Tinkering with Technology and Religion in the Digital Age: The Effects of Internet Use on Religious Belief,Behavior, and Belonging

Internet technology presents a new conceptual reality, one that could potentially challenge religion in subtle but distinct ways. Few sociologists of religion, however, have attempted to evaluate whether using the Internet impacts the way people think about and practice religion. This article elaborates on the concept of “tinkering” discussed by Berger, Berger, and Kellner (1974), Turkle (1997), and Wuthnow (2010) to argue that Internet use affects how people think about and affiliate with religious traditions. Using data from Wave III of the Baylor Religion Survey (2010), I find that Internet use is associated with increases in being religiously unaffiliated and decreases in religious exclusivism. At the same time, I find that television viewing is linked to decreases in religious attendance and other time‐related religious activities, but these outcomes are not impacted by Internet use. To explain these disparate findings, I argue that the Internet is fundamentally different from previous technologies like television and thus impacts religious beliefs and belonging but not time‐related religious activities.     

Seeking the Pathos of God in a Secular Age: Theological Reflections on Mystical Experience in the Twentieth Century

Our current context is a “moving” and unstable one. We are facing not only a time of change, but what Pope Benedict XVI terms “an epochal change.” The impact of this transformation upon religion is unmistakable. In this article I reflect on one aspect of this impact: the one that affects and transforms the experience of God, also called mystical experience. I explore the concept of experience, trying to give a more precise idea of what we understand by mystical experience. I then reflect on the importance of mystical biographies and narratives to theology, including the particular characteristics that emerge when this narrative is about the mystical experiences of twentieth‐century people of faith. I present the specific “case” of Dorothy Day as an exemplification of mystical experience. I conclude with several reflections about how human beings find the way towards God in our secular.     

Transforming to Teach: Teaching Religion to Today's Black College Student

Abstract. Emerging from the particular experiences of the marginalized, postmodern pedagogies (bell hooks, Paolo Freire, feminist pedagogies) argue that education is more than conveying information from teacher to student. Rather education should encompass the transformative process of shaping character, values, and politics through the dynamic interaction among the teacher, the students' experiences, and the content of the instructional material. These perspectives argue that educators should reject “the banking model” of education, and teach to transform. However, religious studies with today's black college student tests the mettle of these approaches. On the one hand, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have long practiced transformative education through a commitment to shaping both the minds and characters of their students. On the other hand, many of today's black college students are less receptive to transformation, particularly in the academic study of religion. This resistance to transformation is a reflection of (1) the socio‐economic reality of the current student, and (2) a new black religiosity that portrays the world in binary terms. These economic and religious realities present a teaching context for which few religious scholars are prepared. This essay discusses the particularities of teaching religion to today's black college student by sharing the challenges, failures, successes, and joys of teaching religion at a small church‐related, historically black women's college in the south. I will discuss the techniques that fail, and the way in which this unique context causes me to transform the way I teach religion. In the midst of a commitment to postmodern pedagogies, I feel a need to return to the banking model's establishment of authority and emphasis on content. As I negotiate with this method, I find ways to stealthily infuse transformative pedagogical techniques. I also discuss the way such a dramatic shift in pedagogy has transformed me, the teacher.     

The Body in the Psychology of Religion

Hutch's position that psychology of religion has neglected the mortal body is affirmed but reinterpreted. Although it may be true that psychology has adopted as postmodern bias toward defining the human being as primarily cognitive, it is less true that the psychology of religion has been unaware of how religion emerges from the experience of living. Noting that Hutch could be understood as a modern Romantic, I reinterpret, in an alternate frame- work, his contention that reexperiencing the sexuality and mortality of the body will reinstate eros into the psychology of religion. The I story model of Donald McKay and the existential paradigm of Reinhold Niebuhr are of- fered as reconceptions of what Hutch is proposing. These theorists state Hutch's position in ways that allow for a more substantive picture of what religion is and how it emerges from the life process.     

