MODERNITY, RELIGION, AND TRADITION IN THE NARRATED LIFE OF A FEMALE HUMANIST

Inger Furseth, KIFO Centre for Church Research, Oslo

This paper gives an in-depth analysis of the life story of a female humanist.  The purpose is to find the types of cultural and religious codes she used to interpret her life. The analysis is combined with data from a national survey on religion in Norway. The paper illustrates the conflict between conformity, tradition, and individualism in the life of a modern self.

THE MARGINALIZATION OF EVANGELICAL FEMINISM

Sally K. Gallagher, Oregon State University

In this paper, I propose an explanation for the marginalization of biblical feminism within American evangelicalism. Drawing on data from the Religious Identity and Influence Survey (1996), personal interviews with 265 evangelicals in 23 states, and an analysis of biblical feminist writings, I argue that unlike the evangelical mainstream, biblical feminism is doubly marginalized, yet continues to thrive as a religious subculture within a larger subculture. Although evangelicals tend to be egalitarian in practice, most resist the egalitarian ideals of biblical femi­nism, particularly its implications for the notion of husbands’ headship. In spite of biblical feminist claims that they retain a high view of the authority and inspiration of the Bible, their explicit arguments for egalitarianism in marriage are viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility by evangeli­cal gender essentialists. At the same time biblical feminists find them­selves at odds with the broader culture for their adherence to the very principles of biblical inspiration and authority that gender essentialist evangelicals accuse them of abandoning.

FUNERALS OF THE CONGREGATIONALLY UNAFFILIATED

Kathleen Garces-Foley, University of California, Santa Barbara

Over one-third of Americans do not claim membership in a reli­gious congregation, but the majority of the “congregationally unaffiliated” continue to mark major life events, such as death, through communal rituals officiated by religious professionals. This paper presents findings from a pilot study in Ventura County, Califor­nia, which explored four dimensions of unaffiliat­ed funerals: the process of ritual creation, lay participation, creativity and standardiza­tion, and shared mean­ing. Following the secularization thesis, some scholars have argued that contempo­rary funerals are devoid of an overarching meaning system and meaningful ritual structure, hence are incapa­ble of assisting the bereaved in facing death. The findings of this study suggest that despite their informal character and emphasis on spontaneous sharing, unaffiliated funerals utilize a highly standardized ritual structure. Further­more, though unaf­filiated services focus on the life of the deceased rather than a theological interpreta­tion of death, they articulate a shared meaning system based on belief in God, person­al immortality, and ethical living.

THE RELIGIOUS IDENTITY OF YOUNG ADULT CATHOLICS IN THE CONTEXT OF OTHER CATHOLIC GENERATIONS

Mary L. Gautier and Mary E. Bendyna, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate

A body of anecdotal evidence suggests that although their reli­gious participation rates are lower, young adult Catholics may be more like their grandparents than their parents in terms of their religious identity. Using the largest national random telephone poll of U.S. Catholics ever conducted, we compare Catholic generations on their sense of what it means to be Catholic and other issues of religious identity.

REVOLUTION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY: THE  GOSPEL OF THOMAS

Robert M. Geraci, University of California, Santa Barbara

The Gospel of Thomas, a noncanonical text of early Christianity, reflects the concerns of a socially marginalized, evangelical tradition. Examina­tion of the specific concerns of its community sheds light on the gospel’s origin and the experience of early Christians. A hermeneutic of thematic frequency and intertextual positionality demonstrates that the 114 logia in the gospel prescribe a worldview concerned with (1) being a social minority and (2) salvation. These concepts—the sociality of a marginal­ized community and their political and spiritual soteriology —demonstrate that the gospel was the social commentary of a (persecuted?) minority. It represents their hope for salvation in the political, temporal world, as well as the eternal salvation of the individual’s relationship to God. The eschatological redemption (political and spiritual) in the Gospel of Thomas shows the concerns of an evangelizing minority. Through careful examination, we see how this method has much to offer other social analyses, past and contemporary.

THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY: MUSLIM STUDENTS IN U.S. COLLEGES

Kamel Ghozzi, Central Missouri State University

Why does the experience of living in the West often turn reli­giously indifferent Muslim students into active Islamists? This paper suggests that Sayyid Qutb’s articles on American society that he wrote while in the U.S. between 1948 and 1950, reflect a quest for identity often lived by Muslim students in the educational and training institutions of the West. As they struggle to define themselves in contradistinc­tion to the West, Muslim students often mobilize religion as a vehicle of identity validation through which they seek to prove the inferior moral status of Western society and the “superior virtue of the op­pressed.” In this therapeutic process, Western society is often turned from a source of knowledge and admiration into an object of critical inquiry, which in turn places these students within the outreach of movements of Islamic resurgence.

GLOBALIZING RELIGION AND RACIAL IDENTITY FORMATION: THE CASE OF

PHILADEL­PHIA MENNONITES

Jeff Gingerich, Bluffton College

This paper will address the effects of globalization on the cultural and racial identity of an urban Mennonite community. The project is a historical ethnographic case study of the Philadelphia District of the Lancaster Conference Mennonite Church. Contrary to the typical cultural stereotypes of Menno­nites as reclusive Swiss-German pacifists, the Philadelphia District consists of significant numbers of Cambodian, Ethiopian, Chinese, Filipino, African-American, Indian, Palestinian-Arabic, Vietnamese, Hispanic, and European individuals. The paper will specifically look at the universalizing and particularizing tendencies of globalization and their subsequent impacts on racial and religious identity. The paper will draw on interviews, ethnographic field notes, and historical data to look at the impact of globalization on this district. Analysis will utilize both the “glocalization” theories of Roland Robert­son and the “racialization” analysis of Omi and Winant.

THE CONCEPT OF “CLASS” IN BRITISH PENTECOSTAL EXPERI­ENCE

Malcolm Gold, Malone College

This paper examines the socioeconomic status of a congre­gation within an Assembly of God Church (City Christian Centre) in the northeast of England. Data indicate a shift in the class compo­sition of British Pentecostals. These find­ings prompt a reevalua­tion of many previous sociologi­cal inter­preta­tions that have linked fundamental Christian belief and affilia­tion with a particular social class—i.e., that fundamental Christianity is comprised mainly of those individuals on the lower end of the scale. Whereas this was the case within City Christian Centre, the past twenty years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the attendance of middle- and upper-middle-income families. The present situa­tion finds a majority of its members falling into the middle-class bracket. Socioeco­nomic group distinctions pertaining to the traditionally perceived notion of cultural difference are under­mined within the class-integrated church. The subsequent insulation creates a unique form of homogeneity based upon theological rather than secular under­standings of social posi­tion.

THE SECULARIZATION DEBATE: A DIALECTIC OF OLD AND NEW PARADIGMS

Warren S. Goldstein, University of Central Florida

The theory of secularization has been placed into question by what R. Stephen Warner calls a “new paradigm” in the sociology of religion. This paper will use two models of the theory of secu­larization to engage in its analysis. The first is unilinear, in which secularization occurs in a gradual one-way evolutionary manner from the sacred to the profane. The second is dialecti­cal, in which secularization takes place through a contradictory process which is marked by a dynamic tension between the sacred and the profane. Using this model, this paper will analyze how unilinear and dialectical instances of secularization are con­tained in the classics, the old and new paradigms. Many sociolo­gists of religion argue either for or against secularization while ignoring evidence of the countervailing tendency. A dialec­tical conception of secularization can help us under­stand the relationship between secularization and sacralization as well as the old and the new paradigms.

RELIGION AS A CATEGORY OF DISCOURSE

Arthur L. Greil, Alfred University

This paper argues that the category “religion” is best under­stood, not so much as an entity, but as a “category of dis­course,” whose precise meaning and implications are continually being negotiated in social interaction. “Religion” is a distinct­ly Western concept with a specific social history. In the present as in the past, the cultural construction of the category “reli­gion” involves power and interests. From this perspective, reli­gion is not an entity but a claim, made by certain groups and—in some cases—contested by others, to the right to the privileges associated in a given society with the religious label. What is needed is an empirical study of the social construction of the category “religion.” Such a study would include—among other things—studies of historical and cross-national differences in the meaning of religion; analysis of the activities of courts and other governmental bodies as efforts to construct and enforce legal definitions of religion; and studies of the way people use terms such as “religion,” “spirituality,” “way of life,” and so on.

IMMIGRANT CHINESE GODS: FUZHOUNESE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN NEW YORK AND THEIR TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS

Kenneth J. Guest, Baruch College, CUNY

Since 1985, 200,000 mostly rural Chinese have immigrated, legally and illegally, from the towns and villages outside the city of Fuzhou on China’s southeastern coast, to New York’s Chinatown, bringing with them their religious beliefs, their religious practices, and their deities. In recent years these immigrant laborers in Chinatown’s restaurants and garment sweatshops have established numerous specifically Fuzhounese religious communi­ties, ranging from Buddhist, Daoist and Chinese popular religion to Protestant and Catholic Christianity. This paper examines the central role of these religious communities in the immigrant incorporation process in Chinatown’s ethnic enclave. It also explores the transnational networks established between religious communities in New York and Fuzhou, including their role in transmitting religious and social constructs from China to the U.S. and the influence of these new U.S. institutions on reli­gious and social relations in the religious revival sweeping southeastern China today.

THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND MAGIC: FAITH HEALING AND CHRIS­TIANITY

Durk H. Hak, University of Groningen

According to the recent Instruction from the Vatican on praying for healing, the local bishop has to consent to healing services. In main­stream Protestantism, both theologians and ministers more or less reject faith healing and faith-healing services. Only in the charismatic and pentecostal movements is there ample room for faith healing, and these communities boast some very successful faith healers: e.g., Oral Roberts, Cerullo and John Osborn, and in the Nether­lands the late Johan Maasbach. Although we are here concerned with magical practices (of indi­viduals), which are in opposition to religion according to received wisdom in both anthropology and sociology, they succeed­ed in gathering around them a more or less stable community. In the paper the tension between (Chris­tian) religion and faith healing (magic) is explored and ana­lyzed, and the insights of, among others, Weber, Malinowski, and Stark and Bainbridge are used. The issue of why these “(tel)e­vangelists” opt for faith healing is also explored.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL CAPITAL IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE

Loek Halman, Tilburg University, and Thorleif Pettersson, Uppsala University

The notion of social capital has recently gained prominence in academic discourse, and social capital theory has been used to explain important differences in governmental performances and social and economic developments. Religion is not infrequently assumed to create social trust and to support norms of reciproci­ty, often regarded as two major components of social capital, while secularization and increased emphasis on individual autonomy have been seen as threats to collective norms and the maintenance of social trust. However, the relationship between religion and social capital has received comparatively little attention. Therefore, it is of considerable interest to investi­gate the relationships between religion and social capital and their various components. Using the 1999/2000 European Values Study data from 29 countries, this paper explores the relation­ships between social capital and religion, and finds them to be generally insubstantial.

