ABSTRACTS

 

 

The Oppositional Impact of Feminism and Religious Fundamentalism:

Gendered Variations in Ideological Processes on US National Identity

Carrie L. Alexandrowicz, Brown University, carrie_alexandrowicz@brown.edu

          The coexistence of religion and government in the US has historically informed both social institutional development as well as individual ethics and citizenship. More recently, religious fundamentalism in particular has functioned as both a social movement and a political entity by defending traditional family values and emphasizing moral certainty. For these reasons, research on personal ideology has often linked fundamentalism to nationalistic self-identity. This paper not only considers the divergent effects of religious fundamentalism on nationalism, it also introduces a seemingly competing ideology into the analysis: feminism. Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey, I examine how fundamentalism and femin-ism differentially affect nationalism by gender. Preliminary results indicate that the influence of these ideologies not only differs substantially for men and women, but they also may not be as oppositional as previously theorized.

 

The Mobilization of “Anti Anti-Cult Movements”: A Turning Point in the

French Cult Controversy?

Véronique Altglas, University of Warwick, v.altglas@warwick.ac.uk

            This paper is based on data very recently collected in France. It will concentrate on an organization called CAP pour la Liberté de Conscience (Coordination of Associations and Peo-ple for Freedom of Conscience), which took legal action last September against the main anti-cult organization in France, the UNADFI (National Union of Associations for the Protection of the Family and the Individual). Although the UNADFI is a state-funded charity and official partner of the French Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Deviations (MIVILUDES), the CAP demanded UNADFI’s dissolution on the assumption that their practices infringed religious liberty. Not only did the CAP lose its case, but it was also found guilty of abusive procedure by the Tribunal of Paris. Nevertheless, this is the first time that individuals involved in religious movements and alternative therapies in France have struck back and accepted social visibility. This empirical case will shed light on the current dynamic of the cult controversy in France and its possible future. More broadly, it contributes to an understanding of the management of religious diversity in France.

 

Evangelical Alternative Science: Parallels between Intelligent Design

Theory and the National Association for Research and Therapy of

Homosexuality

Antony Alumkal, Iliff School of Theology, aalumkal@iliff.edu

When mainstream science has conflicted with evangelical doctrine, evangelicals have often responded not by renouncing science but by creating alternative scientific paradigms. This paper discusses two scientific movements started in the late twentieth century that are popular with American evangelical leaders—Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), which advances a critique of Darwinism, and the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexu-ality (NARTH), which differs from mainstream psychiatric guilds by arguing that homosexu-ality is a treatable illness. I note that both movements: (1) include non-evangelical Christians (Catholics is particular) in leadership and attempt to persuade non-Christians; (2) accuse their opponents of propagating politics and/or philosophy disguised as science; (3) downplay their own religious bases; and (4) claim to be defending the moral foundations of society. I discuss what these movements reveal about the current state of American evangelicalism.

 

The Religious Mainline as a Non-Historiographic Touchpoint

Yakov Ariel, University of North Carolina, yariel@email.unc.edu

          In the last decade, the historiography of religion in America has abandoned its traditional touchpoint and adopted a new narrative in which Protestantism is presented as merely one component of the American religious story. While awareness of the broader pic-ture as well as an inclusive attitude is admirable, this historiographic shift has been too radical. Historians have replaced a narrow narrative with an extremely broad one, giving up on a “touchpoint” altogether. The result is often a lack of sound historical perspective. I argue that while we should pay much attention to the place of other religious communities in American society and culture, ultimately one cannot tell the story of religion in America without pointing to the centrality of Protestant groups and modes of thinking in shaping American institutions and values.

 

Religious Beliefs and Illness Behavior of Africans in the 21st Century

Augustine A. Aryee, Fitchburg State College, aaryee@fsc.edu

            The study of people’s patterns of behavior is generally tied to the study of systems of belief. This paper will examine some aspects of the philosophical and religious beliefs that permeate every facet of the African’s pattern of behavior and which affect his views of illness and health. Accra, Ghana, was the focus of this research. A subsample of 1017 informants provided data on the mixed use of new and old medical systems. Religion is intricately tied to African medicine. African health depends on physical, spiritual, and social wellbeing. Natural and supernatural elements are inextricably interwoven. Health is not seen merely as a biological matter, but one bonding the human body and the soul in total harmony. What governs health and illness is not germ theory as in the Western world. Tensions and aggres-sions found in social relations cause troubles. So, too, supernatural forces can bring evil to human beings. Good health can be preserved only by the observance of social norms and taboos, the maintenance of a harmonious relationships with the members of the supernatural world, and the resolution of interpersonal and group strains and tensions.

 

Denominational Variations in Spiritual Capital among American Youth,

1976-2006: Identifying Trends from Monitoring the Future

John P. Bartkowski, Xiaohe Xu, and Kristi McLeod, Mississippi State University,

bartkowski@soc.msstate.edu

            This study extends the burgeoning body of scholarship on youth religiosity by analyzing evidence from several decades of Monitoring the Future (MTF). Using trend data from MTF, we explore denominational variations in spiritual capital among American high school seniors from the 1970s to the present. Spiritual capital is defined as (1) exposure to and internalization of religious norms, (2) integration within religious networks, and (3) expressions of religious trust. We find that stocks of spiritual capital among American teens are generally robust but subject to distinctive temporal variations across denominational families. We pinpoint those denominations that have successfully sustained the trans-mission of faith to the next generation during the past four decades—and those that have failed to do so.

 

Religious Freedom in Contrast: A Comparative Analysis of Canada and

the United States

Lori G. Beaman, University of Ottawa, beaman@alcor.concordia.ca

            This paper includes a comparison of key Supreme Court cases from the United States and Canada on the issue of religious freedom. Recent Canadian cases indicate that the Supreme Court of Canada is moving toward greater latitude in interpreting the religious freedom guarantee contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In contrast, the situation in the United States is less promising. Both countries, however, still work within a predominantly Christian framework. Moreover, the Supreme Court of Canada has imported several problematic concepts from United States jurisprudence, including the notion of sincerely held belief.

