Expanding the study of U.S. religion: Reflections on the state of a subfield

The study of U.S. religion, which dates from the 19th century, expanded its sources, methods, and scope during the last quarter of the 20th century, as specialists offered more inclusive historical narratives. That methodological expansion never went far enough, however, and the impulse toward narrative inclusiveness has been restrained in recent years. The subfield, I argue, now faces a number of challenges that also confront other specializations in the study of religion—contraction, overspecialization, fragmentation, and parochialism. After a focused overview of the subfield’s history, I discuss those challenges. Proposing a tentative response, I suggest that specialists celebrate methodological diversity and theoretical sophistication, encourage comparative and translocative studies, and increase collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and national borders. Finally, I suggest that we expand the subfield’s temporal span and geographical scope and reframe the study of U.S. religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Western Hemisphere.     

Towards the concerned study of religion: Exploring the double power–play disparity

Increasing numbers of students of religion, from various disciplines, address issues of public interest, going beyond documentation and analysis, taking the quality of human life in religion and society as a criterion for their recommendations. Accordingly, systematic reflection on the concerned study of religion is gaining relevance. The approach chosen in this article is to focus on one particular aspect, in this case the double – cognitive and moral – disparity in religious contexts between forms of power and play.Power is viewed as the human capacity to influence other people’s behaviour, even against their will. Play is defined here as the human capacity to deal simultaneously with different realities. Power and play represent two human capacities that in themselves are neutral but in combination may change from means, a situation of parity, into goal, a situation of disparity. A first type of disparity is cognitive in nature. It stems from the reduction of the potential open dynamic meaning-making that the power–play constellation could stimulate as well. A second disparity is of a moral nature. It stems from the fact that the power–play set may come to interfere with the quality of human life. As a set, power and play thus move between the roles of being either subservient means or self-fulfilling goal, between a soft and a hard version.Religion is one field in which the gift for play is applied, resulting in the relationship with a sacred or divine reality. Whereas religions cannot survive without some form of power, the form given to the power–play set marks out a religion’s identity. Within our time the critical study of the double disparity of hard power and play has gained urgency. Global society faces severe problems of poverty, violence, pollution and miscommunication. Religions may act as a cause, but also as problem solver.Students of religion are invited to form multidisciplinary teams to study the double disparity in its actual form, while simultaneously exploring prospects for the promotion of both open meaning-making and the quality of human life, with power and play in a relationship of parity. This turn would necessitate a reappraisal of the research agenda for Religious/World-view Studies. It demands an identity change for this study field, both in the selection of themes for research and funding, and in the explicitly applied nature of scholarly work.     

Philosophy of science and the study of religion

This paper responds to the six papers from the Tokyo IAHR session.     

Subjective relational experiences and employee innovative behaviors in the workplace

This paper presents two studies that explore the implications of subjective relational experiences (positive regard, mutuality and vitality) on employee engagement in innovative behaviors at work. Data collected at two points in time were used to test two mediation models that link subjective relational experiences and innovative behaviors. The results of Study 1 indicate that subjective relational experiences directly and indirectly, through affective commitment, are associated with employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The results of Study 2 indicate that subjective relational experiences are positively related to psychological availability, creative self-efficacy, and engagement in innovative behaviors. In addition, the findings of Study 2 indicate that creative self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between psychological availability and engagement in innovative behaviors, and partially mediates the link between subjective relational experiences and employee engagement in innovative behaviors. The findings of both studies provide further support to the theoretical distinction between psychological state engagement and behavioral engagement at work.     

Reduction, integrated theory, and the study of religion

The philosophy of science helps us to sort out and evaluate conflicting claims about reduction. Some persons maintain that reductions can be useful in constructing theories in science. Others hold that, with certain possible exceptions, reductions are likely to prove unproductive as well as inelegant. Such disagreements sometimes turn on differences in the scale or scope of the reductions envisioned. A promising strategy is to subsume considerations of reduction into efforts to find compatibilities among the claims and theoretical constructs of different disciplines. The postulation of compatibilities, advanced under rubrics such as ‘unified theory’, ‘consilience’, and ‘integrated theory’, holds great promise for studies of religion undertaken with reference to the contemporary cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Numbers of such studies view religious phenomena as, in part, expressions of evolved capacities and propensities that are not themselves necessarily religious.     

