuple. If in addition, $a_i^2+1$ is a perfect square for $1\le i\le m$, then we say the $m$-tuple is strong. In this paper, we construct infinite families of rational Diophantine sextuples containing a strong Diophantine pair.
This chapter seeks to answer the question as to why, even though subsistence conditions militated against continuing to eke out an existence on unproductive holdings, many inhabitants in Ireland’s western counties did just that. Particularly in the west of Ireland, Irish women and men found ways to remain on their lands and in their dwellings despite the enduring proclivity for permanent migration from Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. The answer lies in the Irish penchant to engage in a variety of vernacular religious practices reiterated via expressive cultural forms like proverbs and reinforced via plays and films. In addition, an otherworld feminine perspective permeated their consciousness. For the Irish, their implicit religion—a complex network of symbols and practices—remained intact, so much so that seasonal migration endured, and the Irish preserved their homelands.
The intersection between religious experience and aesthetic experience has become so obvious that the current “aesthetic turn” in Christian theology no longer needs to be defended. In this essay, I discuss that intersection point from the point of view of Roman Catholicism, in order to demonstrate the bold claim that the arts and the performance they evoke from us are as important as the creed for Catholicism. The essay aims to do three things: first, to examine that intersection point and emphasize the elements of intentionality and desire; second, to analyze one expression of that intersection, namely the connection among Catholic faith claims, the visual arts, and Catholicism’s incarnational-sacramental imagination (using depictions of the post-Resurrection Emmaus story); third, to use hints from Hartmut Rosa’s recent work on “resonance” to tease out how revelation and transformation occur at this intersection.
Bu çalışmanın amacı Türkiye’de sık sık gündeme gelen “kültürel iktidar” tartışmalarının mahiyetini anlamaktır. Kültürel iktidar tartışmaları özellikle 2013 yılı Haziranındaki Gezi Parkı olaylarından sonra gündeme gelmiştir. Bu tarihten günümüze doğru, konu hakkında farklı medya araçlarıyla önemli tartışmalar yürütülmüştür. Tartışmaların bir tarafında dini ve milli kimliğini öne çıkaran “sağ” entelektüeller bulunurken diğer tarafında kendini bu cephenin karşısında konumlayan “sol” entelektüeller yer almıştır. Çalışmada bu iki tarafın mücadelesi Pierre Bourdieu’nün kültürel alan kavramı çerçevesinde değerlendirilmiştir. Kültürel iktidar tartışması kültürel alan içinde gerçekleşen bir sembolik mücadele olarak ele alınmıştır. Tartışmaların yoğunlaştığı 2014-2019 yıllarında yayınlanmış farklı medya mecralarından seçilen seksen sekiz tane metin tematik analize tabi tutulmuştur. Sonuç olarak, sağ ve sol şeklinde iki karşıt konumu içeren kültürel alanda “meşru adlandırma tekelini” elde etmeye yönelik sembolik mücadelenin kültürel iktidar tartışmalarının özünü oluşturduğu görülmüştür. Bu sembolik mücadele, karşıt konumların farklı dışlayıcı stratejilerini içermektedir. Bunlar, özet olarak; niteliksizliğe vurgu, politik iktidarla özdeşleştirme ve ekonomik iktidarla özdeşleştirme şeklinde sıralanabilir.
Communication. Mass media, Religions. Mythology. Rationalism
We establish some upper and lower bounds of the rational topological complexity for certain classes of elliptic spaces. Our techniques permit us in particular to show that the rational topological complexity coincides with the dimension of the rational homotopy for some special families of coformal elliptic spaces.
A longstanding conjecture of Erdős and Simonovits states that for every rational $r$ between $1$ and $2$ there is a graph $H$ such that the largest number of edges in an $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices is $Θ(n^r)$. Answering a question raised by Jiang, Jiang and Ma, we show that the conjecture holds for all rationals of the form $2 - a/b$ with $b$ sufficiently large in terms of $a$.