THE JANUS FACE: ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN THE CHURCH OF SWEDEN

Per H. Hansson, Peter Fjellstedt Foundation, Uppsala

The Church of Sweden (Lutheran) was disestablished in the year 2000. This means that the Church in the future has to rely more on and to have better relations with its members. An investiga­tion of Church culture was undertaken in 1999. Outsiders with a very good knowledge of parish life were inter­viewed in depth. The result is unambiguous: the parishes have one culture faced toward the members and another culture faced inward. The face shown toward the members is friendly and service minded. The parishes seem to be filled with joy and humor. The inner culture was in some cases of a similar kind. In most cases, however, it was almost the opposite: friendliness was turned into rigidity and a will to have everyone to do things in one’s own way. The high degree of service and lack of limits toward the members contrast with the many limits toward colleagues: every­one can claim that his or her theology should be the basis of parish life. The friendliness outward and the rigidity inward can be called the Janus face of the Church.

BLACK HOLY GROUND: ON AFRICAN ROOTS IN CHRISTIANITY

William H. Hardy, Tennessee State University

This paper is an attempt to examine the presence of Africa and African people in several events written in the Hebrew and Greek Bibles (the OT/NT). The methodologi­cal tools used to produce this work have included ethnographic participant observation both in the United States and in Kenya. Also Biblical Afrocentric Exege­sis has been employed, a method that was almost unheard of until the last 25 years of the 20th century. Particularly, this work will focus on the DNA verification of Black Jews in Zimbabwe (the Limba People), who have the Semitic Cohen gene that links the group back to the priestly family of Moses and Aaron, to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. My investigatory effort regard­ing the seemingly controversial first two forks of the river that flows from the Garden of Eden will lay bare the continued racial bias as a result of earlier bibli­cal anthropo­logical work. And the biblical journey of the Wise Men reading the stars as a map to the ful­fillment of an old Hebrew prophesy will be examined from the perspective of the Red Sea people extending to the Horn of Africa, where frankincense and myrrh grow naturally.

IMPERIAL STATES, AXIAL RELIGIONS, AND THE DEFINITION OF RELIGION

William Herbrechtsmeier, Humboldt State University

This essay will explore arbitrary limits, features, and values imposed on the concept “religion” by the prominence of the “big 5” major traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. These traditions are typically understood as basic for definitional concerns, inasmuch as any attempt to describe cultur­al phenomena as “religious” has been based on analogies drawn from the forms that exist in these five traditions. However, these “axial” traditions established their dominance among the world’s religions in virtue of their connections with the imperi­al state, and as such represent patterns of religion that serve to characterize only a relatively narrow spectrum of what consti­tutes religion most generally. The essay will explore the social and political features that contributed to their eventual domi­nance among world traditions, and how these features disadvantage others that are prominent in different cultural contexts.

DISABILITY, RELIGION, AND SOCIETAL MARGINALITY

Albert A. Herzog, Jr., Ohio State University

While the call for papers asserts that religious groups and even private religiosity from the “margins” can offer various forms of social critique, mainstream sociology of religion often overlooks disability as a source of marginal religious group membership and as a source of societal critique. This paper explores whether there is, indeed, such an interface as well as evaluates disabil­ity as source of and “shaper” of social critique. Articles and books about various religious groups located at the societal margins are reviewed for their inclusiveness with regard to disability as well as their links to various social critiques. These are then categorized and analyzed according to criteria found in recent attempts to explore the relationships between disability and society from a sociological perspective. Implica­tions for the sociological study of religion and societal margin­ality are explored.

FINDING A PLACE: THE UNCHURCHED RESEARCHER GOES TO CHURCH

Zoey Heyer-Gray, Woodland, California

In this paper I reflect upon my experience of being an unchurched person studying rural churches in the small, Midwestern town of which I had been a resident for several years prior to taking on this research. I discuss my informants’/neighbors’ efforts to place me, the shifting set of identities they attached to me (from “neighbor-lady” to “lady-moving-back-to-California”), and what these begin to suggest about community and the importance of place. I also talk about how the process of conducting research was not only a way of coming to know the community, the churches, and the people, but also a way of becoming known, of finding a place in the community (albeit an unexpectedly short-lived one) and—to my surprise—maybe even in the churches, too.

FRONTIERS OF FAITH-BASED ACTIVISM

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Kara Lemm, University of Southern California

This presentation compares the activities of a contemporary group of clergy labor activists in Los Angeles who have organized into a group called Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) with another religious group, loosely identified as the Sanctuary Movement, who used civil disobedience to advocate for Central Americans in the 1980s. Relying on primary and secondary data, the presentation will examine the responses of clergy to Latino/Central American immigrant issues, looking particularly at how religious symbolism and moral authority are used in civil disobedience, protest and advocacy.

THE CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA: “THE WORLD’S FIRST ANTI-HUMAN RELIGION”

Matthew Immergut, Drew University

The Church of Euthanasia (CoE) is a new religious movement in Boston, Massachusetts protesting the rapid ecological devastation created by globalizing economic, technological, and cultural forces. The CoE condemns humanism and biblical monotheism as being the religious backbone of modernity’s destructive social structures and habits. The CoE has one main religious command­ment, “Thou Shalt Not Procreate.” Along with this life-time vow not to procreate, which CoE takes “very seriously,” there are an additional four “pillars”: suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy. This paper will examine how CoE has constructed a world view of resistance to the globalizing forces of modernity. Similar to other forms of “fundamentalism” and radical environ­mentalism, CoE must continually negotiate what Stark and Bain­bridge identify as “tensions” between themselves and the dominant culture. For intensely “deviant” groups, the degree of tension with the larger culture remains high and inevitably pushes for some sort of “resolution.” In the case of CoE, the resolution is potentially violent.

STANDING IN AND STANDING OUT: A MAINLINE PROTESTANT RESEARCHER LEARNS FROM THE PENTECOSTALS

Lynne Isaacson, University of Missouri

Faith Ministries is a small, independent Pentecostal church in the southeast Ozarks of Missouri. Healing is an integral part of its ministries. “Standing” is a common practice in which a person might come forward to take the physical place of an absent loved one, acting as an intermediary for healing on the absent person’s behalf. Here, I describe how my experience of standing in for a local friend played an important role in changing my relationship with and feelings about Faith Ministries in particu­lar and Pentecostalism in general. Over the course of my ­work, initial reactions of extreme discomfort and resistance, which are not surprising given my ELCA upbringing, made way for suspension of disbelief and appreciation. My transformative experience raises questions about the role of emotion and subjec­tive experience in fieldwork, and about the usefulness of the concept of “going native.” The research process not only helped me to formulate an understanding of religious life at Faith Minis­tries, but it also changed the way I think about and practice my own spirituality.

ALTERNATIVE RELIGIOUS WORSHIP SPACES ON THE MARGINS: THE ARCHI­TECTURE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, VEDANTA, THEOSOPHY, AND BAHA’I IN THE UNITED STATES

Paul Ivey, University of Arizona

This paper explores the strategies of public representation of four marginal religious groups launched into the limelight at the World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893. As religions that attracted primarily women devotees, the architecture of these groups challenged traditional gender conceptions concerning public/private spheres. Soon after the Exposition, rapidly growing Christian Science congregations adopted the classical style made famous by the “White City.” Debates quickly emerged concerning whether this new church architecture should emphasize traditional sacred or progressive secular civic values. The first Vedanta Hindu Temple in America was built in 1908 as a Victorian domestic structure crowned by Indian temple-inspired towers. Architect Luta Maria Riggs designed an award-winning temple inspired by Indian prototypes in 1946 at a convent near Santa Barbara. These emphasized private devotion. Mystical and esoteric groups such as Theosophy and Baha’i utilized unusual geometric plans to compel their spiritual ideas into the public domain.

CULT AS A RELIGIOUS ADDICTION

Hiroshi Iwai, Kansai University of International Studies

This paper is a theoretical sketch of the sociology of “religious addiction.” Addiction, generally, means the dependency on some­thing that is psychologically or physically habit forming (espe­cially alcohol or narcotic drugs). Religious behavior, like the use of addictive drugs, is a highly reinforcing behavior. There­fore, the concept of addiction will shed light on the study of religion from a different angle. It will also serve to understand why people get involved in “cults” and why it is difficult for converts to leave “cults.”

THE INCORPORATION OF HINDUISM IN NEW YORK

Daniel Jasper, New School for Social Research

Despite the presence of organizations such as the Vedanta Society and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Hinduism has only recently begun to have a prominent presence in the United States. Following the 1965 reform of immigration laws, a sizable community of Hindus has arrived not only from South Asia, but also as twice migrants via Africa and the Caribbean. As large numbers of Hindu immigrants have arrived in the past three decades, there has been a flourishing of Hindu organizations. Carrying with them different forms of religious practice, beliefs, and even deities, a variety of Hindu communities has emerged. This paper looks at some of the strategies Hindu communities have used to establish religious organizations in New York. By analyzing some of the different patterns of Hindu incorporation, it is possible to see the emergence of a variety of particular Hinduisms, as well as addressing the extent to which a unified Hinduism is emerging in the United States.

“THIS IS TRUE BIBLICAL KOINONIA”: THE MAINTENANCE OF MULTICULTURALISM AND MULTIRACIALISM IN THE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHES OF CHRIST

Kathleen Jenkins, Brandeis University

Christian communities have been a locus for social movements and philosophies aimed at dismantling racial and ethnic prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and violence. Although most Americans still choose to worship alongside people who are similar to themselves in racial and ethnic background, there are a significant number of diverse Christian congregations in the United States. Current congregational studies shed some light on the social composition of these racially and ethnically diverse communities. However, there is currently no ethnographic analysis of how a religious congregation maintains a racially and ethnically mixed membership. This paper, based on four years of field studies in a congregation of the International Churches of Christ (ICC), offers such a lens. Analyzing formal group discourse and individual members’ narratives, I illustrate how this new evangelical movement constructs an appealing discourse that depicts their church community as extraordinarily able to practice major principles of multiculturalism and multiracialism.

NEGATIVE HOPES? EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND THE DECLINE NARRATIVE

Daniel C. Johnson, Gordon College

In recent years evangelical Christians in America have grown increasingly comfortable with the image of national or civilizational decline as a prime motif for cultural criticism. This development is significant in light of Charles Lemert’s suggestion that religion is primarily a medium for expressing social hope in the face of human limitations. We might conclude that the embrace of the (essentially pessimistic) decline narrative signals the eclipse of a basic religious concern with social hope within the evangelical subculture. We do better, however, to see it as evidence of a transformation in how hope is typically experienced in advanced modern societies. Building on contemporary analyses of the “risk society” (and of risk and governmentality), this paper suggests that hope has come to be experienced more in a negative form—as a desire that certain bad things do not occur—than in the more conventional form of aspiring toward a positively defined future.

