The Medium Is the Danger: Discourse about Television among Amish and Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Women

This study shows how Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox women’s discourse about television can help develop a better understanding of the creation, construction, and strengthening of limits and boundaries separating enclave cultures from the world. Based on questionnaires containing both closed- and open-ended questions completed by 82 participants, approximately half from each community, I argue that both communities can be understood as interpretive communities that negatively interpret not only television content, like other religious communities, but also the medium itself. Their various negative interpretive strategies is discussed and the article shows how they are part of an “us-versus-them” attitude created to mark the boundaries and walls that enclave cultures build around themselves. The comparison between the two communities found only a few small differences but one marked similarity: The communities perceive avoidance of a tool for communication, in this case television, as part of the communities’ sharing, participation, and common culture

CREDs, CRUDs, and Catholic Scandals Experimentally examining the effects of religious paragon behaviour on co-religionist belief

Previous research on ‘Credibility Enhancing Displays’ (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to religious role models ‘practicing what they preach’ aids the acceptance of religious representations by cultural learners. Likewise, a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence implicates its opposite, perceived ‘religious hypocrisy’ (forthwith ‘Credibility Undermining Displays’ or ‘CRUDs’), as a factor in the rejection of religion. However, there is currently little causal evidence on whether behaviours of either kind displayed by religious authorities directly affect pre-existing religious belief. The current study investigated this question by priming Irish self-identified ‘Catholic Christian’ participants with either a clerical ‘CRED’ or ‘CRUD’ and subsequently measuring levels of explicit and implicit belief. Our results revealed no effects of immediate CRED or CRUD exposure on either implicit religious belief or three different measures of explicit religiosity. Instead, explicit (but not implicit) religiosity was predicted by past CRED exposure. Prospects and limitations of experimental approaches to CREDs/CRUDs are discussed

The Effect of Brain Extracts on Urinary Sodium Excretion of the Rat and the Intracellular Sodium Concentration of Renal Tubule Fragments

1. Extracts were prepared from bovine hypothalamus and cerebral cortex by gel filtration on Sephadex G-25 and G-50. 2. The vasopressin in the hypothalamic extracts was inactivated with thioglycollate and the effectiveness of inactivation was tested in the alcohol-anaesthetized rat. 3. The inactivated hypothalamic extracts caused a significant rise, and the cortical extracts an insignificant fall, in the urinary sodium excretion of the conscious rat. 4. Incubation of tubule fragments in hypothalamic extracts caused a significant rise in intracellular sodium concentration of the tubules when compared with incubation in Ringer, whereas incubation in cortical extracts caused a rise which was not significant. Nevertheless the rise in intracellular sodium concentration produced by incubating the tubules in hypothalamic extracts was not significantly different from the rise produced by incubation in cortical extracts.</jats:p