{"title":"Correction to: “You Can’t Just Give People Food”: Whiteness in Practice at an Evangelical Food Pantry","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141669015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In dialogue with the cross-national scholarship on gender and religion, the study uses a unique combination of rich qualitative and quantitative data from a predominantly Christian rural sub-Saharan setting to examine how churches modify, yet also sustain and even reinforce, patriarchal norms. It shows how churches replace the traditional, extended family-based model of gender inequality with a pseudo-modern model of individualized conjugal dependency. Although men increasingly disengage from the religious space, the growing feminization of that space does not translate into a more gender-egalitarian narrative: the church nurtures women’s agency yet also channels it to rearrange and reassert their subservience. To acquire legitimacy, church women are pressured to act as collective articulators, promoters, and guarantors of neo-patriarchal values and orders, and in particular, as builders and saviors of matrimonial integrity and viability. These dynamics reflect and are an integral part of the broader gendered constraints and precarities of contemporary rural society.
{"title":"Feminizing Patriarchy: Christian Churches and Gender Inequality in Rural Africa","authors":"Victor Agadjanian","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In dialogue with the cross-national scholarship on gender and religion, the study uses a unique combination of rich qualitative and quantitative data from a predominantly Christian rural sub-Saharan setting to examine how churches modify, yet also sustain and even reinforce, patriarchal norms. It shows how churches replace the traditional, extended family-based model of gender inequality with a pseudo-modern model of individualized conjugal dependency. Although men increasingly disengage from the religious space, the growing feminization of that space does not translate into a more gender-egalitarian narrative: the church nurtures women’s agency yet also channels it to rearrange and reassert their subservience. To acquire legitimacy, church women are pressured to act as collective articulators, promoters, and guarantors of neo-patriarchal values and orders, and in particular, as builders and saviors of matrimonial integrity and viability. These dynamics reflect and are an integral part of the broader gendered constraints and precarities of contemporary rural society.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141689491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment—a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more objects or agents beyond the self that are perceived as having intrinsic meaning. Analyses are based on 205 in-depth interviews with biologists and physicists from India, Italy, the UK, and the USA. Building on the works of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor, we develop a theoretical framework of enchantment, which we use to illustrate the different ways science is compatible with an “enchanted” worldview, even when scientists do not explicitly talk about religion. We also contribute a new typology of three modes of enchantment—transcendent, immanent, and liminal—that enriches the sociological understanding of the relationship between science and religion.
{"title":"The Enchantment of Science: Aesthetics and Spirituality in Scientific Work","authors":"Benedetta Nicoli, Stefano Sbalchiero, Brandon Vaidyanathan","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment—a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more objects or agents beyond the self that are perceived as having intrinsic meaning. Analyses are based on 205 in-depth interviews with biologists and physicists from India, Italy, the UK, and the USA. Building on the works of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor, we develop a theoretical framework of enchantment, which we use to illustrate the different ways science is compatible with an “enchanted” worldview, even when scientists do not explicitly talk about religion. We also contribute a new typology of three modes of enchantment—transcendent, immanent, and liminal—that enriches the sociological understanding of the relationship between science and religion.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141362483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gale A. Watts, Francesco Cerchiaro, Landon Schnabel
Although women and men identify as “spiritual” in similar numbers, far more women participate in the holistic milieu. We seek to solve this “gender puzzle” by fleshing out the gender scripts the holistic milieu fosters, and their varying relationships to the wider gender order. Surveying existing scholarship, we show that, for women, participation serves to naturalize a script of postfeminist femininity that combines gender essentialism with politically liberal commitments, is consonant with “difference” feminism, and holds an accommodationist relationship to the wider gender order. By contrast, for men, participation in the holistic milieu naturalizes a script of feminine masculinity (or male femininity) that, while also shaped by postfeminist culture, is comparatively counter-hegemonic, embodying a more radical challenge to the current gender order. This theoretical perspective enables us to explain not only why more women than men participate in the holistic milieu, but also why some women opt out, while some men opt in. Furthermore, it illuminates the pivotal place of gender in ongoing trends in the religious, and increasingly spiritual, landscape.