RELIGIOUS TRAVEL IN THE 21ST CENTURY: MODERN AND POSTMODERN INFLUENCES

Lutz Kaelber, University of Vermont

Religious tourism, this paper argues, is not immune to the influence of some of the same trends that affect travel at large. This paper addresses McDonaldization, Disneyfication, and postmodernization in the context of different forms of religious travel in the 21st century. It explores the extent to which such processes can be found in different types of religious travel: pilgrimage, defined as religiously motivated travel to holy sites that are supported by religious authorities; religious travel, or travel to sacred sites that lack such support; and religious tourism, or travel to sites of postmodern reverence, where the boundaries between religious worship, recreation, and the consumption of space implode. It is argued that while traditional forms such as pilgrimage remain important and, in fact, may show signs of increasing significance in (post)modern culture, the boundaries between such traditional religious travel and other forms of (religious and other) travel seem to erode increasingly.

TRENDS IN RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES ON SUPPORT FOR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL NORMS, 1972-1998

Vyacheslav Karpov and Matthew DeMichele, Western Michigan University

Previous research has suggested that religion has become less connected with support for strict sexual norms among most American Christians, with the exception of conservative Protestants who attend church frequently. This decline is believed to reflect religious privatization. Our paper reevaluates this assumption. Using GSS data, we show that, contrary to previously reported findings, the associations between church attendance and negative attitudes toward premarital sex are actually stronger among all Protestants in 1998 than they were in 1972, while data for Catholics show little change. Then we show similar trends in religious influences on support for other sexual norms. Implications of these findings for the secularization hypothesis are discussed.

“GREENING” ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Laurel Kearns, Drew University

Sociologists of religion and other religious scholars that use related approaches rarely take the physical environment, especially in terms of environmental pollution and toxicity, into consideration as part of the larger setting of religious groups. This paper addresses the need to “green” ethnography from two approaches: First, it examines the need to consider environmental factors in any ethnographic study, but argues that those in the sociology of religion particularly need to understand environmental issues that may affect the emphasis and practice of religious groups. These insights were stimulated by my research on religious involvement in the eco-justice movement, which has changed how I do ethnography. Second, it examines the ecological critique of mainstream social thought and suggests why nature may be particularly problematic for sociologists of religion. I conclude that the important effort to green sociology and ethnography joins other movements from the margins to include the excluded “other”—in this case, nature.

“THE WORLD IS A CANOE”: THE CHUMASH ENVIRONMENTAL ETHOS AND SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS TO MARITIME CULTURE

Dennis Kelley, University of California, Santa Barbara

Of the many things for which the Chumash Indians of the central California coast are known, perhaps the most unique is their plank canoe, or tomol, a vessel not only instrumental in the Chumash exploitation of marine resources, but in solidifying the complex regional trade system comprising the Chumash interaction sphere. However, for some contemporary Chumash, this element of material culture reaches beyond its use value into the realm of prime symbol, tapping into the essence of Chumash religiocultural orientation, encompassing a nexus of meaning surrounding issues of dependence upon nature, belief in the reciprocity of social life, and the interdependence of society and the environment. In this paper, I will attempt to articulate a meaningful analysis of this phenomenon, arguing for the understanding of the tomol as an exemplar of religious, ethnic, and social identity, anchoring the Chumash revitalization movement to an interconnected spiritual and ethical system of maritime orientation.

YOUNG PREACHERS OF THE TABLIGH MOVEMENT IN PUBLIC SPACE: IDENTIARY DIGNITY REDISCOVERED THROUGH RELIGIOUS PURITANISM

Moussa Khedimellah, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Here I have tried to analyze the construction of subjectivity of young Muslims who live in quarters of exclusion in France. They often feel an omnipresent discrimination and then become zealous militants of Islam, joining the Tabligh Movement. Islam and its practice keep them out of the boring and dangerous spiral. With Muslim religiosity, they build a specific and original identity. This subjectivity is based first on a strong faith and a mimetic, strict and regular practice of Islam regarding the Sunna: the Prophet Mohammed becomes the perfect model to imitate. They invest public space with a special dress (beard, Muslim tunic, etc.). The main consequence is a period of closed behavior about friends, family, and the global society. Tabligh’s militants resolve their deep problems of identity by a religious Puritanism by travelling into an interesting process (the four stages), which organized their values, their sense of life and death, and their social relations.

FROM AN EST-LIKE SEMINAR TO A CULT OF A GURU: THE CASE OF “LIFE SPACE” IN JAPAN

Yasushi Koike, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

“Life Space,” one of the biggest self-improvement seminars in Japan, formerly offered est-like therapeutic courses but later transformed into a cult of a guru. Self-improvement seminars can develop in one of two directions: (1) psychological programs for all walks of life, or (2) more spiritual practices for “New Age” niches. Facing a decrease of trainees, Life Space took the latter direction, influenced by the Indian guru system. Its leader, Takahashi, became a guru claiming supernatural powers. In 1999, Takahashi was arrested for keeping a mummified body, which he had claimed was “alive.” It is argued that a therapeutic community outside “mainstream” institutions is likely to become spiritual, and the mummy incident encouraged Life Space to become more like a religion that allegedly “conquers” death.

ABORTION ATTITUDES AND THE DEATH PENALTY

Chris Kudlac and James R. Kelly, Fordham University

Is the way people judge abortion connected with the way they judge capital punishment? We examine the 2000 GSS data (with controls and time comparisons) to test one of the dimensions of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin’s seminal and influential theses first expressed in his December 1983 address, “A Consistent Ethic of Life: American Catholic Dialogue”: “We intend our opposition to abortion and our opposition to nuclear war to be seen as specific applications of this broader attitude. We have also opposed the death penalty because we do not think its use cultivates an attitude of respect for life in society. The purpose of proposing a consistent ethic of life is to argue that success on any one of the issues threatening life requires a concern for the broader attitude in society about respect for human life.”

MULTICULTURALISM, ETHNIC NATIONALISM AND IMMIGRANT RELIGION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AMERICAN HINDUISM

Prema Kurien, University of Southern California

Using the case of Hindu Indian Americans, I argue that the formulation and practice of multiculturalism frequently promotes the development of ethnic nationalism. For a variety of reasons, religious organizations become the preferred means for immigrants to maintain and develop ethnic identities, with the result that national heritage is redefined to be consonant with the religion of the particular group. In multicultural societies, there is pressure on immigrants and their children to become “ethnic and proud” in order to be recognized and validated by the wider society. This usually involves a process of group consolidation, cultural homogenization and glorification. Since religion becomes the carrier of ethnici­ty, much of this process is accomplished through the use of religious organizations and religious symbols. This combination often results in the development of an expatriate nationalism that attempts to rewrite the past, recon­struct the present, and reshape the future in ways that are congruent with religious identity.

THE VALUE OF SACRIFICE: AMERICAN CATHOLICS IN THREE COHORTS

Thomas Landy, College of the Holy Cross

This paper reports results from an in-depth interview study of Boston-area adult Catholics and former Catholics’ attitudes toward sacrifice as a religious disposition and value. The interviews explored religious histories, attitudes toward sacrifice, and changes in understanding about what it means to be religious. Three cohorts—pre-Vatican II, Vatican II, and post-Vatican II—exhibited markedly different attitudes toward sacrifice. These could be characterized as acceptance, ambivalence, and incomprehension. Further cohort differences in degree of religious place attachment were also particularly salient, and seem to some extent to be attached to attitudes toward sacrifice and its ability to foster place attachment.

MONEY, POWER, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE GODS IN CHINA: CASE STUDIES OF THE DELICATE DANCE OF CADRES, VILLAGERS, ENTREPRENEURS, AND DIASPORA CHINESE

Graeme Lang, City University of Hong Kong, Selina Chan, National University of Singapore, and Lars Ragvald, University of Lund

Thousands of Buddhist and Taoist temples in China have been rebuilt or refurbished since the beginning of the 1980s. The religious market in China is constrained by strict government regulation. However, the pressure on this system of regulation from local worshipers, from religious specialists, and from the deep pockets of diaspora Chinese, has opened up many more oppor­tunities for worshipers than existed in the early 1980s. Some local governments also support the construction of a new temple for their own reasons. Some new temples built during this period appear to be successful, while others appear to be failures. Good “marketing knowledge” is a key factor in the success or failure of a temple, and people in China are still trying to learn (or, re-learn) the principles. We illustrate these process­es with case studies of the building of nine new temples to the Taoist deity Wong Tai Sin.

TRADITIONALISM VERSUS EGALITARIANISM: BLACK BAPTISTS AND WOMEN IN MINISTRY

Shayne Lee, Northwestern University

The quest for ordination of black Baptist women has been more difficult than other black mainline denominations. In the last thirty years, Second Baptist Church of Evanston transformed from almost a century of traditionalism into an egalitarian church and fortress for women clergy. This ethnographic work collected data from in-depth interviews and over a year of participant observation at this black Baptist church to study the forces behind its paradigmatic change. My main contention is that cultural change is not a process deriving from the gradual accumulation of divergent paradigms, but is revolutionary and most often specialist-driven. This study also establishes that spiritual communities are like other rational institutions—they are paradigmatic and specialist-driven—and a social constructionist approach is best suited for analyzing paradigmatic interaction.

GAY MARGINS ENCIRCLING STRAIGHT LINES: CHALLENGES TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES TO EMBRACE SOCIAL CHANGE

Paul J. Levesque, California State University, Fullerton

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the dominant Christian institutions in society generally promote social stability through reassertion of the status quo. Even when change is advocated based on the rights and dignity of a particular group, appeal to core Christian values is outweighed by tradition and consistency. Yet there are dissident voices, from within and without, promoting social change and calling for Christian churches to embrace development. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than between the predominant Christian stance against homosexuality and the summons for acceptance and equality for homosexual persons. Evangelical and mainline churches, in varying degrees, have latched onto issues of gay rights as an evil agenda that will corrupt society and must be halted and reversed. Hence, for example, the NCR Alliance Defense Fund maintains that ”the homosexual legal agenda is the number one threat to ... faith, freedom, and family today.”

THEY PRAYED IN BOSTON AND IT RAINED IN BRAZIL: THE TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE

Peggy Levitt, Harvard University

Rather than cutting off social and economic attach­ments to their homelands, and trading one political membership for another, some migrants remain strongly connected to their countries of origin at the same time that they are integrated into new homes. By deepening and extending already-global religious institutions, they create mechanisms enabling continued participation in sending- and receiving-country civic and political life. By participating transnationally through religious institutions, they expand the depth and breadth of religious globalization. The goal of this paper is to propose an emerging framework for understanding the relationship between transnational migration and religious globalization. I begin delineating the transnational religious landscape, offer some preliminary findings on how the actors within it engage in transnational religion and politics, and propose an agenda for further research. My comments are based on preliminary findings from an on-going study of transnational migration among five immigrant communities in greater Boston.