Migrations,transformations and tradition in the Finnish Pentecostal movement: why does all global not become local?*

In this article, I will outline the dynamics of social transformations and cultural preservation in the Finnish Pentecostal movement, which are caused and affected by different migrations in the history of the movement. With a history of hundred years, immersed by social and societal transformations, missionaries, new converts and new cultures, the Finnish Pentecostal movement has its own traditions, but nevertheless is constantly facing influences from different cultures. My aim in this article is to analyse the logics of transformation and preservation of Pentecostal religion and culture on a congregational level. I will compare two different migrations, the Karelian evacuation and the international immigration, as well as analyse the differences in acculturation between these groups. The analysis will include not only the language and cultural habits, but also the social situations, structures and the styles that matter in the way Pentecostalism transforms, and how migrant groups are acculturated within the church.     

On the formation and function of the category ‘religion’ in anarchist writing

Recent works by Asad, McCutcheon and Fitzgerald have sought to call into question the category ‘religion’ in social anthropology and religious studies. The purpose of this essay is to explore the formation and function of the category religion in anarchist writing. Taking the mid‐nineteenth century as a rough point of departure, I demonstrate that the formation and function of religion as a category in anarchist writing reflects wider constructions and imaginings of modernity through which religion emerges as a cipher for thinking about the past. I will argue that the function of the category religion in anarchist writing is to order relations between past and present. Specifically, where ‘anarcho‐modernist’ writing broadly constitutes religion and the past as conditions to be overcome, ‘anarcho‐romanticist’ writing articulates a generalised nostalgia for religion and the past, although it should be noted that religion is rarely dealt with in any systematic way in anarchist writing. I will conclude by suggesting that although anarchist writing is a marginal corpus of literature, the category religion is constituted along similar lines and fulfils similar functions in both anthropological and phenomenological writings on religion.     

The Body as the Ground of Religion, Science, and Self

The human body is both religious subject and scientific object, the manifest locus of both religious gnosis and secular cognition. Embodiment provides the basis for a rich cross–fertilization between cognitive science and comparative religion, but cognitive studies must return to their empiricist scientific roots by reembodying subjectivity, thus spanning the natural bridge between the two fields. Referencing the ritual centrality and cognitive content of the body, I suggest a materialist but nonreductionist construct of the self as a substantial cognitive embodiment that embraces not just perception and cognition, mind and spirit, but the forceful physicality of the moving body. Proprioception of the body's moving mass constitutes a mode of knowing that resonates strongly with the experience of self, not only across religious traditions but also within the physical sciences. By way of illustration, two directions are suggested in which a construct of the self as a substantial cognitive embodiment might lead us: first, a body–based interpretation of the Islamic myth of Adam and Iblis that reveals an internal substantiality as constitutive of the divinely imaged Self, and second, a new, religious direction for human evolutionary theory based on the implications of an embodied intentionality.     

RELIGION‐AND‐SCIENCE DIALOGUE FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Loyal Rue suggests that religion is not about God as such but about the cultivation of personal and social well‐being. Religion may employ cultural resources that include concepts of supernatural agencies, but religion's essential functionalities are not dependent on that particular resource. I largely endorse Rue's view of religion and employ Rue as a guide to thinking through its consequences for the future of Christianity. For Rue, two challenges face Christianity: the erosion of confidence in personal‐god concepts and the ecological crisis engulfing the planet. In the face of these twin momentous changes, I suggest ways in which certain cultural tropes in the Christian matrix will rise to the fore and others will erode.     

Ethics and Undergraduate Research in the Study of Religion: Place‐Based Pedagogy and Reciprocal Research Relations

In the undergraduate religious studies classroom at the University of Leeds students are introduced to the complexity of religion in locality. One of the most engaging ways to do this is through a place‐based pedagogy utilizing independent fieldwork as part of the learning process. However, undergraduates, like seasoned researchers, must learn to balance and understand the way insider representations influence academic interpretations, and the way their academic interpretations and representations can lead to change in the community being studied. Place‐based pedagogy has, therefore, an important ethical dimension that is not accounted for in the existing literature. Engaging with reciprocal research relations as a way to navigate this terrain introduces students to the human impacts of their research and develops their self‐awareness as researchers and religion specialists. This paper will draw on the Leeds experience to build an understanding of the interaction between place‐based pedagogy and reciprocal research relations which informs both teaching and research in the study of religion, and extends the existing discourse on the ethical dimensions of undergraduate research.     

