Prosperity Beliefs and Value Orientations: Fueling or Suppressing Entrepreneurial Activity

Entrepreneurs tend to think differently than nonentrepreneurs. Among the differences are values prizing achievement and self‐direction, while downplaying tradition and conformity. Religion is an important correlate to human values. Nevertheless, previous research has failed to explore adequately the connections among religious beliefs, human values, and entrepreneurial outcomes. The purpose of this study is to test these relationships with a focus on beliefs that God rewards the faithful with material prosperity. We test eight hypotheses using a national survey of working adults. Results of a multigroup path model reveal that value orientations of self‐enhancement, openness to change, and conservation are associated with entrepreneurial attitudes of opportunity recognition and risk willingness. These attitudes likewise correlate with new business creation. Prosperity beliefs moderate the impact of values and entrepreneurial attitudes on the likelihood of starting a new business, but prosperity beliefs by themselves show little direct impact on entrepreneurial attitudes or action.     

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.     

西方宗教教育在思想政治教育中的作用

西方国家的宗教教育非常活跃,并行使某种思想政治教育的职能。西方国家的宗教教育在对国民进行道德熏陶和政治控制,培养公民的民族精神和社会信仰,调和阶级关系,维护社会稳定,以及解决公民日常的思想问题和精神困惑等方面起着重要作用,对我国思想政治教育有着借鉴意义。     

Female religious leadership in Switzerland: norms,power, and money

Women’s access to positions of leadership in religions is a highly contested issue in Western societies, both inside religions themselves and in societal discussions of religion. Reliable data on actual female leadership are, however, scarce, especially in European countries and regarding minority religions. This article describes and explains statistically the normative openness of congregations to female leadership as well as the actual existence, position, and financial remuneration of female leaders across the whole range of religious traditions in Switzerland. The study is based on data from the representative National Congregations Study of 2008/2009. Our results show that, despite considerable normative openness, female spiritual and administrative leadership remains scarce in most religious traditions. The highest percentage of female spiritual leaders can be found in the milieu of alternative spirituality, followed by the Reformed congregations. A generally high percentage of female leadership can be found on administrative boards. It is only leadership positions in certain Christian traditions (Reformed, Catholic, Evangelical-classical) that are normally remunerated for women; many other traditions do not have female leadership or, as in the case of the milieu of alternative spirituality, such leadership positions are not remunerated.     

Considering religious education in context: politics,reform and debates among Turkish Cypriots

This article exemplifies the politicisation of religious education that has polarised the Turkish Cypriot community and explores a possible approach to religious education for primary schools in north Cyprus. In the light of the long-standing debate, this study has a particular focus on the mandatory religious instruction in public primary schools and evaluates the textbooks and teachers' perceptions. Unlike lower and upper secondary schools, divinity classes have constantly been offered to primary school pupils since the 1960s. Religious education at the primary school level is a contentious issue on which the educational experts have been unable to reach a consensus, and continue to discuss on different perspectives. To this end, a comprehensive review of the content analysis of the primary school religious education textbooks and semistructured interviews with teachers and education specialists has been undertaken. Although this study is set in the north Cyprus context, it is also relevant for other conflict-affected societies as it describes the challenges of religious education, secularism and pluralism.     

“I know what a Muslim really is”: how political context predisposes the perceived need for an objective Muslim identity

This article explores the process by which Western Muslim young adults develop the need to experience an ‘objective’ religious identity. We interviewed 20 Western Muslim young adults born in Montreal, Berlin, and Copenhagen within the age range of 18–25, exploring their religious identity development. The interviews were semi-structured and open-ended. Thematic content analysis was used to explore patterns in their narratives. The participants disliked the perceived ethnocentric Muslim identity of their parents, which they sought to ‘purify’ for themselves from ‘cultural contamination’. There were two important elements underlying the process of religious identity objectification: experience of anti-Muslim political discourse and exposure to religious diversity in the aftermath of deterritorialisation.     

Analogous activities: Tools for thinking comparatively in religious studies courses

This article discusses an experiential teaching method that uses secular activities that are simple, accessible, and analogous to religious practice in order to facilitate comparative religious study. These “analogous activities” – for example, social rituals, stillness, yoga, a social media fast, singing, nonviolent communication, and mindfulness meditation – provide a third point of reference that allows students to pivot between their understanding of religion and those of practitioners and scholars of religion. Experiential learning can be quite successful if deliberately sequenced to allow students to encounter a series of interpretive frameworks and structured with prompts and parameters that encourage reflection and critical analysis of their experience. In my course engaging in analogous activities not only impacted students' understanding of Asian religions, but also led them to question two previous assumptions: first, that religious beliefs were more important than religious practices, which is particularly problematic in regards to Asian religious traditions that place more emphasis on orthopraxy than orthodoxy, and second, that religion was something separate from one's everyday or lived reality.     

Ethical narratives,street kitchens and doing religious difference amongst post-migrant communities in contemporary Britain

Street kitchens organised by religious groups in response to food poverty and homelessness have become a ubiquitous feature of British cities. Although a good deal of literature has explored this genre of social action, relatively little has analysed it as a feature of religious practice associated with post-migrant communities. This paper uses data drawn from ethnographic research on Sikh and Muslim street kitchens in two British cities to consider the significance of such initiatives amongst Britain’s South Asian communities. The paper focuses on the role of narrative in this context, deploying Ingold’s notion of ‘storied knowledge’ to analyse fluid, emergent ethical practices expressed through religion-related stories. These practices, envisaged here as ‘religioning’, draw on South Asian religious traditions creatively reconfigured in the postcolonial city. I argue that such developments constitute a significant diasporic intervention into settled accounts of ‘faith’ as a vehicle for ethical citizenship in British urban environments.     

Religious Attendance and Volunteering: Testing National Culture as a Boundary Condition

Numerous studies have documented the importance of religion, and especially of religious congregational attendance, in regard to volunteering. Most of these studies focus on individual and contextual factors, usually within one country. Recent studies suggest that the association between religious attendance and volunteering varies among countries. We hypothesize that national culture plays an important role in explaining volunteering mainly as a moderator of the relationship between religious attendance and volunteering, especially on volunteering to help people in need. To support this position, we used individual‐level data from the World Values Survey (WVS) coupled with national data on cultural measures. This enabled assessment of these relationships using a multilevel analysis of individuals nested in countries. We used two models of national culture, Hofstede (1984) and WVS to explain the differences between countries. We found direct relationships between national culture constructs (power distance and survival/self‐expression values) and volunteering. We also found that individualism, power distance, and survival/self‐expression values moderated the effect of religion on volunteering, with a stronger relationship between religious attendance and volunteering in nationalities with self‐expression values, high power distance, and low individualism. Theoretical and practical implications of this approach are discussed.     

The Relationship between Workplace Status and Workplace Religious Expression

A growing body of literature explores religious expression in workplaces, but comparatively little research examines how religious expression might be shaped by inequality in workplace status. We hypothesize that perceived work autonomy and socioeconomic status (SES) both function as mediating links between organizational status and religious expression. Drawing on a sample of employed adults from a nationally-representative survey in the United States (n = 8611), we examine three modes of religious expression at work: displaying faith, feeling comfortable talking about faith, and expressing views when observing unfair work practices that conflict with faith. Results revealed that workers at the bottom of their organizations express their religiosity less than those at the top. Religious expression in the workplace is thus not simply a reflection of individual religiosity or religious identity, but also workplace power. Although perceived work autonomy mediated the relationship, SES buffered the relationship. Findings have important implications for workplace policy.