STAVING OFF MAINLINE EROSION: FINDING “GOOD” CLERGY FOR MARGINAL CONGREGATIONS

Adair Lummis, Hartford Seminary

Getting “good clergy” for congregations is a major part of most regional leaders’ jobs across denominations. The better they are able to do this, they believe with some justification, the more their congregations will express their allegiance to the regional judicatory in money and denominational commitment. However, many regional leaders are experiencing problems in doing this, as survey data collected in 1999 and open-ended interviews conducted in 2000-2001 with leaders in seven Protestant denominations, attest. Problems in getting “good clergy” they attributed to one or a combination of: (1) unrealistic expectations of lay committees; (2) fewer “good clergy” available, and (3) the increase in numbers of marginal congregations. This paper will examine these issues and explore whether the newer evangelical denominations, more marginal to the American scene, experience similar or different problems in getting “good clergy” than those denominations which have enjoyed a more prestigious, dominant position in our society.

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY IN RELIGION, POWER, AND CHANGE

Mahgoub El-Tigani Mahmoud, Tennessee State University

Religion continues to play a significant role in the politics of many African nations. Today there is a  pressing need to separate religion from governance to increase citizenship relations between the indigenous populations and the ruling elites in order to enhance the cause of peace and develop effective administra­tive systems.

THE BAQT AGREEMENT: MEDIEVAL RELATIONS BETWEEN CHRISTIAN NUBIA AND THE MUSLIM STATE OF EGYPT

Nuraddin Manan, Former Ambassador of Sudan to the United States

Discussion will focus on the Baqt Agreement between the Christian kingdoms of Nubia and the newly established Muslim state of Egypt. The Baqt, although criticized by many historians as a symbol of Muslim domination, was a unique agreement that recog­nized the religious, cultural, and political independence of the Nubian kingdoms from the Muslim state. The Baqt, moreover, opened the way for an equalitarian cultural and social amalgamation of the incoming Muslim Arabs and the indigenous Nubians of Sudan.

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS OF CULT: TOWARD A NEW DEFINITION OF THE CHURCH, DENOMINATION, SECT, AND CULT?

Yoshihiko Joshua Masuda, Sun Moon University

This paper is an attempt to present a comprehensive review of the origin and development of sociological concepts of cult. The author discerns the existence of two different concepts. The first is a very amorphous religious group characterized by looseness and diffuseness of its organization; the second concept is a religious minority group characterized by innovative or alien beliefs. In the first two sections, we will review the origin and development of each of these two sociological concepts of cult. In the third section, we will criticize mainly the second sociological concept of cult and attempt to present a new definition of cult, sect, denomination, and church by synthesizing some of the past typological studies. In conclusion, we will ponder the desirableness of the continuing use of the term cult in the sociological literature.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “PROMISE KEEPERS”? A TEST OF CHRISTIAN SMITH’S “SUBCULTURAL IDENTITY” THEORY OF RELIGIOUS STRENGTH

James A. Mathisen, Wheaton College

In American Evangelicalism, Christian Smith presents a theory of “subcultural identity” to argue that in the case of American evangelicalism, “subcultural identity”—emphasizing distinction from, but engagement with, relevant outgroups best explains its upsurge of the past generation. Ironically, such subcultural distinctiveness also may point to significant areas of likely ineffectiveness. This paper uses a case study, both to test Smith’s theory and also to interpret a specific religious movement. Promise Keepers emerged from its evangelical origins to attempt to build a men’s movement on larger religious and cultural bases of support. After its explosion onto the American religious scene between 1991-1996, however, PK’s recent history has been more problematic. Simply asked, “how adequately does the Smith theory of religious strength explain PK’s dramatic growth and its apparent decline?” And does the theory’s emphasis on the ironies of strength and ineffectiveness provide any particular insights into PK’s current malaise?

GENDER AND CLERGY WORK STRESS: DIFFERENTIAL EXPOSURE AND VULNERA­BILITY

Elaine M. McDuff, Truman State University

Work-related stress is an issue of growing concern to both employers and employees. Modern life is increasingly stress filled, and a substantial body of research indicates that high levels of stress produce physical symptomology, reduced work effectiveness, burnout, and job turnover. Stress and burnout are increasingly being recognized as issues of concern in the work lives of clergy. This study therefore attempts to develop a comprehensive model of sources of clergy stress. In addition, following a number of recent studies which have found evidence of significant gender differences in worker stress, we investigate gender differences in clergy work stress and find higher stress levels for female clergy. Using two popular models for explaining these gender differences, differential vulnerability and differential exposure, we find support for the differential exposure hypothesis as a means of explaining female clergy’s higher levels of stress.

IDENTITY CRISIS: GREECE, THE EUROPEAN UNION, AND RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM

Lina Molokotos-Liederman, École Pratique des Hautes Études

Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of Byzantium are integral parts of Hellenic national identity. As the only Orthodox member-state of the European Union, Greece has been involved in a heated controversy over the question of religious affiliation on identi­ty cards. The problem dates from the early 1990s, when the Maastricht Treaty eased internal border restrictions within the EU and proposed a system of national identity cards which would eventually replace passports in the free movement of citizens within member-states of the Union. This paper presents a first analysis of the subsequent controversy by examining Greek and non-Greek perspectives on the issue, as they are expressed in the national daily press. Based on a content analysis of a nonexhaus­tive sample of Greek, French, and British newspaper articles, the paper compares the manner in which the problem is perceived by the Greek and foreign press and analyzes the different arguments on the issue; it also explores the question of how the controver­sy will redefine Greek church-state relations.

MISSIOLOGY AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION: NOT YET ON SPEAKING TERMS

Robert L. Montgomery, Ridgewood, New Jersey

Missiology and Sociology of Religion are both subdisciplines of well-established fields of study, and both suffer a certain sense of marginality. Nevertheless, they both have strong networks of productive scholars. Missiology, as the theological field devoted to the study of missions, primarily employs historical studies, but has also increasingly used the social sciences. However, missiology has selected cultural anthropology as the most relevant social science and has tended to avoid sociology—and sociology of religion in particular. Sociology of religion has for its part tended to ignore the study of overseas missions, even though such mission work consumes enormous resources of organized religious groups, which otherwise are a major object of study by sociologists of religion. Some possible reasons for this mutual avoidance are mentioned, but more attention is given to the basis for conversation and the advantages of increasing the interaction between missiology and the sociology of religion.

MEXICAN MIGRANT RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AS SEEN FROM THEIR FAMILIES’ POINT OF VIEW

Luis Rodolf Morán Quiroz, Centro de Investigaciones Pedagógicas y Sociales

In this paper I deal with how the migration process of Mexican peasants helps reestablish a high value on religious views and practices that somehow remain inactive but not forgotten while in their hometowns. The migration process influences devotion in a manner that goes off limits from the official church’s doctrine and rituals. Besides the revival of popular practices and rituals that are not necessarily in line with what the institutional churches consider orthodox, the Mexican peasant migrants bring into their religious realm new practices and beliefs thanks to which they deal with their trip and the necessities of their stay. The relatives that remain in the hometown feel a new need for divine protection for those who undertake the migration process; these relatives express this new need to be on good terms with the Catholic “deities” through the so-called “Mandas” and with other offerings directly to God the Father, to Jesus, or with the mediation of a priest or of other local “patron saints.”

AMERICAN BUDDHISTS IN JAPANESE BUDDHIST CHURCHES TODAY: TRADITION, SOCIAL ETHICS, AND IDENTITY AS BUDDHISTS

Tomoe Moriya, Hannan University

In this study I would like to report my findings from a survey on a Japanese Buddhist organization, the Buddhist Churches of America, from April through October 2000. The BCA has been conducting religious rituals and chants in Japanese for over 100 years, although present-day members cannot comprehend the meaning, as the younger generation has recently superseded the older one as both board and church members. This shift indicates the need for a more relevant way of transmitting the teachings in America. BCA churches have been playing an important role for the Japanese-American community as cultural centers, but it is also true that some ministers and members are more concerned about social ethics based upon Buddhist teachings in a Judeo-Christian society. We can see from the transition of the BCA the dilemma of this new trend and tendency toward the tradition of “imagined” Japanese culture.

RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS CRITIQUES OF RELIGION IN FREUDO-MARX­ISM: REICH, FROMM, AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Donald A. Nielsen, SUNY-Oneonta

This paper examines the critique of religion and society in the writings of such major Freudo-Marxists as Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and others in the Frankfurt School. It contrasts the irreligious critique of religion in Reich’s strong Marx-Freud amalgam with the more theologically inflected critiques found in Fromm and others in the Frankfurt School such as Max  Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Briefer reference is made to Herbert Marcuse’s work to demonstrate the main thesis: critiques of religion and society emerging from the Freudo-Marxist orbit ended uniformly in quasi-religious standpoints, whether they started as explicitly anti-religious (Reich) or accepted some selected religious perspectives (Fromm and to an extent Horkhei­me­r) or rested from the outset on implicit theological premises (Benjamin and Adorno) or were required ultimately to smuggle in mythological motifs to ground their critiques (Marcuse). The paper con­cludes with some reflec­tions on the contempo­rary viabil­ity of Freudo-Marxism.

CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM: THEIR CHANGING ROLES IN HONG KONG SINCE 1997

Peter Ng, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Since Hong Kong was a British colony before the return of her sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, Protestant Christianity, especially Anglicanism, had been enjoying many privileges in Hong Kong. In official ceremonies, in social services, in schools and other areas, the high position of the Anglican Bishop and Church was obvious. However, since her return to China in 1997, Hong Kong became the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Since then, the appar­ent role of Christianity in the social and political arena in Hong Kong has been diminishing. At the same time, Buddhism, which signifies a more Chinese form of religion than Christianity, has been assuming a more significant role in the society. The two are competing for the religious market in Hong Kong. The present paper is an attempt to account for this changing scene in Hong Kong.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF ANTI-CULT MOVEMENTS IN JAPAN

Kimiaki Nishida, University of Shizuoka

Recent decades in Japan have seen many “cult problems,” and researchers have been asked for contributions to theoretical explanations of the members’ seemingly irrational behaviors for the following purposes: (1) advising judges and lawyers on the members’ trials; (2) rescuing the former members’ distressed lives, (3) accepting the consulta­tions for the members’ families and their close associates, and (4) protecting our society from their attacks. In 1995, after Aum Shinrikyo’s crimes, researchers established a professional research organization for these problems, the Japan De-Cult Council (JDCC) in cooperation with lawyers, Buddhist priests, and Christian ministers. In addition, some of the members’ family networks and the countermeasure sections of existing religious are developing anti-cult movements in cooperation with lawyers, NPOs, and other experts. Recently, the Japanese government has begun to take measures to meet with the problems too. I introduce some of their concrete activities, exploring the major characteristics of Japan’s anti-cult movements.

CLASS AND EDUCATION CONSIDERATIONS IN AMERICAN JEWISH-GENTILE INTERMAR­RIAGE

Richard O’Leary, Queen’s University of Belfast, and Meir Yaish, Oxford University

Intermarriage has long been recognized as one of the most robust boundaries between groups. This paper uses national survey data to examine religion, education, and class in Jewish-Gentile marriage patterns in the U.S. One question which is posed is whether there is any evidence of social exchange between the characteristics of religion and level of education or class which husbands and wives being to their marriages. It is proposed that a knowledge of the status dimension to religious groups can contribute to our understanding of the pattern of religious intermarriage.

CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, 1971 TO 1990

Daniel V.A. Olson, Indiana University South Bend, and Paul Perl, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate

A number of recent studies show that North American cities and counties having more religious pluralism have lower rates of church membership. However, most of these studies are based on data sets collected at one point in time and are thus subject to a number of possible criticisms and alternative interpretations. In this paper we use structural equation models to analyze data collected from U.S. counties at three points in time, 1971, 1980, and 1990. Preliminary analysis suggests that, consistent with interpretations of cross-sectional data, areas with greater pluralism experience subsequent declines in church membership. However, these preliminary analyses also suggest that church membership rates simultaneously negatively affect pluralism. That is, high church membership rates lead to subsequent declines in pluralism, while low church membership rates may foster the growth of pluralism.

THE LOTTO AND THE LORD: THE IMPACT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND STIMULI ON ATTITUDES ABOUT THE LOTTERY IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Laura Olson, Clemson University, Karen V. Guth and James L. Guth, Furman University

On November 7, 2000, South Carolina voters approved the repeal of a constitutional amendment forbidding lotteries. Many religious leaders in the state had forcefully and publicly voiced their opposition to the lottery, but their efforts did not bear fruit on Election Day. In a state known for its intense evangelical religiosity, does the lottery referendum’s success suggest that clergy cannot sway public opinion? Might the flocks have strayed from their shepherds in the voting booths? I present an empirical look at the relationships between several religious variables among active South Carolina voters. To what extent do religious salience, clergy cues, and identification with evangelical Protestantism affect likelihood of support for the South Carolina lottery? Data are drawn from an October 3, 2000 pool of 450 South Carolinians who had voted in two previous elections.

RETHINKING THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION FOR THE ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIST WOMEN’S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES

Nese Öztimur, Uludag University

In Turkey, the university-student or university-graduated women, who represented their identity in the public sphere by Islamic dressing—the “veil”—were a focus for sociological analysis especially during the last two decades. The majority of this research discussed the compatibility of Islam and modernity. However, there is a need for the detailed analysis of the religious experiences of Islamist women for understanding their everyday life. In this paper, I will discuss how rethinking of sociology of religion, by considering the current shift in social theory from objectivism to hermeneutic, may give an opportunity to analyze the religious experiences of Islamic women in Turkey. Religion’s effect on the everyday life of social agents is not independent from the social, cultural, and political contexts. Religious premises are articulated to meaning and relationship patterns of the current social structure by agents. These presuppositions will be argued in the case of Islamist women.

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES AMONG URBAN UNIVERSITY ASIAN AMERICANS: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS

Jerry Park, University of Notre Dame

This study investigates the complex interconnections between ethnic and religious identities among the coming generation of Asian Americans, many of whom are recent immigrants or have parents of immigrant heritage. The study consists of 100 face-to-face interviews of Asian-American undergraduate student leaders of varying types of organizations (religious, ethnic, neither, or both) in four public universities in four separate census re­gions: SUNY Stony Brook, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Houston, and University of California-Irvine. Additionally, the study incorporates a Web-based survey of the constituent members to which the leaders belong. This approach allows for a comparative view of how these identities are main­tained across different Asian-American ethnic groups (mainly Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese) and different religious affiliations (mainly Buddhist, Catholic, Evangelical, and Hindu). A preliminary analysis of the interview transcriptions and the subsequent survey is presented, as are theoretical implications.

CATHOLICS’ POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS OF ANTI-CATHOLIC BIAS

Paul Perl and Mary Bendyna, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate

We examine the relationship between Catholics’ politics and their perceptions of anti-Catholic bias by using data from the “American Catholics in the Public Square” telephone poll. Over 750 self-identified adult Catholics were asked whether they believe an anti-Catholic bias exists in America and whether each of several social groups is “hostile,” “friendly,” or “neutral” toward Catholics. While perception of anti-Catholic bias is not in and of itself predictive of political orientations, perceptions of hostility-friendliness from specific groups are strongly related to political self-identification. Perception that Hollywood or the mews media are hostile toward Catholicism predicts Republican self-identification, and perception that Evangelicals involved in politics are hostile predicts Democratic self-identification. Perceptions of friendliness-hostility from the Republican and from the Democratic parties are also related to political self-identification, and this relationship persists after controlling for numerous attitudinal variables.

PERSISTENCE OF TRADITIONAL VALUES: CAUSALITY OF CHANGE AND CONFU­CIAN CULTURE

Mary Phillips, American University

This paper falls within the Western social science dialogue concerning the causality of change and addresses the limitations of Western measurement of social change in China. The study suggests that the absence of a Chinese model of development in its own terms exists in Western social science because the indigenous epistemological assumptions that drive theory have not been integrated into the literature. Ronald Inglehart’s ambitious longitudinal study of social change is useful in illustrating the problem. This work offers theoreti­cal tools that define and emphasize Chinese assumptions in order to facilitate more meaningful cross-cultural research. As the current shift in global dynamics is re-Oriented, it is crucial for social-science research to be invested in the study of “Multiple Modernities.” The author suggests a new line of re­search that pushes beyond the limitations of Western theory.

MYSTICISM AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN PENTECOSTAL/ CHARISMATIC CONTEXTS

Margaret Poloma, University of Akron

Although religious experience has long been recognized as a bona fide dimension of religiosity, studying religion’s mystical expression generally has been relegated to philosophers, theologians, and a few psychologists. Using the recent Pentecostal/Charismatic revivals in North America as a source of data, this paper will report on the mystical dimension of the revivals and explore the interface between religious/mystical experience and organizational structure. Religious context, subjective interpretation, and institutional consequences will be used to illustrate the dialectical role mystical experience has played in the de-institutionalization and revitalization of the American Pentecostal/Charismatic movement.

BUREAUCRATIZING RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS: THE EXAMPLE OF IRAN

Stephen Poulson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univer­sity

The ongoing political debate in Iran offers an opportunity to observe the establishment of jurisdictional boundaries for institutions that were established after the Iranian revolution. Debate concerning the authority of newly established religious institutions usually intensifies during presidential and parlia­mentary elections. Reform movement leaders—who control the presidency and legislative branches of governance—are attempting to expand the authority of these institutions in relation to the courts and armed forces. Religious conserva­tives—who control the Guardian Council and Assembly of Ex­perts—currently maintain authority over the courts and armed forces. Because all factions accept the legitimacy of the Veley­at-e faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurisprudence) estab­lished by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, this is fundamentally a process of routinizing the charismatic authority of Khomeini, hence both reformers and conservatives necessarily argue that their positions constitute the logical continuation of Iranian revolutionary ideals.

RELIGION AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION AMONG CANADIAN MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS OF SOUTH ASIAN ORIGIN

Helen Ralston, Saint Mary’s University (Halifax)

This paper focuses on the place of ethnoreligious and ethnocultural consciousness and activities in identity re/construction among Canadian mothers and daughters of South Asian origin. I adopt a qualitative, feminist approach that brings together several theoretical concerns: (1) identity and cultural construction; (2) gender and agency; (3) conceptualization of lived experience; (4) interconnections of ethnicity, race, caste, class, and gender as social constructions. For immigrant mothers, religious activities were an important factor in recreating a meaningful world, in reconstructing identity, in empowering them, and in transmitting key elements of cultural identity to children. Their Canadian daughters were not reproducing their mothers’ religious and cultural identity. In interaction with significant others, they were active constructors and negotiators of a fluid sense of identity. The data suggest that we need a new disclosure and a new paradigm to describe processes of identity construction and, specifically, the place of religion therein, among so-called second-generation immigrant women of color.

DISCUSSING THE “AMERICAN EXCEPTION”: A FRENCH PERSPECTIVE

Fabienne Randaxhe, University of St-Etienne

Traditionally, from a French point of view, the United States is considered the archetype of religious vitality and proliferation. However, such a view raises the question of American exceptional­ism. “Has the United States escaped from the secularization of Western democracies?” This paper will review the debate on the “American exception,” focusing on how French people, in particu­lar, view religious pluralism and secularization in the United States. Questions will center on how the de-institutionalization and individualization of religion are perceived, and on how these views on America raise, in turn, the question of a “French exception” with respect to the dynamics of the religious field.

RELIGION AND HEALTH SEEKING AMONG LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA

Edward Ransford and Frank Carrillo, University of Southern California

Health has to do with the very survival of the individual and the family. This study will investigate health-seeking behavior of Latino immigrants and the role of religion in that behavior. Using open-ended interviews of Hometown Association leaders, health-care providers, and recent immigrants, the study will focus on four topics: (1) The degree to which Latino immigrants embrace folk conceptions of illness, make use of alternative remedies (herbal remedies) and spiritual healers (espiritistas, curanderos, brujos), and the ways in which immigrants blend this system with mainstream health care. (2) The respondent’s percep­tion of barriers to health care in large public facilities as language barriers, lack of medical insurance, concern about undocumented status, etc. How do Latino immigrants work around these barriers? (3) Is the church perceived by immigrants as a social support, broker, or “coach” in health-care seeking? (4) What kinds of personal health-protective behaviors do Latino immigrants employ?

FROM THE MARGINS TO THE STREETS: ANGELENO LATINO POPULAR RELIGION AND TRANSNATIONAL R-EVOLUTION

Jeanette Reedy Solano, University of Southern California

Focusing on public manifestations of Latino popular religion, I explore the ways in which these religious rituals have evolved as they crossed the border and developed in El Norte. More explicitly, I argue that Mexican and Central American immigrants use popular religion both to reconnect with their homeland and critique hegemonic power in the U.S. The artistic outlet provided by popular religion allows social critique to take on dramatic forms. Building on the work of Christian Parker, Orlando Espin, and Donald Miller, I proceed to include my own field research, incorporating video footage of the Day of the Dead in East L.A. as well as interviews with participants and religious leaders. El Salvador’s Divine Savior’s pilgrimage to L.A. as well as the triumphant celebration of Guatemala’s Esquipulas round out this survey of the political and social ramifications of Latino popular religion in the City of the Angels.

CONSUMING THE SELF: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES OF “NEW AGE” SPIRITUAL THINKERS

Jennifer Rindfleish, University of New England (Australia)

In the late twentieth century there has been a proliferation, diversification, and popularization of “new age” spiritual discourses and practices in Western industrialized nations. Popular North American spiritual thinkers such as Deepak Chopra, Andrew Cohen, Ken Wilber, Gary Zukav, and Shakti Gawain have modified discourses and practices from more traditional institutionalized religions to develop practices and discourses to assist an individual to realize his or her “true Self.” This paper uses the theories of such sociological theorists as Foucault, Baudrillard, and Giddens to explore the relationship between discourses and practices of these popular spiritual thinkers and the discourses and practices that reproduce and construct self-identity. The analysis shows how these spiritual discourses and practices are increasingly aligning themselves with consumptive behavior by becoming more secularized, homogenized, and easy to digest. The findings lead the author to postulate that new age spiritual thinkers are engaged in a process that could be described as the “consumption of the self.” The sociological implications of the consumption of the self will be discussed in terms of the way they define and restructure social relations at a most profound level, that of self-identity.