 

Early Dissertations in American Sociology of Religion

Anthony J. Blasi, Tennessee State University, blasi3610@cs.com

            Taking a reference-work approach, this paper describes American dissertations in the sociological study of religion that were written before 1930. The earliest (Pelton, NYU 1895) is homiletic in nature. The others better resemble the sociology of our day, but they reveal no conceptual development for the subdiscipline. Rather, they reflect typical studies found in general sociology in the US at the time: a history of local charities sponsored by a denomination (Appleton, Columbia 1906), an evaluation of ministries in an inner-city setting (Young, Penn 1912), a handbook for conducting community studies (Carroll, Denver 1914), religious demography (Bossard, Penn 1918), a history of a social institution (Jansen, Chicago 1920) and of a reform impulse (Barnhart, Chicago 1924), studies of a cultural contact (Price, Chicago 1924), ethnic settlement (Janzen, Chicago 1926), and a category of organizations (Daniel, Chicago 1925), anthropological reconstruction of a culture (Gower, Chicago 1928), and a development of a pure type (Kincheloe, Chicago 1929). The hegemony of the University of Chicago in the 1920s in the sociological study of religion, if not in sociology more generally, is evident.

 

Prostitution, Parenting, and Pedophilia: An Exploratory Study of

Women’s Accounts of Life in a Sex Cult

Miriam Williams Boeri, Kennesaw State University, mboeri@kennesaw.edu

            Using accounts from in-depth interviews with women who lived in the Children of God/The Family, I present personal testimony from women who reared children in this group while simultaneously engaging in “Flirty Fishing,” a form of sacred prostitution. Some of the women gave birth to nine or more children, some were not sure of the fathers, and others reported that their children were sexually and physically abused by male members of the group. Preliminary findings from this ongoing study support previous research suggesting that male-dominated new religious movements are associated with the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children, specifically that this type of cult environment not only attracts pedophiles but also encourages adults to engage in activities associated with pedophilia and child abuse.

 

Foundational Issues in the Study of Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada

Paul Bramadat, University of Winnipeg, paul.bramadat@uwinnipeg.ca

            While a great deal has been written about ethnicity and Christianity, very little has been written about the complex interaction between these two forces within contemporary Canadian communities. In this paper, I will introduce the three-volume “Religion and Ethnic-ity in Canada” project, and I will use my experience as co-editor of Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada to reflect on some of the foundational issues we face when we examine the relationship between these two powerful forces. Some of these are: the crisis of membership and involvement within the major Christian traditions in Canada, the de-Christianization of the broader society, the emergence in the census process of “Canadian” as an ethnic self-identification, and the implications of the de-Europeanization of Christian communities.

 

“We’ve Always Had Human Rights”: Religious Movements and Discursive

Change in the Global Human Rights Regime

David V. Brewington, Emory University, david.brewington@emory.edu

Religious voices have long been a significant part of human rights movements and discourse, yet they have often been neglected in empirical and theoretical efforts to understand global human rights and globalization. This paper documents the long history of involvement of these religious voices in human rights efforts, and attempts to recognize and theorize how religious voices begin to make theological and religious sense of the secularized global human rights regime. Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Judaic, and Buddhist discourse about human rights implies “we’ve always had human rights,” there theorized as a Meyerian and Robertsonian response to a secular global human rights regime begun in earnest after World War II.

 

From A Beautiful Mind to a Critical Theory of Religion: Rational Choice,

Religion, and Adorno

Christopher Craig Brittain, Atlantic School of Theology, chris.brittain@utoronto.ca

            This paper examines the presuppositions of rational choice explanatory models of human behavior, as they are applied to religious practice. The work of two scholars is ana-lyzed in particular: Rodney Stark and Lawrence Iannaccone. The reliance of this approach on macroeconomic assumptions will be explored, and their reduction of religious behavior to “consolation” will be challenged. The limitations of rational choice theory are illuminated through a comparison with the social theory of Theodor W. Adorno. This criticism will be illustrated by drawing from a popular depiction of the presuppositions of rational choice theory, in the form of a scene from the Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind. This analysis will show that, rather than assisting the study of religion to escape from theological and metaphysical assumptions, rational choice theory is itself laden with problematic presup-positions.

 

How Religious Institutions Enable Internal Reform Movements: Voice of

the Faithful and the Enabling Mechanisms of the Catholic Church

Trica Colleen Bruce, University of California Santa Barbara, mein@umail.ucsb.edu

When religious institutions become the target of social movements, the onus typically falls upon movement participants to negotiate a place at the bargaining table. The absence of participatory features within highly centralized religious institutions are legitimately cited as restrictive to an internal movement’s tactical choices and outcomes. So too, however, must more subtle enabling mechanisms of religious institutions be recognized for their role in actually facilitating internal movements. Drawing from a three-year study of “Voice of the Faithful,” a Catholic lay movement formed in response to revelations of sexual abuse and nondisclosure within the Catholic Church, this paper highlights the process by which internal movements re-purpose existing church structures in order to advance movement goals. Findings reveal that even while official church sanctioning remains at bay, institutional avenues can serve as intermediary enabling mechanisms for reform occurring from within.

 

Religious Involvement, Race, and Adolescent Sexual Behavior

Amy M. Burdette, University of Texas, burdamy@prc.utexas.edu

            Studies show that religious involvement delays and limits adolescent sexual behavior; however, these effects are not uniform across racial and ethnic groups. For example, research suggests that religious involvement may not delay sexual intercourse among African Ameri-cans (particularly males). Although scholars have begun to acknowledge racial and ethnic variation in the effects of religious involvement on adolescent sexual behavior, several issues call for further investigation, including (1) limited measures of religious involvement (i.e., church attendance); (2) limited racial and ethnic groupings (i.e., African American and Cauca-sian); and (3) limited measures of sexual activity (i.e., sexual intercourse). The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) contains several measures of religious involvement, race and ethnicity, and adolescent sexual behavior. Using these data, the present study seeks to overcome the limitations of prior research on religion, race/ethnicity, and sexual activity among US adolescents.

