Ensuring Liberties: Understanding State Restrictions on Religious Freedoms

Promises of religious freedoms have become the standard in national constitutions. Yet, despite these assurances, religious freedoms are routinely denied. Combining new data collections with expanded theoretical explanations, this research explores how dimensions of governance and measures of the religious economy contribute to government restrictions on religion. Consistent with recent work on the judicialization of politics, we find that the absence of an independent judiciary is an important predictor of government restrictions on religious freedoms, whereas free elections and government effectiveness are insignificant in our full models. Consistent with the religious economy theory, we find that social restrictions and government favoritism toward a religion(s) are persistent predictors of the government's restrictions. Although the proportion of the population Muslim holds a strong bivariate association with government restrictions (r = .57), the relationship is reduced to insignificance in our full models. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings.     

Are Religious Women More Traditionalist? A Cross-National Examination of Gender and Religion

Does national context shape the relationship between religious attendance and women's gender ideologies? Although previous studies have examined gender and religion within a single national context (and often in a single faith community), few have done so using a cross-national comparative perspective. This has left a significant gap in our understanding of how gender and religion operate in distinctive national contexts. Relying on survey data collected in 37 countries, this study analyzes how the relationship between religious attendance and women's gender ideologies is conditioned by their country's gender inequality. The findings indicate that while women's religious attendance is, on average, negatively related to egalitarian gender ideologies, this association is conditioned by religious affiliation. The relationship is also contingent on the level of gender inequality experienced, and grows weaker in countries with more prominent gender inequality. This study reveals the mechanisms that contextualize the intersection of gender and religion.     

Religious Heterogamy and the Intergenerational Transmission of Religion in China

In Western societies, religious heterogamy and its effects on religious socialization outcomes have been interpreted through the lens of secularization. How about China, where religion has been resurging in recent decades? Using data from the 2007 Spiritual Life Survey of Chinese Residents, this study shows that despite China's atheist education system and strict religion policies, having at least one religiously affiliated parent is associated with increased religiosity compared to having two nonreligious parents. Whereas religious heterogamy in the West has a secularizing effect on the next generation, religious heterogamy in secular nations, such as China, has a religionizing effect and contributes to religion's rise.     

Good government and the vocation of citizenship: A Lutheran perspective

Martin Luther considered governmental authority to be one of the structures through which God exercises providential care of the created world. Consequently, government and civil society are dimensions of life in which one lives out the divine calling to serve one's neighbors. This theological perspective offers a distinct contribution to discussions of the appropriate role of religion in the public square. God's desire for justice for all is the criterion by which to evaluate specific governments, policies, and officials. The goal of justice provides a common framework within which Christians can work for the common good with those of other faiths and no faith.     

Therapeutic Implications of Religious-Related Emotional Abuse

Religion can play a positive role in preventing all types of abuse. Consequently, it is often difficult to believe that religion or a particular manner of religious awareness can also be conducive to the degradation and humiliation of individuals, and that it can be maneuvered to justify abusive behavior. In this article we discuss the emotional repercussions of religious-related abuse in the family, an aspect that is rarely documented in the field of psychotherapy, but has many negative consequences. Religious-oriented emotional abuse is traceable to several levels of human functioning: the individual's internal level of experiencing themselves, the interpersonal and systemic levels, where the individual enters relationships, as well as within the framework of the individual's relationship with God.     

How Does Religion Promote Forgiveness? Linking Beliefs,Orientations, and Practices

Scholars have long observed that religion and forgiveness are generally positively linked, but it is unclear why this is the case. This article proposes and tests potential mechanisms by which religion promotes forgiveness. Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, I find that holding a collaborative orientation toward God, subscribing to a pervasive role of religion, and believing God forgives are primary factors promoting one's propensity to forgive both oneself and others. These factors have varying influence on interpersonal forgiveness compared to self‐forgiveness and further illuminate the differences between the two processes. My findings demonstrate the importance of analyzing a person's religious beliefs and orientations directly, in addition to examining other dimensions of religion, such as affiliation, frequency of religious activity, and official religious teachings.     

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.     

Cross-National Analysis of the Influence of Cultural Norms and Government Restrictions on the Relationship Between Religion and Well-Being

This study examines the interaction between cultural religious norms and governmental restrictiveness as country-level moderators of the relationship between individual religiousness and well-being, including both happiness and physical health. Data come from five waves of World Values survey data from 221 separate surveys conducted in 88 countries, with data from 317,109 individuals. Three dimensions of individual religiousness were assessed, along with corresponding country-level norms aggregated from these measures. Three-way cross-level interactions were tested to examine whether the extent of government restriction modified the relationship between national religious norms and the individual-level association between religious factors and well-being outcomes. Results supported the hypothesis that self-reported religion is most strongly related to greater happiness and better self-reported health in societies where it is freely and widely practiced. In contrast, religiousness may be harmful when it is relatively deviant, and restrictions of freedom may serve to further exacerbate this effect. These results suggest that the positive association between religion and well-being is not universal, but depends upon the right to express religion freely and the opportunity to practice with like-minded others.     

