Baptists and their polarizing ways: Transnational polarization between Southern Baptist missionaries and Brazilian Baptists

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-174
Author(s):  
Joao Chaves ◽  
C. Douglas Weaver

Polarization in Baptist life has a long history. Baptists have had polarized relations with other competing religious groups and with themselves. Baptist focus on freedom, dissent, conscience, local church independence, among other foundational principles, render Baptists prone to diversity and disagreement. Diversity, salted by the absolute certainties of religious belief, easily translates into polarization. Triumphalism, fundamentalism, and other types of ironic dogmatisms formed in the context of freedom have produced polarized beliefs. Those religious beliefs, however, cannot be separated from the interplay of sources of power: class, gender, and race. In the context of the United States, a discussion of Baptists cannot be separated from these power components, especially matters of race. Significantly, if not surprisingly, Baptists exported their racial, triumphalist identity and commitments abroad in their missionary endeavors. Brazilian Baptists, for example, heard the gospel from Southern Baptists, but they heard that gospel in a racialized form that was captive to Southern US racist culture. Southern Baptists shared the gospel, but they also resisted efforts by native Brazilians in The Radical Movement to indigenize their faith.

Open Mind ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Neil Van Leeuwen ◽  
Kara Weisman ◽  
Tanya Marie Luhrmann

Abstract Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Rigoli

Research has shown that stress impacts on people’s religious beliefs. However, several aspects of this effect remain poorly understood, for example regarding the role of prior religiosity and stress-induced anxiety. This paper explores these aspects in the context of the recent coronavirus emergency. The latter has impacted dramatically on many people’s well-being; hence it can be considered a highly stressful event. Through online questionnaires administered to UK and USA citizens professing either Christian faith or no religion, this paper examines the impact of the coronavirus crisis upon common people’s religious beliefs. We found that, following the coronavirus emergency, strong believers reported higher confidence in their religious beliefs while non-believers reported increased scepticism towards religion. Moreover, for strong believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus threat was associated with increased strengthening of religious beliefs. Conversely, for non-believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus thereat was associated with increased scepticism towards religious beliefs. These observations are consistent with the notion that stress-induced anxiety enhances support for the ideology already embraced before a stressful event occurs. This study sheds light on the psychological and cultural implications of the coronavirus crisis, which represents one of the most serious health emergencies in recent times.


Kidney Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Wilson ◽  
Lisa Spees ◽  
Jessica Pritchard ◽  
Melissa A. Greiner ◽  
Charles D. Scales ◽  
...  

Background: Substantial racial and socioeconomic disparities in metastatic RCC (mRCC) have persisted following the introduction of targeted oral anticancer agents (OAAs). The relationship between patient characteristics and OAA access and costs that may underlie persistent disparities in mRCC outcomes have not been examined in a nationally representative patient population. Methods: Retrospective SEER-Medicare analysis of patients diagnosed with mRCC between 2007–2015 over age 65 with Medicare part D prescription drug coverage. Associations between patient characteristics, OAA receipt, and associated costs were analyzed in the 12 months following mRCC diagnosis and adjusted to 2015 dollars. Results: 2,792 patients met inclusion criteria, of which 32.4%received an OAA. Most patients received sunitinib (57%) or pazopanib (28%) as their first oral therapy. Receipt of OAA did not differ by race/ethnicity or socioeconomic indicators. Patients of advanced age (>  80 years), unmarried patients, and patients residing in the Southern US were less likely to receive OAAs. The mean inflation-adjusted 30-day cost to Medicare of a patient’s first OAA prescription nearly doubled from $3864 in 2007 to $7482 in 2015, while patient out-of-pocket cost decreased from $2409 to $1477. Conclusion: Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status were not associated with decreased OAA receipt in patients with mRCC; however, residing in the Southern United States was, as was marital status. Surprisingly, the cost to Medicare of an initial OAA prescription nearly doubled from 2007 to 2015, while patient out-of-pocket costs decreased substantially. Shifts in OAA costs may have significant economic implications in the era of personalized medicine.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (36) ◽  
pp. 67-73
Author(s):  
Scot M Peterson

The penitentiary in the United States of America originated as a religious institution. Its roots lie in the belief that inmates could reform if they were given an opportunity to engage in reflection, prayer, Bible-reading and work, thus establishing a new personal foundation for functioning as productive members of the larger society. Not surprisingly, given American's predilection for maintaining a secular civil society, this original foundation for the prison eventually fell from favour, and American penological theories became more sociological or psychological in nature. The fact remains, however, that society in the United States is broadly religious, and prisons continue to address the religious beliefs of inmates and how to accommodate those beliefs in a penological setting. This comment provides a case study on this topic, based on littigation concerning the provision of kosher food to Orthodox inmates in the prisons in Colorado.


