Recorded debates from the 19^th century between Christian missionaries and followers of other religions (e.g., the Panadura debate in Ceylon between Buddhist monks and Christian pastors) show Christian argumentation in relation to such concepts as truth and falsehood, salvation and damnation, etc. The goals were considered to be ultimate, and conversion to the "right" faith urgent. Since the late 20^th century, focus in conversations between believers from different religions has moved from debate to dialogue, from truth claims to interpretative perspectives, and from other-worldly to this-worldly. This is particularly true for the liberal churches. What has been labeled the "exclusivist" position (Alan Race) is difficult to find in its unmitigated form even in conservative evangelical traditions. This paper will map the areas of current interfaith discussions and relate these to overall shifts in Western religious discourse.

The objective of this paper is to do an analysis of Catholic censorship policy vis-à-vis Brazilian films. Since the start of the twentieth century there has been a steady development of Catholic censorship by means of film alerts. Under the guise of guardianship, film alerts have been distributed to parishioners commenting on the quality of the films introduced on the national scene. It is my intention to analyze the decade of the 1960s, the appearance of the Left and their revolutionary actions through their cinematic productions, and the policy of Catholic censorship.

Véronique Altglas, Groupe de Sociologie des Religions et de la Laïcité, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-École Pratique des Hautes Études

The study is based on a combination of long-term participant observation and a set of interviews in France and the UK focused on specific aspects of NRMs originating in India. The research aims to throw light on the different methods of spreading and reinterpreting practices and values relative to Hinduism as seen in a Franco-British comparison; specifically: (1) The processes of homogenizing and standardizing neo-Hindu features that have been "imported" as part of a strategy for spreading and internationalizing neo-Hindu religious movements. (2) The necessity for neo-Hindu movements to adapt to national contexts where relations between religions and the state have a direct influence on the status, organization, and mobilization of resources, and the legitimacy or illegitimacy of these minority religious movements. (3) The response of French and British disciples to these practices and values relating to Hinduism. I will suggest some national differences in the reception given to aspects of Indian culture, taking into account the colonial past and significant Hindu diaspora in Great Britain.

Catholic parishes are not above the fray of either political debates concerning service-providing faith-based organizations or academic debates focusing on the salience and creation of social capital. Indeed, a key research question for parishes in the United States today is the manner and extent to which they contribute to civil society. This paper will integrate much of the available data that are germane to this question and give an assessment of the civic contributions of Catholic parishes, especially as these compare to those of congregations within other denominations. Particular attention will be paid to the culture of civic obligation engendered within parishes. Data for this portion of the paper will come from some preliminary research on six Bay Area parishes conducted for my recently begun "Catholic Parishes and Community" project.

Although W.E.B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking monograph, The Negro Church, did not gather much academic attention, it stands as the first book-length sociological study of religion ever published in the United states. Through the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods, Du Bois explored the cultural, organizational, social, economic, and political dimensions of Black religious life. The paper provides a summary of the analysis, its historical significance, and its applicability for the current study of the Black religious experience. The paper compares and contrasts dichotomies presented in The Negro Church and the role of the contemporary Black Church in addressing social problems identified by Du Bois that continue to plague the Black community. The overall goal is to illustrate ways in which The Negro Church informs the discipline of sociology in terms of racism and race relations, economic inequities, political challenges, Black leadership, and religion and the Black community.

When religious minorities attempt to use the law to protect their beliefs and practices, they discover there are limits to the legal protection of religious freedom. More specifically, the language of risk has entered legal discourse as a limiting formula. Formulations of risk of harm draw on the invisible boundaries of freedom in liberal democracies identified by Nikolas Rose—consent and excess. Minority religions in particular are likely to be characterized as either promoting excessive behaviors or as diminishing their participants’ agency. Interestingly, the risk of harm seems to have pervaded legal discourse cross-culturally. Despite significant differences in their political systems, courts in Canada, France, England, and the United states have turned to risk of harm tests. This paper will examine the rule of risk of harm in legal discourse to limit religious freedom as an emerging global phenomenon.

This paper is the first substantial report on the findings of a 3-year long investigation into the treatment of Muslim prisoners in Britain and France. The research was conducted jointly at the University of Warwick, UK, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France. It locates the response of prison authorities to the growing numbers of Muslim prisoners against the backdrop of constitutional and cultural concerns in both countries. Prisons provide an unusual perspective on the opportunities and challenges that the expansion of Islam in Western Europe presents to states and to religious authorities. The analysis of interviews with prisoners, prison staff, and prison administrators throws into sharp relief the differences between the British and the French modes of dealing with a substantial religious minority. The paper will also raise issues about equity in the provision of religious and pastoral assistance to prisoners.

This paper examines the relationship between religious behavior and juvenile delinquency. Specifically, it tests the "moral community" hypothesis and eleven subhypotheses. According to the moral community hypothesis, religious individuals will be less likely to commit delinquent acts, but only in communities in which the majority of people are actively religious. A retrospective self-reporting survey was completed by a sample of 403 students at two Texas state universities. It included questions concerning both their religious and delinquent behavior between the ages of ten and seventeen. Both universities are located in an area known for political, religious, and social conservatism. According to the hypothesis, active religious behavior should deter delinquent behavior. Regression analysis indicates that actual church attendance, religiosity, religious salience, and acceptance of certain aspects of conventional morality were the best predictors of deterrence of delinquency. Analysis of variance also shows that gender is a significant variable for property-related delinquency offenses and that more minority than white respondents reported involvement in property-related offenses.

In this paper, we use structural equation modeling to introduce a new measure of politicized religious congregations that incorporates multiple observed indicators, and explore the various ways in which politicized religious congregations promote both low-risk/cost activism and high-risk/cost activism among a nationally representative sample of African Americans. We consider specifically the extent to which organizing skill, support for religious-based activism, and social networks mediate the relationship between politicized religious congregations and African Americans’ petition signing and participation in protests and demonstrations, controlling for factors known to influence these two types of activism. We also investigate whether politicized religious congregations alter the effect that general religious service attendance has on the petition-signing and protest activism of African Americans.

Du Bois was a pioneer in the sociological study of the Black Church. Many of his propositions are still salient today, one hundred years later. This paper will highlight a number of them, including the following: His conceptualization of the Black Church as a social (beyond religious) institution; his examination of these institutions in their social context, including northern-southern, rural-urban, and small towns; his analysis of differences or diversity among black churches, denominations, and preaching styles; his isolation of the three salient characteristics of the Black Church, namely the preaching style, the singing style, and the expressions of frenzy (or the holy ghost). Despite these differences he found the church to be the central feature of black life in America. And while the church, like all traditional institutions has lost much of its potency, it is still the strongest institution in African-American communities today. This thesis will be explicated in this paper.

The Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty challenges the morality of state and federal laws in the United States and the politically and socially conservative views of many devout American Catholics. Although data from national surveys suggest that differences between Catholics and the general papulation in support for the death penalty had largely disappeared by the late 1990s, Catholics have continued to follow a somewhat unique pattern—one that points to the importance of the parish and the parish priest in the development of death penalty attitudes among parishioners. Using data from the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life, we found significantly less support for the death penalty in parishes where the priest was personally more opposed to such punishment, particularly among those parishioners who had strong spiritual experiences. In addition, a greater convergence in death penalty attitudes was found between black and white Catholic parishioners in predominantly black parishes.

W.E.B. Du Bois drew upon his own experience as well as upon his sociological observations in the course of exercising his sociological imagination. Moreover, he included accounts of how he made his discoveries in order to lead his readers into a mutual seeing. Without duplicating his inimitable style, the present essay utilizes the same method to portray the different social locations of social ethics in African Americans’ and European Americans’ subnationalities. Du Bois’s suggestion that the fifty years before effective abolition was critical in African-American religious tradition is taken as a point of departure.

According to social construction theory, during primary socialization human beings learn to accept a legitimate reality, to develop a sense of self and identity, and to act out behaviors according to accepted roles. Socialization, however, is ongoing, and the behaviors and attitudes that are part of a social identity must continually be maintained. Re-socialization involves a radical change in subjective reality, which includes replicating affective identification with new role models, new significant others, and a new legitimating social structure. Thus, identity is dependent on a self that has been constructed and re-constructed by a continual flow of social factors and events constraining, guiding, intimidating, encouraging, and working with the actor. In this paper, I look at the extreme changes in self and identity through the social re-construction of reality by membership in a Christian communal group that required sacred prostitution. Through content analysis of the group’s literature and interviews with former members, this study explores the social re-construction of reality with its effects on female identity.

