Religion and Disability: Variation in Religious Service Attendance Rates for Children with Chronic Health Conditions

Prior research consistently demonstrates greater religious involvement is associated with improved health outcomes for those with chronic health conditions. Fewer studies focus on how chronic health conditions influence religious service attendance rates and most focus on older Americans. Using three waves of a nationally representative sample of children in the United States, I test whether children with a chronic health condition never attend religious worship services at rates significantly higher than children without a condition. I also investigate variation in attendance rates across a broad range of conditions, something previously overlooked. Children with chronic health conditions are more likely to never attend religious worship services. Specifically, children with chronic health conditions that impede communication and social interaction are most likely to never attend. Despite shifts in prevalence these findings are stable over time. Implications for researchers, religious communities, families with children with chronic health conditions, and health‐care providers are discussed.     

The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to Religion as Culture in Spain

This article contributes to sociological theorizations of religion as heritage through analyzing the politics of religious heritage in Spain since its transition to democracy during the late 1970s. Our analysis is organized around three historical sequences of critical importance for understanding the political and legal significance of discourses that frame religion as cultural heritage in Spain: (1) negotiations that took place during Spain's democratic transition between 1977 and 1980; (2) discussions that surfaced in the context of the state's decision to recognize Islam, Protestantism, and Judaism in 1992; and (3) more recent debates regarding the incorporation of religious minorities in the context of increasing religious diversity, especially concerning places of worship. We show how framing “religion” using the language of cultural heritage has provided religious actors with a means of defending the connection between religion and national identity—and of protecting the privileges of majoritarian religious institutions without violating core tenets of secularism or pluralism. This scenario has created space for certain religious minorities to claim a place within Spain's evolving socioreligious landscape by invoking alternative heritages from Spain's multicultural past.     

Don't Call Me Ishmael: Religious Naming Among Protestants and Catholics in the United States

We explore whether first names of religious origin continue to have religious connotations for Protestants and Catholics in a U.S. culture where naming is largely secularized. We use 1994 General Social Survey data to examine several questions: (1) whether there are Protestant-Catholic differences in broad categories of names (Old Testament, New Testament, saints, etc.); (2) whether worship attendance predicts the likelihood that Protestant and Catholic parents select categories of names corresponding to their respective traditions; and (3) whether worship attendance predicts selection of specific names that are disproportionately common within Protestantism and Catholicism (without regard to the broader categories). Results show some expected Protestant-Catholic differences in the frequency of name categories. However, there is no relationship between parental worship attendance and the likelihood of choosing these categories, suggesting that differences cannot be explained by religious motivations. In contrast, worship attendance does increase Catholics' likelihood of choosing specific names that are disproportionately common within their tradition. This suggests that committed Catholics perceive certain names as "Catholic" and represents one instance in which names do retain religious connotations for believers. We are aware of no previous research that has established such a link between parental religious commitment and naming.     

Changing Worship Practices in American Congregations

Worship is the core activity of American congregations and the primary way people experience religion collectively in the United States. We use data from the National Congregations Study (NCS), notably including data from the fourth wave, collected in 2018–19, to examine two key trends in worship practices among American religious congregations. First, the trend toward more informal and enthusiastic worship identified in earlier NCS surveys continues into 2019. Showing no signs of having reached a plateau, a more informal worship style has increased in prevalence across every major American religious tradition. Second, recently developed communication technologies have permeated congregations’ worship services in ways that change the collective experience. Collected on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCS-IV data on worship and technology provide a baseline for future examinations of worship changes caused by the pandemic, and a window into congregations’ technological preparedness for a world in which it is not safe to gather.     

Religion,ethnicity, and citizenship: the role of Jain institutions in the social incorporation of young Jains in Britain and the United States

The on-going importance of religion as a marker of identity among young South Asians has provoked reflection on the relationship between religion and citizenship in the aftermath of events such as 9/11 and 7/7. In general, European and American scholarship highlights different perspectives on the role of religion in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children. In this article I explore how religion shapes identity and citizenship among young Jains, a group that experiences successful socio-economic integration and material success in Britain and the United States. This qualitative comparative analysis of Jain institutions which are oriented towards young Jains reveals the ways in which the intersection of transnational circulation of religious ideas and actors, national integration regimes, migration histories, and the place of religion in specific contexts shapes religious identities, religious group boundaries, and religious discourses in different ways. Different Jain religious assemblages affirm views of religion in the United States as having a positive role in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children, but point to a more neutral role for religion in the incorporation of middle-class young Jains in Britain.     

