In recent decades, research on family life and religion has been conducted. Much of the research done on religion and well-being has shown beneficial effects of religion or religious practices on well-being (Bonner, Koven, & Patrick, 2003; Loser, Klein, Hill, & Dollahite, 2008). Using data from the Flourishing Families Project (N = 359 adolescents), the relationship between religious variables (family religious practices, family religious importance and religiosity), family climate measures (family connectedness and parent conflict) and adolescent depressive symptoms was examined. Results indicate no significant relationship between religious variables and adolescent depressive symptoms, but a positive relationship between parent conflict and adolescent depressive symptoms and a negative relationship between family connectedness and adolescent depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that while family climate is important to adolescent depressive symptoms, religious activity as measured by family practices is not protective.

The present work intends to investigate the concept of blessing in the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch. The first part analyzes the general characteristics of the term to bless / blessing in the Hebrew Bible and looks at the etymology, the semantic field, the formulas, the gestures, rites and words of blessing. As blessing is the continuous and permanent activity of God in history, the chapter finishes with the concept of history in the ancient world. The second chapter makes an incursion into the characteristics of the ancient biblical society in the two big periods of pre-state Israel and Israel as a state. It studies the nomadic pre-history and the pre-state sedentary Israel paying particular attention to the social organization in families, clans and tribes. In the state period, it gives attention to the Deuteronomic reform and its consequences in the social and religious life of Israel. The third chapter presents the exegesis of selected texts. In the primeval history it looks at blessing in creation, and in the patriarchal history it searches for the strokes of blessing in the family and state context. It also deals with the priestly blessing in Numbers 6,22-27 with special attention to the cult, and with selected texts from Deuteronomy that connect blessing with covenant and endow it with conditionality. The last chapter presents a reflection about family religion and state religion in Israel, and studies the characteristics of blessing in both fields that interrelate not always without tensions- and articulate between them. / El presente trabajo pretende investigar el concepto de bendición en el Antiguo Testamento, especialmente en el Pentateuco. La primera parte analiza las características generales del término bendecir / bendición en la Biblia Hebrea y hace un recorrido por la etimología, el campo semántico, las fórmulas, gestos, ritos y palabras de bendición. Como la bendición es la actividad continua y permanente de Dios en la historia, el primer capítulo termina viendo el concepto de historia en el mundo antiguo. El segundo capítulo hace una incursión en las características de la sociedad bíblica antigua en los dos grandes períodos del Israel pre estatal y estatal. Estudia la prehistoria nómade y el Israel sedentario pre estatal dando particular atención a la organización social en familias, clanes y tribus. En el período estatal la atención se detiene particularmente en la reforma deuteronómica y sus implicancias en la vida social y religiosa de Israel. El tercer capítulo presenta la exégesis de textos elegidos. En la historia primordial mira la bendición en la creación, y en la historia de los patriarcas busca los trazos de la bendición en contexto familiar y estatal. Aborda también la bendición sacerdotal de Números 6,22-27 con especial referencia al culto, y textos escogidos del Deuteronomio que conectan la bendición con la alianza y la dotan de condicionalidad. El último capítulo es una reflexión teológica sobre la religión familiar y la religión estatal en Israel y estudia las características de la bendición en estos ámbitos que se interrelacionan no siempre sin tensiones- y se articulan entre sí.

What did it mean to be a Catholic elite in Protestant England? The relationship between the Protestant crown and its Catholic subjects may be examined fruitfully through a study of an individual and his world. This thesis examines this relationship through the example of Sir Thomas Tresham, who has often been seen as the archetypal Catholic loyalist. It is argued that the notion of Catholic loyalism must be reconfigured to account for the complexities inherent in the relationship between Catholics and the government. The duty to honour the monarch's authority was bound up with social and national sentiment, but it often accompanied criticisms of the practice of that authority, and the ways in which it encroached on personal experience. Intractable tensions lay behind expressions of loyalty, and this thesis travels in these undercurrents of cultural, social, religious, and political conflict to investigate the nuanced relationship between English Catholics and English society. Political resistance as classically understood - actions which directly opposed and undermined government policy - risks the exclusion of culture and identity, through which resistance was redefined. It is argued that Tresham's participation in elite activities became vehicles for resistance in the Catholic context. Book-collecting, reading, and the donation of books to an institutional library are framed as forms of resistance which countered the spirit of government legislation, and provided for the continuation of a robust tradition of Catholic scholarship on English soil. Through artistic and architectural projects, Tresham found ways to participate in elite culture which were not closed off to him, and in which Catholicism and gentility could sit side by side. These activities were also avenues for resistance, whereby the erection of stone testaments to Tresham's faith defied the government's attempts to redefine Englishness and gentility in Protestant terms, to the devastation of Catholicism. These artistic works combined piety, gentility, and resistance, and, together with Tresham's two Catholic libraries, they were to be his legacy.

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