Discussing Racial Justice in Light of 2016: Black Lives Matter,a Trump Presidency,and the Continued Struggle for Justice

The broad fields of ethical reflection on racialization, racial justice, black liberation theology, and queer theology of color must come to terms with the year 2016, which can be framed on one side with the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other side with a presidential election cycle in which racism and racial justice played particularly salient roles. Against this backdrop, this book discussion looks at recent literature on racial justice asking three questions. How does historical consciousness shape contemporary ethical thought on racial justice? In what ways do the intersectionalities of gender and sexuality, immigration and transnationality, class, and contemporary culture present particular challenges and new possibilities? And how do the ethical frameworks of religious traditions contribute to the development of public theology for racial justice? The conclusion considers how religious ethics concerned with racial justice does harm or contributes to religiously grounded responses to racial injustice. Reflection on these questions points to the need for ongoing engagement with the black experience—broadly construed and within the context of multiple intersections—in the United States and globally in ethical analysis. However, this in turn makes particular and critical demands on how it is that we are to both teach and read religious ethics and political theology at our institutions, as well as in the churches.     

Religious Involvement and Status-Bridging Social Capital

Is religious involvement positively associated with having influential friends or is religious involvement unrelated to this kind of social capital? Building on the distinction between the “bonding” and “bridging” aspects of social capital, I distinguish two kinds of bridging social capital—identity‐bridging and status‐bridging—that have been a source of terminological confusion. I examine the relationship between religious involvement and status‐bridging social capital by analyzing data from a large nationally representative survey of the U.S. adult population that included questions about friendships with elected public officials, corporation executives, scientists, and persons of wealth. The data show that membership in a religious congregation and holding a congregational leadership position are most consistently associated with greater likelihood of having these kinds of friendships. The data also show that frequency of religious attendance is largely unrelated to these measures of social capital and that there are some significant variations among religious traditions and size of congregation.     

Part One: the hermeneutics of modern religious education

Hermeneutical reflection on the nature, process, and scope of understanding tends to flourish whenever standard procedures of interpretation begin to falter. The contemporary study of religion is a case in point: conflicting results reflect a lack of consensus regarding appropriate methods of investigation. As a result, hermeneutics enjoys an increasingly significant role in religious and theological exploration. The discipline of religious education, despite constant wrestling with the ambiguity of religion, has not followed suit: it possesses no developed and sustained tradition of hermeneutical deliberation. This attempt to open up hermeneutical debate within the field of religious education begins by identifying romanticism, post‐modernism and critical realism as three key perspectives within contemporary hermeneutical theory (Bleicher, 1982; Jeanrond, 1994; Mueller‐Vollmer, 1986; Palmer, 1969; Thiselton, 1980, 1992). This article offers an account of the hermeneutics implicit in religious education from 1960 to the present, arguing that the subject has—at considerable cost to its integrity—drawn uncritically on the traditions of romanticism and post‐modernism. A second article will propose a critical theory for religious education rooted in the hermeneutics of critical realism.     

Education,Irreligion, and Non-religion: Evidence from Select Anglophone Census Data

A number of different studies carried out in the twentieth century demonstrated a correlation between higher education and loss of religious belief. However, recent research seems to indicate that contemporary social changes have undermined this previously solid connection: it appears that the irreligious—especially the non-religious who do not self-identify as members of any religion—are no longer substantially more educated than the religious. The decline in higher education represents an important component of an emerging consensus that, in effect, ‘normalizes’ the non-religious. In the present study, this imputed characteristic is challenged by an examination of education data from the national censuses of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.     

Religious Studies Collections and Information Literacy: A Snapshot of a University Library

Academic library collections are maintained to support programs and research at their home institutions. Information literacy, the formal instruction in the use of library resources, has become one of the essential programs in higher education. There is little research that shows how collection development, information literacy, and religious studies programs can be coordinated to produce successful partnerships. The authors, coordinators of Information Literacy and Collection Development, examined the religion collection, including purchase, usage, and circulation statistics. Information literacy courses in relation to the religious studies program were also investigated. After analyzing this data, the authors identified challenges, as they exist at their home institution, which includes a deficiency in both the religion collection and information literacy classes taught for the religious studies program. The authors conclude that much work is needed to advance successful collaborations between libraries and the religious studies departments, and academic librarians will need to examine their own religion collections to address similar challenges.     

