Latino Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity

Despite the pervasiveness of Catholicism among Latinos, studies reveal an increasing shift toward Protestantism. Examining the relationship between religion and ethnicity, we explore homeland language use as a core ethnic marker using a survey from the Pew Hispanic Center. Results reveal that Catholic Latinos are significantly more likely to use Spanish at home, even after controlling for other key variables. In response, we posit that Latino Catholicism and Protestantism entail significantly different religiosities in both home and host countries that impact Latino ethnic identification and its markers such as language use. Catholicism displays a higher level of inculturation in the sending country and greater overt institutional acceptance of ethnic culture in host countries. Protestantism in Latin America breaks with localized religiosity and traditions, and U.S. Protestant congregations may de‐emphasize ethnic culture in their theologies and worship. Hence, Latino Catholicism acts as a bridge to homelands and reinforces ethnic salience, thereby supporting continued Spanish use at home. In contrast, Protestants embrace a reorienting religiosity that often presides over ethnic identification, decreasing the salience of homeland cultural markers.     

Core and Periphery in American Catholic Identity

Catholicism, like all old religious traditions, contains numerous teachings, rules, devotions, and practices. Catholics today ask themselves what is essential in Catholicism and what is optional. We carried out two surveys of American Catholics, asking them to rate numerous elements as to what is core and what is peripheral. The surveys agreed that sacraments and helping the poor are seen as central, while some specific teachings such as belief that only men can be priests and opposition to the death penalty are peripheral. These findings indicate where Catholics' central commitments lie and what elements of the faith are seen as optional and open to re-thinking.     

Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition1

Holy Catholic Ireland is changing rapidly. Irish Catholics no longer have the same devotion to the Church that their parents had. While institutional affiliation and levels of belief remain high, there has been a decline in practice, particularly in the number going to Mass. This article analyses recent changes in Catholic belief and practice, compares them with trends among other European Catholics, and links them to findings from a qualitative study of Contemporary Irish Identities. The changes in Irish Catholic religiosity can be associated with an ongoing detachment from the institutional church. An orthodox adherence to institutional rules and regulations appears to be giving way to a collective identification with a religious heritage. What was once defined as?á?la carte Catholicism seems to be giving way to a smorgasbord approach in which Catholics not only pick and choose which institutional rules, beliefs, and practices they prefer, but increasingly mix these with ingredients from other religious traditions. These findings suggest a new typology of Irish Catholics.     

Hermeneutics and the Second Vatican Council's Teachings: Establishing Roman Catholic Theological Grounds for Religious Freedoms in Relation to Islam. Continuity or Discontinuity in the Catholic Tradition?

This article examines how the hermeneutical traditions within Roman Catholicism can be employed to address a question regarding Catholic views on the religious freedoms that should be accorded to Islam in any society. The key Catholic documents examined originate from the Second Vatican Council. This particular question was not the focus of the key documents inspected, but those documents can be applied to this question. The first part of the article examines the complex hermeneutics involved in reading Council documents. The second part of the article examines the way in which the ‘Declaration on Religious Liberty’ can be applied to the question of Islamic religious freedoms. The article also attempts to show that the Council's teachings were a real development in Catholic teaching and were also continuous with an earlier stratum of tradition. Attention is given to the serious debate within the Catholic Church regarding the claims made in this document.     

Religious Belonging,Religious Agency,and Women's Autonomy in Mozambique

Women's autonomy has frequently been linked with women's opportunities and investments, such as education, employment, and reproductive control. The association between women's autonomy and religion in the developing world, however, has received less attention, and the few existing studies make comparisons across major religious traditions. In this study, we focus on variations in levels of female decision‐making autonomy within a single religious tradition—Christianity. Using unique survey data from a predominantly Christian area in Mozambique, we devise an autonomy scale and apply it to compare women affiliated with different Christian denominations as well as unaffiliated women. In addition to affiliation, we examine the relationship between autonomy and women's religious agency both within and outside their churches. Multivariate analyses show that women belonging to more liberal religious traditions (such as Catholicism and mainline Protestantism) tend to have higher autonomy levels, regardless of other factors. These results are situated within the cross‐national scholarship on religion and women's empowerment and are interpreted in the context of gendered religious dynamics in Mozambique and similar developing settings.     

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.     

"Official" Doctrine and "Unofficial" Practices: The Negotiation of Catholicism in a Netherlands Community

This article examines the Dutch Catholic Church. It is based on a qualitative ethnographic analysis of a particular Dutch Catholic community. It seeks to demonstrate that despite a decline in the church since the 1960s many Dutch parishioners are becoming active in redefining the church and attempting to revitalize Catholicism, creating democratically organized local communities where laity and local clergy, women and men, work together as equals in negotiating change, but argues that this may involve "unofficial" practices, possibly at odds with "official" church hierarchy controlled doctrine, which may resist acknowledging them and resist change. By examining these issues, the article aims to understand the dialectic and tension between what could be termed "popular" and "orthodox", "private" and "public", beliefs and to examine the constraints or possibilities this may place on the church. In this sense, the article also aims to explore how religion, thought to be vulnerable to recent change encouraging individual independence from social institutions, may negotiate (or reject) new developments. Although challenged, Catholic identity may still be valued and provide individuals with resources for negotiating new developments. However, the success or failure of this may depend on the nature of the struggle for authority and influence between "official" and "unofficial" versions of Catholicism.     

