Good News
The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy
Robert Woodberry
American Political Science Review, May 2012, Pages 244-274
Abstract:
This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms, thereby creating the conditions that made stable democracy more likely. Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy. The association between Protestant missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples, and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable analyses.
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Religion as a means to assure paternity
Beverly Strassmann et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The sacred texts of five world religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism) use similar belief systems to set limits on sexual behavior. We propose that this similarity is a shared cultural solution to a biological problem: namely male uncertainty over the paternity of offspring. Furthermore, we propose the hypothesis that religious practices that more strongly regulate female sexuality should be more successful at promoting paternity certainty. Using genetic data on 1,706 father-son pairs, we tested this hypothesis in a traditional African population in which multiple religions (Islam, Christianity, and indigenous) coexist in the same families and villages. We show that the indigenous religion enables males to achieve a significantly (P = 0.019) lower probability of cuckoldry (1.3% versus 2.9%) by enforcing the honest signaling of menstruation, but that all three religions share tenets aimed at the avoidance of extrapair copulation. Our findings provide evidence for high paternity certainty in a traditional African population, and they shed light on the reproductive agendas that underlie religious patriarchy.
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Warrior Chicks: Youthful Aging in a Postfeminist Prosperity Discourse
Kathleen Jenkins & Gerardo Marti
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2012, Pages 241-256
Abstract:
In a youth-oriented evangelical congregation where being perceived as "old" might marginalize member involvement and participation, a Hollywood, California congregation's women's ministry, God Chicks, presents aging women as possessing "godly wisdom," endowing older women with spiritually charged energy, authority, and responsibility for training younger women to live "godly" lives. Ethnographic research and in depth media analysis of the God Chicks ministry reveals a particularly energizing evangelical postfeminist orientation that applies prosperity theology to contemporary challenges of changing women's roles. Specifically, the God Chicks ministry provides "women over forty" with consumer and caretaking strategies for maintaining youthful selves and motivating younger women. A "God Chick" emerges as a compelling, youthful gendered religious identity that expects congregationally committed women to be strong, healthy, and active warriors who fight multiple relational and global humanitarian battles. Overall, this study demonstrates the construction of an innovative postfeminist evangelical identity through the tactical, opportunistic use of theological doctrine by ministry leaders within a particularistic geographic location.
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Cleanliness and Godliness: Mutual association between two kinds of personal purity
Jesse Lee Preston & Ryan Ritter
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Purity rituals (such as baptism, mikvah, and ablution) are an important component of many religious practices. These practices not only help protect the faithful from physical contaminants, but also bestow symbolic purity and maintain the sanctity of sacred objects. The present work examines the association between religion and cleanliness, as two representations of personal purity. Religious primes were found to activate cleanliness concepts in a word-stem completion task (Study 1), and increased the subjective value of cleaning products (Study 2). In a final study, cleaning primes increased ratings of religious value. These studies suggest a mutual association between religiousness and cleanliness, and that each may activate the other as goals for personal purity.
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Religious Participation versus Shopping: What Makes People Happier?
Danny Cohen-Zada & William Sander
Journal of Law and Economics, November 2011, Pages 889-906
Abstract:
In this paper, we first explore how an exogenous increase in the opportunity cost of religious participation affects an individual's religious participation and reported happiness, using data from the General Social Survey. The exogenous shift in the cost of religious participation is a result of the repeal of so-called blue laws that restrict retail activity on Sundays. We find that repealing blue laws causes a significant decline in the religious participation of women and in their happiness. For men, we do not observe any effect on happiness, while the estimate of the effect on church attendance is similar in magnitude to that for women but is imprecise. We also use repeal as an instrumental variable for church attendance and provide direct evidence that church attendance has a significant positive effect on happiness.