Using 1991 and 1998 data from the Religion modules of the International Social Survey Program for Austria, the former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), this study examines the impact of political and economic changes on secularization, particularly religiosity. The data provide strong support for East Germany as becoming more secularized, and weaker support for Austria and West Germany. In East Germany, secularization is evident in declining levels of church attendance and in declining support for traditional beliefs about premarital sex for Catholics, Lutherans, and Evangelicals. The findings were mixed for Austria and West Germany; church attendance increased in Austria, while decreasing for West Germans, whereas the percent believing premarital sex is "always wrong" decreased for Austria, while it increased for West Germany. Overall, the analysis supports a trend of secularization only in East Germany.

Borrowing the economic imagery of the marketplace, a fundamental assumption of the rational choice approach is that religious "goods" are "consumed" by individuals using a cost-benefit calculation in much the same way as other commodities. This paper examines the limitations of the rational choice approach to religion in the context of social stratification and perceived constraints on individual choice by the religious opportunity structure. In examining how religious participation is socially structured, my paper restores neglected concepts of inequality, group membership, and identity to prominence in the interpretation of religious experience.

Embalming and the keeping of the dead body in their own premises have been pointed out as important tools for the professionalization of funeral directors, along with traditional strategies, such as university education and official regulations. In Sweden, neither of these means has been used by funeral directors. By the use of a theory based on the division of responsibilities, professionalization can nevertheless be observed. The work of funeral directors takes place in five different task areas: the field of corpses, the field of logistics, the field of bereavement, the field of rites, and the field of law. By widening their work tasks and entering new fields, they have made professionalization possible without focusing on the corpse or on higher education.

This paper reports findings from research conducted in 1999 and 2000 on the continued significance of the call experience for Black ministers. In African-American religious traditions, the call is considered an encounter with God that spiritually compels an individual to enter ministry. Since the 1960s, Black Protestant churches have been confronted by forces of modernization that have the potential to eclipse the significance of the call experience for ministers. One such modernizing force is the logic of commodification that assigns an enhanced value to ministers who hold professional degrees. To investigate this concern, a triangulated method of data collection was performed at two historically Black seminaries. While seminary administrators and faculty advocate preparatory educational training for seminarians entering a competitive job market of professional ministry, seminarians value their call experiences differently depending on age, gender, and identification with charismatic denominations of African-American Protestantism.

It is almost a truism that religion has had enormous political significance throughout US history, but it is also the case that religion is not usually explicitly politicized. While it is appropriate to emphasize religion’s political significance in US society, it is typically the case neither that religious attitudes translate directly into political positions nor that religious Americans enter politics with a goal of translating religious doctrine into public policy.

Jocelyne Cesari, Groupe de Sociologie des Religions et de la Laïcité, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-École Pratique des Hautes Études

Heightened visibility of Islam in the West began in the 1980s, coincidentally with the Islamic revolution in Iran and the growth of fundamentalism all over the Muslim world. Europeans and Americans drew the mistaken conclusion that political activists in the Muslim world were inspiring an Islamic emergence within the West. They did not realize that Muslims do not practice their religion in Europe and America exactly the same way they do within their native lands. In these circumstances, the main objective of the paper is to investigate the consequences of September 11^th on the religious practices and political behaviors of Muslims living in the West as well as the possible changes in the acculturation process of the Islamic tradition to Western norms and values.

After 9/11/2001, the White House faith-based initiative was put on hold in the face of a national concern about terrorism. In fall 2002 it reemerged as part of American social and public policy with clearly identified priority areas: At-Risk youth and prisoners; elders in need; the homeless; substance abusers; welfare-to-work families. Historically the Black church in America is widely involved in the provision of these types of social services. Using a survey of two hundred Black pastors in five southern states (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, North and South Carolina), conducted by the Institute for Black Religious Life in 2003, Black Protestant church involvement in social service programs identified by the faith-based initiative was examined. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, two foci were considered: (1) type and level of current and (2) type and level of desired church involvement. Data derived from this study will report on important identity issues and choice of religious participation in particular social policy issues.

This paper will utilize a more global interpretation of anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace to frame a case analysis of two Bahá’i communities in the United States, Atlanta and Houston. Wallace suggests that new religious movements, both in modernity and in the future, will not only encompass tribal (nationalist, fundamentalist, or racial/ethnic) identities, but some will also foster global, universal identities as one response to globalization. Looking at the arena of new religious movements, the Bahá’i Faith is a relatively little-studied religious movement from the nineteenth century that promotes such a global worldview for its adherents through unique institutional and ideological mechanisms. We use Wallace to frame our investigation of Bahá’i converts, demographic characteristics, practices, and ideology, thus adding to our understanding of this growing, yet little known, movement and the process by which they attempt to forge a global identity.

In 1890 the US government conducted its first, and only, national survey of the Jewish population of the United States. It is commonly referred to as the Billings Report, after John Billings, who was in charge of the project. My paper will discuss the background of the report, the roles played by John Billings and Adolphus Solomon, and the key findings regarding the vital statistics of American Jewry in 1890.

Low fertility and high rates of intermarriage among American Jews during the last decades of the twentieth century have had a cumulative impact on the structure of the American Jewish family. This paper briefly outlines the demographic trends and uses economic analysis to draw inferences about Jewish family life and family-based Jewish observance. It then discusses implications for the Jewish community in the twenty-first century: for family and synagogue life, for communal structures, and for future surveys of American Jewry.

While evangelicals have historically sought to convert Muslims and challenge the teachings of Islam, there has been a change in how many view the religion since the attacks of September 11. As demonstrated by evangelical and New Christian Right leaders, there is a growing tendency to portray all of Islam as a violent religion that worships a God that is largely foreign to Christianity. Through a content analysis of popular evangelical books and articles on Islam, the paper argues that these new polemics against Islam have been shaped by the politicization and globalization of evangelical and Pentecostal churches during the 1980s and 1990s.

Secular humanist and organized atheist groups have long been in a state of decline. But these groups have recently taken a new approach based on outreach to secular-oriented Americans. This paper will examine new signs of growth in these organizations. This is taking place as the central paradigm of organized secular humanism and atheism, the secularization thesis, is being widely challenged. Through interviews with members and content analysis of secular humanist/atheist publications and Web sites, the paper will look at how identity politics has replaced the secularization thesis for many participants and activists in these groups.

The role of women in American congregations is a topic that has gained attention in the past twenty years. The majority of work has focused on leadership and clergy roles and the willingness, or reluctance, of denominations to ordain women. In this study we report on women as members, lay leaders, and clergy in Philadelphia congregations, and we assess the factors that explain the rate of women in any of these roles. We find that regardless of advancement in many areas of society, women are the majority members yet are still a minority among the clergy. Finally, we study how the gender composition of members, lay leaders, and clergy explains the congregation’s involvement in social service provisions. In this respect, gender composition of members, lay leaders, and clergy made little impact on congregational social service involvement. A variety of explanations are provided to account for women’s little impact in this domain.

Three shifts have marked the US welfare policy debates of the past two decades: dependence, devolution, and markets: (1) From concern for poverty to a fight against dependence, with a focus on work-fare rather than welfare; (2) From federal government "entitlement" programs to devolution to state and county levels; (3) From nonprofit or governmental models to market models. In this paper, the author looks at the impact on Catholic social services of these three institutional changes and internal Catholic pressures to highlight the Catholicity of Catholic social services.

In this paper, changes in the texts and the symbols in more than thirteen thousand death notices from 1976 through 1995 (and 1999) from randomly selected newspapers in Sweden are discussed from several sociological perspectives. In addition, 301 individuals who submitted a relative’s death notice were interviewed on their choice of text and graphic symbol. (The first non-religious symbol appeared in 1978.) The text data from 1976-1995 is connected to data from 1945-1975, which was collected by another scholar. One result is that the decrease of texts referring to Christianity during the fifty-year period can be illustrated very clearly. Changes in symbols during 1975-1995 may reflect an increased individualism and a reaction against the anonymity perceived in the cross symbol, which for many indicated only that somebody had died.

At least in those static days of yore, one sensed that the best predictor of the offspring’s religion and religiosity was that of the parents. If the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, neither did the grape fall far from the vine. But as stability gave way to change, generational succession became associated with secularizing effect. Recently, however, we have had evidence of a relationship between social and religious change that moves in a sacralizing direction. This is true of young Christians who seek out or stumble into more conservative religious traditions and new religious movements as part of an increasing switching phenomenon. It is also true of Muslims and Hindus who have joined religious groups on the radical right, including the Middle East’s Al Queda, on the one hand, and India’s RSS and Shiv Sena, on the other. What accounts for these recent shifts? Are they exceptions or the rules in their social contexts? Do they reflect generational, cohort, or period effects? This paper addresses these issues in suggesting that a new conceptualization of religious change is in order.