 

 

 

The Meanings of Mary: Tourism, Faith and Cultural Dimensions of

Marian Apparitions

Michelle Madsen Camacho, University of San Diego, mcamacho@sandiego.edu

            This paper explores the social and cultural dimensions of pilgrimages to Virgin Mary apparition sites in Latin America. Meanings of these pilgrimages vary by race, gender, and class. I examine how tourism to these sites contributes to cultural productions of spiritual practice. Two sites will be compared: the festival of the Virgin of Urkupiña in Cochabama, Bolivia (unrecognized by the Catholic Church) and the Marian apparitions at Betanía, Venezuela (an “official” site in the eyes of the Church). Comparing both sites with fieldwork and ethnographic interviews, I examine ideas of syncretism and cultural fusion and analyze local responses and interpretations of these “miraculous” sites.

 

The Man Who Has Will Always Be Given More?  Winners of the Protestant

Market in Taiwan

Hsing-Kuang Chao, Tunghai University, wade0429@mail.thu.edu.tw

Beginning with the mid-1960s, Taiwanese Protestant Christianity had been stagnant for about thirty years. New statistical data, however, show a moderate growth during the last decade of the twentieth century. This paper will investigate whether the growth of Taiwanese Protestant Christianity, especially of small denominations and independent churches in the urban areas, can be explained using a supply-side framework. Two levels of factors are involved: First are contextual factors, such as industrialization and rural-urban migration. Second are institutional factors, such as churches’ theological stands, ritual practices, and growth strategies. The contextual factors may be important to increase the prospect pool for recruiting new members to Protestantism. This paper argues that institutional factors may be more important than contextual factors to understanding the growth of small denominations and independent churches in urban areas. These churches not only provide a substantive meaning system to rural-urban immigrants, but they also launch different evangelical move-ments and organize community programs to satisfy these prospects’ needs.

 

True Buddhism is Not Chinese: Taiwanese Immigrants becoming “True

Buddhists” in the US

Carolyn Chen, Northwestern University, cechen@northwestern.edu

          The majority of Taiwanese immigrants who are practicing Buddhists begin practicing after migrating to the US. Despite the claim in the immigration and religion literature that religion preserves ethnicity, Taiwanese immigrant Buddhists adamantly deny any link between their ethnic traditions and “true” Buddhism. Rather, Taiwanese American Buddhists appeal to western values and science to legitimate their religious choices. This paper explores how contextual factors shape the discourse of true Buddhism in the US and further argues that religions may challenge rather than preserve ethnic traditions.

 

Confucian Marxism and the Weberian Thesis

Weigang Chen, University of Vermont, wxchen@pop.uvm.edu

The increasing salience of cultural conflicts in the post-Cold War era brings the Weberian legacy of comparative religion to the center of current debates on globalization. Specifically, these conflicts force us to confront directly the toughest challenge posed by the Protestant ethic thesis: If the principles of justice and equality are beyond the peculiarity of Occidental civilization, how then can we give a full explanation as to why in the West, and only in the West, the ideal of public reasoning by private people has materialized? The present study seeks to address this fundamental challenge by drawing on Confucian Marxism—a distinctive Marxist school that seeks to combine Marxist aspirations for radical justice and the Confucian ethical tradition. I argue that at the core of the problem of “the clash of civilizations” is an intrinsic linkage between Eurocentrism and the liberal paradigm of “civil society.” The prospect of global justice, therefore, hinges on the development of a new conception of the “social” that reverses the liberal interpretation of the relationship between bourgeois subjectivity and public reasoning, and derives instead directly from the primacy of ethic life for social formation.

 

Sacred Sacrilege: Religion and Popular Culture in Singapore

Lloyd Chia, University of Missouri, lloydchia@mizzou.edu

            Religion and popular culture are often seen as mutually exclusive domains. But Singapore has pop-star and magician pastors; Malaysia has Islamic boy bands; Iran has officially sanctioned pop concerts; and England has seen “Harry Potter” church services. Are these isolated anomalies, or do they portend a religiously inspired sociocultural shift? This study explains finding religious practice in “strange places” and finding “strange practices” in religious places. It accounts for monotheistic religions making their stake in popular culture industries and expressive genres. How do these social agents deal with the perceived sacrilegious mixing of sacred and profane? The research employed in-depth interviews of producers, consumers, and critics of religious popular culture; it included observations of sites and events. This paper explores a “crisis of meaning” that occurs between for and against postures of the confluence of religion and popular culture. It also seeks to account for intra-religious pluralization by examining the tensions between factions to define the sacred.

 

Emergent Global Ethics: Reenchantment and the Rhetoric of the

Dispossessed

JoAnn Chirico, Pennsylvania State University, jxc64@psu.edu

A global ethic is emerging, rooted in the religious and quasi-religious experiences of disenfranchised groups within developing societies. For them, globalization has not only failed to alleviate poverty and suffering; it has worsened it. Violent conflict, starvation, the AIDS pandemic, and environmental destruction threaten their survival. The emergent global system is not far, economically, politically and strategically, from the “war of all against all.” We lack adequate meaning at the level of the globe and increasingly within societies to sustain satisfactory social systemic function. Disaffected groups are promoting an ethic that transcends the instrumental rational models, in particular the Washington Consensus, that resulted in their disaffection. They are forcing more substantive, value rational (reenchanted) concerns into local and global debate. For many groups, particularly grassroots women’s labor movements, these emergent ethics have religious roots.

 

The Charismatic Movement and the Contemporary Worship Style: How

their Impacts on Church Growth Differ between Mainline and

Conservative Congregations

Hui-Tzu Grace Chou, Utah Valley State College, chougr@uvsc.edu

It has been observed that congregations involved with the charismatic movement or using the contemporary worship style grow faster than other congregations. However, there are still questions to be answered. First, are the impacts of the charismatic movement and the contemporary worship style on church growth caused by other factors? Second, are their impacts on church growth similar for both mainline and conservative congregations? Analyzing the data of the National Congregations Study, the results of logistic regression show that the charismatic movement and the contemporary worship style work differently on church growth between mainline congregations and conservative congregations. The contem-porary worship style has a significant impact on church growth among conservative congrega-tions, while the charismatic movement has a significant impact among liberal congregations, after controlling for the age of congregations and other variables. Different religious needs between liberal and conservative congregations and the definition of disinherited groups are also discussed.

