Intelligibility,Moral Loss and Injustice

In Liberalism's Religion, I analyse the specific conception of religion that liberalism relies upon. I argue that the concept of religion should be disaggregated into its normatively salient features. When deciding whether to avert undue impingements on religious observances, or to avoid any untoward support of such observances, liberal states should not deal with ‘religion’ as such but, rather, with relevant dimensions of religious phenomena. States should avoid religious entanglement when ‘religion’ is epistemically inaccessible, socially divisive and/or comprehensive in scope. In turn, states should show special deference to religious observances insofar as they exhibit what I call integrity – whether personal or collective. The upshot of this interpretive strategy is that liberal law need not recognise religion as such. As a result, there are gaps between the liberal construal of disaggregated religion and the lived experience of religion as a uniquely integrated experience. Are these gaps morally regrettable? Are they unjust?     

Depression and Religion: Realities,Perspectives, and Directions

The debate between psychologists hostile and friendly to religion regarding whether religion promotes or deters depression is reviewed from a historical perspective. Two modes of religion can be seen as forming a continuum with one pole as a life-celebrating, self-affirming religion that deters depression and the other pole as a life-constricting, self-derogating religion that promotes depression. Counselors are advised to help lead religious clients out of depression by procedures aimed at moving them from unhealthy toward healthy religious modes     

SBNR Identity: The Role of Impersonal God Representations,Individualistic Spirituality,and Dissimilarity With Religious Groups

We conducted two studies investigating the extent to which self-identification as Spiritual but not Religious (SBNR) was associated with (H1) the development of idiosyncratic religious beliefs and exposure to religious diversity and/or (H2) negative attitudes toward organized religion and being hurt by members of a religious group. In Study 1, SBNRs scored higher than religious and nonreligious participants on belief in God as an impersonal cosmic force (but not as a personal being) and individualistic spirituality. Although SBNRs had positive attitudes toward religion, they were less positive than those identifying as religious. Exposure to religious diversity and hurt by religious groups were not significant predictors of SBNR. We replicated these results in Study 2 using a multi-item measure of God representations and also found that SBNRs’ attitudes toward religion were predicted by a perceived dissimilarity with religious groups over and above individualism, secular group participation, perceptions of Christianity as too structured, and liberalism.     

Religious Beliefs,Diet, and Physical Activity Among Jewish Adolescents

Despite a well‐documented connection between religion and mortality, the link between religion and obesity‐related outcomes and behaviors has not been adequately studied, particularly among adolescents. This study examines whether self‐reported religious beliefs influence decisions about physical activity and diet in a sample of Jewish adolescents (n = 351). The results show that reporting a stronger influence of religious beliefs on health behaviors is associated with behaviors related to physical activity, but not diet. In adjusted regression models, individuals who report that their religious beliefs influence decisions about being physically active “a lot” have significantly more active days per week than those who say their religious beliefs do not influence such decisions. Similar effects are seen with regard to the students’ overall amount of sedentary time. The results shed light on previously documented relationships between religion and health, provide practical implications for religious organizations and leaders, and suggest areas for future research.     

Philosophy of religion, fictionalism, and religious diversity

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept “God”, as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context.     

Banal is not Trivial: Visibility,Recognition, and Inequalities between Religious Groups in Prison

Recognizing religious groups is not only a question of granting rights, but also a question of the possibility of being perceived as unproblematic, especially in contexts where religion is a contested issue. Spain is a compelling case to examine this proposition. There, the rise of migration-driven religious diversity and the attacks of 11 March 2004 have led religious minorities into the sensitive terrain of ‘supra-visibility’. Drawing upon research conducted in prisons, we show that, in this situation, being classified as a ‘religion’ becomes more a cause for alarm than a sign of normalcy. The most powerful actors in the field have actively distanced themselves from the category of ‘religion’, either because they are presented as spiritual therapies or because they are embedded in cultural traditions—the banal Catholicism that prevails in many southern European settings. Overall, religious inequalities are not only related to the recognition of rights, but also to the (in)visibility of some social and cultural forms over others.     

Secularism,Criticism, and Religious Studies Pedagogy

Abstract. Secularization, the idea that religion would gradually diminish over time, was once widely assumed to be true by scholars of religion, but the unexpected resurgence of religious traditions has called it into question. Related debates on the distinction between religion and the secular have destabilized religious studies further. What does the crisis of secularization and secularism mean for the religious studies classroom? This essay proposes a model of religious criticism in the wake of secularism. No longer simply claiming a “view from nowhere,” students and instructors can (by observing standards of evidence, reason, and self‐disclosure) combine criticism with learning. Drawn from aesthetic and ethical traditions of criticism, religious criticism can be practiced by “teaching the conflicts” and through the pedagogical models of Freire and hooks.     