This paper will use survey data to illustrate some of the internal and external institutional and cultural constraints that impact the dual objectives of Catholic colleges and universities to be centers of both academic excellence and Catholic identity. The paper will review how this dual mandate impacts such questions as curriculum breadth and disciplinary boundaries; student, faculty, and community diversity; and the public intellectual and moral role of Catholic universities.

Practitioners usually describe Falun Gong as a "cultivation practice" of mind and body, a form of qigong, a way of self-improvement, or a spiritual practice. Although practitioners almost uniformly reject the religion label, most research on Falun Gong has, to date, defined it as religious. Drawing on my experiences while living in China from 1991 to 1996, participant observation conducted since 2000, Web postings, press reports, interviews, and other sources, I examine why practitioners refuse to categorize Falun Gong as a religion, the uses and limitations of viewing it through the lens of religion, and how Chinese concepts like "cultivation practice" might function as sociological concepts. Other ways of understanding Falun Gong, that it is possibly, among other things, part of a moral movement, a self-help movement, or a health movement, can provide more nuanced interpretations of its emergence and significance in China.

Arguably, one of the greatest catalysts for change in a new religious movement is the birth of a second generation. By the time the second generation has matured, the organization will have faced many moments where it had to make a decision: to what degree do we adapt to the demands of our children? And as members of the second generation leave, as they invariably do, the organization’s reaction will be crucial in defining its position in society. Will the group denominationalize as it accommodates to the needs of the second generation, or will it remain sectarian as it casts out "baddies" while holding on to the "goodies"? This paper will focus on several religious movements and describe their development over the course of the maturation of their second generation, how the organizational decisions have affected the relations between the groups and their children, and how these dynamics have affected the position of the groups within society.

I compared Korean American participation in a second-generation Korean congregation to that in a multiethnic evangelical congregation, on volunteer practices outside their churches. Members of the second-generation Korean congregation adopted a more collectivist approach to volunteering. The congregation provided motivation for members to go outside the church as a group and link with existing social services in the community, providing support for these services through volunteer hours. In contrast, Korean Americans who attended a multiethnic congregation talked about the ways in which their church encouraged their own personal reflection. They drew on a Korean ethnic history, and particularly a history with ethnic Korean churches, as a place from which to stress a personal and individual perspective on the relationship between religious faith and volunteerism. By comparing Korean American participation in congregations with different ethnic composition, this work lends insight to the role of religious assimilation on civic participation among second-generation immigrants.

Made up of interdependent religious groups competing with each other for cultural and territorial dominance and for ecological niches, religious ecologies frequently engage in competitive cooperation with its resulting cultural interdependence. At the same time, the physical embeddedness of religious ecologies often imposes a certain amount of solidarity, consensus and common purpose. This paper argues that conflict in and among congregations provides a means for understanding the ecological dynamics of succession, competition, invasion, and domination.

The link between religion and emotion has received surprisingly little systematic empirical attention. We contribute to this literature via analyses of data from a special module on the 1996 NORC General Social Survey, a nationwide probability sample of US adults. Among our key preliminary findings: (a) Several dimensions of religious involvement, particularly belief in an afterlife, are linked with salutary emotional outcomes, e.g., higher tranquility, lower anxiety and anger; (b) Self-identified evangelicals and regular church attenders also enjoy select emotional benefits; (c) Some, but not all, of these relationships are mediated by the sense of control, i.e., the perception that human fortune is not due to luck or randomness, and feelings of shame. The implications of these and other findings for the growing religion-health literature will be discussed further.

Most studies of religion and correctional policies in the US have focused on the tendency of conservative Protestants to favor harsh and retributive policies vis-à-vis criminals. Using data from the 1998 NORC General Social Survey, we focus on three understudied facets of religion—forgiveness, compassion, and hierarchical God imagery—and their links with (1) support for the death penalty for persons convicted of first-degree murder, and (2) the belief that US courts generally do not deal harshly enough with criminals. Persons who endorse compassion (i.e., who feel responsibility for reducing pain and suffering in the world) and persons who pray regularly tend to reject punitive policies. Persons with hierarchical, judgmental images of God tend to favor harsher punishments. Forgiveness (of others, or by God) has no connection with these outcomes, and the effects of other religious dimensions (including conservative Protestantism) are minimal.

Although a growing research literature documents significant linkages between religion and family, particularly in the US and Canada, it is not clear how these relationships are represented in family sociology textbooks. We analyze 24 current texts, focusing on their treatment of a number of substantive areas, including: (1) cohabitation, (2) interfaith marriage, (3) marital quality and duration, (4) sexuality and fertility, (5) childrearing, and (6) gender roles. Overall, the relationships between religion and family are downplayed or misrepresented in nearly all books. A number of these texts simply imply or assert that the role of religion (a) in American society and (b) in shaping family values and practices has declined in recent years, despite evidence to the contrary. We review and catalog the major problems, concluding with recommendations for improving and supplementing these texts, and for additional study of religion-family linkages.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light upon the function of hymns in Church of Sweden funeral services. Since this service can been seen as an essential meeting place between people and their needs in a mourning process and the Church and its message of faith in this situation, the primary focus is a study of the conditions necessary for meeting these needs and conveying this message in the funeral context. To achieve this purpose, empirical data from a research project are used which cover 2,222 funeral services in the Church of Sweden during 1997. In order to analyze the function of hymns, I use qualitative analyses, which focus on the relation and interaction between the hymns and their theological and existential content and the other parts of the service.

An umbrella organization of over 30 groups, Women-Church over the past 20 years has developed several strategies for surviving in and transforming a patriarchal church. This paper explores three most recent ways Women-Church is challenging the Roman Catholic hierarchy. First, Women-Church has more consciously become international in scope. Second, individual members are joining the Christian Federation of Ministries (FCM). Third, they are reaching out to college-aged and young professional women by linking women’s ordination with other issues in the church, such as contraception, abortion, and sexual and reproductive freedom, as well as other justice issues. At this critical moment in church history, it is important to understand and evaluate strategies for effecting change in the Roman Catholic Church.

In describing Christianity in France, the disciplines of history and sociology have had lasting difficulties escaping from the "sect-church" opposition. The heavy dominance of Catholicism is a probable reason. Contrary to the American situation, characterized by a competitive religious market in which religions are structured in various "denominations," the French landscape seems to be defined as religiously "dry," in a very secularized context. Today, with declining churches, the dominant trend would be the "decomposition" of religion, instead of its restructuration. This process takes two forms: religious bricolage or narrow sectarian belonging. The field of evangelical Protestantism invites us to question this interpretative scheme.

In the context of globalization, Mexican-Americans in the Rio Grande Valley are "at the border" between Mexican traditions and modern American lifestyles. Yet, little is known about the features of religion in the border region. This paper reports findings from a survey of 100 Mexican-American students in a south Texas university 20 miles from Mexico. The students wrote narratives about their spiritual experiences and completed standardized measures assessing their religious affiliations and practices. The findings reflect both acculturation to American evangelicalism and retention of Mexican Catholic traditions.

A series of novels, plays, and films in the first third of the last century—created largely by Jews—served as encoded stories about romantic liaisons enabling minorities to pass across ethnoreligious lines. Focus group research conducted in California has also revealed that Jewish and non-Jewish, male and female Americans have deeply internalized stereotypical cultural portrayals of Jews, especially Jewish women. Although men were the signifying Jews in historical Jewish culture (and in most older antisemitic literature), in American cultural portrayals from the mid-twentieth century onward, women are increasingly portrayed as the signifying Jews. These portrayals blend elements of classic antisemitic attitudes and a general mistrust of bourgeois women. My research interviewing 254 men and women in New England, New Jersey, Atlanta and Denver reveals that the personal narratives of American Jews often bear striking thematic similarities to fiction, film, and popular cultural portrayals of intercultural romances. For many, marrying a non-Jew is symbolic nonconformity to what one informant called "stifling Jewish expectations." Negative Jewish stereotypes absorbed from cultural contexts are still a potent factor in the courtship patterns of American Jews, and in their romantic and marital decisions.

Does the historical link between religion and "European identity" have a legacy in contemporary EU developments? This question is examined through perspectives internal to Greece and Turkey—countries whose religious backgrounds stand, in varying degrees, outside of the "core" of national religious traditions within the EU. These cases illustrate a complex role played by religion in two domains: first, in attitudes toward Europe shaped by the interplay between religious and national identity; and second, in the effects of EU membership, or potential membership, on state-religion relations. A thorough examination of each case reveals that "religious" attitudes toward the EU have little to do with religion per se—as theology or doctrine—but are relative to the interests of particular religious groups. This study also demonstrates that the practicalities of EU membership influence state-religion relations and, by extension, domestic politics in ways that may affect a country’s position vis-à-vis the EU.