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The Stained Glass Ceiling: Social Contact and Mitt Romney's "Religion Problem"
David Campbell, John Green & Quin Monson
Political Behavior, June 2012, Pages 277-299
Abstract:
Why did Mitt Romney face antagonism toward his Mormon religion in the 2008 election? Using experiments conducted in the real time of the campaign, we test voters' reactions to information about Romney's religious background. We find that voters were concerned specifically with Romney's religious affiliation, not simply with the fact that he is religious. Furthermore, concern over Romney's Mormonism dwarfed concerns about the religious backgrounds of Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee. We find evidence for a curvilinear hypothesis linking social contact with Mormons and reaction to information about Romney's Mormonism. Voters who have no personal exposure to Mormons are most likely to be persuaded by both negative and positive information about the Mormon faith, while voters who have sustained personal contact with Mormons are the least likely to be persuaded either way. Voters with moderate contact, however, react strongly to negative information about the religion but are not persuaded by countervailing positive information.
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John Bartkowski et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2012, Pages 343-358
Abstract:
Research has demonstrated that white conservative Protestants are more opposed to abortion than their Catholic counterparts. At the same time, conservative Protestantism has made significant inroads among U.S. Latinos. This study augments existing research on religion and racial-ethnic variations in abortion attitudes by comparing levels of support for legalized abortion among Catholic and conservative Protestant Latinos. Data are drawn from a nationally representative sample of U.S. Latinos. Significantly greater opposition to abortion is found among religiously devout conservative Protestant Latinos when compared with their Catholic counterparts. Latino Catholicism, which functions as a near-monopolistic, highly institutionalized faith tradition among Hispanics, produces weaker antiabortion attitudes than those exhibited in Latino conservative Protestantism. Among Latinos, conservative Protestantism operates as a niche voluntaristic faith. These factors produce a religious schema that yields robust antiabortion attitudes. This study has important implications for understanding the intersection of race-ethnicity, religion, and public policy preferences.
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The Jewish Advantage and Household Security: The 19th Century Sephardim of Gibraltar
L.A. Sawchuk, L. Tripp & U. Melnychenko
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using the historical population of Gibraltar to examine the pattern of mortality of Jews and Roman Catholics revealed that: (1) the Jews exhibited a significantly better health status as measured by life expectancy at birth,(47.66 and 47.56 for Jewish males and females vs. 38.10 and 40.89 for Catholics males and females, respectively) (2) most of the disparity is found in the very young age categories and (3) the significantly lower rates of deaths could be attributed to the diarrheal and nutritional complex. Stage two of the research involved the linkage of deaths over a seven-year period relative to their household context as of 1878. Being Jewish, having a servant, having access to a water well in the tenement and residing in a tenement only with other Jews, were all factors that contributed to a higher life expectancy. Our explanation for the enhanced survivorship among the Jews is grounded in economics as well as in an established welfare system, in religious precepts and in secular knowledge of health. One of the more notable and hitherto unobserved findings is that Roman Catholics residing in the same tenements with Jews enjoyed a distinct health advantage. This suggests that a positive amplification effect arose from their co-residence with the Jews.
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"God Damn:" The Law and Economics of Monastic Malediction
Peter Leeson
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Today monks are known for turning the other cheek, honoring saints, and blessing humanity with brotherly love. But for centuries they were known equally for fulminating their foes, humiliating saints, and casting calamitous curses at persons who crossed them. Clerics called these curses "maledictions." This paper argues that medieval communities of monks and canons used maledictions to protect their property against predators where government and physical self-help were unavailable to them. To explain how they did this I develop a theory of cursing with rational agents. I show that curses capable of improving property protection when cursors and their targets are rational must satisfy three conditions. They must be grounded in targets' existing beliefs, monopolized by cursors, and unfalsifiable. Malediction satisfied these conditions, making it an effective institutional substitute for conventional institutions of clerical property protection.