 

 

Strong Religion and the Hard Sciences: American Muslims and Hindus

and the Applied Sciences

Richard Cimino, New School for Social Research, relwatch1@msn.com

Many American Muslims and Hindus have training and/or work experience in the applied sciences, particularly engineering, medicine, and the hi-tech fields. This paper will examine the religious discourse of these applied science professionals and the impact it has had in the Muslim and Hindu communities of the US. Through content analysis of their writings in publications and online, and interviews with these professionals, I will seek to understand the relationship and interaction between applied scientific knowledge and religious belief and practice. I am particularly interested in the way members of this “new technical knowledge class” have taken up an autodidactic approach to their faiths while assuming leadership positions in the Muslim and Hindu immigrant communities (often due to the shortage of trained clergy and leaders).

 

The New Buddhism

James William Coleman, California Polytechnic State University, jcoleman@calpoly.edu

          As Buddhism moves from Asia and the ethnic enclaves of Asian immigrants into postmodern Western culture, it is undergoing a transformation as sweeping as any in its long history. In the new Buddhism that is emerging among western converts, the classic distinc-tion between monks and laity is becoming blurred. Meditation is no longer the primary domain of monastics but is the central religious practice among all members. Moreover, celibate monasticism itself is a far less common and less revered practice. At the same time, institutional structures are being redefined, and women have moved into leadership roles unprecedented in patriarchal Asian traditions.

 

Rescuing Weber: A Critique of the Culturalist View of Protestantism and

Progress in Latin America

Madeleine Cousineau, Mount Ida College, mrcousineau@comcast.net

During the past fifty years millions of Latin Americans have been converting to Protestantism. A number of social scientists and religious observers have defined this phenomenon as a new reformation that will bring democracy and prosperity to the region. They frequently turn for their inspiration to Max Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis. However, their analyses are limited in several ways: (1) They are one-sidedly idealistic (or culturalist), in contradiction to Weber’s more nuanced view of the relationship between religion and economics; (2) they neglect to distinguish between the rational, inner-worldly ethic of eighteenth-century English Calvinists and the more emotional, world-rejecting beliefs of contemporary Pentecostals, who constitute the majority of Latin American Protestants; (3) they fail to consider the socioeconomic context; (4) they are not supported by empirical research. This paper provides evidence of these limitations, along with a critique of the ideological underpinnings of the culturalist view.

 

Material Culture and the Sociology of Religion: Speaking the Language

of Objects

Douglas E. Cowan, Renison College, decowan@uwaterloo.ca

            Until very recently, relatively little attention was paid to the material culture of religious traditions except as adjuncts to specific beliefs and practices. Hundreds of thou-sands of books and countless millions of words have been written about the various beliefs, doctrines, ritual practices, and organizational structures of religious traditions worldwide, but the objects that make those traditions recognizable to the rest of the world—and to practition-ers—have been largely ignored. Can we learn things from the social life of material objects that we cannot learn in other ways, things that other species of data either cannot disclose or cannot disclose as clearly or as easily? Using examples drawn from research on the material culture of modern Paganism, this paper will lay out what Baudrillard called a “language of objects” as a meaningful approach to the sociological study of religious belief and practice.

 

Religious Leadership under Fire: Conflict and Tension in the Air Force

Chaplain Service

Barbara J. Denison, Shippensburg University, bjdeni@ship.edu

            Recent reports from the USAF Academy in Colorado have focused attention on evangelical Protestant Air Force chaplains engaged in proselytizing activity among academy cadets. Training chaplains receive at Air Force Chaplains’ School reinforces the governing paradigm that denounces any attempt to proselytize as an illegitimate activity for chaplains. Additionally, the mandate for Air Force Chaplains in the AF Chaplain Service has focused on the free exercise of religion and providing spiritual support, comfort, counseling and other services for all, regardless of religion, faith, or creed. This paper is an initial attempt to use source materials from USAF Chaplain Service documents and directives as well as news reports to examine this crisis created by competing models of religious leadership among USAF chaplains.

 

God Matters, Ritual Doesn’t: The Effects of Importance of Religion and

Church Attendance on Moral Beliefs

Scott A. Desmond, Purdue University, and Rachel Kraus, Ball State University,

sdesmond@purdue.edu

            According to Durkheim, religious rituals such as church attendance help to support the moral order. In contrast, Rodney Stark has recently argued that religious beliefs (impor-tance of religion) are significantly related to moral beliefs, while religious rituals are not. We used a sample of adolescents to test Stark’s hypothesis that church attendance is unrelated to moral beliefs. Preliminary results provide partial support for Stark’s hypothesis. Consistent with Stark’s argument, a measure of religious importance had a significant effect on moral beliefs about violence, property offenses, marijuana use, and drinking. Adolescents who reported that religion was important to them were more likely to believe that these behaviors are wrong. Contrary to Stark, however, church attendance had a significant effect on moral beliefs about marijuana and alcohol use. Therefore, religious rituals may have a significant effect on some moral beliefs but not others.

 

Muslim Discourses in the Public Sphere in Québec

Ali G. Dizboni, Royal Military College of Canada, dizboni-a@rmc.ca

            The Muslim presence in the West, and in Québec in particular, raised a number of serious challenges and questions ranging from security concerns to sociocultural issues (identity, integration, etc.). Depending on particular circumstances, Western democracies adopted different approaches ranging from laisser-faire to interventionism. My paper will discuss the leading discourses of Muslim intellectuals living in the West, like Tareq Ramadan, about the place of Islam in the Western public sphere. My discussion will deal with fundamental issues of identity, laws (Shari‘a), and cultural integration. The mediatized controversies around issues of Kirpan and headscarf in Québec and Islamic Courts in Ontario show the policy-relevance and the social sensitivity associated with these questions. My objective is to assess the theoretical and empirical implications of Muslim intellectuals’ discourses both for Québec’s experience of social integration and for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 

 

 

 

 

“Spiritual but not Religious”? Spiritual and Religious Identities among

Academic Scientists

Elaine Howard Ecklund, SUNY Buffalo, and Elizabeth Long, Rice University,

ehe@buffalo.edu

Science is often perceived as incompatible with religion. Rarely, however, do scholars examine the place of spirituality in relationship to science. This paper compares religious to spiritual identities among academic scientists in the natural and social sciences at twenty-one different elite US research universities. Using recently collected data from a national survey of over 1600 academic scientists and in-depth interviews with 250 scientists, we specifically compare faculty in the natural science disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology as well as the social science disciplines of sociology, psychology, political science, and economics. Findings reveal several distinct frameworks for the place of spirituality, when compared to religion, in the lives of elite scientists. We situate these results in the midst of studies of spirituality in the general US population and make projections about the relevance of findings for issues related to secularization and higher education, as well as those related to the intersection of religion and science.