Kuhn and the science of religion

Ever since the challenge to the ‘received’ view of the philosophy of science—a view epitomized by Karl Popper and Carl Hempel—the status of science has been questioned. If radical critics of the received view—critics including Kuhn, Laudan, Feyerabend, the Edinburgh Strong Programme, and Latour—are right, can science, which means natural science, still be considered objective? Can it still be deemed the model of objectivity to be emulated by the social sciences and even by the humanities? Because religious studies is commonly assumed to fall short of the standards of objectivity of the natural sciences and even of the social sciences, what bearing does criticism of conventional philosophy of science have on it? Specifically, can the religionist approach to religion, the approach that purports to be the sole appropriate one for religious studies, be defended? Does radical philosophy of science, by challenging the objectivity of scientific claims, make the world safe for religious ones? This article will focus on the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and will seek to determine what use defenders of religious studies can make of it.     

On Inclusion of Covariates for Class Enumeration of Growth Mixture Models

In this article, we directly question the common practice in growth mixture model (GMM) applications that exclusively rely on the fitting model without covariates for GMM class enumeration. We provide theoretical and simulation evidence to demonstrate that exclusion of covariates from GMM class enumeration could be problematic in many cases. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for examining the class enumeration by the fitting model without covariates and discuss the potential of covariate inclusion as a remedy for the weakness of GMM class enumeration without including covariates. A real example on the development of children's cumulative exposure to risk factors for adolescent substance use is provided to illustrate our methodological developments.     

Employment trajectories: Exploring gender differences and impacts of drug use

This study investigated the impact of drug use on employment over 20 years among men and women, utilizing data on 7661 participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Growth mixture modeling was applied, and five distinct employment trajectory groups were identified for both men and women. The identified patterns were largely similar for men and women except that a U-shape employment trajectory was uniquely identified for women. Early-initiation drug users, users of “hard” drugs, and frequent drug users were more likely to demonstrate consistently low levels of employment, and the negative relationship between drug use and employment was more apparent among men than women. Also, positive associations between employment and marriage became more salient for men over time, as did negative associations between employment and childrearing among women. Processes are dynamic and complex, suggesting that throughout the life course, protective factors that reduce the risk of employment problems emerge and change, as do critical periods for maximizing the impact of drug prevention and intervention efforts.     

Parental Monitoring During Early Adolescence Deters Adolescent Sexual Initiation: Discrete-Time Survival Mixture Analysis

We used discrete-time survival mixture modeling to examine 5,305 adolescents from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth regarding the impact of parental monitoring during early adolescence (ages 14–16) on initiation of sexual intercourse and problem behavior engagement (ages 14–23). Four distinctive parental-monitoring groups were identified and labeled as “High,” “Increasing,” “Decreasing,” and “Low”. About 68% of adolescents received a high level of parental monitoring from ages 14 to 16 (High), 6 and 9% respectively exhibited an accelerated (Increasing) and a decelerated trajectory (Decreasing), and 17% had consistently low parental monitoring (Low). Relative to participants in the Low group, adolescents in the High group delayed sexual initiation by 1.5 years. Males, relative to females, were more likely to have had a low trajectory of parental monitoring, and were more likely to initiate sexual intercourse before age 14. In contrast to White Adolescents, Hispanics and Blacks were less likely to receive High parental monitoring, and had a higher rate of early sexual initiation before age 14. The study demonstrates the temporal relationship of parental monitoring with adolescent sexual initiation from a longitudinal perspective. An increase of parental monitoring across ages is accompanied with a decrease of sexual risk. The continual high level of parental monitoring from ages 14 to 16 also mitigated the risk of engagement in substance use and delinquent behaviors from ages 14 to 23.