Most previous studies have focused on married couples and their general tendency to forgive. They have often ignored other relationship types. Past research has also focused on attitudes toward forgiveness without studying the actual reactions after experiencing the transgression. Therefore, this study explored if religion has an influence on how dating and married couples react to transgressions. Do they forgive, or do they seek revenge? Two hundred sixteen adults (123 married and 93 dating) completed a survey administered through a medium-sized research university in the southeastern United States. Results showed that after experiencing a specific transgression, married individuals who are religious are more likely to forgive the partner and less likely to seek revenge. Dating couples would forgive their partners to the same extent but for different reasons. Among both dating and married participants, religiosity is positively related to the avoidance of revenge.

Since 2006, a rural Georgia church has successfully produced and nationally distributed three feature length films. Each movie has shown higher production quality and box office profits than the last. The current research uses a perspective from Quentin Schultze to examine how this “tribal” medium is received by the larger mainstream press. In examining critics’ reviews, the investigation suggests that the films were viewed negatively, but that justifications for displeasure were not traditional aesthetic flaws. Instead, much of the focus was on the fact that the films were preachy and allowed limited polysemy. Such findings raise interesting questions about mainstream press acceptance of overtly religious media messages.

Yoga’s popularity prompts concern about the extent to which cultural appropriation compromises its original philosophy. This interpretive analysis explores how nonIndian yoga instructors negotiate religion and spirituality in their classrooms and daily lives. In doing so, I consider yoga as a commodity articulated within the frameworks of transculturation, cultural appropriation (Rogers, 2006), and symbolic displacement (Wilson, 2012). Findings indicate that yoga is discursively detached from its religious origins and linked to an abstract and expansive spiritualism. Instructors also hope to initiate spiritual engagement among students through physical practice. These findings are contextualized with regard to cultural appropriation, ownership, and hybridity.

Despite the proliferation of online interaction through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), religious organizations like churches have fallen behind in their adoption. Lagging rates of ICT integration in these organizations have created a number of challenges for many Christian denominations as membership numbers have declined. The present paper seeks to identify the dialectic tensions with which religious leaders of churches in one denomination, the United Methodist Church, struggle as they attempt to integrate new ICTs into their congregations. Through interviews with pastors and youth directors (N=27), three dialectic tensions were revealed, creating difficult challenges for organizational administration as they attempt to negotiate competing needs. The organizational approaches taken to ICT adoption and integration were influenced by the resolution of each dialectic.