Religious Ambivalence,Liminality, and the Increase of No Religious Preference in the United States, 2006–2014

Americans identified less and less with organized religion over the past two decades. Yet apparently, many people who no longer identify with a religion are not consistently nonreligious. Reinterviews reveal that many people who express no religious preference in one survey name a religion when asked the same question in a subsequent interview. Past research called this phenomenon a “liminal” status. This article improves estimates of liminality by using three interviews and a better statistical model. About 20 percent of Americans were liminal in recent years, 10 percent were consistently nonreligious, and 70 percent were consistently religious. Falling religious identification in cross‐sectional data over the last three decades reflects slow change in religious identity, but some of the rise of the nones is due to more liminals saying they have no religion. Liminals appear equally among people raised conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, or Catholic.     

Religious agency,identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

Abstract

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual's appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.     

RETHINKING THE SECULAR: SCIENCE,TECHNOLOGY, AND RELIGION TODAY

Abstract. Contemporary tensions between science and religion cannot simply be seen as a manifestation of an eternal tension between reason and revelation. Instead, the modern secular, including science and technology, needs to be seen as a distinctive historical phenomenon, produced and still radically conditioned by the religious history of the West. Clashes between religion and science thus ought to be seen fundamentally as part of a dialogue that is internal to Western religious history. While largely agreeing with Caiazza's account of the “magical” understanding of technology, I suggest that this needs to be seen as part of a more fundamental drift in religion and culture away from canonical meanings to more “indexical,” pragmatic ones—but also that technology is still inflected by soteriological meanings that were coded into modern technology at its very inception in the early modern period. I conclude by arguing that a recognition of science and technology's grounding in Western religious history can make possible a more fundamental encounter with religion.     

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.     

Religious experience,religious orientation and schizotypy

The present study examined the relationship between religious orientation and schizotypy, with the prediction that intrinsic religiosity would be negatively associated with schizotypy, and religious experience and extrinsic religiosity would be positively associated with schizotypy. A total of 308 UK adults (132 men; 176 women) completed measures of religious experience, intrinsic orientation towards religion, extrinsic orientation towards religion, schizotypal personality traits and borderline personality. Though the present findings also suggest that the significant relationships between religiosity and schizotypy traits are fragmented, particularly by sex, the findings are consistent with theory that an intrinsic orientation towards religion is associated with lower levels of schizotypy, and religious experience and an extrinsic orientation towards religion is associated with higher levels of schizotypy.     

Religion,Religious Tradition,and Nationalism: Jewish Revival in Poland and “Religious Heritage” in Québec

This article uses and develops Martin Riesebrodt's distinction between religion and religious tradition to shed light on the making of various articulations of religious identities and political projects. Based on extensive research on the Polish and Québécois cases, I show how social and state actors in these societies reactivate past religious traditions to respond to current social transformations and articulate societal projects and advance political agendas in the present. In both cases, religion and religious tradition are juxtaposed to articulate new national identities or fortify older ones, and to respond more specifically to the challenges posed by “pluralism.” I suggest that sociologists who work at the intersection of religion and politics can contribute to our understanding of the various registers through which religion, religious action, and religious tradition are rendered meaningful to social actors, used for different goals (religious and not) and transformed in the process.     

PRAGMATISM,REALISM, AND RELIGION

Pragmatism is often thought to be incompatible with realism, the view that there are knowable mind‐independent facts, objects, or properties. In this article, I show that there are, in fact, realist versions of pragmatism and argue that a realist pragmatism of the right sort can make important contributions to such fields as religious ethics and philosophy of religion. Using William James's pragmatism as my primary example, I show (1) that James defended realist and pluralist views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion, and (2) that these views not only cohere with his pragmatism but indeed are basic to it. After arguing that James's pragmatism provides a credible and useful approach to a number of basic philosophical and religious issues, I conclude by reflecting on some ways in which we can apply and potentially improve James's views in the study of religion.     