Karl Barth's 'Dialectical Catholicity': Sic et Non

This essay attempts to achieve three things. First, it brings to the foreground an important but largely forgotten conversation partner of Karl Barth's theology: Roman Catholicism, and sketches Barth's critical and constructive engagement of it from his teaching at the University of Muenster (1925–1930) to his late booklet "Ad Limina Apostolorum". Second, it argues that Barth's engagement of Roman Catholicism functions as a crucial moment of his "dialectical catholicity", through which he discursively applies his critical, reflexive principle of "genuine Protestantism". Third, the essay puts forth a critique of Barth's transcendental account of "genuine Protestantism" by drawing on Martin Luther's concrete, ecclesially embodied pneumatology.     

The Ressourcement of Black Catholicism in Cyprian Davis,OSB

Fr. Cyprian Davis, OSB (1930–2015) was a Benedictine monk and the preeminent historian of black Catholicism in the United States. Although he began his scholarly career in the study of medieval monasticism, he brought cultural history methods of the Annales school to bear on black Catholicism. While he is known for his archival work on black Catholicism and spirituality, Davis's work should be understood as ressourcement, a theological retrieval of lost sources of black Catholicism. Cyprian Davis offers an iteration of ressourcement that takes seriously the often-violent rupture that black Catholics experienced. The theological vision that arises out of his historical recovery is one attentive to the experience of division, fragmentation, loss of traditional moorings, alienation from a wider tradition, and rejection by the church.     

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.     

A Response to <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion</Emphasis> from two Perspectives

This review considers the The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion (Rambo and Farhadian 2014) from the perspective of Western counseling practice and its applicability to Eastern religious traditions. The Handbook presents a nuanced approach to conversion that emphasizes its complex and dynamic qualities, providing counselors/pastors with practical perspectives to enhance their understanding of people in various stages of a conversion career. By addressing non-Abrahamic traditions, The Handbook also looks at “conversion” from a wider perspective, raising issues about whether it can legitimately be applied to traditions that do not share Western religious assumptions (such as exclusivity) and religious identity. From both perspectives, The Handbook challenges readers to expand their perspectives and rethink their preconceived notions of religious conversion, especially those assumptions based on Western Protestant interpretation of the story of Paul’s conversion.     

Criticism and Tradition in Popper, Oakeshott and Hayek

ABSTRACT Popper's attitude to traditions is fundamentally rationalistic. He analyses traditions, along with other institutions and practices, in terms of their efficiency in promoting goals which can be specified independently of the traditions themselves. Hayek, by contrast, looks at traditions in terms of their contributions to the survival of the culture in which they are embedded, something whose evaluation may be opaque even to people within the culture. Both these approaches are flawed compared to Oakeshott's insistence that traditions are not goal-oriented, and that goals cannot be specified independently of agents'forms of life. Oakeshott's views constitute a via media between Popperian rationalism and Hayekian anti-rationalism.     

The Religious Origins and Destinations of Individuals Identifying as a Sexual Minority

Religion has been, and continues to be, a source of external hostility and internal struggle for many sexual minorities. This has potential implications for the observed religious origins and current religious affiliations of individuals identifying as a sexual minority. Regarding origins, self-identified sexual minorities might be less likely than heterosexuals to have come from religious traditions that have tended to be hostile to minority sexualities, as individuals raised within those traditions might be hesitant to identify as a sexual minority even if they have same-sex attractions. Regarding destinations, self-identified sexual minorities might be more likely than heterosexuals to switch away from religious traditions that have tended to be hostile to minority sexualities. We examine these expectations using nationally representative survey data from the 2008 to 2014 General Social Surveys. The analysis shows that sexual minorities do not significantly differ from heterosexuals by the religious traditions in which they were raised. Sexual minorities are, however, more likely than heterosexuals to move away from Christian traditions and towards disaffiliation or reaffiliation with “other” traditions that include Judaism, Buddhism, and liberal nontraditional religions such as Unitarian Universalism. For gay and lesbian individuals, these patterns of disaffiliation and reaffiliation can be attributed to higher on average education and lower likelihood of being married and having children; however, these sociodemographic factors do not explain the disaffiliation and reaffiliation of bisexual individuals. Further research should explore the different religious experiences of sexual minority sub-groups.     