 

Spiritual Dimensions of Everyday Life: Perspectives from Elders

Susan A. Eisenhandler, University of Connecticut, susan.a.eisenhandler@uconn.edu

          Though reliance on attendance and other measures of formal religious participation is widely acknowledged to be of limited scope in understanding the meaning and salience of faith for people of all ages, continued preference for such measures profoundly inhibits our understanding of how religion and spirituality are perceived in the daily life and lived experi-ence of older adults. The social milieu or context surrounding older adults is an important factor that shapes faith practice and the spirituality evoked in daily life. This paper addresses some spiritual dimensions of faith that emerged during an ongoing study (2005-2006) that includes face-to-face interviews and participant observation with fifteen elders from one residential community. A special focus is a discussion of gardening and other intrinsically valued secular activities and the construction of transcendent meaning in late life.

 

Mellowing with Age? Exploring Age Variations in Anger toward God

Christopher G. Ellison and Wei Zhang, University of Texas, cellison@prc.utexas.edu

          Although many studies have reported salutary associations between religion and health, a modest literature has begun to identify aspects of religiousness that have harmful health consequences. Much of this work focuses on “religious struggle” or negative relation-ships with God (e.g., feelings of anger, abandonment, etc.). Researchers have called for more attention to the social sources and patterning of “religious struggle.” Our study contributes to this area by developing and testing a series of hypotheses concerning the age distribution of anger toward God. We address the following questions: (1) Are there age variations in this type of anger? (2) Can these variations be accounted for in terms of individuals’ social location, exposure to chronic stressors or personal crises, or religious background? (3) Do the effects of these factors on individuals’ anger toward God vary by age? Data come from the 1988 NORC General Social Survey, a nationwide sample of US adults—to our knowledge, the only large-scale representative database containing information on this topic. Findings are discussed in terms of the interplay of psychological and sociological perspectives, and study limitations and future research directions are elaborated.

 

Wrestling with the Meaning of Multiracial Congregations

Michael O. Emerson, Rice University, moe@rice.edu

            Based on seven years of research, key findings from the Multiracial Congregations Project will be discussed with a focus on the implications for race relations, racial inequality, religion, and other aspects of social life. An important question guiding the presentation and subsequent discussion will be whether more of such congregations would be beneficial to US society and to groups within the society.

 

Muslim American Politics and Presidential Elections: Discourse,

Strategies, Orientations

Marcel Fallu, Université Laval, marcel.fallu.1@ulaval.ca

            Muslim organizations “advocate active engagement in the political process.” In 2004, the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), a coalition of several American Muslim advocacy groups, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry; in 2000, a similar coalition had advocated bloc-voting for George W. Bush. Defending a “Civil Rights Plus agenda” in a context of increased scrutiny, these organizations—who claim to speak on behalf of a strikingly diverse minority—have engaged in the American system through, among other means, the formation of Political Action Committees (PACs). Through content analysis, I will provide insight on how their Islamic orientation is articulated with American citizenship, patriotism, and nationalism in an institutional context marked simul-taneously by the separation of state and religious institutions and the omnipresence of religious values in the public sphere.

 

Religious Coping, Family Stressors, and Elderly Depression in Taiwan

Daisy Fan and Gang-Hua Fan, University of Texas, daisy@mail.la.utexas.edu

            The purpose of this study is to examine the buffering effect of three dimensions of religion (attendance, coping, and private practice) on psychological distress in the presence of family stressors among elderly Taiwanese. Using the 1999 Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan, results thus far suggest that religious attendance may buffer the deleterious effect of financial hardship and negative family interaction on distress; while, sur-prisingly, religious coping turns out to exacerbate the stress experience related to negative family relationship. The nature of religious behaviors in Taiwan and the salience of family relationship to Taiwanese elderly may account for some of the findings.

 

Are Religious Revivals Over in France and the UK? When History and

Sociology Compete for the Answer

Sebastien Fath, École Pratiques des Hautes Études, faths@wanadoo.fr

          Are religious revivals over in France and the UK? Comparing the contemporary Evan-gelical scene in Britain and in France reveals a striking difference. In the first case, Evangeli-cals seem condemned to decline. In this national context, revivals appear to be clearly over. In the French case however, Evangelical figures have multiplied by seven in the last 50 years. This contrast will be described and addressed in the first part of the paper. How does sociol-ogy of religion address these two national cases? In the second part of this analysis, I will highlight the contrast between two sociological frameworks. At this stage, should be give up the possibility of unifying the analytic framework? Does sociological truth on one side of the Channel become sociological error on the other side? Maybe not. In the last part of the paper, I will evaluate the opportunity of “rescuing” sociology with comparative history.

 

The Place of the Charismatic Renewal in the Formation of the Coalition

of Opposition to the Consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Episcopal

Bishop of New Hampshire

Dana Fenton, Lehman College CUNY, ddfen@juno.com

            In the course of my research on Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians both before and after the approval of the election of Gene Robinson, a gay man with a partner, to the episcopate in the Episcopal Church, I started to hear about the healing movement that started with the Bennets and continued with the McNutts. I quickly learned that the healing movement was intimately connected with the charismatic renewal in the Episcopal Church in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I later realized that many of the current leadership of the “Biblically Orthodox” Episcopalians first worked together in the loose network of the Charismatic Renewal.

 

The Mormon Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Michelle Fether-Samtouni and Barry Goetz, Western Michigan University,

michelle.fether@wmich.edu

One hundred years after its publication, Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic contin-ues to have tremendous force for debating the links between ideas, economic structures, and social behavior. This paper will discuss how religious ideas continue to influence human action, particularly economic action within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon Church is well known for its financial success and work ethic. Church leaders frequently stress that work is a blessing from God and a fundamental principle of salvation, while idleness is condemned. The unemployment rate in Utah, where the majority of the population is Mormon, is 3.8% compared to the national average of 4.9%. In this paper we will conduct a content analysis of church scriptures, Sunday school textbooks, and official church magazines that reveal linkages between Mormon doctrine and the stimulation of a strong work ethic. We conclude that Weber’s argument about religious ideas influencing social and economic outcomes is still relevant for understanding Mormons and other social groups, and also show that Weber’s ideas about the Protestant ethic in particular has special resonance for understanding the cultural life of Mormonism today.

