Feed the Church,starve the party? Church-state relations and religious political mobilisation in 21 Catholic-majority countries

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines the effects of state religion policy on religious political mobilisation, focusing on the case of the Catholic Church in the post-Cold War era. Catholicism remains politically salient in most Catholic-majority societies, but the presence and success of parties that explicitly mobilise Catholicism in the electoral arena varies enormously. In addition, Catholic-majority countries display a wide variety of institutional arrangements governing the relationship between religion and state. This contribution presents a theoretical framework for analysing the effect of these institutions on the performance of political parties that seek to mobilise religion. Relying on a dataset that covers 137 elections in 21 Catholic-majority countries as well as key measures from the Religion and State (RAS) dataset, this contribution shows that countries with higher levels of state regulation of religion and friendlier religion-state relations are more likely to host parties that mobilise religion; it also suggests that funding for the Catholic Church may constrain such parties.     

Still Opting for the Poor: The Brazilian Catholic Church and the National Movement of the Street Population

Have rumors of the demise of liberation theology been greatly exaggerated? There is a prevailing belief among scholars and other observers that the Latin American Catholic Church has withdrawn from the preferential option for the poor, which had encouraged a combination of faith and activism for social justice. This article challenges that belief by means of qualitative data gathered during 8 months in Brazil that provide evidence of close connections between the Pastoral of the Street, a church program that mobilizes homeless people, and the National Movement of the Street Population (MNPR). The principal data came from 42 interviews with homeless or formerly homeless people, movement leaders, and religious sisters and lay workers in the pastoral program. Participant observation and documentary research supplemented the interviews. The findings demonstrate that the Pastoral of the Street helped to create the MNPR and continues to provide it with material and ideological support.     

Internal Reformation Within the Contemporary Coptic Imagined Community: The Sunday School Movement and Mechanisms of Minority Survival

Abstract

With the centennial jubilee of the Sunday School Movement (SSM) occurring in 2018, this article explores two main questions: what are the main features of the Coptic community as imagined by the leaders of the SSM? And what is the nature of the relationship between “Coptic” Christian and “national Egyptian” identities within the dominant discourse of the SSM? The article argues that the contemporary Coptic identity, as reconstituted by the SSM, helps the Coptic community to survive as a vertical ethnie. The new Coptic identity is rooted in and relies upon the exclusive use of demotic symbols and narratives. Thus equipped, modern Copts perceive themselves as part of an imagined spiritual community within the wider Egyptian community. Indeed, this article argues that the SSM’s discourse presents a unique ‘marble cake’ model wherein religious and national identities are both present. By portraying Coptism as the area of interplay between Christianity and Egyptian-ness, the SSM blends “biological” and “cultural-ideological” modes of myth-making. Accordingly, to identify as Copt becomes equivalent to identifying as Egyptian.     

The neural substrate of schadenfreude: The effects of competition level changes on the processing of pain in others

Schadenfreude is defined as the joy individuals feel as a result of the pain felt by opposing group members. In order to experience schadenfreude, it is not enough for the individual who is suffering to be a member of the opposing group, but also the perceived competitiveness level of the opposing group must be high. Although this basic assumption of Schadenfreude's competitiveness is confirmed by self-report-based techniques, there is no study in the literature addressing the subject's neural bases. The aim of this study is to test the competitiveness assumptions of schadenfreude using the electroencephalography-based ERP method. For this purpose, EEG recordings were taken of 40 individuals who expressed themselves as belonging to a political party while watching the outgroup and ingroup party members in pain. Perception of competition levels of outgroup and ingroup members were manipulated during the study. The results show that pain empathy for the suffering individuals changes in relation to the competition level. Particularly related changes have been observed in late ERP components known to be related to consciousness. In this context, our study contributes to the literature as the first confirmation of the assumptions of schadenfreude competitiveness level by neuroscientific methodology.     

Where Have All the Proportionalists Gone?

Interest in proportionalism as an important trend in Catholic moral theology seems to have faded in the recent decade. This has led some to view it as a movement that was somehow defeated. I suggest that proportionalism's influence can still be seen in contemporary Catholic ethics, most noticeably in the current interest in virtue ethics, casuistry, and feminist ethics. I argue that proportionalism encouraged a reappraisal of the methodology for evaluating moral action in a direction that was more hospitable to concerns about the particularity and context of the agent.