Neutrality, Rebirth and Intergenerational Justice

A basic feature of liberal political philosophy is its commitment to religious neut-rality. Contemporary philosophical discussion of intergenerational justice violates this com-mitment, as it proceeds on the basis of controversial metaphysical assumptions. The Contractualist notion of a power imbalance between generations and Derek Parfit's non-identity claims both presuppose that humans are not reborn. Yet belief in rebirth underlies Hindu and Buddhist traditions espoused by millions throughout the world. These traditions clearly constitute what John Rawls dubs "reasonable comprehensive doctrines", and therefore cannot be dismissed by political liberals. In many societies, including the USA, the UK, and India, belief in rebirth exists alongside other traditions, as well as modern Western views. A liberal theory for such societies must be impartial regarding rebirth, and the after-life in general. Two alternatives forms of liberal neutrality are sketched, based on Contractualism and Consequentialism.     

No Other Life: death and Catholicism in the novels of Brian Moore

There is a critical consensus (Dahlie, 1969, 1981; Flood, 1974; O'Donoghue, 1990; Sullivan, 1996) that one theme predominates in Brian Moore's fiction: the literary portrayal of Roman Catholicism. Yet over the past five decades, Moore's attitude to Catholicism, now more ambivalent than openly antagonistic, has changed and developed just as Roman Catholicism, especially post‐Vatican II, has changed and developed. Refining such a literary consensus, this article argues that the literary examination of a metaphysics and theology of death has been central to Moore's portrayal of Catholicism. A critical examination will be provided here of the portrayal of death in a representative sample of Brian Moore's novels before a more detailed focus upon the novel from which this article takes its main title, No Other Life (1993). By way of open conclusion, literary case study will be highlighted as a means of engaging in that interdisciplinary realm where literature and theology examine similar themes. In particular, such interdisciplinary research will be contextualised as part of an international literary‐theological programme from which one volume has arisen and which the present author is currently editing (Gearon, forthcoming).     

Religions in Europe

The breakdown of European society is changing rapidly, particularly in the field of religion. Culture is of vital importance to the presence of religion in all nations. Religions also have exerted a certain degree of political power, thus influencing the economy and other related spheres of life.The different religions in Europe exhibit a variety of attitudes towards religious pluralism. The religious differences between Western and Eastern Europe depend mainly on issues of national identity related to religious adherence.This essay provides an overview of religion and politics, or Church and state, in Europe. It will conclude with some reflections about possible future developments within religious traditions in Europe. New religious communities and religious organisations are reaching different parts of Europe, sometimes very far from their place of origin. Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism) is the most widespread religion in contemporary Europe. Catholic religion is well diffused in Europe, but there are substantial differences in belief, behaviour and practice within different Catholic communities. There are various branches of Orthodoxy in Europe, such as the distinct autocephalous churches. In general Orthodox religion is closely aligned with national culture. Islam is also present in Western countries, and its impact is evident.     

‘The poorest form of theism’: Schopenhauer,Islam and the perils of comparative hermeneutics

Even among Western philosophers open to religious and intellectual traditions of other cultures, such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), the hermeneutic reception of Islam has been highly problematic. In the case of Schopenhauer, we find an interpretation which aligns the Islamic tradition with philosophical themes which met his general rejection, the commitment to theism and the ‘optimism’ characteristic of a teleological view of existence. These themes are ones Schopenhauer finds refuted in his typologically classified cultural/religious complexes of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which espouse either polytheism or atheism and a ‘pessimistic’ orientation. In Schopenhauer's contorted hermeneutic, which considerably distorts all the religions he examines, it is these latter traditions which are ancient ancestors of Christian spirituality and show up Islam along with Judaism to be the religious ‘other’ to Europe. In Schopenhauer's case, we can see the fully tragic outcome of a ‘monological’ stance, a stance which considers alien religious traditions as objects of classification rather than living, vibrant partners which can be engaged with and learned from in dialogue, the tragic outcome so endemic to European Orientalism.     

Multi-religiosity in the Canary Islands: Analysing processes of religious change between continents

This article is made possible by the research program of the group RELICAN (Religions in the Canaries), which is devoted to the study of multi-religiosity in the Canary Islands. The aim of the group is to analyse the different religious components implied in the configuration of the present diversity of the Canarian religious field. In this exposition, the tri-continental geo-strategic position of the Canary Islands is understood to be of critical importance as the islands form an archipelago located near the coast of Africa, but they are closer to Europe from a cultural and political point of view, and they are also closely linked to Ibero-America (and to the whole American continent) in many respects.Christianity is the primary European religious tradition in the Canaries, and it has many faces: Catholicism maintains an undeniably powerful influence but the presence of Protestant churches continues to increase both for foreigners and tourists (mainly from European countries) and also for Spaniards who convert to non-Catholic Christian churches.African religious perspectives have been reinforced as a result of immigration: Islam is the second most prominent religion in the Canaries due to the importance of Moroccan immigration, but also due to the increasing presence of Senegalese, Mauritanian and other Muslim immigrants.The impact of American religious traditions is increasing not only due to immigration from Ibero-America but also because of the influence of Pentecostals, Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and other American (i.e. U.S.) models of being Christian.The problems and challenges that are particular to this field of research are examined and revised in the last part of the article from an analytical perspective that has as its focus the local–global implications of the religious changes taking place in the Canaries.