Residents' Attitudes About On-Site Religious Activities: A Comparison of Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Two States

ABSTRACT

Twelve older adults were interviewed in two continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs), one in Florida and the other in Wisconsin. Only the residents in Wisconsin maintained contact with local congregations, probably because most had always lived in communities not far from the CCRC. On-site religious activities such as worship and study groups were important because of the ways they ordered the week and the opportunities they offered for social interaction. In both locations, Protestant residents appreciated the opportunity to worship in ecumenical services conducted by clergy of different Protestant faith traditions. Catholic services were also available in both locations. Suggestions are offered about ways that faith communities can nourish the spiritual lives of persons living in CCRCs by working with chaplains and by conducting small prayer and study groups.     

Beyond Christendom: Protestant—Catholic distinctions in coming global Christianity

Using actual and projected population data from the World Christian Database, this article evaluates Philip Jenkins' argument that the centre of global Christianity is moving from the Euro‐American centre (the ‘global North’) to the developing world (the ‘global South’) by disaggregating the different outcomes of this shift for Protestants and Catholics. Over the next fifty years, Catholics will decline much less than Protestants in the North, and will be concentrated in Latin America, not Africa. With the decline of the Enlightenment nation‐state, religious authority and identity will become more concentrated in Catholicism but will become more dispersed in Protestantism. This transition from national to global Christianity, I argue, will realign the post‐Reformation achievement of balanced tension among three social realitiesd Protestantism, Catholicism and the nation‐statedto produce not just another Christendom but a new, more complex articulation of civil and religious realities that will move beyond the old arrangement of Christendom altogether.     

Longitudinal Effects of Religious Media on Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

Religion and anti-gay prejudice in the United States are closely connected. Yet we still know little about the specific mechanisms through which religious subcultures may shape adherents’ attitudes toward gays and lesbians. This study considers religious media consumption as a unique mechanism through which religious Americans are socialized and embedded within an anti-gay religious subculture. Drawing on panel data from the nationally-representative Portraits of American Life Study, and focusing on opposition to same-sex marriage as a measure of anti-gay prejudice, analyses show that more frequent consumption of religious radio and TV (but not internet) is associated with higher levels of opposition to same-sex marriage over time. These effects remain significant with different model specifications as well as controls for previous attitudes toward same-sex marriage, general media use, sociodemographic and religious characteristics, and intimate contact with gays and lesbians. We propose that consuming religious media over time may influence Americans’ views toward LGBT issues directly through explicit messages about homosexuality and indirectly by embedding Americans within a broader religious subculture (largely, conservative Protestantism) that opposes homosexuality.     

The Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Association Between Interfaith Contact and Religious Pluralism

This research contributes to increasing understanding of the ways in which Christians think about religious pluralism in the United States. It does so by empirically uncovering the relationship between inter-faith contact and the willingness of white Christians to support tenets of religious pluralism. To that end, this study largely intimates that religious identity reinforces a dualistic world view. For white Christians, it is likely that contact with Jews and not Muslims is salient to their religious pluralist understandings. Nonetheless, more so than other Christians, Evangelicals tend to embrace a theology that views their belief system as being in conflict and competition with non-Christians. To that end, it is plausible that even when Christians have positive contact experiences with Jews and Muslims, Evangelicals are less willing than are other Christians to recognize them as members of the American religious polity.     

The objects of American religious studies

Disciplinary retrospectives on American religious studies have come over the last several decades to center on a single turning point, a decisive and expansive reformation of the object of scholars’ attentions. In a nutshell, somewhere between the 1970s and 1980s a vanguard among us began at last to leave off writing about white, northeastern, Protestant men and to write instead about everybody: more religions, more relations to religion, more of what counts as religion in the first place. Even as it lies at the animating heart of our disciplinary self-appraisals, however, this narrative turn from Protestantism to pluralism in American religious studies seems itself peculiarly resistant to analysis. This essay proposes that we revisit the dialectic between ‘oneness’ and ‘manyness’ in American religious history and historiography. In particular, it urges that we bring scrutiny to bear on the ways that our newer narratives of religious pluralism in America come to be spliced within a more longstanding and resilient metanarrative rooted in American Protestantism.     

Christian Ethics,Religious Ethics,and Secular Ethics: A Contemporary Reappraisal

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular-religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise.     

Comparative Religious Ethics and the Politics of Christian Identity

I present a brief historical narrative of the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE) that attempts to make sense of the tensions within the field from the perspective of the politics of identity with reference to its changing content and practices—its internal history—and what might be called the background conditions—its external history—that shaped not only the content and methods of CRE but also its self‐understanding. Given the politics of Christian identity and the historical development of religious ethics within the American academy, I recommend that scholars of CRE adopt a more confessional mode of inquiry that makes explicit their ultimate commitments.     

