Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief.

A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to assess research relevant to understanding consumer and societal attitudes to genetic modification applied to agri-food production. The objective was to compare attitudes in different global regions, at different times and between applications. Seventy articles were included in the final meta-analysis. Plant-related or “general” applications were more acceptable than animal-related applications. Risk perceptions were greater in Europe than North America and Asia. The reverse was true of benefit perceptions. Moral concerns are higher in North America and Asia. Both risk and benefit perceptions increased with time.

Public perceptions of agri-food applications of genetic modification - a systematic review and meta-analysis

Europe: the Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World

Virtually every discussion of secularization asserts that high levels of religiosity in the United States make it a decisive counterexample to the claim that modern societies are prone to secularization. Focusing on trends rather than levels, the authors maintain that, for two straightforward empirical reasons, the United States should no longer be considered a counterexample. First, it has recently become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades. Second, this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West: each successive cohort is less religious than the preceding one. America is not an exception. These findings change the theoretical import of the United States for debates about secularization.

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Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis

What do we currently know about atheists and secular people? In what ways are atheism and secularity correlated with positive societal outcomes? This article offers a thorough presentation and discussion of the latest social scientific research concerning the identities, values, and behaviors of people who don’t believe in God or are non-religious, and addresses the ways in which atheism and secularity are positively correlated with societal well-being.

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Atheism, Secularity, and Well‐Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions

Contents: Introduction Religious America, secular Europe? Variation1: contrasting histories Variation 2: different intellectual traditions Variation 3: institutional carriers Variation 4: social difference So what? Policy implications Bibliography Index.

Religious America, Secular Europe?: A Theme and Variations

1. Introduction Effie Fokas 2. Christians and Muslims: memory, amity and enmities Tarek Mitri 3. The question of Euro-Islam: restriction or opportunity? Jorgen Nielsen 4. Muslim identities in Europe: the snare of exceptionalism Jocelyne Cesari 5. From exile to diaspora: the development of transnational Islam in Europe Werner Schiffauer 6. Bosnian Islam as European Islam: limits and shifts of a concept Xavier Bougarel 7. The regulation of religious diversity by the institutions of the European Union: the case of Islam Berengere Massignon 8. Development, discrimination and reverse discrimination: effects of EU integration and regional change on the Muslims of Southeast Europe Dia Anagnostou 9. Breaching the infernal cycle: Turkey and the European Union Valerie Amiraux 10. Afterword Aziz al-Azmeh.

Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence

Over the past 20 years the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has evolved into a conspicuous, often contentious, force in the multilevel battles over the place of religion in the European public sphere. In the light of scholarly debates, questioning the direct effects of courts on the issues they address, this article explores how the nature and extent of European juridical influence on religious pluralism are better understood through developments taking place ‘in the shadow’ of the Court. Specifically, what is the aftermath of the Court’s religion jurisprudence in terms of its applications at the grassroots level? And how might legal and political elites operating at the national and international levels influence the Court’s engagement with religion? These questions are important because ECtHR case law will shape, to a large extent, both local and national case law and—less conspicuously but no less importantly— grassroots-level developments in the promotion of or resistance to religious pluralism, which will, in turn, influence the future of the ECtHR caseload. The European public square has, in the past 20 years and increasingly so, been inundated with controversies and debates broadly conceived around the place of religion in the public sphere. In spite of (and, some would argue, because of) popular and scholarly expectations of religion’s retreat in Europe, issues such as freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech versus protection against blasphemy, and the public display of religious symbols loom large in the workplace, in schools, in media coverage, etc throughout Europe, at local, national, and supranational levels. The presence of Islam in Europe has acted as a catalyst in many debates on religion in Europe, but these debates have now grown to encompass much broader assumptions about the nature of religious communities, their relationship to state institutions, and the place of minority religious communities in society. In short, the

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Directions in Religious Pluralism in Europe: Mobilizations in the Shadow of European Court of Human Rights Religious Freedom Jurisprudence

Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, Hartford, CT, Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, 2007, iv +165 pp., (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-9794816-0-4 Janet R. Jakob...

Secularism and secularity: Contemporary international perspectives

This title is borrowed from a 1999 article by Nicos Alivizatos, in which he considered whether the election of Archbishop Christodoulos ushered in a new role for the church vis-a-vis the Greek state. Ten years on, in the aftermath of the election of a new archbishop – Ieronymos – it seems fitting to revisit the question and, in so doing, to reassess the place of religion in the Greek public sphere.

Effie Fokas

Papers

Religious America, Secular Europe?: A Theme and Variations

Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence

Directions in Religious Pluralism in Europe: Mobilizations in the Shadow of European Court of Human Rights Religious Freedom Jurisprudence

Secularism and secularity: Contemporary international perspectives

A new role for the church? Reassessing the place of religion in the Greek public sphere