Think and Act Global and Local: A Portrait of the Individual as a Flexible Information-Processor

What accounts for the links between religion and health and well-being? This question was central to the commentators' responses to the target articles. Many of the commentators provided fresh new ways of explaining religion in psychological, social, physiological, and evolutionary terms. A few, however, came perilously close to the slippery slope of radical reductionism. In this article, I argue that religion is, by definition, unique, for it has a singular point of reference, the sacred. In addition, I review empirical studies assessing the independent predictive power of religion; they suggest that religion is a unique source of motivation and values, a unique form of coping, and a unique source of distress. Finally, I contend that social scientists should learn more about the connections between religion and health and well-being, not to explain religion away, but to gain a more complete understanding of religion and human nature more generally. Researchers should remember that religion represents not only a resource for psychological well-being and physical health, but a distinctive human dimension that carries meaning and power in and of itself.     

SOME WAYS EMERGING ADULTS ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

This article addresses how the field of religion and science will change in the coming decades by analyzing the attitudes of emerging adults (ages 18–30). I first present an overview of emerging adulthood to set the context for my analysis, especially highlighting the way in which emerging adults find themselves “in between” and in an “age of possibilities," free to explore a variety of options and thus often become “spiritual bricoleurs." Next, I expand on how a broadening pluralism in emerging adult culture changes both the conversation of “religion and science,” on one hand, and the locus for their interaction on the other. In the third section, I address the question of whether there exists a consensus view of how to relate religion and science. Paradoxically, though 18–30‐year‐olds perceive that there is conflict between science and religion, they personally endorse collaboration or independence. Finally, I draw conclusions for practitioners and theorists.     

BEYOND BARBOUR OR BACK TO BASICS? THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION AND THE QUEST FOR UNITY

Reflecting on the future of the field of science‐and‐religion, I focus on three aspects. First, I describe the history of the religion‐and‐science dialogue and argue that the emergence of the field was largely contingent on social‐cultural factors in Western theology, especially in the United States. Next, I focus on the enormous influence of science on Western society and on what I call cultural scientism, which influences discussions in science‐and‐religion, especially how theological notions are taken up. I illustrate by sketching the way divine action has been studied in science‐and‐religion. The divine‐action debates may seem irrelevant to theologians because the way divine action is dealt with in science‐and‐religion is theologically problematic. Finally, I analyze the quest for integration and unity of science and religion that underlies much of the contemporary field of science‐and‐religion and was stimulated particularly by the efforts of Ian Barbour. I argue that his quest echoes the logical positivist vision of unification and has a strong bias toward science as the sole source of rationality, which does not take theology fully seriously.     

“THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF EXPERTS”: IN DEFENSE OF THE “ELITES” OF THE SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION DEBATE

This article takes a critical stance on John H. Evans's 2018 book, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science. Highlighting the significance of the book for the science‐and‐religion debate, particularly the book's emphasis on moral questions over knowledge claims revealed in social‐scientific studies of the American public, I also suggest that the distinction between the “elites” of the academic science‐and‐religion field and the religious “public” is insufficiently drawn. I argue that various nuances should be taken into account concerning the portrayal of “elites,” nuances which potentially change the way that “conflict” between science and religion is envisaged, as well as the function of the field. Similarly, I examine the ways in which the book construes science and religion as distinct knowledge systems, and I suggest that, from a theological perspective—relevant for much academic activity in science and religion—there is value in seeing science and religion in terms of a single knowledge system. This perspective may not address the public's interest in moral questions directly—important as they are—but nevertheless it fulfils the academic function of advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and self‐understanding.     

Doing Pentecostal Civic Engagement in the Squatter Area of Lower Rock Quarry,Baguio City,Philippines

Pentecostals are frequently placed on the sidelines of civic engagement, seen as participating less in public life because of their preoccupation with other‐worldly eschatology and their one‐way‐ticket evangelistic efforts. This study does not share the above view, but argues that Pentecostal civic engagement 1 has been increasingly recognized as resource capital that empowers the lives of the poor. This paper investigates the impact of Pentecostal/charismatic religion on civil society, asking what contribution the study of “spirit empowered” religion can make to our understanding of the role of religion in human society. Using a quantitative and qualitative approach to flesh out empirical evidence, this study reveals what Filipino Pentecostals believe and practise with regard to civic engagement. It provides a case study of findings to further point out that Pentecostals in the Philippines are not on the sidelines of civic engagement, but are one of the religious players in the creation of a just and loving society.     