This presentation will explore how religion in different cultural contexts provides a variety of responses to the phenomena of social change, especially poverty and globalization. Special attention will be given to the role of official religious leaders and of grassroots leaders (especially women) in fostering and mobilizing civil society.

In this paper, I explore how engaging in new forms of religious participation reinforces gender identity but alters gendered interactions for Mexican immigrants in the Southeastern US. I argue that religious participation provides discourses, practices, and symbols through which gender difference is reified for an immigrant population experiencing significant indeterminacy. However, experiences of religious conversion, from traditional to charismatic forms of Catholicism and from Catholicism to mainline Protestantism, also offer surprising opportunities for male Mexican immigrants to assume clearly female identity characteristics and vice versa. Such acts of crossing, rather than dissolving reified gender difference, reinforce such difference as "natural" and only to be overcome through divine intervention. Nevertheless, as Mexican men and women move across "natural" boundaries of identity, they engage in new forms of interaction that reconfigure gendered relationships, both in the US South and in the Mexican communities from which these migrants have come.

This paper explores the various tensions over reclaiming or rejecting the Confucian tradition during the redefinition of political strategies by CCP leaders and intellectuals since the Tiananmen demonstration and its resolution in 1989. All of this has profound ramifications for the creation of a new Chinese nationalism and the response to the international human rights movement, both of which are also briefly explored.

By contrast to Catholicism seen as a church system in which religious structures are neatly separate from society, Islam is presented as an organic system equating religion and society, merging sacral law and social structure, and leading its specialists —ulema—to emphasize strongly their societal engagements over their institutional functions. This paper will show how Islam’s lack of structural insulation from the "problems of life" has often heightened its ulema’s need for laity approbation, which at times placed their professionalism at the mercy of lay powers. The paper will also explain the rise of Islam’s four main schools of law in the eighth century as a rigorous methodological effort that aimed to compensate for its lack of structural insulation from the lay world, by strongly establishing the authority of the text over reality and by strictly limiting the religiously valid methods through which Islamic laws could be formulated.

In order to suggest possible extensions of W.E.B. Du Bois’s observations about religion in his early work, this paper will review Du Bois’s writings on religion in The Souls of Black Folk and his later book The Gift of Black Folk. Du Bois offered a theory of the elementary forms of African-American Christianity, pointing to "he preacher, the music, and the frenzy" in his essay "Faith of the Fathers" in Souls. He also argued that African-American creativity and labor were vital elements of American culture and important contributions to making of new society of the United States—American civilization. Twenty years later, Du Bois extended many of his observations about African-American life and culture, offering thicker descriptions of black cultural forms and arguing for a more nuanced understanding of "the gift" or contributions of black people. This paper explores Du Bois’s initial assessments, their value in describing and explaining segments of American religious history, and their implications for understanding contemporary issues in religion and race in the US, particularly the emergence of new organizational forms among African Americans and the persistence of African-American religious independence in the post-civil rights era.

This ethnographic study investigates how qualities of the sacred (defined through place, story, image, and relationships) are experienced and expressed in two artists’ lives. It explores the meaning of being an artist in communion: the act of sharing with others who are of the same religious, cultural, and historical orientation; their experience of contemplation as an internal first action; and the expression of personal transcendence through their art experiences. The narratives shaped from in-depth dialogue with the artists have implications for those who wish to explore a postmodern, social reconstructionist stance that creates understanding through authentic involvement in community. It is the hope that the text of these artists’ lives will further blend the lines of sacred and secular thinking into a unified conception of all art as transformative experience, one that can be understood as a link with the Divine.

Globalization did not begin with McDonalds, CNN, and Starbucks. Long before modern capitalism and news and entertainment media spread ideas and schema around the globe, religious belief systems crossed international borders with great success. This paper tests whether affiliation with one religion in particular—Roman Catholicism—has a global impact on the attitudes, values, and behavior of its members irrespective of their nation of origin. The "third wave" of the World Values Study is used to show that domestic cultures, post-Communism, and post-materialistic change appear to be more important determinants of the attitudes and behavior of Catholics than any one globalized set of Catholic values and beliefs.

Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of mostly rural Chinese have migrated from Fuzhou, on China’s southeastern coast, to New York’s Chinatown. Like the Cantonese who comprised the previous wave of migrants, the Fuzhounese have brought with them their religious beliefs, practices, and local deities. These immigrants have established Buddhist, Daoist, Protestant, Catholic, and Chinese popular religious communities that play central roles in the immigrant incorporation process, build transnational links between New York and China, and influence the religious revival sweeping southeastern China today.

The purpose of this paper is to study the extent to which the available data on Jewish identity enable us to study (1) gender differences in Jewish identity, and (2) the effect that these gender differences in Jewish identity have on secular roles of Jewish men and women. As established in previous research, Jewish identity varies along two dimensions, the religious-ethnic dimension and the public-private dimension of expression. Together these result in four components of Jewish identity: the public religious component, the private religious component; the public ethnic component, and the private ethnic component of Jewish identity. By addressing each of these four components of Jewish identity, we will assess the adequacy of existing data, including the NJPS 2000-2001, to analyze: (1) gender differences in that component and (2) the effect of these gender differences in the secular behavior of American Jews.

This paper presents results from an investigation made in southern Sweden in 2001. Ten relatives of people whose remains were scattered were interviewed about the circumstan-ces of the scattering. The forms for scattering the ashes varied depending on the locality. In several cases relatives scattered the ashes alone or together, and in some cases funeral directors and a minister did it. Reciting poems, singing hymns or traditional songs are not uncommon. Overall, the ceremony was a positive experience for the relatives, and it was seen as a terminal point of a long process. Several of the relatives also recognized the scattering of ashes as an option for the disposal of their own bodies after death. It is suggested that the scattering of ashes can be seen as a postmodern way of relating to rites of death.

This paper seeks to construct a theoretical, methodological, and substantive research program which incorporates disability into the agenda of the sociology of religion. In order to address this interface more thoroughly, this paper provides a framework for understanding the interaction between disability, society and religion at three levels: the personal, the social, and the societal. At the personal level, the paper focuses on the interaction of the individual with a disability and religious practice as related in personal accounts of experience with a disability. The discussion of the social level focuses on the interactions between individuals with disabilities and various social roles in religious life. Looking at the interaction of disability, society and religion at the societal level places emphasis on issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and injuries from war as ways to understand the contributions of various religious statements with regard to disability and "global" affairs.

Drawing from extensive field study in the International Churches of Christ (ICOC) and using Scientology as a comparative case, this paper highlights the intersection of religion, family, and the therapeutic in new religious movements at the turn of the 21^st century. Sociologists have well documented the pervasiveness of a therapeutic ethos in US social structure and called attention to the religio-therapeutic appeal of much contemporary religious belief and practice. This paper adds to the literature by noting the historically specific language and symbols in institutional legitimations of religious healing approaches; for example, discourses of genetics and health and wellness are used to affirm organizational effectiveness. I argue that contemporary religious presentations of redemp-tion from sin and illness, of turning sinful, sick intimate relationships into saved, healthy ones, are representative of a historically specific, alluring combination of sacred family community, divine power, and medical therapeutic diagnosis and treatment.

Does individual religious commitment serve as a buffer in supporting high-risk youth escape drug use and other illegal activities? Inadequacies of support structures in poor inner-city black communities lead many black youth into criminal and other delinquent activities. Using survey data from interviews of 2,538 young black males from poor neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, we find that behavioral measures of religious commitment significantly reduce non-drug illegal activities, drug use, and drug dealing. We discuss the implications of these findings as well as directions for future research on religiosity as an important protective factor for disadvantaged youth.

Using data from the "Values-2002" survey in Russia (N=2,848), this paper explores the structures and distributions of opinions about Islam and Orthodoxy. Focusing on such perceived characteristics of religion as their militancy or peacefulness, pro-democratic or anti-democratic orientations, and others, this paper demonstrates important similarities and differences in opinions among Muslims and Christians. The data give little support to beliefs about inherent hostility of Muslims to Christianity, or of Christians toward Islam, in Russia.

This paper uses the Weberian categories of church and sect in order to analyze difference in the social organization of medieval religious groups for the conduct of its members. It is argued that the initial organization of the Waldensians was based on the charismatic foundation of a sect, but the routinization of charisma that occurred after the founder’s death brought about a push toward a church-type organization. A similar process occurred among the early Franciscans but not the Cathars. Implications of organizational changes for the role of women in these movements are discussed.