{"title":"The Spiritual Turn and “Feminization”: Turning a Gender Lens on Spirituality","authors":"Gale A. Watts, Francesco Cerchiaro, Landon Schnabel","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although women and men identify as “spiritual” in similar numbers, far more women participate in the holistic milieu. We seek to solve this “gender puzzle” by fleshing out the gender scripts the holistic milieu fosters, and their varying relationships to the wider gender order. Surveying existing scholarship, we show that, for women, participation serves to naturalize a script of postfeminist femininity that combines gender essentialism with politically liberal commitments, is consonant with “difference” feminism, and holds an accommodationist relationship to the wider gender order. By contrast, for men, participation in the holistic milieu naturalizes a script of feminine masculinity (or male femininity) that, while also shaped by postfeminist culture, is comparatively counter-hegemonic, embodying a more radical challenge to the current gender order. This theoretical perspective enables us to explain not only why more women than men participate in the holistic milieu, but also why some women opt out, while some men opt in. Furthermore, it illuminates the pivotal place of gender in ongoing trends in the religious, and increasingly spiritual, landscape.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141361456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, David Voas, Kirstie Hewlett
We define two types of religious polarization and investigate the extent to which they are present across European countries, based on data from the 2008 to 2017 European Values Study and hierarchical linear modeling. The first type is polarization by religiosity, with declines in the middle ground between the actively religious and the nonreligious as secularization reaches an advanced stage. The second type is issue polarization, with the religious and secular taking different positions on a range of socio-political values, including social conservatism and ethnic nationalism. We find limited evidence of bimodality in the distribution of religiosity. We find more evidence, however, of issue polarization between the religious and secular in Europe, especially in social conservatism. Religious polarization should thus be understood as a multidimensional concept where one dimension may be more prevalent than others in society.
{"title":"Religious Polarization in Europe","authors":"Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, David Voas, Kirstie Hewlett","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We define two types of religious polarization and investigate the extent to which they are present across European countries, based on data from the 2008 to 2017 European Values Study and hierarchical linear modeling. The first type is polarization by religiosity, with declines in the middle ground between the actively religious and the nonreligious as secularization reaches an advanced stage. The second type is issue polarization, with the religious and secular taking different positions on a range of socio-political values, including social conservatism and ethnic nationalism. We find limited evidence of bimodality in the distribution of religiosity. We find more evidence, however, of issue polarization between the religious and secular in Europe, especially in social conservatism. Religious polarization should thus be understood as a multidimensional concept where one dimension may be more prevalent than others in society.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141366508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Singlehood and Religion: The Case of Israeli Religious Zionist Singles, by ARI ENGELBERG","authors":"Elazar Ben‐Lulu","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141268639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joseph Blankholm, Ryan Cragun, Abraham Hawley Suárez, Shakir Stephen
This essay argues that “atheist” and “agnostic” are not merely negative labels that indicate a person lacks belief in God or is not religious. Relying on a new survey of very secular Americans and the General Social Survey, we demonstrate a statistically significant and substantively meaningful relationship, in both predictive directions, between identifying as atheist or agnostic and holding certain beliefs about how best to know the world and what happens when we die. We can reliably predict that most people in the United States who trust science, reason, and evidence and do not trust religious sources will identify as atheist or agnostic—and vice-versa. We find the same bi-directional relationship with belief in mortal finitude, i.e., that death is the final end. Our findings suggest that exclusive empiricism and mortal finitude are positive tenets of belief systems that those who identify as atheist or agnostic are likely to hold.
