Sacred Canopies or Religious Markets? The Effect of County-Level Religious Diversity on Later Changes in Religious Involvement

Secularization theories, such as Berger's Sacred Canopy argument, hold that religious diversity leads to a decline in religious participation. Religious market models (e.g., Finke and Stark) argue the opposite. Voas, Olson, and Crockett found that nearly all of the vast research exploring this important question prior to 2002 was flawed due to a previously unrecognized noncausal statistical relationship between measures of religious diversity and measures of religious participation. Since 2002, this methodological issue has largely stymied research on this important topic. We first describe how, following Voas et al.’s recommendations, longitudinal models can overcome these problems. We then apply these methods to data measuring the religious composition of all U.S. counties found in the Religious Congregations and Membership Studies from 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Using multilevel longitudinal regression models, we find that greater county-level religious diversity is followed by later declines in county-level religious participation rates. The negative effect size of religious diversity is large and robust to changes in the control variables and different methods of measuring religious diversity.     

Buddhists’ Religious and Health Practices

A web survey of Buddhists’ religious practices and beliefs, and health history and practices was conducted with 886 Buddhist respondents. Eighty-two percent were residents of the USA. Ninety-nine percent practiced Buddhist meditation and 70% had attended a formal retreat for intensive meditation practice. Eighty-six percent were converts to Buddhism and had been a Buddhist for a median of 9 years. Sixty-eight percent of respondents rated their health as very good or excellent. A one-point increase on a Buddhist Devoutness Index was associated with a 15% increase in the odds of being a non-smoker and an 11% increase in the odds of being in good to excellent health.     

Does a Nation's Religious Composition Affect Generalized Trust? The Role of Religious Heterogeneity and the Percent Religious

Is religion more of an integrative or a divisive force in contemporary societies? We use multilevel analyses of World Values Survey data from 77,409 individuals in 69 countries to examine how both the percent of the population that is religious and the religious heterogeneity of a country are related to generalized social trust, the willingness of individuals to trust “most people.” When we first examine the main effects of the percent religious and religious heterogeneity we find no evidence that either variable is related to trust in the ways predicted by major theories. However, the combination of these two variables has a huge negative relationship with trust. Countries that are both highly religious and religiously heterogeneous (diverse) have, on average, levels of trust that are only half the average levels of countries with other combinations of these two variables. The results have important implications for understanding the role of religion in modern societies.     

Are Risk‐Taking Persons Less Religious? Risk Preference,Religious Affiliation,and Religious Participation in Taiwan

The "risk-preference" thesis is a controversial topic in the sociology of religion. Thus far, cross-cultural empirical research on risk preference and religiosity has been meager. This study attempts to replicate Miller's ( Miller, Alan S. 2000 . Going to hell in Asia: The relationship between risk and religion in a cross cultural setting.   Review of Religious Research 42(1):5–18) study for Taiwanese society, using data from the 2007 Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS). Logistic regression results show that for the Taiwanese (1) risk preference has little estimated net effect on religious affiliation, but (2) the relationship between risk preference and frequency of religious participation is statistically significant.     

Religious Resources or Differential Returns? Early Religious Socialization and Declining Attendance in Emerging Adulthood

The transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood is usually accompanied by a decline in religious participation. This article examines why such decline occurs at different rates across major Christian traditions and whether this variation can be explained by early socialization factors. Using data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 1,879), I examine the effects of parental religiosity, church support, religious education, and youth group involvement on the decline in attendance five years later. Results show that these socialization processes adequately explain why attendance declines at different rates across religious traditions. However, these socialization factors do not have the same effect across traditions and often yield differential returns for attendance outcomes. These findings also suggest that comparisons across religious traditions can resolve the “channeling hypothesis” debate about whether parental influence on an offspring's future religiosity is primarily direct or indirect.     

Response to Gracia Fay Ellwood's “Religious Experience,Religious Worldviews,and Near-Death Studies”

After a brief glance at religious wars that now embroil the field of near-death studies, I respond to Gracia Fay Ellwood's commentary on Light & Death (Sabom, 1998), in which she alleges serious problems with my discussion of Raymond Moody's research, my views on the psychic and the occult, my use of the Bible as an authoritative document, my research methodology, and my definition of Christianity.     

Religious outlook and students’ attitudes toward the environment

This paper reports the results of a survey study on attitudes towards religion and the environment, carried out with 1000 undergraduate students enrolled in two universities in Bangkok and Chiangmai, Thailand. There is a positive relationship between students’ religious outlook and their attitudes towards the environment, a finding that underlines the educational significance of general epistemological stances.     

Teaching or Preaching—Max Charlesworth and Religious Education

In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states.     

What is Metaphysics? Postmodern Hermeneutics and Religious Education

This paper will be attempting to do three things: (i) briefly identify the metaphysical preoccupations of modern and contemporary postmodern thinking; (ii) clarify the position of metaphysics in relation to issues in religious education, here incorporating spirituality in education; and (Hi) thereby establish a place for metaphysics within current educational debate.     

Markets and The Needy: Organ Sales or Aid?

As organ shortages have become more accute, support for a market in organs has steadily increased. Whilst many have argued for such a market, it is Gerald Dworkin who most persuasively defends its ethics. As Dworkin points out, there are two possibilities here--a futures market and a current market. I follow Dworkin in focusing on a current market in the sale of organs from living donors, as this is generally considered to be the most difficult to justify. One of the most pressing concerns here is that such a market will exploit the poor. I outline this concern and scrutinize Dworkin's and others' rejection of it. Briefly, I argue that the arguments Dworkin employs for allowing the poor to sell their organs fail, and in fact better support an argument for increasing aid to the needy.     

