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The purpose of this paper is to find out the prevalence and determinants of unmet need with a special focus on religious barrier towards the use of contraception among Muslim women in India. The study also addresses their future intention to use family planning method.

Data from the latest round of District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3) in India is used. A multi-stage stratified probability proportion to size sampling design was adopted. The present analysis is based on 70,016 currently married Muslim women across the country.

The prevalence of total unmet need is the highest in Bihar (48.5 per cent), which is two times higher than the national level (27.6 per cent). About 9 per cent Muslim women in India do not use contraception due to religious opposition. There is considerable gap in the future intention to use family planning method between Muslim (9.2 per cent) and non-Muslim (19.6 per cent) women particularly for limiting birth. The logistic regression analysis shows non-Muslim women are significantly more likely (OR=1.540, p<0.001) to have the intention to use family planning method in the future than Muslim women.

Men are not included to explore the differences in the perception of men and women towards family planning. Interventions targeting men and aiming at overcoming cultural barriers to using family planning method are equally imperative. Couple's knowledge, attitude and perception towards acceptance of family planning methods need to be addressed simultaneously by interviewing the couples separately.

Public-private collaboration to promote family planning programme and providing services in the high prevalence (unmet need) states is required. Support from the religious leaders to overcome the cultural barriers towards the use of family planning is also needed.

This is the first ever effort to address the existing unmet need for family planning among Muslim women in India, which is an important determinant of high fertility among Muslim women.

Fertility aspirations shape family planning behavior of a couple. Desire to have certain number of children is linked with various micro- and macro-level factors such as individuals’ characteristics, sociocultural contexts and unconscious personal motivations. Fertility aspirations are an important component of fertility decision-making and a major predictor of childbearing. In India, Uttar Pradesh (UP) is the most populated state with historically high levels of fertility rates as compared to national average. This research is a qualitative exploration of the perspectives and practices of women with respect to their fertility aspirations and family planning behavior in an urban setting. A cross-sectional study was conducted between August 2017 and July 2018 among married women and men of the reproductive age group of 17–49 years using qualitative methods. The study was done in Pakbara, a Census Town (has a minimum population of 5,000) in the district of Moradabad, situated in western UP. It was found that along with personal motivations of having a quality life change in objective circumstances has led to changes in the fertility aspirations of the participants, particularly women. Increasing education, more mobility in public spaces, aspirations for a quality life, exposure to mass media and new job opportunities generate revision of parental aspirations. Couples, particularly from middle and upper-middle classes, limit their family size to attain upward social mobility. Couples from lower economic class have realized that rise of household income has not been commensurate with rise in prices. Thus, restricted childbearing is one way to cope with the situation.

The 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision accomplished more than the national legalization of same-sex marriage; it also laid bare a deep rift among US Supreme Court justices over the question of whether and how religious objections to same-sex marriage should be accommodated in this new era of marriage equality. This chapter will explore the rift revealed in Obergefell between the Court’s differing conceptions of religious free exercise and will highlight the ways in which this legal dispute was translated into a forceful mode of conservative religious activism in the buildup to the groundbreaking 2016 election.

How ought religion and democratic politics relate to each other in a spirit of intellectual humility? This chapter suggests four potential understandings of the relationship: hindrance, resource, evaluation, and source. Each of these understandings seems to take for granted a form of Enlightenment rationality (whether in support or opposition), and the final section of the chapter develops a synthesis of Durkheim and Dewey to consider a different way through which religion and deliberative democracy can coexist, one more sensitive to the role of emotion, ritual, and contingency and thereby more open to the problem of epistemic arrogance and the necessity for intellectual humility.

We discuss a recent effort of institutional resistance in the context of the 2008–2011 Apostolic Visitation of U.S. women religious motivated by Vatican concerns about perceived secularism and potential lack of fidelity among Catholic sisters. We examined the process of and women’s responses to the Visitation to shed light on the institutional work associated with productive resistance and the role of identity and emotions in transforming institutions.

At a time when the male leadership can be blamed for leading the church to a state of crisis – a time when the voices of women are needed more than ever – even the modest roles accorded to female clerics have come under attack. The specific reasons for the investigation are unclear (or, more probably, not public), but the suspicion, clearly, can be put in the crassest terms: too many American nuns have gone off the reservation.

– Lisa Miller, Female Troubles, Newsweek, May 27, 2010

At a time when the male leadership can be blamed for leading the church to a state of crisis – a time when the voices of women are needed more than ever – even the modest roles accorded to female clerics have come under attack. The specific reasons for the investigation are unclear (or, more probably, not public), but the suspicion, clearly, can be put in the crassest terms: too many American nuns have gone off the reservation.

Acounts of new religious movements have been almost exclusively about those which have arisen in the last two decades in the most advanced capitalist societies, and theoretical explanations of their emergence and spread have very firmly connected them with the material standard and social ethos of that type of society. Although there have been significant new developments in the religious life of Soviet society there have been no religious movements forming such a radical break with the old religious life as those found in the West. In this article I shall be concerned with firstly, giving a brief outline of those transformations which have occurred in the religious life of Soviet society. Secondly, I shall show how and why they differ from the New Religious Movements in the West. I shall investigate in some detail why the latter could not and will not in the near future, take root in Soviet society.

On February 11, 1979, the monarchy rule in Iran was replaced by an Islamic theocracy, and the new government revised textbooks to promote a new identity based on Shia Islam and the Iranian nationalism. Because textbooks are used throughout the world to create national identities and are of interest to educators, an analysis of texts can provide insights into how a nation views itself, others, and its place in the world. Using discourse analysis, this study analyzes an eighth-grade history textbook used in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2004 to understand the role of Khomeini vis-à-vis the Shah and how the regime’s adversaries are depicted. Concepts of grievance and framing are used to analyze the textbook.

This paper explores religious education (RE) in South Australia from 1968–1980. It focuses especially on the collapse of the RE settlement from 1968–1972 and the controversial legislation and subsequent curricula emerging from changes to the Education Act in 1972.

This paper draws upon archival materials, published sources from the South Australian Institute of Teachers, the South Australian Education Department and the Religious Education Project Team, as well as an interview with Malcolm McArthur, one of the most influential figures in the controversy.

Following the collapse of religious instruction from 1968–1972, the Minister of Education quickly passed legislation regarding a new course of religious education. A major controversy subsequently broke out over the appropriateness and design of a new programme of religious education. Educators attempted to design an educationally sound programme of RE that would avoid the problem of indoctrination. Ultimately, a new programme was created that satisfied neither proponents nor opponents of religion in state schools, and General Religious Teaching gradually faded from South Australian classrooms by 1980.

The article engages with broader debates on the nature of secularity in Australian history. In particular, it complicates the political-institutional approach developed by Damon Mayrl by stressing the agency and significance of elite educational and religious actors in the creation of new secular settlements. It also provides a useful addition to an older South Australian historiography by utilising newly available sources on the topic.

In a constantly changing and increasingly globalized world, religion still plays a significant role in influencing social and consumer behavior. This study will analyze what influence religion and intensity of belief has on attitudes towards the advertising of particular controversial products and services. A questionnaire was distributed to 1,393 people across six different countries and resulting in samples of four main religious groups. The results indicated some statistically significant differences between the groups, which can have important implications for global marketers.