scholarly journals The Perils of Politicized Religion

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
David E. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Private Behavior ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Ability To Act

In the United States, religion and partisan politics have become increasingly intertwined. The rising level of religious disaffiliation is a backlash to the religious right: many Americans are abandoning religion because they see it as an extension of politics with which they disagree. Politics is also shaping many Americans' religious views. There has been a stunning change in the percentage of religious believers who, prior to Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, overwhelmingly objected to immoral private behavior by politicians but now dismiss it as irrelevant to their ability to act ethically in their public role. The politicization of religion not only contributes to greater political polarization, it diminishes the ability of religious leaders to speak prophetically on important public issues.

A King Cyrus President

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Barrett-Fox
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Moral Majority ◽  
Open Coding

Religious right leaders and voters in the United States supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election for the same reason that all blocs vote as they do: They believed that the candidate offered them the best opportunity to protect and extend their power and create their preferred government. The puzzle of their support, then, is less why they chose Trump and more how they navigated the process of inserting Trump into their story of themselves as a “moral” majority. This self-understanding promotes and exploits feelings of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate to encourage political action. Because Trump’s speeches affirm these feelings, religious right voters were open to writing a plot twist in their story, casting Trump as a King Cyrus figure, as their champion if not a coreligionist. This article analyzes appeals to and expressions of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate from more than 60 sermons, speeches, and books by religious right authors, Donald Trump, and Trump surrogates. Using open coding, it identifies themes in how these emotions are recognized, affirmed, and invoked by speakers, focusing on Trump’s Cyrus effect.

scholarly journals Exposure to Common Enemies can Increase Political Polarization: Evidence from a Cooperation Experiment with Automated Partisans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eaman Jahani ◽  
Natalie McDaniel Gallagher ◽  
Friedolin Merhout ◽  
Nicolo Cavalli ◽  
Douglas Guilbeault ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Group Conflict ◽  
Opposing Party ◽  
Common Enemy

Longstanding theory indicates the threat of a common enemy can mitigate conflict between members of rival groups. We tested this hypothesis in a pre-registered experiment where 1,670 Republicans and Democrats in the United States were asked to complete a collaborative online task with an automated agent or “bot” that was labelled as a member of the opposing party. Prior to this task, we exposed respondents to primes about a) a common enemy (involving threats from Iran, China, and Russia); b) a patriotic event; or c) a neutral, apolitical prime. Though we observed no significant differences in the behavior of Democrats as a result of these primes, we found that Republicans—and particularly those with very strong conservative views—were significantly less likely to cooperate with Democrats when primed about a common enemy. We also observed lower rates of cooperation among Republicans who participated in our study during the 2020 Iran crisis, which occurred in the middle of our fieldwork. These findings indicate common enemies may not reduce inter-group conflict in highly polarized societies, and contribute to a growing number of studies that find evidence of asymmetric political polarization. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for research in social psychology, political conflict, and the rapidly expanding field of computational social science.

scholarly journals Dewey and Political Communication in the Age of Mediation

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-102
Author(s):  
Lance E Mason
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Sociopolitical Environment ◽  
The Way

The present sociopolitical environment in the United States is perpetually mediated and beset with information from innumerable sources. This paper argues that Dewey’s conception of communication as a mutual act of meaning-making holds insights for explaining the connections between pervasive mediation and political polarization, in addition to understanding why political discourse has become more degrading in recent years. It also points the way toward viable solutions by arguing for the reorientation of schools toward valuable living experiences that are becoming less pronounced in the broader culture, such as sustained face to face engagement on matters of social import.

scholarly journals Religion and Ecomodernity

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Witoszek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Capitalist Enterprise

Religion has long stood at the center of debates on the environmental crisis of late modernity. Some have portrayed it as a malade imaginaire, providing divine legitimation for human domination and predatory exploitation of natural resources; others have looked up to it as an inspirational force that is the essential condition of planetary revival. There is an ongoing battle of the books on the salience of religion in the modern world. Some trendy volumes declare that God Is Back (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2009). Others advert to The End of Faith (Harris 2004, harp the theme of The God Delusion (Dawkins 2006), or claim that God Is Not Great (Hitchens 2007). Both sides provide ample evidence to support their adversarial claims. In much of Canada and Western Europe, where religious establishments have courted or colluded with the state, religion has come to be viewed as the enemy of liberty and modernity. Not so in the United States, where the Jeffersonian separation of religion from politics forced religious leaders to compete for the souls of the faithful—and thus to make Christianity more reconcilable with the agenda of modernity,individualism and capitalist enterprise.

