Essays
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Atheism, Agnosticism, and Irreligion - Smith, Buster G.
Research on the topics of atheism, agnosticism, and irreligion has been limited during much of the last century. We explain the reasons for a lack of research in this field and discuss the recent interest in this topic. The most recent wave of research has been concentrated during the past decade and tends to look at the dual issues of who composes the religiously unaffiliated and why they choose this self‐identification. Recent research has begun to take a much wider and deeper view on the subject. This includes research on particular segments of the population such as atheists, as well as understanding how the religiously unaffiliated are viewed by the broader culture. We conclude by describing important directions for future research. In particular, there is a need to break out the separate forms of irreligion and use creative new methodologies to find and study this significant portion of the population. -
Complex Religion: Toward a Better Understanding of the Ways in which Religion Intersects with Inequality - Wilde, Melissa J.
Sociologists have long known that religion is deeply interconnected with race, class, and ethnicity in the United States. However, modern sociologists typically study religion as if it is independent from other social structures. Profound class differences remain between American religious groups. Jews, Mainline Protestants and new immigrant groups such as Hindus are at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Conservative Protestants, both Black and White remain at the bottom. We therefore argue that religion is not independent of class and race and should almost always be examined in interaction with these and other social structures. We call this, theoretical approach “complex religion.” -
Institutional Change in American Religion - Clevenger, Casey
This essay provides an overview of demographic and organizational changes in American religion since 1965. We focus on religious beliefs and practices, congregational life, special purpose groups, religion outside of religious organizations, and transnational and global aspects of religion. American religious institutions are increasingly diverse, reflecting the growing ethnic, linguistic, and religious pluralism of the United States. Recent immigrants to the United States are more Catholic, more Orthodox, and less Christian than adult Americans overall, and they have joined existing congregations in addition to forming their own religious organizations. A substantial number of Americans now consider themselves spiritual, but not religious, and many do not identify with organized religion at all. American Christianity itself is more politically polarized than in the past, and individuals who are religiously active across traditions tend to be more politically and socially conservative than others with tensions evident around contemporary social issues such as abortion and homosexuality. Existing religious organizations and secular organizations such as hospitals, universities, and prisons have responded to demographic and religious changes by offering new or changed services and physical spaces to meet religious and spiritual needs. We encourage future scholars to address institutional changes in American religion by considering diverse people and traditions, asking questions about religion in religious and nonreligious organizations, and situating studies of the United States in their broader global contexts. -
Introduction to the Corporate Governance of Religion - Rost, Katja
Stationed at the border between the past and the present, the corporate governance of religion is concerned with the governance mechanisms by which religious organizations are controlled and directed. Building on similarities between contemporary organizations and their predecessors in Roman Catholic monasticism, this essay illustrates that studying the past can be of enormous benefit. It allows us to see familiar problems in a new light: for example, bureaucratic rules—nowadays no longer linked to efficiency—that emerged in Catholic orders and enabled organizational learning, innovations, and survival in uncertain environments. The study of the past is also an appreciation for the kind of governance mechanisms that have staying power: Catholic orders can be viewed as pioneers of corporate governance and show what kind of governance is suitable to reduce agency problems. Finally, when abstract organizational theories are presented in a historical context, it makes them more palatable, more understandable, and more interesting: the theory of the optimal colocation of decision rights within the specific knowledge framework of organizations is supported in Catholic orders. They decentralize their local communities the higher the ratio of credence goods produced, and centralize their local communities the higher the ratio of search/experience goods produced. -
Lived Religion - Ammerman, Nancy T.
Research on “lived religion” focuses on the everyday practices of ordinary people, in contrast to the study of official texts, organizations, and experts. It includes attention to rituals and stories and spiritual experiences that may draw on official religious traditions, but may also extend beyond them. Lived religion is closely related to “popular religion”, but is a more encompassing category. As with the study of popular religion, the focus is on ordinary people and often includes festivals and shrines and healing practices that may happen without the approval of religious authorities. Lived religion research pays special attention to the lives of women, of populations of color, and of people in the Global South. Both approved traditional practices and new innovations may be “lived”. -
Mysticism - Markovsky, Barry
Mysticism and related concepts have appeared in a variety of academic and nonacademic contexts. We begin by narrowing our focus to several general definitions that emphasize properties that have proved to be of interest to social and behavioral scientists. In such contexts, mystical knowledge typically refers to a special kind of positive, life‐changing sense of comprehending the universe, and a mystical experience is the physical and psychological state in which such knowledge is acquired, and during which the experiencer feels “at one” with the universe and/or a higher power. We review some of the earliest work on mysticism in psychology and sociology, primarily attributable to William James and Max Weber, respectively. More recent work in psychology has focused mainly on the development of mysticism scales, and research in neuropsychology is focusing on, among other topics, how structures and processes in the human brain produce mystical experiences. Sociological research has been relatively meager; however, we do note the potential contributions that sociological perspectives might offer. We close with a discussion of some methodological and theoretical issues that seem to hinder progress in the area, and note several promising lines for future research. -
Religion - Purzycki, Benjamin Grant
Religions are complex systems that can adapt to diverse environments because of the dynamic relationship of their internal parts. The most fundamental of these parts includes supernatural beliefs, rituals, and myths. The social scientific study of religion focuses on these parts and builds on previous generations of research to provide distal explanations for religion as a dynamic phenomenon. In recent years, interest in the social science of religion has turned to the cognitive and behavioral studies of religion. The cognitive science of religion documents the mental organization and structure of religious thought, while the behavioral science of religion focuses on ritual behavior as the building block of sociality. Key issues for future research include the ontogeny of religion, the cognitive and cross‐cultural representation of religious concepts, the relationship between religion and reproduction, and the evolution of religion. With these new frontiers have come a variety of novel methodologies but also an emphasis on the need for comparative ethnography. -
Religion and Nationalism - Omer, Atalia
This essay examines the relations between religion and nationalism by highlighting the existing scholarly approaches as well as the ways in which they might be further expanded into deeper engagements with the legacies of colonialism and race. The argument is that cross‐fertilizing the religion and nationalist literature with critical race theories and the study of coloniality will provide explanatory frames and analytic tools to interpret the waves of right‐wing populist nationalisms in Euro‐America in the twenty‐first century. In particular, the ways in which appeals to Christianity, Judeo‐Christianity, or “civilizational” values participate in patterns of exclusion and inclusion through the mechanisms of sexual politics and human rights' instruments are studied as an opportunity to interrogate the interrelation between anti‐Semitism and anti‐Muslim rhetoric to the histories of colonialism and how they have undergirded the patterns of interactions between religion and the production, reproduction, and subversion of political national identities. -
The Sociology of Religious Experience - Porpora, Douglas
This essay examines the sociology of religious experience within the broader context of how other disciplines also study the same phenomenon. It explains the principle of methodological atheism sociologists have typically employed in the study of religion, which goes back to Peter Berger's The Sacred Canopy. The principle expressly excludes the possibility that subjects of religious experience may actually be experiencing something real that contributes to their experience. As a consequence, other disciplines and even some sociologists have recently departed from methodological atheism in favor of an approach that might be called methodological agnosticism. This essay examines that shift and the research agenda thereby opened up. -
Trends in Religiosity and Religious Affiliation - Christiano, Kevin J.
This essay examines studies of trends in religion and religiosity, concentrating on the case of the United States but periodically comparing that country to other societies as well.