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We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how performing formalized and improvised forms of praying changed the evoked BOLD response in a group of Danish Christians. Distinct from formalized praying and secular controls, improvised praying activated a strong response in the temporopolar region, the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporo-parietal junction and precuneus. This finding supports our hypothesis that religious subjects, who consider their God to be ‘real’ and capable of reciprocating requests, recruit areas of social cognition when they pray. We argue that praying to God is an intersubjective experience comparable to ‘normal’ interpersonal interaction.

This essay sketches out a biocultural theory of religion which is based on an expanded view of cognition that is anchored in brain and body (embrained and embodied), deeply dependent on culture (enculturated) and extended and distributed beyond the borders of individual brains. Such an approach uniquely accommodates contemporary cultural and neurobiological sciences. Since the challenge that the study of religion faces, in my opinion, is at the interstices of these sciences, I have tried to develop a theory of religion which acknowledges the fact. My hope is that the theory can be of use to scholars of religion and be submitted to further hypotheses and tests by cognitive scientists.

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how assumptions about speakers’ abilities changed the evoked BOLD response in secular and Christian participants who received intercessory prayer. We find that recipients’ assumptions about senders’ charismatic abilities have important effects on their executive network. Most notably, the Christian participants deactivated the frontal network consisting of the medial and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally in response to speakers who they believed had healing abilities. An independent analysis across subjects revealed that this deactivation predicted the Christian participants’ subsequent ratings of the speakers’ charisma and experience of God’s presence during prayer. These observations point to an important mechanism of authority that may facilitate charismatic influence, a mechanism which is likely to be present in other interpersonal interactions as well.

No detailed description available for \"Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches\".

This article briefly surveys and compares the histories of research in the comparative science of religion (beginning with Friedrich Max Müller) and the anthropology of religion. The article notes the close interactions between these two fields and argues that the comparative science of religion drew significant inspiration from anthropology and sociology during the twentieth century until about the 1970s when anthropology came under heavy fire from critics. The postcolonial, feminist, and postmodern wave did not have a significant impact on the comparative science of religion until the 1990s. But already during the 1980s a new approach to religion, championed by Jonathan Z. Smith, contributed to a theoretical and critical analysis of religion that neither bought into postmodernism nor into the sui generis approach to religion. During the 1990s, another new approach began making an impact, namely, the cognitive science of religion, championed by E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley (both scholars of religion), and Pascal Boyer (anthropologist). The article suggests in conclusion that the two disciplines can once again meet in the growing fields of experimental anthropology and experimental science of religion and in the need to explore and address how culture affects and rewires the brain. Furthermore, evolutionary theory is also beginning to serve as a common framework for thinking about religion.

Although the use of prayer as a religious coping strategy is widespread and often claimed to have positive effects on physical disorders including pain, it has never been tested in a controlled experimental setting whether prayer has a pain relieving effect. Religious beliefs and practices are complex phenomena and the use of prayer may be mediated by general psychological factors known to be related to the pain experience, such as expectations, desire for pain relief, and anxiety. Twenty religious and twenty non-religious healthy volunteers were exposed to painful electrical stimulation during internal prayer to God, a secular contrast condition, and a pain-only control condition. Subjects rated expected pain intensity levels, desire for pain relief, and anxiety before each trial and pain intensity and pain unpleasantness immediately after on mechanical visual analogue scales. Autonomic and cardiovascular measures provided continuous non-invasive objective means for assessing the potential analgesic effects of prayer. Prayer reduced pain intensity by 34 % and pain unpleasantness by 38 % for religious participants, but not for non-religious participants. For religious participants, expectancy and desire predicted 56–64 % of the variance in pain intensity scores, but for non-religious participants, only expectancy was significantly predictive of pain intensity (65–73 %). Conversely, prayer-induced reduction in pain intensity and pain unpleasantness were not followed by autonomic and cardiovascular changes.

The Constitution of Denmark of 1849 establishes the Evangelical Lutheran Church as the Church of Denmark, which \"shall as such be supported by the State.\" A handful of other denominations enjoyed recognition by royal decree until this practice was ended in 1970 with the new Marriage Act which allowed church weddings with civil validity to take place not only in the Church of Denmark but also in recognized denominations and other religious communities that obtain authorization from the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1998 an expert committee was established to advise the Minister on applications for denominational recognition. The committee consisted of myself, a historian of religions and chairman, sociologist of religion Ole Riis, later replaced by Margit Warburg, Church historian Jørgen Stenbæk, later replaced by Per Ingesman and professor of law Eva Smith, later replaced by Jens Elo Rytter. In the fall of 2007, a cabinet reorganization in the Liberal-Conservative Government led to a reorganization of the legal body responsible for the recognition of minority denominations. Thus the judicial process, including the expert committee, was transferred to the Department of Justice under the Section of Family Affairs. Since 2014, jurisdiction is under the Ministry of Child, Equality, Integration and Social Affairs, Permanent Under-Secretarial Department, Office of Family Affairs. This paper will describe the judicial and pragmatic aspects of our deliberations. Furthermore, a few key cases will be described which demonstrate how the recognition process sometimes influences the negotiation of religious identity among applicant denominations.