Beneficence, Street Begging, and Diverted Giving Schemes

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-935
Author(s):  
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Potential Solution ◽  
Institutional Response ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
Normative Evaluation ◽  
Moral Duties

In recent years, some cities and localities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere have adopted or intend to adopt one potential solution to the difficulties inherent in addressing the needs of street beggars: diverted giving schemes (DGSs). A DGS is an institutional response designed to motivate people to donate money in charity boxes or donation meters rather than directly to street beggars. Their advocates believe that DGSs are both more efficient and more ethically permissible than direct giving to individual beggars. This article asks whether and how a DGS can be justified. It offers a normative evaluation of the main idea behind this policy, namely, that anonymous and spontaneous donations to charity boxes are in themselves an adequate policy instrument to address the problem of street begging. Ultimately, the paper argues against this idea and develops the case that DGSs can potentially compromise our ability to act on our moral duties toward truly needy beggars. Moreover, it explains why and under which circumstances this kind of program can potentially and seriously interfere with the freedom and opportunities of individuals in the begging population.

Political and Technological Changes That Created Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Television News ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
American Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cable Television Industry

This chapter describes the regulatory, political, and technological changes in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that set the stage for the television satire and outrage programming of the early 2000s. It summarizes the story of the deregulation of the American media industry and argues that the resulting increased demand for profits from television news eroded the journalistic mission. It also explains the roots of political polarization in the United States, from social and cultural shifts to changes in the party nominating processes and to the increased role of soft (and dark) money in elections. The chapter chronicles the history of the cable television industry and how the proliferation of channels in the 1980s upended the economics of media, erasing the concept of the “mass audience” in favor of smaller niche audiences defined by psychographics and sociodemographics.

“Your Views Cross the Atlantic”

2021 ◽  
pp. 195-222
Author(s):  
Robert Murray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
Racially Ambiguous ◽  
Free People

Chapter 5 examines the overwhelming rejection of colonization by free people of color in the United States, the evolution of the colonization societies, and the agency of the settlers in enacting these changes. For the majority of African Americans rejected colonization’s principal arguments. Those few who saw potential in Liberia emphasized the performative possibilities of the colony, the ability to act in ways previously denied to them on account of race. Significantly, the small number of African Americans who willingly chose to emigrate to Liberia were often racially ambiguous. They saw opportunity in the undefined and evolving racial identities offered by moving to Liberia. The chapter also examines the settlers’ roles in changing the colonization societies. For many settlers, there was no difference between abolition and colonization. Settlers worked with colonizationists committed to black uplift and attempted to drive out those who did not favor such reforms; they changed how the societies’ governed their colonies.

Perceptions of religious leaders’ culpability in the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Kane ◽  
Robin J. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Leaders

Putting “Place” in the Center of Journalism Research: A Way Forward to Understand Challenges to Trust and Knowledge in News

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki Usher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
News Production ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Journalism Research

The U.S. journalism industry is facing unprecedented challenges from questions of economic stability, rising antimedia sentiment among the government and the public, new technologies that have democratizing effects on news production, and the lowest levels of trust in journalism in decades. At the same time, the United States is facing structural inequality and political polarization that has taken on a distinctly place-based dimension. Taken together, the places of news have changed, both because of forces inside and outside journalism: The places where journalists do their work have changed, not only in an immediate sense of their own work routines but also because of the larger place-based realignment in the United States. This monograph argues that place must be at the center of scholarly and industry analysis to better understand the challenges to professional journalism today.

Can Information Decrease Political Polarization? Evidence From the U.S. Taxpayer Receipt

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 736-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Duhaime ◽  
Evan P. Apfelbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
White House ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Baseline Levels ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
High Level ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

Scholars, politicians, and laypeople alike bemoan the high level of political polarization in the United States, but little is known about how to bring the views of liberals and conservatives closer together. Previous research finds that providing people with information regarding a contentious issue is ineffective for reducing polarization because people process such information in a biased manner. Here, we show that information can reduce political polarization below baseline levels and also that its capacity to do so is sensitive to contextual factors that make one’s relevant preferences salient. Specifically, in a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and a preregistered replication (Study 2), we find that providing a taxpayer receipt—an impartial, objective breakdown of how one’s taxes are spent that is published annually by the White House—reduces polarization regarding taxes, but not when participants are also asked to indicate how they would prefer their taxes be spent.

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