 

Drumming as Embodied Spirituality: Focus on Religious Venues

Tanice G. Foltz, Indiana University Northwest, tfoltz@iun.edu

            This paper is part of a larger project that centers on drumming in its multiple uses for healing, serving special populations, and creating a global drum community. My analysis of drumming as embodied spirituality addresses Weber’s concern with the disenchantment of the rational world and proposes that drumming is one pathway of spiritual re-enchantment. Drumming connects participants and leads them into a “flow” state that can be likened to Turner’s conceptualization of “communitas,” defined by a feeling of unity and bonding often found in spiritual settings. I draw upon studies of trance and entrainment, as well as my participant-observation experiences in experiences in several religious and spiritual venues. These include Yoruba Candomble House ceremonies in Bahia, Brazil, as well as Pagan rituals and Christian worship services in the US, where drumming is employed to enhance parti-cipants connection with the spirit world.

 

How Congregations Advertise and Market Themselves

Steven Frenk, Duke University, and Wayne Luther Thompson, Carthage College,

wthompson@carthage.edu

This paper identifies types of congregational communication strategies and activities. Religious congregations enter into relationships with the social environment. Evangelism and other attempts of congregations to project an image are clues to theological stances, growth and survival strategies, scope and targets of programming and market niches. Congregations range from inward orientations to enthusiastic and extensive activities to communicate about themselves and what they have to offer. Do growing, evangelical, or newer congregations act more aggressively to communicate and advertise themselves than other congregations? Do the content and style of advertising and other communications of congregations affect worship and the creation of sacred space for those groups? How do congregations cultivate and project images of themselves in lieu of demand for privatized, personal meaning in modern societies, and with what results? Data for this analysis come from the Social Ecology of Congregations project. This study combines fieldwork in dozens of congregations with surveys of congregational lay leaders and professional staff in those congregations and broader samples. The initial wave of data comes from three urbanized Southeastern Wisconsin counties.

 

Views on Marriage among Immigrant Muslim Women in the Los Angeles

Area

Inger Furseth, KIFO Centre for Church Research, inger.furseth@kifo.no

          This paper explores the experiences of and discourse on marriage among Muslim women in the Los Angeles area. The study is based on in-depth interviews with a small sample of immigrant women. The women are divided into four categories, based on their orientation toward society and the religious community: the Representatives, the Communi-cators, the Belongers, and the Ambivalent. Analysis shows that the Representatives tend strongly to favor arranged marriage. The Communicators are more hesitant toward arranged marriage. The Belongers have a diverse view on this issue, while the Ambivlent are negative to arranged marriage. The latter group favors marriage based on love and individual choice. This study suggests that there is a link between these immigrant women’s religious orientation and their view on marriage. Whereas most of the women wore the hijab on a daily basis, some had never done so, and some had quit. Their discourse on the hijab centers on religious obedience, oppression, identity, and dialogue. This study suggests that women use the hijab to position themselves in the religious landscape, inside and outside the religious community.

 

Canadian History of Wicca: Obstacles on the Path of the Uninitiated

Researcher

Mireille Gagnon, Laval University, mireille.gagnon.1@ulaval.ca

            How does one retrace Canadian Wiccan history without being a Wiccan? Though the researcher might be welcomed in the communities, it will soon become apparent that information will be harder to gather than one would think. Troubled pasts of communities, rivalry between members involved in witch wars, informants with several pagan names are just some examples of issues with which the researcher has to deal. In order to understand the Wiccan presence in Canada, one must be able to dig in its past and find out how it got here and how it developed. How does an uninitiated avoid the many obstacles? In this paper I will show the challenges of working in such an environment, while keeping in line with our professional ethics and our continual search for balanced information.

 

Evangelicalism and Change in the DUP: Implications for the Northern

Ireland Peace Process

Gladys Ganiel, Trinity College Dublin, gganiel@tcd.ie

            In 2005 the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) became the largest political party in Northern Ireland. Since its inception in 1971, it has been regarded as a vehicle for Protestant fundamentalism and as a destabilizing force in the peace process. This paper presents new research about the changing role of evangelicalism within the DUP. It highlights the DUP’s shift away from “evangelical” issues, demonstrating how evangelicals within the party are pursuing those issues through interest groups rather than the party. This has increased the party’s secular appeal and ability to negotiate with the republicans, while keeping evangeli-cals on board. I also draw on interviews to explore how evangelicals’ personal convictions intersect with pragmatic political decisions. As the DUP attempts to appeal to a wider base, the evangelical convictions of key individuals will be sources of tension, contradictory stances, and ideological confusion that may hinder its ability to reach accommodation with republicanism.

 

 

 

 

Beyond Identity: A Framework for Understanding the Dynamics of

Religious Journeys

Gladys Ganiel, Trinity College Dublin, and Claire Mitchell, Queen’s University Belfast, gganiel@tcd.ie

Scholarship on evangelicalism has focused on explaining the persistence of this so-called “old time religion.” Evangelicalism has been conceived as a reaction to modernity and as providing people with a meaningful social identity. In this paper, we move the debate beyond religious persistence and social identity, presenting a more dynamic analysis of evan-gelicalism. Drawing on research among Northern Irish evangelicals, we argue that evangeli-calism is better understood as a journey or process rather than a social identity category. We develop a theoretical framework for understanding evangelicalism as a process, identifying and highlighting the dynamics of change at various stages of the journey: conversion, con-servatism, privatization, moderation, and transformation. This allows us to make conclusions about both the persistence and the fluctuation of evangelicalism in Northern Ireland over time. It also allows us to contribute to the theoretical debate about how to conceive religion’s role in the contemporary world.

 

Turkey’s Quest for European Union Membership: Will the EU Accept a

Muslim Candidate?

