Home shrines in Britain and associated spiritual values

In a quantitative survey of religious attitudes and practices in a multi-religious sample of 369 school pupils aged between 13 and 15 in London, the presence of a home shrine was found widespread in 11% of adolescents spanning several religious affiliations and ethnicities – especially Buddhists, Hindus and those of Indian, Chinese and ‘Other Asian’ ethnicity. Having a home shrine correlated significantly with spiritual attitudes such as agreement with filial piety, the Eightfold Path, subjectivity of happiness, meditation, Sikh festivals, reincarnation and opening Gurdwaras to all. It is suggested that teachers and the social services should be aware of the importance of shrines to many religious communities and recognize their potential as a spiritual asset and manifestation of religion outside the congregational place of worship

Teaching Buddhism in Britain's schools : redefining the insider role

Dialogical approaches to Religious Education in Britain’s schools have opened the subject to input by Buddhist insiders more than ever in its history although shortcomings remain in the way Buddhism is portrayed in the classroom. With the proviso that insider input can move beyond the ‘do-ut-des’ religious style, this paper describes eight possible areas of classroom experience where Buddhist insiders can make a beneficial contribution. Of these, examples could be found in the educational literature where insider input through home nurture, teaching materials, teacher expertise, insider input and pedagogy had already been applied to good effect in the classroom. However, in the areas of the Agreed Syllabuses for RE, school ethos and national representation input was found lacking or skewed toward 'convert' Buddhist expectations, while the voice of the more numerous 'migrant' Buddhist community remained relatively unheard

Social and historical aspects of the assimilation of Christianity in Southeast Asia from 1500-1900 with reference to Thailand and the Philippines

Though many have attempted to address the complexities of the encounter between Christianity and non-western societies, the literature has not dealt much with Southeast Asia. This article attempts to help fill that gap by examining some of the factors affecting the assimilation of Christianity in Southeast Asia by looking at two countries in detail: Thailand and the Philippines. These two countries offer strikingly different assimilation results. Thailand was not colonized when Christianity was introduced while in the Philippines colonization and Christianity were intimately linked. As a result, both Thailand and the Philippines are a study in contrasts

Almost a proper Buddhist : the post-secular complexity of heritage Buddhist teen identity in Britain

This qualitative study explores how Buddhist affiliation relates to practice, how Buddhist teens define and experience their religious identity and which sociological paradigms are helpful in understanding the dynamics of Buddhist teen identity. Focus group methodology was used to examine attitudes to superstition, stereotypes, prejudice, religion and society, convictions, and friends for 65 heritage Buddhist teenagers from Britain. Shared identity was expressed in terms of spiritual teachers, eclecticism within the Buddhist tradition, Asian heritage, openness to the supernatural, relevance of Buddhism in the present day and temple-going. Practice rather than belief seemed to represent the operational difference between how Buddhist teens defined 'Buddhist' and 'proper Buddhist'. Buddhist teens experienced little negative prejudice on account of their religion but experienced being grouped with Buddhists of other ethnicities in others' eyes. Secularization, modernity, projection and especially post-secularism were found helpful as sociological paradigms for explaining various aspects of Buddhist teen identity

Other religious perspectives : Buddhist

This short section of Chapter 6 of the book "Religion and Nationhood: Insider and outsider perspectives on Religious Education in England" gives a brief summary of demographics and diversity of the Buddhist community in the UK, the history of and research on Buddhism in English classroom Religious Education, attitudes of Buddhists to education and advice for Religious Education teachers in including Buddhism in their coursework

Review of Buddhist understanding of childhood spirituality : the Buddha’s children, by von Alexander, Gontard

This is a review of Alexander von Gontard's (2017) book "Buddha’s Children

Buddhist shrines : bringing sacred context and shared memory into the home

Previous research has recognized shrines in homes as sites of shared cultural memory with the function of contextualising religious narratives and bringing the sacred into the home. For Buddhists, shrines occupy a grey area between the cultural and the religious and have not been widely considered as indicators of religiosity. A quantitative study of 417 British teenagers self-identifying as Buddhists found that the 70% who had a home shrine were less likely to visit a Buddhist temple, but more likely to exhibit daily personal religious practice and to bow to parents. The attitude profile of those with shrines showed that these teenagers were generally happier at school, more collectivist, polarised regarding their identities, and strict about intoxicants. Heightened affective religiosity was linked with having a home shrine, particularly for female, late-teen, and heritage Buddhists. The article argues that, for these groups of Buddhists, a shrine represents a locus for shared memory, especially accessible to those of Sensing Psychological Types, but, for males, early teens, and converts, there is more a sense of shrines giving context to their Buddhist narratives

Postsecularity in twenty questions : a case study in Buddhist teens

This chapter aims to unpack the question of the sort of religiosity for which postsecularity reflects a resurgence—to answer the question of whether as well as being is a quality of an age or a culture, postsecularity is also a feature of the participant people—and to explore the relationship between boundary marking and postsecularism. Quantitative analysis to postsecularism is applied and a set of questions is compiled to identify postsecular attitudes—looking specifically at: (1) facets of modernism and secularity, (2) public and private spheres of religion, (3) liquid religion, (4) projection, and (5) boundary marking in a case study of teen Buddhists in Britain

The spirituality of Buddhist teens : religious/spiritual experiences and their associated triggers, attributes and attitudes

In the quantitative analysis of a survey of 417 13- to 20-year-old Buddhists, the 48% who had undergone a religious or spiritual experience (RSE) were significantly more likely to self-identify as a spiritual person. Buddhists who had undergone RSEs were also more positive about spiritual teachers, a monastic vocation, attitude to Buddhism, supernatural phenomena and mystical orientation. In the qualitative part of the analysis, descriptions of RSEs volunteered by 107 of these teens were compared with non-Buddhist categories for triggers and attributes. For Buddhist teens, triggers seemed to include a higher percentage of positive states of mind, especially those cultivated in meditation. Buddhist RSEs seemed to represent a subset of possible RSE categories previously described suggesting that Buddhist RSEs come from a spiritual root shared with ‘mystics’ of other religions. The article argues that the role of RSEs in Buddhist nurture, would seem to concern development of worldview rather than ideology or collectivism

Validity and reliability of a revised scale of attitude towards Buddhism (TSAB-R)

The empirical properties of a revised 24-item instrument called the Thanissaro Scale of Attitude towards Buddhism (TSAB-R) designed to measure Buddhist affective religiosity are described. The instrument was tested on adolescents and teenagers in the UK. Discriminant validity of the instrument was found satisfactory in relation to Buddhist affiliation and content validity in relation to religious involvement with temple attendance, scripture reading, meditation, having had a religious or spiritual experience and religious style. Unlike Christians, for Buddhists, affective religiosity was found to vary independently from age and sex. The differential between heritage and convert religious style of Buddhism was linked to the perceived affective religiosity of the Buddhist features of the home shrine and bowing to parents. Factor analysis revealed two subscales within the instrument for intellectual and affective components. With confirmation of the validity and reliability of the revised scale, the instrument is commended for measurement of Buddhist affective religiosity with adults and children down to the age of 13 year