New religious movement responses to COVID: Frame alignment strategies and social context

New religious movements (NRMs) have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in diverse ways, ranging from closely following mainstream public health recommendations to explicit rejection of such guidance. This article considers the manner in which NRMs have responded to the pandemic through analysis of groups’ ideological alignment with their host societies’ cultural and social frames. Extending the Bromley–Melton (2012) model of social alignment and the Rochford (2018) approach of frame alignment, the response of these NRMs must be contextualized in regard to alignment with broader social frames. The article considers specific cases of NRMs in South Korea, India, and the United States and posits that no single model can encompass NRM responses to the pandemic, but that multiple social factors provide guidance for understanding why and how NRMs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic

Totem and taboo in the grocery store: quasi-religious foodways in North America

This article focuses on food proscriptions such as veganism and gluten-free eating, and prescriptions such as the Paleolithic diet, focusing on the North American context. These quasi-religious foodways serve as means for individuals to engage in discourses of community, personal and group identity, and boundary-marking. Through the daily practice of eating, those who follow quasi-religious foodways mark their identities, literally consuming who they are. These quasi-religious foodways therefore function to allow contemporary consumer-oriented individualistic Americans to engage in discourses of community, identity, and meaning in a highly vernacular manner, that of the marketplace. They also point to the manner in which identity and community have expanded well outside of religious categories

Senior Recital: Benjamin Miles, saxophone

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Music Education. Mr. Miles studies saxophone with Sam Skelton.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1485/thumbnail.jp

New Religious Movements: A Bibliographic Introduction

This article provides a map to the bibliographic landscape for the academic study of new religious movements (NRMs). The article first considers the development of the scholarly subfield, including debates over the nature of the concept of ‘new religious movement’ and recent scholarship on the nature of this key term, as well as the most salient research areas and concepts. Next, the article introduces the most important bibliographic materials in the subfield: journals focusing on the study of NRMs, textbooks and reference volumes, book series and monographic literature, online resources, and primary sources

Di-μ-acetato-bis­(dimethyl­formamide)­penta­kis­(μ-N,2-dioxidobenzene-1-car­boximidato)tetra­kis­(1-ethyl­imidazole)­penta­manganese(III)­manganese(II)–diethyl ether–dimethyl­foramide–methanol–water (1/1/1/1/0.12)

The title compound [Mn6(C7H4NO3)5(CH3CO2)2(C5H8N2)4(C3H7NO)2]·(C2H5)2O·C3H7NO·CH3OH·0.12H2O, abbreviated as MnII(OAc)2[15-MCMnIII(N)shi-5](EtIm)4(DMF)2·diethyl ether·DMF·MeOH·0.12H2O (where −OAc is acetate, MC is metallacrown, shi3− is salicylhydroximate, EtIM is n-ethylimidazole, DMF is N,N-dimethylformamide, and MeOH is methanol) contains five MnIII ions as members of the metallacrown ring and an MnII ion bound in the central cavity. The central MnII ion is seven-coordinate with a distorted face-capped trigonal–prismatic geometry. The five MnIII ions of the metallacrown ring are six-coordinate with distorted octa­hedral geometries. The configuration of the MnIII ions about the metallacrown ring follow a ΔΛΔPP pattern, with P representing planar. The four 1-ethyl­imidazole ligands are bound to four different MnIII ions. A diethyl ether solvent mol­ecule was found to be disordered over two mutually exclusive sites with an occupancy ratio of 0.568 (7):0.432 (7). A methanol solvent mol­ecule was found to be disordered over two mutually exclusive sites by being hydrogen bonded either to a dimethyl­formamide solvent mol­ecule (major occupancy component) or to an O atom of the main mol­ecule (minor occupancy component). The occupancy ratio refined to 0.678 (11):0.322 (11). Associated with the minor component is a partially occupied water mol­ecule [total occupancy 0.124 (15)]