Ecclesiology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Paul Fiddes

AbstractThe main substance of this article is an extended review of a recent book by a Southern Baptist historical theologian, Malcolm Yarnell, entitled The Formation of Christian Doctrine, which aims to root the development of doctrine in a free-church ecclesiology. This review offers the opportunity to examine a spectrum of ecclesiologies that has recently emerged among Baptists in the Southern region of the United States of America. Four 'conservative' versions of ecclesiology are identified, which are named as 'Landmarkist', 'Reformed', 'Reformed-Ecumenical' and 'Conservative Localist'. Four 'moderate' versions are similarly identified, and named as 'Voluntarist', 'Catholic', 'Moderate Localist' and 'World-Baptist'. While these categories are not intended to be mutually exclusive, the typology is useful both in positioning Yarnell's particular thesis, and in making comparisons with recent Baptist ecclesiology in Great Britain, which has focussed on the concept of covenant. Yarnell's own appeal to covenant is unusual in Southern Baptist thinking, and means that he cannot be easily fitted into the typology suggested. Though he belongs most evidently to the group named here as 'Conservative Localists', and is overtly opposed to any concept of a visible, universal church except in an eschatological sense, it is suggested that his own arguments might be seen as tending towards a more 'universal' view of the reality of the church beyond its local manifestation. His own work thus offers the promise that present polarizations among Baptists in the southern United States might, in time, be overcome.


1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-298
Author(s):  
Barry Hankins

At times in history, groups of people with very different ideologies have allied with one another because of a common threat. The most striking example of this was the World War II alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union. In a religious matter, Baptists and other free-church evangelicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries joined with deists like Thomas Jefferson to combat the threat to religious liberty posed by the establishment of religion. At other times, groups with similar ideas have been unable to come together because they did not share similar attitudes toward or positions within their cultures. This essay is concerned with the latter phenomenon and uses Southern Baptists and northern evangelicals as a case study. The historical relationship of these two groups illustrates something profound about the very nature of religious alliances; specifically, it illustrates how cultural factors and intuitive notions of uneasiness about theological security determine whether or not religious groups with great theological similarities can find common ground.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-527
Author(s):  
Zihao Bian ◽  
Hanqin Tian ◽  
Qichun Yang ◽  
Rongting Xu ◽  
Shufen Pan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Livestock manure nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) play an important role in biogeochemical cycling. Accurate estimation of manure nutrient is important for assessing regional nutrient balance, greenhouse gas emission, and water environmental risk. Currently, spatially explicit manure nutrient datasets over a century-long period are scarce in the United States (US). Here, we developed four datasets of annual animal manure N and P production and application in the contiguous US at a 30 arcsec resolution over the period of 1860–2017. The dataset combined multiple data sources including county-level inventory data as well as high-resolution livestock and crop maps. The total production of manure N and P increased from 1.4 Tg N yr−1 and 0.3 Tg P yr−1 in 1860 to 7.4 Tg N yr−1 and 2.3 Tg P yr−1 in 2017, respectively. The increasing manure nutrient production was associated with increased livestock numbers before the 1980s and enhanced livestock weights after the 1980s. The manure application amount was primarily dominated by production, and its spatial pattern was impacted by the nutrient demand of crops. The intense-application region mainly enlarged from the Midwest toward the southern US and became more concentrated in numerous hot spots after the 1980s. The South Atlantic–Gulf and Mid-Atlantic basins were exposed to high environmental risks due to the enrichment of manure nutrient production and application from the 1970s to the period of 2000–2017. Our long-term manure N and P datasets provide detailed information for national and regional assessments of nutrient budgets. Additionally, the datasets can serve as the input data for ecosystem and hydrological models to examine biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.919937 (Bian et al., 2020).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jong ◽  
Adam Baimel ◽  
Robert M Ross ◽  
Ryan McKay ◽  
Matthias Bluemke ◽  
...  

We present two datasets from a project about the relationship between traumatic life experiences and religiosity. These include data from 1,754 individuals in the United States (n = 322), Brazil (n = 205), China (n = 202), India (n = 205), Indonesia (n = 205), Russia (n = 205), Thailand (n = 205), and Turkey (n = 205). Surveys were consistent across samples: they include measures of traumatic life experiences, negative affective traits, existential security, life satisfaction, death anxiety, and various religious beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. Psychometric evaluations of measures of supernatural belief and death anxiety were conducted.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietram A. Scheufele ◽  
Elizabeth A. Corley ◽  
Tsung-jen Shih ◽  
Kajsa E. Dalrymple ◽  
Shirley S. Ho

Author(s):  
Michael Hout ◽  
Andrew Greeley

This chapter discusses the link between happiness and religion. It draws on meaning-and-belonging theory to deduce that a religious affiliation heightens happiness through participation in collective religious rituals. Attendance and engagement appear key: a merely nominal religious affiliation makes people little happier. Notably, two religious foundations of happiness—affiliation with organized religious groups and attendance at services—have fallen. Softened religious engagement, then, may contribute to the slight downturn in general happiness. In fact, steady happiness is reported among those who participate frequently in religious services, but falling levels among those who are less involved. The chapter also considers the association between religion and happiness outside the United States using data from the International Social Survey Program, an international collaborative survey to which the General Social Survey contributes the American data.


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