The Dark Side of Liberalization: How Myanmar's Political and Media Freedoms Are Being Used to Limit Muslim Rights

This article describes how divisive groups have taken advantage of Myanmar's new political and media freedoms to pursue an agenda that will limit the civil and political rights of the country's Muslim population. The article argues that enforcement of the four Protection of Race and Religion Laws will disadvantage Myanmar's already politically marginalized Muslim residents by creating a de facto religious test for full Myanmar citizenship rights. The article examines both the positive and negative aspects of Myanmar's liberalizations, the nature of the ‘Protection of Race and Religion' legislative package and how this will interact with Myanmar's citizenship laws.     

Education of Foreign Children in Japan: Local Versus National Initiatives

Immigration has long been a controversial subject in Japan, with the country’s historic aversion to foreign populations well noted. This article seeks to discuss recent developments in Japanese immigration policy, looking specifically at how both local governments and the national government address education issues for foreign children. Examining the specific case of Kawasaki City’s foreign student educational policies in detail, this article compares local initiatives to national policy developments, arguing that Kawasaki has been a pioneer in many cases and that the national government has ultimately adopted similar resolutions. The national government, for its part, has been slow to take up issues addressing immigrants, trailing more progressive cities like Kawasaki, but has slowly been making efforts to improve foreign student education. In the broader sense, this article argues two additional points: that largely ethnically homogenous countries like Japan are no longer able to completely ignore their immigrant populations and that highly centralized states are moving slowly toward empowering their local governments.     

Measuring Long‐Term Patterns of Political Secularization and Desecularization: Did They Happen or Not?

Political secularization theories have predicted religion's decline in public and political life, and desecularization theories have predicted the reverse trend. However, there is little agreement on the timing of either phenomenon or even their existence. Until now, deep empirical tests of any of these were hampered by lack of historical country‐level data on religious preferences of governments (previously used data sets go back only to 1990). However, the new Government Religious Preference data set (GRP) measures state religion from 2015 back to the 1800s. Using GRP data, this article offers the first long‐term quantitative measurement of political secularization and in doing so, weighs in on competing claims regarding its timing. This article finds strong support that political secularization happened gradually over the long 19th century, accelerated after World War II, and peaked in the 1970s or 1980s. In contrast, the article finds only tepid support for the existence of political desecularization overall.     

Belief in Hell and Parenting Priorities Concerning Child Independence and Obedience: Does Economic Context Matter?

This study examines the ways that belief in hell is associated with parental goals concerning child independence and obedience. Further, it assesses how this association is contingent upon economic circumstances of a nation, reflected by a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Multilevel analyses with data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010-2014) show that belief in hell is associated with a greater likelihood of opposing independence and endorsing obedience. Yet, these observed associations differ across national economic context. Specifically, the negative association between belief in hell and parental endorsement of independence is greater in countries that are more economically developed. Similarly, the positive association between belief in hell and parental endorsement of obedience is greater in countries that are more economically developed. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed regarding the interplay of religion, parental values about child socialization, and social context.     

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.     

Christian Identification and Self‐Reported Depression: Evidence from China

The nexus between religion and mental health in the East has been understudied, where the coexistence of multiple religions calls for scholarly attention to religious identification. This article investigates the impact on self‐reported depression of an individual's identification with Christianity in a non‐Judeo‐Christian and religion‐regulating social setting. Taking advantage of the Chinese General Social Survey 2010, our empirical analyses suggest that people who explicitly identify with Christianity report a significantly higher level of depression compared with both religious nones and self‐claimed Buddhists. In contrast, there is no significant difference in self‐reported depression between religious nones and self‐identified Buddhists. This study supplements current literature on the connection between religious affiliation and mental health with a particular interest in East Asia, suggesting that the consequence on mental health of religious identification is contingent on a religion's social status, and a religion's marginal position may turn religious identification into a detrimental psychological burden.     