This paper uses data from the "Values-2002" survey (N=2,848) to explore religious determinants of political tolerance in Russia. Specifically, it shows the effects of religious affiliation, commitment, participation, and theocratic beliefs on tolerance of atheists, homosexuals, and fascists, and on tolerance of US-based and other Western churches recently established in Russia. The paper suggests that intolerance, both political and religious, is primarily linked to theocratic orientations rather than to religious commitment and participation.

Focusing on recent debates stirred in Russia by the introduction of "The Foundations of the Orthodox Culture" as an elective in Russian public schools, this paper explores the politics of influence of the Orthodox Church on Russia’s education. Using data from the "Values-2002" survey (N=2,848), the paper suggests that the growing access of the Church to public schools goes contrary to public opinion about religious instruction. However, once the new norms are introduced, they may increase popular support for stronger ecclesiastical influences on education.

The use of the terms "religious" and "secular" to label individuals in everyday life is a modern phenomenon. The secularization process led people who once called one another "Jewish," "Muslim," or "Christian" to begin using terms such as religious and secular. In this paper secularization is defined as the differentiation of clerical from state institutions. The aim of the paper is to consider the implications of the secularization process in the Israeli context for the construction of religious and secular Jewish identity. We will see that secular Israeli-Jewish identity is shaped as a reaction against attempts by the state to preserve traditional religious ritual in the public sphere. In contrast, we find people calling themselves "religious," as opposed to simply "Jewish" in situations in which the state does not attempt to enforce traditional ritual or in which there is no consensus about the performance of ritual in the broader Israeli-Jewish population. The paper draws on survey data from four groups of 20- to 30-year-old Israeli Jews (N=1,000) and focuses on the attitudes to religious ritual in public and parochial contexts.

Why has the sociology of religion not developed in Israel? The answer is found in the local understanding of ritual rooted in religious doctrine. The sociology of religion was born from the attempt by the founding fathers of the discipline to understand a world in which authority for determining correct performance of ritual was taken out of the hands of agents of the state and privatized. The development of the sociology of religion in a particular country depends on the nature of the privatization process. This paper argues that a sociology of religion in Israel has not developed because religious ritual is for most Israelis a public or parochial, and not a private, experience. Most Israeli sociologists do not find the theoretical frameworks offered by the sociology of religion an obvious point of departure to understand phenomena in which the performance of religious ritual is ironically a central social component.

Although religious and cultural pluralism has been a reality in South Africa both before and during apartheid, it was only after the dismantling of apartheid that due recognition of it became constitutionally entrenched. It means that all religious and cultural groups have equal rights and opportunities to practice and spread their religious and cultural beliefs. However, the debate around the schools, as to whether there should be a multi-religious approach to religious education or a single-faith approach is still going on. The ministry of education has taken a stand that there should be a multi-faith approach to religious education. But several private schools, which understand their ethos as being predominantly Christian, have been resisting the idea of a multi-faith approach, as they fear that their own faith might be either diluted or lost. This is the context in which this paper looks at the greater Durban area in the KZN province of South Africa and, in light of the pluralistic nature of its society, argues that attitudes of fundamentalism and racism can be dealt with only through a sustained approach to religious education by drawing upon the multi-religious resources that exist in South Africa. The broader issue of pluralism as part of the hidden agenda of the so-called secularism project will also be addressed.

Drawing on three theories—structuration, bounded rationality, and personal closure— bounded choice theory is a new approach for exploring the behavior of "true believers" in charismatic groups. Structurally, such groups are comprised of four interrelated, interdependent dimensions: charismatic authority, transcendent belief system, systems of control, and systems of influence. Such groups are closed to disconfirming evidence and structured in such a way that everything reinforces the system. The true believer is characterized by a charismatic commitment that is the result of the fusion of the ideal of personal freedom to be gained by participation in the group and the group’s demand for self-renunciation in order to achieve that ideal. The individual member is an active agent within this system, reproducing the system, yet at the same time is constrained by its demands. Bounded choice theory addresses individual choice within this context, addressing issues of knowledge and power within the duality of structure.

Between 1981 and 1990 the European Values Surveys largely sustained the thesis of an increasing secularization in Western Europe. Nearly all the variables showed a religious decline in the eleven surveyed countries in 1981 and 1990. The decline was even deeper among young people, except for after-death beliefs. Peter Berger and Grace Davie underlined the "European exception" in opposition to the rest of the world. However the 1999 survey revealed dramatic changes. This trend is now counterbalanced by two new tendencies: a Christian revival and the development of religiosity without belonging, especially among young people. In particular, after-death beliefs are spreading. The respective share of these three tendencies varies according to the countries. Post-Socialist Europe shows an even more developed revival, in particular among young people. At the same time, by contrast, according to 1991 and 1998 ISSP data, the United States points to a slight religious decrease. I will summarize the data and propose an explanation.

The concept of "axial age" has been used to refer to one historical period: the emergence of universalism, philosophy, great religions, and early science. This is especially true of the centuries BCE and the rise of Christianity (Deutero-Isaiah, Pericles, the Upanishads, Jain, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tze, Jesus), of which Islam is an offspring. This age is considered "axial" because we continue to be its heirs, particularly through the great religions. However, there is no reason that we cannot also consider the Neolithic age, the earliest civilizations, the great empires, and modernity as such axial ages, since they too marked a general reshaping of collective thought and led to new religious configurations, respectively: oral agrarian religions, religions of antiquity, religions of salvation (universalist religions), modern changes. Therefore, our definition of "axial age" (or axial period) shall include these four ages. We shall focus on key examples to illustrate this theoretical perspective and to show how it can help us understand modern religious changes.

Following a number of bombings and attacks, the events of September 11 raised a number of questions as to what kinds of people might launch suicide missions and why they would do so. Contemporary Islamic fundamentalism and a very small, but significant, number of dedicated terrorists seeking political change, can be understood as an outcome of a long historical process in which religiously sanctioned expressions of martyrdom through assertive masculinity are a means to political redress. Islam, having created one of the world’s great civilizations, hegemonic over a vast part of the world, fell into economic, political and cultural decline, fostering a ressentiment toward the West. This has taken the form of erecting barriers to modernity, the lack of a reformation, without a space for critical doubt, but rather denial and projection, as explanations for Islamic Exceptionalism. But when progressive, modernist movements emerged, they took progressive forms and were squelched by imperialist forces. But that, fueled by more recent Western policies, has left a wide swath of the world’s poor, underdeveloped, and undemocratic—fertile soil for religious and political extremism.

This paper selectively explains, illustrates, and assesses the application of classical arguments about the changing role of religion in society to the sociological analysis of globalization in order to determine the relative significance of religion in that process. Specifically, it draws key arguments from classical authors, shows how these have been or can be adapted to global purposes by contemporary scholars, provides supportive empirical cases or instances, and critically asks what further steps may be needed to advance a theoretical understanding of religion in globalization.

This paper explores notions of the "urban" when communities are constituted transnationally and pays special attention to the role of religion in building these bridges across borders.

How does religion influence civic engagement beyond religious congregations? Different lines of research show that church-based social capital, privately held beliefs, or public religious discourses galvanize people for civic action. Borrowing from new work on religious identity, this paper shows that religion can have a heretofore untheorized, "quiet" cultural influence on civic engagement, too. Ethnographic research on two local, community service alliances shows that religious meanings influence ordinary customs of sustaining groups. In the first case, "quiet" religious meanings helped a mainline Protestant church alliance establish ties with a low-income neighborhood. In the second case, quiet religious meanings divided mainline and evangelical Protestant members of a local anti-racism coalition. In both cases, religion mattered because of what it signaled quietly about how people should act as group members, apart from what it said loudly as an explicit discourse of civic action or social change. The concept of quiet religious influence bids us to refine scholarly terms of debate about public religion, and suggests a new understanding of mainline Protestantism’s heroic role in American public life.

In this paper I will review the sociological literature on new religious movements (NRMs) in the United States between 1960 and the present, paying particular attention to those with communal forms of organization. I find six themes running through the literature that seem to be important for understanding these movements: (1) currents of tension and toleration that mark the relationship between NRMs and American society; (2) the ideological disconnection of NRMs—particularly millenarianism and religious violence; (3) the central role of charismatic leadership and charismatic influence in NRMs; (4) the distinguishing characteristics of joiners, stayers, and leavers of these movements; (5) the networks of relationships among members of NRMs; and finally, (6) methodological issues that arise in the study of NRMs.

Taking "special efforts" to help persons of racial-ethnic minorities gain church leadership positions is problematic to many laity and clergy in a predominantly Anglo denomination, even though a majority espouse increasing the representation of ethnic minority clergy as an ideal. Results from a national survey conducted in 2002 (about 2,500 responses from laity and clergy) are used to discuss the theoretical, theological, and pragmatic issues involved in increasing the number of ethnic minority clergy, with comparisons to similar issues in increasing the number of women in top leadership positions and in the clergy.