Teacher discourse constructing different social positions of pupils in Finnish separative and integrative religious education

Abstract

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom observations and staff interviews from two separate studies. The first study investigates two cases in separative religious education (RE), Islamic and Lutheran. The second study deals with integrative practices of RE. In this study, discourse analysis as a methodological tool is used to examine discursive practices in RE lessons. The study will explore the following question: What kinds of subjectivities are constructed through teachers’ discursive practices in separative and integrative RE? The study will demonstrate that teachers use scientific language to underline the objective nature of RE and use the language of belonging to engage their pupils on a personal level. The former ends up silencing the religious stance, while the latter often excludes those who do not share those specific experiences. The findings reveal some challenges in developing inclusive teaching.     

A Clash of Civilizations? Preferences for Religious Political Leaders in 86 Nations

Huntington claimed that today's major conflicts are most likely to erupt between religiously defined “civilizations,” in particular between Christianity and Islam. Using World Values Surveys from 86 nations, we examine differences between Christians and Muslims in preferences for religious political leaders. The results suggest a marked difference between Muslims and Christians in their attitudes toward religious politicians, with Muslims more favorable by 20 points out of 100. Devoutness, education, degree of government corruption, and status as a formerly Communist state account for the difference. Little support is found for the clash‐of‐civilizations hypothesis. Instead, we find that a clash of individual beliefs—between the devout and the secular—along with enduring differences between the more developed and less developed world explains the difference between Islam and Christianity with regards to preferences for religious political leaders.     

Love Thy Self? How Belief in a Supportive God Shapes Self-Esteem

Previous research raises the question of self-esteem as a fundamental human need, but also indicates that self-esteem is an inherently social product. Is religious involvement influential—and does it depend on beliefs about God? In this research, we examine the associations between multiple dimensions of religious involvement and self-esteem, and specifically focus on the belief in a supportive higher power (“divine support”) as a central influence in this relationship. Analyses of a national probability sample of adults from the US (2004 General Social Survey) reveal two central findings: (1) divine support helps to explain a positive association between religious involvement and self-esteem; (2) divine support strengthens that association. These findings contribute to the growing discussion about beliefs about God—especially as an engaged, involved, and influential force in everyday life—and the association with different components of the self-concept. Our observations underscore the need for more research on the intersection of beliefs and practices in shaping various facets of personal functioning.     

Mindful Virtue, Mindful Reverence

How does one talk about moral thought and moral action as a religious naturalist? We explore this question by considering two human capacities: the capacity for mindfulness, and the capacity for virtue. We suggest that mindfulness is deeply enhanced by an understanding of the scientific worldview and that the four cardinal virtues—courage, fairmindedness, humaneness, and reverence—are rendered coherent by mindful reflection. We focus on the concept of mindful reverence and propose that the mindful reverence elicited by the evolutionary narrative is at the heart of religious naturalism. Religious education, we suggest, entails the cultivation of mindful virtue, in ourselves and in our children.     

Religious Education and Information Technology: Challenges and Problems

Abstract. With advances in information technology, the velocity of information production on the global level has expanded as well. This acceleration has led to the delegitimizing of knowledge, the equating of information with knowledge, and the giving of predominance to information rather than knowledge. This advance has created epistemological challenges for the process of religious education. At the same time, the growth of the internet has created a “rhizomatic space” possessing new methodological characteristics that create problems for religious education. Information technology generates a “hypertextual learning space,” which weakens the place of traditional texts in the learning process, particularly in a traditional religious education process. This hypertextual development is especially problematic for religious education in conservative or fundamentalist traditions. This article analyzes the epistemological, methodological, and contextual problems and challenges posed by information technology for traditional religious education processes.     

Religious involvement, beliefs about God, and the sense of mattering among older adults

Using data from a 2001–2002 sample of adults aged 65 and older living in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, we examine the associations among religious involvement (as measured by the frequency of attendance at religious services and praying), the belief in divine control, and the sense of mattering—a key component of the self-concept. We also assess the extent to which these patterns vary by gender, race, and education. Findings indicate indirect effects of religious attendance on mattering through divine control beliefs and the frequency of social contact. Praying increases mattering indirectly only through divine control beliefs. Moreover, divine control beliefs are more strongly associated with mattering among women, African Americans, and individuals with less education. We discuss the contribution of these findings for theory about the links between religious involvement, beliefs about God, and psychosocial resources, and the influence of core dimensions of social status and stratification.     