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Andreas Hess
Economy and Society, Spring 2012, Pages 227-257
Abstract:
This paper discusses the complex relationship between morals and markets and uses the case of Nantucket as an illustration. I argue that it was a specific Protestant work ethic promoted by Quakerism that facilitated the rise of Nantucket to become the capital of the American whaling fleet for more than a century. However, I also argue that the same morals and values that helped to give birth to the Quaker whaling empire contributed significantly to the downfall of the Quaker community, decades before whaling in general got into crisis. In more general terms this paper attempts to be a historical case study that illustrates the complexities of Albert O. Hirschman's doux commerce argument and particularly the way the Protestant spirit fits into Hirschman's explanation.
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Prayer Utterances as Aligning Actions
Shane Sharp
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2012, Pages 257-265
Abstract:
Social actors use prayer utterances (e.g., statements such as "prayed over,""prayed about," or "spent time in prayer") as aligning actions that justify problematic or questionable courses of action and prevent possible negative characterizations. The prayer utterance functions as an aligning action in American society because of Americans' beliefs and actions concerning the efficacy of prayer in solving problems and because prayer is viewed as a sign of personal morality and trustworthiness. Three examples of individuals who use the prayer utterance as an aligning action serve as illustrations of this argument (Oprah Winfrey, Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb, and President Barack Obama). Scholars should investigate the uses and functions of prayer utterances in social life and should also investigate the possible uses of other religious talk as aligning actions.
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Carl McIntire and the Fundamentalist Origins of the Christian Right
Markku Ruotsila
Church History, June 2012, Pages 378-407
Abstract:
Recent scholarship has argued that Cold War anticommunism was key among the tools with which conservative evangelicals in the United States negotiated their return to the mainstream of American public conversation. While useful, such renderings of the anticommunist leaven in the repoliticization of religious conservatives remain misleading as long as they remain pivoted on the small cadre of reputedly moderate new evangelical intellectuals. Entirely obscured in such portrayals is the agency of the militant separatist fundamentalists whose engagement with anticommunism was at once broader in scope, more systematic, organized and pervasive, and of significantly earlier lineage than that of their new evangelical rivals. The roots of the Christian Right do indeed lie in Cold War Christian anticommunism but the lines of influence stretch as much, if not more, from the fundamentalists gathered around the controversial pastor Carl McIntire and his American (and International) Council of Christian Churches as they do from the new evangelicals. A pivotal transitional figure who nurtured, renovated, and passed on to a new generation the anticollectivist public doctrines of the original fundamentalist movement. In his anticommunist work McIntire pioneered, as well, the faith-based mass demonstration and petition, the political use of Christian radio, and the lobbying of government officials that the later Christian Right perfected.
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Lisa Blaydes & Rachel Gillum
Stanford Working Paper, December 2011
Abstract:
While public opinion research has expanded rapidly in the Islamic world since 2001, little scholarly work has examined interviewer effects related to an enumerator's religious adherence. We find that the perceived religiosity of an interviewer impacts respondents' expressions of personal piety and adherence to Islamic cultural norms in a sample of approximately 1,200 women in Greater Cairo. Muslim women indicate that they are more religious and adherent to Islamic cultural norms when interviewed by an enumerator donning the Islamic headscarf. Conversely, members of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community report that they are less adherent to Christianity when interviewed by a veiled enumerator. Through psychological processes of strategic self-presentation of identity and impression management, the veil may trigger Muslim respondents to express what they perceive to be socially desirable (i.e., more devout) responses; in contemporary Egypt, being perceived as pious may elicit social and economic benefits. Christians appear to deemphasize their religious identity to avoid appearing antagonistic to the dominant, Muslim majority to which the enumerator appears to belong. Younger, poorer and less educated women -- who may be most susceptible to concerns about social desirability -- show the largest effects.