“Islam and Woman: Where Tradition Meets Modernity”: History and Interpretations of Islamic Women's Status

The status of Islamic women varies in different Muslim countries, which interpret Islamic religion and law differently, especially with regard to their attitudes toward women. Most of these Islamic countries have specific beliefs about women and have restrictions concerning them. Gender stereotypes of Islamic women have their origin in the evolution of the Muslim religion. This is similar to the early development of many other religions and how the gender stereotypes of women developed along with the development of these religions. This paper describes the meaning of being a Muslim and the doctrine of the Qur'an, which came from the revelations to Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet about 610 C.E. During Muhammad's life, he was sympathetic toward women and was concerned about their equal treatment, including full religious responsibility. Although the restrictions were still there on women, their treatment was much more favorable than after Muhammad's death. Conditions for women under Muhammad's successors became worse. Attitudes and perceptions about women were even more negative. Women were isolated, secluded, forced to pray at home—not in the mosque, and exclusion was put into practice. Women were essentially removed from most sectors of society. Veiling of women included covering specific parts of their body to prevent enticing men. Women's status declined rapidly and any freedoms they had were essentially abolished. And as Islam spread across the centuries, these restrictions and practices were adopted, amended, or made more extreme by most if not all Muslim countries and have continued until the present time. The current status of women in Islamic countries is described along with the intensified discussions and debates concerning women, presently taking place. In some states, bills and laws were passed to improve conditions of women but some have already been revoked. In other countries, new restrictions have been proposed. Nevertheless, Islamic women and women's groups are continuing the struggle for their rights. This struggle, amidst the continuing turmoil in the Middle East and the increase in fundamentalist groups, has unfortunately made the final outcome for women yet to be decided.     

Discussions about indigenous,national and transnational Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Transnational Islam is increasingly presented in the Russian political rhetoric as a security threat. Therefore, Russian politicians and authorities attempt to support indigenous or national forms of Islam. Similar policies are implemented in several western European countries. Yet they tend to disregard the heterogeneity of the Muslim community, they create exclusions and they are often conceived as imposing outside evaluations and interpretations on Islam. This contribution analyses initiatives intended to develop a national Islam in post-Soviet Russia. While the aims, methods and problems in different countries are often quite similar, the values and norms underlying these initiatives vary and reflect the societies from which they emerge. This contribution argues that since the 1990s, the changes in the political line of the Kremlin have impacted the project for a ‘national’ Islam by placing less emphasis on liberal values and more emphasis on adherence to loyalism and political conservatism.     

Identification with Religion: Cross‐National Evidence from a Social Psychological Perspective

Why is religion a more central social identity for some people than for others? Previous studies focus on explaining individual differences in religious affiliation and religiosity, often using the term “identification” in reference to these concepts. Yet, few scholars operationalize—let alone attempt to explain—identification with religion in social psychological terms, i.e., as a construct that captures the subjective psychological centrality of one's religious identity. After underscoring the benefits of exploring religious identification using cross‐national data, we employ an original data set composed of nationally representative surveys in three European countries to model religious identification in two ways: importance (independent strength of attachment) and prominence (prioritization of one's religious identity relative to the others one holds). We document substantial variation in the degree to which individuals define themselves on the basis of their religious identity. We then test predictions drawn from existing theories to model these two measures. Our results extend current understandings of what shapes psychological attachment to religion and raise new questions for future theorization and analysis.     

Distinctive national patterns of career motivation(123)

The possible existence and stability of different national patterns of career-values in eight countries was tested by administering an Occupational Values Inventory to 6,400 urban children in seven of the countries in 1965, and to a sample of 3,600 in 1969. The samples were stratified by age (10 and 14), sex and socioeconomic status (upper-middle and upper-lower). A four-way analysis of variance revealed distinctive national profiles which were stable across the two samples except for some changes in three countries. Each country's value profile is briefly described and possible relations to different national patterns of economic growth are discussed.     

The “New Cognitive Science of Religion” and Religious Pluralism

Abstract : The “new cognitive science of religion” (Lawson, McCauley, Boyer, Sperber, Tremlin, Pysiäinen, Hinde) finds that certain of the brian's “inference systems” press us to postulate gods or other supernatural agents where knowledge and control are lacking. In this article we explore the implications of this new “explanatory” appraoch for Christian theology, pluralism, and worship life.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM OR THEOLOGICAL HUMANISM?

Loyal Rue's book Religion Is Not About God (2005) is a polemic for religious naturalism. In it Rue sets up a general model of religion based on principles of scientific materialism, tests his model against five historical religions, and speculates on the future of religion. He claims that in the West, modern science and pluralism threaten the moral authority of Christianity in facing the environmental crisis, which is fueled by a rival metareligion, consumerism. He concludes that an ecological Doomsday is likely, following which a new religion will arise: religious naturalism. I challenge Rue's account at three levels, from the standpoint of theological humanism. First, as a philosopher of religion, Rue cannot carry through his scientific materialist explanation of religion. The first‐person experience of consciousness escapes such an account. Second, as a myth maker, Rue unifies the evolutionary epic retrospectively, where the evidence is thin, and projects the future overconfidently. Third, as a theologian, Rue is wrong to equate God and Nature.