This paper argues for a Marxist class-cultural theory of contemporary religious revival, compared to present rational choice theories using empirical examples from the 1960s Commune movements and present-day movements. This paper examines the reasons that enthusiasts find particular new religions compelling, compared to the decline of mainline churches. Factors include social change, cultural values, consumerism, and class position. The paper concludes that a class-cultural model, applied as both a structural and social-psychological theory, accounts for new interest in religion.

In this paper I argue that the roots of liberation theology are found in the institutions inspired by Catholic Social Teaching, also known as social Catholicism. Drawing on a fine-grained analysis of the case of Mexico and a coarse-grained analysis of a fuzzy set of seven other countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay), I posit that variation in the strength of social Catholicism, and thus liberation theology, in Latin America can best be explained by the character of secularization in each country. Following Chaves’s reconceptualization of secularization as the declining scope of religious authority, I consider secularization processes at two levels: the state, with emphasis on church-state relations, and at the level of society, with a focus on competition from Marxism. In all eight countries, social Catholicism is strongest where and when Marxism is strong and the church maintains an independent yet amicable relation with the state.

This paper will start with a brief summary of John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory. It will then identify two key assumptions: first, the ideas of the Christendom group (1920-1950 in Britain) and, in particular, V.A. Demant’s concept of "Christian sociology;" second, the affirmation of the postmodern and the insistence on contrasting rationalities in different traditions. The paper will then move beyond the descriptive to offer a critique of Radical Orthodoxy. The three main difficulties are (a) its inability to cope constructively with plural traditions; (b) the propensity to antagonism with the secular social sciences; and (c) the coherence of insisting on radical incommensurability between traditions. However, the paper will conclude by affirming the clarity of the challenge. There is a need for sociologists of religion to move beyond its uncomplicated affirmation of the rationality of modernity and fight the methodological battle.

Pentecostalism can be understood as part of a caravanserai moving to the megacity in La Paz or Harare or Seoul. People link themselves together in convoy in faith and hope for changed lives and better futures, morally and spiritually. Sometimes they come from long-neglected minorities like the Aymara or Maya; always they carry people forward and up over generations, offering them skills, organization, and means of expression. Those emerging in new middle classes find anchors in an unstable world. Pentecostalism increases the range of cultural options as people choose on an open market. It looks back to the old inspirited world and forward to global modernity and its means of communication.

Pentecostalism offers cultural re-formation throughout the developing world, most dramatically in Latin America and Africa. It brings together black and white revivalism with an appeal to ancient worlds of the spirit and an opening onto international global modernity. Part of the appeal is to subordinate peoples who can dance and sing their way into the contemporary world or to those who elect to journey in mutually supporting fellowship from countryside to megacity. It also has some appeal to new middle classes, enabling them to seek "goods," moral and material, in a framework of personal and family discipline.

The relationship between the institutions of the European Union and religious and humanist leaders is a laboratory of regulation of religious diversity by a transnational and intergovernmental organization. Actors are prompted to think beyond the classical framework of the Nation State. Through formal and informal relations, a specific European model of regulation of religion is emerging from the different models of the 15 Member States. On the one hand, actors lobby in order to preserve the specificity of their model of Church/State relationships from the European integration process. But on the other hand, they try to impose their national model at the European level. In this competition, the French system proves to be an exception, and its advocates are isolated. I will show the significance of this specificity. Besides, the European model of intermediation of interests is considered more pluralistic and open than in the Member States. It is often compared with the USA. We’ll discuss the interest and limits of this comparison.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States faced invasion by "... a miserable rabble unlike anything the country has known ... noisily drinking and brawling, without the American respect for law...." In other words, Irish Catholic immigrants. The nativist American Protestants reacted in a number of ways—creating missions, including the King James Version of the Bible in public school curricula, and sometimes rioting and burning down Catholic institutions. The Catholics responded in kind. This paper will examine this seminal period in both American and religious history.

In my presentation I will be discussing the challenges and tensions involved in trying to study and live pluralism in a region still imagined largely in terms of Protestant (specifically Baptist and Methodist) frames of reference.

Throughout the 1990s, lists of best-selling books were dominated by titles from New Age spiritual authors. In order for these titles to attain their phenomenal sales figures, individuals outside the New Age fringe must have been responsible for a large proportion of the purchases of such works. In other words, mainstream readers drove the market for New Age spirituality. These readers remain unaccounted for in the sociological literature. By utilizing analysis of reader reviews of New Age best-sellers and follow-up interviews, this paper seeks to further our understanding of the attraction of New Age spirituality in mainstream culture. It also suggests possible implications of the introduction of new spiritual ideas on the lives of New Age readers.

Four Corners, a predominantly poor African-American neighborhood in Boston, contains nearly 30 religious congregations despite its modest 0.6 square mile area. Common assumptions regarding the nutritive role of churches in neighborhood life would imply that a neighborhood so dense with religious life should be particularly well served or particularly ripe for revitalization. Such assumptions, recently stoked by developments in social welfare policy, ignore the extent to which internal contestation over the meaning of community and place condition the course of neighborhood revitalization. They also do not consider the origin and nature of churchly relationships with host neighborhoods in "religious districts" like Four Corners. As this paper contends, the same factors that permit a 0.6 square mile neighborhood to contain 30 churches also complicate neighborhood revitalization by foiling church-based attachments to the neighborhood.

This paper examines dominant conceptualizations of human embodiment that have marked different generations of sociologists of religion. Beginning with the neglected significance of the body among the "classical" theorists, I suggest that Parsons and later sociologists engaged embodiment in a highly selective manner. This selectivity, reinforced by the widening gulf between sociology of religion and anthropology, focused primarily upon cognitive factors (e.g., an overriding concern belief issues) in relation to socialization processes or existential issues, rather than practical actions or emotional and sensory potentialities and characteristics. McGuire’s call for a "rematerialization" of the body coincided with the rise of new generations of sociologists and cultural theorists eager to return the body to the center of analysis. I argue that a satisfactory account of religion, society, and embodiment must include the following: (1) a recognition of the primary importance of human action rather than belief systems; (2) a concern for ontology rather than epistemology; and (3) an attempt to develop a more nuanced account of how enduring human potentialities and constraints relate to social and historical changes, resisting the tendency to overestimate the significance of epochal changes of various sorts.

A number of social and cultural theorists argue that the impact of globalized information flows upon contemporary life is not only evident in the decreasing significance of nation-states, but also in the redundancy of classical sociological theories of "society." Indeed, for some writers, there is not an information society at all, but a series of "mobilities," "networks," and "flows" where everything is reconfigured in a global interplay of information. In this paper, however, it is argued that such views misrepresent classical theory and offer an inadequate account of contemporary social life. Building upon Durkheim’s argument that changing patters of collective representations must be analyzed in relation to a religious substratum of society, it is argued that returning religion to the center of sociological analysis allows us to understand the real character of contemporary social and cultural changes.

Being the first of its kind in Greece, "Free Monks" is a Greek Orthodox rock band of black-robed monks. Since 2000 the group has produced three popular musical albums and video clips with modern Greek and some English songs. This paper will explore the aesthetic and social aspects of this cultural phenomenon and more particularly analyze the music, along with its accompanying vocals (lyrics in modern and vernacular Greek) and images (video clips). The group’s means of self-promotion and dissemination (Web site, publications, concerts, etc.), the resonance of this musical phenomenon in Greek society, and its reception by the institution of the Church in Greece will also be examined.

Without most sociologists of religion and other western scholars taking note, Christianity has become a global religion. Strong Christian bases have developed outside of the western world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, but also in Asia. This has taken place primarily after the middle of the twentieth century, and especially after the collapse of colonialism. To challenge sociologists of religion to study global Christianity, I first review the major shift in Christianity to nonwestern bases. Then, I consider some of the difficulties for sociologists of religion in studying global Christianity. Finally, I discuss some of the theories that can be applied by sociologists of religion to studies of global Christianity.

Though not entirely absent from public discussion in the 1970s and 1980s, euthanasia ascended to the forefront of political and legal forums during the 1990s. Catholics and Conservative Protestants in particular appear to be among the most vocal opponents. For Catholics, the Vatican has long been opposed to the human termination of life in any form, a position outlined explicitly in its "Catechism and the Catholic Church—the Fifth Commandment." Similarly, the Conservative Protestant-sponsored Web site www.family.org has posted numerous pieces condemning the passing of pro-euthanasia legislation in several states (e.g., Hawaii and Oregon). For both groups, opposition seems rooted in the belief that it is contrary to the will of God to interfere with God’s plan, and that ending one’s life prematurely is a usurpation of God’s omniscience and authority. Up to this point, few scholars have examined the relationship between religion and attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide. In this paper, we attempt to chart the attitudes of various religious groups over time. To this end, we use data obtained from the General Social Survey (1977-2000).