INDIGENOUS MIGRANTS AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY: ON ETHNICITY AND RELIGION AMONG MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, University of Southern California

This paper analyzes the civic activism of indigenous Mexican immigrants organized around a wide variety of cross-border civic organizations and how this has created opportunities for coopera­tion among different religious and political actors on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. The paper presents the factors that influence the different positions that immigrant civic organiza­tions take toward engagement with religion, mobilization and organizational issues. It also explores whether these Mexican indigenous migrant associations develop broader alliances working with other religious, political or civic organizations in the U.S. or remain focused primarily on their communities of origin in Mexico. This work is based on a broader research project which involves intensive ethnographic fieldwork with a wide range of Latino immigrant cross-border civic organizations in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The main goal of this study is to anal­yze Hometown Associations from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala within a comparative framework considering religious, gender, ethnic, and political variables.

SEARCHING EXPRESSIONS OF IDENTITY: BELONGING AND SPACES—MEXICAN IMMI­GRANTS IN NEW YORK

Liliana Rivera Sanchez, New School for Social Research

This research paper traces some lines of understanding between belonging, space, and memory as convergent points in the “immi­grant condition” and identity formation. I would like to look at the cultural formation of the Mexican immigrant community living in New York; fundamental­ly I will focus on the primordial ethnic network of Mexican immigrants and how these links are building some sites where ethnic particularity is produced, acquiring a diasporic mode of existence. I look, on the one hand, at some places where Mexicans encounter each other in New York and, on the other hand, particularly at a Mexican community-based organi­zation. This paper will show some insights on how Mexicans recreate a community in New York City, and how they live their immigrant condition in the host society. In the latter, religion plays a central role.

WOMEN’S VOICES AND THE MOBILIZATION OF WOMEN WITHIN THE HARE KRISHNA

E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Middlebury College

This paper addresses the mobilization of women within the Hare Krishna movement and the resulting changes in the status of women organizationally. Empirically, I focus on four processes to account for women’s mobilization: (1) women’s grievances; (2) consciousness raising and emergent frameworks of understanding devotee women’s life circumstances; (3) the declining labor force within the movement’s temple communities and the expansion of women’s roles organizationally; and (4) the declining religious authority of the movement’s leadership and the resulting growth of political opportunities for women and other aggrieved groups. My effort here is not narrowly focused on explaining why women have stood up against abuse, neglect and mistreatment, as I also seek to account for the timing of women’s protest activity and how it has gained recognition and political leverage. Theoretically, this case study is framed by the literature on clergy shortage and the approach advanced by Chaves that the rules regarding women clergy/ ordination represent symbolic displays geared toward constructing public identities.

“INTOLERANCE IS A BEAUTIFUL THING”: JERRY FALWELL, THE MORAL MAJORITY, AND RANDALL TERRY

Victoria C. Rosenholtz, SUNY-Canton

This study explored a longstanding rhetorical tradition within fundamentalism in the Independent Baptist tradition and affiliated groups in the Christian Right. Research methods included ethnography, extensive participant observation, interviews, observation, and content analysis. Premillennial dispensational doctrine focusing on the return of Jesus as a warlord at the Battle of Armageddon sets the tone of the movement in the contemporary “culture war” in the “Second American Revolution.” Preached messages, tracts distributed nationally by the Moral Majority, and Randall Terry’s speech at a 1993 anti-abortion rally all include intense antagonism toward most aspects of contemporary American mainstream culture. Edwin Shur finds that stigma contests and propaganda to dehumanize the competition are common in periods of rapid social change. Jacques Ellul finds that intense propaganda of agitation and shock is used in apposition to established authority and usually seeks rebellion and war.

SPIRITUAL TOURISM: THE MODERN PAGAN PILGRIMAGE

Kathryn Rountree, Massey University

This paper focusses on women belonging to the Goddess movement who make pilgrimages to sites deemed to be connected with Goddess worship in an attempt to discover “the center out there” (Turner), “authenticity” (MacCannell), and a solution to their sense of personal dislocation (Lowenthal) in relation to mainstream religions. In their own words, women who make such journeys tell of ephemeral moments in distant temples, museums, and landscapes—their sense of “coming home” to matrifocal roots, of healing, empowerment, transformation, and spiritual revelation. The paper explores the relationship between tourism and pilgrimage in the neo-pagan context, and the relationship between the Goddess pilgrims and host societies. In a sense, such women are marginal both as pilgrims and as tourists. The paper also reviews the idea that all tourist journeys are rites of passage and all tourists liminoid personae. Fieldwork for the paper was carried out in Malta and Turkey.

SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS OF CONVERSION AT THE INTERFACE WITH MISSIOLOGICAL PRACTICE

Craig D. Rusch, Vanguard University

Social science covers that domain of investigation that is particularly human. It addresses issues concerning individual actors, groups of actors, social structures, interaction of actors and structures within networked constraints, and overall configurations or patterns, largely referred to as culture. Missiology conversely covers divine-human interaction in a particularly theological frame. The paper begins theoretically from the standpoint of an integrative approach to several social scientific subfields, and asks probing questions about the nature of Christian conversion. The subfields addressed are social psychology, cognitive science, and psychological anthropology. Secondarily, I will try to lay some groundwork for methodologically approaching this theoretical frame and testing hypotheses. Third, I will attempt to address what occurs within a self during conversion processes and describe the phenomena both empirically and transempirically. Further issues surrounding both the veracity of “so-called” encounters with spiritual forces and the ethics of conversion will be covered.

CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE AND RELIGION: THE SOCIAL GOSPEL GOES TO KALAMAZOO

Linda Rynbrandt, Grand Valley State University

In this paper I examine the social gospel through a female lens, in contrast to the typical male-centered approach. I also focus on the practical and the local rather than the abstract ideolo­gy/ theology and universal approach of most work on the subject.

THE CONVERSION PROCESS OF YOUNG UNIFICATION CHURCH MEMBERS IN JAPAN SINCE 1985

Yoshihide Sakurai, Hokkaido University

Since the mid-1980s, the Japanese Unification Church has changed its missionary strategy. Branches of corporations affiliated with the Unification Church recruited new members and raised funds for the Unification Movement, due to strong criticism from the anti-Unification Movement over fraudulent sales of spiritual goods. This study will show the conversion process of young Unification Church members recruited since then, using documents and interview research conducted among ex-members. The findings are: (1) the strong commitment of members was molded in fraudulent fund raising and recruitment, in contrast with weak motivation of members for conversion built up in the process of a short intensive training period; (2) their subordination to Korean superiority in the Unification Movement, especially in arranged mass marriages, originates from Japanese ambiguity to war crimes in the first half of the twentieth century, and the founder’s revenge on the Japanese.

CONTEMPORARY CONFLICTS: MODERN FUNDAMENTALISM VERSUS POPULAR ISLAM

Hassan Mohamed Salih, Sacramento, California

The paper will examine the conflict between fundamentalist thought as exercised by the national Islamic Front of Sudan, Al-Takfeer wa Al-Hijra of Egypt, and other fundamentalist groups, and the strong organizations of popular Islam that many Sufi groups practice in most Muslim countries.

RESPONDING TO ECONOMIC CRISIS: BLACK CHURCH SUPPORT FOR THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE BLACK “ANXIOUS MIDDLE”

Chris Scharen, Emory University

Lincoln and Mamiya, in The Black Church in the African-American Experience, write that “no studies have been done on the role of the Black Church in the economic mobility of black people and the creation of a viable and stable black middle class.” Yet, they argue, the church clearly is a fundamental economic institu­tion in the black community, not least because “the Black Church assumed the task of helping black people internalize the ethic of economic ratio­nality that would lead to economic mobility.” In my paper, I report on ethnographic fieldwork in two remarkable black congre­gations in the booming African-American suburban community of Stone Mountain, just east of Atlanta, Georgia. Through compar­ative analysis, I show how the religious narratives, congrega­tional culture, and intraorganizat­ional ecology of each congrega­tion offer concrete responses to the crises of the upwardly mobile black middle class. In showing how these two quite differ­ent middle-class African-American churches play quite important economic roles, this research will contribute to filling the lack noted by Lincoln and Mamiya.

A REVIEW OF THE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF MYSTICISM

Philip Schwadel, Penn State University

This paper summarizes the social scientific analysis of mysti­cism in refereed social science journals since 1963 (and provides an annotated bibliography thereof). The first task of the paper is to assess the current state of the field. In this regard, a general undercurrent of mysticism as irrationality is found throughout the literature. Nevertheless, many thoughtful and unbiased articles that analyze mysticism are also found in the literature. The second task of the paper is to gauge holes in the literature. While a variety of gaps appear in this review, the lack of empirical analyses of mysticism is the most striking. The final, and probably most important, task is to provide background for future inquiries into the social scientific analysis of mysticism. In addition to the descriptions of patterns and holes in the literature, this review should be a useful starting point for all forthcoming social scientific analyses of mysticism.

SPIRITS, ANCESTORS, OR DEMONS: TRADITIONAL HEALING AND THE CHALLENGE OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM IN SAMOA

Maureen Sier, National University of Samoa

The pre-Christian religion of Samoa included priests and priestesses who were trained to heal people of sicknesses believed to be caused by traditional spirits and family ancestors. With the coming of the various Christian missionary groups to Samoa, the status of these traditional healers diminished, and Western ideas of religion, health, and sickness prevailed. When Samoa gained independence in the 1960s, there was a resurgence of pride in all things Samoan, including openness about traditional forms of “spirit healing.” Traditional healers, the majority of whom were women, began to work more openly. Then, in the 1980s, fundamentalist Christian groups began to grow in popularity. This paper explores changing Samoan perceptions of “spirit healers and healing” since the arrival of the fundamentalist Christian groups, particularly focussing on the challenges posed by “healing” passing from the female traditional healers to the male fundamentalist pastors.

DOMINICAN IMMIGRANTS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW YORK CITY: LEGAL AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP, HISPANICITY, AND THE CREATION OF A DOMINICAN SOCIAL SPACE

Nina Siulc, New York University

Though Dominican immigrants have begun to receive a great deal of attention from social scientists over the past decade, there has been very little reference to religion and spirituality in the lives of Dominican immigrants in any of the numerous social scientific studies that have been conducted in New York City. Given the importance that several scholars have attributed to religious institutions in immigrants’ involvement in civic life in the United States, this topic needs more consideration by Dominicanists. This paper considers the role religious institutions and. specifically, Roman Catholic churches, play in the lives of Dominican immigrants in New York. It discusses the extent to which religious institutions in New York have contributed to Dominicans’ achievement of both legal and cultural citizenship. Related to this, the paper considers the role played by churches in promoting a Hispanic identity to immigrants in New York City. In discussing how Dominicans position themselves vis-à-vis a larger Hispanic identity, the paper also explores how Dominicans have used religious imagery and icons to claim space to celebrate Dominican nationalism and Dominican-specific agendas within their local parishes and in New York City. Finally, the paper offers some suggestions for considering how continued relations between institutions in the Dominican Republic and the United States have transformed religious practices in both locations.