Brent Garrett, US Department of Homeland Security, wbrentgarrett@aol.com

            Ankara is currently in the process of institutionalizing far-reaching reforms required by Brussels in order to be considered a serious candidate for membership in the European Union. Many Turks are convinced, however, that even if Turkey succeeded in the reforms required for EU accession, Brussels would ultimately reject Ankara’s application due to the fact that Turkey is a Muslim candidate. Ankara’s accession to the EU would indubitably buttress Turkey’s chances of becoming a successful modern democracy in the Muslim world. This paper will examine the following: to what extent does religion play a role in determining Turkey’s eventual acceptance or rejection as a member of the EU? Turkey’s acceptance into or rejection from the EU will certainly cause reverberations throughout the Muslim world, as well as throughout Europe’s Muslim communities.

 

The Impact of Race on Denominational Variations in Social Attitudes:

The Issue and its Dimensions

David A. Gay, John P. Lynxwiler, and Warren S. Goldstein, University of Central

Florida, dgay@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

            Although the impact of religious affiliation on social attitudes is a popular research topic in the sociology of religion, few scholars have examined the role that race plays in this relationship. Moreover, studies that do explore the interplay of race and religious affiliation seldom move beyond the general categories of conservative, moderate, and liberal denomina-tional families. Our research uses recent General Social Survey data to compare the social attitudes of African Americans and their White counterparts within established designations of religious affiliation. Along with control variables, we include attitude measures for political tolerance, legalized abortion, gender equality, premarital sex, homosexual lifestyles, and extramarital sexual relations. Our analysis isolates levels of support for these attitudes within categories of race and religious affiliation to determine if variations emerge and whether they are nested within specific issues or denominations or reflect more general patters of race differences.

 

The Secularist Movement in Québec

Martin Geoffroy, Université de Moncton, geoffrm@umoncton.ca

          The Secularist Movement in Québec has been gaining ground in the last ten years by successfully pushing the Québec government to complete the secularization of the public school system in the province. The movement is mainly represented by a militant organization called the Mouvement Laïque Québécois. The dream of its president, Daniel Baril, would be to have a system similar to the “secularist” regime in France to deal with Québec’s dealings with religion. This paper is based on interviews done with the leaders of this organization and on content analysis of their documents. It will show that despite some gains on the political front, the secularist movement in Québec remains relatively marginal.

 

Worlds Apart? A Comparative Study of the Place of Religion in Canadian

and American Public Space

Martin Geoffroy, Université de Moncton, and Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, Université de

Montréal, geoffrm@umoncton.ca

          Based on many years of fieldwork in Canada and the US, this paper will attempt to point out both the differences and similarities in the way these two neighbors deal with reli-gion on an everyday basis. In Canada, it seems religion has been perceived as a symbol of individual choice rather than a collective one as in the US. But is that really totally true? In recent years the Canadian court system has seen more and more cases of collective demands based on religious believers. These demands are confronting the so called Canadian concep-tion of political non-involvement in religious affairs, and with a new Conservative Canadian government with ties to western fundamentalism, the question of these differences can be asked without sounding as out of place as before. Is religion becoming more political in Canada, as it can be in the US?

 

Muslims of the West: Loyalty to Faith and Membership in Western

Society

Kamel Ghozzi, Central Missouri State University, ghozzi@cmsu1.cmsu.edu

            The growing presence in Europe and North America of a second and third generation of western Muslims deeply challenges the West’s traditional image of Islam as an “Eastern Religion,” as well as western Muslims’ traditional self-image as “immigrants” in foreign lands. Nevertheless, western Islam remains deeply problematic and somewhat irritating to the west-ern mind. Many in the West question the adaptability of Islam as a new religious component in the religious pluralism of western societies. Given its organic nature, Islam equates religion and society, and merges religious law and social structure; hence, it may not easily accept the western principle of separation of realms or any notion of civil religion. This paper explains the dilemma lived by large numbers of western Muslims as they struggle to bridge the gap between loyalty to faith and membership in western society.

 

The Night the Guru Spanked Natalie Wood: Emotion and Legend at

Esalen

Marion S. Goldman, University of Oregon, mgoldman@uoregon.edu

          Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California is a legendary community, retreat, spa, and think tank founded in 1962. Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, Bishop James Pike, and Timothy Leary were among dozens of well-known fig-ures associated with the institute. Since the late 1960s, three central informal narratives have supported the institute’s foundational mission, encouraging personal spiritual growth and social sensitivity. One of these three contemporary legends is the “wise father” story, about the Hollywood party where Fritz Perls, a gestalt therapy guru, turned a gorgeous movie star, Natalie Wood, over his knee and spanked her. She responded with a satirical movie, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, and a personal search that led her back to Esalen almost two decades later. This narrative reveals ways in which Esalen encouraged emotional intelligence through exploring personal vulnerabilities.

 

 

Sweet Potato Latkes and Other Southern Jewish Delicacies: Exploring

the Myriad Flavors of Jewish Identity Formation in the American South

Dana M. Greene, Appalachian State University, greenedm@appstate.edu

          This paper addresses the richness of Jewish American identity formation in the Ameri-can South by focusing on the socioreligious definition that has been adopted by members of Southern Jewish communities that link their regional identities to their religious heritage, thereby becomingly “Jewishly Southern.” This process of self-definition, coupled with the meaning of having a religious tradition that links ethnicity and geographic regionality repre-sents the crux of this study. Thus, drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, this paper addresses the myriad social considerations linked to cultural capital—e.g., opportunities for upward mobility; experiences with racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of ethnically entrenched bias; religious freedom; interactions with differing denominations within Judaism; and most important, Southern pride and Southern history—to define a contemporary Jewish American identity in the South that is tied to collective group historical memory and an understanding/interpretation of the lived experience of being both Jewish and American, as well as residing in the Southern US.

 

What is Religion for Americans?

T. Jeremy Gunn, Emory University, jgunn@law.emory.edu

Several religious identity symbols are part of the 21st Century culture wars in the US: Ten Commandment monuments, “intelligent design” as an alternative to the theory of evolu-tion, crèches and holiday images, and the phrases “in God we trust” and “one nation under God.” These symbols are largely uncontroversial when they are a matter of individual expression, but they elicit a firestorm when some citizens insist that governments adopt or promote them. Curiously, the proponents of such symbols do not base their arguments on religious requirements (e.g., that scripture or theology demands it), but on nationalist or identity grounds. The arguments are “our country was founded on religious principles” and “we are a religious people,” not “the Bible commands us to do this.” Theology is thin; identity conflicts control.