This paper shows how the cultural turn intersects with feminist theories and methodologies to provide a framework for putting gender and sexuality at the center of our study of religion. Both feminist thought and the cultural turn brought new understandings of narrative and relationality to social analysis. This, in turn, led to new ways of conceptualizing the relations between structure and culture. Unlike the traditional opposition between the ideal and the material, culture and structure are seen as mutually constitutive. These aspects of the cultural turn have many ramifications for the sociology of religion. Among them, they allow us to see how gender and sexuality are at the core of religious identification and practice.

This paper examines mythic and religious elements in Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. We examine tensions between the scientific and reductionistic, and the mythic and religious, themes in Marx and Freud, and contrast them with the more substantial elements of myth, religion, and metaphysics in these Freudo-Marxists. While each intends initially to merge Marx and Freud into a secular critical theory, they all end with mytho-religious amalgams. Reich opens the project with a materialistic and anti-religious Freudo-Marxist social psychology, but ends with a metaphysical life-philosophy. Fromm adds elements borrowed from both Jewish religious philosophy as well as other cultural sources, resulting in a "perennial" religious philosophy with Marxian and Freudian elements. Marcuse draws on Classical myths about Orpheus and Narcissus to shadow forth a utopian Freudo-Marxism. We suggest some reasons for these shifts of perspective and conclude with a discussion of whether or not such mythologizing was inherent to the Marx-Freud merger.

Globalization poses new challenges for cross-national religious organizations, as European and American leaders are faced with issues and agendas from leaders in parts of their churches that until now have not represented a powerful presence or challenge to the status quo. The severity of the strife has raised the question of whether multinational denominationalism will survive. If so, what kind of civic or moral role can it serve? Or, is it simply an antiquated organizational relic of modernism? This paper builds upon previous work revising Kohlberg’s moral development theory for secular organizations, and applied as a model for analyzing discourse and behavior across boundaries of substantive international and cultural differences. How well does this model fit denominationalism? What can it predict? Based primarily upon a case study of the Anglican Communion, with reference to other types of multinational religious associations and organizations, this paper represents work in progress that seeks to assess the viability of this organizational development model as a means of analyzing internal conflicts related to globalization and multicultural legitimation, and to set forth theoretical conditions more likely to predict new models of relating across traditional political and religious boundaries.

Globalization, like religion, has had its detractors and proponents. Across the geographical landscape of Europe and the United States are African churches of "the next Christendom." Fleeing oppressive regimes, social and political dislocation, ethnic strife and religious persecution, African immigrant churches have dotted the cities, college campuses, and suburbs of the United States. This paper addresses the central role of the Christian faith in helping African immigrants adapt to civic life in the United States. As products of Western education and Christianity, African immigrants confront modernity and Christianity and challenge them through an immanent critique. Using African philosophy and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, this paper evaluates post-colonial discourse on Christianity in light of the African condition in the current global structure. I make use of the works of key figures in African philosophy—V.Y. Mudimbe and Kwame Anthony Appiah—as well as Walter Benjamin among critical theorists in examining the concepts of memory and remembrance as these immigrants relate to historical, current, and religious issues at home and in their newly adopted country.

This paper argues that in order to understand the nature of what is happening today to the spaces of cities, we must understand many of the new immigrant and ethnic communities that have arisen within them. We begin from a simple premise based, in part, on Émile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life—that communities, like all social life, are created, and recreated, through the activity in common of people. As a result of such common activity, social byproducts are created too, including specific sites and places in space, new forms of culture, and even an emergent emphasis on multicultural space in which the differences in the social practices among ethnic communities are both encouraged and tolerated.

The topic of my paper will seek to explore how Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critical theory of religion addresses the three alternative futures that futurologists state our present social system contains: Future Alternative I—the totally administered, cybernetic, mechanized society; Future Alternative II—the ABC & T War society (A = atomic[nuclear], B = bacterial, C = chemical, T = terroristic); and Future Alternative III—a reconciled, just/peace society. By their critical sublimation of the Second and Third Commandments, which prohibit and thus deny the possibility of naming or imaging the totally Other/God, as well as of the Prophetic and Messianic longing and hope for redemption in a new creation into their critical theory of society and religion, Horkheimer and Adorno give a critical, liberational, and materialistic critique of Future Alternatives I and II, while dialectically unfolding modern society’s structural and systematic possibilities of creating Future Alternative III—a better, more rational, just, humane, and peaceful/shalom-filled society of autonomy and solidarity.

The Raelian Movement is the largest UFO religion in the world and recently announced that its company, CLONAID, had succeeded in producing the first cloned human. On the basis of 15 years of intermittent research, I argue that the Raelians represent a new response to the crisis of secularization. Referring to Stark and Bainbridge’s theory, I argue that their religion combines the "magic" of the frontiers of science (in their view the superior technology of extraterrestrials)—i.e., cloning—with the "general compensators" that religion provides, like loving gods, ethical values in tune with the modern world, and a sense of universal order and meaning. This paper explores the puzzling syncretism of atheistic anti-Catholic secular humanism with Bible fundamentalism and ufological hermeneutics that makes Rael’s religion and growing subculture so successful and distinctive among NRMs.

Our paper focuses on analysis of focus group interviews with Latino/a pastors from seven cities throughout the US and the PARAL data collected for the US National Survey of Leadership in Latino Parishes and Congregations. Our data show that while Latino religious leaders and their churches and congregations are very engaged in providing social services for their community, they also show limitations. In our paper, we focus on what those limitations are. We focus particularly on language and financial barriers, including professional development. We argue that without attention to the barriers that limit Latino/a leadership in ministry, our civic engagement as a fast-growing community in US society will not translate into political clout as it has, though in a limited way, for the African-American community.

Based on the work of James Hopewell and Nicholas Healy, the thesis argues that significant theological beliefs and practices are apparent in the "operant" religion of a church or congregation, and that the sociological or ethnographic excavation of these primary sources can show that such material constitutes ecclesial life just as much as any "formal" religious statements. Two contrasting case studies illustrate the thesis. The conclusion argues that modern ecclesiology, in trying to understand churches, needs to be hospitable to the social sciences. At the same time, theological insights can also enrich narrative studies, ethnography, and sociology in their readings of congregations and churches. Correspondingly, a complementary and mutually hospitable relationship between theology and the social sciences is essential for a deeper and richer form of modern ecclesiology.

This paper examines effects of Catholic college attendance on the politics of US college-educated Catholics. Data are taken primarily from a 2000 telephone poll conducted for the American Catholics in the Public Square project and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. While results are inconsistent, some evidence suggests that those who ever attended a Catholic college are more likely than others to adhere to "social justice" stances on issues such as government responsibility for aiding the poor, third world debt forgiveness, and capital punishment. Some mechanisms by which these effects might take place are examined.

Research has found support for Peter Berger’s ideas about the role plausibility structures play in sustaining religious beliefs. However, it has been argued recently that the analytical and measurement approach taken in that research is problematic and has produced findings that have insufficient empirical support. It has also been argued that an alternative analytical/measurement strategy is more appropriate. In this paper, we examine both arguments and conclude that the alternative approach has important limitations of its own, while criticisms of the approach taken in existing research are overstated. We also discuss the implications both approaches have for Berger’s ideas.

Sociologists pay a great deal of attention to growth within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A recent survey of religious denominations in the United States asserts that Mormonism is the fastest growing large church in the US, and the nation’s fifth largest Christian faith. To date, however, there have been no sociological analyses of how this rapid growth affects Mormon congregations. This paper uses participant observation and in-depth interviews with Mormons to show how the church’s extensive missionary program affects the programs and social climate of a typical Mormon congregation. I then examine worldwide church growth statistics to demonstrate that the micro-level problems uncovered in this congregation are indicative of larger problems within Mormonism caused by the organization’s heavy emphasis on growth. The paper shows how the Mormon church inflates its membership statistics and fills church rolls with "converts" who are only marginally affiliated with the church. The ramification of these facts for several important theories in the sociology of religion is addressed.

Through the lenses of narrative ethnology, "Fire in Atlanta" introduces Blood-N-Fire (BnF), a "church of the poor" near the Capitol Corridor. Founded by a former successful CEO with a passion for the poor, the ministry’s roots are deep in a Pentecostal-Charismatic worldview, with ongoing experiences of "charismata" or the paranormal "gifts of the Spirit." Using Pitirim Sorokin’s typology of love as a sociological frame, this paper explores the relationship between love and empowerment and the role they play in advancing spiritual and social transformation in this innovative faith-based outreach.