RUPTURE OR CONTINUITY? LATIN AMERICAN EVANGELICAL POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE ELECTION OF HUGO CHÁVEZ

David Smilde, University of Georgia

Scholars consistently present contrasting findings that, on the one hand, Latin American Evangelical political culture represents a rupture with the surrounding political culture by fomenting democracy, individualism, and participation; on the other hand, that it represents continuity in reinforcing authoritarianism, patriarchalism, and clientelism. Here I use concepts from the sociology of culture to view these contrasting tendencies as two possible engagements of the core constructs of the “Evangelical frame.” I then empirically demonstrate continuity in how Venezuelan Evangelicals were able to support nationalist ex-coup leader Hugo Chávez in the 1998 presidential elections. I demonstrate rupture, on the one hand, in how Evangelicals shunned Venezuela’s one Evangelical party when its leader made a political pact with an infamous candidate and the discredited Democratic Action party. I end with comparisons to Evangelical support for Guatemalan military dictator Rios Montt and Peruvian ex-president Alberto Fujimori.

INSIGHTS INTO THE LIFE AND TIMES OF IRISH PRIESTS IN THE UNITED STATES

William L. Smith, Georgia Southern University

As researchers know, archives often can be storehouses of very revealing information. This has been the case regarding the topic of Irish priests in the United States. Documents pertaining to alumni who have served in the U.S. were examined at three Irish seminaries. These documents provide interesting assessments of the life and times of Irish priests in the U.S. This paper will review a number of the documents written by the priests as well as documents written by bishops and others who were involved in procuring priests for U.S. Catholic dioceses.

MORAL COSMOLOGY AND PROTESTANT SELF-IDENTIFICATION: DIFFERING POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES?

Brian Starks, Indiana University

Recently, sociologists of religion have argued that differences within denominations and faith traditions are becoming more important than differences between them. As a result, researchers have begun exploring the social and political consequences of intradenominational variation. Two different research strategies have developed to explore this variation. One approach posits that moral cosmology, understood as a consistent constel­lation of beliefs, underlies the basic divisions. Thus, orthodox religionists are juxtaposed to modernist religionists. The second approach hypothesizes that there are different religious communities and subcultures within American Protestant­ism that compete for believers across denominations. Thus, Protestant self-identification as a fundamentalist, evangelical, mainline, or liberal is used to identify religionists who are within these different cross-denominational communities. Using 1998 GSS data, we test both approaches with a variety of political items in order to assess whether the two approaches are tapping similar or different concepts.

WOMEN’S WORK AND “WOMEN’S WORK”: LDS DUAL-EARNER FAMILIES, WORK-FAMILY SPILLOVER, AND FAMILY COHESION

Daphne Pedersen Stevens and Krista Lynn Preheim, Utah State University

Not only are LDS women confronted with widespread cultural expectations that their primary responsibilities should be child care and maintenance of the home, but recently church leadership has also issued a statement that strongly discourages women from participating in the labor force. Given this situation, how to LDS women who are labor-force participants view the impact of their work on family cohesion? Additionally, how do their partners perceive this impact? Data for this study originate from a questionnaire administered randomly to dual-earner families in Utah. Only respondents who indicate LDS affiliation are included in this study. Preliminary findings indicate that for both women and men, women’s work-to-family spillover is negatively associated with family cohesion. Number of children is also negatively associated with family cohesion. For women, relative housework contribution is negatively associated with family cohesion: the more housework she does relative to her partner, the less family cohesion she reports. As women’s hours of labor-force participation increase, so does women’s work-to-family spillover. Interestingly, men’s relative housework contribution is positively related to men’s perceptions of their partner’s work-to-family spillover. These findings suggest that LDS men and women both feel that women’s work outside the home negatively influences family life. However, these women feel burdened by their household responsibilities, because while they are contributing to the family’s economic needs, their partners are not in turn adequately contributing to the household labor demands.

OUR PLACE IN THE PEW

D. Paul Sullins, Catholic University of America

Why do people sit where they do in worship? Are the back seats really the most popular in church? Do women tend to worship in groups more than men? To address these and related issues, sociation of individuals at worship services (N=3,300) was observed over a three-year period in three Protestant denominations. Hierarchical log-linear modeling is employed with these data to examine hypotheses regarding the effects on sociation of gender, age, size of congregation, size of worship space, length of pews, and time of arrival. The implications of the findings, and of potential studies of this kind, for theories of religious community and participation (and for church architecture) are discussed. It is argued that this area of research, completely ignored until now, has great value for understanding the sociology of religious congregations.

RELIGIOUS COMPOSITION OF CHINESE SOCIETIES, 1950-2000

Joseph B. Tamney, Ball State University

Using census and national survey data, changes in the religious compositions of mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan between 1950 and 2000 are described. Generally, Folk Religion has declined, Buddhism has grown, and the percentage of people with no religious affiliation has remained high. The pattern for Christianity varies among societies. Reasons for these changes are discussed.

GREEN NUNS AND LAND: CULTIVATING NEW VARIETIES OF RELIGION AND CULTURE

Sarah McFarland Taylor, Northwestern University

In the past decade, a growing number of American Roman Catholic nuns from a variety of religious communities have taken to “sod-busting” the well-manicured lawns surrounding their monasteries, mother houses, and retreat centers. By tearing up lawns and replacing them with community-supported organic gardens or “CSGs,” environmentally concerned sisters aim to reduce the impact of industrial farming on the land, while cultivating a more spiritually mindful relationship between their local community and creation. In this context, sisters recast farming as a “priestly practice” in which one enters the “sanctuary of the soil” to work co-creatively with the holy of holies—the life force. Sisters often term the mindful farming practices associated with these new organic gardening projects “sacred agriculture.” This paper presents demographic and ethnographic data on the proliferation of earth ministries directed toward the practice of sacred agriculture, primarily focussing on projects initiated by women religious. Based on field work at these communities, I argue that as Catholic sisters cultivate ecologically sustainable farming techniques, they also begin to reshape notions of piety, sacrament, and religious observance in ways that challenge centralized corporate authority, reconceptualize reified notions of “tradition,” and embrace and ethic of spiritual, cultural, and biotic diversity that demonstrates sharp resistance to norms imposed by both industrial agriculture and institutional religion.

GLOBAL IMPACTS OF AN ETHNO-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT: THE CASE OF THE NATION OF ISLAM (NOI) IN BRITAIN

Nuri Tinaz, University of Warwick

The impacts of the NOI in Britain as a transnational ethno-religious movement were little known to the mainline British public until extensive media coverage in the 1990s. The NOI’s influence and teachings, however, have been very familiar in “social” and “cultic” milieux where Afro-Caribbean diasporas are densely populated. This influence can be traced to the mid-1960s, when Malcolm X visited Britain twice, seeking to arouse Black Nationalist sentiments in Britain. The most salient point about the movement is how the NOI’s religio-political and nationalist teachings appeal to Afro-Caribbeans who have not gone through historical difficulties, namely slavery, segregation, racism, and socioeconomic inequalities like their counterparts in the United States. How does the NOI globally expand beyond the border of the U.S. in geographic areas such as the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe—and particularly in Britain?

ANALYZING “MISSION AS TRANSFORMATION” IN THE PHILIPPINES:

AN INTERDIS­CIPLINARY APPROACH

F. Albert Tizon, Graduate Theological Union

“Mission as Transformation”—a concept that traces its official adoption to 1983 at the Consultation on the Church in Response to Human Need, held in Wheaton, Illinois—represents a paradigm shift in evangelical missiology, making relief, development, and social justice ministries central to missionary thought and practice. This paper works toward explicating an interdisciplin­ary methodology to analyze the concept of “mission as transformation” in the context of the Philippines. A study of this concept necessitates employing theological and sociocultural methodologies, separately but not antagonistically. Such an interdisciplinary approach makes a case for doing missiology responsibly.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONGREGATIONS, LAY LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES, AND SOCIAL SERVICE PROVISION

William Tsitsos, University of Arizona

This paper uses data from the National Congregations Study (1998) to examine social service programs supported by African-American religious congregations. Specifically, I focus on social service programs aimed at disprivileged people in congregations’ surrounding communities. In the process I have two main objectives: On the one hand, this research seeks to compare black congregations with other congregations in order to determine if African-American congregations are, indeed, more likely to support these types of programs. On the other hand, I look for variation among African-American congregations in order to uncover forces that affect whether or not they participate in these programs.

RELIGION, VOLUNTEERING AND MODERNITY

Bryan S. Turner, University of Cambridge

This paper reports a comparative study of voluntary associations in Australia, Britain, Russia, and Sweden (aspects of which appeared in Brown, Kenny and Turner Rhetorics of Welfare). Although this study was originally designed to examine problems relating to social capital in liberal capitalism, it also raises important questions about the consequences of modernity for religion, charity, and philanthropy. Broadly speaking, where the state (Sweden) or the Church (Catholic Italy) has played a dominant role in the development of public welfare, there has been in historical terms little overt and explicit emphasis on the moral value of volunteerism. Voluntary associations tend to be merged within or regulated by state or religious institutions. They exist in a socially submerged condition. In contemporary welfare reform strategies (broadly referred to as “third way politics”), there is increasing emphasis on voluntary participation in society, but the aim here is essentially secular, namely to reduce the public costs of welfare provision. These European traditions contrast sharply with the centrality of voluntary associations in America in both the secular democratic tradition (de Tocqueville) and the religious tradition (Niebuhr). The paper concludes with an analysis of the secular causes of the vitality of American religious associations (through Putnam’s bowling alone thesis) and the moral dimensions of “acts of compassion” (through Wuthnow’s poor Richard’s principle).

CREATING A NEW PARISH MODEL: AFRICAN-AMERICAN CATHOLICS

Ruth Wallace, George Washington University

This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study of a Catholic parish headed by an African-American deacon. This parish is part of a larger study of twenty Catholic parishes throughout the United States with no resident priest, where the parish leader is a married man. The author conducted on-site taped interviews with the key participants: the deacon, his wife and children, parishioners, the visiting priest, and the bishop. The focus here is on a unique parish model created by the deacon and his parishioners consisting of three structures: parish as family, collective ownership, and Afrocentric celebration.

PATH DEPENDENT MODELING APPLIED TO THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Barbara R. Walters, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY

The research analyzes newly composed versions of liturgical offices in Latin and French that arise in conjunction with the inception of the Feast of Corpus Christi. The analysis confirms the new works as affirmations of orthodox belief in a sociopolitical context replete with heterodoxy and sectarian strife. They provide documentation of allegiances in a cultural/social world rampant with political/religious strife and of party formation in the 13th century. The analysis suggests that physical necessity, protocol, political-economic status, and interpersonal-familial networks governed these allegiances. The interpretation combines path dependent modeling and case pattern analysis to reveal the response of the ecclesia to multi-front challenges to sacerdotal authority.

UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES BY WAY OF THE OTHER: EXPERIMENTS IN ETHNOGRAPHIC EMPATHY

Jillinda Weaver, Emory University

Often ethnographers in the U.S. are attracted to studying groups from whom they have significant social distance. Historically this tradition came from anthropological assumptions about objectivity and about lingering fears about going “native.” However, as this process of studying the “other” has continued, epistemological assumptions about intersubjectivity and reflexiv­ity have come more to the fore. Thus, basic questions are raised about how we can open ourselves to the possible transformation of our perceptions and certainly our theories if we are studying groups who hold some racist, sexist, homophobic, or other mean-spirited political and ethical views. How does the researcher engage the individuals in the site by thinking of them in rela­tion to and comparison to herself? What shape does sympathetic understanding take in giving an account of such research? This paper addresses epistemological and subjective inquiries that occurred in the context of conducting research in a southern exurban religious community.

DECENTERING AND ANTICENTERING: TENSIONS IN NEIGHBORHOOD RELIGIOUS LIFE

Elfriede Wedam, The Polis Center, IUPUI

In Indianapolis, changes in the city’s spatial ecology over the 20th century have affected religion’s reach, scope, and impact. At the same time, religion has pushed back against the decentralizing, secularizing, and modernizing effects of restructuring that in many forms appear hostile to traditional structures of church life. This paper, which is drawn from a larger book on Indianapolis, focuses on neighborhoods, parishes, and congrega­tions. I examine the relationships among the religious institu­tions within each neighborhood and the relationships of the neighborhoods to the larger city. In comparing four neighborhoods distinguished by race and class, I found that congregations were alternatively sympathetic or antagonistic toward their surround­ings, leading to the creation of either strong local centers or balkanized relationships among the organizational players. Yet congregations can be most effective for influencing local neigh­borhood life when they mobilize their cultural resources. This presentation will focus on two neighbor­hoods, a white, middle-class suburb and a white, poor city neighborhood.

BUDDHISM DURING THE PAST FIFTY YEARS IN CHINA

Dedong Wei, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

This paper aims to research the history of Buddhism in mainland China in the past fifty years, sum up its historical stages, religious characteristics, and look forward at its future. I take Guanghau temple as an example, reflecting the development of Chinese Buddhism in the last half-century.

RELIGION, MORAL AUTHORITY, AND ATTITUDES TOWARD ABORTION

Michael R. Welch, University of Notre Dame, and Neal Christopher­son, Whitman College

Using data from the 1988 General Social Survey, we investigate the affect of measures of religious moral authority, conscience-based moral authority, and individual religiosity on measures of one’s support for abortion for medical or social reasons. Struc­tural equation models (LISREL) that include standard demographic variables and latent variables representing relevant sociopoliti­cal attitudes (e.g., attitudes toward sexual morality, gender roles, civil liberties) are estimated, allowing us to examine both the direct and indirect effects of the independent vari­ables. Results of the analyses reveal that the effects of the moral authority measures are negligible and connected solely to support for abortion for social reasons. General religiosity proves to be related to both dimensions of abortion attitudes, but its effects appear to be largely indirect.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL TRUST

Michael R. Welch, David Sikkink, and Carolyn Bond, University of Notre Dame

Using data from the 2000 General Social Survey, we investigate the affect of measures of religious affiliation and commitment on measures of one’s level of trust in others. Models that include standard demographic variables and respondents’ involvement in community organizations are estimated, allowing us to disentangle purely religious effects from the effects of simple associationa­lism. Results of the analyses should help to inform the debate about the declining bases of community within the U.S. and connections between religion and social capital.

RELIGION AS PROTECTION FROM JOINING GANGS

Monica L. Whitlock, University of Southern California, and Cheryl L. Maxson, University of California-Irvine

Many youth residing in neighborhoods with high levels of gang activity do not join gangs. Few studies have addressed the role that religion might play in this process. Moreover, very little is known about the differential rates of gang membership among immigrant and nonimmigrant youth, and whether connections to religious institutions serve a protective function for immigrant youth in particular. This study utilizes interviews with 7th and 8th grade boys and their caregivers who reside in several stable and transitional Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles. It will assess whether characteristics of religious involvement predict reduced risk of joining gangs and whether these relationships differ among immigrant and nonimmi­grant youth. Finally, the role of religious institutions in providing prevention or intervention services to at-risk youth will be discussed.

FROM SOCIAL MARGIN TO CENTER STAGE: INDIVIDUALISM, QUEER CONGREGA­TIONS, AND THE “HOMOSEXUALITY” DEBATES

Melissa M. Wilcox, University of California, Santa Barbara

In recent years, sociologists of religion have become increasingly interested in the “homosexuali­ty” debates within mainline U.S. Protestant denominations. However, these studies often pay little heed to the religious experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people themselves, or to the possible causal factors underlying the debates. This paper suggests that these two gaps in the literature are linked: understanding the religious histories of LGBT people may clarify the development of the “homosexuality” debates. Working from several recent studies of LGBT people in religion, the paper suggests that a broader cultural trend toward religious individualism led in the 1970s to the formation of LGBT congregations and later of LGBT ministries within established denominations. The latter served as a base for LGBT activism within the denominations, which eventually sparked the debates. Ironically, then, in this case the religious individualism that sociologists predicted would lead to the downfall or organized religion has led instead to the growth of new religious organizations and to major changes within the mainline denominations.

CATHOLIC IDENTITY: ARE GENXERS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER BIRTH CO­HORTS?

Andrea S. Williams, Purdue University

National telephone poll data indicate that Generation X Catholics are much less likely than older Catholics to identify strongly with the Church. Controlling for the impact of other independent variables, birth cohort is found to be one of the strongest predictors of Catholic identity. Variables such as amount of Catholic schooling, the frequency with which respondents’ parents talked with them about religion, and items tapping the religiosi­ty of respondents’ parents were also found to influence current level of identification with the Church. Only the importance respondents place on their ethnic ancestry was found to have a greater impact than birth cohort on persons’ identifi­cation with the Church. Implications of this finding are discussed, as well as the probability that today’s young Catholics will become increasingly likely to identify with the institutional Church as they get older. Although the data examined here are somewhat limited in terms of predicting future trends, I argue that, because of changes that have taken place within the Church and the broader secular arena, it is doubtful that Generation X Catholics will increasingly embrace a strong Catholic identity as they move through the life cycle.

WOMEN AND RELIGION IN MODERN TIMES: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University

DIVIDING AMERICA: THE LEGACY OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY

Sherry Wright, University of Denver

The efforts of the framers of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights to avoid government establishment of religion and to protect the religious beliefs and practices of a variety of peoples have resulted in a religious mainstream that is clearly distinguishable from minority religious groups. Majority religious groups and minority religious groups have played vastly different roles in shaping America’s national ethos, are perceived differently by Americans, and are treated differently by American government institutions, including the courts. This paper will examine how the history of religious freedom in America has resulted in what Martin Marty has called a de facto religious establishment, will define majority and minority religions in a new way that relies on their ethos-shaping power, and will ultimately derive three different lists of the groups that have comprised the nation’s religious mainstream at different points in the nation’s history.

LOST IN THE MARKET, SAVED AT MCDONALD’S: THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANI­TY IN CHINESE COASTAL CITIES

Fenggang Yang, University of Southern Maine

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of Christian church­es in several coastal cities conducted in Summer 2000. I will describe recent developments and the current status of Protestant Christianity in coastal cities of China where both the economy and Christianity have been growing fast. I will present prelimi­nary analyses of the factors for the rapid growth of Christiani­ty.

BISEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY: THE NARRATIVES OF MALE AND FEMALE BISEXUAL CHRISTIANS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Andrew K.T. Yip, Nottingham Trent University

The label of “bisexual” has been fashionably tagged along with that of “gay and lesbian” in most social research on nonheterosexuals. Consequently, bisexuals as a distinctive minority have not been given the due consideration they deserve. This paper aims to throw some light on their lived experiences, with special focus on their spirituality. Drawing from a quantitative and qualitative study of 45 self-defined bisexual Christians, this paper will address the following themes: (a) The journey of “bisexuality”—data will illustrate the respondents’ journey of sexuality, which is intertwined with their spirituality. For instance, this theme will examine the process of “bisexual Christian” identity construction. Respondents arrived at this self-identification through different routes. This highlights that bisexuality takes various forms of expression, challenging the simplistic conception of this sexuality. It will also highlight the difficulty they experience in heterosexual and homosexual communities, as well as religious and nonreligious communities. (b) Negotiating space within the religious community­—data will show that, while homosexuality has been discussed increasingly, bisexuality is still absent in religious conscious­ness and discourse. The churches, for instance, have not demonstrated much awareness of and willingness to address the issue. The respondents therefore encounter great difficulty in negotiating space within the religious community, which affects, among other things, their participation patterns in this community.

ASTROLOGY AND NEW AGE: MINORITY RELIGION WITH MAINSTREAM APPEAL

Michael York, Bath Spa University College

The contemporary New Age movement is largely—though not com­pletely—a modern manifestation of theosophy and astrology. While the study of the stars has a persistent, albeit esoteric, presence throughout the history of Western metaphysical thought, Theosophy itself comes closest to being a renaissance of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Both subjects have, of course, been condemned by canonical Christianity and, more recently, by a prevailing scientistic/reductionistic form of modern science. Through its gnostic heritage, New Age should by rights be a minority religion in a traditionally Christian host society. However, eschewing for the most part sectarian sociological forms, New Age and popular interest in horoscopes and astrological forecasts have entered and essentially are the contemporary spiritual supermarket. Using Stark and Bainbridge terminology, its “audience” and “clients” are simply and mostly mainstream consumers. How and why does astrologically-based gnosticism create mainstream/market appeal? Does secularization play a role here, and what does the emergence of New Age popularity tell us about shifts and changes within current Western society?

THE “CULT” AND REGIONAL SOCIETIES: A CASE STUDY OF AUM SHINRIKYO IN JAPANESE COMMUNITIES

Tatsuya Yumiyama, Taisho University

In March 1995, top officials of Aum Shinrikyo committed a poison­ous sarin gas attack on subways in Tokyo. After the arrests of its leader and core members, Aum Shinrikyo has lost its cohesive power, leading Aum members to disperse in Japanese society. Today one of the many concerns for Japanese people is how to deal with Aum Shinrikyo members when they come to local communities. In my presentation I will discuss the following points by examining the developments of Aum Shinrikyo and anti-Aum movements in different regions: (1) in constructing the anti-cult movements, their leaders’ life histories and generations (e.g., the wartime generation, the baby-boomer generation, and the post-baby-boomer generation) have influenced the characteristics of these move­ments; and (2) Aum Shinrikyo has been isolated in local communi­ties through Aum attempts to gain support from the media or liberal intellectuals, and these anti-cult movements became intense and expanded in the face of such a situation. Through discussing the case of Aum Shinrikyo, I will explore a typical relationship between “cults” and regional societies in Japan.

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