“Heart Trouble” and Religious Involvement among Older White Men and Women

Objective Few studies examine how older adults’ health status affects spiritual and religious involvement. This study examined the effects of gender and poor cardiac health on older adults’ ends, means, and quest religious motivations and frequency of private devotion. Method Longitudinal data (12 months between the T₁ and T₂ interviews) with 182 older adults sampled from a Northeast city were used to examine in a multivariate analysis of covariance whether gender and the existence of cardiac health problems at T₁ affected older adults’ spiritual and religious involvement at T₂. Findings A gender and cardiac health condition interaction showed older men with heart trouble had more changes in religious involvement—they engaged in more religious doubt, prayed less, and were not as intrinsically oriented at T₂. Discussion The findings strongly suggest that older men with heart trouble may maintain a masculine style and shun seeking divine help.     

Moral Representativeness and Satisfaction with One’s Religious Community

Belonging to a community of believers represents a basic component of most religions. According to a social-functional account of religion, a primary function of religious belief is to bind individuals to these types of cooperative, moral groups. However, this framework has yet to investigate what factors are associated with being more or less “bound” to a particular community. Although previous research has found that being very representative of the congregation in terms of religious belief (e.g., fundamentalism) is an important factor, the social-functional account suggests that being representative of the binding moral beliefs of the community should mediate this effect. In this study, participants from 23 churches completed measures assessing religious and moral beliefs. Analyses revealed that moral representativeness was associated with greater satisfaction with one’s faith community, above and beyond theological belief. Moreover, representativeness in terms of binding moral foundations mediated the relationship between satisfaction and representativeness in terms of religious fundamentalism.     

Shari’a Reasoning and the Justice of Religious War

Most contemporary advocates of the Just War Tradition (JWT) condemn religious war. If they are correct, waging war should be a secular affair, fully justifiable on non-religious grounds. This secularized understanding of the JWT draws on normative commitments that lead many political theorists to advocate in favor of a secularized politics in western liberal polities. As a matter of historical fact and contemporary commitment, many Muslims have rejected the secularized conception of the morality of war found in contemporary conceptions of the JWT. I argue that, given appropriate distinctions between relevantly different kinds of religious war, advocates of the JWT have excellent reason to rethink their antipathy to religious war. Specifically, I argue that distinct kinds of religious war can enjoy differential normative standing and that there is no compelling reason to believe that religiously justified wars must be waged in a morally improper manner, viz., in a way that violates the JWT's in bello requirements.     

Teaching Theology and Religious Studies Is There A Problem?

This paper discusses a problem which is largely, though not exclusively, peculiar to the older universities in Great Britain where, in recent years, many long-established departments of Christian theology have expanded their area of responsibility to include religious studies. However, the author believes that what he has to say is not without relevance to universities and colleges outside of Great Britain which have inherited and continue to maintain a confessional bias in teaching theology and religion.     

Attachment and Religious Beliefs––Attachment Styles in Evangelical Christians

Attachment styles, interpersonal problems, and personality variables were identified in male members of two German charismatic Christian congregations. To assess attachment styles and interpersonal relations, a semi-structured attachment interview was applied. In addition, self report measures focusing on aspects of self concept, self regulation, and interpersonal problems were used and analysed in relation to attachment styles. Significant differences were found between the investigated group and corresponding norm samples in a number of measures related to interpersonal problems, self regulation, and self concept. Focussing on attachment styles, the results are compared with findings of the literature and discussed accordingly. Dr Ross is a clinical psychologist working mainly in the field of forensic psychology and psychotherapy. At the University of Ulm, Germany, he holds the position of a research fellow. He studied psychology and clinical psychology at the Universities of Freiburg, Germany, and Edinburgh, Scotland. His main research interests are: offender treatment and rehabilitation, risk assessment and risk prediction, migration studies, human attachment, the psychology of religion. He has been involved in a large scale thematic network study funded by the European Commission and devised or participated various other research projects on all abovementioned research areas.     

Religious Attendance and Social Support: Integration or Selection?

Although numerous studies have shown that religious attendance is associated with greater social support, concerns remain about selection into religious attendance and more supportive relationships. In this paper, we employ data collected from the 2011 Miami-Dade Health Survey (n?=?444) to assess the extent to which the association between religious attendance and social support is due to selection processes related to personality, health behavior, and health status. In our multinomial logistic regression of attendance, we find that the odds of weekly attendance are increased by extraversion and reduced by smoking. We also observe that religious attendance does not vary according to level of agreeableness, self-esteem, alcohol consumption, psychological distress, or physical health. In our regression of support, we find that respondents who attend religious services weekly or more tend to report more social support than respondents who never attend. This association persisted with adjustments for age, gender, race, immigrant status, interview language, education, employment status, household income, financial strain, marital status (parent and respondent), the presence of children, family difficulties, personality (agreeableness, extroversion, and self-esteem), health behavior (smoking, binge drinking, and substance use), and health status (psychological distress, activity limitations, and overall physical health). Across models, the association between weekly attendance and social support is attenuated by no more than 7%. This attenuation is due to personality (extraversion), not health behavior or health status. We conclude that the association between religious attendance and social support is primarily driven by integration processes rather than any selection processes we have considered.

     

Religious Belief and Practice in Urban China 1995–2005

Drawing on relevant data from surveys conducted in 1995 and 2005, this article explores the perceptible changes in religious beliefs and practices among the Han Chinese in urban areas during this ten-year period. Through analysing the survey data, the article attempts to examine these changes—the increasing awareness of religious others and the more revealing interaction between change and continuity—in the context of greater changes of society, economy, and politics. It concludes that, while commercialism and rationalism continue to dominate the ideological sky of urban China, spiritual beliefs and practices in various forms have also gained a strong footing in contemporary society and demonstrate a complex religiosity.