The Royal Road: Children, Play, and the Religious Life

This article explores the role of play in human development and religious faith. It begins with problems in children’s play in contemporary society, as seen through history and sociology, and then analyzes the contributions of two psychologists, Erik H. Erikson and D. W. Winnicott, and recent thought on play in theology, childhood studies, and the scholarship of Donald Capps in particular. It argues that play has a potentially fruitful role in development and the life of faith for children and adults but modern constructions of play have obscured its place in adulthood and overlooked its uneven distribution among children in different classes and races.     

Parental Religious Socialization Practices,Connectedness With Others,and Depressive Symptoms in Late Life

This purpose of this study is to examine two constructs that have been largely overlooked in the study of religious involvement among older people: parental religious socialization practices and feelings of connectedness with others. The data are from an ongoing nationwide survey of older people. Findings from a latent variable model that was designed to examine the two focal constructs provide support for the following relationships: (a) older people whose parents encouraged them to become more involved in religion are more likely to attend worship services, (b) older people whose parents promoted religious involvement and older individuals who attend church more often are more likely to report that they see a fundamental connection among all human beings, (c) older adults who feel more closely connected to others will be more likely to forgive people for the things they have done, and (d) older people who are more forgiving are likely to experience fewer symptoms of depression over time.     

Parental Religious Socialization Practices, Connectedness With Others, and Depressive Symptoms in Late Life

This purpose of this study is to examine two constructs that have been largely overlooked in the study of religious involvement among older people: parental religious socialization practices and feelings of connectedness with others. The data are from an ongoing nationwide survey of older people. Findings from a latent variable model that was designed to examine the two focal constructs provides support for the following relationships:(1) older people whose parents encouraged them to become more involved in religion are more likely to attend worship services; (2) older people whose parents promoted religious involvement and older individuals who attend church more often are more likely to report that they see a fundamental connection among all human beings; (3) older adults who feel more closely connected to others will be more likely to forgive people for the things they have done; and (4) older people who are more forgiving are likely to experience fewer symptoms of depression over time.     

Implications of Religious Identity Salience,Religious Involvement,and Religious Commitment on Aggression

Social identity can affect perceptions of external threats and the type of response elicited to those threats. Religion is a social identity with eternal group membership and revered beliefs and values; thus, religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement may have implications for aggressive responses to perceived threats to a person’s religious identity. In a sample of 176 Christians, Muslims, and Jews, we investigated whether people respond aggressively to collective threat as a function of religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement. Religious commitment was positively related to anger only when religious identity was salient. Religious involvement was negatively related to anger and hostility only when religious identity was salient. Religious identity salience appears to act as a moderator by either enhancing perceptions of threat or by activating internal religious beliefs and values.     

A Religious Profile of American Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneur is a celebrated figure in American society. These innovative risk‐takers hold an influential place in the economy and in popular culture. Substantial research has gone into identifying characteristics associated with these individuals, but research on entrepreneurs and religion is surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. Using national survey data, we examine religious affiliation, belief, and behavior for Americans who have started or are trying to start a business. American entrepreneurs appear no different than nonentrepreneurs in religious affiliation, belief in God, or religious service attendance. They do tend to see God as more personal, pray more frequently, and are more likely to attend a place of worship that encourages business activity. A discussion of implications concludes the research note.     

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Religious Involvement in a Multi-Ethnic Cohort of Midlife Women

We examined racial/ethnic differences in five measures of religious involvement (worship attendance, religious social support, importance of faith, comfort from religion, and frequency of prayer or meditation) among 2,690 women, age 42–52 years, participating in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). The women reported five racial/ethnic identifications: white, African American, Hispanic, Japanese, and Chinese. A large proportion of the Asian and Hispanic women were born outside the United States (Japanese 48 percent, Chinese 69.5 percent, Hispanic 89.1 percent). African-American and Hispanic women reported the highest levels of religious involvement. White and Japanese women reported similar levels of involvement for four measures. Compared to the white women, the Chinese women reported similar levels of worship attendance and religious social support, but lower levels for the other three measures. These racial/ethnic differences were not explained by differences in religious preference, acculturation, or sociodemographic factors. With the exception of worship attendance, in adjusted models, measures of acculturation were not significantly associated with religious involvement .     

Catholic Schooling, Protestant Schooling, and Religious Commitment in Young Adulthood

If and how Catholic and Protestant schools influence the religious lives of their students once they have graduated is unclear. Methodological limitations and inconsistencies in previous studies have resulted in confusing and often contradictory findings. Using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ( N  = 11,212), I compare the religious lives of young adults who attended Catholic, Protestant, and secular schools as adolescents. The results suggest that Protestant schoolers are far more religious as young adults than those who attended a secular school, a difference that is at least partially explained by the schools' religious environment. But young adults who attended Catholic schools report levels of religiosity that are similar to those educated in a secular school, and are actually lower for some outcomes. Studies of religious schoolers that ignore the religious tradition of the school overlook these differing effects and forfeit statistical explanatory power.