religious faith. Part of this faith is the belief that homosexuality is against God and God's teachings. The researcher is part of a research team working together on a grant-funded project focusing on adjustment of children raised in families with same-sex parents. The researcher has been tasked with completing a major part of the literature review related to the topic. What advice would you give the researcher for remaining unbiased while reviewing the literature?
The researcher has the challenge of remaining objective whilst reading the material and selecting that which he would incorporate in his writing. There are various strategies that the researcher can use:

Being aware of his bias

It is crucial that the researcher be aware of the fact that he has heterosexual tendencies that have been shaped by his religious inclinations and that this fact may impact his work. t the same time, he needs to be aware of….

religious faith seems to most of us living in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century to be a purely private one. e (most of us believe) that a person's choice of religion, of congregation, of philosophy is something that each individual must decide for himself or herself. If a person finds most intellectual and emotional comfort in being a Muslim or a Jew or an atheist or a Theosophist we believe that such choices are between that person and his or her conscience alone. However, this acceptance that people must choose their own moral path in life as a purely individual choice is a relatively new idea and one that we owe very much to the beliefs promulgated by the thinkers and writers of the Enlightenment who for the first time began a systematic exploration of the ways in which questions of morality, religion and….

In time, Bringham Young became the Mormon leader and led the Mormons further west ultimately to the Salt Lake Valley.
hat are the Tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

According to the Mormon website, there are six key points that believers must adhere to in the Mormon Church: a) "God Is Our Father" (God is the "Father of our spirits," humans are "created in His image" and humans have a "divine nature and destiny"); b) "e lived with God" (before people were born they lived with God and hence, "All persons on earth are literally brothers and sisters in the family of God"; c) "Earth Life Is Part of God's Plan" (the lives of people are purposeful, and by coming to Earth -- through Jesus Christ -- God's plan for us is "…to gain a physical body and learn to choose between good and evil"); d)….

ideals of Religious faith looking at such questions as "What are the grounds of religious faith? What does a faith do for a life?. Examples used are historical data such as Germanic faith, Vedic cultures and faith from Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Bibliography cites four references
Faith; Blind love or stupidity

What are the grounds of religious faith?" This question is as ambiguous, and as difficult to answer as the question "Does a God exist?" There are many ways of understanding the need and grounds for a religious faith, such as psychological, sociological and cultural. It also needs to be recognized many devout followers believe that their God is supreme, for instance followers of the Muslim faith.

However, to answer the question, where are the grounds for faith in religion, we need to look at the evidence and the reason of the existence of faith. The moist common answer may be simplified….

Whether or not God chooses to forgive the choice not to accept Christ in life, any punishment for that in the afterlife is a matter for God, not man, to consider. Likewise, the decision to forgive earthly sins based on repentance and acceptance of Christ is also a matter for God's infinite wisdom and not man's fallible intellectual powers.
In all likelihood, there are explanations besides genuine remorse for one's sins that explain the unusually high religious conversion rates observed in prisons generally, and among those sentenced to life terms and to death, in particular. For one thing, all of us have a psychological need to think of ourselves as being good people. In then outside world, so called illicit pleasures and impulses that conflict with religious morality are a powerful temptation to stray from the moral path. Without immoral temptation, after all, there would be no motivation to sin….

Faith and reason: Can one Live without the other?
Theology

Habitually, faith and reason have respectively been looked at as being the sources of justification for religious faith. For the reason that both can supposedly serve this same epistemic purpose, it has been a question of much interest to theorists and theologians how the two are linked and as a result how the rational agent should treat claims resulting from either basis. Some theologians have held that there can be no struggle between faith and reason -- that reason correctly employed and faith correctly assumed will never create opposing or opposing claims -- whereas others have supported that faith and reason can be in honest disagreement over certain propositions or events (O'Collins, 2003). The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian explains, "y its nature, faith appeals to reason because it reveals to man the truth of his destiny and the….

Religious Field Search
AHMADIS: THE OTHER FACE OF ISLAM

For the purposes of this paper I visited the local Ahmaddiya Muslim Community or as they prefer to called Ahmadis. Ahmadis are a sub-sect of the Islamic Community. What attracted to me to study this community was that unlike the general image we have of the Islamic community, this community is non-violent and is considered heretical by the larger Islamic community for having a prophet in succession to Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic faith. In many Muslim majority countries the Ahmadis are banned and in many others they have been ex-communicated from the Islamic mainstream. Apparently -- as I discovered- one of the other contentious issues between them and the rest Islamic community is the controversy over Jesus Christ's death, which I found interesting given that I considered Jesus an exclusively Christian figure. To my amazement it turns out that all Muslims….

In society today, we are bombarded with messages that suggest that our morality is driven by anything but the Bible. Indeed, turn on the television and images which are antithetical to Christ's word are everywhere, open the pages of a textbook and you will see pages upon pages of secular explanations of the existence of mankind; however, Matt Slick author of "What is a Christian Worldview? And Why Do We Need One?" warns us not to despair and that things are actually looking up for Christians. In fact, more people today derive his/her morals from God than did three hundred years ago. For example, in the 1700's, less than 20% of the American population went to church where now it is above 50% of the population (Slick). At this rate, in another 500 years, we will have attained a 100% participation rate!
The Christian conception of life and death and….

