“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.     

驳"王弼以老解《易》论"

本文反对王弼以老庄思想解释<周易>这一传统观点,因为他除了用老庄道家思想解释<周易>之外,王弼也运用儒家思想来解释<周易>,而且运用儒家思想解释的内容大于运用道家思想解释的内容.本文分析了王弼为何同时运用儒家和道家思想解易的原因,并提出<周易注>的绝大多数内容是以<易传>的思想和汉代的注易方法来解释<周易>.     

Spiritual Issues in Counseling: What Do Students Perceive They Are Being Taught?

Client religious and spiritual practices have recently emerged as beneficial to both mental and physical health. However, graduates of counseling programs indicate that they have not been adequately trained to address religious and spiritual issues with clients. This exploratory study focused on the perceptions of counselors‐in‐training regarding what messages they received about these issues during their training programs, as well as their potential behaviors when working with clients. Results indicated that potential behaviors are not always consistent with what they are taught. Implications for training and future research are discussed.     

The Middle Passage,Trauma and the Tragic Re-Imagination of African American Theology

African American Christian consciousness developed in response to the traumatic field in which African American subjectivity took shape. The expression of the faith in the African American tradition is fundamentally tragic as a consequence. The Middle Passage is the existential and symbolic nodal point of this experience. There is a sense in which African Americans remain very much on the water; marginalized and suspended between worlds. There is a deeper sense in which the African American situation and response reflects the condition of modernity and post-modernity in the sense that it is hardly more than modernity becoming conscious of itself. A thorough examination and exploration of its significance is essential to developing a theology that adequately expresses African American Christian consciousness. This paper is an attempt to lay out, what I think, are some of the basic components of the experience and the bare outlines or orientation of such a theology grounded in it.     

Social Traditionalism and Economic Conservatism: Two Conservative Political Ideologies in the United States

Abstract

The authors surveyed by telephone a random sample of voters in the 1996 presidential election from the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area of Muncie, IN (“Middletown”; R. Lynd & H. Lynd, 1929) to test a model describing the nature of 2 conservative political ideologies–social traditionalism and economic conservatism. The model, based on functions of attitudes theory, predicted (a) that the 2 political ideologies would appeal to 2 rather distinct constituency groups–the former, to conservative Protestants; the latter, to people of higher incomes–and (b) that social traditionalists would be more dogmatic and economic conservatives would be more open-minded in their respective views. The findings were consistent with those predictions.     

Attitudes of Parents,Students, and Mental Hygien-Ists toward Children's Behavior

ABSTRACT

The literature on the relationship between religiosity and prejudice has shown inconsistent findings. We argue that it is necessary to distinguish between different types of religiosity and that its relationship with prejudice is mediated by different values. Results of two studies conducted in Italy show that identified religiosity and introjected religiosity predict different levels of prejudice toward Muslim immigrants. Moreover, the negative relationship between identified religiosity and prejudice was mediated by prosocial values, whereas valuing conformity mediated the positive relationship between introjected religiosity and prejudice. The results show that it is possible to better understand the relationship between religiosity and prejudice by disentangling the different ways of being religious.     

From Mission Theology Towards an Intercultural Theology—The German Way

The rather young theological discipline of missiology is in a process of transition. Against the backdrop of a shift in gravity of the global church's geographical centre, and considering the rising number of contextual theologies and Christianities, as well as a continuously bad reputation of mission in the Western world, the discourse has shifted and is focusing on the term “intercultural theology.” Will “intercultural theology” replace “missiology,” and how important is the issue of mission in this debate?     

Using census data in the management of religious diversity: an Australian case study

Abstract

Mapping and measuring religious diversity has become critical to the management of interreligious relations in the 21st century. The data about religious identification provided by the Australian census since the formation of Federal Government in Australia, and prior to that in the Colonies, has provided detailed information about the extent of and changes in religious diversity in the nation and in particular cities. Because the census also provides very detailed information about where people of different religions live, it can provide information about the extent to which religious groups are residentially segregated, a factor which affects how people of different religions relate to each other. The methodological issues related to measuring diversity are discussed and the utility in urban contexts of a ‘dissimilarity scale’ is demonstrated. The unique contribution of census data to the mapping and management of religious diversity in Australia is presented.     

To Love or Hate Thy Neighbor: The Role of Authoritarianism and Traditionalism in Explaining the Link Between Fundamentalism and Racial Prejudice

Fundamentalism is consistently related to racial prejudice (Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010), yet the mechanisms for this relationship are unclear. We identify two core values of fundamentalism, authoritarianism and traditionalism, that independently contribute to the fundamentalism‐racial prejudice relationship. We also contextualize the fundamentalism‐racial prejudice relationship by suggesting that fundamentalists may show prejudice based on conceptions of African Americans as violating values but show tolerance when prejudice is less justifiable. These ideas are tested and confirmed using three data sets from the American National Election Studies. Across all three samples, fundamentalism is related to increases in symbolic racism but decreases in negative affect towards African Americans, and these relationships are mediated by both authoritarianism and traditionalism.     

EXPLANATORY MODESTY

Although I certainly have differences with some of my commentators, I am grateful for the time, effort, and attention that each has devoted to my book, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. They have helpfully pointed out features of my positions that need clarification and elaboration. I am also grateful to the editor of Zygon, Willem Drees, for this opportunity to undertake that task here.