Sexual Encounters and Manhood Acts: Evangelicals,Latter‐Day Saints,and Religious Masculinities

The experiences of men in traditional religions are complex, at times inconsistent, and not necessarily the direct result of religious teachings. This article draws from two qualitative case studies to examine the ways in which evangelical and Latter‐Day Saint men understand masculinity and their spiritual beliefs in the context of sexual activity. The authors present two masculine practices—acceptance of sexual rejection and sexual indifference—that allow religious men in this study to simultaneously challenge and uphold the system of hegemonic masculinity that their traditions promote. These findings point to the moments when creative, interpretative work helps religious men to reconcile their experiences with religious expectations and to alleviate the tensions they face in their everyday lives. This article offers new insights into how gender and sexuality studies may be integrated into the sociology of religion.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being in Ghana

This paper uses data from the 2012 Afrobarometer Surveys to empirically investigate the relationship between social capital and subjective well-being (SWB) in Ghana. Two measures of SWB are examined—absolute SWB and relative SWB. Results from OLS and ordered logit regressions are mixed. For instance, while generalized trust has no significant effect on either measure of SWB, interpersonal trust and institutional trust are significantly correlated with both measures. The results also suggest that being satisfied with the way democracy works in Ghana has a positive effect on SWB. Even though membership in a voluntary association is negatively correlated with absolute SWB, it has a positive effect on relative SWB. Finally, members of a religious association tend to report lower relative SWB.     

“Practical Divine Influence”: Socioeconomic Status and Belief in the Prosperity Gospel

The “prosperity gospel” is an understudied feature of the religious landscape of the United States. Little is known about the social patterning of prosperity gospel beliefs. We focus on two core dimensions of socioeconomic status (SES)—education and income—as potential influences. Our analyses of data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's 2006 Survey of Pentecostals produce three findings. First, education and income have negative and mostly independent associations with prosperity gospel beliefs. Second, SES‐based patterns remain after accounting for other attributes of the religious role. Third, while most education‐based differences are contingent upon the attributes of the religious role, these contingencies are not replicated for income‐based differences. These observations reinforce the long‐standing claim that SES plays a pivotal—and complex—role in the social patterning of religious beliefs.     

“Being Religious” or “Being Spiritual” in America: A Zero‐Sum Proposition?

Recent discussions of religious attitudes and behavior tend to suggest—and in a few cases, provide evidence—that Americans are becoming “more spiritual” and “less religious.” What do people mean, however, when they say they are “spiritual” or “religious”? Do Americans see these concepts as definitionally or operationally different? If so, does that difference result in a zero‐sum dynamic between them? In this article, we explore the relationship between “being religious” and “being spiritual” in a national sample of American Protestants and compare our findings to other studies, including Wade Clark Roof’s baby‐boomer research (1993, 2000), 1999 Gallup and 2000 Spirituality and Health polls, and the Zinnbauer et al. (1997) study of religious definitions. In addition to presenting quantitative and qualitative evidence about the way people think about their religious/spiritual identity, the article draws implications about modernity, the distinctiveness of religious change in the recent past, and the deinstitutionalization of religion.     

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.     

“To Teach Them to See”: Teaching Christian Theology in Material Things

Teachers of theology or religious studies readily seek to open their students to the interpretation of theological texts. Do they share a similar readiness to open students to the interpretation of religious symbols and artifacts, the material cultures of religious faiths? Although theological studies have preferred the abstract concept over the material object, any proper understanding of religious faith must admit some form of direct encounter with the constellation of material symbols surrounding that faith. Teaching students to “read” the material symbols of faith does not do away with the need to help them read and interpret the written word, but supplements and deepens humane, scholarly reflection on religious faith. Helping students to see, to interpret what they see, and to re‐view their understanding of the religious symbol or artifact amounts to teaching a visual theology; a helpful and necessary challenge for the teacher of theology or religious studies.