This extends to environmental concerns as well, because scientific research has demonstrated that the diversity of an ecosystem is what allows the constituent parts of that ecosystem to thrive, with the diversity of genetics, organisms, and personalities giving any given ecosystem a robustness such that it is not as susceptible to destruction or eradication at the hands of a single negative element. Adherents of the Faith seek harmony with all things, such that one goal is the advancement of technology to the point that humans might be able to genetically and technologically alter themselves such that they may sustain their own lives without causing undue harm to other lives, whether those be the lives of animals or plants. Thus, adherents of the Faith look towards the day when humanity has used the ample intellectual and scientific skill amassed over the years to overcome the current limitations of biology so….

Trees take in carbon dioxide (which includes pollution in the air) and give off oxygen so we can all breathe, and so God's plan can be carried through. The teaching of values, morals, and discipline must be part of the program for a Catholic teacher, and also the involvement of parents brings the school, the Church, the children and the families together in a fellowship of learning and praying.
As was mentioned earlier in this section, involving parents in their children's learning activities is a powerful way to keep our faith strong and growing in the context of education and Christianity. This is particularly poignant because on page 9 of the "Our Catholic Schools" one of the major issues facing Catholic education is the "…inadequate home and parish involvement with schools," and we can mitigate this problem by working closely with children to get them inspired enough so they want….

Faith-Based eentry Programs
Corrections

Faith-based initiatives:

Legal and logistical challenges in corrections

The separation of church and state is codified in the First Amendment. State support of faith-based organizations designed to reduce recidivism rates was permitted when President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act in 2007. The Second Change Act allowed federal funds to be used for reentry programs, including faith-based reentry programs. As expected, the legislation could theoretically pose some First Amendment issues given that it involves federal support for programs run by religious institutions, but given that members of the clergy are already a presence in most prisons, there has been muted debate on the topic. When evaluating the utility of such programs two central questions may be asked: do such reentry programs 'work' and if so, is the faith-based component sufficiently necessary to justify the potential blurring of the line between church and state, as articulated in the Establishment….

In 1924, the American Congress greatly reduced immigration with the Immigration Act, but this system was removed in 1965 which allowed for a huge wave of immigration from parts of Asia, such as the Philippine Islands, Japan and China; also, immigrants from Haiti and Mexico flooded in and greatly increased the population of American Catholics. With the arrival of the 1960's, five events are of high importance. First, John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic President of the United States in 1960 which "due to his popularity, charisma and personal integrity reassured non-Catholic Americans that Catholicism was legitimate and that Catholics could be trusted" (Emerson, 256).

Second, Pope John XXIII who had been elected as Pope in 1958 became one of the most popular and beloved Catholic Pope in modern history, due to his attempts to bring Catholics and non-Catholics together in friendship and appreciation. Third, John XXIII also convened the….

Numerous artists have made use of religious principles as they devised ideas to use in their work. "It is no wonder, therefore, that so much of the finest art of history has religious meaning, from the Parthenon and Chartres to the Taj Mahal and Rothko Chapel, from the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost through the erman Requiem to the Brothers Karamazov" (Dutton 230).

Bermudez, Jose Luis, Art and morality, (Routledge, 2003)

Dutton, Denis, the art instinct: beauty, pleasure, & human evolution, (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Widdows, Heather, the moral vision of Iris Murdoch, (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005)

Even though there are many individuals who promote the belief that art should not be associated with religion, people appear to ignore the fact that religious concepts can functions as catalysts strengthening the relationship between man and the divine. Art practically represents the best that humanity can give birth to and it should be recognized for the….

If he had love, he had no pot in which to plant it. And so it stayed trapped in his mind, separate from any object -- for Kant insisted on the gulf between faith and reason. If one had to accept certain truths on the authority of the one revealing them -- Kant wanted no part in it. According to Kant, one should accept only that which can be reasoned. According to Aquinas, it is not unreasonable to accept that which is revealed.
In a sense, many of us today are Kantian rather than Thomistic. We are Hamlet figures, forever trapped in doubt. What Aquinas allows us to do is put away doubt. He allows us -- in fact, implores us, to act. He is now to us like the ghost of Hamlet's father -- reappearing to urge his son to action. Still, Hamlet delays. What happens to Hamlet --….

Religious Studies
The things that Orthodox Judaism and Jewish Renewal have in common appear to originate from the foundations of the Jewish faith. Both make use of the Jewish scriptures such as the Talmud, and both adhere to Jewish traditions in terms of holidays and general practices. Another significant similarity is the importance that both directions have for women. The Orthodoxy is reported to give significance to the feminine style of devotion to God, which includes a more emotional, nurturing relationship with him. The Renewal appears to be an inclusion of more emotional qualities in the style of worship for both women and men.

The differences are more marked, and thus easier to identify. Regarding the role of women, for example, the Jewish Renewal seeks to include women in all aspects of Jewish worship. They are thus not excluded from leadership roles or practices within the synagogue.

The style of worship also differs.….