After the February Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church sought to reconstitute itself to allow broader participation of its clergy and laity in order to fulfill the aspirations of a Church reform movement that had begun around 1900. At the same time, the Church sought to avoid losing its traditional institutional authority in the eyes of believers. To accomplish this, broader participation had to be grounded in sobornost’ – a church ethos of traditional Orthodox catholicity or conciliarism – while avoiding political, secular, and revolutionary influences.
Drawing on many church voices from 1917–1918, this paper sketches the efforts and ultimate success that the Russian Church achieved in reestablishing sobornost’ as its organizational and spiritual foundation. Specifically, it reveals how a revitalized diocesan church press, freed from pre-revolutionary censorship, expressed the widespread hopes that a conciliar church could be
established through active participation of the clergy and laity, and ultimately through the convening of the long-anticipated All-Russian Church Council. Revolution in the church threatened the authority of the Holy Synod and the Preconciliar Committee that planned the Church Council. However, a significant yet relatively unknown episode – the August 1917 elections to the Council’s Presidium – as well as the writings of Sobor members themselves demonstrate how the Council succeeded in institutionalizing sobornost’ at the Council. Although
this quality of sobornost’ expressed “unity in multiplicity,” it was neither quantitative nor geographical, and did not reflect class, estate, or political distinctions. Instead, it expressed a wholeness and communion of ideas that still allowed for vigorous debate.
Prompted by the concerns about legitimacy that Josh Reeves expresses in his book Against Methodology in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology, this article considers how the field of science and religion, and the disciplines and scholars that comprise it, should think about the pursuit of legitimacy today. It begins by examining four features of any conferral of legitimacy on an object. It then looks more closely at distance and its effects on judgments of legitimacy. It first notes how longer distances can enable a wide range of factors other than the internal features or inherent merits of the object to influence judgments of its legitimacy. It then explores the factors that persons who have significant expertise in or experience with the object may consider when judging its legitimacy. It closes by posing three questions that anyone designing a strategy to increase the perceived legitimacy of an object might ask.
A landmark result from rational approximation theory states that $x^{1/p}$ on $[0,1]$ can be approximated by a type-$(n,n)$ rational function with root-exponential accuracy. Motivated by the recursive optimality property of Zolotarev functions (for the square root and sign functions), we investigate approximating $x^{1/p}$ by composite rational functions of the form $r_k(x, r_{k-1}(x, r_{k-2}( \cdots (x,r_1(x,1)) )))$. While this class of rational functions ceases to contain the minimax (best) approximant for $p\geq 3$, we show that it achieves approximately $p$th-root exponential convergence with respect to the degree. Moreover, crucially, the convergence is doubly exponential with respect to the number of degrees of freedom, suggesting that composite rational functions are able to approximate $x^{1/p}$ and related functions (such as $|x|$ and the sector function) with exceptional efficiency.
We give a geometric characterization of finite rational groups. In particular, we prove that a finite group is rational if and only if there exists a finite geometry $Γ$ of type $I$ and action of $G$ on $Γ$ as a group of automorphisms such that if $g$ and $h$ are elements of $G$ fixing the same number of flags of type $J$ for all subsets $J$ of $I$, then $g$ and $h$ are conjugate in $G$.
Motivated by a result of van der Poorten and Shparlinski for univariate power series, Bell and Chen prove that if a multivariate power series over a field of characteristic 0 is D-finite and its coefficients belong to a finite set then it is a rational function. We extend and strengthen their results to certain power series whose coefficients may form an infinite set. We also prove that if the coefficients of a univariate D-finite power series `look like' the coefficients of a rational function then the power series is rational. Our work relies on the theory of Weil heights, the Manin-Mumford theorem for tori, an application of the Subspace Theorem, and various combinatorial arguments involving heights, power series, and linear recurrence sequences.
We characterize rational series over the free group by using an operator introduced by A. Connes. We prove that rational Malcev--Neumann series posses rational expressions without simplifications. Finally, we develop an effective algorithm for solving the word problem in the free skew field.