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Comparing the Geographic Distributions and Growth of Mormons, Adventists, and Witnesses
Ronald Lawson & Ryan Cragun
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2012, Pages 220-240
Abstract:
Mormons, Adventists, and Witnesses have all felt called to take their teachings to the world and have experienced growth. However, they have varied considerably in both their geographic spread - where they have developed a presence over time - and also in where they have been more successful numerically. The result is sharply differing profiles: Adventists are concentrated more in the developing world; Witnesses and Mormons are proportionately stronger in the developed world, but in different parts of it. Within countries, Witnesses and Mormons are more urban, while Adventists are more concentrated in rural regions; Adventists also tend to be poorer than Witnesses and especially practicing Mormons. The article explores why these differing patterns developed, expanding on a recently developed theoretical model by Cragun and Lawson that religious growth depends on the synchronization of supply and demand and their corresponding components.
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Distancing oneself from God: Relationships with borderline personality symptomatology
Randy Sansone & Michael Wiederman
Mental Health, Religion & Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-harm behaviour traditionally has been associated with borderline personality disorder. In this study, we examined the relationship between borderline personality symptomatology and intentionally distancing oneself from God as self-punishment, based on the assumption that such self-punishment may represent a form of self-harm behaviour. Data from four previous samples of primary care outpatients collected over a two-year period were combined (N = 1511). Borderline personality was assessed with two measures: the borderline personality scale of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4 (PDQ-4) and the Self-Harm Inventory (SHI). Point-biserial correlation coefficients revealed that those who endorsed distancing oneself from God as punishment scored relatively higher on both the PDQ-4 (r = 0.40, p < 0.001) and the SHI (r = 0.46, p < 0.001). Similarly, when compared to respondents who denied ever having distanced themselves from God as punishment, those who did were more likely to exceed the clinical cut-off score on the PDQ-4 (47.3% vs. 10.9%, X2 = 152.53, p < 0.001) and the SHI (57.3% vs. 11.4%, X2 = 224.12, p < 0.001). Findings support our hypothesis that distancing oneself from God as punishment may be a form of self-harm behaviour associated with borderline personality symptomatology.
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The protestant ethic and the religious tattoo
Jerome Koch & Alden Roberts
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research illustrates how basic ideas from Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism are reflected in religious individuals' choices in obtaining tattoos. Qualitative responses to survey questions show that, among 60 university students who indicated they have one, religious tattoos reflect asceticism in their lives, point them to service (calling) in the name of God, or provide a level of assurance (or anxiety) regarding life after death. We offer this work as an illustration of how the essence of Weber's work persists in the popular culture of the 21st century.
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Beauty contra God: Has aesthetics replaced religion in modernity?
John Carroll
Journal of Sociology, June 2012, Pages 206-223
Abstract:
The mainstream of sociology has argued that the process of modernization is inevitably accompanied by secularization. In spite of some recent questioning of the argument, the churches of the Western world, with the partial exception of the United States, have continued to steadily empty. Yet signs abound that individuals still seek metaphysical experience, but are more likely to do so in the secular realm. Above all, transcendence is sought aesthetically, through the experience of beauty, whether, to name a few domains, in Romance, through sport or out in nature. Nietzsche asserted that existence and the world can only be justified aesthetically. Major modern poets have agreed with him. This article takes up the question of whether aesthetic experience has replaced the religious in modernity.
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Andrew Village
Mental Health, Religion & Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychological type preferences of 333 biblical scholars (102 women and 231 men) were assessed using an on-line survey of members of the Society of Biblical Literature, who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Women showed preferences for introversion (74%) over extraversion (26%), thinking (67%) over feeling (33%), and judging (83%) over perceiving (17%), but no preference between sensing (49%) and intuition (51%). The two most frequent types were ISTJ (21%) and INTJ (17%). Men showed preferences for introversion (80%) over extraversion (20%), thinking (73%) over feeling (27%), and judging (87%) over perceiving (13%), but no preference between sensing (46%) and intuition (54%). The two most frequent types were ISTJ (29%) and INTJ (24%). Compared with a sample of clergy and USA population norms, the biblical scholars showed stronger preferences for introversion, intuition, thinking and judging. The women scholars in particular showed an unusually strong preference for thinking over feeling.