During the past two decades there has been increasing academic interest in the study of "New Religious Movements"(NRMs) and "New Social Movements"(NSMs). In the past, scholarship associated with the sociology of religion often used analytical approaches distinct from those used by scholars who studied social movements. Recently, scholars in the NRM field have become more inclined to use paradigms that have been established by NSM scholars. This paper describes the concept of social movement "framing" that is used prominently in NSM studies. It then investigates the movement frames being used by religious reform groups in Iran. The paper concludes that exploring movement frames is a useful analytical tool for describing the growth of religious movements.

Although among the lesser-known classical Roman poets, Dio Chrysostom and Lucian have considerable relevance for those interested in the study of people’s religious beliefs, practices, and representations of the divinity. Whereas their texts are important for explicitly connecting classical Greek thought with the emergence and continuity of people’s later religious notions and practices, the constructionist motifs that Dio and Lucian develop are strikingly contemporary in overall emphases. Thus, while acknowledging some of the more particular practices and intrigues of their contemporaries with respect to theological matters, Dio and Lucian also ask about the foundations (as in poetics, philosophy, and the plastic arts) of Greek theological ventures and consider the implications of people’s current practices for their subsequent continuities in theological arenas. Representing valuable transhistorical reference points, Dio and Lucian help establish the more enduring relevance of constructionist theory for the study of religion.

This presentation intends to discuss the notion of exceptionalism as it is applied to the religious field. Discussing this concept will lead to a consideration of its historic use, its further developments since the first representations it was intended to express, and the interpretative turns it has either undergone or initiated. This analytical overview will also be critical: What does the use of a concept related, implicitly or not, to the notion of "rule"

mean on an epistemological basis? And, to what extent does such a concept contribute to a binary view of religious facts?

Within the theoretical framework of "minority status" vs "sovereignty," this study analyzes patterns of group identity among Israeli and American Jews. In America, the most legitimate source of cultural differences lies in the religious domain. But most Jews are not religiously oriented; religious, ethnic, cultural and historical components comprise the abundant expressions of Jewish identity. In Israel, the national and/or religious elements of ritual observance play a paramount role in the meaning of being Jewish. Despite many overlaps, there are unique characteristics of Jewish identification in each of the two societies. Likewise, there are significant structural differences which are likely to affect the level of Jewishness in each society. Thus, we examine the behaviors and attitudes among similar subgroups in each of the societies, their rank order, the mutual relationships between various behavioral and attitudinal components, hence the nature of group commitment, and the determinants of Jewish identification.

One way of measuring the stability of a denomination through its ever-changing social and political environment is to analyze the tenure patterns of pastors. The Southern Baptist Convention and its state conventions have gone through considerable turmoil and some schism during the past 25 years. The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) has been an arena for conflict between "moderate" and "fundamentalist" factions. Has this conflict affected pastor-church relationships? Self-reported annual reports from the churches of the BGCT served as the database for this study of the health of its churches. The steady increase in pastoral tenure length is indicative of good pastor-church relations. Other factors related to longer tenure are also examined.

The issue of woman abuse offers an interesting case study into the role of faith-based and secular organizations and their struggle to respond to the needs of those who have been victimized. Research in North America indicates that faith-based organizations offer their members and the communities in which their services are located an array of informal services that attempt to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs in the aftermath of violence. A preliminary look at Eastern Europe suggests that this informal network of social support does not operate with the same prevalence as it does in North America. Reflecting on data collected in Croatia and in Canada, this paper will assess some of the features associated with the response of congregations to violence in the family context.

The Coptic Orthodox Church represents one of the oldest continuing Christian traditions. With its origins in the Alexandria of apostolic times, the church retains a presence in modern Egypt and the Egyptian diaspora. Copts can be classed as members of the Oriental Orthodox community, diverging from Byzantine and Roman traditions after the Council of Chalcedon. Copts first started to arrive in Australia in substantial numbers in the 1960s and have now established churches, schools, and other infrastructure in major population centers such as Melbourne and Sydney. Unlike many established churches, the Copts appear to be more successful in retaining young adults as participating members of the faith community. This paper explores some of the ways in which Copts retain their ethical and religious identity in contemporary Australian society. In particular, the role of the ordained ministry, the emphasis on continuity of belief and practice, and the importance placed on outreach to young adults will be examined.

The goal of therapy is the removal of distress and pathology. Hindutva sociopolitical movements in recent years tried to bring changes through spirituality and religious guidance toward a higher level of civilization. Political scientists and sociologists (T.N. Madan and others) led an antisecularist critique of nationalist orthodoxy. Partly in agreement with this line of argument, my paper would submit that the secularist state did not have to initiate change in such a manner that secularism could have an absolute upper hand over religion and religion-related issues such as the Ayodhya mosque-mandir controversy.

I will present a paper on the Frankfurt School’s view concerning unconditional meaning, universal values and norms in relation to alternative global futures of society. What does critical theory have to say about subjectivity and intersubjectivity, civil society, political state and culture: particularly the possibility of universal values? The paper will not only reflect on the last three generations of critical theorists, but will also develop further the dialectical theory of society in terms of contextual praxis to mitigate as much as possible the trend in civil society toward alternative global Future I—the totally administered society; to prevent under all circumstances the tendency in modern political states toward alternative global Future II—conventional wars and civil wars, ABC wars and the consequent ecological disasters; and to promote as passionately as possible the tendencies in modern culture toward alternative global Future III—the right society in which personal autonomy and universal, i.e., anamnestic, present and proleptic solidarity will be reconciled, and a friendly and helpful living together will be possible.

Leicester is a city in the English midlands that has grown over the last two hundred years from a small East Midlands market town into a major city that has become an exemplar of religious diversity throughout Europe. I am currently involved in a project looking at Leicester and the "making of a multicultural city." The project is concerned about the way in which civic authorities have developed their public policy based on ideas of social cohesion leading to a "civic multiculturalism," while the communities themselves still maintain a high level of residential segregation and community isolationism. The paper will explore these issues further.

For this presentation, I will focus on the propagation of neo-shamanism from fieldwork at workshops on shaman training, women’s drum circles, and psychic fairs I’ve attended as a participant observer. I will also share excerpts from interviews with contemporary shamans, their apprentices, and consumers. The training workshops, of which there are several, are run by local shamans who charge fees for training Westerners how to be shamanic healers through workshops, residencies, and private tutoring. This project looks at how self-proclaimed shamans borrow from and then, in turn, sell, spiritual knowledge. This is a rugged individualist project, but ultimately a global movement aimed at collectively healing the planet of its many ethical, moral, social, and subsequently environmental ills. I will look at the way in which contemporary shamans take up what are thought of as authentic indigenous approaches to healing and refine them for Western consumption.

Research suggests that middle-class conservative Protestant congregations are opening up to the process of modernization. They are popular because they both accommodate and resist modernity. In this paper, I discuss the specific aspects of modernization that are accepted or rejected by such congregations. The paper concludes with a consideration of the likely stability of such a mixed response to modernization.

The Russian Orthodox Church, like other Christian churches, has always had a traditionally male-dominant structure. But all researchers note that during the twentieth century women have constituted the biggest part of the congregations, without having the possibility to participate in the organization of church life, to create new religious forms and understandings of their religious experience. This was understandable in the context of antireligious Communist policy, but the situation has not changed after the collapse of the Communist regime, when being religious became popular. On the other hand, there were a few women who managed to create new religious traditions (as E.P. Blavckaia) at the beginning of the twentieth century, or communities, like the soviet feminist group "Mariya" of T. Goricheva and home religious circle "Nadezhda" of Z. Krahmal’nikova in the 1970s, among many others organized and directed by males. Additionally, the end of the century was marked by debates about women clergy in the Orthodox Church. In my paper, I will discuss general ideas, hypotheses, and data from research on women’s places and roles in the Russian Orthodox Church and near-Orthodox communities today.

Research on the development of social movement and social reality of Gay Religious Life in North America has as a primary causal force the specific theological beliefs of religious organizations. Not only have these theological positions necessitated the social innovation and formation of new organizations based on different theological premises, but variations in original theological stance may even have a direct influence on the form these new organizations adopt. This paper will sketch some of this development and relationship. While this paper does not want to claim that theological beliefs are causative of all social phenomena, it will argue that there are times when sociologists of religion need to devote greater attention to theological premises and entertain the hypothesis that organizational belief formulations may shape social reality in more ways than are often acknowledged.