The Amish Symposium

The Amish is a 500-some page university press-sized handbook that touches on a variety of topical areas. The book is the culmination of two and a half decades each of Kraybill’s, Johnson-Weiner’s, and Nolt’s work about the Amish. Karen Johnson-Weiner published a series of linguistic studies through the 1990s, and from these spring-board works later explored more fully schools and New York settlements. Donald Kraybill’s first Amish-focused publication was a Durkheimian study of the Amish and suicide in 1986. From then on he has maintained this functionalist orientation in comparative studies of plain Anabaptists and Amish responses to cultural, economic, and political change. Steven Nolt’s work follows two threads: Amish history, of which his A History of the Amish (1992) stands as the premiere testament, and Amish identity, realized most fully in Plain Diversity (2007), co-authored with Thomas Meyers. While Kraybill and Nolt have collaborated on seven publications, this is Johnson-Weiner’s first publication with either. Given the book’s volumous size and its claim to be the first generalist book about the Amish since John Hostetler’s first edition of Amish Society (1963), we as co-editors felt the book merited special review via a symposium in JAPAS. Three respondents provide reviews: a scholar of the Amish, a scholar outside Amish studies, and an Amishman. The first is Steven Reschly, a JAPAS editorial board member whose research focuses on Midwestern Amish and Amish from around the 1870s to 1930s. His work extends Bourdieau’s theories by arguning for a community-based Amish repetoire of action. The second reviewer is Benjamin Zeller, who has published several books about New Religious Movements and religion & food. He is Assistant Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College. The third reviewer is Tom Coletti, a long-term convert to the Amish and a farmer in the Union Grove, NC, community. Megan Bogden, a former student in Ohio State University’s Amish Society course, provides a brief book summary. —Cory Anderson, co-edito

Storming the gates of the Temple of Science: religion and science in three new religious movements

This dissertation considers how three new religious movements-the Hare Krishnas, Unification Church, and Heaven's Gate-treated the concept of science and the relation of science to religion and the wider society. Each of the three religions offered a distinct position on the nature of science and how religion and science ought to interact. All of the three new religions understood their views of science as crucial to their wider theological views and social stances. And, in each of these new religious movements, the nature and meaning of science served a central role in the group's self-understanding and conceptualization. Because the roles and boundaries of science so concerned each of the groups, their founders, leaders, and ordinary members offered both implicit and explicit re-envisionings of science. These views developed out of each group's historical circumstances and theological positions, but also evolved in concert with concurrent social developments and cultural influences. Such varying factors resulted in three different perspectives on science. The Unification Church aimed to guide science and the American scientific establishment. It positioned science as a sphere separate from religion, yet at the same time attempted to direct science's ethical boundaries, methods, and even research goals. The Hare Krishnas sought to replace Western science with an alternative scientific-religious system rooted in their own Hindu religious tradition. The science of ancient Indian religious texts, they insisted, offered a more accurate and socially healthy paradigm than that of the contemporary American scientific establishment. Heaven's Gate attempted to absorb or incorporate science and scientific elements into their religious system. It looked to methodological materialism and naturalism as the ideal epistemology, and declared itself the truest form of science. Taken together, the manner in which the three new religious movements responded to the power, prestige, and place of science in America demonstrates the multiple ways that religious groups can incorporate creative tension with science into their broader intellectual positions. The three groups emerged from different cultural and historical circumstances, yet they each insisted that religion could respond to science with neither warfare nor surrender

Symposium Review of "The Amish" by Donald Kraybill, Karen Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Nolt

Summary by Megan Bogden; Review by Steven Reschly; Review by Benjamin Zeller; Review by Tom Coletti; Authors' Reply by Donald Kraybill, Karen Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Nol

Design, Synthesis, and Structure of Copper Dithione Complexes: Redox‐Dependent Charge Transfer

Redox‐active ligands impart versatility in transition metal complexes, which are attractive for photosensitizers, dye sensitized solar cells, photothermal therapy, etc. Dithiolene (Dt) ligands can transition between fully reduced and fully oxidized states. Herein, we report the syntheses, characterization, crystal structures and electronic properties of four [Cu(R2Dt0)2]+/2+ (R = Me, iPr) complexes, [Cu(iPr2Dt0)2][PF6] (1a), [Cu(iPr2Dt0)2][PF6]2 (1b), and [Cu(Me2Dt0)2][PF6] (2a), [Cu(Me2Dt0)2][PF6]2 (2b), where iPr2Dt0 = N,N′‐diisopropyl‐1,2‐piperazine dithione and Me2Dt0 = N,N′‐dimethyl‐1,2‐piperazine dithione. In addition, the molecular structure of [Cu(iPr2Dt0)2][BF4]2(1c) is also reported. Complexes 1a and 2a crystallized in the triclinic, P1 space group, and 1c crystallized in the monoclinic crystal system, space group C2/c. The single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction measurements show that the Cu(I) complexes have a distorted tetrahedral geometry, whereas the Cu(II) complex exhibits a true square‐planar geometry. Cu(I) complexes exhibit a low energy charge‐transfer band (450–650 nm), which are not observed in Cu(II) complexes. Electrochemical studies of these complexes show both ligand‐ and metal‐based redox couples