Socially engaged Buddhists experience tensions around reconciling equanimity and nonattachment with assertive activism. These tensions risk being be exacerbated by political polarization, which emphasizes opposition and confrontation between groups of people. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies exploring this theme. This study explores how Western Buddhists negotiate climate activism amid political polarization, focusing on 12 Finnish Buddhist practitioners involved in Extinction Rebellion Finland's 2024 protests. Surprisingly, most participants interpreted compassion as a justification for disruptive protest, even if it heightened polarization. They combined compassion with secular interpretations on protest strategies with the highest efficacy, applying the Buddhist concept of skillful means to navigate these challenges. Many also expressed compassion toward political opponents. The findings suggest that Buddhist teachings can mediate the impact of activism on political polarization by shaping group identity and protest strategies, highlighting how religion-specific concepts influence political engagement.
The relationship between the state and religious institutions in Denmark is unique due to the Evangelical-Lutheran Church's (ELC) integration with state functions. Historically recognized as a state church under Denmark's 1849 Constitution, the ELC has hitherto been financially supported by the government. In a modern pluralistic society, however, this arrangement raises questions about secularism, national identity, and religious freedom. The debate on Church financing, highlighted by a 2016 parliamentary proposal, aimed to reform how the Church is funded by suggesting that clergy salaries should be covered by church taxes rather than state subsidies. Rather than merely describing parliamentary speeches, the article explains variations in party positions by linking fiscal instrument design, constitutional constraints, and "vicarious religion" logics. It specifies testable implications regarding when parties push for member-funded proclamation versus state-funded heritage and administration.
Death is a prominent theme in many Nordic films. This article takes a closer look at films with a focus on losing a loved one or facing one's own death. The article studies how death is imagined, ritualized and framed, as well as what insights into contemporary views on death the films can be argued to capture. Four themes are explored: 1) expressed beliefs about what happens when one dies, 2) death rituals, 3) experiences of dead loved ones and 4) representations of afterlives. The findings are related to Charles Taylor's work on the immanent frame. It is argued that the general framework of the films is secular, even when glimpses of an afterlife are provided. Something happens when death is brought up which calls for or indicates that something more is needed. However, what this "more" is, is largely left open for the viewer to decide.
This study tests a hypothesis that religious individuals are less likely than non-religious individuals to work in occupations associated with a risk of technology-induced job loss due to a general tendency towards risk aversion as well as lower prioritization given to material rewards. It combines data on religiosity from a Norwegian largescale health survey (HUNT4, 2017-2019) with assessments of the risks of technology-induced job loss, as indicated by a Routine Task Intensity (RTI) index collected from the O*NET Database, at the level of 358 occupations. Our findings show that religious individuals are less likely to work in occupations at risk of technology-induced job loss. Additionally, religious individuals tend to have lower incomes from work even at similar levels of education. The gap in occupational risks between religious and non-religious individuals is larger among men than women, and it holds across various types of religious activity, age groups, and levels of education.
In the present study, the ambition is to explain variations in death penalty usage across time and space with reference to religion. Whereas previous studies regarding death penalty usage have generally focused on the period after 1960, this study covers the period 1800-2022. All currently independent countries in the world and all major world religions are included in the empirical analyses. The ambition is to provide a comprehensive account of how religion relates to death penalty usage at different points in time. The different world religions are doctrinally linked to attitudes towards the death penalty, after which the relationships between religious dominance and death penalty regimes are tested by means of bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses. The results show that although religion is strongly associated with death penalty regimes in bivariate analyses, the impact of religion on death penalty usage is overshadowed by degree of democracy, diffusion and state power.
This study investigates the attitudes of Swedish religious education (RE) teachers towards public religion and religious symbols, and compares their views to the general population. In secularized and diverse Sweden, the presence of religious symbols in public spaces is contentious. Data from a survey among Swedish teachers of RE is compared with survey data from a representative population sample and complemented with teacher interviews. The study reveals that the Swedish teachers of RE are generally more accepting of public religion than the broader population. However, teachers show differing levels of acceptance for religious symbols: about half support smaller symbols like a cross or Star of David, but there is less acceptance for more visible symbols such as the veil or turban. This ambivalence stems from teachers' emphasis on neutrality and objectivity in their professional roles. The study underscores the complexity of public religion in secular societies and the need for ongoing discussion about religious symbols in education.
Drawing on data from Norway and Finland, we explore three questions in this paper. First, do nonreligious individuals in these two countries report believing in a soul? Second, do those same individuals report believing in an afterlife? And third, what factors predict believing in a soul? We find that 65.2% of unaffiliated individuals in Norway and 58.3% of unaffiliated individuals in Finland report believing in a soul, but much smaller percentages - 24.7% and 24.1%, respectively - report believing in an afterlife. We find that religiosity and spirituality do not predict belief in a soul, but that believing in an afterlife, reincarnation, and universal energy do. This leads us to believe that many of the nonreligious individuals who report believing in a soul in these two countries likely do not believe in a supernatural soul but rather use the word "soul" in a naturalistic sense to describe one's personality or individual identity.