 

Where the Babies Are: Patterns of Congregational Fertility

Conrad Hackett, Princeton University, chackett@princeton.edu

            Since children usually inherit parental religious identity, fertility patterns are consequential for religious institutions. Despite scholarly and popular interest in church growth and decline, the relationship between congregations and fertility has been neglected. Using the Congregational Life Survey, an innovative, large-scale study of American congrega-tions, I report and analyze congregational fertility patterns. High fertility is found in congrega-tions affiliated with small denominations, whose members are not identified in standard demographic surveys. Using regression analysis, I estimate the influence of theology, compo-sitional characteristics, and pro-natalist congregational culture upon congregational fertility rates. Within congregations, there is a close relationship between completed fertility rates and current fertility rates among women of childbearing age.

 

How Theology Matters for Congregants in Presbyterian Churches

Jennifer Campbell Hackett, Princeton Theological Seminary,

campbell.hackett@ ptsem.edu

          This study investigates how the theology and culture of eight Presbyterian (PCUSA) congregations influence the way members frame ethical issues. Anticipating that many Pres-byterian congregations may shy away from providing theological resources to address sub-jects such as political behavior and medical ethics, I study “typical” congregations as well as congregations distinguished by strong evangelical or liberal theology. I find that members of the evangelical churches think theologically about a narrow range of topics and tend to frame social problems on a personal level. Members of liberal congregations think theology is relevant to a broad range of topics and tend to think structurally about social problems.

 

Evangelicalism as the Future of an “Illusion”? An Evolutionary

Perspective

Durk Hak, Enschede, Netherlands, durkhak@home.nl

            It is supposed (a) mainline modern Christianity as described, e.g., by Bellah will result in secularization, unchurching, and unbelief, and (b) the soteriology of both historic Christian religion and early-modern Christianity are no acceptable any longer to modern Christian believers. Two orthodox Christian reactions to modern Christianity are observed: one “reform-ative” fundamentalist (and regressive); the other evangelical. The question addressed in the paper is whether the adaptive capacity of evangelicalism to the requirements of modern soci-ety is great enough to last until the end of the century. Evangelicalism (and “reformative” fundamentalism) is seen as a “family of denominations” with a hard core consisting of (1) accepting Jesus Christ as savior, (b) personal conversion, (c) reaching out to the world, and (b) the Bible as God’s word, “inerrant in matters of faith and practice”—to which evangelicals subscribe to a lesser or greater degree. It is assumed that evangelicalism is instrumental to a modern religious person’s needs for physical and social wellbeing. The kingdom of heaven can be achieved because of the believer’s voluntary decision to accept Jesus Christ as savior. Evangelicalism is supposed to have the greater adaptive capacity to modern society of the two, and consequently is supposed to “have” the future. Yet, it is institutionally relatively weak, and we cannot yet foresee the consequences of institutionalization or oligarchy formation, nor the effects of the coming generation of evangelical academics and academic evangelical theologians.

 

Catholic Decline and the Challenge of Liberalism

Pierre Hegy, Adelphi University, hegy@adelphi.edu

This paper reviews major findings about Protestant decline since the 1960s and then concentrates on Catholic decline in more recent years. I review the literature on strictness and rational choice, and find that they have little explanatory power. I hypothesize that secular liberalism and internal secularization have played a major role in mainline Protestant decline. I then apply these criteria to Catholic interview data.

 

Bringing Theology Back In: Building a Swedish Lutheran Parish in an

Industrializing City

Michael Hillary, University of Wisconsin–Waukesha, mhillary@uwc.edu

            Early in the study of immigration communities of the late 19th and early 20th centur-ies, a general model of immigrant churches emerged, describing them as central institutions in the creation of ethnic communities, providing essential services to members of the com-munity, organizing responses to challenges from the surrounding society, variously facilitat-ing, regulating, and resisting assimilation. A vast array of historical work documents varia-tions and exceptions among churches, based on ethnicity, leadership, various characteristics of local context, political challenges, and historical timing. This paper gives attention to a difference curiously neglected or left out of focus in the literature on immigrant churches—theology. Historical research on Swedish Lutherans in an industrializing city is used to examine how a distinct theology gives shape to ethnic parishes with practices and structures both similar to and different from common patterns found in Catholic parishes. While aspir-ing to the inclusiveness of many ethnic Catholic parishes, theological constraints systemati-cally undermined this ideal.

 

 

 

Buddhism in the HomeSpace

Jane N. Iwamura, University of Southern California, iwamura@usc.edu

            In the sociological study of Asian North American Buddhism, the temple has served as the primary site of research. While there are good reasons for this focus, examining Buddhist practice in the home can prove equally illuminating. Drawing from a pilot study of Japanese American Buddhists and their home shrines (obutsudan), I discuss how Buddhist altars and altar practice play an understated, but important role in mediating family relations, ethnic identity formation, and religious attitudes. Monitoring Buddhism in the “homespace” also reveals much about the way in which practices change in diaspora and over time. In addition to looking at Japanese American home altars, I will also consider other examples (e.g., Chi-nese, Vietnamese) to discuss the relevance that these alternative spaces hold for the study of (Asian) North American religions broadly conceived.

 

A “New” Religious Movement: The Dutch Prophetess and Healer, Mrs.

Sonja de Vries

Lammert G. Jansma, Foundation Forces (Netherlands), f2hlgjansma@hetnet.nl

            In my paper I will discuss the movement that has assembled around the prophet and healer Mrs. Sonja de Vries, which has its center in the village of Oudehorne (Friesland, Netherlands). Important elements in the doctrine of the movement, which considers itself a Christian movement, are personal growth, reincarnation, and health/illness. This movement has a firmly established structure and a belief system collectively shared by its adherents. This type of highly institutionalized movement seems to be an exception among current emerging religious groups, where loosely organized groupings seem to be the rule. In this paper both the organization and the belief system are discussed, and an explanation is given why this particular movement developed into a full-fledged organization.

 

The Political Past as Sacred Past: Making Shivaji a Sacred King in

Western India

Daniel Jasper, Moravian College, djasper@moravian.edu

            In this p