Religious Subcultures and Reading Culture

For religious subcultures, the reading of religious books was of great importance, even for Roman Catholics, renowned for their ritual-mindedness and the prevailing limitations in terms of religious reading for laypeople. This article aims to reveal the extent to which the status and role of a subculture affected the printing history and reception of religious books. The Post-Reformation Low Countries – split into the South, where the Catholics were a dominant culture, and the Dutch Republic in the North, where they were a subculture – provides an excellent case study. A very popular meditation book serves as the source for the study, namely Sondaechs Schoole (Sunday school) (1623).

Formal or Functional? Traditional or Inclusive? Bible Translations as Markers of Religious Subcultures

English Bible translations are often classified along two axes: (1) whether their translation approach pursues “formal correspondence” (prioritizing literalness) or “functional equivalence” (prioritizing meaning); and (2) whether their translation approach emphasizes “gender-traditionalism” (translating gendered language literally) or “gender-inclusivism” (minimizing unnecessarily gendered language). Leveraging insights from research on how religious subcultural capital shapes consumption patterns, we examine how indicators of conservative Protestant subcultural attachment potentially shape Christians’ choices of Bible translation along these axes. Compared with Catholics and “other Christians,” Conservative Protestants are more likely to read functional equivalence translations. Biblical literalists are more likely to read gender-traditionalist translations, but curiously no more likely than others to read formal correspondence translations. The link between conservative Protestant affiliation and reading a gender-traditionalist or inclusive Bible is heavily influenced by how we classify the New International Version. Importantly, we also find Bible reading and overall religiosity are positively associated with reading functional equivalence and gender-inclusive Bibles. Thus while conservative Bible beliefs seem to incline Christians toward translations that reflect conservative subcultural priorities (gender-traditionalism), consistent Bible practice is more prevalent among Christians who read more dynamic and inclusive translations.

Toward a Conservative Revolution

The interwar radicalization of politics in East Central Europe was linked to the proliferation of a discourse of crisis. Symptoms of crisis could be localized in certain social groups, institutions, and social relations, such as the generational cleavage. Since the topos of crisis was not bound to any particular ideology, the very same discourse was used by liberal and leftist intellectuals as well. Nevertheless, the most plausible ideological framework offering a way out of the crisis seemed to be the “conservative revolution,” promising to restore the continuity of traditions that had been interrupted by the breakthrough of modernity. This led to the proliferation of “national metaphysics,” defining the specificity of the respective nation with ontological categories. Another face of this “conservative revolution” was the politicization of religion, linked to the renewed interest in myth and popular religiosity. At the same time, there was also a conservative anti-totalitarian stance and, in a few cases, a left-wing reorientation of certain religious subcultures.

Why Won’t Religion Just Go Away?

This chapter outlines explanations for the continuing salience of religion in the United States and raises questions about how congregations, including the structures in which they worship, contribute to adult identity for women and men. Beginning with an assessment of current theories of religious markets and religious subcultures, and theories of religious conversion or switching, we make the case that denominational distinctives continue to shape membership for women and men. We critique the generalization that women are more religious than men, and we provide a brief overview of the analysis of how women and men experience the process of joining, growing connection and involvement, and changing within three diverse congregations.

Is there an American Exceptionalism?

This chapter on the development of US and German Catholicism in the second half of the twentieth century till 2015 traces two paths of religious modernization. The legacy of the religious subcultures of the nineteenth century in both nations was quite similar. However, after 1945 the Catholics followed different tracks, which are often interpreted as ‘secularization’ versus ‘exceptional’ booming religious life. More detailed data show that this argument is quite short-sighted: both Catholic Churches adjusted in the first place to the different developments of the nations of which they are a part (church–state relations, welfare state, culture, etc.), although, since the millennium, a deep (generational?) crisis of membership on both sides of the Atlantic can be identified. So from this argument it can be concluded that the USA is not a religious nation that is separate from the rest of the world.

Integrating Religion into the Historical Mainstream: Recent Literature on Religion in the Federal Republic of Germany

Those discovering the growing number of writings on the religious history of the Federal Republic of Germany might be forgiven for thinking that they had entered a parallel universe. To use the terminology popularized by M. Rainer Lepsius, Christian milieus have largely disintegrated and their members been integrated into the mainstream of political and economic life. Yet until recently, research on German Catholicism and Protestantism has remained confined to confessional ghettos that many members of these religious subcultures once sought to escape. The dozens of monographs that have appeared in the last five years have yet to be incorporated into the central narratives that dominate the secular histories of the postwar era. Many have still to be reviewed in non-religious journals. Edited volumes that purport to analyze the many facets of the Federal Republic include few if any chapters on religion.

Scaling Heaven's Gate: Individualism and Salvation in a New Religious Movement

This article considers the new religious movement popularly known as Heaven's Gate within the context of American religious history, focusing on its soteriology (scheme of salvation) and the place of the individual within it. I argue that this contextualization reveals a movement that held unusual yet clearly identifiable religious beliefs reflecting popular religious subcultures and possessing clear historical antecedents. Specifically, within Heaven's Gate's soteriology one finds a synthesis of elements drawn from New Age thinking, Christian beliefs, and popular attitudes, and built upon assumptions of individualism and personal autonomy that pervade American religion. Rather than being an aberration of American religious history, Heaven's Gate was quintessentially American, albeit outside the religious mainstream.