本文认为,"无神论者 "和 "不可知论者 "并不仅仅是表示一个人缺乏对上帝的信仰或不信教的负面标签。通过对非常世俗的美国人进行的一项新调查和《社会概览》(General Social Survey),我们证明了无神论者或不可知论者的身份与对如何最好地认识世界和人死后会发生什么持有某些信念之间在两个预测方向上都具有统计意义和实质意义的关系。我们可以可靠地预测,在美国,大多数相信科学、理性和证据而不相信宗教来源的人都会认定自己是无神论者或不可知论者,反之亦然。我们发现,这种双向关系也与对死亡有限性(即死亡是最终结局)的信念有关。我们的研究结果表明,排他性经验主义和凡人的终极性是无神论者或不可知论者可能持有的信仰体系的积极信条。
{"title":"The Beliefs of Nonbelievers: Exclusive Empiricism and Mortal Finitude Among Atheists and Agnostics","authors":"Joseph Blankholm, Ryan Cragun, Abraham Hawley Suárez, Shakir Stephen","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay argues that “atheist” and “agnostic” are not merely negative labels that indicate a person lacks belief in God or is not religious. Relying on a new survey of very secular Americans and the General Social Survey, we demonstrate a statistically significant and substantively meaningful relationship, in both predictive directions, between identifying as atheist or agnostic and holding certain beliefs about how best to know the world and what happens when we die. We can reliably predict that most people in the United States who trust science, reason, and evidence and do not trust religious sources will identify as atheist or agnostic—and vice-versa. We find the same bi-directional relationship with belief in mortal finitude, i.e., that death is the final end. Our findings suggest that exclusive empiricism and mortal finitude are positive tenets of belief systems that those who identify as atheist or agnostic are likely to hold.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140964869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article focuses on the role of time and space in the religious practices of Roman Catholic women. It aims to demonstrate not only how the spatial-temporal conditions of everyday life shape religious practices, but also how the space and time for practicing religion are produced as a result of practices. The article also shows how religious and other practices compete for limited spatial-temporal resources, contributing to the transformation of religious practices by incorporating new materials, technologies, and meanings. Based on the results of qualitative research among Roman Catholic women in Poland and using the praxeological lived religion approach, the analysis shows that religion is lived by women in-between—interwoven in temporal and spatial terms between other practices, either dominated by them or sometimes gaining a monopoly. The shape of religion in everyday life, therefore, does not only depend solely on the dynamics of religious practices, but also results from tensions between various social practices.
{"title":"Religion Lived In-Between. Time, Space, and Religious Practices of Roman Catholic Women in Poland","authors":"Anna Szwed","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article focuses on the role of time and space in the religious practices of Roman Catholic women. It aims to demonstrate not only how the spatial-temporal conditions of everyday life shape religious practices, but also how the space and time for practicing religion are produced as a result of practices. The article also shows how religious and other practices compete for limited spatial-temporal resources, contributing to the transformation of religious practices by incorporating new materials, technologies, and meanings. Based on the results of qualitative research among Roman Catholic women in Poland and using the praxeological lived religion approach, the analysis shows that religion is lived by women in-between—interwoven in temporal and spatial terms between other practices, either dominated by them or sometimes gaining a monopoly. The shape of religion in everyday life, therefore, does not only depend solely on the dynamics of religious practices, but also results from tensions between various social practices.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140965328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Explaining the reasons—while not the causes—behind religious decline is a central issue for sociologists interested in secularization processes. Many theoretical perspectives have been proposed over the last decades, and this article focuses on one of them. In particular, it refers to the so-called insecurity theory, formalized by Norris and Inglehart (2011), which reads processes of religious decline in light of the increased security coming with modernization. It summarizes the empirical evidence proposed so far by distinguishing between individual and contextual insecurity and static and longitudinal approaches. Moreover, it underlines the difference between economic and existential insecurity as well as the leading role of socialization processes. From this basis, it provides a summary of the main potential weaknesses of the theory and the main criticisms leveled against it, in order to expand its theoretical relevance and clarify what insecurity theory can, and cannot, tell us about secularization processes.
{"title":"Rising Security and Religious Decline: Refining and Extending Insecurity Theory","authors":"Francesco Molteni","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Explaining the reasons—while not the causes—behind religious decline is a central issue for sociologists interested in secularization processes. Many theoretical perspectives have been proposed over the last decades, and this article focuses on one of them. In particular, it refers to the so-called insecurity theory, formalized by Norris and Inglehart (2011), which reads processes of religious decline in light of the increased security coming with modernization. It summarizes the empirical evidence proposed so far by distinguishing between individual and contextual insecurity and static and longitudinal approaches. Moreover, it underlines the difference between economic and existential insecurity as well as the leading role of socialization processes. From this basis, it provides a summary of the main potential weaknesses of the theory and the main criticisms leveled against it, in order to expand its theoretical relevance and clarify what insecurity theory can, and cannot, tell us about secularization processes.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140964158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Female Faith Practices. Qualitative Research Perspectives, edited by NICOLA SLEE, DAWN LLEWELLYN, KIM WASEY, LINDSEY TAYLOR-GUTHARTZ","authors":"Alberta Giorgi","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141010429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}