Religious Non-involvement Among African Americans, Black Caribbeans and Non-hispanic Whites: Findings from the National Survey of American Life

This study examines the association between race/ethnicity, socio-demographic characteristics, and religious non-involvement among a national sample of African Americans, Black Caribbeans and Non-Hispanic Whites. The relationship between religious non-involvement and selected measures of religious participation, spirituality, religious coping is also examined. The study utilizes data from a national multi-stage probability sample, the National Survey of American Life (n = 6,082). Very few individuals, <1 out of 20 respondents, both never attended religious services and have no current denomination. Overall, <8 % have never attended religious services since the age of 18. Both African Americans and Black Caribbeans were significantly less likely than non-Hispanic Whites to report never attending religious services and not having a current denomination. The greater reliance upon religious institutions for support and guidance among African Americans and Black Caribbean Americans relative to Non-Hispanic Whites may help explain the importance of race in predicting religious non-involvement. Women, married persons, Southerners, and the more highly educated are significantly more likely to be involved in religion. Finally, this study indicates that the religiously non-involved are less likely than others to participate in religious activities, to identify as spiritual, and to rely upon religion to cope with trying circumstances. Nonetheless, even respondents who never attend religious services and do not have a denomination still report some level of religious participation along with relatively high levels of religious coping. We posit that religious non-involvement is less indicative of apostasy, but rather likely reflects a critique of organized religion.     

Some reflections on spirituality,religion and mental health

For both religion and psychiatry context is becoming more important. Object relations theory, and especially the concept of a transitional object, may be a means of linking religious thinking and psychoanalysis together. The distinction between religion and spirituality is important, though not absolute. Two factors emerge from this engagement: 1) critical questioning at the boundary of each discipline; and 2) both spirituality and mental health are related to life in a specific society. The link between religion and irrational behaviour is important, religion being a primary means of acknowledging the irrational facets of everyday life. But delusion must not be confused with illusion: between these two imagination, art and religion flourish. Each of these is dangerous, since they connect the ‘normal’ with the ‘riskily marginal’. In a multicultural society behaviour which may be acceptable in one context may in another be regarded as a sign of illness. This is particularly true of religious behaviour. Three key issues are examined: 1) the social function of spirituality and religion; 2) the idea of personal wholeness; and 3) the link between external and internal validation of the individual's spirituality. The boundary between psychotic and religious behaviour is a difficult one to discern. Yet neither medical nor spiritual explanations alone seem sufficient. There is a complementary mapping of the complications of human experience.     

The Enduring Influence of Religion on Senators’ Legislative Behavior

Does a senator's personal religion influence their legislative behavior in the Senate? To date, empirical research has answered this question only using senators’ religious traditions, while more concurrent work implies that religion should be measured as a multifaceted phenomenon. This study tests this proposition by compiling a unique data set of senators’ religion, conceptualized and measured by three different elements—belonging, beliefs, and behavior. The study estimates the association between these three religious facets and senators’ legislative behavior on economic, social, and foreign policy issues, while controlling for their constituencies’ political and religious preferences. It finds that religious beliefs are a strong predictor of senators’ legislative behavior, while religious tradition and behavior are mostly not. Furthermore, it finds that religious beliefs are associated with legislative behavior across a wide array of policy areas and are not confined to sociocultural issues.     

The rise of the nones and the changing relationships between identity,belief, and behavior

ABSTRACT

One of the more remarkable trends of the past 30 years is the dramatic rise of individuals who do not identify with any religious tradition. While this trend has been well documented, some of the underlying dynamics and consequences have not been fully appreciated or explicated. We examine the General Social Survey in the period from 1972 to 2014 to examine how the increase in the ‘nones’ is tied to changes in the strength of religious identity among US adults and, in turn, how the rise of the nones has affected the relationships between religious identity, religious belief, and religious behavior. In particular, we show that, as the percentage of US adults who do not identify with a religion has grown, the correlations between religious identification, belief, and behavior have increased. In short, the rise of the nones has led to more congruence between measures of religion.     

ATHENS,JERUSALEM, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TECHNO‐SECULARISM

Abstract. Western civilization historically has tried to balance secular knowledge with revealed religion. Science is the modern world's version of secular knowledge and resists the kind of integration achieved by Augustine and Aquinas. Managing the conflict between religion and evolution by containing them in separate “frames,” as Stephen J. Gould suggested, does not resolve the issue. Science may have displaced religion from the public square, but the traditional science‐religion conflict has become threadbare in intellectual terms. Scientific theories have become increasingly abstract, and science has been attacked from the left as a source of objective knowledge. However, technology, not science, has displaced religious belief, a phenomenon I call techno‐secularism. Robert Coles's suggestion that secularism is a form of doubt inevitably attached to religious belief, and William James's reduction of religious experiences to psychological states, evaluating them according to their “cash value,” are unhelpful. Technology enables us to remake our environment according to our wishes and has become a kind of magic that replaces not just revealed religion but also theoretical science. Techno‐secularism has an ethical vision that focuses on healthful living, self‐fulfillment, and avoiding the struggles of human life and the inevitability of death.