Bulgakov’s sophiology: towards an Orthodox economic theological engagement with the modern world

Contemporary scholarship interprets Sergej Bulgakov??s sophiology as an engagement of Orthodox theology with the modern world and as being on its way to becoming a political theology. In this paper I undertake a re-evaluation of the kind of engagement sophiology was and was intended to be, and of the kind of world it was destined for. It will be argued that sophiology was not so much a political-theological engagement with the world concentrating on the relation of religion and politics or state and church, but rather an economic-theological engagement in the tradition of oikonomia theology that tried to understand the world in its relation to and as part of divine oikonomia. Furthermore, the world sophiology promotes engagement with is not only the real contemporary world, or the sociological ideal type of modernity, but primarily the world as such, this secular and human world over and against the divine and transcendent world.     

Constructing 'God': a Contemporary Interpretation of Religion

To discuss the rationality of religious beliefs of the meaning of those beliefs must be made intelligible, sometimes to those who do not share our presuppositions. Is it possible to explain the meaning of such basic concepts as ‘Religion’, and ‘God’ without presupposing other religious concepts? The present paper is an attempt at such a radical interpretation of religion. This is done by wedding a full‐fledged constructivist epistemology with insights from the mystical traditions of the East and the West. How such an epistemology can account for both the unity and plurality of religions is also indicated. In the process I give not only a new interpretation of ‘God’ but also suggest the reasons for the failure of the “proofs” for the existence of God. Thus, a new way is opened up for discussing the rationality of religious beliefs.     

THE VARIETIES AND REVISIONS OF ATHEISM

Abstract. The philosopher Antony Flew has argued for decades that theistic arguments cannot meet criteria of truth. In this essay I respond to Flew's recent announcement that research into the emergence of DNA provides grounds for rational belief in an intelligent orderer, a “God.” Flew's theistic turn is important for philosophers of religion and the wider science‐and‐religion dialogue. It becomes apparent, however, that Flew's “conversion” is not as decisive as one might imagine. While he admits growth in scientific and philosophical understanding, he rejects the idea of growth in religious understanding. Further, he endorses a version of “theoretical theism” while denying the practical importance of belief. Such denial of practical conviction is part of a modernist mindset that separates freedom from the embeddedness of human beings in the natural world. I conclude by noting that the entanglement of human action and wider physical processes, an entanglement seen emblematically in the environmental crisis, requires not only considering the importance of intelligence and order in the emergence of life but also the significance of human agency in claims about the divine and the natural world.     

LOOKING TO CHARLES TAYLOR AND JOSEPH ROUSE FOR BEST PRACTICES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

People discussing science and religion usually frame their conversations in terms of essentialist assumptions about science, assumptions requiring the existence (but not the specification) of criteria according to which science can be distinguished from other forms of inquiry. However, criteria functioning at a level of generality appropriate to such discussions may not exist at all. Essentialist assumptions may be avoided if science is understood within a broader context of human practices. In a philosophy of practices, to label a practice as “scientific” is to make a practically motivated provision for a way of speaking. Charles Taylor and Joseph Rouse have produced complementary philosophies of practice that promote this kind of understanding. In this essay I review the work of Taylor and Rouse, identify apparent residues of essentialism that each seems to harbor, and offer a resolution to some of their disagreements. I also criticize a form of essentialism commonly employed in Christian circles and outline an anti‐essentialist view of science that may be helpful in science‐and‐religion discussions.     

American Medicine as Religious Practice: Care of the Sick as a Sacred Obligation and the Unholy Descent into Secularization

Modern medicine serves a religious function for modern Americans as a conduit through which science can be applied directly to the human body. The first half of this paper will focus on the theoretical foundations for viewing medicine as a religious practice arguing that just as a hierarchical structured authoritarian church historically mediated access to God, contemporary Western medicine provides a conduit by which the universalizable truths of science can be applied to the human being thereby functioning as a new established religion. I will then illustrate the many parallels between medicine and religion through an analysis of rituals and symbols surrounding and embedded within the modern practice of medicine. This analysis will pay special attention to the primacy placed on secret interior knowledge of the human body. I will end by responding to the hope for a “secularization of American medicine,” exploring some of the negative consequences of secularization, and arguing that, rather than seeking to secularize, American medicine should strive to use its religious features to offer hope and healing to the sick, in keeping with its historically religious legacy.