Reconnecting Religion and Community in a Small City: How Urban Amenities Afford Religious Amenities

Recently, sociologists of religion have argued that rather than treating geographical location as a mere backdrop against which religion happens, scholars ought to theorize how place characteristics influence, and are shaped by, religion. In particular, they focus on urbanicity, a key variable in the secularization debate. Drawing on interviews with 50 Catholic and non-Catholic residents of a small city just outside of Washington, D.C. along with participant observation data, I argue that one way to examine how urbanicity—and space and place more generally—matters for religion is to identify its affordances, or features of an environment that allow for certain lines of action. Specifically, I show how urban amenities can afford the creation of religious amenities that support religious practice. I also demonstrate how the concepts of affordances and amenities can be used to theorize place characteristics, and their relationship with religion, more systematically.

“Some Vital Religion”: Social Religion and the Science of Character Education in the United States, 1918–1932

The history of American public education has generally been considered as a steady transition from religious and sectarian to secular and pluralist, with the role of science in education increasing as the role of religion decreased. This article examines a conception of the role of religion in education that does not fit this narrative, the “social religion” of theorists of moral and character education in the 1920s. Relying on ideas of religious naturalism and with an orientation toward the practical effects of religious belief, this community of scholars asserted a concept of religion that would allow it to be at the heart of the common school project, uniting all under the common morality of the social good. Influenced both by liberal Protestant humanism and the scientific worldview pervasive in education reform at the time, these character educationists’ ideas remind us of the historical contingency of categories like “religious” and of the antiquity of ideas we might classify under the heading of spirituality in American culture.

Armed Conflict and Religious Adherence Across Countries: A Time Series Analysis

A fundamental question in the comparative sociology of religion is: What are the drivers of cross-national differences in religiosity? The existential insecurity argument raises the expectation of higher levels of religiosity in contexts of social crisis. We test this argument against countries’ armed conflict experiences, employing global longitudinal data on religious adherence over almost half a century. We did not find evidence of religious revival when measuring the consequences of armed conflict with a 5-year lag, indicating that armed conflict-related social crises do not tend to lead to sudden changes in the religious adherence of a country. However, we did find more consistent indications of a higher proportion of religious people when using accumulated measurements of armed conflict, highlighting the importance of investigating the armed conflict history of a country when assessing its religious consequences. Our results show that countries with a more devastating experience of armed conflict tend to present higher proportions of religious adherence in comparison with countries with a less devastating armed conflict history. We concluded that armed conflict tends to partially drive religious persistence in societies that have experienced it, and that the pace at which this takes place is gradual rather than immediate.

Between Online Autonomy and Local Constraints: Spaces of Roman Catholic Women’s Activity in Poland

The analysis presented in this article shows how a hybrid community combining online and offline activity generates a semi-autonomous space of women's activity, neither fully independent of the religious institution, nor entirely controlled by it. Based on results obtained over 15 months of qualitative research conducted in the Captivating (Urzekająca), conservative community of Roman Catholic women in Poland, I show that digital environments are conducive to building a community of women, a creative approach to practices, renegotiating power relations, and building a sense of agency among women, while also recognizing the authority of the Church as an institution. At the same time, I argue that relative autonomy in practising religion online is limited by the pressures experienced by women in the offline space as a result of the nature of the local Church. The article discusses the question of the relations between the online and offline space, as well as the role of the broader context for understanding conservative women's practice of religion.

A Theory of Political Backlash: Assessing the Religious Right’s Effects on the Religious Field

A growing body of evidence suggests that the rise in religious disaffiliation can be partly attributed to a political backlash against the Religious Right. Yet the concept of “political backlash” remains undertheorized, limiting our ability to evaluate how backlash against the Religious Right has impacted the religious field as a whole. This article develops a general account of how political backlash against a radical actor can impact participants within a given field, distinguishing between broad backlash, narrow backlash, and counter backlash. It then applies this framework to the case of the religious field. An analysis of available evidence suggests that backlash against the Religious Right has had ripple effects beyond the rise of the “nones,” including a rise in “spiritual” identification, positive attention to the “Religious Left,” depoliticization of liberal religion, and purification and radicalization within the Religious Right itself. This article encourages religion scholars to connect dots between trends that have not been understood as related, and deepens our understanding of the relational nature of religious change. More generally, it offers a framework for understanding how backlash against radical actors can shape entire fields.

Theodicy and Crisis: Explaining Variation in U.S. Believers’ Faith Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Based on a national survey of U.S. adults conducted six weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, this article investigates how crisis affects religious faith. Almost no Americans reported losing or a weakening of faith in response to the pandemic at this time. By contrast, nearly one-third of believers indicated that the coronavirus outbreak had strengthened their faith. We theoretically develop and empirically test three religious factors—theodicy, practices, and tradition—to explain variation in the strengthening effect of the COVID-19 pandemic among believers. Results from statistical models show that two theodicic interpretations—believing that God: is using the pandemic as a way to tell humanity to change; and will personally protect you from the virus—significantly increased believers’ reports of faith strengthening, controlling for other factors. We also found that Black Protestants were more likely to report these interpretations, which in turn strengthened their faith in response to the pandemic.

Protestant Missionaries Are Associated With Reduced Community Cohesion

Do Protestant missionaries affect community cohesion? This study puts forth two mechanisms that link missionaries to trusting, cooperative community life: pro-social preferences and social networks. On the one hand, Protestant missionaries espouse charity, and they establish regular venues of social interaction. On the other hand, Protestant missionaries propagate an individualist faith, and they provide an identity along which communities may separate. The effect of Protestant missionaries on community cohesion is thus unclear. To make headway on these conflicting theoretical predictions, we study variation in missionary activity in southeastern Peru. We document that villages with Protestant missions show lower levels of community cohesion compared to non-missionized, Catholic villages. We point to weakened networks as the most likely causal channel and show that effect sizes are particularly large among Pentecostal missionaries.